The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley

by Alex Haley

  Anyway, we lived for the next two and a half years in Queens, sharing a house of two small apartments with Brother John Ali and his wife of that time. He’s now the National Secretary in Chicago.

  Attallah, our oldest daughter, was born in November 1958. She’s named for Attilah the Hun (he sacked Rome). Shortly after Attallah came, we moved to our present seven-room house in an all-black section of Queens, Long Island.

  Another girl, Qubilah (named after Qubilah Khan) was born on Christmas Day of 1960. Then, Ilyasah (“Ilyas” is Arabic for “Elijah”) was born in July 1962. And in 1964 our fourth daughter, Amilah, arrived.

  I guess by now I will say I love Betty. She’s the only woman I ever even thought about loving. And she’s one of the very few—four women—whom I have ever trusted. The thing is, Betty’s a good Muslim woman and wife. You see, Islam is the only religion that gives both husband and wife a true understanding of what love is. The Western “love” concept, you take it apart, it really is lust. But love transcends just the physical. Love is disposition, behavior, attitude, thoughts, likes, dislikes—these things make a beautiful woman, a beautiful wife. This is the beauty that never fades. You find in your Western civilization that when a man’s wife’s physical beauty fails, she loses her attraction. But Islam teaches us to look into the woman, and teaches her to look into us.

  Betty does this, so she understands me. I would even say I don’t imagine many other women might put up with the way I am. Awakening this brainwashed black man and telling this arrogant, devilish white man the truth about himself, Betty understands, is a full-time job. If I have work to do when I am home, the little time I am at home, she lets me have the quiet I need to work in. I’m rarely at home more than half of any week; I have been away as much as five months. I never get much chance to take her anywhere, and I know she likes to be with her husband. She is used to my calling her from airports anywhere from Boston to San Francisco, or Miami to Seattle, or, here lately, cabling her from Cairo, Accra, or the Holy City of Mecca. Once on the long-distance telephone, Betty told me in beautiful phrasing the way she thinks. She said, “You are present when you are away.”

  —

  Later that year, after Betty and I were married, I exhausted myself trying to be everywhere at once, trying to help the Nation to keep growing. Guest-teaching at the Temple in Boston, I ended, as always, “Who among you wish to follow The Honorable Elijah Muhammad?” And then I saw, in utter astonishment, that among those who were standing was my sister—Ella! We have a saying that those who are the hardest to convince make the best Muslims. And for Ella it had taken five years.

  I mentioned, you will remember, how in a big city, a sizable organization can remain practically unknown, unless something happens that brings it to the general public’s attention. Well, certainly no one in the Nation of Islam had any anticipation of the kind of thing that would happen in Harlem one night.

  Two white policemen, breaking up a street scuffle between some Negroes, ordered other Negro passers-by to “Move on!” Of these bystanders, two happened to be Muslim brother Johnson Hinton and another brother of Temple Seven. They didn’t scatter and run the way the white cops wanted. Brother Hinton was attacked with nightsticks. His scalp was split open, and a police car came and he was taken to a nearby precinct.

  The second brother telephoned our restaurant. And with some telephone calls, in less than half an hour about fifty of Temple Seven’s men of the Fruit of Islam were standing in ranks-formation outside the police precinct house.

  Other Negroes, curious, came running, and gathered in excitement behind the Muslims. The police, coming to the station house front door, and looking out of the windows, couldn’t believe what they saw. I went in, as the minister of Temple Seven, and demanded to see our brother. The police first said he wasn’t there. Then they admitted he was, but said I couldn’t see him. I said that until he was seen, and we were sure he received proper medical attention, the Muslims would remain where they were.

  They were nervous and scared of the gathering crowd outside. When I saw our Brother Hinton, it was all I could do to contain myself. He was only semiconscious. Blood had bathed his head and face and shoulder. I hope I never again have to withstand seeing another case of sheer police brutality like that.

  I told the lieutenant in charge, “That man belongs in the hospital.” They called an ambulance. When it came and Brother Hinton was taken to Harlem Hospital, we Muslims followed, in loose formations, for about fifteen blocks along Lenox Avenue, probably the busiest thoroughfare in Harlem. Negroes who never had seen anything like this were coming out of stores and restaurants and bars and enlarging the crowd following us.

  The crowd was big, and angry, behind the Muslims in front of Harlem Hospital. Harlem’s black people were long since sick and tired of police brutality. And they never had seen any organization of black men take a firm stand as we were.

  A high police official came up to me, saying “Get those people out of there.” I told him that our brothers were standing peacefully, disciplined perfectly, and harming no one. He told me those others, behind them, weren’t disciplined. I politely told him those others were his problem.

  When doctors assured us that Brother Hinton was receiving the best of care, I gave the order and the Muslims slipped away. The other Negroes’ mood was ugly, but they dispersed also, when we left. We wouldn’t learn until later that a steel plate would have to be put into Brother Hinton’s skull. (After that operation, the Nation of Islam helped him to sue; a jury awarded him over $70,000, the largest police brutality judgment that New York City has ever paid.)

  For New York City’s millions of readers of the downtown papers, it was, at that time, another one of the periodic “Racial Unrest in Harlem” stories. It was not played up, because of what had happened. But the police department, to be sure, pulled out and carefully studied the files on the Nation of Islam, and appraised us with new eyes. Most important, in Harlem, the world’s most heavily populated black ghetto, the Amsterdam News made the whole story headline news, and for the first time the black man, woman, and child in the streets was discussing “those Muslims.”

  CHAPTER 14

  BLACK MUSLIMS

  In the spring of nineteen fifty-nine—some months before Brother Johnson Hinton’s case had awakened the Harlem black ghetto to us—a Negro journalist, Louis Lomax, then living in New York, asked me one morning whether our Nation of Islam would cooperate in being filmed as a television documentary program for the Mike Wallace Show, which featured controversial subjects. I told Lomax that, naturally, anything like that would have to be referred to The Honorable Elijah Muhammad. And Lomax did fly to Chicago to consult Mr. Muhammad. After questioning Lomax, then cautioning him against some things he did not desire, Mr. Muhammad gave his consent.

  Cameramen began filming Nation of Islam scenes around our mosques in New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. Sound recordings were made of Mr. Muhammad and some ministers, including me, teaching black audiences the truths about the brainwashed black man and the devil white man.

  At Boston University around the same time, C. Eric Lincoln, a Negro scholar then working for his doctorate, had selected for his thesis subject the Nation of Islam. Lincoln’s interest had been aroused the previous year when, teaching at Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia, he received from one of his Religion students a term paper whose introduction I can now quote from Lincoln’s book. It was the plainspoken convictions of one of Atlanta’s numerous young black collegians who often visited our local Temple Fifteen.

  “The Christian religion is incompatible with the Negro’s aspirations for dignity and equality in America,” the student had written. “It has hindered where it might have helped; it has been evasive when it was morally bound to be forthright; it has separated believers on the basis of color, although it has declared its mission to be a universal brotherhood under Jesus Christ. Christian love is the white man’s love for himself and for his race. For the man who is not white
, Islam is the hope for justice and equality in the world we must build tomorrow.”

  After some preliminary research showed Professor Lincoln what a subject he had hold of, he had been able to obtain several grants, and a publisher’s encouragement to expand his thesis into a book.

  On the wire of our relatively small Nation, these two big developments—a television show, and a book about us—naturally were big news. Every Muslim happily anticipated that now, through the white man’s powerful communications media, our brainwashed black brothers and sisters across the United States, and devils, too, were going to see, hear, and read Mr. Muhammad’s teachings which cut back and forth like a two-edged sword.

  We had made our own very limited efforts to employ the power of print. First, some time back, I had made an appointment to see editor James Hicks of the Amsterdam News, published in Harlem. Editor Hicks said he felt every voice in the community deserved to be heard. Soon, each week’s Amsterdam News carried a little column that I wrote. Then, Mr. Muhammad agreed to write a column for that valuable Amsterdam News space, and my column was transferred to another black newspaper, the Los Angeles Herald Dispatch.

  But I kept wanting to start, somehow, our own newspaper, that would be filled with Nation of Islam news.

  Mr. Muhammad in 1957 sent me to organize a Temple in Los Angeles. When I had done that, being in that city where the Herald Dispatch was, I went visiting and I worked in their office; they let me observe how a newspaper was put together. I’ve always been blessed in that if I can once watch something being done, generally I can catch onto how to do it myself. Quick “picking up” was probably the number one survival rule when I’d been out there in the streets as a hustler.

  Back in New York, I bought a second-hand camera. I don’t know how many rolls of film I shot until I could take usable pictures. Every chance I had, I wrote some little news about interesting Nation of Islam happenings. One day every month, I’d lock up in a room and assemble my material and pictures for a printer that I found. I named the newspaper Muhammad Speaks and Muslim brothers sold it on the ghetto sidewalks. Little did I dream that later on, when jealousy set in among the hierarchy, nothing about me would be printed in the paper I had founded.

  Anyway, national publicity was in the offing for the Nation of Islam when Mr. Muhammad sent me on a three-week trip to Africa. Even as small as we then were, some of the African and Asian personages had sent Mr. Muhammad private word that they liked his efforts to awaken and lift up the American black people. Sometimes, the messages had been sent through me. As Mr. Muhammad’s emissary, I went to Egypt, Arabia, to the Sudan, to Nigeria, and Ghana.

  You will often hear today a lot of the Negro leaders complaining that what thrust the Muslims into international prominence was the white man’s press, radio, television, and other media. I have no shred of argument with that. They are absolutely correct. Why, none of us in the Nation of Islam remotely anticipated what was about to happen.

  —

  In late 1959, the television program was aired. “The Hate That Hate Produced”—the title—was edited tightly into a kaleidoscope of “shocker” images…Mr. Muhammad, me, and others speaking…strong-looking, set-faced black men, our Fruit of Islam…white-scarved, white-gowned Muslim sisters of all ages…Muslims in our restaurants, and other businesses…Muslims and other black people entering and leaving our mosques….

  Every phrase was edited to increase the shock mood. As the producers intended, I think people sat just about limp when the program went off.

  In a way, the public reaction was like what happened back in the 1930’s when Orson Welles frightened America with a radio program describing, as though it was actually happening, an invasion by “men from Mars.”

  No one now jumped from any windows, but in New York City there was an instant avalanche of public reaction. It’s my personal opinion that the “Hate…Hate…” title was primarily responsible for the reaction. Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, black and white, were exclaiming “Did you hear it? Did you see it? Preaching hate of white people!”

  Here was one of the white man’s most characteristic behavior patterns—where black men are concerned. He loves himself so much that he is startled if he discovers that his victims don’t share his vainglorious self-opinion. In America for centuries it had been just fine as long as the victimized, brutalized and exploited black people had been grinning and begging and “Yessa, Massa” and Uncle Tomming. But now, things were different. First came the white newspapers—feature writers and columnists: “Alarming”…“hate-messengers”…“threat to the good relations between the races”…“black segregationists”…“black supremacists,” and the like.

  And the newspapers’ ink wasn’t dry before the big national weekly news magazines started: “Hate-teachers”…“violence-seekers”…“black racists”…“black fascists”…“anti-Christian”…“possibly Communist-inspired….”

  It rolled out of the presses of the biggest devil in the history of mankind. And then the aroused white man made his next move.

  Since slavery, the American white man has always kept some handpicked Negroes who fared much better than the black masses suffering and slaving out in the hot fields. The white man had these “house” and “yard” Negroes for his special servants. He threw them more crumbs from his rich table, he even let them eat in his kitchen. He knew that he could always count on them to keep “good massa” happy in his self-image of being so “good” and “righteous.” “Good massa” always heard just what he wanted to hear from these “house” and “yard” blacks. “You’re such a good, fine massa!” Or, “Oh, massa, those old black nigger fieldhands out there, they’re happy just like they are; why, massa, they’re not intelligent enough for you to try and do any better for them, massa—”

  Well, slavery time’s “house” and “yard” Negroes had become more sophisticated, that was all. When now the white man picked up his telephone and dialed his “house” and “yard” Negroes—why, he didn’t even need to instruct the trained black puppets. They had seen the television program; had read the newspapers. They were already composing their lines. They knew what to do.

  I’m not going to call any names. But if you make a list of the biggest Negro “leaders,” so-called, in 1960, then you’ve named the ones who began to attack us “field” Negroes who were sounding insane, talking that way about “good massa.”

  “By no means do these Muslims represent the Negro masses—” That was the first worry, to reassure “good massa” that he had no reason to be concerned about his fieldhands in the ghettoes. “An irresponsible hate cult”…“an unfortunate Negro image, just when the racial picture is improving—”

  They were stumbling over each other to get quoted. “A deplorable reverse-racism”…“Ridiculous pretenders to the ancient Islamic doctrine”…“Heretic anti-Christianity—”

  The telephone in our then small Temple Seven restaurant nearly jumped off the wall. I had a receiver against my ear five hours a day. I was listening, and jotting in my notebook, as press, radio, and television people called, all of them wanting the Muslim reaction to the quoted attacks of these black “leaders.” Or I was on long-distance to Mr. Muhammad in Chicago, reading from my notebook and asking for Mr. Muhammad’s instructions.

  I couldn’t understand how Mr. Muhammad could maintain his calm and patience, hearing the things I told him. I could scarcely contain myself.

  My unlisted home telephone number somehow got out. My wife Betty put down the phone after taking one message, and it was ringing again. It seemed that wherever I went, telephones were ringing.

  The calls naturally were directed to me, New York City being the major news-media headquarters, and I was the New York minister of Mr. Muhammad. Calls came, long-distance from San Francisco to Maine…from even London, Stockholm, Paris. I would see a Muslim brother at our restaurant, or Betty at home, trying to keep cool; they’d hand me the receiver, and I couldn’t believe it, either. One funny thin
g—in all that hectic period, something quickly struck my notice: the Europeans never pressed the “hate” question. Only the American white man was so plagued and obsessed with being “hated.” He was so guilty, it was clear to me, of hating Negroes.

  “Mr. Malcolm X, why do you teach black supremacy, and hate?” A red flag waved for me, something chemical happened inside me, every time I heard that. When we Muslims had talked about “the devil white man” he had been relatively abstract, someone we Muslims rarely actually came into contact with, but now here was that devil-in-the-flesh on the phone—with all of his calculating, cold-eyed, self-righteous tricks and nerve and gall. The voices questioning me became to me as breathing, living devils.

  And I tried to pour on pure fire in return. “The white man so guilty of white supremacy can’t hide his guilt by trying to accuse The Honorable Elijah Muhammad of teaching black supremacy and hate! All Mr. Muhammad is doing is trying to uplift the black man’s mentality and the black man’s social and economic condition in this country.

  “The guilty, two-faced white man can’t decide what he wants. Our slave foreparents would have been put to death for advocating so-called ‘integration’ with the white man. Now when Mr. Muhammad speaks of ‘separation,’ the white man calls us ‘hate-teachers’ and ‘fascists’!

  “The white man doesn’t want the blacks! He doesn’t want the blacks that are a parasite upon him! He doesn’t want this black man whose presence and condition in this country expose the white man to the world for what he is! So why do you attack Mr. Muhammad?”

  I’d have scathing in my voice; I felt it.

  “For the white man to ask the black man if he hates him is just like the rapist asking the raped, or the wolf asking the sheep, ‘Do you hate me?’ The white man is in no moral position to accuse anyone else of hate!

  “Why, when all of my ancestors are snake-bitten, and I’m snake-bitten, and I warn my children to avoid snakes, what does that snake sound like accusing me of hate-teaching?”