Les Payne

Les Payne (1941–2018), born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, was a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist and a former editor at Newsday. A founder of the National Association of Black Journalists, Payne also wrote an award-winning syndicated column. After his passing, his daughter and primary researcher, Tamara Payne, completed The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X (Liveright) Les Payne embarked in 1990 on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X— all living siblings of the Malcolm Little family, classmates, street friends, cellmates, Nation of Islam figures, FBI moles and cops, and political leaders around the world. His goal was ambitious: to transform what would become over a hundred hours of interviews into an unprecedented portrait of Malcolm X, one that would separate fact from fiction. The result is this historic biography that conjures a never-before-seen world of its protagonist. In the process he corrects the historical record and delivers extraordinary revelations including a clandestine meeting with the KKK and a minute-by-minute account of Malcolm X’s murder at the Audubon Ballroom. The Library Journal, in a starred review, called it “Monumental […] Payne’s richly detailed account is based on hundreds of interviews with Malcolm X’s family members, childhood friends, cellmates, allies, and enemies. […] An extraordinary and essential portrait of the man behind the icon.”