By the time of his tragic murder in 1965, Malcolm X was world famous as the angriest black man in America. From hustling, cocaine addiction and armed violence in the ghettos of Harlem he had turned, in a dramatic prison conversion, to the fervour of the Black Muslims. Speaking out to millions of oppressed blacks, he brought new hope and self-respect. But was Malcolm X, in the words of one critic, merely a racist preaching hatred or was he a founding father, whose passionate eloquence has helped to nourish the modern anti-racist movement? This book attempts to answer this question by looking at the life and work of Malcolm X.