To the evidence: The notion that Malcolm X was a closeted gay man was first aired by Bruce Perry who, in his book Malcolm, claimed that his subject had several gay encounters, many of them for money. Perry's book was loudly denounced at the time of publication, and I'm sure some of the denunciation had to do with anger at the very thought of the icon of black manhood sleeping with men. For my part, I found Perry's book, which is big on telepathy and small on skepticism, to be pretty worthless. I take any claim leveled in that book with a grain of salt.

The claim by Marable is more limited, and rests on somewhat firmer ground. Marable says that  Malcolm was paid to rub talcum powder on a man and massage him until he came. This is also relayed in Malcolm's Autobiography, but with another man (not Malcolm) doing the massaging. Marable enlists a memoir by Malcolm's nephew Rodnell Collins, who says he heard the story from Malcolm's sister Ella Collins. On the broader point Marable is rather confusing. He doesn't offer any other instances of sex with men, but implies that there may have been when he writes that Malcolm was "not an active homosexual after 1952." At the same time, Marable says that Malcolm's experience with Lennon appears "to have been limited,"

It really wouldn't surprise me if Malcolm, especially during his hustler days, if he had, essentially, massaged Lennon to climax for money. But I don't think marshaling a second and third-hand account proves the case. And I think people who are moving to the much broader point--that Malcolm X was gay--are really stretching. With something like this, it's really important to look at the footnotes.