The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley

by Alex Haley

  When the New York Times poll was published, I had spoken at well over fifty colleges and universities, like Brown, Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Rutgers, in the Ivy League, and others throughout the country. Right now, I have invitations from Cornell, Princeton and probably a dozen others, as soon as my time and their available dates can be scheduled together. Among Negro institutions, I had then been to Atlanta University and Clark College down in Atlanta, to Howard University in Washington, D.C., and to a number of others with small student bodies.

  Except for all-black audiences, I liked the college audiences best. The college sessions sometimes ran two to four hours—they often ran overtime. Challenges, queries, and criticisms were fired at me by the usually objective and always alive and searching minds of undergraduate and graduate students, and their faculties. The college sessions never failed to be exhilarating. They never failed in helping me to further my own education. I never experienced one college session that didn’t show me ways to improve upon my presentation and defense of Mr. Muhammad’s teachings. Sometimes in a panel or debate appearance, I’d find a jam-packed audience to hear me, alone, facing six or eight student and faculty scholars—heads of departments such as sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, and religion, and each of them coming at me in his specialty.

  At the outset, always I’d confront such panels with something such as: “Gentlemen, I finished the eighth grade in Mason, Michigan. My high school was the black ghetto of Roxbury, Massachusetts. My college was in the streets of Harlem, and my master’s was taken in prison. Mr. Muhammad has taught me that I never need fear any man’s intellect who tries to defend or to justify the white man’s criminal record against the non-white man—especially the white man and the black man here in North America.”

  It was like being on a battlefield—with intellectual and philosophical bullets. It was an exciting battling with ideas. I got so I could feel my audiences’ temperaments. I’ve talked with other public speakers; they agree that this ability is native to any person who has the “mass appeal” gift, who can get through to and move people. It’s a psychic radar. As a doctor, with his finger against a pulse, is able to feel the heart rate, when I am up there speaking, I can feel the reaction to what I am saying.

  I think I could be speaking blindfolded and after five minutes, I could tell you if sitting out there before me was an all-black or an all-white audience. Black audiences and white audiences feel distinguishably different. Black audiences feel warmer, there is almost a musical rhythm, for me, even in their silent response.

  Question-and-answer periods are another area where, by now, again blindfolded, I can often tell you the ethnic source of a question. The most easily recognizable of these to me are a Jew in any audience situation, and a bourgeois Negro in “integrated” audiences.

  My clue to the Jew’s question and challenges is that among all other ethnic groups, his expressed thinking, his expressed concerns, are the most subjective. And 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.

  Now, of course I can understand the Jew’s hypersensitivity. For two thousand years, religious and personal prejudices against Jews have been vented and exercised, as strong as white prejudices against the non-white. But I know that America’s five and a half million Jews (two million of them are concentrated in New York) look at it very practically, whether they know it or not: that all of the bigotry and hatred focused upon the black man keeps off the Jew a lot of heat that would be on him otherwise.

  For an example of what I am talking about—in every black ghetto, Jews own the major businesses. Every night the owners of those businesses go home with that black community’s money, which helps the ghetto to stay poor. But 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 challengers 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-Semitic; it means merely that I am antiexploitation.

  The white liberal may be a little taken aback to know that from all-Negro audiences I never have had one challenge, never one question that defended the white man. That has been true even when a lot of those “black bourgeoisie” and “integration”-mad Negroes were among the blacks. All Negroes, among themselves, admit the white man’s criminal record. They may not know as many details as I do, but they know the general picture.

  But, let me tell you something significant: This very same bourgeois Negro who, among Negroes, would never make a fool of himself in trying to defend the white man—watch that same Negro in a mixed black and white audience, knowing he’s overheard by his beloved “Mr. Charlie.” Why, you should hear those Negroes attack me, trying to justify, or forgive the white man’s crimes! These Negroes are people who bring me nearest to breaking one of my principal rules, which is never to let myself become over-emotional and angry. Why, sometimes I’ve felt I ought to jump down off that stand and get physical with some of those brainwashed white man’s tools, parrots, puppets. At the colleges, I’ve developed some stock put-downs for them: “You must be a law student, aren’t you?” They have to say either yes, or no. And I say, “I thought you were. You defend this criminal white man harder than he defends his guilty self!”

  One particular university’s “token-integrated” black Ph.D. associate professor I never will forget; he got me so mad I couldn’t see straight. As badly as our 22 millions of educationally deprived black people need the help of any brains he has, there he was looking like some fly in the buttermilk among white “colleagues”—and he was trying to eat me up! He was ranting about what a “divisive demagogue” and what a “reverse racist” I was. I was racking my head, to spear that fool; finally I held up my hand, and he stopped. “Do you know what white racists call black Ph.D’s?” He said something like, “I believe that I happen not to be aware of that”—you know, one of these ultra-proper-talking Negroes. And I laid the word down on him, loud: “Nigger!”

  —

  Speaking in these colleges and universities was good for the Nation of Islam, I would report to Mr. Muhammad, because the devilish white man’s best minds were developed and influenced in the colleges and universities. But for some reason that I could never understand until much later, Mr. Muhammad never really wanted me to speak at these colleges and universities.

  I was to learn later, from Mr. Muhammad’s own sons at he was envious because he felt unequipped to speak at colleges himself. But nevertheless, in Mr. Muhammad’s behalf at this time, I was finding these highly intelligent audiences amazingly open-minded and objective in their receptions of the raw, naked truths that I would tell them:

  “Time and time again, the black, the brown, the red, and the yellow races have witnessed and suffered the white man’s small ability to understand the simple notes of the spirit. The white man seems tone deaf to the total orchestration of humanity. Every day, his newspapers’ front pages show us the world that he has created.

  “God’s wrathful judgment is close upon this white man stumbling and groping blindly in wickedness and evil and spiritual darkness.

  “Look—remaining today are only two giant white nations, America and Russia, each of them with mistrustful, nervous satellites. America is propping up most of the remaining white world. The French, the Belgians, the Dutch, the Portuguese, the Spanish and other white nations have weakened steadily as non-white Asians and Africans have recovered their lands.

  “America is subsidizing what is left of the prestige and strength of the once mighty Britain. The sun has set forever on that monocled, pith-helmeted resident colonialist, sipping tea with his delicate lady in the non-white colonies bein
g systematically robbed of every valuable resource. Britain’s superfluous royalty and nobility now exist by charging tourists to inspect the once baronial castles, and by selling memoirs, perfumes, autographs, titles, and even themselves.

  “The whole world knows that the white man cannot survive another war. If either of the two giant white nations pushes the button, white civilization will die!

  “And we see again that not ideologies, but race, and color, is what binds human beings. Is it accidental that as Red Chinese visit African and Asian countries, Russia and America draw steadily closer to each other?

  “The collective white man’s history has left the non-white peoples no alternative, either, but to draw closer to each other.

  Characteristically, as always, the devilish white man lacks the moral strength and courage to cast off his arrogance. He wants, today, to ‘buy’ friends among the non-whites. He tries, characteristically, to cover up his past record. He does not possess the humility to admit his guilt, to try and atone for his crimes. The white man has perverted the simple message of love that the Prophet Jesus lived and taught when He walked upon this earth.”

  Audiences seemed surprised when I spoke about Jesus. I would explain that we Muslims believe in the Prophet Jesus. He was one of the three most important Prophets of the religion of Islam, the others being Muhammad and Moses. In Jerusalem there are Muslim shrines built to the Prophet Jesus. I would explain that it was our belief that Christianity did not perform what Christ taught. I never failed to cite that even Billy Graham, challenged in Africa, had himself made the distinction, “I believe in Christ, not Christianity.”

  I never will forget one little blonde co-ed after I had spoken at her New England college. She must have caught the next plane behind that one I took to New York. She found the Muslim restaurant in Harlem. I just happened to be there when she came in. Her clothes, her carriage, her accent, all showed Deep South white breeding and money. At that college, I told how the ante-bellum white slavemaster even devilishly manipulated his own woman. He convinced her that she was “too pure” for his base “animal instincts.” With this “noble” ruse, he conned his own wife to look away from his obvious preference for the “animal” black woman. So the “delicate mistress” sat and watched the plantation’s little mongrel-complexioned children, sired obviously by her father, her husband, her brothers, her sons. I said at that college that the guilt of American whites included their knowledge that in hating Negroes, they were hating, they were rejecting, they were denying, their own blood.

  Anyway, I’d never seen anyone I ever spoke before more affected than this little white college girl. She demanded right up in my face, “Don’t you believe there are any good white people?” I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I told her, “People’s deeds I believe in, Miss—not their words.”

  “What can I do?” she exclaimed. I told her, “Nothing.” She burst out crying, and ran out and up Lenox Avenue and caught a taxi.

  —

  Mr. Muhammad—each time I’d go to see him in Chicago, or in Phoenix—would warm me with his expressions of his approval and confidence in me.

  He left me in charge of the Nation of Islam’s affairs when he made an Omra pilgrimage to the Holy City Mecca.

  I believed so strongly in Mr. Muhammad that I would have hurled myself between him and an assassin.

  A chance event brought crashing home to me that there was something—one thing—greater than my reverence for Mr. Muhammad.

  It was the awesomeness of my reason to revere him.

  I was the invited speaker at the Harvard Law School Forum. I happened to glance through a window. Abruptly, I realized that I was looking in the direction of the apartment house that was my old burglary gang’s hideout.

  It rocked me like a tidal wave. Scenes from my once depraved life lashed through my mind. Living like an animal; thinking like an animal!

  Awareness came surging up in me—how deeply the religion of Islam had reached down into the mud to lift me up, to save me from being what I inevitably would have been: a dead criminal in a grave, or, if still alive, a flint-hard, bitter, thirty-seven-year-old convict in some penitentiary, or insane asylum. Or, at best, I would have been an old, fading Detroit Red, hustling, stealing enough for food and narcotics, and myself being stalked as prey by cruelly ambitious younger hustlers such as Detroit Red had been.

  But Allah had blessed me to learn about the religion of Islam, which had enabled me to lift myself up from the muck and the mire of this rotting world.

  And there I stood, the invited speaker, at Harvard.

  A story that I had read in prison when I was reading a lot of Greek mythology flicked into my head.

  The boy Icarus. Do you remember the story?

  Icarus’ father made some wings that he fastened with wax. “Never fly but so high with these wings,” the father said. But soaring around, this way, that way, Icarus’ flying pleased him so that he began thinking he was flying on his own merit. Higher, he flew—higher—until the heat of the sun melted the wax holding those wings. And down came Icarus—tumbling.

  Standing there by that Harvard window, I silently vowed to Allah that I never would forget that any wings I wore had been put on by the religion of Islam. That fact I never have forgotten…not for one second.

  CHAPTER 16

  OUT

  In nineteen sixty-one, Mr. Muhammad’s condition grew suddenly worse.

  As he talked with me when I visited him, when he talked with anyone, he would unpredictably begin coughing harder, and harder, until his body was wracked and jerking in agonies that were painful to watch, and Mr. Muhammad would have to take to his bed.

  We among Mr. Muhammad’s officials, and his family, kept the situation to ourselves, while we could. Few other Muslims became aware of Mr. Muhammad’s condition until there were last-minute cancellations of long-advertised personal appearances at some big Muslim rallies. Muslims knew that only something really serious would ever have stopped the Messenger from keeping his promise to be with them at their rallies. Their questions had to be answered, and the news of our leader’s illness swiftly spread through the Nation of Islam.

  Anyone not a Muslim could not conceive what the possible loss of Mr. Muhammad would have meant among his followers. To us, the Nation of Islam was Mr. Muhammad. What bonded us into the best organization black Americans ever had was every Muslim’s devout regard for Mr. Muhammad as black America’s moral, mental, and spiritual reformer.

  Stated another way, we Muslims regarded ourselves as moral and mental and spiritual examples for other black Americans, because we followed the personal example of Mr. Muhammad. Black communities discussed with respect how Muslims were suspended if they lied, gambled, cheated, or smoked. For moral crimes, such as fornication or adultery, Mr. Muhammad personally would mete out sentences of from one to five years of “isolation,” if not complete expulsion from the Nation. And Mr. Muhammad would punish his officials more readily than the newest convert in a mosque. He said that any defecting official betrayed both himself and his position as a leader and example for other Muslims. For every Muslim, in his rejection of immoral temptation, the beacon was Mr. Muhammad. All Muslims felt as one that without his light, we would all be in darkness.

  As I have related, doctors recommended a dry climate to ease Mr. Muhammad’s condition. Quickly we found up for sale in Phoenix the home of the saxophone player, Louis Jordan. The Nation’s treasury purchased the home, and Mr. Muhammad soon moved there.

  Only by being two people could I have worked harder in the service of the Nation of Islam. I had every gratification that I wanted. I had helped bring about the progress and national impact such that none could call us liars when we called Mr. Muhammad the most powerful black man in America. I had helped Mr. Muhammad and his other ministers to revolutionize the American black man’s thinking, opening his eyes until he would never again look in the same fearful, worshipful way at the white man. I had participated in spreading the t
ruths that had done so much to help the American black man rid himself of the mirage that the white race was made up of “superior” beings. I had been a part of the tapping of something in the black secret soul.

  If I harbored any personal disappointment whatsoever, it was that privately I was convinced that our Nation of Islam could be an even greater force in the American black man’s overall struggle—if we engaged in more action. By that, I mean I thought privately that we should have amended, or relaxed, our general non-engagement policy. I felt that, wherever black people commined themselves, in the Little Rocks and the Birminghams and other places, militantly disciplined Muslims should also be there—for all the world to see, and respect, and discuss.

  It could be heard increasingly in the Negro communities: “Those Muslims talk tough, but they never do anything, unless somebody bothers Muslims.” I moved around among outsiders more than most other Muslim officials. I felt the very real potentiality that, considering the mercurial moods of the black masses, this labeling of Muslims as “talk only” could see us, powerful as we were, one day suddenly separated from the Negroes’ front-line struggle.

  But beyond that single personal concern, I couldn’t have asked Allah to bless my efforts any more than he had. Islam in New York City was growing faster than anywhere in America. From the one tiny mosque to which Mr. Muhammad had originally sent me, I had now built three of the Nation’s most powerful and aggressive mosques—Harlem’s Seven-A in Manhattan, Corona’s Seven-B in Queens, and Mosque Seven-C in Brooklyn. And on a national basis, I had either directly established, or I had helped to establish, most of the one hundred or more mosques in the fifty states. I was crisscrossing North America sometimes as often as four times a week. Often, what sleep I got was caught in the jet planes. I was maintaining a marathon schedule of press, radio, television, and public-speaking commitments. The only way that I could keep up with my job for Mr. Muhammad was by flying with the wings that he had given me.