Part VII: Where It Ended Up Podcast By  cover art

Part VII: Where It Ended Up

Part VII: Where It Ended Up

Listen for free

View show details

About this listen

In the seventh episode, young Charles faces the ongoing racist abuses of prison authorities and then "escapes" as a parolee to the military, where he finds an even more outrageous experience of racism.  Struggling against a system where even black officers are subordinated to white inferiors, Charles pushes back and pays dearly for it.  And, in a twist of fate, Charles becomes the cell mate of one of jazz music's all-time legends, with a not-so-musical outcome.  Finally, Lou gets married and Kenyatta goes to his wedding--but then somewhat suddenly gets married too, and Lou is hardly "over the Moon" about it.

NOTE TO LISTENERS: ALTHOUGH KENYATTA'S NARRATIVE CONTAINS THE USE OF THE "N-WORD" IN THIS SECTION, IT IS NOT REPRODUCED.  INSTEAD, AN APPROPRIATELY OFFENSIVE "BEEP" SOUND SERVES AS THE "N-WORD" MARKER.--LD

In "The Curious & Embattled Life of Charles Kenyatta," historian and biographer, Louis A. DeCaro, Jr., narrates the story of his association and friendship with Charles (37X) Kenyatta, a follower of Malcolm X and prominent personality in Harlem from the 1960s until his death in 2005.   Reminiscing about his decade-long association with this controversial Harlem personality, Lou weaves Kenyatta's own story into the narrative, revealing the life and struggles of an unlikely Harlem leader, a man whose passion for the poor and the disenfranchised was matched by his own quest for leadership and notoriety--a quest filled with twists, turns, and backflips.  Based upon extensive interviews with Kenyatta, the story is juxtaposed against Kenyatta's FBI files and other research.

Louis DeCaro Jr. is a biographer of abolitionist John Brown, but entered his life of scholarship in the late 1980s and early '90s as a student of Malcolm X, and ultimately produced a doctoral dissertation and two books on the Muslim activist, On the Side of My People: A Religious Life of Malcolm X (1995) and Malcolm and the Cross: Christianity, the Nation of Islam, and Malcolm X (1997).

Support the show
No reviews yet