Introduction
The American civil war did not end in 1865. This extraordinary book shows how the bloodshed and brutality of racial slavery extended into the twentieth century and conditioned its political conflicts over race. The Autobiography takes us back to a difficult and violent phase in America’s continuing transition towards a non-racial democracy. This period saw blacks belatedly awarded full citizenship as well as winning a significant measure of official recognition as human beings who could bear the same legal and moral rights as whites. The ‘Jim Crow’ code that had formalized complete racial separation was overthrown during this time. It was defeated in bitter struggles that transformed all of America’s institutions, North and South.
As Malcolm’s life unfolds, and its militant pattern and direction become gradually apparent, the book also catches the spirit of the world-wide movement against colonialism to which black America’s battles for freedom and citizenship were increasingly being tied. The moral authority and credibility of western civilization were judged to be at stake in the handling of ‘Negro’ demands for political equality and human rights. This conflict irrevocably changed the way in which the USA was seen by the rest of the world. The contribution which The Autobiography made to that great shift should not be underestimated.
The changing moods and responses of African-Americans constitute the book’s political and emotional core. Their feelings during that decisive period of upheaval and social reconstruction are captured in the prism of Malcolm’s life. His progressively more sophisticated attempts to analyse the crisis that would eventually consume him provide more than a history lesson. They have offered millions of readers a practical crash-course in the politics of race. This curriculum was the culmination of an education that had started in the prison library and crystallized in the monastic solitude of Malcolm’s prison cell. It communicates important lessons even now and is all the more interesting because it is conducted by a participant in events whose world-historic character would only become apparent later on.
The historical and political dimensions of The Autobiography are not the only qualities that keep it being read and argued over. It has other dimensions that frame and modify its historical status. It presents a charismatic version of Malcolm’s life and endows his remarkable personal story with a mythic significance that is not always accurate in small details. These lapses do not, however, invalidate the motivated approach taken by the authors or undermine the larger claims to which their collaboration gives such eloquent and troubling voice. Malcolm’s disturbing and exciting tale was orchestrated so that it corresponded to old patterns of storytelling in which pilgrims and sinners triumphed over adversity and acquired eventual redemption from unlikely sources. From this perspective, all the petty humiliation and routine brutality of American racial politics could detract from or even undermine The Autobiography’s universal story of conversion, betrayal and transcendent personal development. However, it is a measure of the book’s great achievements that its specific and general elements have been so carefully and creatively combined that the reader can no longer separate them.
The anti-racist humanism that Malcolm proclaims is able to endow precious universality in the parochial image of the Negro. This accomplishment was made easier by the way that The Autobiography draws upon and extends the distinctive traditions of self-expression and autobiographical writing that were born from slavery. The slaves’ path to literacy had been locked by the violence of the slaveholders. Under that pressure, a dogged and subversive pursuit of the ability to read and write forges alternative literary conventions. The autobiographical writing of ex-slaves and fugitives was connected directly to their bid for freedom and recognition. Publishing their life stories became integral to the work of building an international abolitionist movement in which reading about the sufferings and triumphs of slaves played a central formative role. The capacity to tell one’s own story publicly, in one’s own way, became an index of personal autonomy and authentic self-possession. Older European ideas of autobiography as confession were left behind at this point. The Autobiography rewrites and updates the literary logic of abolitionism which is then placed in the service of another moral and political movement against racism. Malcolm’s book makes this tradition correspond to the imperatives of the late twentieth century. Frederick Douglas in the nineteenth century and Olaudah Equiano before that, achieved similar literary feats. Like Malcolm’s, their autobiographical works demanded recognition for their authors as special representative voices – figures whose lives and their public telling, could communicate uncomfortable but necessary truths and map a whole constellation of suffering as the first step towards bringing it to an end.
Just like the slave narratives that first employed these tactics, The Auto biography manages to speak simultaneously to different groups of readers. It is multiply addresses: first to Malcolm’s racial siblings; and then to whites who are made to face their complicity in US apartheid and to embrace their significant responsibilities in its overthrow. A new definition of the political work involved in purging the world of racism ended what Malcolm described as the ‘blanket indictments’ that had defined his immature political outlook. Here, he turned away from the wholesome condemnation that could reproduce elements of the very racism it struggled to overcome. He was prepared instead to encourage ‘sincere’ white people by giving them a new mission which he outlined with great care and feeling: ‘let sincere whites go and teach non-violence to white people!’
Beyond the borders of the US homeland from which he was so comprehensively estranged, Malcolm’s book also speaks to a wider world constituency. This readership was partly created and sometimes reached via the new communications media that characterized the cold war period. At that moment, the novel power of television was transmitting highly charged images of the of the black American freedom movement to a global public. Those flickering black-and-white pictures of police dogs and protest, fire-hoses and flames were conducted into the deep shadows cast by the Nazi genocide and a storm of colonial conflicts in Indo-China, Africa and elsewhere. The cold was environment fostered Malcom’s moral commitment and fed his vision of human relationships from which the corrosive power of racism had been absolutely removed. He was one of many voices raised to demand that the West acknowledge the damage that had been done to its democracy and it civilization by the twin evils of race consciousness and race hierarchy. We feel Malcolm being transformed by his growing contact with this outside world. We see him unwittingly become a global figure with a planetary understanding of his own racial predicament and an indivisible sense of justice to match it. He was thus a different kind of leader whose journeying away from home enriched and complicated his knowledge of himself with a cosmopolitan understanding of equality. His loathing of ignorance and equally strong investment in the value of education, particularly in languages, expressed that insurgent spirit. New value was placed upon contact with others whose difference was not something to be feared but rather to be appreciated as an opportunity for enhances self-knowledge.
The insights that Malcolm gained from his travels in Europe and Africa, like the pleasure he took in appearing in television, point forward from his time to ours. He seems to have actually relished playing the game of ‘sound-bites’ with hostile reporters. To understand why his celebrity and visibility produced great envy and made him a marked man, we need to remember that this was a period in which mass media came to dominate and transform political communication. Athletes aside, Malcolm was briefly the most famous black man in the world and The Autobiography shows that he had acquired a subtle grasp of how his media image could be shaped to maximum effect. His early and sophisticated command of the opportunities created by post-modern media not only helped his story to organise the consciousness of his own generation, but helped to provide interpretative resources and political insights to its successors.
From the start, the political narrative The Autobiography contains is counterpointed and interrupted by other sensibilities that broaden its audience. Today, these qualities suggest other ways of reading and using the book. We should remember, for example, that the circumstances in which the text was produced were highly unusual. Its special flavour derives from the fact that it was a collaboration between two people, Malcolm and Alex Haley, who, initially anyway, were mutually distrustful and suspicious. The resolution of their antagonistic relationship seems to have become an active element in the process of Malcolm’s emotional and moral growth. His acceptance of Haley becomes a measure of that growth. Many commentators have described the uncomfortable sessions that led to the book’s production as akin to encounters between a psychoanalyst or psychotherapist and their patient. This view is strengthened when we remember that after two months of frustration and tacit conflict it was Haley’s chance question about Malcolm’s mother which eventually opened the flow of words and observations.
Malcolm’s fast-lane life transmits another urgency into the story. The book acquires an accelerated momentum as it hurtles towards our present. We approach Haley’s rather saintly, protestant Malcolm through our knowledge of his eventual martyrdom. The enduring appeal of the book has been shaped by the impact of that final tragedy which stands between us and its authors, cutting off Malcolm’s voice prematurely and making it impossible to know where his political, spiritual and moral journeys would have eventually terminated. This openness has made Malcolm’s legacy indeterminate and it remains important to the ongoing life of the book. Liberating open-mindedness is combined with Malcolm’s distaste for bigotry and hypocrisy. He was both humble and stern, and this distinctive combination echoes loudly through a regularly expressed determination to emancipate his own thinking from the effects of the ‘racist cancer that is malignant in the body of America’. The same indeterminacy gives the inattentive or casual reader an unwelcome freedom. Without a disciplined and careful reading of the text, they can, in effect, produce the Malcolm they desire from a range of different options: hipster, prisoner, Muslim, socialist, anti-racist and so on. The authors anticipated and perhaps even amplified this ambiguity. It reappears not only in their predictions of murder for the other leaders of the Civil Rights movement but in a startling conclusion that presents Malcolm as an otherworldly figure who is already dead as their collaboration draws to a close. This literary device wins additional moral and political gravity for their book by effectively making it into a cautionary message from a dead man, unjustly robbed of his life by the forces of evil that its closing chapters denounce.
There is one notable element of Malcolm’s public personality that stays constant, underpinning his various and contradictory incarnations. All of them are built upon the foundation supplied by his special role as an exemplar of heroic manliness. This quality is so powerful that it can reverse the twilight of interminable boyhood that was required by slavery. A manly brand of leadership can effectively compensate the whole race for its lack of access to authentic masculinity. Malcolm’s incarnation as primary symbol of African-American manhood has placed a heavy, perhaps unbearable burden on his contested political legacies. Those voices most keen to identify Malcolm with the restoration of manhood to African-Americans in general have not always been as quick to interpret his story for what it might reveal about the questionable political value of brotherhood, the logic of fratricide and mistaken specifications of the proper character of relationships between men and women. Malcolm’s break with the sectarian mentality of ethnic nationalism seems incomplete as long as its rules regarding gender and family relations remain uncontested. It is not so much that Malcolm’s criticisms of Elijah Muhammed were driven by his disgust at the older man’s sexual immorality, there is a strong sense of unfinished business here. This is deepened by the suggestion that Malcolm’s relations with women, family and children provide a larger key to the enigma of his shape-shifting personality.
This disturbing possibility underlines further, universally resonant human themes – loss, family, conflict, development, education, responsibility, morality and shame – which are all vividly present and propel discussion of the book far beyond the confines of racialized experience. To put it another way, the emotional life overflow the boundaries which America’s malignant obsessions with race would try to contain them in. moving beyond the veil of race, the attentive reader comes not only to recognize some of their own human features and frailties in this exploration of Malcolm’s demonic personality but also to appreciate his self-disciple and the hard-won ability to reconstruct himself along more modest and less demagogic lines. Through this identification with Malcolm’s struggle to master himself, we are asked to understand and query the very mechanisms of his racial demonization. The critique of white supremacy which he invites his readers to share, does more than articulate the justified anger of all wronged African-Americans. That anger is more than just a legitimate response, it is made comprehensible.
The book’s enduring appeal suggests that it has corresponded to the needs of different groups at different moments, that it enjoyed a different appeal in the eras of Bob Marley and Nelson Mandela than it must have had while the Civil Rights struggles were in full flight or the Black Power Movement was at its most assertive. The secret of the book’s broad popularity may lie in the fact that this version of Malcolm’s life finally demonstrates the difficult and perennially unfashionable notion that people are not fixed or closed products of their circumstances. Here is compelling evidence that they can change, and perhaps even improve. This liberating insight is not restricted only to matters of formal ideology and conscious belief. Malcolm’s opinions and his political and religious outlooks developed restlessly as he pursued more testing truths. The authors present the evolution of his outlook into and through black nationalism but also beyond it into an uncharted territory that is hard even now to label.
Malcolm’s timely voice was raised, first against white supremacy and the studied indifference that feeds it. He indicted the unsatisfactory political and religious frameworks that failed to make his experience of injustice intelligible. Finally, he did battle with his own feelings and limits. Malcolm showed his readers how he had been damaged and then courageously revealed that he had damaged himself and others. He suffered, he reflected and then worked to understand the systematic character of that suffering. In taking possession of it and making it convincingly both personal and historical, he mastered himself. In ultimately moving beyond a narrow, racialized interpretation of his people’s bloody history, Malcolm made their anger plausible and their collective humanity unavoidable. This book is absolutely faithful to its historical context and to the national pursuit of justice by a people who would soon stop calling themselves ‘Negroes’. However, it bears repetition that its political dimensions are no longer its only or even its principal sources of appeal. The text itself suggests that there are higher forms of truth at stake here than any definitions of politics can contain.
- Paul Gilroy
*POI descriptions have been taken directly from the autobiography (not my own words).
All first person tenses have been changed to third person, for fluidity; nothing else has been altered.
Change in information such as professions, relationship status etc. were also added on as I've gone through the book.
Names are listed in the order they were introduced in the book.
If you believe you have spotted any errors, please do let me know as this would have been unintentional and I'll gladly rectify the issue.
Reverend Earl Little
Father & a Baptist minister, a dedicated organizer for Marcus Aurelius Garvey’s U.N.I.A. (Universal Negro Improvement Association). Malcom was 6 when he died.
Ella
Half Sibling from Earl’s previous marriage. This is a strong, big, black, Georgia-born woman. Lived in Boston. She was extroverted like Malcolm. She took Malcolm in and introduced him to a new life after he moved there, after eight grade. She had played a very significant role in his life. No other woman ever was strong enough to point him in directions; he pointed women in directions.
Earl
Half Sibling from Earl’s previous marriage. Lived in Boston. Was a singer with a band in Boston. He was singing under the name of Jimmy Carleton.
Mary
Half Sibling from Earl’s previous marriage. Lived in Boston.
Wilfred
Oldest sibling. Studied a trade at Wilberforce University in Ohio. He was the Minister of the Detroit Temple.
Hilda
Philbert
Older sister.
Older brother (Malcolm came next). He was the Minister of the Lansing Temple.
Reginald
Younger brother. From infancy, he had some kind of hernia condition which was to handicap him physically for the rest of his life. He never liked white women. He showed, in often surprising wats, more sense than a lot of working hustlers twice his age. He was lazy and eventually quit his hustle altogether. He was very close to Mary, as they were quiet types. He was suspended from The Nation of Islam for not practicing moral restraint; he was carrying on improper relations with the then secretary of the New York Temple. He is in an institution now.
Louise Little
Yvonne
Wesley
Robert
Mr Maynard Allen
Mr & Mrs Swerlin
Mother. She was born in Grenada, in the British West Indies and looked like a white woman. Her father was white. Eventually, she suffered a complete breakdown and had to move to the State Mental Hospital at Kalamazoo, where she remained for about 26 years.
Youngest sister.
Younger brother.
Youngest brother.
A white state man put in charge of sorting out where Malcolm would be raised.
They ran the detention home that Malcolm stayed at for a few years in order to be ‘reformed’. They were white.
Mr Ostrowski
Mr Williams
Mr & Mrs Lyons
Shorty Henderson
Malcolm's English teacher.
Malcolm’s history teacher who loved to make ‘nigger’ jokes.
Malcolm lived with them for 2 months in eighth grade, before moving to Boston to live with Ella. They were respected negroes.
A dark, stubby, conk-headed fellow who racked up balls for the pool players. He was about 10 years older than Malcolm.
Freddie
A wiry, brown-skinned, conked fellow. He was a shoeshine boy at the Roseland State Ballroom who quit his job after winning the numbers. He taught Malcolm the ropes (It was Malcolm’s first job in Boston).
Laura
A school girl Malcolm became friends with whilst working as a soda fountain clerk (his job after quitting shoe shining). She was Malcolm’s favourite lindy hopping partner at the Roxbury, but her life changed drastically after meeting Malcolm. She finished high school and was in and out of jail. She started drinking liquor which led to dope and then prostitution. Learning to hate men who bought her, she also became a lesbian.
Sophia
She became entranced with Malcolm after seeing him at the Roseland black dances, dancing with Laura. She was a fine white woman who Malcolm ditched Laura over. She also financed Malcolm. She was still seeing Malcolm whilst married to some well-to-do Boston white fellow.
Pappy Cousins
The ‘Yankee Clipper’ steward, a white man from Maine. He worked on the New Haven Line train, where Malcolm worked as a sandwich man.
Ed Smalls
Charlie Smalls
Owner of a bar called Small’s Paradise, in New York.
Ed’s brother; they were inseparable. He hired Malcolm to be a day waiter at the bar, after someone quit to join the army.
Brisbane
The biggest, blackest, worst cop of them all in Harlem. He was West Indian.
'Cadillac' Drake
A big jolly, cigar smoking, fat, black, gaudy-dressing pimp; he had a string of about a dozen of the stringiest, scrawniest, black and white street prostitutes in Harlem. Eventually he had gotten hooked on heroin.
'Sammy the Pimp'
Young, smooth, independent-acting pimp from Kentucky. He could pick out potential prostitutes by watching their expressions in dance halls. In time, Sammy and Malcolm became each other’s closest friends. The friendship hit a wall, when after a burglary attempt they were both in on went wrong and Sammy was grazed by a bullet. When Malcolm went to his apartment the next day, Sammy’s woman started attacked Malcolm and he fended her off. Sammy reached for his gun and chased Malcolm down a block. They soon made up – on the surface. But things are never fully right with anyone you have seen trying to kill you. He eventually quit pimping and had gotten pretty high up in the numbers business and was doing well. He later married some fast young girl, but then shortly after his wedding one morning was found lying dead across his bed with $25,000 in his pockets.
'Dollarbill'
A big, fat pimp. He loved to flash his ‘Kansas City roll’, probably fifty one-dollar bills folded with a twenty on the inside and a one-hundred dollar bill on the outside.
'Fewclothes'
Had been one of the best pickpockets in Harlem, back when the white people swarmed up every night in the 1920s, but then during the Depression, he had contracted a bad case of arthritis in his hands. His finger joints were knotted and gnarled so that it made people uncomfortable to look at them.
'Jumpsteady'
A burglar. He was called that because, it was said, when he worked in white residential areas downtown, he jumped from roof to roof and was so steady that he manoeuvred along window ledges. If he fell, he’d have been dead. He got into apartments through windows. He always keyed himself up high on dope when he worked. He was a night-time apartment specialist. He taught Malcolm some things that he would employ in later years when hard times would force him to have his own burglary ring.
Creole Bill
From New Orleons, a good friend of Malcolm. After Small’s closed, Malcolm would bring fast-spending white people who still wanted some drinking action to Creole Bill’s speakeasy, which was in his apartment.
'St Louis Red'
'Chicago Red'
A professional armed robber in Harlem.
They became good buddies in a speakeasy (Jimmy’s Chicken Shack) where later Malcolm was a waiter and he was a dishwasher. Now he’s making his living being funny as a nationally known stage and night-club comedian. He is Redd Foxx.
Lionel Hampton
A close friend. He would do the most generous things for people he barely knew.
Gladys Hampton
Lionel’s wife and business manager. One of the brainiest women Malcolm ever met. She used to talk to him a lot and tried to give him good advice. She saw how wild he was. She saw him headed toward a bad end.
Frank Schiffman
West Indian Archie
Owner of The Apollo Theatre where Lionel performed.
Former strong-arm man for Dutch Schultz in Harlem. He had the kind of photographic memory that put him among the elite of numbers runners. He never wrote down your number; even in the case of combination plays, he would just nod. He was able to file all the numbers in his head, and write them down for the banker only when he turned in his money. This made him the ideal runner because cops could never catch him with any betting slips. He handled only sizable bettors. He also required integrity and sound credit. Malcolm began placing bets with him.
Hymie
A jew who bought rundown restaurants and bars in downtown Harlem and then flipped them for a profit. Malcolm began to work for him after he quite steering. He would have done anything for Hymie. He did do all kinds of things, but his main job was transporting bootleg liquor that Hymie supplied, usually to those spruced-up bars which he sold to someone.
Jean Parks
Rudy
Bimbi
Elijah Muhammad
Master W. D. Fard
Lemuel Hassan
Clara Muhammad
Mother Marie
Betty X
Attilah
Qubilah
Ilyasah
Amilah
Louis Lomax
C. Eric Lincoln
James Hick
Minister Jeremiah X
Minister John X
Minister Wallace Muhammad
Jean was one of the most beautiful women who ever lived in Harlem. She once sang with Sarah Vaughan in the Bluebonnets, a quartet that sang with Earl Hines. For a long time, Jean and Malcolm enjoyed a standing, friendly deal that they'd go out and celebrate when either of them hit the numbers.
Shorty’s friend. His mother was Italian and his father was a negro. He was born in Boston, a short, light fellow, a pretty boy type. Rudy worked regularly for an employment agency that sent him to wait on tables at exclusive parties. Rudy was part of Malcolm’s burglary ring; he qualified both as a ‘finder’ and as someone able to ‘case’ physical layouts.
The first man Malcolm ever met in prison who made any positive impression on him. He was a light, kind of red-complexioned Negro, as Malcolm was; about Malcolm's height, and he had freckles. He was an old-time burglar who had been in many prisons.
Small, sensitive and gentle, with a brown face. Seemed fragile, almost tiny compared to the Fruit of Islam guards. In 1943 Elijah was arrested for draft dodging. He was sentenced to five years in prison. In the Milan, Michigan, federal prison, he served three and a half years, when he was paroled. Leader of The Nation of Islam.
In 1934, he disappeared without a trace. He taught Elijah Muhammad.
A Minister at Temple Number One.
Elijah Muhammad’s wife.
Elijah Muhammad’s mother. Malcolm spent as much time with her as he did with Elijah Muhammad.
Malcolm’s wife. She was tall, brown skinned, with brown eyes.
Malcolm’s first born and oldest daughter.
Malcolm’s second born daughter.
Malcolm’s third born daughter.
Malcolm’s fourth born daughter.
A Negro journalist, then living in New York.
A Negro Scholar who selected for his thesis subject the Nation of Islam, for his doctorate.
Editor of the Amsterdam News.
Of Atlanta’s Temple.
Of Los Angele's Temple.
Elijah Muhammad’s son and Minister at the Philadelphia Temple. He was eventually suspended alongside Malcolm. They had shared an exceptional closeness and trust.
Minister Woodrow X
Minister Lucius X
Minister George X
Minister David X
Minister Louis X
Emanuel Muhammad
Sister Ethel (Muhammad)
Sharrieff
Sister Lottie Muhammad
Nathaniel Muhammad
Herbert Muhammad
Elijah Muhammad Jr
Akbar Muhammad
Dr Leona A. Turner
Cassius Clay
Dr Mahmoud Youssef Shawarbi
Dr Omar Azzam
Abd ir-Rahman Azzam
Muhammad Abdul Azziz Maged
Hussein Amini
Sheikh Abdullah Eraif
King Faisal
Muhammad Faisal
Professor Essein-Udom
Larry Jackson
Of Atlantic City's Temple.
Of Washington D.C’s Temple. He was previously a Seventh Day Adventist and a 32nd Degree Mason.
Of Camden, New Jersey's Temple. He used to be a pathologist.
Was previously the minister of a Richmond, Virginia, Christian Church; he and enough of his congregation had become Muslims so that the congregation split and the majority turned the church into the Richmond Temple.
Of Boston’s Temple. Previously was a well-known and rising popular singer called ‘The Charmer’. He had written the Nation’s popular first song, titled ‘White Man’s Heaven Is A Black Man’s Hell’. He had also authored the Nation’s first play, ‘Orgena’.
Elijah’s oldest; he runs the dry-cleaning plant.
Elijah’s daughter. The Muslim sisters’ Supreme Instructor. Her husband, Raymond Sharrieff, is Supreme Captain of the Fruit of Islam.
Elijah’s daughter. She supervises the two Universities of Islam.
Elijah’s son. He assists Emmanuel in the dry-cleaning plant.
Elijah’s son. He publishes Muhammad Speaks, the Nation’s newspaper that Malcolm began.
The Fruit of Islam Assistant Supreme Captain.
Elijah’s youngest. He was the family student, attending the University of Cairo at El-Azhar. He broke ties with his father.
Malcolm’s family doctor for years, who practices in East Elmhurst, Long Island.
Now known as Muhammad Ali; boxer. Malcolm liked him. Some contagious quality about him made him one of the very few people Malcolm ever invited to his home. Cassius was simply a likeable, friendly, clean-cut, down-to-earth youngster. Malcolm noticed how alert he was even in little details.
A University of Cairo graduate, a University of London Ph.D., a lecturer on Islam, a United Nations advisor and the author of many books.
A Swiss-trained engineer. His field was city planning. The Saudi Arabian government had borrowed him from the United Nations to direct all of the reconstruction work being done on Arabian holy places. His sister was wife of Prince Faisal’s son.
Dr Omar’s father. A highly skilled diplomat, with a broad range of mind. His knowledge was so worldly. He was as current on world affairs as some people are to what’s going on in their living room.
The Deputy Chief of Protocol for Prince Faisal.
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. A learned man, especially well read on America.
Mayor of Mecca. When he was a journalist had criticised the methods of the Mecca municipality – and Prince Faisal made him the Mayor, to see if he could do any better. Everyone generally acknowledged he was doing fine.
A Saudi Arabian statesman and diplomat who was King of Saudi Arabia from 2 November 1964 until his assassination in 1975.
Prince Faisal’s son.
Of the Ibadan University, Lagos.
A Morgan State College graduate from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who had joined the Peace Corps in 1962.
People of Interest
Quotes
Let sincere whites go and teach non-violence to white people!
No white man’s promise was worth the paper it was on.
I have less patience with someone who doesn’t wear a watch than with anyone else, for this type is not time conscious. In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determines success or failure.
You never can fully trust any woman. I’ve got the only one I ever met whom I would trust seventy-five percent. I’ve told her that. I’ve told her like I tell you I’ve seen too many men destroyed by their wives, or their women.
I don’t completely trust anyone, not even myself. I have seen too many men destroy themselves.
The only thing I considered wrong was what I got caught doing wrong. I had a jungle mind, I was living in a jungle, and everything I did was done by instinct to survive.
In the hectic pace of the world today, there is no time for meditation, or for deep thought. A prisoner has time that he can put to good use. I’d put prison second to college as the best place for a man to go if he needs to do some thinking. If he’s motivated, in prison he can change his life.
His love of books. “People don’t realize how a man’s whole life can be changed by one book.”
If I meet a problem I feel I can’t solve, I shut it out. I make believe that it doesn’t exist. But it exists.
It’s always a Negro responsible, not what the white man does! Yes, I’m an extremist. The black race here in North America is in extremely bad condition. You show me a black man who isn’t an extremist and I’ll show you one who needs psychiatric attention!
The white man is afraid of truth. The truth takes the white man’s breath and drains his strength – you just watch his face get red anytime you tell him a little truth.
He, moreover, was convinced that he could tell a lot about any person by listening. “There’s an art to listening well. I listen closely to the sound of a man’s voice when he’s speaking. I can hear sincerity.”
The young whites, and blacks, too, are the only hope that America has. The rest of us have always been living in a lie.
I think that anybody who is in a position to discipline others should first learn to accept discipline himself.
‘You have not converted a man because you have silenced him – John Viscount Morley’
It is easy for something that is done or said tomorrow to be outdated even by sunset on the same day.
One hundred years after the Civil War, and these chimpanzees get more recognition, respect and freedom in America than our people do.
‘There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action – Goethe’
Children have a lesson adults should learn, to not be ashamed of failing, but to get up and try again. Most of us adults are so afraid, so cautious, so ‘safe’, and therefore so shrinking and rigid and afraid that is why so many humans fail. Most middle-aged adults have resigned themselves to failure.
I no longer subscribe to racism. I have adjusted my thinking to the point where I believe that whites are human beings as long as this is borne out by their humane attitude toward Negroes.
I’m not a racist. I’m not condemning whites for being whites, but for their deeds. I condemn what whites collectively have done to our people collectively.
Do you realize that some of history’s greatest leaders never were recognized until they were safely in the ground!
I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being – neither white, black, brown, or red; and when you are dealing with humanity as a family there’s no question of integration or intermarriage. It’s just one human being marrying another human being or one human being living around and with another human being. I may say, though, that I don’t think it should ever be put upon a black man, I don’t think the burden to defend any position should ever be put upon the black man, because it is the white man collectively who has shown that he is hostile toward integration and towards intermarriage and toward these other strides toward oneness. So as a black man and especially as a black American, any stand that I formerly took, I don’t think that I would have to defend it because it’s still a reaction to the society, and it’s a reaction that was produced by the society; and I think that it is the society that produced this that should be attacked, not the reaction that develops among the people who are the victims of that negative society.
If I can’t be safe among my own kind, where can I be?
I’m going to ease some of this tension by telling the black man not to fight himself – that’s all a part of the white man’s big manoeuvre, to keep us fighting among ourselves, against each other.
“Master spell-binder that he was, Malcolm X in death cast a spell more far-flung and more disturbing than any he cast in life.” – Roy Wilkins, Executive Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
An educated woman, I suppose, can’t resist the temptation to correct an uneducated man.
I feel definitely that just as my father favoured me for being lighter than the other children, my mother gave me more hell for the same reason
So early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise
“Credit is the first step into debt and back into slavery,” – Earl Little
Anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you’re both engaged in the same business – you know they’re doing something that you aren’t
It has historically been the case with white people, in their regard for black people, that even though we might be with them, we weren’t considered of them. Even though they appeared to have opened the door, it was still closed.
I don’t care how nice one is to you; the thing you must always remember is that almost never does he really see you as he sees himself, as he sees his own kind. He may stand with you through thin, but no thick; when the chips are down, you’ll find that as fixed in him as his bone structure is his sometimes subconscious conviction that he’s better than anybody black.
“Everything in the world is a hustle.” – Freddie
I don’t see how on earth a black woman with any race pride could walk down the street with any black man wearing a conk – the emblem of his shame that he is black.
We were in that world of Negroes who are both servants and psychologists, aware that white people are so obsessed with their own importance that they will pay liberally, even dearly, for the impression of being catered to and entertained.
Almost everyone in Harlem needed some kind of hustle to survive, and needed to stay high in some way to forget what they had to do to survive.
It was chiefly the women who weren’t prostitutes who taught me to be very distrustful of most women; there seemed to be a higher code of ethics and sisterliness among those prostitutes than among numerous ladies of the church who have more men for kicks than the prostitutes have for pay.
More wives could keep their husbands if they realized their greatest urge is to be men.
A woman should occasionally be babied enough to show her the man had affection, but beyond that she should be treated firmly. These tough women said that it worked with them. All women, by their nature, are fragile and weak: they are attracted to the male in whom they see strength.
In order to get something you had to look as though you already had something.
Any experienced hustler will tell you that getting greedy is the quickest road to prison.
She showed me how, in the country’s entire social, political and economic structure, the criminal, the law and the politicians were actually inseparable partners. Speaking of his boss’s wife, when he became a part of the numbers racket.
In all of my time in Harlem, I never saw a white prostitute touched by a white man.
The hypocritical white man will talk about the Negro’s ‘low morals’. But who has the world’s lowest morals if not whites? And not only that, but the ‘upper-class’ whites!
I don’t know, to tell the truth, how I am alive to tell it today. They say God takes care of fools and babies. I’ve so often thought that Allah was watching over me. Through all of this time of my life, I really was dead – mentally dead. I just didn’t know that I was.
A white woman might blow up at her husband and scream and yell and call him every name she can think of, and say the most vicious things in an effort to hurt him, and talk about his mother and his grandmother, too, but one thing she never will tell him herself is that she is going with a black man. That’s one automatic red murder flag to the white man, and his woman knows it.
It seems that some women love to be exploited. When they are not exploited, they exploit the man.
I had given her a hard time, just to keep her in line. Every once in a while a woman seems to need, in fact wants this too. Speaking of Sophia.
I am not saying there shouldn’t be prisons, but there shouldn’t be bars. Behind bars, a man never reforms. He will never forget. He will never get completely over the memory of the bars.
The white man’s society was responsible for the black man’s condition in this wilderness of North America.
Many who today hear me somewhere in person, or on television, or those who read something I’ve said, will think I went to school far beyond the eight grade. This impression is due entirely to my prison studies.
Only guilty admitted accepts truth.
If you started with a black man, a white man could be produced; but starting with a white man, you could never produce a black man – because the white chromosome is recessive. And since no one disputes that there was but one Original Man, the conclusion is clear. Findings in Genetics by Gregor Mendel.
You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man.
The American black man is the world’s most shameful case of minority oppression. What makes the black man think of himself as only an internal United States issue is just a catch-phrase, two words, ‘civil rights’. How is the black man going to get ‘civil rights’ before first he wins his human rights? If the American black man will start thinking about his human rights, and then start thinking of himself as part of one of the world’s great peoples, he will see he has a case for the United Nations.
If I weren’t out here every day battling the white man, I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.
I don’t think anybody ever got more out of going to prison than I did. In fact, prison enabled me to study far more intensively than I would have if my life had gone differently and I had attended some college.
Where else but in prison could I have attacked my ignorance by being able to study intensely sometimes as much as fifteen hours a day?
All that’s new is white scientist’s attitude. The ancient civilizations of the black man have been buried on the Black continent all the time.
I have to admit a sad, shameful fact. I had so loved being around the white man that in prison I really disliked how Negro convicts stuck together so much. But when Mr Muhammad’s teachings reversed my attitude toward my black brothers, in my guilt and shame I began to catch every chance I could to recruit for Mr Muhammad.
You have ti be careful, very careful, introducing the truth to the black man who has never previously heard the truth about himself, his own kind, and the white man.
It was right there in prison that I made up my mind to devote the rest of my life to telling the white man about himself – or die.
You won’t find anybody more time-conscious than I am. I live by my watch, keeping appointments. Even when I’m using my car, I drive by my watch, not my speedometer. Time is more important to me than distance.
“The father prepares the way for his family.” – Wilfred
We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, my brothers and sisters – Plymouth Rock landed on us!
Seek peace, and never be the aggressor – but if anyone attacks you, we do not teach you to turn the other cheek.
The black man is going around saying he wants respect; well, the black man never will get anybody’s respect until he first learns to respect his own women! The black man needs today to stand up and throw off the weaknesses imposed upon him by the slave master white man! The black man needs to start today to shelter and protect and respect his black women!
The white man wants black men to stay immoral, unclean and ignorant. As long as we stay in these conditions we will keep on begging him and he will control us. We never can win freedom and justice and equality until we are doing something for ourselves!
The white man is in no moral position to accuse anyone else of hate!
No one will know who we are… until we know who we are! We never will be able to go anywhere until we know where we are!
You cannot find one black man, I do not care who he is, who has not been personally damaged in some way by the devilish acts of the collective white man!
History shows that an educated slave always begins to ask, and next demand, equality with his master.
One thing the white man never can give the black man is self-respect! The black man never can become independent and recognized as a human being who is truly equal with other human beings until he has what they have, and until he is doing for himself what others are doing for themselves.
Speaking on the Washington march. The marchers had been instructed to bring no signs – signs were provided. They had been told to sing one song: ‘We Shall Overcome’. They had been told how to arrive, when, where to arrive, where to assemble, when to start marching, the route to march. First-aid stations were strategically located – even where to faint! Yes, I was there. I observed that circus.
The very fact that millions, black and white, believed in this monumental farce is another example of how much this country goes in for the surface glossing over, the escape ruse, surfaces, instead of truly dealing with its deep-rooted problems. What that March on Washington did do was lull Negroes for a while. But inevitably, the black masses started realizing they had been smoothly hoaxed again by the white man.
I finished the eight grade in Mason, Michigan. My high school was the black ghetto of Roxbury, Massachusetts. My college was in the streets of Harlem, and my masters’ was taken in prison.
The Jew is usually hypersensitive. I mean, you can’t even say ‘Jew’ without him accusing you of anti-semitism. I don’t care what a Jew is professionally, doctor, merchant, housewife, student, or whatever – first he, or she, thinks Jew.
I doubt that I have ever uttered this absolute truth before an audience without being hotly challenged and accused by a Jew of anti-semitism. Why? I will bet that I have told five hundred such challenges that Jews as a group would never watch some other minority systematically siphoning out their community’s resources without doing something about it. I have told them that if I tell the simple truth, it doesn’t mean that I am anti-Semetic; it means merely that I am anti-exploitation.
I believe that no man in the Nation of Islam could have gained the international prominence I gained with the wings Mr Muhammad put on me – plus having the freedom that he granted me to tale liberties and do things on my own – and still have remained as faithful and as selfless a servant to him as I was.
Not long before, I had been on the Jerry Williams radio program in Boston, when someone handed me an item hot off the Associated Press Machine. I read that a chapter of the Louisiana Citizens Council had just offered a $10,000 reward for my death. But the threat of death was much closer to me than somewhere in Louisiana.
As you sow, so shall you reap.
Speaking of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I said what I honestly felt – that it was s I saw it, a case of ‘the chickens coming home to roost’. I said that the hate in white men had not stopped with the killing of defenceless black people, but that hate, allowed to spread unchecked, finally had struck down this country’s Chief of State. I said it was the same thing as had happened with Medgar Evers, with Patrice Lumumba, with Madame Nhu’s husband.
Anyone in a position to discipline others must be able to take disciplining himself.
Any Muslim would have known that my ‘chickens coming home to roost’ statement had been only an excuse to put into action the plan for getting me out. And step one had already been taken: the Muslims were given the impression that I had rebelled against Mr Muhammad. I could now anticipate a step two: I would remain ‘suspended’ (and later I would be ‘isolated’) indefinitely. Step three would be either to provoke some Muslims ignorant of the truth to take it upon himself to kill me as a ‘religious duty’ – or to ‘isolate’ me so that I would gradually disappear from the public scene.
The thing to me worse than death was the betrayal. I could conceive death. I couldn’t conceive betrayal – not of the loyalty which I had given to the Nation of Islam, and to Mr Muhammad.
What began to break my faith was that, try as I might, I couldn’t hide, I couldn’t evade, that Mr Muhammad, instead of facing what he had done before his followers, as a human weakness or as fulfilment of prophecy – which I sincerely believe that Muslims would have understood, or at least they would have accepted – Mr Muhammad had, instead, been willing to hide, to cover up what he had done.
Seven has always been my favourite number. It has followed me throughout my life.
The first direct order for my death was issued through a Mosque Seven official who previously had been a close assistant. Another previously close assistant of mine was assigned to do the job. He was a brother with a knowledge of demolition; he was asked to wire my car to explode when I turned the ignition key. But this brother, it happened, had seen too much of my total loyalty to the Nation to carry out his order. Instead, he came to me.
The most dangerous black man in America was the ghetto hustler. Why do I say this? The hustler, out there in the ghetto jungles, has less respect for the white power structure than any other Negro in North America. The ghetto hustler is internally restrained by nothing. He has no religion, no concept of morality, no civic responsibility, no fear – nothing. To survive, he is out there constantly preying upon others, probing for any human weakness like a ferret. The ghetto hustler is forever frustrated, restless, and anxious for some ‘action’. Whatever he undertakes, he commits himself to it fully, absolutely.
The black man in North America was economically sick and that was evident in one simple fact: as a consumer, he got less than his share, and as a producer have least. The black American today shows us the perfect parasite image – the black tick under the delusion that he is progressing because he rides on the udder of the fat, three-stomached cow that is White America. For instance, annually, the black man spends over $3 billion for automobiles, but America contains hardly any franchised black automobile dealers. For instance, forty percent of the expensive imported scotch whisky consumed in America goes down the throats of the status-sick black man; but the only black-owned distilleries are in bathtubs, or in the woods somewhere.
Black men don’t own and control their own community’s retail establishments that they can’t stabilize their own community.
Twenty-two million black men! They have given America four hundred years of toil; they have bled and died in every battle since the Revolution; they were in America before the Pilgrims, and long before the mass immigrations – and they are still today at the bottom of everything!
The black man doesn’t have the economic strength – and it will take time for him to build it. But right now the American black man has the political strength and power to change his destiny over night.
To me the earth’s most explosive and pernicious evil is racism, the inability of God’s creatures to live as One, especially in the Western world.
The colour-blindness of the Muslim world’s religious society and the colour-blindness of the Muslim world’s human society: these two influences had each day been making a greater impact, and an increasing persuasion against my previous way of thinking.
America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem.
Perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man – and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their ‘differences’ in color.
The Arabs are poor at understanding the psychology of non-Arabs and the importance of public relations.
The American Negro has been entirely brainwashed from ever seeing or thinking of himself as he should, as a part of the non-white peoples of the world. The American Negro has no conception of the hundreds of millions of other non-whites’ concern for him: he has no conception of their feeling of brotherhood for and with him.
The American black ‘leader’s’ most critical problem is lack of imagination! His thinking, his strategies, if any, are always limited, at least basically, to only that which is either advised, or approved by the white man. And the first thing the American power structure doesn’t want any Negroes to start is thinking internationally.
I think the single worst mistake of the American black organizations, and their leaders, is that they have failed to establish direct brotherhood lines of communication between the independent nations of Africa and the American black people.
Prince Faisal said, pointing out that there was an abundance of English-translation literature about Islam – so that there was no excuse for ignorance, and no reason for sincere people to allow themselves to be misled.
I saw clearly the obvious European influence upon the Lebanese culture. It showed me how any country’s moral strength, or its moral weakness, is quickly measurable by the street attire and attitude of its women – especially its young women. Wherever the spiritual values have been submerged, if not destroyed, by an emphasis upon the material things, invariably, the women reflect it. Witness the women, both young and old, in America – where scarcely any moral values are left. There seems in most countries to be either one extreme or the other. Truly a paradise could exist wherever material progress and spiritual values could be properly balanced.
Never have even American Negro audiences accepted me as I have been accepted time and again by the less inhibited, more down-to-earth Africans.
I was not surprised when violence happened in any of America’s ghettoes where black men had been living packed like animals and treated like lepers.
The charge against me was typical white man scapegoat-seeking – that whenever something white men disliked happened in the black community, typically white public attention was directed not at the cause, but at a selected scapegoat.
‘I’m not anti-American, and I didn’t come here to condemn America – I want to make that very clear!’ I told them. ‘I came here to tell the truth – and if the truth condemns America, then she stands condemned!’
New York white youth were killing victims; that was a ‘sociological’ problem. But when black youth killed somebody, the power structure was looking to hang somebody. When black men had been lynched or otherwise murdered in cold blood, it was always said, ‘Things will get better.’ When whites had rifles in their homes, the Constitution gave them the right to protect their home and themselves. But when black people even spoke of having rifles in their homes, that was ‘ominous’.
In the past, yes, I have made sweeping indictments of all white people. I never will be guilty of that again – as I know now that some white people are truly sincere, that some truly are capable of being brotherly toward a black man. The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks.
Why, here in America, the seeds of racism are so deeply rooted in the white people collectively, their belief that they are “superior” in some way is so deeply rooted, that these things are in the national white subconsciousness. Many whites are even actually unaware of their own racism, until they face some test, and then their racism emerges in one form or another.
I’ve had enough of someone else’s propaganda. I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.
I feel that if white people were attacked by Negroes – if the forces of law prove unable, or inadequate, or reluctant to protect those whites from those Negroes – then those white people should protect and defend themselves from those Negroes, using arms if necessary. And I feel that when the law fails to protect Negroes from whites’ attack, then those Negroes should use arms, if necessary, to defend themselves.
I believe it’s a crime for anyone who is being brutalized to continue to accept that brutality without doing something to defend himself. If that’s how ‘Christian’ philosophy is interpreted, if that’s what Ghandhian philosophy teaches, well, I will call them criminal philosophies.
I am for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American black man’s problem – just to avoid violence. I don’t go for non-violence if it also means a delayed solution. To me a delayed solution is a non-solution.
It isn’t the American white man who is a racist, but it’s the American political, economic, and social atmosphere that automatically nourishes a racist psychology in the white man.
The white man is not inherently evil, but America’s racist society influences him to act evilly. The society has produced and nourishes a psychology which brings out the lowest, most base part of human beings.
No matter what job a man had, at least he ought to be able to think for himself.
I have these very deep feelings that white people who want to join black organizations are really just taking the escapist way to salve their consciences. By visibly hovering near us, they are ‘proving’ that they are ‘with us’. But the hard truth is this isn’t helping to solve America’s racist problem. The Negroes aren’t the racists. Where the really sincere white people have got to do their ‘proving’ of themselves is not among the black victims, but out on the battle lines of where America’s racism really is – and that’s in their own home communities; America’s racism is among their own fellow whites. That’s where the sincere whites who really mean to accomplish something have got to work.
*Quotes have been taken directly from the autobiography (not my own words).
No language or tenses have been changed.
Where context needed to be provided, these words have been highlighted in yellow.
Quotes from Malcolm X, unless specified otherwise.
If you believe you have spotted any errors, please do let me know as this would have been unintentional and I'll gladly rectify the issue.
Timeline
1925
*Dates have been noted throughout the book. However, a specific date was not always provided.
For a date to be mentioned as part of this list, at least the year will have been provided in the autobiography,
If a year was provided but no month or day, I have noted 'unknown'.
If you believe you have spotted any errors, please do let me know as this would have been unintentional and I'll gladly rectify the issue.
19 May
Malcolm X was born in an Omaha hospital. His mother was 28 at the time.
1929
Unknown
Shortly after Yvonne was born, their house in Lansing, Michigan was set on fire by a local hate society called The Black Legion. Black Legionnaires weren’t happy with the teachings of Malcom’s father, who was doing freelance Christian preaching in local Negro Baptist Churches, and during the week he was roaming about spreading word of Marcus Garvey.
1931
Unknown
Earl Little was killed. His skull was crushed on one side and his body was cut almost in half. People said that the white Black Legion had finally got him.
1940
Summer
Malcolm’s first time visiting Boston.
1942
Unknown
Malcolm turns 17. He’s hired as a day waiter at Small’s Paradise, New York.
1943
Unknown
Malcolm gets drafted for the war, but manages to evade it by ‘acting crazy’ and not passing the psychiatrist evaluation.
1946
February
Malcolm was sentenced to 10 years in prison for burglary (He only served 7 years). He wasn’t quite 21; he hadn’t even started shaving.
1947
Unknown
Malcolm meets Bimbi at Charlestown.
1948
Unknown - Late 1948
Malcolm’s transferred to Concord Prison. Philbert writes to Malcolm that he’s found the ‘natural religion for the black man’ and he belonged now to something called ‘the nation of Islam’. Malcolm also quits smoking forever.
Malcolm is successfully transferred to Norfolk, Massachusetts, Prison Colony, which was an experimental rehabilitation jail (with the help of Ella). But his last year in Prison was back at Charlestown.
1952
Spring - Unknown
the Masachusetts State Parole Board had voted for Malcolm to be released from Prison.
Last time Malcolm visited his mother at the hospital, after she didn’t recognise him at all. He was 27.
1953
Early - Summer
Malcolm left work at his brother Wilfred’s furniture shop and started working at a Gar Wood factory in Detroit, instead.
Malcolm was named Detroit Temple Number One’s Assistant Minister. He was also questioned by the F.B.I on why he hadn’t registered to draft for the Korean War, which he rejected as a conscientious objector.
1954
March
Malcolm left Temple Eleven to Minister Ulysses X.
May
Malcolm established Temple Twelve in Philadelphia.
June
Malcolm is appointed as the Minister of Temple Seven in New York City, by Elijah Muhammad.
1955
Unknown
Malcolm made his first long distance trip, to help open Temple Number Fifteen in Atlanta, Georgia.
1956
Unknown
Elijah Muhammad authorized Temple Seven to buy and assign for Malcolm a new Chevrolet. He knew Malcolm loved to roam and didn’t want him to be tied down. Malcolm noticed Sister Betty X, who joined Temple Seven.
1957
Unknown
Wilfred was made Minister of Detroit’s Temple One. Malcolm was sent to organise a temple in Los Angeles.
1958
14 January
Malcolm drove to Indiana to try to marry Betty X. The next day they married in Lansing, at the Justice of the Peace. They lived for the next two and a half years in Queens.
November
Malcolm’s oldest daughter was born; Attilah (named for Attilah the Hun). Shortly after she was born, Malcolm and Betty moved to a seven bedroom house in an all-black section of Queens, Long Island.
1959
Spring - Late
Louis Lomax ask Malcolm whether the Nation of Islam would cooperate in being filmed as a television documentary program for the Mike Wallace show, which featured controversial subjects.
The documentary aired : The Hate that Hate Produced.
1960
21 November
Malcolm was sent a classification Card in the mail. Card Number 20 219 25 1377, Class 5-A.
25 December
Malcolm’s second daughter, Qubilah (named after Qubilah Khan) was born.
1962
Unknown
I began to notice that less and less about me appeared in or Nation’s Muhammad Speaks. Finally I got no coverage at all – for by now an order had been given to completely black me out of the newspaper. Met Cassius Clay in Detroit.
July
Malcolm’s daughter Ilyasah was born.
Late
I learned reliably that numerous Muslims were leaving Mosque Two in Chicago. The ugly rumour of Elijah Muhammad’s adultery was spreading swiftly.
1963
Unknown
Malcolm got his mother out of the hospital, and she now lives there in Lansing with Philbert and his family. I couldn’t help being hypersensitive to my critics in high posts within our Nation.
February
Malcolm officiated at the University of Islam graduation exercises; when he introduced various members of the Muhammad family, he could feel the cold chill toward them from the Muslims in the audience.
April
Elijah Muhammad had Malcolm fly to Phoenix to see him. Malcolm questions him on the adultery rumours.
Late
At a rally in Philadelphia, Mr Muhammad, embracing Malcolm, said to that audience before them, “This is my most faithful, hardworking minister. He will follow me until he dies”. But this would be Mr Muhammad’s and Malcolm's last public appearance.
22 November
President John F. Kennedy is assassinated.
1964
Unknown
Malcolm’s fourth daughter, Amilah was born.
April
Malcolm flew to Beirut, the seaport of Lebanon.
19 May
39th Birthday – when he arrived in Algiers.
21 May
Malcolm landed at JFK in the afternoon.
1965
21 February
Malcolm X is assassinated during a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan.
These are my general thoughts.
Words are my own.
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Your environment will affect your ideas, your views and how you are as a person. However, it is not the end all. You can still develop and learn and grow as an adult. You are not stuck in your ways because of taught behaviours. You can choose to change your thought process, your behaviours. It is not enough to say as a grown adult that you are the way you are because of the environment you grew up in as a child.
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Knowledge is important and you should always seek it. You should want to learn about things and have an inquisitive mind. Question everything.
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A lot of people are just sheep. They take information given to them and never question why that is or where it came from. Seeking truth, seeking justice, that’s something you must do for yourself. How else will you ever know?
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The odds can be stacked up against you. The system can be designed to set you up for failure. But it is never ‘impossible’ for you to succeed. You’ll have to jump over hurdles that other people probably wouldn’t but if you’re strong enough mentally, and you’re committed to your cause, you can find a way out.
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Most influential people are ridiculed while they’re alive and followed after they’re dead. Why can’t we accept them while they’re still breathing?
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Holding people accountable for their actions doesn’t make you a racist, though it’s very evident that even in the 21st century, one would link the two. To ask for white people to look at the way they live, their system in America, which is set against black people, isn’t racist. It’s just a fact. Asking to change that system isn’t racist either. But why does is make white people so uncomfortable? Because the system is set up so that they always win. The reality is, why would they want to change it. For this reason, the default setting to fall back on is the offense. Malcolm X wanted better for his people, he wanted a change. This branded him as a racist towards white people, even long after he accepted the errors of things he’d said in the past and has a new outlook of life.
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Malcolm grew up in Lansing, where the ‘N-word’ was freely used. But just because it was common didn’t mean that black people didn’t mind that it was so freely used. This eventually will have some psychological repercussions. Knowing that people think lesser of you because of your skin colour, being coined a specific word to describe that colour and knowing that you can’t do anything about it because what power did black people have then? And this is why I strongly believe that we shouldn’t be using that word today. It’s not for us non-black people to dictate why or when we can use that word because we just can’t. The word itself holds so many connotations and emotional baggage from all those years ago, I think it’s the least we can do, to no longer have it as part of our vocabulary. It’s just wrong. Even though these children are growing up in an environment where this is deemed normal, it will just be a matter of time before they react, or snap. Conditioning doesn’t mean this child will not grow up one day and have is own thoughts and beliefs.
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Black people were treated differently to the whites, they weren’t allowed to have the same aspirations and even if they aspired, the system in place would never allow it. Malcolm could dream of becoming a lawyer, but would he be able to become one? The white children at the school are being pushed to aim higher but the black kids being pushed to aim for low meaning jobs like carpentry. How is this not proof of the racism in America?
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White men have all the success, they have all the good paying big jobs, but they’re still jealous of the one, two small things that the black man has. When Malcolm stated that a white woman would never tell her husband she was leaving with a black man because that’s an automatic red murder flag… How is it that nothing will trigger a white man like the way a black man can. Why is that? The black man is already worse of (at this point in time) and yet, it’s not enough satisfaction for the white man that there’s a clear difference. What will satisfy him?
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The power and importance of Knowledge. Just because you’ve been taught something, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t seek to verify what you have been taught. Lack of knowledge is detrimental to society as a whole.
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Even though Elijah Muhammad was trying to bring Malcolm down, he never spoke ill or him and never discussed his adultery with the wider world. In a stance to not tear down black unity.
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Importance of travelling. To open your eyes to other cultures and people, so that you don’t believe everything that is said to you in the media. Malcolm completely changed his mind about race when he visited Saudi Arabia.
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I don’t think I’ve ever felt so sad reading about someone’s life. The fact that Malcolm knew he was going to die, and living every day like it was his last, but still staying true to his cause and trying to change things for the 22 million black people in America, is unbelievable. His determination and hope that things will change for the better. He dedicated his whole life for the cause. If he was alive now, it’s so interesting to think how much further America would have come. He was taken so soon, in his prime. What other leader could be said to have made a mark like Malcolm? He experienced everything under the sun and at such a young age. This book is an inspiration to anyone who thinks there is no way out of the gutter.
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In the same way that Islam is misunderstood in the West, Malcolm was also misunderstood by the West. He’s constantly being painted in a bad light. I always see comparisons with Malcolm and Martin Luther King Jr, and yes, although he had a different stance, were they not after the same thing? They were both trying to free their race of people, they were trying to change their environments for the better. It was just unfortunate for Malcolm that he wasn’t born into better circumstances. But as you read the quotes from start to finish, you really see how he matured and changed over time. He changed his values and his stance against white people. He admitted that he was wrong about certain things and was willing to adopt a new way of life, he just wasn’t given the chance. With that being said, the way he lived his life for the most part was that of a changed man. He committed crimes, yes, but we have to see his age, he really lived a full life at such a young age! He went to jail at such a young age. Had he lived, with his new thought process, no doubt he would have changed the not only circumstances in America but globally.
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Malcolm’s story makes me so emotional. Can you imagine devoting your whole life and being to an organization and person, thinking it’s spiritually for the better, and in the end they just cut you off, leave you to the curb and completely turn their back on you, like you’re a stranger. How many of us have had broken relationships? Friendships? This man dedicated his book proceedings, all his money into that belief, just for it to be the eventual death of him. As cynical as this lesson may be, I just feel in this life you really can’t whole heartedly trust anyone 100% (as he originally said to Alex Haley). A percentage must always be reserved so that you’re always thinking with a level head and so that you can find yourself again/pick yourself back up. Giving 100% would be like your whole life is over. And even Malcolm, who knew death was coming for him, was still willing to start afresh and look forward to a new start, even though, for him, his life it would seem, was over. The media hated him, friends turned their backs on him, he was banished from the religion he followed, he was shunned by his mentor and guide who he pledged his allegiance to. It’s enough to break any of us.