ELYUMA: Who was Malcolm X: Criminal, Minister, Humanist, Revolutionary, or Martyr?

Over the weekend I finished reading the 500+ page new biography of Malcolm X by Manning Marable: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
The very aptly titled book traces this extraordinary and quintessentially American's multiple reinventions and transformations over the course of his all too brief 39 years. The man who we know today as Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska, to fiercely proud and independent Garveyite parents and died (assassinated by his former Nation of Islam “brothers” —likely with the foreknowledge and possibly the assistance of the NYPD and the FBI) just a few blocks from where I live in Washington Heights, New York City in 1965.

Finally, there are brief if interesting sections in the bio that refer to Malcolm's meetings with Castro and possibly Che Guevara (…), easily his closest ideological analogue at the time.