The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley

by Alex Haley

  The manuscript copy which Malcolm X was given to review was in better shape now, and he pored through page by page, intently, and now and then his head would raise with some comment. “You know,” he said once, “why I have been able to have some effect is because I make a study of the weaknesses of this country and because the more the white man yelps, the more I know I have struck a nerve.” Another time, he put down upon the bed the manuscript he was reading, and he got up from his chair and walked back and forth, stroking his chin, then he looked at me. “You know this place here in this chapter where I told you how I put the pistol up to my head and kept pulling the trigger and scared them so when I was starting the burglary ring—well,” he paused, “I don’t know if I ought to tell you this or not, but I want to tell the truth.” He eyed me, speculatively. “I palmed the bullet.” We laughed together. I said, “Okay, give that page here, I’ll fix it.” Then he considered, “No, leave it that way. Too many people would be so quick to say that’s what I’m doing today, bluffing.”

  Again when reading about the period when he had discovered the prison library, Malcolm X’s head jerked up. “Boy! I never will forget that old aardvark!” The next evening, he came into the room and told me that he had been to the Museum of Natural History and learned something about the aardvark. “Now, aardvark actually means ‘earth hog.’ That’s a good example of root words, as I was telling you. When you study the science of philology, you learn the laws governing how a consonant can lose its shape, but it keeps its identity from language to language.” What astonished me here was that I knew that on that day, Malcolm X’s schedule had been crushing, involving both a television and radio appearance and a live speech, yet he had gone to find out something about the aardvark.

  Before long, Malcolm X called a press conference, and announced, “My new Organization of Afro-American Unity is a non-religious and non-sectarian group organized to unite Afro-Americans for a constructive program toward attainment of human rights.” The new OAAU’s tone appeared to be one of militant black nationalism. He said to the questions of various reporters in subsequent interviews that the OAAU would seek to convert the Negro population from non-violence to active self-defense against white supremacists across America. On the subject of politics he offered an enigma, “Whether you use bullets or ballots, you’ve got to aim well; don’t strike at the puppet, strike at the puppeteer.” Did he envision any special area of activity? “I’m going to join in the fight wherever Negroes ask for my help.” What about alliance with other Negro organizations? He said that he would consider forming some united front with certain selected Negro leaders. He conceded under questioning that the N.A.A.C.P. was “doing some good.” Could any whites join his OAAU? “If John Brown were alive, maybe him.” And he answered his critics with such statements as that he would send “armed guerrillas” into Mississippi. “I am dead serious. We will send them not only to Mississippi, but to any place where black people’s lives are threatened by white bigots. As far as I am concerned, Mississippi is anywhere south of the Canadian border.” At another time, when Evelyn Cunningham of the Pittsburgh Courier asked Malcolm X in a kidding way, “Say something startling for my column,” he told her, “Anyone who wants to follow me and my movement has got to be ready to go to jail, to the hospital, and to the cemetery before he can be truly free.” Evelyn Cunningham, printing the item, commented, “He smiled and chuckled, but he was in dead earnest.”

  His fourth child, yet another daughter, was born and he and Sister Betty named the baby Gamilah Lumumbah. A young waitress named Helen Lanier, at Harlem’s Twenty Two Club where Malcolm X now often asked people to meet him, gave him a layette for the new baby. He was very deeply touched by the gesture. “Why, I hardly know that girl!”

  He was clearly irked when a New York Times poll among New York City Negroes reflected that three-fourths had named Dr. Martin Luther King as “doing the best work for Negroes,” and another one-fifth had voted for the N.A.A.C.P.’s Roy Wilkins, while only six percent had voted for Malcolm X. “Brother,” he said to me, “do you realize that some of history’s greatest leaders never were recognized until they were safely in the ground!”

  One morning in mid-summer 1964, Malcolm X telephoned me and said that he would be leaving “within the next two or three days” for a planned six weeks abroad. I heard from him first in Cairo, about as the predicted “long, hot summer” began in earnest, with riots and other uprisings of Negroes occurring in surburban Philadelphia, in Rochester, in Brooklyn, in Harlem, and other cities. The New York Times reported that a meeting of Negro intellectuals had agreed that Dr. Martin Luther King could secure the allegiance of the middle and upper classes of Negroes, but Malcolm X alone could secure the allegiance of Negroes at the bottom. “The Negroes respect Dr. King and Malcolm X because they sense in these men absolute integrity and know they will never sell them out. Malcolm X cannot be corrupted and the Negroes know this and therefore respect him. They also know that he comes from the lower depths, as they do, and regard him as one of their own. Malcolm X is going to play a formidable role, because the racial struggle has now shifted to the urban North…if Dr. King is convinced that he has sacrificed ten years of brilliant leadership, he will be forced to revise his concepts. There is only one direction in which he can move, and that is in the direction of Malcolm X.” I sent a clipping of that story to Malcolm X in Cairo.

  In Washington, D.C. and New York City, at least, powerful civic, private, and governmental agencies and individuals were keenly interested in what Malcolm X was saying abroad, and were speculating upon what would he say, and possibly do, when he returned to America. In upstate New York, I received a telephone call from a close friend who said he had been asked to ask me if I would come to New York City on an appointed day to meet with “a very high government official” who was interested in Malcolm X. I did fly down to the city. My friend accompanied me to the offices of a large private foundation well known for its activities and donations in the civil-rights area. I met the foundation’s president and he introduced me to the Justice Department Civil Rights Section head, Burke Marshall. Marshall was chiefly interested in Malcolm X’s finances, particularly how his extensive traveling since his Black Muslim ouster had been paid for. I told him that to the best of my knowledge the several payments from the publisher had financed Malcolm X, along with fees he received for some speeches, and possible donations that his organization received, and that Malcolm X had told me of borrowing money from his Sister Ella for the current trip, and that recently the Saturday Evening Post had bought the condensation rights of the book for a substantial sum that was soon to be received. Marshall listened quietly, intently, and asked a few questions concerning other aspects of Malcolm X’s life, then thanked me. I wrote to Malcolm X in Cairo that night about the interview. He never mentioned it.

  The Saturday Evening Post flew photographer John Launois to Cairo to locate Malcolm X and photograph him in color. The magazine’s September 12 issue appeared, and I sent a copy by airmail to Malcolm X. Within a few days, I received a stinging note, expressing his anger at the magazine’s editorial regarding his life story. (The editorial’s opening sentence read, “If Malcolm X were not a Negro, his autobiography would be little more than a journal of abnormal psychology, the story of a burglar, dope pusher, addict and jailbird—with a family history of insanity—who acquires messianic delusions and sets forth to preach an upside-down religion of ‘brotherly’ hatred.”) I wrote to Malcolm X that he could not fairly hold me responsible for what the magazine had written in a separate editorial opinion. He wrote an apology, “but the greatest care must be exercised in the future.”

  His return from Africa was even more auspicious than when he had returned from the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. A large group of Negroes, his followers and well-wishers, kept gathering in the Overseas Arrival Building at Kennedy Airport. When I entered, white men with cameras were positioned on the second level, taking pictures of all the Negroes who entered, and a
lmost as obvious were Negro plainclothesmen moving about. Malcolm’s greeters had draped across the glass overlooking the U.S. Customs Inspection line some large cloth banners on which were painted in bold letters, “Welcome Home, Malcolm.”

  He came in sight, stepping into one of the Customs Inspection lines; he heard the cheering and he looked up, smiling his pleasure.

  —

  Malcolm X wanted to “huddle” with me to fill me in on details from his trip that he wanted in the book. He said that he was giving me only the highlights, because he felt that his carefully kept diary might be turned into another book. We had intensive sessions in my hotel room, where he read what he selected from the diary, and I took notes. “What I want to stress is that I was trying to internationalize our problem,” he said to me, “to make the Africans feel their kinship with us Afro-Americans. I made them think about it, that they are our blood brothers, and we all came from the same foreparents. That’s why the Africans loved me, the same way the Asians loved me because I was religious.”

  Within a few days, he had no more time to see me. He would call and apologize; he was beset by a host of problems, some of which he mentioned, and some of which I heard from other people. Most immediately, there was discontent within his organization, the OAAU. His having stayed away almost three times as long as he had said he would be gone had sorely tested the morale of even his key members, and there was a general feeling that his interest was insufficient to expect his followers’ interest to stay high. I heard from one member that “a growing disillusion” could be sensed throughout the organization.

  In Harlem at large, in the bars and restaurants, on the street corners and stoops, there could be heard more blunt criticism of Malcolm X than ever before in his career. There were, variously expressed, two primary complaints. One was that actually Malcolm X only talked, but other civil-rights organizations were doing. “All he’s ever done was talk, CORE and SNCC and some of them people of Dr. King’s are out getting beat over the head.” The second major complaint was that Malcolm X was himself too confused to be seriously followed any longer. “He doesn’t know what he believes in. No sooner do you hear one thing than he’s switched to something else.” The two complaints were not helping the old firebrand Malcolm X image any, nor were they generating the local public interest that was badly needed by his small, young OAAU.

  A court had made it clear that Malcolm X and his family would have to vacate the Elmhurst house for its return to the adjudged legal owners, Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam. And other immediate problems which Malcolm X faced included finances. Among his other expenses, a wife and four daughters had to be supported, along with at least one full-time OAAU official. Upon his return from Africa, our agent for the book had delivered to me for Malcolm X a check for a sizable sum; soon afterward Malcolm X told me, laughing wryly, “It’s evaporated. I don’t know where!”

  Malcolm X plunged into a welter of activities. He wrote and telephoned dozens of acceptances to invitations to speak, predominantly at colleges and universities—both to expound his philosophies and to earn the $150-$300 honorariums above traveling expenses. When he was in New York City, he spent all the time he could in his OAAU’s sparsely furnished office on the mezzanine floor of the Hotel Theresa, trying to do something about the OAAU’s knotty problems. “I’m not exposing our size in numbers,” he evaded the query of one reporter. “You know, the strongest part of a tree is the root, and if you expose the root, the tree dies. Why, we have many ‘invisible’ members, of all types. Unlike other leaders, I’ve practiced the flexibility to put myself into contact with every kind of Negro in the country.”

  Even at mealtimes, at his favorite Twenty Two Club, or elsewhere in Harlem, he could scarcely eat for the people who came up asking for appointments to discuss with him topics ranging from personal problems to his opinions on international issues. It seemed not in him to say “No” to such requests. And aides of his, volunteering their time, as often as not had to wait lengthy periods to get his ear for matters important to the OAAU, or to himself; often, even then, he most uncharacteristically showed an impatience with their questions or their suggestions, and they chafed visibly. And at least once weekly, generally on Sunday evenings, he would address as many Negroes as word of mouth and mimeographed advertising could draw to hear him in Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom on West 166th Street between Broadway and St. Nicholas Avenue, near New York City’s famous Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.

  Malcolm X for some reason suddenly began to deliver a spate of attacks against Elijah Muhammad, making more bitter accusations of “religious fakery” and “immorality” than he ever had. Very possibly, Malcolm X had grown increasingly incensed by the imminence of the court’s deadline for him to have to move his wife and four little daughters from the comfortable home in which they had lived for years in Elmhurst. And Sister Betty was again pregnant. “A home is really the only thing I’ve ever provided Betty since we’ve been married,” he had told me, discussing the court’s order, “and they want to take that away. Man, I can’t keep on putting her through changes, all she’s put up with—man, I’ve got to love this woman!”

  A rash of death threats were anonymously telephoned to the police, to various newspapers, to the OAAU office, and to the family’s home in Elmhurst. When he went to court again, fighting to keep the house, he was guarded by a phalanx of eight OAAU men, twenty uniformed policemen, and twelve plainclothes detectives. The court’s decision was that the order to vacate would not be altered. When Malcolm X reached home in Long Island, one of his followers, telephoning him there, got, instead, a telephone company operator who said that the OL 1-6320 number was “disconnected.” A carload of his OAAU followers, racing to Long Island, found Malcolm X and his family perfectly safe. Inquiry of the telephone company revealed that a “Mrs. Small” had called and requested that the service for that number be disconnected, “for vacation.” The OAAU followers drove back to Harlem. There was an ensuing confrontation between them and followers of Elijah Muhammad in front of the Black Muslim restaurant at 116th Street and Lenox Avenue. The incident wound up with policemen who rushed to the scene finding two guns in the OAAU car, and the six OAAU men were arrested.

  Malcolm X had a date to speak in Boston, but he was too busy to go, and he sent an OAAU assistant who spoke instead. The car returning him to the Boston Airport was blocked at the East Boston Tunnel by another car. Reportedly, men with knives rushed out of the blockade car, but the Malcolm X forces showed a shotgun, and the attackers dispersed.

  Malcolm X steadily accused the Black Muslims as the source of the various attacks and threats. “There is no group in the United States more able to carry out this threat than the Black Muslims,” he said. “I know, because I taught them myself.” Asked why he had attacked the Black Muslims and Elijah Muhammad when things had seemed to be cooled down, he said, “I would not have revealed any of this if they had left me alone.” He let himself be photographed in his home holding an automatic carbine rifle with a full double clip of ammunition that he said he kept ready for action against any possible assassination efforts. “I have taught my wife to use it, and instructed her to fire on anyone, white, black, or yellow, who tries to force his way inside.”

  I went to New York City in December for Malcolm X’s reading of final additions to the manuscript, to include the latest developments. He was further than I had ever seen him from his old assured self, it seemed to me. He kept saying that the press was making light of his statements about the threats on his life. “They act like I’m jiving!” He brought up again the Saturday Evening Post editorial. “You can’t trust the publishing people, I don’t care what they tell you.” The agent for the book sent to my hotel a contract dealing with foreign publication rights which needed Malcolm X’s and my signature. I signed it as he observed and handed the pen to him. He looked suspiciously at the contract, and said, “I had better show this thing to my lawyer,” and put the contract in his inside coat pocke
t. Driving in Harlem about an hour later, he suddenly stopped the car across the street from the 135th Street Y.M.C.A. Building. Withdrawing the contract, he signed it, and thrust it to me. “I’ll trust you,” he said, and drove on.