Letter to the Editor

Abstract

Previous article FreeLetter to the EditorRandy Roberts and Johnny SmithRandy RobertsDistinguished Professor of History, Purdue University Search for more articles by this author and Johnny SmithAssistant Professor of History, Georgia Tech Search for more articles by this author Distinguished Professor of History, Purdue UniversityAssistant Professor of History, Georgia TechPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreAugust 2, 2018V. P. Franklin, EditorJournal of African American HistoryDear Dr. Franklin,In the Winter/Spring 2018 issue of the JAAH, Ronald J. Stephens wrote a misleading review of our book, Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X. It’s difficult to even scratch the surface of how many factual mistakes he made misrepresenting our research. Stephens wrote, “Indeed one inherent problem in covering Ali’s journey … is the authors’ heavy dependence on secondary news accounts based in the FBI’s surveillance of Ali’s involvement with the Nation of Islam. … The reliance on newspaper accounts (secondary sources) is problematic because the authors did not consult the bureau’s original files on Ali. … Rather, it appears that the authors relied on newspaper accounts of the files.”Stephens’s statement is demonstrably false. First, as any history major knows, newspaper accounts are primary sources. The overwhelming number of newspaper articles we used—more than 500—were from the 1950s and 1960s; we consulted only 3 secondary newspaper articles. Second, our endnotes clearly show that we examined the available original FBI files related to Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, and the Nation of Islam. In fact, we cited the original FBI files more than 50 times.Furthermore, Stephens claims that we did not consult the FBI’s original files on Ali. This is true. But no one but Ali himself had access to his FBI file until December 2016, after he died in June. Our book was published in February 2016, ten months before the FBI released the Ali file. Stephens should have recognized that Ali’s FBI records were not available to researchers until December 2016 since he footnoted three news articles from that month about the Ali file.Stephens makes appalling mistakes in his review. He claimed that we depended on Ali’s autobiography and Jack Cashill’s Sucker Punch. In fact, we cited Ali’s autobiography only twice in the entire book because it is an unreliable source. Furthermore, we did not once cite Cashill’s book or consult it in the course of our research. No biographer could depend on these books together since the autobiography mythologizes Ali’s heroic story and Cashill’s scathing work condemns the man and the myth.Stephens’s contention that we relied “too much” on secondary sources could not be further from the truth. Our endnotes show that we utilized far more primary sources than secondary, including the papers of Malcolm X, Alex Haley, and others; FBI files, State Department records, the daily press, news footage, oral histories, interviews, and various archival collections.We could point out other factual errors made by Stephens, but space limits prevent us from doing so. Reading his review, we can’t help but wonder if he read the same book that we wrote. Previous article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of African American History Volume 104, Number 1Winter 2019 A journal of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/701309 © 2019 by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.