The Geography of Malcolm X

Book excerpt: The impact of Malcolm X and black nationalism can hardly be overestimated. Not only did they transform race relations in America, they revolutionized the study of race in all fields of study, from American history to literature to sociology. Jim Tyner's The Geography of Malcolm X will be the first book to apply a geographical perspective to black radicalism. The Geography of Malcolm X explores how the radical black power movement that emerged in the 1960s thought and acted in spatial terms. How did they conceive of the space of the ghetto? The different social and political geographies of the North and South? The imaginative geographies connecting blacks in America to Africa and the emerging postcolonial world? At the center of his account is the intellectual evolution of Malcolm X, who at every stage of his development applied a spatial perspective to the predicament of blacks in America and the world. The Geography of Malcolm X introduces critical race theory to geography and demonstrates to readers in many other fields the importance of space and place in black nationalist thought. Given his range of thinking and his centrality to the era, Malcolm X is an ideal window into this long-neglected aspect of race relations in America.