January 18, 2005. The Autobiography of Malcolm X Multimedia Study Environment (MSE) presents Malcolm X's memoir as the textual "spine" with links to critical annotations, audio, video, and images within an innovative interactive Web site. The Autobiography is the 17th MSE produced by the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL). Professor Manning Marable, Director of Columbia's Center for Contemporary Black History (CCBH), served as CCNMTL's faculty partner and executive editor for this MSE, which will be used in his lecture course on Malcolm X.

As a personal account of his life story as told to Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X is the most popular and accessible text on Malcolm X. However, as an autobiography, it fails to reconcile certain inconsistencies and factual errors. The MSE seeks to provide a resource for studying and understanding Malcolm X by delving beyond the Haley text through critical annotations, interviews, and other primary sources organized by four "lenses," or perspectives: politics, culture, globalism, and faith.

In addition to annotating this landmark text, the MSE provides access to materials that make it an invaluable resource for scholars, including a case file on the assassination of Malcolm X. This unprecedented collection contains material not readily available to the public before, ranging from photographs of the contents of Malcolm X's pockets when he was shot to files from the FBI and the New York Municipal Archives. The multimedia archive features original interviews with Columbia Professors Farah J. Griffin and Robin Kelley, as well as Malcolm X's contemporaries Max Stanford and Ossie Davis, among others. The MSE also incorporates four video lectures by Dr. Marable on the Malcolm X/Alex Haley collaboration, the assassination, Malcolm X and politics, and Malcolm X and gender.

Frank Moretti, executive director of CCNMTL, points out that "The Malcolm X MSE represents the culmination of an ambitious, three-year collaboration between CCNMTL and CCBH. We have created a site that supports research and education, with information and commentary never before gathered in one place. We hope that the combination of its design, along with the power of the Autobiography and the life of Malcolm X himself, will make The Autobiography of Malcolm X MSE a powerful tool for African American scholarship."

Access to The Autobiography of Malcolm X MSE is available to faculty or students affiliated with a course using the MSE. For more information on this or any of the other 16 MSEs, please contact CCNMTL.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X MSE

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