A new academic book edited by Harlem native Najha Zigbi-Johnson gathers a mix of essays, poems and visual art to reflect on Malcolm X’s political and cultural legacy in Harlem. Released on Sept. 13, “Mapping Malcolm” features contributions from artists, community organizers, and scholars like author and TV personality Marc Lamont Hill, visual artist Nsenga Knight, and author Joshua Bennett.
“Malcolm spent a lot of time organizing in Harlem,” Zigbi-Johnson said. “He came to Harlem to help establish mosques as part of the Nation of Islam. He spent a lot of time making friends, listening to music, [and] being an everyday person. But, particularly for this book project, I’m interested in the political and religious spaces that Malcolm helped to shape in Harlem.”
Zigbi-Johnson teaches at The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York, and until early 2023, spent more than two years as the director of institutional advancement at the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center. She earned her bachelor’s degree in comparative religious studies from Guilford College in 2017, and master’s of theological studies from Harvard Divinity School in 2020, where she also explored the history of Black social movements.
“Growing up, as someone who’s lived in Harlem my whole life, how I understood Harlem was through Malcolm’s legacy,” Zigbi-Johnson said. “Growing up on Malcolm X Blvd, passing Temple No. 7 [relocated since Malcolm X’s passing], watching people sell bean pies or copies of the Final Call. How I understood Malcolm was how I understood Harlem.”
Zigbi-Johnson spent two years curating “Mapping Malcolm” and began first by consulting with elders she’s encountered throughout her years as a community organizer for names of people whose voices would be welcomed in the book.
Book images courtesy of Ayem Design and Columbia Books on Architecture and the City
“I also was really interested in approaching a new set of people who may not always be connected to Malcolm’s scholarship. I wanted to include emerging scholars, Black and Brown voices, Muslim people, [and] women. People who have in their own disciplines been informed by the legacy of Malcolm X, and also the legacy of the Black radical tradition.”
“Mapping Malcolm” includes an essay from Marc Lamont Hill about his personal relationship to Malcolm X’s philosophies, which he was introduced to by his older brother. Nsenga Knight contributes an art piece on the last rites and rituals that were a part of Malcolm X’s muslim funeral services. Late actor Ossie Davis’s son, Guy Davis, hand wrote his father’s famous eulogy for Malcolm X, in which he called the activist “our shining black prince,” and added his own reflections on his father’s speech.
“It is a scholarly project, but the book is meant to be engaged in a lot of ways,” Zigbi-Johnson explained. “You can read a poem and then close it, you can look at a piece of art. It’s meant to offer a range of entry points to think through the legacy of Malcolm in a new and more expansive way.”
The book is published by Columbia Books on Architecture in the City, a subsidiary of Columbia University Press, a non-profit press part of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University. While participating in a fellowship at the graduate school, Zigbi-Johnson held a lecture called “Reframing Power” that used Malcolm X’s legacy as a guide on how to restructure the relationships between institutions like Columbia, and the communities that they’re in.
The April 2022 lecture sparked a conversation with the school’s affiliated publisher, which led to the creation of the book. Zigbi-Johnson doesn’t shy away from the belief that Columbia University’s development and presence in Harlem is at odds with her values.
“I was exploring the relationship between Columbia and Harlem, and the way that the institution has been a gentrifying force,” Zigbi-Johnson explained. “The people who run the press have a deep understanding of community development and sovereignty that’s rooted in our collective flourishing. Rather than trying to shy away from the fact that we are also attached to this institution which has not done right by our community, and not done right by its students, there are still voices of moral clarity in the institution, and that press represents one of them.”
“Mapping Malcolm” is a collection that brings together commissioned works created specifically for the book, in addition to pieces selected by Zigbi-Johnson that had already been created previously. Some of the works are more indirectly related to Malcolm X and his work, like an essay on the architecture of the Harlem home of activist and Malcolm X’s friend Yuri Kochiyama, which was a gathering place for organizing work in the 1960s.
“This book and the work that’s in it is not biographical,” Zigbi-Johnson said. “It’s not a biography of his life or [of] the Shabazz family. It’s a reflection of what a range of people think when they remember and invoke Malcolm’s spirit in the work that they do.
“This is for my generation to continue to think about Malcolm. To continue recognizing that places like the Shabazz Center exist, that the Theresa Hotel has this incredible history. People like Malcolm X were struggling and building, and being powerful every single day right on this [Lenox] avenue.”
“Mapping Malcolm” is available online on Amazon and at cup.columbia.edu.