https://www.8freebooks.com The absorbing personal story of the most dynamic leader of the Black Revolution. It is a testament of great emotional power from which every American can learn much. But, above all, this book shows the Malcolm X that very few people knew, the man behind the stereotyped image of the hate-preacher-a sensitive, proud, highly intelligent man whose plan to move into the mainstream of the Black Revolution was cut short by a hail of assassins' bullets, a man who felt certain "he would not live long enough to see this book appear. "In the agony of [his] self-creation [is] the agony of an entire.people in their search for identity. No man has better expressed his people's trapped anguish." -The New York Review of Books https://www.8freebooks.com Books published by The Ballantine Publishing Group are available at quantity discounts on bulk purchases for premium, educational, fund-raising, and special sales use. For details, please call 1-800-733-3000. https://www.8freebooks.com THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OFMALCOLMX With the assistance of Alex Haley Foreword by Attallah Shabazz Introduction by M. S. Handler Epilogue by Alex Haley Afterword by Ossie Davis BALLANTINE BOOKS• NEW YORK https://www.8freebooks.com Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as "unsold or destroyed" and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it. A Ballantine Book Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group Copyright© 1964 by Alex Haley and Malcolm X Copyright© 1965 by Alex Haley and Betty Shabazz Introduction copyright© 1965 by M. S. Handler Foreword copyright © 1999 by Attallah Shabazz All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. "On Malcolm X" by Ossie Davis previously appeared in Group magazine, and is reprinted by permission. www.randomhouse.com/BB/ ISBN: 0-345-35068-5 This edition published by arrangement with Grove Press, Inc. Manufactured in the United States of America First Ballantine Books Edition: June 1973 63 62 61 60 59 Cover illustrations by Charles Lilly https://www.8freebooks.com This book I dedicate to my beloved wife Betty and to our children whose understanding and whose sacrifices made it possible for me to do my work. https://www.8freebooks.com https://www.8freebooks.com CONTENTS ATTALLAH SHABAZZ: M. FOREWORD s. HANDLER: INTRODUCTION ix xxv CHAPTER ONE: NIGHTMARE CHAPTER TWO: MASCOT 24 "HOMEBOY" LAURA HARLEMITE 41 59 73 CHAPTER THREE: CHAPTER FOUR: CHAPTER f1VE: CHAPTER srx: DETROIT RED CHAPTER SEVEN: HUSTLER CHAPTER EIGHT: TRAPPED CHAPTER NINE: CAUGHT CHAPTER TEN: SATAN CHAPTER ELEVEN: SAVED CHAPTER TWELVE: SAVIOR CHAPTER THIRTEEN: MINISTER MALCOLM x I 87 111 129 137 154 172 195 215 CHAPTER f1FTEEN: BLACK MUSLIMS ICARUS 240 271 CHAPTER SIXTEEN: OUT 294 CHAPTER FOURTEEN: MECCA 325 EL-HAJJ MALIK EL-SHABAZZ CHAPTER NINETEEN: 1965 ALEX HALEY: EPILOGUE 349 371 390 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: OSSIE DAVIS: ON MALCOM x https://www.8freebooks.com 464 https://www.8freebooks.com ATTALLAH SHABAZZ FOREWORD Behold, America. Just when our country's cultural evolution appears to have stagnated and we've grown insensitive to justice, the U.S. Postal Service has issued a commemorative stamp to honor one of our country's most outspoken revolutionaries-my father, Malcolm X Shabazz. This national commemoration, three decades after his lifetime, pays tribute to his immeasurable contributions on behalf of one's innate right to self-preservation and human dignity. Although Malcolm X is no longer with us physically, tens of millions have gotten to know him through this timeless volume that you now hold in your hands. The Autobiography ofMalcolm X has served as an everlasting testament to my father's life and legacy. In light of the cultural and political climate of the 1960s, when the book was first published, both my father and my godfather, Alex Haley, would feel great peace in knowing that Time magazine's "Best of the Century" issue named The Autobiography ofMalcolm X one of the top ten works of nonfiction of this century. My father's life story stands alongside such monumental works as The Diary ofAnne Frank and others. A lover of language, my father believed very much in the power of words to influence and transform lives. His own life stands as an affirmation of that power. Our literature and our history are filled with stories of men and women whose will and inner strength nourished their rise from impoverishment to wealth, whether material, spiritual, or educational. My father's life and its stages of personal metamorphosis and enlightenment documented in this text stand as a confirmation of how one can, through witness and transformation, ultimately claim one's own divine path. At this point in my life, and significantly as https://www.8freebooks.com X THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOIM X his daughter, it is quite meaningful for me to contribute my prose to this living record. My godfather, Alex Haley, bequeathed me the opportunity to write this foreword to my father's autobiography. He had set the process in motion almost a year before the offer was formally brought to my attention in the fall of 1992. It was, indeed, a spiritual gift of timing. Eight months earlier, in February 1992, the man who was the author of the internationally acclaimed Roots passed away suddenly in the middle of the night. Alex Haley and I had discussed the possibility of my writing his autobiography to acknowledge our literary circle, our family of writers-my father to him and him to me. Six years have passed since I received this initial request to prepare a new foreword for my father's life story. My godfather's wish was that I commemorate my father's life by writing about some of the significant events that have served as a postscript for his extraordinary life story, but to do this it is essential to begin with the legacy that my father himself was heir to from the beginning. In 1919, my paternal grandparents, Earl and Louisa Little, married and began their large family of eight children. At the same time they both worked steadfastly as crusaders for Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, acting as chapter president and writer/translator for more than a decade. Their children were deeply involved and inspired by their parents' mission to encourage self-reliance and uphold a sense of empowerment for people of the African Diaspora. Given the turbulence, fear, and despair of the depression era, with its economic droughts and racial and social inequities, my grandparents could never have imagined that one of their own children would have his likeness on a United States postal stamp before the century's end. Eighty years later, on January 20, 1999, pride filled Harlem's historic Apollo Theatre as six of Earl and Louisa Little's granddaughters sat encircled by a body of fifteen hundred, as family, friends, esteemed guests, and well-wishers gathered to celebrate a momentous occasion--the unveiling of the United States Postal Service's newest release in its Black Heritage Stamp Series. The issuance of the stamp with the image of El-Hajj Malik ElShabazz-known to the world as Malcolm X and fondly loved by myself and my five sisters as Daddy-will provide a source of eternal pride to his children. While this was indeed a glorious moment, it does not cancel the pain of the loss of both our par- https://www.8freebooks.com FOREWORD xi ents, or even kiss away the ache of their absence. What it certainly does is add to the blessings of our dowry. The stamp also serves as a reminder of the stock from which we were born and confirms significantly that how one lives his or her life today stands as a testament to one's forever after. In his genuine humility and pure dedication to service, my father had no idea of the potency ofhis deeds, of the impact his life would have on others, or of the legacy that was to unfold. As he and my godfather, Alex Haley, worked diligently to complete this classic work-in person, from airport telephones, via ship to shore, or over foreign wire services-he could never have imagined by America's tone in his final days that his words, philosophy, and wisdom would be so appreciated and honored around the world, or that it would still offer inspiration and guidance to so many. In my father's absence, my mother nurtured and protected the significance and value of her husband's endless devotion to human rights. She was thrilled by the opening discussions about her husband's image appearing on a U.S. postal stamp. From her perspective, it was not as inconceivable as others have found it. To my mother, it was his due. As the house lights dimmed in the Apollo Theatre, the flickering images of black-and-white photographs and film clips on the screen chronicled my father's life. Bittersweet, his youthful face and broad smile caressed my heart. As the documentary film moved forward, the voice-over of our dear family friend and loving "uncle" actor Ossie Davis delivered the eulogy from my father's funeral in 1965. This became the backdrop for the montage of nostalgic childhood memories that played in my mind. Life with both parents and my little sisters. Life joyous and uninterrupted. When people ask how my mother managed to keep my father's memory alive, all I can say is-for my mother, he never left. He never left her. He never left us. My father's spiritual presence is what sustained my mother. And we, their children, were the beneficiaries of their timeless love for one another. Born and raised in a family that was culturally varied, I innately gravitated to the rhythms of the world. Mommie was our constant, as many mothers are. Daddy was the jubilant energy in our world. He was not at all like the descriptions I grew up hearing. In addition to being determined, focused, honest, he was also greatly humorous, delightful, and boy-like, while at the same time a strong, firm male presence in a house filled with https://www.8freebooks.com xii IBE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X little women. His women. My sisters, me, and our mother. A collaboration of qualities that enchants me even now. " ... If you knew him you would know why we must honor him," Uncle Ossie's voice continued. "Malcolm was our manhood, our living, black manhood.... and, in honoring him, we honor the best in ourselves ...." A spotlight on the Apollo podium brought me back to the present as the announcer introduced Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, the first of an intimate selection of my father's esteemed comrades and appreciators from the "front line" to speak and share their remembrances. Aunt Ruby opened, "What a privilege to witness the radical gone respectable in our times ...." Uncle Ossie continued, "We in this community look upon this commemorative stamp finally as America's stamp of approval. ..." When I had mentioned the issuance of the stamp to others, the news simply stopped folks in their tracks. Touched. Teary-eyed. They could hardly believe it. They had to catch their breath, or ask me to repeat myself "How can this be?" they wondered. "A stamp with Brother Malcolm's face on it?" "What does it mean?" "Is America really ready for a Malcolm X stamp, even if it is thirty-four years after his assassination?" I reflected on the message of Congressman Chaka Fattah, the ranking Democrat on the Postal subcommittee, who commented, "There is no more appropriate honor than this stamp because Malcolm X sent all of us a message through his life and his life's work. "Stamps are affixed to envelopes that contain messages, and when we receive an envelope with this particular stamp on it hopefully it is a message that will speak again to the conscience of this nation. Hopefully not just to those of African descent in America but to those who want to speak and be heard on the question of human rights throughout the world. To this day Malcolm X stands as a leader. His thoughts, his ideas, his conviction, and his courage provide an inspiration even now to new generations that come." I've asked myself, What change in our society today permits the reevaluation of my father's convictions or his stance on the human injustices that plagued the international landscape? For years, he's been the subject of a patchwork of commentaries, numerous judgments, and endless character assessments from a spectrum of self-appointed experts. But, in spite of the psycho- https://www.8freebooks.com FOREWORD xiii analysis, Malcolm will always be exactly who he is, whether or not we as a society ever succeed in figuring him out. Truth does not change, only our awareness of it. Not everyone agreed with my father's philosophy or methodology; he was considered complicated, intricate, and complex. Nevertheless, he was always a focused man with a commitment and a program. His plan of action, regardless of the stages of his life, his agenda, and his perspective were always poignantly clear. Malcolm X never advocated violence. He was an advocate of cultural and social reconstruction-until a balance of equality was shared, "by any means necessary." Generally, this phrase of his was misused, even by those who were his supporters. But the statement was intended to encourage a paralyzed constituent of American culture to consider the range of options to which they were entitled-the "means." "By any means necessary" meant examine the obstacles, determine the vision, find the resolve, and explore the alternatives toward dissolving the obstacles. Anyone truly familiar with my father's ideology, autobiography, and speeches sincerely understands the significance of the nowfamous phrase. My father affected Americans-black and white-in untold measure and not always in ways as definitive as census charts and polls have dictated. We've misrepresented the silent majority on both sides. There were black folks who carried as much disdain for my father as some white folks did, and then there were some white folks for whom his life's lessons were as valuable a blueprint for personal and spiritual development as they have been for many black folks. Nevertheless, within the range of the boisterous and the silent there are still folks brown, red, and yellow on this continent and elsewhere who honor and respect the true message of Malcolm X Shabazz. Fortunately, as a child, my surroundings were filled with my father's partners for social change. This warm, devoted circle of people was always on the front lines of the struggle, working to ensure the rightful equilibrium ofhuman rights-not just domestically, but globally-"by any means necessary." Whether they were persons of note or simply hardworking citizens, these individuals in my early life were missionaries of justice, each committed to doing his or her part. As the dedication ceremony continued at the Apollo, the master of ceremonies, activist-entertainer Harry Belafonte--yet https://www.8freebooks.com xiv IHE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X another childhood "uncle"-frarned the importance of this historic moment for the audience assembled. "Each year the Postal Service receives more than forty thousand requests recommending subjects for U.S. stamps. Only thirty or so are chosen. Short of a national monument in Washingtonand that's not a bad idea--a stamp is among the highest honors that our country can pay to any of its citizens." The El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz/Malcolm X stamp is the twenty-second in the Black Heritage Series, which was inaugurated in 1978. It joins such luminaries as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, A. Philip Randolph, Mary McLeod Bethune, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others. I am hopeful that the initial printing of 100 million stamps will be some inspiration to those who collect them or pass them on as gifts to represent or encourage one's personal enlightenment and triumph. What my father aspired to be and what Allah had destined for him was nurtured chiefly by the fertile tutelage of his parents while his family was still together and thriving as a unit. This was before his father's murder by the Klan, his mother's emotional breakdown, and the subsequent scattering of his siblings and himself into an inadequate and inattentive foster care system. My grandmother had a direct hand in the cultural, social, and intellectual education of her children. The attitude of people of color during the '20s and '30s festered with racial tension that produced varying degrees of misguided social and personal paralysis. Knowing this and being globally educated members of the Garvey movement cognizant of the true origins of the African in the Western Hemisphere, both my grandmother and her husband were intent on equipping their children with a clear awareness of the seed of their origins and its ancestral power. They knew that this would provide a base of strength for their children. My grandmother knew that in spite of America's social climate, her children would be able to discern for themselves when an act was generated by pure racism, or simply by ignorance. For example, there are many who know the story about when my father, while on the honor roll and the eighth-grade class president, was told by his white teacher that his dream to be a lawyer was unrealistic for a "colored boy." Maybe he should consider carpentry.... He shared this story with us directly. The teacher actually admired my father greatly and didn't want to encourage him to enter a field of study that he believed wouldn't https://www.8freebooks.com FOREWORD X'I allow my father to excel. Misguided, yet well intended. A teacher crippled by a country that offered little promise or future for its indigenous and colored inhabitants. Without the strong support oflife with his parents and siblings under one roof and chafing under foster parents and teachers imposing limited state policies, Malcolm simply dropped out. This is usually where the recounting of my father's life begins. In the street. Hustling, numbers running, stealing ... Indeed these accounts were factual and he was always the first to tell them. But if his first fourteen years hadn't been rooted in a healthy diet of education and the richness of his heritage, Malcolm wouldn't have found himself gravitating to the prison libraries after he was incarcerated. The movie Malcolm X, which was originally contracted as X: The Movie, shows him learning how to read the dictionary as if he didn't already know how. The truth is, it had been a while since he'd read anything. But after being reacquainted with books, he proceeded to outread the library stock. I've seen letters that my father wrote from prison in his early twenties, eagerly looking for the third volume of a text, or wanting help to track down out-of-print books, or even suggesting books to his friends and family on the outside. The honor roll student reappeared as the layers of street life faded. He read so much that he had to begin to wear glasses. With the encouragement of his brothers, he began studying the tenets of the Nation of Islam. While the Little brothers didn't adhere to all of the teachings personally, they did believe it was the only current American-based ideology that had the potential to unify black people and teach self-pride the way their childhood affiliation with the Garvey movement had done. Also, the brothers believed that through the Nation oflslam they could finally become part of a larger family that could reunite them once again. It was as a result of the documentary he was producing on the Nation of Islam that Mike Wallace, an uncompromising, truthseeking pioneer of broadcast journalism and now the senior correspondent of 60 Minutes, first met my father on an assignment. He recalled those early meetings in his remarks at the stamp's unveiling: "It was forty years ago, back in 1959, that I first heard about a man who called himself Malcolm X. We at Channel 13 had set out to produce a documentary that we had intended to call 'The Hate That Hate Produced.' It was a report about a group and https://www.8freebooks.com xvi lliE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X a man just beginning to get some attention in the white world. The group was the Black Muslims and their leader was Elijah Muhammad. [When] we finally broadcast the documentary, America at large finally learned about the Nation and their desire to separate from the white man. Their hatred of the white man for that effectively was their credo back then: The white man hates us, so we should hate the white man back. Not long after the broadcast, which caused a considerable stir, Louis Lomax invited me to sit down for breakfast for my first meeting with Malcolm, and strangely and rather swiftly after that morning a curious friendship began to develop, and slowly a trust. And on my part a growing understanding and eventually an admiration for a man with a daring mind and heart. And gradually it became apparent to me that here was a genuine, compassionate, and farseeing leader in the making. A man utterly devoted to his people, but at the same time he was bent on reconciliation between the races in America. "And that, of course, that was heresy to the Nation of Islam at the time. "Malcolm was still evolving, still finding his way, still finding his constituency back then when he was struck down-to him not unexpectedly-struck down by forces who feared that his way, his leadership, might be a serious threat to their power. I have treasured the memory of the Malcolm that I knew. I know he trusted me as a reporter, but in the few years that I had the chance to know him, he sent me on my own voyage of reportorial discovery and understanding. "[The] stamp that honors him today is the kind ofrecognition he deserves as a courageous American hero." In time my father's growth and independence would be his undoing. The Nation reprimanded him, stripped him of all powers of attorney, silenced him, and then exiled him. At first his expulsion left him feeling like a man without a home, much the way it had been in his childhood. Ultimately, however, it gave him the freedom he needed. He finally began accepting long-standing invitations he'd received to travel abroad. There were many foreign heads of state and prime ministers who had long taken note of this charismatic champion of the people. With my mother's blessings for his journey, my father set out to visit Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Nasser of Egypt, Prince Faisal of Saudi Arabia, and more. The warm welcomes and in- https://www.8freebooks.com FOREWORD xvii stant paternal relationships became an essential component of his cleansing and rebirth as he traveled throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, culminating in his great pilgrimage to Mecca. As my father's philosophy expanded, he began to empower, enlighten, and embrace an untold populace extending far beyond the limits of governmental control. However, as long as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., remained in the South, and my father in the North, neither was too difficult to monitor. But when my father and Dr. King became colleagues and decided to bridge their two philosophies and unite the American commonwealth toward a greater goal, they both became tremendous threats to the status quo. Sadly, this fear was shared by some of their own constituents and supporters who believed that the union of both would weaken or detract from the strength of each movement. One man whose brethrenship never wavered was the Honorable Percy Sutton, my father's attorney and a perpetual drum for our family, who approached the podium at the Apollo. He paused reflectively and warmly paid tribute to my father, while placing my father's life in its proper perspective: "It is a miracle, really, if you think about it!" The audience burst into applause. " ... The journey of Malcolm X was long and hard.... I can remember a Minister Malcolm that nobody wanted to be near; lawyers, accountants, persons of consequence to the black community ... were afraid to be identified with him, afraid to be seen with him ... . "We would invite them to come because we needed lawyers, we needed doctors, we needed persons of ability, but they were frightened, they were frightened by other people's attitudes toward Minister Malcolm .... "Let me for a moment tell you who Malcolm X was. Malcolm was not a spiteful man. Malcolm X was a revolutionary. But he was not a mean-spirited revolutionary, he was a gentle man. A kind man, a concerned man. "It was so bad, ladies and gentleman, that even at Malcolm's death there were people who were afraid to come to the funeral. ... There was not a major black church in the entire city of New York that was willing to let us bury him from their edifices. It was a small church up on Amsterdam Avenue [the Faith Temple Church of God] that permitted us to come." Looking into Mr. Sutton's face and seeing him diplomatically balance all that he knew of my parents' challenges brought https://www.8freebooks.com xviii IRE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X back an old sadness, one that had not healed since the loss of his "little sister," my mother, Betty. Feeling Mr. Sutton's steadfast devotion, I found myself massaging the ache from my own heart as I reflected on America's treatment of my parents during my childhood. Despite my youthful joys and sense of safety, the trials my parents faced were unrelenting. As well, the way my father was regarded during his lifetime robbed him of any peace in knowing that his life and contributions mattered, and that his family would live without jeopardy or repercussion. Now, perhaps sanctioned by a karmic wave of "in due time," America is acknowledging Malcolm yet again. The Honorable S. David Fineman, member of the Board of Governors of the U.S. Postal Service, commented on the appropriateness of this acknowledgment during his introduction to the stamp's official unveiling, "Today we honor not only a great African American but a great American. Malcolm X was one of the most charismatic and pivotal figures of our time. He was a passionate and persuasive voice for change, and his controversial ideas helped bring race relations to a national stage. "[Malcolm] X poured his energy and anger into speaking the truth about the plight of African Americans. He spoke with a rare passion and eloquence. He became a worldwide hero. A symbol of strength and defiance. He wasn't shy about telling us where society was going wrong. ("Although] it has been thirty-four years since we lost Malcolm X, his words, his voice, his vision, his story of transformation lives on. They have become part ofus in a journey to wholeness. "We must never forget the challenge Malcolm X issued to us. 'Let us learn to live together in justice and love.'" I had long known of the individual and cultural values that others placed on my father's life. But I would learn of another measurement and display of that value in the marketplace. On October 2, 1992, I was on location in southern Africa producing a segment for a documentary film. During a break in the day, I returned to my hotel room for my afternoon siesta. This particular afternoon, I turned on my television and searched until I found a CNN broadcast. Global news commentaries now became the backdrop in my room. I then pulled down the top sheet and blanket on my bed so I could rest. No sooner had my head touched the pillow, I began to fade, exchanging conscious sounds of the television for those of my inner thoughts. But in a matter of moments I was interrupted by the https://www.8freebooks.com FOREWORD xix broadcaster stating, "Earlier today the Alex Haley estate auctioned off his items ...." I instantly sat up and listened in disbelief. The newscast continued, "Among the items sold was the original manuscript of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, with actual handwritten notes by Malcolm X himself." I cannot possibly recapture in words how I felt at that instant. It seemed inconceivable that such a personal and historic document could be bartered away so carelessly. It was yet another loss to contend with. I was still brokenhearted about my godfather being gone, and greatly disappointed by the decision to diminish the value of his life's contributions by way of the auction block, a symbol that he fought so hard to dismantle in the telling of Roots. Doubly painful was the fact that this bidding war included a part of me and my family with neither our permission nor participation. Had anyone thought to offer my father's wife and children first right ofrefusal? I jotted down as much data as possible during the news coverage and then called the legal firm handling my godfather's estate auction in Tennessee. Although I did reach a representative, little information was given over the telephone so I scheduled a subsequent call following my return to the States. During my long hours of travel across the Atlantic, I worried about how this gross display may have been tugging at my mother. How was she feeling about it all? As it was, she'd become increasingly busy due to the explosion of interest about her husband, and the preparations for the release of X- The Movie. Malcolm X had been reborn during this period. It was approximately six weeks prior to the world premiere and my mother and I were about to embark on a press junket that was to exceed a hundred interviews-print, electronic, video-to promote the film and discuss the resurgence of Malcolm. The vibrant, pop-culture marketing of the film gave people permission to claim and learn about Malcolm in a forum that was not threatening. For people who didn't know anything about his life, America now provided a healthier, safer atmosphere to do so. It also gave the public the freedom and opportunity to talk about Malcolm out loud, as opposed to in the murmured huddles that reflected the climate of the previous generation. So much of the public and the media were under the impression that the making of X: The Movie was a new venture. That its director had to battle alone, tooth and nail, on behalf of 35 million black Americans. Things aren't always as they seem. The components in the making of this film were very significant and https://www.8freebooks.com XX IBE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X intertwined like the main branches on a family tree. They were not to be forgotten. Shortly after my father's assassination in 1965 and the publication of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Marvin Worth, a friend of my father's from their teenage years, approached Alex and my mother about making a film about my father's life. Once both agreed, Marvin brought James Baldwin on board to write the script and Arnold Perl to modify the screenplay. During what was to take twenty-five years to realization, Marvin Worth produced the Warner Bros. documentary El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. This was the first definitive film stock collection of the life of Malcolm X and it traveled extensively throughout the nation's university circuit as well as to civil rights and Afro-American nationalist events. In the meantime, this fraternity of men worked diligently against all setbacks and odds to create a film respectfully representative of their brother, now gone-the man who, in their eyes, America had betrayed. But old attitudes and distorted stubborn impressions of my father outlived Arnold Perl and James Baldwin. Marvin Worth was the lone torchbearer, a thorn in Hollywood's side, holding true to the initial dream for almost twenty-five years, despite the taboo image of my father. Single-handedly, while keeping my mother abreast of all updates, he continued to commission writers again and again. Marvin's tenacity was astonishing, to the dismay of many. His dedication and faithfulness were due to his own personal loyalty to my parents and his passion for displaying onscreen the integrity and power of my father's message. In the late '70s, Marvin began to include me informally in the process of the film development. This became very cathartic for me. I accompanied him to meetings with prospective directors and writers. Shortly thereafter, I began reading through different drafts submitted, and I recall him telling me, "Some of them are overwriting. They are trying to 'create' Malcolm as the hero. I just told them to start from scratch; if you write honestly, the hero will emerge." Those who knew Malcolm X Shabazz personally wanted to be sure that the negative myth around his memory would be erased by portraying the truths of his mission, and the depth of his heart. Finally, it was the right time. In 1991, without any further delays, the deal to make the film of my father's life came through. A long-awaited dream was to be realized. But before it made it to the screen, we lost Alex. https://www.8freebooks.com FOREWORD xxi My father, James Baldwin, Arnold Perl, and my godfather, Alex Haley, were all with us in spirit as my mother, her daughters, and Marvin Worth journeyed forth toward the final realization of this history-making film, which not only made it come to life, it ignited a cultural phenomenon. During this period, total sales of The Autobiography of Malcolm X reached record numbers. Nearly 3 million copies have been sold worldwide. At least twenty new literary works that used my father's life as a subject appeared on bookshelves. Young males, newly born, were being named Malcolm, Malik, and Omowale after my father. His philosophy, speeches, and life transitions were now being adopted by a whole new generation of youngsters, internationally. Adult appreciators were coming out of the closet, waving their Malcolm banners boldly. Both American and foreign students utilized him as their prototype for human development, spiritual dedication, and equality. Parents of the '90s were not as apprehensive as the parents of the '60s, '70s, and '80s. Instead, as their many letters and comments informed me, they were relieved that at a stage when their children's discipline and social mores were being challenged, their son or daughter had claimed characteristics and habits associated with Malcolm's. Psychologists, professors, journalists, and critics rediscovered Malcolm X for review and general analysis. New documentaries unfolded, revealing film footage long existing yet previously edited from cultural consumption. The sensations, passions, and sincerities of this black American crusader, plus his new crossover and international marketability, now challenged all the preceding assessments of twentiethcentury historians, social experts, the media, and most pointedly our government. The resurrection of Malcolm X also precipitated a new wave of unauthorized exploitation of his image. In the early daysthe '60s, '70s, and '80s, before my father's likeness had become a licensed commodity-my mother didn't mind the bootlegged T-shirts, cassette tapes, and framed photos being sold at various events around the country during his birthday, Black History Month, and the like. In those years she felt it was one of the pulses that kept Malcolm alive on campuses, in community centers, and on cultural occasions. As a mother and educator, she was comforted by the thought that such remembrances https://www.8freebooks.com xxii THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOlM X would enable young people to have an opportunity to be exposed to her husband, ask questions, learn, and achieve. Pass it on! When people commented on the exploitation, she'd generously reply, "It's Jove that's making them do this for my husband." On the other hand, ifthe intentions of the merchant were not honorable, you'd better believe that she'd be heading in their direction to inform them of their malfeasance and impropriety. It was imperative to my mother that the memory of her husband be respected with the honor she knew he deserved. It was not okay to mistreat her husband. Not okay. In his absence, for more than thirty years, she tirelessly guarded his legacy and fought to ensure that his ideology was clear. For her, it was essential that if she was going to lose her lifemate to the struggle, then those for whom he had struggled must be educated. They must be made aware of the conviction, dedication, and sacrifices he made on behalf of his faith in humanity and his mission to unite us as one community, certain of our inherent right to our own destiny. My mother took note of anyone who maligned any characteristic of her husband or anything associated with him. To my mother, Malcolm X Shabazz was reserved for herself, her children, and the many persons, young and mature, who have been fortified, caressed, and inspired to employ aspects of my father's life lessons and personal discoveries as a bridge to their own inner strength and as a foundation for their "personhood." "Personhood" is a word I first heard as I listened to the eloquence of Brother Randall Robinson, president oftheTransAfrica Forum, during his remarks at the Apollo commemoration. While he is a generation younger than my father, both he and his elder brother Max always symbolized a genuine and authentic continuity throughout the struggle. They are men of their word, like Haki Madhubuti, Kweisi Mfume, and Danny Glover-the few in their generation who say it, mean it, and live it. Thank God for them as they continue to make certain that my father's beat goes on. "I grew up in the Old South in Richmond, Virginia," said Brother Randall Robinson. "I am one of the unfortunate millions who never knew or met MalcolmX. "So perhaps I can presume to speak for those millions like me, then and now, when I say that Malcolm X was a shining model for a new, whole, and proud black personhood. https://www.8freebooks.com FOREWORD xxiii "Before we in the South could see through the mean veil of Southern segregation-there was Malcolm X. "Before we could function beyond the humiliation of Southern bigotry-there was Malcolm X. "Before we could come to know Africa's glorious past-there was Malcolm X. "Before we could find our self-esteem and self-respect-there was Malcolm X. "And we owe him so dearly in ways our young must never be allowed to forget. "Where we have now the very possibility of courage--we owe MalcolmX. "Where we have the wisdom to search for our history before the Atlantic slave trade-we owe Malcolm X. "Where we have the political integrity to simply stand for something because it is right-we owe Malcolm X. "It is not often that an American government institution honors those who embody a whole and uncompromised truth. But today is one such rare occasion. And I will keep it in my heart for the rest of my life." At that moment, Brother Robinson spoke for all of us, and I will forever carry in my heart the sincerities of that ceremony. In particular, I will remember that as my five younger sisters and I gathered onstage for Harry Belafonte's closing remarks, I remained full. As I listened to the final notes sung by the Boys Choir of Harlem their song's message still lingered in my heart: "All black boys are born of heroes." I thought of my father and his parents, my mother and her parents, each family's respective lineage and history of participation in social movements-Garvey on one side and Booker T. Washington on the other. I thought of my sisters and I standing there, parentless, yet in constant celebration of our parents' lives. We are blessed every day by the union and the victorious sojourns that Malcolm X Shabazz and his beloved Betty Saunders Shabazz shared on this earth. When I first realized that my mother wouldn't be here to witness her husband's likeness being unveiled on a United States postal stamp, after participating in the initial discussions, a lonely tear began to slip down my cheek. But then it dawned on me that she wasn't missing the occasion. In fact, she had the best seat in the house. She is now where she longed to be. Beside her https://www.8freebooks.com xxiv THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X husband. And together they are toasting our healthy continuance and productive lives. As their eldest, I have pledged time and again to care for their daughters, my younger sisters, in their memory, in their honor, and with their celestial guidance. When the curtain descends on this current wave of attention and the thematic celebrations cool down, my sisters and I will remain proud. Proud of a man and his wife, proud of a cause and a heartbeat that was a metronome for us long before the crossover audience considered them worthy of praise. We, the Shabazz daughters and our children, will forever be nurtured by our legacy. My inherent idealism yearns forthe issuance of the commemorative stamp and the living document of The Autobiography of Malcolm X to continue to bridge ignorance with insight, and despondency with hope. It is essential for people to trust--even through long periods when dreams may appear to have been deferred, delayed, and overshadowed-that there comes a time when an unwavering will, a strong belief, and endless prayers bring great visions to realization. The Autobiography of Malcolm Xis evidence of one man's will and belief in prayer and purpose. As you read my father's autobiography, whether for the first time or after a long absence, it is my hope that you will come to know him foremost as a man. A man who lived to serve-initially a specific people, then a nation, and eventually all people of the world. Some have said that my father was ahead of his time, but the truth is he was on time and perhaps we were late. I trust that through his words we may come to honor and respect all members of the human family as he did. In closing, I offer you my father's own words: "One day, may we all meet together in the light of understanding." https://www.8freebooks.com M. S. HANDLER INTRODUCTION The Sunday before he was to officially announce his rupture with Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X came to my home to discuss his plans and give me some necessary documentation. Mrs. Handler had never met Malcolm before this fateful visit. She served us coffee and cakes while Malcolm spoke in the courteous, gentle manner that was his in private. It was obvious to me that Mrs. Handler was impressed by Malcolm. His personality filled our living room. Malcolm's attitude was that of a man who had reached a crossroads in his life and was making a choice under an inner compulsion. A wistful smile illuminated his countenance from time to time-a smile that said many things. I felt uneasy because Malcolm was evidently trying to say something which his pride and dignity prevented him from expressing. I sensed that Malcolm was not confident he would succeed in escaping from the shadowy world which had held him in thrall. Mrs. Handler was quiet and thoughtful after Malcolm's departure. Looking up suddenly, she said: "You know, it was like having tea with a black panther." The description startled me. The black panther is an aristocrat in the animal kingdom. He is beautiful. He is dangerous. As a man, Malcolm X had the physical bearing and the inner selfconfidence of a born aristocrat. And he was potentially dangerous. No man in our time aroused fear and hatred in the white man as did Malcolm, because in him the white man sensed an implacable foe who could not be had for any price-a man unreservedly committed to the cause of liberating the black man https://www.8freebooks.com xxvi THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X in American society rather than integrating the black man into that society. My first meeting with Malcolm X took place in March 1963 in the Muslim restaurant of Temple Number Seven on Lenox Avenue. I had been assigned by The New York Times to investigate the growing pressures within the Negro community. Thirty years of experience as a reporter in Western and Eastern Europe had taught me that the forces in a developing social struggle are frequently buried beneath the visible surface and make themselves felt in many ways long before they burst out into the open. These generative forces make themselves felt through the power of an idea long before their organizational forms can openly challenge the establishment. It is the merit of European political scientists and sociologists to give a high priority to the power of ideas in a social struggle. In the United States, it is our weakness to confuse the numerical strength of an organization and the publicity attached to leaders with the germinating forces that sow the seeds of social upheaval in our community. In studying the growing pressures within the Negro community, I had not only to seek the opinions of the established leaders of the civil rights organizations but the opinions of those working in the penumbra of the movement-"underground," so to speak. This is why I sought out Malcolm X, whose ideas had reached me through the medium of Negro integrationists. Their thinking was already reflecting a high degree of nascent Negro nationalism. I did not know what to expect as I waited for Malcolm. I was the only white person in the restaurant, an immaculate establishment tended by somber, handsome, uncommunicative Negroes. Signs reading "Smoking Forbidden" were pasted on the highly polished mirrors. I was served coffee but became uneasy in this aseptic, silent atmosphere as time passed. Malcolm finally arrived. He was very tall, handsome, of impressive bearing. His skin had a bronze hue. I rose to greet him and extended my hand. Malcolm's hand came up slowly. I had the impression it was difficult for him to take my hand, but, noblesse oblige, he did. Malcolm then did a curious thing which he always repeated whenever we met in public in a restaurant in New York or Washington. He asked whether I would mind if he took a seat facing the door. I had https://www.8freebooks.com INTRODUCTION xxvii had similar requests put to me in Eastern European capitals. Malcolm was on the alert; he wished to see every person who entered the restaurant. I quickly realized that Malcolm constantly walked in danger. We spoke for more than three hours at this first encounter. His views about the white man were devastating, but at no time did he transgress against my own personality and make me feel that I, as an individual, shared in the guilt. He attributed the degradation of the Negro people to the white man. He denounced integration as a fraud. He contended that if the leaders of the established civil rights organizations persisted, the social struggle would end in bloodshed because he was certain the white man would never concede full integration. He argued the Muslim case for separation as the only solution in which the Negro could achieve his own identity, develop his own culture, and lay the foundations for a self-respecting productive community. He was vague about where the Negro state could be established. Malcolm refused to see the impossibility of the white man conceding secession from the United States; at this stage in his career he contended it was the only solution. He defended Islam as a religion that did not recognize color bars. He denounced Christianity as a religion designed for slaves and the Negro clergy as the curse of the black man, exploiting him for their own purposes instead of seeking to liberate him, and acting as handmaidens of the white community in its determination to keep the Negroes in a subservient position. During this first encounter Malcolm also sought to enlighten me about the Negro mentality. He repeatedly cautioned me to beware of Negro affirmations of good will toward the white man. He said that the Negro had been trained to dissemble and conceal his real thoughts, as a matter of survival. He argued that the Negro only tells the white man what he believes the white man wishes to hear, and that the art of dissembling reached a point where even Negroes cannot truthfully say they understand what their fellow Negroes believe. The art of deception practiced by the Negro was based on a thorough understanding of the white man's mores, he said; at the same time the Negro has remained a closed book to the white man, who has never displayed any interest in understanding the Negro. https://www.8freebooks.com xxviii TIIE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X Malcolm's exposition of his social ideas was clear and thoughtful, if somewhat shocking to the white initiate, but most disconcerting in our talk was Malcolm's belief in Elijah Muhammad's history of the origins of man, and in a genetic theory devised to prove the superiority of black over white-a theory stunning to me in its sheer absurdity. After this first encounter, I realized that there were two Malcolms-the private and the public person. His public performances on television and at meeting halls produced an almost terrifying effect. His implacable marshaling of facts and his logic had something of a new dialectic, diabolic in its force. He frightened white television audiences, demolished his Negro opponents, but elicited a remarkable response from Negro audiences. Many Negro opponents in the end refused to make any public appearances on the same platform with him. The troubled white audiences were confused, disturbed, felt themselves threatened. Some began to consider Malcolm evil incarnate. Malcolm appealed to the two most disparate elements in the Negro community-the depressed mass, and the galaxy of Negro writers and artists who have burst on the American scene in the past decade. The Negro middle class-the Negro "establishment"-abhorred and feared Malcolm as much as he despised it. The impoverished Negroes respected Malcolm in the way that wayward children respect the grandfather image. It was always a strange and moving experience to walk with Malcolm in Harlem. He was known to all. People glanced at him shyly. Sometimes Negro youngsters would ask for his autograph. It always seemed to me that their affection for Malcolm was inspired by the fact that although he had become a national figure, he was still a man of the people who, they felt, would never betray them. The Negroes have suffered too long from betrayals and in Malcolm they sensed a man of mission. They knew his origins, with which they could identify. They knew his criminal and prison record, which he had never concealed. They looked upon Malcclm with a certain wonderment. Here was a man who had come from the lower depths which they still inhabited, who had triumphed over his own criminality and his own ignorance to become a forceful leader and spokesman, an uncompromising champion of his people. https://www.8freebooks.com INTRODUCTION xxix Although many could not share his Muslim religious beliefs, they found in Malcolm's puritanism a standing reproach to their own lives. Malcolm had purged himself of all the ills that afflict the depressed Negro mass: drugs, alcohol, tobacco, not to speak of criminal pursuits. His personal life was impeccable---of a puritanism unattainable for the mass. Human redemptionMalcolm had achieved it in his own lifetime, and this was known to the Negro community. In his television appearances and at public meetings Malcolm articulated the woes and the aspirations of the depressed Negro mass in a way it was unable to do for itself. When he attacked the white man, Malcolm did for the Negroes what they couldn't do for themselves-he attacked with a violence and anger that spoke for the ages of misery. It was not an academic exercise of just giving hell to "Mr. Charlie." Many of the Negro writers and artists who are national figures today revered Malcolm for what they considered his ruthless honesty in stating the Negro case, his refusal to compromise, and his search for a group identity that had been destroyed by the white man when he brought the Negroes in chains from Africa. The Negro writers and artists regarded Malcolm as the great catalyst, the man who inspired self-respect and devotion in the downtrodden millions. A group of these artists gathered one Sunday in my home, and we talked about Malcolm. Their devotion to him as a man was moving. One said: "Malcolm will never betray us. We have suffered too much from betrayals in the past." Malcolm's attitude toward the white man underwent a marked change in 1964-a change that contributed to his break with Elijah Muhammad and his racist doctrines. Malcolm's meteoric eruption on the national scene brought him into wider contact with white men who were not the "devils" he had thought they were. He was much in demand as a speaker at student forums in Eastern universities and had appeared at many by the end of his short career as a national figure. He always spoke respectfully and with a certain surprise of the positive response of white students to his lectures. A second factor that contributed to his conversion to wider horizons was a growing doubt about the authenticity of Elijah Muhammad's version of the Muslim religion-a doubt that grew https://www.8freebooks.com XXX THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X into a certainty with more knowledge and more experience. Certain secular practices at the Chicago headquarters of Elijah Muhammad had come to Malcolm's notice and he was profoundly shocked. Finally, he embarked on a number of prolonged trips to Mecca and the newly independent African states through the good offices of the representatives of the Arab League in the United States. It was on his first trip to Mecca that he came to the conclusion that he had yet to discover Islam. Assassins' bullets ended Malcolm's career before he was able to develop this new approach, which in essence recognized the Negroes as an integral part of the American community-a far cry from Elijah Muhammad's doctrine of separation. Malcolm had reached the midpoint in redefining his attitude to this country and the white-black relationship. He no longer inveighed against the United States but against a segment of the United States represented by overt white supremacists in the South and covert white supremacists in the North. It was Malcolm's intention to raise Negro militancy to a new high point with the main thrust aimed at both the Southern and Northern white supremacists. The Negro problem, which he had always said should be renamed "the white man's problem," was beginning to assume new dimensions for him in the last months of his life. To the very end, Malcolm sought to refashion the broken strands between the American Negroes and African culture. He saw in this the road to a new sense of group identity, a selfconscious role in history, and above all a sense of man's own worth which he claimed the white man had destroyed in the Negro. American autobiographical literature is filled with numerous accounts of remarkable men who pulled themselves to the summit by their bootstraps. Few are as poignant as Malcolm's memoirs. As testimony to the power of redemption and the force of human personality, the autobiography of Malcolm X is a revelation. New York, June 1965 https://www.8freebooks.com CHAPTER ONE NIGHIMARE When my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, a party of hooded Ku Klux Klan riders galloped up to our home in Omaha, Nebraska, one night. Surrounding the house, brandishing their shotguns and rifles, they shouted for my father to come out. My mother went to the front door and opened it. Standing where they could see her pregnant condition, she told them that she was alone with her three small children, and that my father was away, preaching, in Milwaukee. The Klansmen shouted threats and warnings at her that we had better get out of town because ''the good Christian white people'' were not going to stand for my father's "spreading trouble" among the "good" Negroes of Omaha with the "back to Africa" preachings of Marcus Garvey. My father, the Reverend Earl Little, was a Baptist minister, a dedicated organizer for Marcus Aurelius Garvey's U.N.l.A. (Universal Negro Improvement Association). With the help of such disciples as my father, Garvey, from his headquarters in New York City's Harlem, was raising the banner of black-race purity and exhorting the Negro masses to return to their ancestral African homeland-a cause which had made Garvey the most controversial black man on earth. Still shouting threats, the Klansmen finally spurred their horses and galloped around the house, shattering every window pane with their gun butts. Then they rode off into the night, their torches flaring, as suddenly as they had come. My father was enraged when he returned. He decided to wait until I was born-which would be soon-and then the family 1 https://www.8freebooks.com 2 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X would move. I am not sure why he made this decision, for he was not a frightened Negro, as most then were, and many still are today. My father was a big, six-foot-four, very black man. He had only one eye. How he had lost the other one I have never known. He was from Reynolds, Georgia, where he had left school after the thinl or maybe fourth grade. He believed, as did Marcus Garvey, that freedom, independence and self-respect could never be achieved by the Negro in America, and that therefore the Negro should leave America to the white man and return to his African land of origin. Among the reasons my father had decided to risk and dedicate hi& life to help disseminate this philosophy among his people was that he had seen four of his six brothers die by violence, three of them killed by white men, including one by lynching. What my father could not know then was that of the remaining thret, including himself, only one, my Uncle Jim, would die in bed, of natural causes. Northern white police were later to shoot my Uncle Oscar. And my father was finally himself to die by the white man's hands. It has always been my belief that I, too, will die by violence. I have done all that I can to be prepared. I was my father's seventh child. He had three children by a previous marriage-Ella, Earl, and Mary, who lived in Boston. He had met and married my mother in Philadelphia, where their first child, my oldest full brother, Wilfred, was born. They moved from Philadelphia to Omaha, where Hilda and then Philbert were born. I was next in line. My mother was twenty-eight when I was born on May 19, 1925, in an Omaha hospital. Then we moved to Milwaukee, where Reginald was born. From infancy, he had some kind of hernia condition which was to handicap him physically for the rest of his life. Louise Little, my mother, who was born in Grenada, in the British West Indies, looked like a white woman. Her father was white. She had straight black hair, and her accent did not sound like a Negro's. Of this white father of hers, I know nothing except her shame about it. I remember hearing her say she was glad that she had never seen him. It was, of course, because of him that I got my reddish-brown ''mariny'' color of skin, and my hair of the same color. I was the lightest child in our family. (Out in the world later on, in Boston and New York, I was https://www.8freebooks.com NIGHTMARE 3 among the millions of Negroes who were insane enough to feel that it was some kind of status symbol to be lightcomplexioned-that one was actually fortunate to be born thus. But, still later, I learned to hate every drop of that white rapist's blood that is in me.) Our family stayed only briefly in Milwaukee, for my father wanted to find a place where he could raise our own food and perhaps build a business. The teaching of Marcus Garvey stressed becoming independent of the white man. We went next, for some reason, to Lansing, Michigan. My father bought a house and soon, as had been his pattern, he was doing free-lance Christian preaching in local Negro Baptist churches, and during the week he was roaming about spreading word of Marcus Garvey. He had begun to lay away savings for the store he had always wanted to own when, as always, some stupid local Uncle Tom Negroes began to funnel stories about his revolutionary beliefs to the local white people. This time, the get-out-of-town threats came from a local hate society called The Black Legion. They wore black robes instead of white. Soon, nearly everywhere my father went, Black Legionnaires were reviling him as an "uppity nigger" for wanting to own a store, for living outside the Lansing Negro district, for spreading unrest and dissention among "the good niggers." As in Omaha, my mother was pregnant again, this time with my youngest sister. Shortly after Yvonne was born came the nightmare night in 1929, my earliest vivid memory. I remember being suddenly snatched awake into a frightening confusion of pistol shots and shouting and smoke and flames. My father had shouted and shot at the two white men who had set the fire and were running away. Our home was burning down around us. We were lunging and bumping and tumbling all over each other trying to escape. My mother, with the baby in her arms, just made it into the yard before the house crashed in, showering sparks. I remember we were outside in the night in our underwear, crying and yelling our heads off. The white police and firemen came and stood around watching as the house burned down to the ground. My father prevailed on some friends to clothe and house us temporarily; then he moved us into another house on the out- https://www.8freebooks.com 4 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X skirts of East Lansing. In those days Negroes weren't allowed after dark in East Lansing proper. There's where Michigan State University is located; I related all of this to an audience of students when I spoke there in January, 1963 (and had the first reunion in a long while with my younger brother, Robert, who was there doing postgraduate studies in psychology). I told them how East Lansing harassed us so much that we had to move again, this time two miles out of town, into the country. This was where my father built for us with his own hands a fourroom house. This is where I really begin to remember thingsthis home where I started to grow up. After the fire, I remember that my father was called in and questioned about a permit for the pistol with which he had shot at the white men who set the fire. I remember that the police were always dropping by our house, shoving things around, "just checking" or "looking for a gun." The pistol they were looking for-which they never found, and for which they wouldn't issue a permit-was sewed up inside a pillow. My father's .22 rifle and his shotgun, though, were right out in the open; everyone had them for hunting birds and rabbits and other game. After that, my memories are of the friction between my father and mother. They seemed to be nearly always at odds. Sometimes my father would beat her. It might have had something to do with the fact that my mother had a pretty good education. Where she got it I don't know. But an educated woman, I suppose, can't resist the temptation to correct an uneducated man. Every now and then, when she put those smooth words on him, he would grab her. My father was also belligerent toward all of the children, except me. The older ones he would beat almost savagely if they broke any of his rules-and he had so many rules it was hard to know them all. Nearly all my whippings came from my mother. I've thought a lot about why. I actually believe that as anti-white as my father was, he was subconsciously so afflicted with the white man's brainwashing of Negroes that he inclined to favor the light ones, and I was his lightest child. Most Negro parents in those days would almost instinctively treat any lighter children better than they did the darker ones. It came directly from https://www.8freebooks.com NIGHTMARE 5 the slavery tradition that the ''mulatto,'' because he was visibly nearer to white, was therefore "better." My two other images of my father are both outside the home. One was his role as a Baptist preacher. He never pastored in any regular church of his own; he was always a ''visiting preacher.'' I remember especially his favorite sennon: "That little black train is a-comin' . . . an' you better get all your business right!'' I guess this also fit his association with the back-to-Africa movement, with Marcus Garvey's "Black Train Homeward." My brother Philbert, the one just older than me, loved church, but it confused and amazed me. I would sit goggle-eyed at my father jumping and shouting as he preached, with the congregation jumping and shouting behind him, their souls and bodies devoted to singing and praying. Even at that young age, I just couldn't believe in the Christian concept of Jesus as someone divine. And no religious person, until I was a man in my twenties-and then in prison-could tell me anything. I had very little respect for most people who represented religion. It was in his role as a preacher that my father had most contact with the Negroes of Lansing. Believe me when I tell you that those Negroes were in bad shape then. They are still in bad shape-though in a different way. By that I mean that I don't know a town with a higher percentage of complacent and misguided so-called "middle-class" Negroes-the typical statussymbol-oriented, integration-seeking type of Negroes. Just recently, I was standing in a lobby at the United Nations talking with an African ambassador and his wife, when a Negro came up to me and said, "You know me?" I was a little embarrassed because I thought he was someone I should remember. It turned out that he was one of those bragging, self-satisfied, "middleclass" Lansing Negroes. I wasn't ingratiated. He was the type who would never have been associated with Africa, until the fad of having African friends became a status-symbol for "middleclass" Negroes. Back when I was growing up, the "successful" Lansing Negroes were such as waiters and bootblacks. To be a janitor at some downtown store was to be highly respected. The real "elite," the "big shots," the "voices of the race," were the waiters at the Lansing Country Club and the shoeshine boys at the state capitol. The only Negroes who really had any money https://www.8freebooks.com 6 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X were the ones in the numbers racket, or who ran the gambling houses, or who in some other way lived parasitically off the poorest ones, who were the masses. No Negroes were hired then by Lansing's big Oldsmobile plant, or the Reo plant. (Do you remember the Reo? It was manufactured in Lansing, and R. E. Olds, the man after whom it was named, also lived in Lansing. When the war came along, they hired some Negro janitors.) The bulk of the Negroes were either on Welfare, orW.P.A., or they starved. The day was to come when our family was so poor that we would eat the hole out of a doughnut; but at that time we were much better off than most town Negroes. The reason was that we raised much of our own food out there in the country where we were. We were much better off than the town Negroes who would shout, as my father preached, for the pie-in-the-sky and their heaven in the hereafter while the white man had his here on earth. I knew that the collections my father got for his preaching were mainly what fed and clothed us, and he also did other odd jobs, but still the image of him that made me proudest was his crusading and militant campaigning with the words of Marcus Garvey. As young as I was then, I knew from what I overheard that my father was saying something that made him a "tough" man. I remember an old lady, grinning and saying to my father, "You're scaring these white folks to death!" One of the reasons I've always felt that my father favored me was that to the best of my remembrance, it was only me that he sometimes took with him to the Garvey U.N.l.A. meetings which he held quietly in different people's homes. There were never more than a few people at any one time-twenty at most. But that was a Jot, packed into someone's living room. I noticed how differently they all acted, although sometimes they were the same people who jumped and shouted in church. But in these meetings both they and my father were more intense, more intelligent and down to earth. It made me feel the same way. I can remember hearing of ''Adam driven out of the garden into the caves of Europe," "Africa for the Africans," "Ethiopians, Awake!" And my father would talk about how it would not be much longer before Africa would be completely run by Negroes-"by black men," was the phrase he always used. https://www.8freebooks.com NIGHTMARE 7 "No one knows when the hour of Africa's redemption cometh. It is in the wind. It is coming. One day, like a storm, it will be here.'' I remember seeing the big, shiny photographs of Marcus Garvey that were passed from hand to hand. My father had a big envelope of them that he always took to these meetings. The pictures showed what seemed to me millions of Negroes thronged in parade behind Garvey riding in a fine car, a big black man dressed in a dazzling uniform with gold braid on it, and he was wearing a thrilling hat with tall plumes. I remember hearing that he had black followers not only in the United States but all around the world, and I remember how the meetings always closed with my father saying, several times, and the people chanting after him, "Up, you mighty race, you can accomplish what you will!" I have never understood why, after hearing as much as I did of these kinds of things, I somehow never thought, then, of the black people in Africa. My image of Africa, at that time, was of naked savages, cannibals, monkeys and tigers and steaming jungles. My father would drive in his old black touring car, sometimes taking me, to meeting places all around the Lansing area. I remember one daytime meeting (most were at night) in the town of Owosso, forty miles from Lansing, which the Negroes called "White City." (Owosso's greatest claim to fame is that it is the home town of Thomas E. Dewey.) As in East Lansing, no Negroes were allowed on the streets there after dark-hence the daytime meeting. In point of fact, in those days lots of Michigan towns were like that. Every town had a few "home" Negroes who lived there. Sometimes it would be just one family, as in the nearby county seat, Mason, which had a single Negro family named Lyons. Mr. Lyons had been a famous football star at Mason High School, was highly thought of in Mason, and consequently he now worked around that town in menial jobs. My mother at this time seemed to be always workingcooking, washing, ironing, cleaning, and fussing over us eight children. And she was usually either arguing with or not speaking to my father. One cause of friction was that she had strong ideas about what she wouldn't eat-and didn't want us to eatincluding pork and rabbit, both of which my father loved dearly. https://www.8freebooks.com 8 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X He was a real Georgia Negro, and he believed in eating plenty of what we in Harlem today call "soul food." I've said that my mother was the one who whipped me-at least she did whenever she wasn't ashamed to let the neighbors think she was killing me. For if she even acted as though she was about to raise her hand to me, I would open my mouth and let the world know about it. If anybody was passing by out on the road, she would either change her mind or just give me a few licks. Thinking about it now, I feel definitely that just as my father favored me for being lighter than the other children, my mother gave me more hell for the same reason. She was very light herself but she favored the ones who were darker. Wilfred, I know, was particularly her angel. I remember that she would tell me to get out of the house and ''Let the sun shine on you so you can get some color.'' She went out of her way never to let me become afflicted with a sense of color-superiority. I am sure that she treated me this way partly because of how she came to be light herself. I learned early that crying out in protest could accomplish things. My older brothers and sister had started to school when, sometimes, they would come in and ask for a buttered biscuit or something and my mother, impatiently, would tell them no. But I would cry out and make a fuss until I got what I wanted. I remember well how my mother asked me why I couldn't be a nice boy like Wilfred; but I would think to myself that Wilfred, for being so nice and quiet, often stayed hungry. So early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise. Not only did we have our big garden, but we raised chickens. My father would buy some baby chicks and my mother would raise them. We all loved chicken. That was one dish there was no argument with my father about. One thing in particular that I remember made me feel grateful toward my mother was that one day I went and asked her for my own garden, and she did let me have my own little plot. I loved it and took care of it well. I loved especially to grow peas. I was proud when we had them on our table. I would pull out the grass in my garden by hand when the first little blades came up. I would patrol the rows on my hands and knees for any worms and bugs, and I https://www.8freebooks.com NIGHTMARE 9 would kill and bury them. And sometimes when I had everything straight and clean for my things to grow, I would lie down on my back between two rows, and I would gaze up in the blue sky at the clouds moving and ti.ink all kinds of things. At five, I, too, began to go to school, leaving home in the morning along with Wilfred, Hilda, and Philbert. It was the Pleasant Grove School that went from kindergarten through the eighth grade. It was two miles outside the city limits, and I guess there was no problem about our attending because we were the only Negroes in the area. In those days white people in the North usually would "adopt" just a few Negroes; they didn't see them as any threat. The white kids didn't make any great thing about us, either. They called us "nigger" and "darkie" and "Rastus" so much that we thought those were our natural names. But they didn't think of it as an insult; it was just the way they thought about us. One afternoon in 1931 when Wilfred, Hilda, Philbert, and I came home, my mother and father were having one of their arguments. There had lately been a lot of tension around the house because of Black Legion threats. Anyway, my father had taken one of the rabbits which we were raising, and ordered my mother to cook it. We raised rabbits, but sold them to whites. My father had taken a rabbit from the rabbit pen. He had pulled off the rabbit's head. He was so strong, he needed no knife to behead chickens or rabbits. With one twist of his big black hands he simply twisted off the head and threw the bleeding-necked thing back at my mother's feet. My mother was crying. She started to skin the rabbit, preparatory to cooking it. But my father was so angry he slammed on out of the front door and started walking up the road toward town. It was then that my mother had this vision. She had always been a strange woman in this sense, and had always had a strong intuition of things about to happen. And most of her children are the same way, I think. When something is about to happen, I can feel something, sense something. I never have known something to happen that has caught me completely off guardexcept once. And that was when, years later, I discovered facts https://www.8freebooks.com 10 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X I couldn't believe about a man who, up until that discovery, I would gladly have given my life for. My father was well up the road when my mother ran screaming out onto the porch. ''Early! Early! '' She screamed his name. She clutched up her apron in one hand, and ran down across the yard and into the road. My father turned around. He saw her. For some reason, considering how angry he had been when he left, he waved at her. But he kept on going. She told me later, my mother did, that she had a vision of my father's end. All the rest of the afternoon, she was not herself, crying and nervous and upset. She finished cooking the rabbit and put the whole thing in the warmer part of the black stove. When my father was not back home by our bedtime, my mother hugged and clutched us, and we felt strange, not knowing what to do, because she had never acted like that. I remember waking up to the sound of my mother's screaming again. When I scrambled out, I saw the police in the living room; they were trying to calm her down. She had snatched on her clothes to go with them. And all of us children who were staring knew without anyone having to say it that something terrible had happened to our father. My mother was taken by the police to the hospital, and to a room where a sheet was over my father in a bed, and she wouldn't look, she was afraid to look. Probably it was wise that she didn't. My father's skull, on one side, was crushed in, I was told later. Negroes in Lansing have always whispered that he was attacked, and then laid across some tracks for a streetcar to run over him. His body was cut almost in half. He lived two and a half hours in that condition. Negroes then were stronger than they are now, especially Georgia Negroes. Negroes born in Georgia had to be strong simply to survive. It was morning when we children at home got the word that he was dead. I was six. I can remember a vague commotion, the house filled up with people crying, saying bitterly that the white Black Legion had finally gotten him. My mother was hysterical. In the bedroom, women were holding smelling salts under her nose. She was still hysterical at the funeral. I don't have a very clear memory of the funeral, either. Oddly, the main thing I remember is that it wasn't in a church, and that surprised me, since my father was a preacher, and I had been https://www.8freebooks.com NIGHTMARE 11 where he preached people's funerals in churches. But his was in a funeral home. And I remember that during the service a big black fly came down and landed on my father's face, and Wilfred sprang up from his chair and he shooed the fly away, and he came groping back to his chair-there were folding chairs for us to sit onand the tears were streaming down his face. When we went by the casket, I remember that I thought that it looked as if my father's strong black face had been dusted with flour, and I wished they hadn't put on such a lot of it. Back in the big four-room house, there were many visitors for another week or so. They were good friends of the family, such as the Lyons from Mason, twelve miles away, and the Walkers, McGuires, Liscoes, the Greens, Randolphs, and the Turners, and others from Lansing, and a lot of people from other towns, whom I had seen at the Garvey meetings. We children adjusted more easily than our mother did. We couldn't see, as clearly as she did, the trials that lay ahead. As the visitors tapered off, she became very concerned about collecting the two insurance policies that my father had always been proud he carried. He had always said that families should be protected in case of death. One policy apparently paid off without any problem-the smaller one. I don't know the amount of it. I would imagine it was not more than a thousand dollars, and maybe half of that. But after that money came, and my mother had paid out a lot of it for the funeral and expenses, she began going into town and returning very upset. The company that had issued the bigger policy was balking at paying off. They were claiming that my father had committed suicide. Visitors came again, and there was bitter talk about white people: how could my father bash himself in the head, then get down across the streetcar tracks to be run over? So there we were. My mother was thirty-four years old now, with no husband, no provider or protector to take care of her eight children. But some kind of a family routine got going again. And for as long as the first insurance money lasted, we did all right. Wilfred, who was a pretty stable fellow, began to act older than his age. I think he had the sense to see, when the rest of us https://www.8freebooks.com 12 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X didn't, what was in the wind for us. He quietly quit school and went to town in search of work. He took any kind of job he could find and he would come home, dog-tired, in the evenings, and give whatever he had made to my mother. Hilda, who always had been quiet, too, attended to the babies. Philbert and I didn't contribute anything. We just fought all the time-each other at home, and then at school we would team up and fight white kids. Sometimes the fights would be racial in nature, but they might be about anything. Reginald came under my wing. Since he had grown out of the toddling stage, he and I had become very close. I suppose I enjoyed the fact that he was the little one, under me, who looked up to me. My mother began to buy on credit. My father had always been very strongly against credit. "Credit is the first step into debt and back into slavery," he had always said. And then she went to work herself. She would go into Lansing and find different jobs-in housework, or sewing-for white people. They didn't realize, usually, that she was a Negro. A lot of white people around there didn't want Negroes in their houses. She would do fine until in some way or other it got to people who she was, whose widow she was. And then she would be let go. I remember how she used to come home crying, but trying to hide it, because she had lost a job that she needed so much. Once when one of us-I cannot remember which-had to go for something to where she was working, and the people saw us, and realized she was actually a Negro, she was fired on the spot, and she came home crying, this time not hiding it. When the state Welfare people began coming to our house, we would come from school sometimes and find them talking with our mother, asking a thousand questions. They acted and looked at her, and at us, and around in our house, in a way that had about it the feeling-at least for me-that we were nor people. In their eyesight we were just things, that was all. My mother began to receive two checks-a Welfare check and, I believe, widow's pension. The checks helped. But they weren't enough, as many of us as there were. When they came, about the first of the month, one always was already owed in https://www.8freebooks.com NIGHTMARE 13 full, if not more, to the man at the grocery store. And, after that, the other one didn't last long. We began to go swiftly downhill. The physical downhill wasn't as quick as the psychological. My mother was, above everything else, a proud woman, and it took its toll on her that she was accepting charity. And her feelings were communicated to us. She would speak sharply to the man at the grocery store for padding the bill, telling him that she wasn't ignorant, and he didn't like that. She would talk back sharply to the state Welfare people, telling them that she was a grown woman, able to raise her children, that it wasn't necessary for them to keep coming around so much, meddling in our lives. And they didn't like that. But the monthly Welfare check was their pass. They acted as if they owned us, as if we were their private property. As much as my mother would have liked to, she couldn't keep them out. She would get particularly incensed when they began insisting upon drawing us older children aside, one at a time, out on the porch or somewhere, and asking us questions, or telling us things-against our mother and against each other. We couldn't understand why, if the state was willing to give us packages of meat, sacks of potatoes and fruit, and cans of all kinds of things, our mother obviously hated to accept. We really couldn't understand. What I later understood was that my mother was making a desperate effort to preserve her pride-and ours. Pride was just about all we had to preserve, for by 1934, we really began to suffer. This was about the worst depression year, and no one we knew had enough to eat or live on. Some old family friends visited us now and then. At first they brought food. Though it was charity, my mother took it. Wilfred was working to help. My mother was working, when she could find any kind of job. In Lansing, there was a bakery where, for a nickel, a couple of us children would buy a tall flour sack of day-old bread and cookies, and then walk the two miles back out into the country to our house. Our mother knew, I guess, dozens of ways to cook things with bread and out of bread. Stewed tomatoes with bread, maybe that would be a meal. Something like French toast, if we had any eggs. Bread pudding, sometimes with raisins in it. If we got hold of some ham- https://www.8freebooks.com 14 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X burger, it came to the table more bread than meat. The cookies that were always in the sack with the bread, we just gobbled down straight. But there were times when there wasn't even a nickel and we would be so hungry we were dizzy. My mother would boil a big pot of dandelion greens, and we would eat that. I remember that some small-minded neighbor put it out, and children would tease us, that we ate "fried grass." Sometimes, if we were lucky, we would have oatmeal or cornmeal mush three times a day. Or mush in the morning and cornbread at night. Philbert and I were grown up enough to quit fighting long enough to take the .22 caliber rifle that had been our father's, and shoot rabbits that some white neighbors up or down the road would buy. I know now that they just did it to help us, because they, like everyone, shot their own rabbits. Sometimes, I remember, Philbert and I would take little Reginald along with us. He wasn't very strong, but he was always so proud to be along. We would trap muskrats out in the little creek in back of our house. And we would lie quiet until unsuspecting bullfrogs appeared, and we would spear them, cut off their legs, and sell them for a nickel a pair to people who lived up and down the road. The whites seemed less restricted in their dietary tastes. Then, about in late 1934, I would guess, something began to happen. Some kind of psychological deterioration hit our family circle and began to eat away our pride. Pemaps it was the constant tangible evidence that we were destitute. We had known other families who had gone on relief. We had known without anyone in our home ever expressing it that we had felt prouder not to be at the depot where the free food was passed out. And, now, we were among them. At school, the "on relief" finger suddenly was pointed at us, too, and sometimes it was said aloud. It seemed that everything to eat in our house was stamped Not To Be Sold. All Welfare food bore this ~tamp to keep the recipients from selling it. It's a wonder we didn't come to think of Not To Be Sold as a brand name. Sometimes, instead of going home from school, I walked the two miles up the road into Lansing. I began drifting from store to store, hanging around outside where things like apples were displayed in boxes and barrels and baskets, and I would watch https://www.8freebooks.com N1GH1MARE 15 my chance and steal me a treat. You know what a treat was to me? Anything! Or I began to drop in about dinnertime at the home of some family that we knew. I knew that they knew exactly why I was there, but they never embarrassed me by letting on. They would invite me to stay for supper, and I would stuff myself. Especially, I liked to drop in and visit at the Gohannases' home. They were nice, older people, and great churchgoers. I had watched them lead the jumping and shouting when my father preached. They had, living with them-they were raising him-a nephew whom everyone called "Big Boy," and he and I got along fine. Also living with the Gohannases was old Mrs. Adcock, who went with them to church. She was always trying to help anybody she could, visiting anyone she heard was sick, carrying them something. She was the one who, years later, would tell me something that I remembered a long time: "Malcolm, there's one thing I like about you. You're no good, but you don't try to hide it. You are not a hypocrite." The more I began to stay away from home and visit people and steal from the stores, the more aggressive I became in my inclinations. I never wanted to wait for anything. I was growing up fast, physically more so than mentally. As I began to be recognized more around the town, I started to become aware of the peculiar attitude of white people toward me. I sensed that it had to do with my father. It was an adult version of what several white children had said at school, in hints, or sometimes in the open, which really expressed what their parents had said-that the Black Legion or the Klan had killed my father, and the insurance company had pulled a fast one in refusing to pay my mother the policy money. When I began to get caught stealing now and then, the state Welfare people began to focus on me when they came to our house. I can't remember how I first became aware that they were talking of taking me away. What I first remember along that line was my mother raising a storm about being able to bring up her own children. She would whip me for stealing, and I would try to alarm the neighborhood with my yelling. One thing I have always been proud of is that I never raised my hand against my mother. In the summertime, at night, in addition to all the other things https://www.8freebooks.com 16 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X we did, some of us boys would slip out down the road, or across the pastures, and go "cooning" watermelons. White people always associated watermelons with Negroes, and they sometimes called Negroes "coons" among all the other names, and so stealing watermelons became "cooning" them. If white boys were doing it, it implied that they were only acting like Negroes. Whites have always hidden or justified all of the guilts they could by ridiculing or blaming Negroes. One Halloween night, I remember that a bunch of us were out tipping over those old country outhouses, and one old farmer-I guess he had tipped over enough in his day-had set a trap for us. Always, you sneak up from behind the outhouse, then you gang together and push it, to tip it over. This farmer had taken his outhouse off the hole, and set it just infront of the hole. Well, we came sneaking up in single file, in the darkness, and the two white boys in the lead fell down into the outhouse hole neck deep. They smelled so bad it was all we could stand to get them out, and that finished us all for that Halloween. I had just missed falling in myself. The whites were so used to taking the lead, this time it had really gotten them in the hole. Thus, in various ways, I learned various things. I picked strawberries, and though I can't recall what I got per crate for picking, I remember that after working hard all one day, I wound up with about a dollar, which was a whole lot of money in those times. I was so hungry, I didn't know what to do. I was walking away toward town with visions of buying something good to eat, and this older white boy I knew, Richard Dixon, came up and asked me if I wanted to match nickels. He had plenty of change for my dollar. In about a half hour, he had all the change back, including my dollar, and instead of going to town to buy something, I went home with nothing, and I was bitter. But that was nothing compared to what I felt when I found out later that he had cheated. There is a way that you can catch and hold the nickel and make it come up the way you want. This was my first lesson about gambling: if you see somebody winning all the time, he isn't gambling, he's cheating. Later on in life, if I were continuously losing in any gambling situation, I would watch very closely. It's like the Negro in America seeing the white man win all the time. He's a professional gambler; he has https://www.8freebooks.com NIGHTMARE 17 all the cards and the odds stacked on his side, and he has always dealt to our people from the bottom of the deck. About this time, my mother began to be visited by some Seventh Day Adventists who had moved into a house not too far down the road from us. They would talk to her for hours at a time, and leave booklets and leaflets and magazines for her to read. She read them, and Wilfred, who had started back to school after we had begun to get the relief food supplies, also read a lot. His head was forever in some book. Before long, my mother spent much time with the Adventists. It's my belief that what mostly influenced her was that they had even more diet restrictions than she always had taught and practiced with us. Like us, they were against eating rabbit and pork; they followed the Mosaic dietary laws. They ate nothing of the flesh without a split hoof, or that didn't chew a cud. We began to go with my mother to the Adventist meetings that were held further out in the country. For us children, I know that the major attraction was the good food they served. But we listened, too. There were a handful of Negroes, from small towns in the area, but I would say that it was ninety-nine percent white people. The Adventists felt that we were living at the end of time, that the world soon was coming to an end. But they were the friendliest white people I had ever seen. In some ways, though, we children noticed, and, when we were back at home, discussed, that they were different from us-such as the lack of enough seasoning in their food, and the different way that white people smelled. Meanwhile, the state Welfare people kept after my mother. By now, she didn't make it any secret that she hated them, and didn't want them in her house. But they exerted their right to come, and I have many, many times reflected upon how, talking to us children, they began to plant the seeds of division in our minds. They would ask such things as who was smarter than the other. And they would ask me why I was "so different." I think they felt that getting children into foster homes was a legitimate part of their function, and the result would be less troublesome, however they went about it. And when my mother fought them, they went after her-first, https://www.8freebooks.com 18 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X through me. I was the first target. I stole; that implied that I wasn't being taken care of by my mother. All of us were mischievous at some time or another, I more so than any of the rest. Philbert and I kept a battle going. And this was just one of a dozen things that kept building up the pressure on my mother. I'm not sure just how or when the idea was first dropped by the Welfare workers that our mother was losing her mind. But I can distinctly remember hearing "crazy" applied to her by them when they learned that the Negro farmer who was in the next house down the road from us had offered to give us some butchered pork-a whole pig, maybe even two of themand she had refused. We all heard them call my mother ''crazy' ' to her face for refusing good meat. It meant nothing to them even when she explained that we had never eaten pork, that it was against her religion as a Seventh Day Adventist. They were as vicious as vultures. They had no feelings, understanding, compassion, or respect for my mother. They told us, "She's crazy for refusing food." Right then was when our home, our unity, began to disintegrate. We were having a hard time, and I wasn't helping. But we could have made it, we could have stayed together. As bad as I was, as much trouble and worry as I caused my mother, I loved her. The state people, we found out, had interviewed the Gohannas family, and the Gohannases had said that they would take me into their home. My mother threw a fit, though, when she heard that-and the home wreckers took cover for a while. It was about this time that the large, dark man from Lansing began visiting. I don't remember how or where he and my mother met. It may have been through some mutual friends. I don't remember what the man's profession was. In 1935, in Lansing, Negroes didn't have anything you could call a profession. But the man, big and black, looked something like my father. I can remember his name, but there's no need to mention it. He was a single man, and my mother was a widow only thirty-six years old. The man was independent; naturally she admired that. She was having a hard time disciplining us, and a big man's presence alone would help. And if she had a man to provide, it would send the state people away forever. We all understood without ever saying much about it. Or at https://www.8freebooks.com NIGHTMARE 19 least we had no objection. We took it in stride, even with some amusement among us, that when the man came, our mother would be all dressed up in the best that she had-she still was a good-looking woman-and she would act differently, lighthearted and laughing, as we hadn't seen her act in years. It went on for about a year, I guess. And then, about 1936, or 1937, the man from Lansing jilted my mother suddenly. He just stopped corning to see her. From what I later understood, he finally backed away from taking on the responsibility of those eight mouths to feed. He was afraid of so many of us. To this day, I can see the trap that Mother was in, saddled with all of us. And I can also understand .. why he would shun taking on such a tremendous responsibility. But it was a terrible shock to her. It was the beginning of the end of reality for my mother. When she began to sit around and walk around talking to herself-almost as though she was unaware that we were there-it became increasingly terrifying. The state people saw her weakening. That was when they began the definite steps to take me away from home. They began to tell me how nice it was going to be at the Gohannases' home, where the Gohannases and Big Boy and Mrs. Adcock had all said how much they liked me, and would like to have me live with them. I liked all of them, too. But I didn't want to leave Wilfred. I looked up to and admired my big brother. I didn't want to leave Hilda, who was like my second mother. Or Philbert; even in our fighting, there was a feeling of brotherly union. Or Reginald, especially, who was weak with his hernia condition, and who looked up to me as his big brother who looked out for him, as I looked up to Wilfred. And I had nothing, either, against the babies, Yvonne, Wesley, and Robert. As my mother talked to herself more and more, she gradually became less responsive to us. And less responsible. The house became less tidy. We began to be more unkempt. And usually, now, Hilda cooked. We children watched our anchor giving way. It was something terrible that you couldn't get your hands on, yet you couldn't get away from. It was a sensing that something bad was going to happen. We younger ones leaned more and more https://www.8freebooks.com 20 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X heavily on the relative strength of Wilfred and Hilda, who were the oldest. When finally I was sent to the Gohannases' home, at least in a surface way I was glad. I remember that when I left home with the state man, my mother said one thing: "Don't let them feed him any pig." It was better, in a lot of ways, at the Gohannases'. Big Boy and I shared his room together, and we hit it off nicely. He just wasn't the same as my blood brothers. The Gohannases were very religious people. Big Boy and I attended church with them. They were sanctified Holy Rollers now. The preachers and congregations jumped even...
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