I just got a news alert on my phone about this article in the New York Times, which was time consuming because I really don’t know how to retrieve these articles from my phone well if at all. It is also problematic because I can’t afford a New York Times subscription and I quickly run out of my free articles on my computer, and then I run out of my free articles on my phone, but I was able to retrieve and read this.
Missing Malcolm X Writings, Long a Mystery, Are Sold
You likely never have to ask me because I will probably tell you first. The best book I’ve ever read was “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.”
The answer to the question at the top of the page is merely that my excitement to read them or my interest in my ability to do so is quite secondary to me.
My first concern is that they never be sold as a part of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” in any form. I suppose I can live with them added on in the back as an addendum, preferably with like 300 pages of analysis about their place in history separating them from the Ossie Davis eulogy that ended the “authentic” version I read. I would prefer that everyone first encounter it exactly as I did.
I also want everybody to read the “Autobiography of Malcolm X.” My first and best thought about education has always been that everyone should read it as early as I did when I read it at twelve or thirteen. I’ve bought it for many, many people. I’ve forced it on people when I know that is counterproductive to my goals in wanting them to read it.
I don’t have the copy that I personally read because I lent it to a friend, and it fell apart. He had plenty of money to buy me a new copy, but replaced it with a used copy filled with underlines and highlighting. I didn’t care about it then and it’s still the copy I own. I have only read “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” once, but its message and all of it are indelibly written into my brain like the software that comes pre-installed with a new computer.
I want everybody to read it in any fashion. I don’t care if they put Spike Lee’s name and a quote by him on the cover. I don’t care what relatives accounts are added to it, although I would prefer that they too are put after Ossie Davis’ eulogy.
One thing however that I will never sway from is that I will become extremely violent about them ever being attempted to be sold mixed into chronological order like Francis Ford Coppola did with “The Godfather” and the “Godfather Part II” when he created “The Godfather Saga.” When it comes to all that footage Coppola or anyone else is fine putting it out in any format, in random order, backwards, upside down, out of focus, with CGI Jedis running around in random places. I don’t care at all.
I will never be swayed from that opinion. It will never change. If you try to change my opinion on that you will see me angrier than I’ve ever been seen, and I’ve rarely shown anger in my life. You will perhaps see me closer to contemplating violence than I ever have, and the only time I have ever done anything remotely violent was when I was forced to fight another kid at the age of eight, and even then I wasn’t very aggressive. I just wanted it to be over.
You don’t have to call me a hypocrite. I will readily admit it, because the second most dominant message I took from that book was the heroism of listening and adjusting what you most do not want to adjust or change about your belief system, if you honestly perceive yourself to have been wrong. The depiction of “Malcolm X” doing it in that book and then going out the next day believing in himself 100% again, and constantly evolving productively each day in that way, is what made me idolize that “depiction” of him. Whether that man ever really existed in real life or not does not matter to me nearly as much as that exact depiction of him that I first read there. I feel the same way about an incredibly idealized version of John Lennon that may or may not have existed.
The number one message of that book to me was indeed read another book. Read every book.
But to me the content from what in my version began officially on Page 1 and ended on page 460 with the following paragraph from Ossie Davis’ eulogy must never be touched in any way.
“But in personal judgment, there is no appeal from instinct. I knew the man personally, and however much I disagreed with him, I never doubted that Malcolm X, even when he was wrong, was always that rarest thing in the world among us Negroes: a true man. And if to protect my relations with the many good white folk who make it possible for me to earn a fairly good living in the entertainment industry, I was too chicken, too cautious, to admit that fact when he was alive, I thought at least that now when all the white folks are safe from him at last, I could be honest with myself enough to lift my hat for one final salute to that brave, black, ironic gallantry, which was his style and hallmark, that shocking zing of fire-and-be-damned-to-you, so absolutely absent in every other Negro man I know, which brought him, too soon, to his death.”
Keep that intact and surround it with whatever you like, but DO NOT MESS WITH those 460 pages.
I don’t want them edited for misspellings or grammar. I do not want them edited for clear factual errors. I do not want them edited due to a discovery of a 100% real signed document from within the last hour of either Alex Haley’s or Malcolm X’s life. I do not want anything altered from those pages that were first released on October 29th, 1965 changed in any way.
If you want to release an annotated version, we can discuss it peacefully. But every single character must remain whole in that those pages or we will indeed throw down.
I will not be moved or swayed on that and it is unlike the “Malcolm” depicted in it my final thought on the subject.
It will take me many words to describe this apparent hypocrisy. You can choose to read them or not. Just know that this and only this is the one belief I hold in my life that I will never change under any circumstance!
Everything I’ve seriously learned honestly, almost always on my own because of interest and passion, started with Muhammad Ali’s Autobiography, “The Greatest.”
That book came out in 1975, and I probably read it in 1977 or so, I know that because I remember reading it in the bedroom I did not have until that year.
Before that I had read on my own a lot, but mostly fiction (Hardy Boys Mysteries, sports novels or short stories, a lot of Archie comic books). I loved reading, but hated reading anything that was assigned in school. I did have insomnia so a lot of times I would grab a volume of the encyclopedia we owned and read it in the hall (my parents kept the hall light on for us) until I fell asleep.
All the non-fiction books assigned at school were essentially patriotic biographies or patriotic history books. I would read them as fast as I could so I could read something else, usually something about sports.
All those sports books led me nowhere other than sports. “The Greatest” led me specifically to one other book and then to everything else. “The Greatest” was hilarious and meaningful and fun as was its “author.”
It had tons of amusing stories and legends in it. It had a rambling, funny, depiction of two undefeated heavyweight champions taking a long and very amusing car ride together, both knowing that they were not legally allowed at that time to decide in the ring who was the real “Champ.” It had a truly inspirational story of a young Cassius Clay returning to his home country wearing his Olympic gold medal, that he had won for the United States, proudly (indeed beamingly proudly) everywhere he could. Upon learning that his feat that he thought he had achieved for his country did not change the fact that because of the color of his skin he could still not frequent certain establishments or even drink from certain water fountains, he became enraged and threw that medal, which had been everything for which he had worked for years off a bridge and into a river never to be found again.
Eventually, I learned that Muhammad Ali had very little to do with the actual writing of that book. I also learned that he never threw his medal off a bridge, but that he lost it. When I gradually learned that, it was a good lesson as well.
Unlike all the other sports books I had read though, “The Greatest” made me want to read about this mysterious guy named Malcolm X.
The next book I did read was in fact the “Autobiography of Malcolm X.” From the title on the book I knew that it was merely told to Alex Haley and not written by Malcolm X. In fact, the last thing in it is Alex Haley, describing himself the harrowing last days of Malcolm X, who at that time was going by the name of el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. That last section, which also included Ossie Davis’ eulogy for the man, was a gut punch to me. Just flat out tore my world apart forever.
It did not start that way though. The book started out talking about Jazz and swing dancing, it talked about hustling, it talked about being friends with Billie Holiday and washing dishes with Redd Foxx, when his last name was Sanford. Sanford was called “Chicago Red” and Little (Malcolm) was called “Detroit Red” due to where they grew up and the color of their hair. There is little doubt that “Chicago Red” was hilarious while he was washing dishes. There is no doubt that when Malcolm related that to Haley both of them knew who Redd Foxx had become, and what that new name represented.
The other was “Chicago Red.” We became good buddies in a speakeasy where later on I was a waiter; Chicago Red was the funniest dishwasher on this earth. Now he’s making his living being funny as a nationally known stage and nightclub comedian. I don’t see any reason why old Chicago Red would mind me telling that he is Redd Foxx.”
One of the earliest stories in the book was an act to me that seemed extremely scary and a bit insane, it was the description of how Malcolm first had his hair “conked” or straightened so he could adopt certain white hairstyles. The procedure I believe involved potatoes and chemicals, and excruciating, burning pain!
So by the third chapter I was interested in Jazz, swing dancing, comedy, as well as racism (and its impact) and I would go on to later pursue knowledge on all of those subjects.
Swing dancing was my biggest failure and perhaps only failure in acquiring knowledge.
That book came out in 1998. There was a big swing revival going on both in San Francisco where I lived and Los Angeles where I would soon move.
From 1990- 1999, I lived in San Francisco and still could not sleep, which was a hassle because my job was a as an option floor trader on the San Francisco Stock Exchange , which rather absurdly and inconveniently for an insomniac, night person like myself took place from 5:30 A.M until 1:10 P.M.
In 1996, the movie “Swingers,” starring Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau came out.
Favreau plays a brokenhearted wannabe comedian (who somehow never said anything funny even when he was stealing great jokes by Steven Wright) who can’t get over his past love to the point of stalkerish lunacy, until he is saved one night by his ability to swing dance.
Before I saw saw that movie, at that exact same time, although I said a lot of funny things, I was that exact same guy. I was always up all night and often wound up at a club called “Hi-Ball” at 473 Broadway, which was about half way between my apartment and my office.
I already knew and loved all the music even though technically I knew it wasn’t really swing. It was more Louis Jordan rhythm and blues, which I preferred. They had great bands playing it every night and great dancers to watch, who dressed up like peacocks. I didn’t dress up, I didn’t drink, but I watched and enjoyed both the bands and the dancers. There were many beautiful girls and being able to dance seemed an incredibly effective way to meet them.
Even without that the dancing had seemed cool to me ever since the very beginning of Malcolm’s story, and I wanted to learn how to do it for both reasons.
The Hi-Ball offered free lessons; other clubs offered free lessons; I even paid for lessons both private and group.
Sadly, never really an athlete, I had no rhythm much less “swing.” Even without that handicap, I soon learned the sad lesson of what I will call the Brad Laidman: Laws of Swing Dancing.
The Brad Laidman: Laws of Swing Dancing are these:
One: It takes a lot of practicing to become a good swing dancer. For men this usually needs to happen when you are young.
Two: Men will dance with any pretty woman whether she can dance or not, because they have ulterior reasons to do so.
Three: Women who can swing dance well will predominantly only dance with men who can also dance well. They are usually there to dance and get better at dancing.
Four: Men who can’t swing dance well are usually not going to ever dance in a club until they somehow learn to do so through some other route.
So hilariously, I mostly just watched and admired the dancers, and when the band and or dancers took a break, I’d smoke outside and talk to the bouncer/doorman about movies he liked foreign films I had never seen.
At some point, I would go to my office and worry obsessively about whether it looked like I would lose large sums of money on the open at 6:30 A.M. I would watch futures that rarely moved for the rest of the night, and if they moved it didn’t really matter. Usually, but sadly not always, I did not lose a fortune at 6:30 A.M and often was home asleep by 8:00 A.M. This went on for at least four years, at which point I left my job and sought out different music in Los Angeles for a couple of years.
Once, a very pretty woman actually asked me to dance, and sadly I had to admit that I was so bad at it that even attempting to try no matter how much I would have made it a bad option for her.
That’s a big veer off, but nevertheless “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” took me everywhere that turned out to be good and educational in my life, regardless of its political or social ramifications, which I also read endlessly about.
That isn’t the reason that it’s the best book I’ve ever read. It is because the Malcolm you read about, somehow on every single page is a slightly different Malcolm. If you start on any random page and then skip 30 pages forward, it’s a radically different Malcolm, but it happens by the very gradual changes on each page. The book as it was released is the very definition of positive evolution. No matter what else in that book is true or not. No matter what else was planned to be there by Malcolm or Haley that happens and it is the only autobiography or non-fiction book where I have ever seen that happen.
At its core, the book reveals an extremely intelligent man, who takes on different personas and characters due to his different environments and survival instincts, constantly in search of his true self.
You don’t even need to read the book to see this. You can glean it from the chapter titles alone:
Two: MASCOT
Three: “HOMEBOY”
Five: HARLEMITE
Six: DETROIT RED
Seven: HUSTLER
Ten: SATAN
Thirteen: MINISTER MALCOLM X
Fourteen: ICARUS
Eighteen: EL-HAJJ MALIK EL-SHABAZZ
This was a man who when he believed something or even pretended to be something did so full out. What he believed that day he believed 100%, but if you disagreed with him he might listen and have slightly different beliefs that he would in turn be 100% confident in representing. This seemingly happened every day of this man’s life. There is at no point an attempt by Haley to make the book consistent from one page to the next. The source material comes from Malcolm beginning with the first article Haley wrote about him in Readers Digest in 1959, the Playboy interview Haley did with him in 1962, and the sessions Haley had with Malcolm specifically meant for the book from 1963 until some point in 1965 where Malcolm knew in his mind that he would not live to see it published.
Whatever Malcolm told to Haley that day is for the most part the Malcolm telling the story in the book when it was eventually put into chronological order. How much of it was set in stone when Haley and Malcolm last worked on it together is extremely debatable,and has been endlessly debated. The difference between the Malcolm who was born May 19th, 1925 and the Malcolm at any other day in his life is vast, but the different turbulent Malcolms Haley dealt with from the beginning of those sessions to the end of them was in hyper-drive.
At some point during the work between the two Malcolm definitely realized that this would be his one and only chance to form a defining legacy for himself.
I think that there are many things that are very consistently true about the “Malcolm” presented here.
One: He was always fiercely proud of the family he came from and his father who was on the most radically proud spectrum of those of his skin color at the time.
Two: He was always deeply angry about how that family was torn apart largely as he saw it do to the color of his skin.
Three: He deeply regretted all of the time he spent “conned” into wanting to look and have the characteristics of whites.
Four: He spent a lot of time searching and wandering lost for his self identity.
Five: He would despite his eventual hatred of Elijah Muhammad’s actions, deeds, and possible true intentions, be forever and fiercely grateful to the man who set him on a path to finding out who he really was.
Six: Once he became aware of the true crime he perceived to have been committed against his people (no matter what the details or circumstances) he would never describe it as anything other than an epic, disgusting crime.
Seven: At some point in his life he decided that the absolute truth as he saw it on any day would be what he would say, even before and especially after he was freed from the constraints set on him by Elijah Muhammad.
I think that at all points of his work on the book he realized that 99.99% of memoirs, autobiographies, or as told to accounts, whatever you want to call them are crafted by their subjects to build a mythical telling of their lives. He wanted to create his myth as a message mostly to those he saw for most of his life to be “his people” and then past that to all people.
The messages I got from him consistently were.
One: Everyone is constantly evolving try to evolve for the better.
Two: The key to understanding yourself and evolving is to read and learn everything you can and try to put in into the right context. He knew that not only facts but words were pliable and deceptive. He wanted to know everything he could about all the things that were considered to be facts and all of the words, whose definitions he memorized in prison, and how they were and could be used. But again the message I got most from that book was self education guided by your conscience and morality. He may have been especially moved and influenced by particular books, but that did not stop him from continuing to read every book even if it were written with bad intentions and especially if it completely contradicted the books he did love the most.
Three: No matter how false the first book you start with is, as long as it leads you to another book and hopefully a better book, that first book was vital. This especially related to whatever version of the Koran that he started with and the one he eventually ended up with.
Four: Smart people learn mostly from mistakes, really smart people don’t make the same mistakes more than once and use their mistakes to show that.
I believe that Malcolm says that he regrets that so much of his life was derailed by race. To me the book, which is almost all about race isn’t about race at all. It is about education and evolution.
You could argue that I see it that was perhaps because I am white, but I will never stop arguing that until like Malcolm I am proven to be wrong. At which point, I’ll totally admit that I was wrong, until with the best intentions I again see things from a better perspective.
To me had he lived another year the book might have ended with a different Malcolm, but I think it was always his intent that the final Malcolm be the only Malcolm he wanted mythologized.
While I think this is clear, and I choose the final Malcolm, Haley’s involvement has been an excuse for many to choose the Malcolm they like the best, since in ways we can never fully comprehend the last words of the book aside from Davis’ stirring eulogy, which was public record were Haley’s and its final completed form also was Haley’s. At all points the reader needs to not only attempt to grasp who Malcolm was as he was desperately grasping for that himself, but as well to understand who Haley was at those times, which is especially difficult because who Haley was during that period was influenced by Malcolm. To some extent Haley was evolving too.
Aside from understanding how important it is to seek the truth, everything else in that book is for better or worse up for debate.
In Haley’s epilogue he writes about the initial contract he made with Malcolm and the Nation of Islam upon the agreeing to do the book, and you need to know that at that time (and I don’t know to how many members of the organization this applied) Malcolm X owned little and earned little. It all belonged to the Nation of Islam, and perhaps in the end Elijah Muhammad. This included the house he lived in. After Malcolm broke with the nation he fought to keep that house, the Nation of Islam fought to take it away from him and won. Despite winning they did likely (with whatever influence on or help by the FBI you want to give credence to) firebomb that house, burning it to the ground.
There were people in that organization who had a lot of money, most of it was probably earned for them by the power of Malcolm’s words, but almost none of it wound up with Malcolm. At that period and in most of the book Malcolm refuses to say that anything he said under the aegis of the Nation of Islam were even his words. He constantly says at almost all times that his words are merely the words of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. The only thing he may have admitted at that time publicly would be perhaps that his oratory abilities were better than Muhammad’s at that time (which was obvious and Malcolm probably would not have admitted that either).
In fact perhaps the only public quotes from Malcolm X that he was made to take full responsibility for were those he said after the assassination of John F Kennedy.
“President Kennedy never foresaw that the chickens would come home to roost so soon. Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they’ve always made me glad.”
This clearly drove Haley crazy, but though the voice in Haley’s book is represented as Malcolm’s so many parts of it are preceded with the words “The honorable Elijah Muhammad tells us.”
Haley writes in his epilogue that he drafted a side contract with Malcolm at that time.
Another letter was dictated, this one an agreement between him and me: “Nothing can be in this book’s manuscript that I didn’t say, and nothing can be left out that I want in it.”
Haley in turn writes that he followed with another deal with Malcolm.
In turn, I asked Malcolm X to sign for me a personal pledge that however busy he was, he would give me a priority quota of his time for the planned 100,000-word “as told to” book which would detail his entire life. And months later, in a time of strain between us, I asked for-and he gave-his permission that at the end of the book I could write comments of my own about him which would not be subject to his review.
I’ve read tons of books on both Malcolm and Haley, the last being “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” by Manning Marable, which won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for History.
Here is Marable’s account of what happened before and after his comments on Kennedy and how they became almost the only things said during that era that were depicted as solely from him.
“John F. Kennedy was assassinated in the early afternoon of Friday, November 22, 1963. When Elijah Muhammad was told, he was taken aback. He had frequently warned Malcolm of criticizing Kennedy, knowing of the president’s considerable popularity with black Americans, and now he took steps to ensure that the NOI would not be caught in the storm of anger and disbelief that was already roiling the nation. He released a short statement expressing shock “over the loss of our president,” and then arranged for his next column in Muhammad Speaks to be moved to the front page alongside a photo of Kennedy. He informed all NOI ministers to say nothing in public, going so far as to have one of his sons call Malcolm so he could dictate over the phone what he wanted his national minister to say if questioned about the assassination. With the stakes high and Malcolm already bridling at Chicago’s attempts to control him, Muhammad would leave nothing to chance.”
Then:
“Now he was fired up, finally unmuzzled, and the criticism began to flow freely. Kennedy had been “twiddling his thumbs” when South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were murdered recently. The Dallas assassination, Malcolm said, was an instance of “the chickens coming home to roost.” America had fomented violence, so it was not a surprise that the president had become a victim.
Had Malcolm stopped there, he might have escaped unscathed, or at least invited less trouble than would soon unfold for him. These comments, while certainly offensive, could at least be understood in the context of previous speeches and the generally understood opinions of the Nation of Islam. But then he added, with a rhetorical flourish, “Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they’ve always made me glad.” There was further laughter and applause by audience members, but this extra sentence condemned him as gleeful and celebratory over the president’s death. When the FBI later noted the speech in a report, it characterized the “chickens” remarks as suggesting that the assassination brought Malcolm pleasure, which, if not quite the thrust of his much quoted phrase, was certainly the sentiment driven home by the “old farm boy” quip that followed.”
And finally:
“When he arrived, as customary the two men embraced, but Malcolm immediately sensed that something was wrong. “That was a very bad statement,” Muhammad told him. “The president of the country is our president, too.” This was an odd formulation, given that NOI members had been discouraged from voting in elections. Muhammad then told Malcolm that he was suspended for the next ninety days, during which time he would be removed from his post as minister of Mosque No. 7. Though he would not be allowed to preach or even enter the mosque, he was expected to continue performing the administrative tasks of the minister—approving invoices, answering correspondence, and maintaining records. Marilyn E.X., his secretary, would continue working for him.”
I still am not sure if those “contracts” between Haley and Malcom exist. If they do and are in a University Library somewhere and are 100% verified as true, I don’t think that anyone can prove that further different contracts may have also once existed.
What is true was that whether or not Malcolm died before the book was issued, the final words were Haley’s.
What is also true is that given the acclaim of Marable’s book that everything we know to be true about both Haley and Malcolm continues to evolve, and nearly everyone involved that cares has a stake in the game be it The Nation of Islam, Malcolm’s surviving family, the FBI, white supremacists, past and current civil rights leaders (John Lewis is both), violent separatists, peaceful integrationists, former members of the Weather Underground, Fox News, CNN, The New York Times, and even relative bystanders like myself. Everyone cares deeply.
Here are Malcolm’s final words as issued by Haley in their book.
You watch. I will be labeled as, at best, an “irresponsible” black man. I have always felt about this accusation that the black “leader” whom white men consider to be “responsible” is invariably the black “leader” who never gets any results. You only get action as a black man if you are regarded by the white man as “irresponsible.” In fact, this much I had learned when I was just a little boy. And since I have been some kind of a “leader” of black people here in the racist society of America, I have been more reassured each time the white man resisted me, or attacked me harder—because each time made me more certain that I was on the right track in the American black man’s best interests. The racist white man’s opposition automatically made me know that I did offer the black man something worthwhile.
Yes, I have cherished my “demagogue” role. I know that societies often have killed the people who have helped to change those societies. And if I can die having brought any light, having exposed any meaningful truth that will help to destroy the racist cancer that is malignant in the body of America—then, all of the credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine.
Those final words were extremely well planned out and so were Haley’s final words.
After signing the contract for this book, Malcolm X looked at me hard. “A writer is what I want, not an interpreter.” I tried to be a dispassionate chronicler. But he was the most electric personality I have ever met, and I still can’t quite conceive him dead. It still feels to me as if he has just gone into some next chapter, to be written by historians.
New York, 1965
Pretty perfect and accurate as to what would follow.
Haley without a doubt was a great writer and his epilogue is harrowing for two reasons.
One: It showed how much Malcolm’s ordeal had left him bravely but devastatingly close to dead before any shots were fired.
Two: As this is going on Haley portrays Malcolm as constantly obsessed with how much he can truly trust Haley with his legacy, knowing that so much of it does depend and belong to Haley!
Here are some portions from that epilogue:
For perhaps a month I was afraid we weren’t going to get any book. Malcolm X was still stiffly addressing me as “Sir!” and my notebook contained almost nothing but Black Muslim philosophy, praise of Mr. Muhammad, and the “evils” of “the white devil.” He would bristle when I tried to urge him that the proposed book was _his_ life. I was thinking that I might have to advise the publisher that I simply couldn’t seem to get through to my subject when the first note of hope occurred. I had noticed that while Malcolm X was talking, he often simultaneously scribbled with his red-ink ball-point pen on any handy paper. Sometimes it was the margin of a newspaper he brought in, sometimes it was on index cards that he carried in the back of a small, red-backed appointment book. I began leaving two white paper napkins by him every time I served him more coffee, and the ruse worked when he sometimes scribbled on the napkins, which I retrieved when he left.
Here is some of what came from those notes and those EVOLVING discussions according to Haley:
“Only persons really changed history those who changed men’s thinking about themselves. Hitler as well as Jesus, Stalin as well as Buddha . . . Hon. Elijah Muhammad. . . .”
It was through a clue from one of the scribblings that finally I cast a bait that Malcolm X took.
“Woman who cries all the time is only because she knows she can get away with it,” he had scribbled. I somehow raised the subject of women. Suddenly, between sips of coffee and further scribbling and doodling, he vented his criticisms and skepticisms of women. “You never can fully trust any woman,” he said. “I’ve got the only one I ever met whom I would trust seventy-five percent. I’ve told her that,” he said. “I’ve told her like I tell you I’ve seen too many men destroyed by their wives, or their women.
“I don’t completely trust anyone,” he went on, “not even myself. I have seen too many men destroy themselves. Other people I trust from not at all to highly, like The Honorable Elijah Muhammad.” Malcolm X looked squarely at me. “You I trust about twenty-five per cent.”
“Sit down, talk with people with brains I respect, all of us want same thing, do some
brainstorming.”
And then almost as suddenly, Malcolm X caught himself and sat back down, and for the rest of that session he was decidedly grumpy. Later on in the Harlem narrative, he grew somber again.
“The only thing I considered wrong was what I got caught doing wrong. I had a jungle mind, I was living in a jungle, and everything I did was done by instinct to survive.” But he stressed that he had no regrets about his crimes, “because it was all a result of what happens to thousands upon thousands of black men in the white man’s Christian world.”
“Yet another time, Malcolm X reflected, “Once a man has been to prison, he never looks at himself or at other people the same again. The ‘squares’ out here whose boat has been in smooth waters all the time turn up their noses at an ex-con. But an ex-con can keep his head up when the ‘squares’ sink.
“Learn wisdom from the pupil of the eye that looks upon all things and yet to self is blind.”
Persian poet.”
At intervals, Malcolm X would make a great point of stressing to me, “Now, I don’t want anything in this book to make it sound that I think I’m somebody important.” I would assure him that I would try not to, and that in any event he would be checking the manuscript page by page, and ultimately the galley proofs. At other times, he would end an attack upon the white man and, watching me take the notes, exclaim. “That devil’s not going to print that, I don’t care what he says!”
I would point out that the publishers had made a binding contract and had paid a sizable sum in advance. Malcolm X would say, “You trust them, and I don’t. You studied what he wanted you to learn about him in schools, I studied him in the streets and in prison, where you see the truth.”
Any interesting book which Malcolm X had read could get him going about his love of books. “People don’t realize how a man’s whole life can be changed by one book.”
…when Malcolm X returned this time, he reported triumphantly, “I have something to tell you that will surprise you. Ever since we discussed my mother, I’ve been thinking about her. I realized that I had blocked her out of my mind-it was just unpleasant to think about her having been twenty-some years in that mental hospital.” He said, “I don’t want to take the credit. It was really my sister Yvonne who thought it might be possible to get her out. Yvonne got my brothers Wilfred, Wesley and Philbert together, and I went out there, too. It was Philbert who really handled it.
“It made me face something about myself,” Malcolm X said. “My mind had closed about our mother. I simply didn’t feel the problem could be solved, so I had shut it out. I had built up subconscious defenses. The white man does this. He shuts out of his mind, and he builds up subconscious defenses against anything he doesn’t want to face up to. I’ve just become aware how closed my mind was now that I’ve opened it up again.
“That’s one of the characteristics I don’t like about myself. If I meet a problem I feel I can’t solve, I shut it out. I make believe that it doesn’t exist. But it exists.”
“Anytime the name of the present Federal Judge Thurgood Marshall was raised, Malcolm X still practically spat fire in memory of what the judge had said years before when he was the N.A.A.C.P. chief attorney: ‘The Muslims are run by a bunch of thugs organized from prisons and jails and financed, I am sure, by some Arab group.’ The only time that I have ever heard Malcolm X use what might be construed as a curse word, it was a ‘hell’ used in response to a statement
that Dr. Martin Luther King made that Malcolm X’s talk brought ‘misery upon Negroes.’
Malcolm X exploded to me, ‘How in the hell can my talk do this? It’s always a Negro responsible, not what the white man does!’ The ‘extremist’ or ‘demagogue’ accusation invariably would burn Malcolm X. ‘Yes, I’m an extremist. The black race here in North America is in extremely bad condition. You show me a black man who isn’t an extremist and I’ll show you one who needs psychiatric attention!’
“Once when he said, ‘Aristotle shocked people. Charles Darwin outraged people. Aldous Huxley scandalized millions!’ Malcolm X immediately followed the statement with ‘Don’t print that, people would think I’m trying to link myself with them.’ Another time, when something provoked him to exclaim, ‘These Uncle Toms make me think about how the Prophet Jesus was criticized in his own country!”
Malcolm X promptly got up and silently took my notebook, tore out that page and
crumpled it and put it into his pocket, and he was considerably subdued during the remainder of that session.”
Now just that last part alone shows you how much you must “trust” Haley. Either Haley had an eidetic memory, he immediately slipped into another room and wrote that quote back down as best as he could remember it, or indeed that was the best he could remember it when he did write it down. The argument that is is 100% accurate is nearly impossible to make.
“Malcolm speaking in Harlem stared down at one of the white reporters present, the only whites admitted to the meeting, and went on, ‘Now, there’s a reporter who hasn’t taken a note in half an hour, but as soon as I start talking about the Jews, he’s busy taking notes to prove that I’m anti- Semitic.’
“Behind the reporter, a male voice spoke up, ‘Kill the bastard, kill them all.’ The young man, in his unease, smiled nervously and Malcolm jeered, ‘Look at him laugh. He’s really not laughing, he’s just laughing with his teeth.’ An ugly tension curled the edges of the atmosphere. Then Malcolm went on: ‘The white man doesn’t know how to laugh. He just shows his teeth. But we know how to laugh. We laugh deep down, from the bottom up.’ The audience laughed, deep down, from the bottom up and, as suddenly as Malcolm had stirred it, so, skillfully and swiftly, he deflected it. It had been at once a masterful and shabby performance.”
“I later heard somewhere, or read, that Malcolm X telephoned an apology to the reporter. But this was the kind of evidence which caused many close observers of the Malcolm X phenomenon to declare in absolute seriousness that he was the only Negro in America who could either start a race riot-or stop one.
“When I once quoted this to him,tacitly inviting his comment, he told me tartly, ‘I don’t know if I could start one. I don’t know if I’d want to stop one.’ It was the kind of statement he relished making.”
Haley had a nearly impossible job. In the epilogue, he shows Malcolm both heroically and despicably, and in the actual words in the book you see the exact same Malcolm!
There is evidence of hatred and admiration towards Jews, hatred and admiration towards women, nothing but hatred for nearly every white American, finally some admiration for people with white skin not “poisoned” by America, any Malcolm you want to laud to or discredit is in that book!
“There was something about this man when he was in a room with people. He commanded the room, whoever else was present. Even out of doors; once I remember in Harlem he sat on a speaker’s stand between Congressman Adam Clayton Powell and the former Manhattan Borough President Hulan Jack, and when the street rally was over the crowd focus was chiefly on Malcolm X. I remember another time that we had gone by railway from New York City to Philadelphia where he appeared in the Philadelphia Convention Hall on the radio station WCAU program of Ed Harvey. ‘You are the man who has said ‘All Negroes are angry and I am the angriest of all’; is that correct?’ asked Harvey, on the air, introducing Malcolm X, and as Malcolm X said crisply, ‘That quote is correct!’ the gathering crowd of bystanders stared at him, riveted.”
This was an incredibly intelligent man, with almost no parallel when it came to face to face charisma, at all times the willingness and courage to say anything he wanted to no matter what the consequences.
Again who he was and what he believed changed every single day gradually, but on no single day would he ever say he was wrong about anything unless it had thus occurred to him that he was wrong, and mostly that happened upon further reflection, it mostly happened only privately, and potentially it may have only happened according to Haley.
Clearly, the most important part of the book is Malcolm’s visit to Mecca and what followed, and it is preserved on film that his views on many things changed dramatically. Those filmed interviews also showed many of his beliefs stayed the same.
So the hope and dream of that book is that the “final” Malcolm, el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, was a man who had taken an incredible journey in his live and had finally evolved in such a radical and revolutionary way in his 39 or so years on the planet, most of them tainted by “America’s original sin” had emerged a very wise person, genuinely decent person, whose journey showed hope for the survival and the possible eventual betterment of every person in the world.
And in his final year, he indeed acted not like an American, but as a citizen of the world, and though he still condemned America, he did so mostly speaking to the rest of the world hoping that with them he could change America too. He did not do that. Perhaps “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” helped do that though.
“When Malcolm X made long trips, such as to San Francisco or Los Angeles, I did not go along, but frequently, usually very late at night, he would telephone me, and ask how the book was coming along, and he might set up the time for our next interview upon his return. One call that I never will forget came at close to four A.M., waking me; he must have just gotten up in Los Angeles. His voice said, “Alex Haley?” I said, sleepily, “Yes? Oh, hey, Malcolm!” His voice said, “I trust you seventy per cent”-and then he hung up. I lay a short time thinking about him and I went back to sleep feeling warmed by that call, as I still am warmed to remember it. Neither of us ever mentioned it.”
“Malcolm X’s growing respect for individual whites seemed to be reserved for those who ignored on a personal basis the things he said about whites and who jousted with him as a man. He, moreover, was convinced that he could tell a lot about any person by listening. “There’s an art to listening well,” he told me. “I listen closely to the sound of a man’s voice when he’s speaking. I can hear sincerity.” The newspaper person whom he ultimately came to admire probably more than any other was the New York Times’ M. S. Handler. (I was very happy when I learned that Handler had agreed to write this book’s Introduction; I know that Malcolm X would have liked that.) The first time I ever heard Malcolm X speak of Handler, whom he had recently met, he began, “I was talking with this devil-” and abruptly he cut himself off in obvious embarrassment. “It’s a reporter named Handler, from the Times” he resumed. Malcolm X’s respect for the man steadily increased, and Handler, for his part, was an influence upon the inner Malcolm X. “He’s the most genuinely unprejudiced white man I ever met,” Malcolm X said to me, speaking of Handler months later. “I have asked him things and tested him. I have listened to him talk, closely.”
“I saw Malcolm X too many times exhilarated in after-lecture give-and-take with predominantly white student bodies at colleges and universities to ever believe that he nurtured at his core any blanket white-hatred. ‘The young whites, and blacks, too, are the only hope that America has, he said to me once. ‘The rest of us have always been living in a lie.’ “
“Malcolm X and I reached the point, ultimately, where we shared a mutual camaraderie that, although it was never verbally expressed, was a warm one. He was for me unquestionably one of the most engaging personalities I had ever met, and for his part, I gathered, I was someone he had learned he could express himself to, with candor, without the likelihood of hearing it repeated, and like any person who lived amid tension, he enjoyed being around someone, another man, with whom he could psychically relax. When I made trips now, he always asked me to telephone him when I would be returning to New York, and generally, if he could squeeze it into his schedule, he met me at the airport. I would see him coming along with his long, gangling strides, and wearing the wide, toothy, good-natured grin, and as he drove me into New York City he would bring me up to date on things of interest that had happened since I left. I remember one incident within the airport that showed me how Malcolm X never lost his racial perspective. Waiting for my baggage, we witnessed a touching family reunion scene as part of which several cherubic little children romped and played, exclaiming in another language. ‘By tomorrow night, they’ll know how to say their first English word ‘nigger,’ observed Malcolm X.”
“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 pocket. 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.”
So that is essentially the final thing Haley has to say about Malcolm. That he trusted him with his journey, story,message and legacy.
Here is why I give Haley’s “version” of Malcolm some credence.
Malcolm was a self professed “hustler” and “criminal.”
He probably exaggerated the extent of how much of one he was for dramatic effect, but it is without doubt true.
In my experience, all observed with the reference gained from reading Haley’s book, “hustlers” and “criminals” have three needs.
One: Money. Malcolm made close to none once he went to prison and emerged as a member of the Nation of Islam.
Two: Power. He had a lot as a member of the Nation of Islam, but did not use it very much in the real world. The dictates of Elijah Muhammad were that he would only serve him and that would only engage with the outside world as more than a commentator when a member of that group was in peril. This is a depiction of his most famous and if not only, rare, engagements on the front lines.
That is a movie and we’ll discuss its veracity later.
As to Malcolm’s power, he seemed like he had a lot at that time. Aside from that he wasn’t fighting in the streets with or against Martin Luther King, his people, or white people. How much he wanted to do that is a matter of conjecture.
What isn’t is that all the power of the Nation of Islam at the time was held by Elijah Muhammad. His goal was to amass power for him and his institution, to be used for him and it outside of those not within it. Malcolm’s job was to build that power for Muhammad and the Nation. Malcolm always told you that was his job. Sometimes Malcolm’s job included secret negotiations with the Ku Klux Klan. Malcolm built that power for the Nation vigorously and fearlessly. By doing it he became the public face of the Nation of Islam, which meant he took most of their bullets, and also that in doing so he aroused jealousy from many with more power with the Nation including its leader. Malcolm did his job, was intelligent enough to know whose power was growing as a result of it, and likely knew early and then definitely finally that doing that job did nothing, but decrease his power within that organization.
Malcolm nourished Cassius Clay, was the only one in the organization that thought him of value, when Malcolm’s belief in that value came true (in what was considered the biggest upset in the history of boxing at the time), Cassius Clay first became Cassius X, then later Muhammad Ali. Suddenly, Ali’s value led to him gaining power. Malcolm’s power within the nation was dwindling.
Ali’s charisma was the only presence within that organization that rivaled Malcolm’s.
When Malcolm broke with Elijah Muhammad, whether you believe he did so out of moral conscience, a need for his own power or both, it led to a tough decision for Ali. Ali, who likely was not a big fan of choosing between friends had to nevertheless make a choice.
You can read many accounts of what happened between the two after that. I’ve read pretty much all of them. My interpretation based on what I have read is that it weighed on Ali a lot. It probably weighed on him even more after Malcolm’s death, and eventually Ali chose the “real Islam” that Malcolm did. I’m not really qualified to say what is fact.
Here is Haley’s and probably Malcolm’s version from their book.
Malcolm’s travels through Africa and his visit to Mecca are easily the most joyous passages in the “Autobiography.”
Here is one joyous passage:
One of the Egyptian Muslims, particularly, kept watching me out of the corner of his eye. I smiled at him. He got up and came over to me. “Hel-lo-” he said. It sounded like the Gettysburg Address.
I beamed at him, “Hello!” I asked his name. “Name? Name?” He was trying hard, but he didn’t getit. We tried some words on each other. I’d guess his English vocabulary spanned maybe twenty words. Just enough to frustrate me. I was trying to get him to comprehend anything. “Sky.” I’d point. He’d smile. “Sky,” I’d say again, gesturing for him to repeat it after me. He would. “Airplane .. . rug . . . foot. . . sandal . . . eyes. . . .” Like that. Then an amazing thing happened. I was so glad I had some communication with a human being, I was just saying whatever came to mind. I said “Muhammad Ali Clay”
All of the Muslims listening lighted up like a Christmas tree.
“You?
You?”
My friend was pointing at me. I shook my head, “No, no. Muhammad Ali Clay my friend-friend!”
They half understood me. Some of them didn’t understand, and that’s how it began to get around that I was Cassius Clay, world heavyweight champion. I was later to learn that apparently every man, woman and child in the Muslim world had heard how Sonny Liston (who in the Muslim world had the image of a man-eating ogre) had been beaten in Goliath-David fashion by Cassius Clay, who then had told the world that his name was Muhammad Ali and his religion
was Islam and Allah had given him his victory.“The Muslim from America” excited everywhere the most intense curiosity and interest. I was mistaken time and again for Cassius Clay. A local newspaper had printed a photograph of Cassius and me together at the United Nations. Through my chauffeur-guide-interpreter I was asked scores of questions about Cassius. Even children knew of him, and loved him there in the Muslim world. By popular demand, the cinemas throughout Africa and Asia had shown his fight.
At that moment in young Cassius’ career, he had captured the imagination and the support of the entire dark world.”
So at that point according to the “Autobiography,” Malcolm knows who Ali chose. Malcolm sees that Ali’s name has become one of the most powerful names in all of Africa, and that is perhaps the only name in all of Africa that is instantly understood by those who speak any of the multitudes of languages. Ali’s name has transcended languages. Had he wanted that name to be his? Was he jealous? He most certainly believed that without him that name would not exist and have that power. If he feels betrayed or jealous, he has no will to show it. He does feel a need to show his joy that it happened.
Malcolm’s travels in Africa, pretty much have to be considered the purest Malcolm in the book, or at least the Malcolm he wanted to portray. By this time, he knows there will be a book, and he is consciously documenting every aspect of his trip and sending reports back to America about his journey.
Why does he not differentiate between the names Cassius Clay and Muhammad Ali? I have no idea. You’ d think that he more than anyone would insist on making that demarcation. Especially if he did indeed feel that joy that the name Ali meant so much in Africa.
When Ali famously fought Ernie Terrell, Terrell refused to call him Ali, claiming he had always known him as Clay. I’m not sure whether that explanation by Terrell was honest or a psychological tactic against Ali, whose tactics pre-fight were always psychological. What I do know was that it enraged Ali, and led to one of the ugliest nights in his career as he kept pummeling Terrell, but refusing to finish him as he for maybe the only time in his public life cried out with pure venom over and over again, “What’s my name?”
I’ve read almost every book on Ali that exists. I’ve read many about Malcolm, but less because many more exist about Ali than Malcolm.
From what I have gathered, Malcolm who had almost as many names as Ali has books written about him, was probably fiercely proud of his final name el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz.
No one on television ever insisted on calling him Malcolm Little instead of Malcolm X, because the name Malcolm Little never meant anything to them. In most cases they likely had no idea until they asked what name the X replaced. They may not have even known why his last name was replaced by an X.
From what I can gather if you had met Malcolm under any name he was not offended by you calling him any name especially the name he went by when you you two had been in contact with each other.
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