“For Harlem is where he worked and where he struggled and fought—his home of homes, where his heart was, and where his people are.” Nearly sixty years since the martyrdom of Malcolm X, these words from Ossie Davis’s eulogy remind us that Malcolm’s political and religious beliefs and conceptions of culture have profoundly shaped and been shaped by Harlem. Mapping Malcolm continues the project of reinscribing Malcolm X’s memory and legacy in the present by exploring his commitment to community building and his articulation of a global power analysis as it continues to manifest across New York City today. More specifically, the book explores the limits and possibilities of the archive, the political, material, and philosophical legacy of the Black radical tradition, the Black diaspora, and the state.

Oriented toward sovereignty and liberation, Mapping Malcolm brings together artists, community organizers, and scholars to consider the politics of Black space-making in Harlem through a range of historical, cultural, and anti-imperialist worldviews designed to offer new, reparatory pedagogical possibilities. Together, they reconfigure how we understand, employ, and carry forward Malcolm X’s sociopolitical, cross-cultural analyses of justice and power as an everyday praxis in the built environment and beyond.

With contributions from Maytha Alhassen, Joshua Bennett, Christopher Joshua Benton, Lisa Beyeler-Yvarra, Stephen Burks, Guy Davis, Ossie Davis, Ibrahem Hasan, Albert Hicks IV, Marc Lamont Hill, Ladi’Sasha Jones, Jerrell Gibbs, Nsenga Knight, Akemi Kochiyama, Denise Lim, Jaimee A. Swift, James A. Tyner, Marcus Washington Jr., and Darien Alexander Williams.

Najha Zigbi-Johnson

Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2024

22.8 X 15 cm, 304 pages