Coalhouse: Context for Ragtime

As we prepare to read Ragtime together and to pay attention to various social matters the new Martin Luther King memorial is being dedicated on the mall in Washington, D. C.  King's "I Have a Dream" speech was delivered a dozen years before Doctorow's novel was published in 1975.  Malcolm X was assassinated a decade before the book.  Three years later, King was assassinated. These three events remind us of the context in which Doctorow was writing and of the pressing concerns that informed him as he represented an earlier era of American life. 

As I listened this morning to an American Icon episode on Malcolm X Coalhouse, both the man and the group around him, echoed.  I was struck as much by the testimony of people who had been effected by his autobiography as much as by the portrayal of Malcolm X.  A white journalist spoke of recognizing the truth of the book's portrayal of "white devils."  A black man recalled trying to join the Black Panthers when he was about 15 years old: when he declared his desire to be armed, he was given a stack of books that included The Autobiography of Malcolm X.