The Sex Work of Malcolm X
Was it part of his radical education?
Fans of Malcolm X have had a tough time getting the biography they wanted. One after another doesn’t deliver the legend they like.
For decades, a white scholar named Bruce Perry did biographical research on Malcolm with sources who’d known him, and published his 1991 biography, Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America.
That wasn’t the one the fans wanted.
It described Malcolm doing escorting with men.
A source who knew Malcolm had told Perry that as a teenager, Malcolm had been employed in 1946 by William Paul Lennon, a wealthy Bostonian. Lennon paid Malcolm “to disrobe him, place him on his bed, sprinkle him with talcum powder, and massage him until he reached his climax.”
This wasn’t an unfamiliar story. The Autobiography of Malcolm X had a profile of a young man named ‘Rudy’, who was something like a male escort. As the passage reads:
“Once a week, Rudy went to the home of this old, rich Boston blueblood, pillar-of-society aristocrat. He paid Rudy to undress them both, then pick up the old man like a baby, lay him on his bed, then stand over him and…
