Alston grew up in the inner city of Plainfield, New Jersey, which he has described as being, at that time, "Niggertown with all the customs and traditions of racism, sexism and powerlessness". Alston was 11 years old during the assassination of Malcolm X and 13 years old during the 1967 Newark riots, events that both took place near his home town of Plainfield. In a 2010 interview, Alston said that he did not remember Malcolm X's death in 1965, but he began to understand the significance of Malcolm's legacy as rebellions occurred throughout the United States in 1967. Alston described the impact of seeing his older brother's copy of Malcolm X's autobiography with the subtitle "former pimp, hustler, robber, who becomes leader of the Black Revolution", which demonstrated to him that "people that come from that kind of background can play a heroic role in the struggle." He also recalled how witnessing the 1967 Plainfield rebellion gave him "an image of black men and women in heroic roles in our community crashing all the myths about us being 'niggers', all that stuff."