The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley

by Alex Haley

The front two or three press rows were filled with the black reporters and cameramen representing the Negro press, or those who had been hired by the white man’s newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. America’s black writers should hold a banquet for Mr. Muhammad. Writing about the Nation of Islam was the path to success for most of the black writers who now are recognized.

  Up on the speaker’s platform, we ministers and other officials of the Nation, entering from backstage, found ourselves chairs in the five or six rows behind the big chair reserved for Mr. Muhammad. Some of the ministers had come hundreds of miles to be present. We would be turning about in our chairs, beaming with smiles, wringing each other’s hands, and exchanging “As-Salaam-Alaikum” and “Wa-Alaikum-Salaam” in our genuine deep rejoicing to see each other again.

  Always, meeting us older hands in Mr. Muhammad’s service for the first time, there were several new ministers of small new Temples. My brothers Wilfred and Philbert were respectively now the ministers of the Detroit and Lansing Temples. Minister Jeremiah X headed Atlanta’s Temple. Minister John X had Los Angeles’ Temple. The Messenger’s son, Minister Wallace Muhammad, had the Philadelphia Temple. Minister Woodrow X had the Atlantic City Temple. Some of our ministers had unusual backgrounds. The Washington, D.C., Temple Minister Lucius X was previously a Seventh Day Adventist and a 32nd degree Mason. Minister George X of the Camden, New Jersey, Temple was a pathologist. Minister David X 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 our Richmond Temple. The Boston Temple’s outstanding young Minister Louis X, previously a well-known and rising popular singer called “The Charmer,” had written our Nation’s popular first song, titled “White Man’s Heaven is Black Man’s Hell.” Minister Louis X had also authored our first play, “Orgena” (“A Negro” spelled backwards); its theme was the all-black trial of a symbolic white man for his world crimes against non-whites; found guilty, sentenced to death, he was dragged off shouting about all he had done “for the nigra people.”

  Younger even than our talented Louis X were some newer ministers, Minister Thomas J. X of the Hartford Temple being one example, and another the Buffalo Temple’s Minister Robert J. X.

  I had either originally established or organized for Mr. Muhammad most of the represented temples. Greeting each of these Temples’ brother ministers would bring back into my mind images of “fishing” for converts along the streets and from door-to-door wherever the black people were congregated. I remembered the countless meetings in living rooms where maybe seven would be a crowd; the gradually building, building—on up to renting folding chairs for dingy little storefronts which Muslims scrubbed to spotlessness.

  We together on a huge hall’s speaking platform, and that vast audience before us, miraculously manifested, as far as I was concerned, the incomprehensible power of Allah. For the first time, I truly understood something Mr. Muhammad had told me: he claimed that when he was going through the sacrificial trials of fleeing the black hypocrites from city to city, Allah had often sent him visions of great audiences who would one day hear the teachings; and Mr. Muhammad said the visions also buoyed him when he was locked up for years in the white man’s prison.

  The great audience’s restless whisperings would cease….

  At the microphone would be the Nation’s National Secretary John Ali, or the Boston Temple Minister Louis X. They enlivened the all-black atmosphere, speaking of the new world open to the black man through the Nation of Islam. Sister Tynetta Dynear would speak beautifully of the Muslim women’s powerful, vital contributions, of the Muslim women’s roles in our Nation’s efforts to raise the physical, mental, moral, social, and political condition of America’s black people.

  Next, I would come to the microphone, specifically to condition the audience to hear Mr. Muhammad who had flown from Chicago to teach us all in person.

  I would raise up my hand, “As-Salaam-Alaikum—”

  “Wa-Alaikum-Salaam!” It was a roared response from the great audience’s Muslim seating section.

  There was a general pattern that I would follow on these occasions:

  “My black brothers and sisters—of all religious beliefs, or of no religious beliefs—we all have in common the greatest binding tie we could have…we all are black people!

  “I’m not going to take all day telling you some of the greatnesses of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad. I’m just going to tell you now his greatest greatness! He is the first, the only black leader to identify, to you and me, who is our enemy!

  “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the first black leader among us with the courage to tell us—out here in public—something which when you begin to think of it back in your homes, you will realize we black people have been living with, we have been seeing, we have been suffering, all of our lives!

  “Our enemy is the white man!

  “And why is Mr. Muhammad’s teaching us this such a great thing? Because when you know who your enemy is, he can no longer keep you divided, and fighting, one brother against the other! Because when you recognize who your enemy is, he can no longer use trickery, promises, lies, hypocrisy, and his evil acts to keep you deaf, dumb, and blinded!

  “When you recognize who your enemy is, he can no longer brainwash you, he can no longer pull wool over your eyes so that you never stop to see that you are living in pure hell on this earth, while he lives in pure heaven right on this same earth!—This enemy who tells you that you are both supposed to be worshiping the same white Christian God that—you are told—stands for the same things for all men!

  “Oh, yes, that devil is our enemy. I’ll prove it! Pick up any daily newspaper! Read the false charges leveled against our beloved religious leader. It only points up the fact that the Caucasian race never wants any black man who is not their puppet or parrot to speak for our people. This Caucasian devil slavemaster does not want or trust us to leave him—yet when we stay here among him, he continues to keep us at the very lowest level of his society!

  “The white man has always loved it when he could keep us black men tucked away somewhere, always out of sight, around the corner! The white man has always loved the kind of black leaders whom he could ask, ‘Well, how’s things with your people up there?’ But because Mr. Elijah Muhammad takes an uncompromising stand with the white man, the white man hates him! When you hear the white man hate him, you, too, because you don’t understand Biblical prophecy, wrongly label Mr. Muhammad—as a racist, a hatt teacher, or of being anti-white and teaching black supremacy—”

  The audience suddenly would begin a rustling of turning….

  Mr. Muhammad would be rapidly moving along up a center aisle from the rear—as once he had entered our humble little mosques—this man whom we regarded as Islam’s gentle, meek, brown-skinned Lamb. Stalwart, striding, close-cropped, hand-picked Fruit of Islam guards were a circle surrounding him. He carried his Holy Bible, his holy Quran. The small, dark pillbox atop his head was gold-embroidered with Islam’s flag, the sun, moon, and stars. The Muslims were crying out their adoration and their welcome. “Little Lamb!” “As-Salaam-Alaikum!” “Praise be to Allah!”

  Tears would be in more eyes than mine. He had rescued me when I was a convict; Mr. Muhammad had trained me in his home, as if I was his son. I think that my life’s peaks of emotion, until recently, at least, were when, suddenly, the Fruit of Islam guards would stop stiffly at attention, and the platform’s several steps would be mounted alone by Mr. Muhammad, and his ministers, including me, sprang around him, embracing him, wringing both his hands….

  I would turn right back to the microphone, not to keep waiting those world’s biggest black audiences who had come to hear him.

  “My black brothers and sisters—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! The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is giving us a true identity, and
a true position—the first time they have ever been known to the American black man!

  “You can be around this man and never dream from his actions the power and the authority he has—” (Behind me, believe me when I tell you, I could feel Mr. Muhammad’s power.)

  “He does not display, and parade, his power! But no other black leader in America has followers who will lay down their lives if he says so! And I don’t mean all of this non-violent, begging-the-white-man kind of dying…all of this sitting-in, sliding-in, wading-in, eating-in, diving-in, and all the rest—

  “My black brothers and sisters, you have come from your homes to hear—now you are going to hear—America’s wisest black man! America’s boldest black man! America’s most fearless black man! This wilderness of North America’s most powerful black man!”

  Mr. Muhammad would come quickly to the stand, looking out over the vacuum-quiet audience, his gentle-looking face set, for just a fleeting moment. Then, “As-Salaam-Alaikum—”

  “WA-ALAIKUM-SALAAM!”

  The Muslims roared it, as they settled to listen. From experience, they knew that for the next two hours Mr. Muhammad would wield his two-edged sword of truth. In fact, every Muslim worried that he overtaxed himself in the length of his speeches, considering his bronchial asthmatic condition.

  “I don’t have a degree like many of you out there before me have. But history don’t care anything about your degrees.

  “The white man, he has filled you with a fear of him from ever since you were little black babies. So over you is the greatest enemy a man can have—and that is fear. I know some of you are afraid to listen to the truth—you have been raised on fear and lies. But I am going to preach to you the truth until you are free of that fear….

  “Your slavemaster, he brought you over here, and of your past everything was destroyed. Today, you do not know your true language. What tribe are you from? You would not recognize your tribe’s name if you heard it. You don’t know nothing about your true culture. You don’t even know your family’s real name. You are wearing a white man’s name! The white slavemaster, who hates you!

  “You are a people who think you know all about the Bible, and all about Christianity. You even are foolish enough to believe that nothing is right but Christianity!

  “You are the planet Earth’s only group of people ignorant of yourself, ignorant of your own kind, of your true history, ignorant of your enemy! You know nothing at all but what your white slavemaster has chosen to tell you. And he has told you only that which will benefit himself, and his own kind. He has taught you, for his benefit, that you are a neutral, shiftless, helpless so-called ‘Negro.’

  “I say ‘so-called’ because you are not a ‘Negro.’ There is no such thing as a race of ‘Negroes.’ You are members of the Asiatic nation, from the tribe of Shabazz! ‘Negro’ is a false label forced on you by your slavemaster! He has been pushing things onto you and me and our kind ever since he brought the first slave shipload of us black people here—”

  When Mr. Muhammad paused, the Muslims before him cried out, “Little Lamb!”…“All praise is due to Allah!”…“Teach, Messenger!” He would continue.

  “The ignorance we of the black race here in America have, and the self-hatred we have, they are fine examples of what the white slavemaster has seen fit to teach to us. Do we show the plain common sense, like every other people on this planet Earth, to unite among ourselves? No! We are humbling ourselves, sitting-in, and begging-in, trying to unite with the slavemaster! I don’t seem able to imagine any more ridiculous sight. A thousand ways every day, the white man is telling you ‘You can’t live here, you can’t enter here, you can’t eat here, drink here, walk here, work here, you can’t ride here, you can’t play here, you can’t study here.’ Haven’t we yet seen enough to see that he has no plan to unite with you?

  “You have tilled his fields! Cooked his food! Washed his clothes! You have cared for his wife and children when he was away. In many cases, you have even suckled him at your breast! You have been far and away better Christians than this slavemaster who taught you his Christianity!

  “You have sweated blood to help him build a country so rich that he can today afford to give away millions—even to his enemies! And when those enemies have gotten enough from him to then be able to attack him, you have been his brave soldiers, dying for him. And you have been always his most faithful servant during the so-called ‘peaceful’ times—

  “And, still, this Christian American white man has not got it in him to find the human decency, and enough sense of justice, to recognize us, and accept us, the black people who have done so much for him, as fellow human beings!”

  “YAH, Man!”…“Um-huh!” “Teach, Messenger!”…“Yah!”…“Tell ’em!”…“You right”!…“Take your time up there, little Messenger!”…“Oh, yes!”

  Others besides the Muslims would be shouting now. We Muslims were less extroverted than Christian Negroes. It would sound now like an old-fashioned camp meeting.

  “So let us, the black people, separate ourselves from this white man slavemaster, who despises us so much! You are out here begging him for some so-called ‘integration’! But what is this slavemaster white, rapist, going about saying! He is saying he won’t integrate because black blood will mongrelize his race! He says that—and look at us! Turn around in your seats and look at each other! This slavemaster white man already has ‘integrated’ us until you can hardly find among us today any more than a very few who are the black color of our foreparents!”

  “God-a-mighty, the man’s right!”…“Teach, Messenger—” “Hear him! Hear him!”

  “He has left such a little black in us,” Mr. Muhammad would go on, “that now he despises us so bad—meaning he despises himself, for what he has done to us—that he tells us that legally if we have got one drop of black blood in us, that means you are all-black as far as his laws are concerned! Well, if that’s all we’ve got left, we want to reclaim that one drop!”

  Mr. Muhammad’s frail strength could be seen to be waning. But he would teach on:

  “So let us separate from this white man, and for the same reason he says—in time to save ourselves from any more ‘integration’!

  “Why shouldn’t this white man who likes to think and call himself so good, and so generous, this white man who finances even his enemies—why shouldn’t he subsidize a separate state, a separate territory, for we black people who have been such faithful slaves and servants? A separate territory on which we can lift ourselves out of these white man’s slums for us, and his breadlines for us. And even for those he is complaining that we cost him too much! We can do something for ourselves! We never have done what we could—because we have been brainwashed so well by the slavemaster white man that we must come to him, begging him, for everything we want, and need—”

  After perhaps ninety minutes, behind Mr. Muhammad, every minister would have to restrain himself from bolting up to his side, to urge him that it was enough. He would be pressing his hands tightly against the edges of the speaker’s stand, to support himself.

  “We black people don’t know what we can do. You never can know what anything can do—until it is set free, to act by itself! If you have a cat in your house that you pamper and pet, you have to free that cat, set it on its own, in the woods, before you can see that the cat had it in him to shelter and feed itself!

  “We, the black people here in America, we never have been free to find out what we really can do! We have knowledge and experience to pool to do for ourselves! All of our lives we have farmed—we can grow our own food. We can set up factories to manufacture our own necessities! We can build other kinds of businesses, to establish trade, and commerce—and become independent, as other civilized people are—

  “We can throw off our brainwashing, and our self-hate, and live as brothers together…

  “…some land of our own!…Something for ourselves!…leave this white slavemaster to himself….”

 
Mr. Muhammad always stopped abruptly when he was unable to speak any longer.

  The standing ovation, a solid wall of sound, would go on unabating.

  Standing up there, flailing my arms, finally I could quiet the audiences as Fruit of Islam ushers began to pass along the seating rows the large, waxed paper buckets we used to take up the collection. I would speak.

  “You know, from what you have just heard, that no white money finances The Honorable Elijah Muhammad and his program—to ‘advise’ him and ‘contain’ him! Mr. Muhammad’s program, and his followers, are not ‘integrated.’ Mr. Muhammad’s program and organization are all-black!

  “We are the only black organization that only black people support! These so-called ‘Negro progress’ organizations—Why, they insult your intelligence, claiming they are fighting in your behalf, to get you the equal rights you are asking for…claiming they are fighting the white man who refuses to give you your rights. Why, the white man supports those organizations! If you belong, you pay your two, or three, or five dollars a year—but who gives those organizations those two, and three, and five thousand dollar donations? The white man! He feeds those organizations! So he controls those organizations! He advises them—so he contains them! Use your common sense—aren’t you going to advise and control and contain anyone that you support, like your child?

  “The white man would love to support Mr. Elijah Muhammad. Because if Mr. Muhammad had to rely on his support, he could advise Mr. Muhammad. My black brothers and sisters, it is only because your money, black money, supports Mr. Muhammad, that he can hold these all-black meetings from city to city, telling us black men the truth! That’s why we are asking for your all-black support!”

  Nearly all bills—and far from all one-dollar bills, either, filled the waxed buckets. The buckets were swiftly emptied, then refilled, as the Fruit of Islam ushers covered the entire audience.

  The audience atmosphere was almost as if the people had gone limp. The collections always covered the rally expenses, and anything beyond that helped to continue building the Nation of Islam.