The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley

by Alex Haley

  “Mr. Malcolm X,” those devils would ask, “why is your Fruit of Islam being trained in judo and karate?” An image of black men learning anything suggesting self-defense seemed to terrify the white man. I’d turn their question around: “Why does judo or karate suddenly get so ominous because black men study it? Across America, the Boy Scouts, the YMCA, even the YWCA, the CYP, PAL—they all teach judo! It’s all right, it’s fine—until black men teach it! Even little grammar school classes, little girls, are taught to defend themselves—”

  “How many of you are in your organization, Mr. Malcolm X? Right Reverend Bishop T. Chickenwing says you have only a handful of members—”

  “Whoever tells you how many Muslims there are doesn’t know, and whoever does know will never tell you—”

  The Bishop Chickenwings were also often quoted about our “anti-Christianity.” I’d fire right back on that:

  “Christianity is the white man’s religion. The Holy Bible in the white man’s hands and his interpretations of it have been the greatest single ideological weapon for enslaving millions of non-white human beings. Every country the white man has conquered with his guns, he has always paved the way, and salved his conscience, by carrying the Bible and interpreting it to call the people ‘heathens’ and ‘pagans’; then he sends his guns, then his missionaries behind the guns to mop up—”

  White reporters, anger in their voices, would call us “demagogues,” and I would try to be ready after I had been asked the same question two or three times.

  “Well, let’s go back to the Greek, and maybe you will learn the first thing you need to know about the word ‘demagogue.’ ‘Demagogue’ means, actually, ‘teacher of the people.’ And let’s examine some demagogues. The greatest of all Greeks, Socrates, was killed as a ‘demagogue.’ Jesus Christ died on the cross because the Pharisees of His day were upholding their law, not the spirit. The modern Pharisees are trying to heap destruction upon Mr. Muhammad, calling him a demagogue, a crackpot, and fanatic. What about Gandhi? The man that Churchill called ‘a naked little fakir,’ refusing food in a British jail? But then a quarter of a billion people, a whole subcontinent, rallied behind Gandhi—and they twisted the British lion’s tail! What about Galileo, standing before his inquisitors, saying ‘The earth does move!’ What about Martin Luther, nailing on a door his thesis against the all-powerful Catholic church which called him ‘heretic’? We, the followers of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, are today in the ghettoes as once the sect of Christianity’s followers were like termites in the catacombs and the grottoes—and they were preparing the grave of the mighty Roman Empire!”

  I can remember those hot telephone sessions with those reporters as if it were yesterday. The reporters were angry. I was angry. When I’d reach into history, they’d try to pull me back to the present. They would quit interviewing, quit their work, trying to defend their personal white devil selves. They would unearth Lincoln and his freeing of the slaves. I’d tell them things Lincoln said in speeches, against the blacks. They would drag up the 1954 Supreme Court decision on school integration.

  “That was one of the greatest magical feats ever performed in America,” I’d tell them. “Do you mean to tell me that nine Supreme Court judges, who are past masters of legal phraseology, couldn’t have worked their decision to make it stick as law? No! It was trickery and magic that told Negroes they were desegregated—Hooray! Hooray!—and at the same time it told whites ‘Here are your loopholes.’ ”

  The reporters would try their utmost to raise some “good” white man whom I couldn’t refute as such. I’ll never forget how one practically lost his voice. He asked me did I feel any white men had ever done anything for the black man in America. I told him, “Yes, I can think of two. Hitler, and Stalin. The black man in America couldn’t get a decent factory job until Hitler put so much pressure on the white man. And then Stalin kept up the pressure—”

  But I don’t care what points I made in the interviews, it practically never got printed the way I said it. I was learning under fire how the press, when it wants to, can twist, and slant. If I had said “Mary had a little lamb,” what probably would have appeared was “Malcolm X Lampoons Mary.”

  Even so, my bitterness was less against the white press than it was against those Negro “leaders” who kept attacking us. Mr. Muhammad said he wanted us to try our best not to publicly counterattack the black “leaders” because one of the white man’s tricks was keeping the black race divided and fighting against each other. Mr. Muhammad said that this had traditionally kept the black people from achieving the unity which was the worst need of the black race in America.

  But instead of abating, the black puppets continued ripping and tearing at Mr. Muhammad and the Nation of Islam—until it began to appear as though we were afraid to speak out against these “important” Negroes. That’s when Mr. Muhammad’s patience wore thin. And with his nod, I began returning their fire.

  “Today’s Uncle Tom doesn’t wear a handkerchief on his head. This modern, twentieth-century Uncle Thomas now often wears a top hat. He’s usually well-dressed and well-educated. He’s often the personification of culture and refinement. The twentieth-century Uncle Thomas sometimes speaks with a Yale or Harvard accent. Sometimes he is known as Professor, Doctor, Judge, and Reverend, even Right Reverend Doctor. This twentieth-century Uncle Thomas is a professional Negro…by that I mean his profession is being a Negro for the white man.”

  Never before in America had these hand-picked so-called “leaders” been publicly blasted in this way. They reacted to the truth about themselves even more hotly than the devilish white man. Now their “institutional” indictments of us began. Instead of “leaders” speaking as themselves, for themselves, now their weighty name organizations attacked Mr. Muhammad.

  “Black bodies with white heads!” I called them what they were. Every one of those “Negro progress” organizations had the same composition. Black “leaders” were out in the public eye—to be seen by the Negroes for whom they were supposed to be fighting the white man. But obscurely, behind the scenes, was a white boss—a president, or board chairman, or some other title, pulling the real strings.

  It was hot, hot copy, both in the white and the black press. Life, Look, Newsweek and Time reported us. Some newspaper chains began to run not one story, but a series of three, four, or five “exposures” of the Nation of Islam. The Reader’s Digest with its worldwide circulation of twenty-four million copies in thirteen languages carried an article titled “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” by the writer to whom I am telling this book; and that led off other major monthly magazines’ coverage of us.

  —

  Before very long, radio and television people began asking me to defend our Nation of Islam in panel discussions and debates. I was to be confronted by handpicked scholars, both whites and some of those Ph.D. “house” and “yard” Negroes who had been attacking us. Every day, I was more incensed with the general misrepresentation and distortion of Mr. Muhammad’s teachings; I truly think that not once did it cross my mind that previously I never had been inside a radio or television station—let alone faced a microphone to audiences of millions of people. Prison debating had been my only experience speaking to anyone but Muslims.

  From the old hustling days I knew that there were tricks to everything. In the prison debating, I had learned tricks to upset my opponents, to catch them where they didn’t expect to be caught. I knew there were bound to be tricks I didn’t know anything about in arguing on the air.

  I knew that if I closely studied what the others did, I could learn things in a hurry to help me to defend Mr. Muhammad and his teachings.

  I’d walk into those studios. The devils and black Ph.D. puppets would be acting so friendly and “integrated” with each other—laughing and calling each other by first names, and all that; it was such a big lie it made me sick in my stomach. They would even be trying to act friendly toward me—we all knowing they had asked me there to try and beat
out my brains. They would offer me coffee. I would tell them “No, thanks,” to please just tell me where was I supposed to sit. Sometimes the microphone sat on the table before you, at other times a smaller, cylindrical microphone was hung on a cord around your neck. From the start, I liked those microphones better; I didn’t have to keep constantly aware of my distance from a microphone on the table.

  The program hosts would start with some kind of dice-loading, non-religious introduction for me. It would be something like “—and we have with us today the fiery, angry chief Malcolm X of the New York Muslims….” I made up my own introduction. At home, or driving my car, I practiced until I could interrupt a radio or television host and introduce myself.

  “I represent Mr. Elijah Muhammad, the spiritual head of the fastest-growing group of Muslims in the Western Hemisphere. We who follow him know that he has been divinely taught and sent to us by God Himself. We believe that the miserable plight of America’s twenty million black people is the fulfillment of divine prophecy. We also believe the presence today in America of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, his teachings among the so-called Negroes, and his naked warning to America concerning her treatment of these so-called Negroes, is all the fulfillment of divine prophecy. I am privileged to be the minister of our Temple Number Seven here in New York City which is a part of the Nation of Islam, under the divine leadership of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad—”

  I would look around at those devils and their trained black parrots staring at me, while I was catching my breath—and I had set my tone.

  They would outdo each other, leaping in on me, hammering at Mr. Muhammad, at me, and at the Nation of Islam. Those “integration”-mad Negroes—you know what they jumped on. Why couldn’t Muslims see that “integration” was the answer to American Negroes’ problems? I’d try to rip that to pieces.

  “No sane black man really wants integration! No sane white man really wants integration! No sane black man really believes that the white man ever will give the black man anything more than token integration. No! The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches that for the black man in America the only solution is complete separation from the white man!”

  Anyone who has ever heard me on radio or television programs knows that my technique is non-stop, until what I want to get said is said. I was developing the technique then.

  “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that since Western society is deteriorating, it has become overrun with immorality, and God is going to judge it, and destroy it. And the only way the black people caught up in this society can be saved is not to integrate into this corrupt society, but to separate from it, to a land of our own, where we can reform ourselves, lift up our moral standards, and try to be godly. The Western world’s most learned diplomats have failed to solve this grave race problem. Her learned legal experts have failed. Her sociologists have failed. Her civil leaders have failed. Her fraternal leaders have failed. Since all of these have failed to solve this race problem, it is time for us to sit down and reason! I am certain that we will be forced to agree that it takes God Himself to solve this grave racial dilemma.”

  Every time I mentioned “separation,” some of them would cry that we Muslims were standing for the same thing that white racists and demagogues stood for. I would explain the difference. “No! We reject segregation even more militantly than you say you do! We want separation, which is not the same! The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that segregation is when your life and liberty are controlled, regulated, by someone else. To segregate means to control. Segregation is that which is forced upon inferiors by superiors. But separation is that which is done voluntarily, by two equals—for the good of both! The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that as long as our people here in America are dependent upon the white man, we will always be begging him for jobs, food, clothing, and housing. And he will always control our lives, regulate our lives, and have the power to segregate us. The Negro here in America has been treated like a child. A child stays within the mother until the time of birth! When the time of birth arrives, the child must be separated, or it will destroy its mother and itself. The mother can’t carry that child after its time. The child cries for and needs its own world!”

  Anyone who has listened to me will have to agree that I believed in Elijah Muhammad and represented him one hundred percent. I never tried to take any credit for myself.

  I was never in one of those panel discussions without some of them just waiting their chance to accuse me of “inciting Negroes to violence.” I didn’t even have to do any special studying to prepare for that one.

  “The greatest miracle Christianity has achieved in America is that the black man in white Christian hands has not grown violent. It is a miracle that 22 million black people have not risen up against their oppressors—in which they would have been justified by all moral criteria, and even by the democratic tradition! It is a miracle that a nation of black people has so fervently continued to believe in a turn-the-other-cheek and heaven-for-you-after-you-die philosophy! It is a miracle that the American black people have remained a peaceful people, while catching all the centuries of hell that they have caught, here in white man’s heaven! The miracle is that the white man’s puppet Negro ‘leaders,’ his preachers and the educated Negroes laden with degrees, and others who have been allowed to wax fat off their black poor brothers, have been able to hold the black masses quiet until now.”

  I guarantee you one thing—every time I was mixed up in those studios with those brainwashed, “integration”-mad black puppets, and those tricky devils trying to rip and tear me down, as long as the little red light glowed “on the air,” I tried to represent Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam to the utmost.

  Dr. C. Eric Lincoln’s book was published amid widening controversy about us Muslims, at just about the time we were starting to put on our first big mass rallies.

  Just as the television “Hate That Hate Produced” title had projected that “hate-teaching” image of us, now Dr. Lincoln’s book was titled The Black Muslims in America. The press snatched at that name. “Black Muslims” was in all the book reviews, which quoted from the book only what was critical of us, and generally praised Dr. Lincoln’s writing.

  The public mind fixed on “Black Muslims.” From Mr. Muhammad on down, the name “Black Muslims” distressed everyone in the Nation of Islam. I tried for at least two years to kill off that “Black Muslims.” Every newspaper and magazine writer and microphone I got close to: “No! We are black people here in America. Our religion is Islam. We are properly called ‘Muslims’!” But that “Black Muslims” name never got dislodged.

  Our mass rallies, from their very beginning, were astounding successes. Where once Detroit’s struggling little Temple One proudly sent a ten-automobile caravan to Chicago to hear Mr. Muhammad, now, from East Coast Temples—the older Temples as well as the new ones that all of the massive publicity had helped us to bring into being—as many as 150, 200 and even as many as 300 big, chartered buses rolled the highways to wherever Mr. Muhammad was going to speak. On each bus, two Fruit of Islam men were in charge. Big three-by-nine-foot painted canvas banners hung on the buses’ sides, to be read by the highway traffic and thousands of people at home and on the sidewalks of the towns the buses passed through.

  Hundreds more Muslims and curious Negroes drove their own cars. And Mr. Muhammad with his personal jet plane from Chicago. From the airport to the rally hall, Mr. Muhammad’s motorcade had a siren-screaming police escort. Law agencies once had scoffed at our Nation as “black crackpots”; now they took special pains to safeguard against some “white crackpots” causing any “incidents” or “accidents.”

  America had never seen such fantastic all-black meetings! To hear Elijah Muhammad, up to ten thousand and more black people poured from public and private transportation to overflow the big halls we rented, such as the St. Nicholas Arena in New York City, Chicago’s Coliseum, and Washington, D.C.’s Uline Arena.

 
The white man was barred from attendance—the first time the American black man had ever dreamed of such a thing. And that brought us new attacks from the white man and his black puppets. “Black segregationists…racists!” Accusing us of segregation! Across America, whites barring blacks was standard.

  Many hundreds arrived too late for us to seat them. We always had to wire up outside loudspeakers. An electric atmosphere excited the great, shifting masses of black people. The long lines, three and four abreast, funneling to the meeting hall, were kept in strict order by Fruit of Islam men communicating by walkie-talkie. In anterooms just inside the halls, more Fruit of Islam men and white-gowned, veiled mature Muslim sisters thoroughly searched every man, woman, and child seeking to enter. Any alcohol and tobacco had to be checked, and any objects which could possibly be used to attempt to harm Mr. Muhammad. He always seemed deathly afraid that someone would harm him, and he insisted that everyone be searched to forestall this. Today I understand better, why.

  The hundreds of Fruit of Islam men represented contingents which had arrived early that morning, from their Temples in the nearest cities. Some were detailed as ushers, who seated the people by designated sections. The balconies and the rear half of the main floor were filled with black people of the general public. Ahead of them were the all-Muslim seating sections—the white-garbed beautiful black sisters, and the dark-suited, white-shirted brothers. A special section near the front was for black so-called “dignitaries.” Many of these had been invited. Among them were our black puppet and parrot attackers, the intellectuals and professional Negroes over whom Mr. Muhammad grieved so much, for these were the educated ones who should have been foremost in leading their poor black brothers out of the maze of misery and want. We wanted them to miss not a single syllable of the truths from Mr. Muhammad in person.