The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley

by Alex Haley

  He had started flushing red. You know the way white people do. He said “Yes.”

  I wasn’t through yet. “What color was Jesus…he was Hebrew, too…wasn’t he?”

  Both the Negro and the white convicts had sat bolt upright. I don’t care how tough the convict, be he brainwashed black Christian, or a “devil” white Christian, neither of them is ready to hear anybody saying Jesus wasn’t white. The instructor walked around. He shouldn’t have felt bad. In all of the years since, I never have met any intelligent white man who would try to insist that Jesus was white. How could they? He said, “Jesus was brown.”

  I let him get away with that compromise.

  Exactly as I had known it would, almost overnight the Charlestown convicts, black and white, began buzzing with the story. Wherever I went, I could feel the nodding. And anytime I got a chance to exchange words with a black brother in stripes, I’d say, “My man! You ever heard about somebody named Mr. Elijah Muhammad?”

  CHAPTER 12

  SAVIOR

  During the spring of nineteen fifty-two I joyously wrote Elijah Muhammad and my family that the Massachusetts State Parole Board had voted that I should be released. But still a few months were taken up with the red tape delay of paper work that went back and forth, arranging for my parole release in the custody of my oldest brother, Wilfred, in Detroit, who now managed a furniture store. Wilfred got the Jew who owned the store to sign a promise that upon release I would be given immediate employment.

  By the prison system wire, I heard that Shorty also was up for parole. But Shorty was having trouble getting some reputable person to sign for him. (Later, I found out that in prison Shorty had studied musical composition. He had even progressed to writing some pieces; one of them I know he named “The Bastille Concerto.”)

  My going to Detroit instead of back to Harlem or Boston was influenced by my family’s feeling expressed in their letters. Especially my sister Hilda had stressed to me that although I felt I understood Elijah Muhammad’s teachings, I had much to learn, and I ought to come to Detroit and become a member of a temple of practicing Muslims.

  It was in August when they gave me a lecture, a cheap L’il Abner suit, and a small amout of money, and I walked out of the gate. I never looked back, but that doesn’t make me any different from a million inmates who have left a prison behind them.

  The first stop I made was at a Turkish bath. I got some of that physical feeling of prison-taint steamed off me. Ella, with whom I stayed only overnight, had also agreed that it would be best for me to start again in Detroit. The police in a new city wouldn’t have it in for me; that was Ella’s consideration—not the Muslims, for whom Ella had no use. Both Hilda and Reginald had tried to work on Ella. But Ella, with her strong will, didn’t go for it at all. She told me that she felt anyone could be whatever he wanted to be, Holy Roller, Seventh Day Adventist, or whatever it was, but she wasn’t going to become any Muslim.

  Hilda, the next morning, gave me some money to put in my pocket. Before I left, I went out and bought three things I remember well. I bought a better-looking pair of eyeglasses than the pair the prison had issued to me; and I bought a suitcase and a wrist watch.

  I have thought, since, that without fully knowing it, I was preparing for what my life was about to become. Because those are three things I’ve used more than anything else. My eyeglasses correct the astigmatism that I got from all the reading in prison. I travel so much now that my wife keeps alternate suitcases packed so that, when necessary, I can just grab one. And you won’t find anybody more time-conscious than I am. I live by my watch, keeping appointments. Even when I’m using my car, I drive by my watch, not my speedometer. Time is more important to me than distance.

  I caught a bus to Detroit. The furniture store that my brother Wilfred managed was right in the black ghetto of Detroit; I’d better not name the store, if I’m going to tell the way they robbed Negroes. Wilfred introduced me to the Jews who owned the store. And, as agreed, I was put to work, as a salesman.

  “Nothing Down” advertisements drew poor Negroes into that store like flypaper. It was a shame, the way they paid three and four times what the furniture had cost, because they could get credit from those Jews. It was the same kind of cheap, gaudy-looking junk that you can see in any of the black ghetto furniture stores today. Fabrics were stapled on the sofas. Imitation “leopard skin” bedspreads, “tiger skin” rugs, such stuff as that. I would see clumsy, work-hardened, calloused hands scrawling and scratching signatures on the contract, agreeing to highway-robbery interest rates in the fine print that never was read.

  I was seeing in real life the same point made in a joke that during the 1964 Presidential campaign Jet magazine reported that Senator Barry Gold water had told somewhere. It was that a white man, a Negro, and a Jew were given one wish each. The white man asked for securities; the Negro asked for a lot of money; the Jew asked for some imitation jewelry “and that colored boy’s address.”

  In all my years in the streets, I’d been looking at the exploitation that for the first time I really saw and understood. Now I watched brothers entwining themselves in the economic clutches of the white man who went home every night with another bag of the money drained out of the ghetto. I saw that the money, instead of helping the black man, was going to help enrich these white merchants, who usually lived in an “exclusive” area where a black man had better not get caught unless he worked there for somebody white.

  Wilfred invited me to share his home, and gratefully I accepted. The warmth of a home and a family was a healing change from the prison cage for me. It would deeply move almost any newly freed convict, I think. But especially this Muslim home’s atmosphere sent me often to my knees to praise Allah. My family’s letters while I was in prison had included a description of the Muslim home routine, but to truly appreciate it, one had to be a part of the routine. Each act, and the significance of that act, was gently, patiently explained to me by my brother Wilfred.

  There was none of the morning confusion that exists in most homes. Wilfred, the father, the family protector and provider, was the first to rise. “The father prepares the way for his family,” he said. He, then I, performed the morning ablutions. Next came Wilfred’s wife, Ruth, and then their children, so that orderliness prevailed in the use of the bathroom.

  “In the name of Allah, I perform the ablution,” the Muslim said aloud before washing first the right hand, then the left hand. The teeth were thoroughly brushed, followed by three rinsings of the mouth. The nostrils were also rinsed out thrice. A shower then completed the whole body’s purification in readiness for prayer.

  Each family member, even children upon meeting each other for that new day’s first time, greeted softly and pleasantly, “As-Salaam-Alaikum” (the Arabic for “Peace be unto you”). “Wa-Alaikum-Salaam” (“and unto you be peace”) was the other’s reply. Over and over again, the Muslim said in his own mind, “Allahu-Akbar, Allahu-Akbar” (“Allah is the greatest”).

  The prayer rug was spread by Wilfred while the rest of the family purified themselves. It was explained to me that a Muslim family prayed with the sun near the horizon. If that time was missed, the prayer had to be deferred until the sun was beyond the horizon. “Muslims are not sun-worshipers. We pray facing the East to be in unity with the rest of our 725 million brothers and sisters in the entire Muslim world.”

  All the family, in robes, lined up facing East. In unison, we stepped from our slippers to stand on the prayer rug.

  Today, I say with my family in the Arabic tongue the prayer which I first learned in English: “I perform the morning prayer to Allah, the Most High, Allah is the greatest. Glory to Thee O Allah, Thine is the praise, Blessed is Thy Name, and Exalted is Thy Majesty. I bear witness that nothing deserves to be served or worshiped besides Thee.”

  No solid food, only juice and coffee, was taken for our breakfasts. Wilfred and I went off to work. There, at noon and again at around three in the afternoon, unnotice
d by others in the furniture store, we would rinse our hands, faces and mouths, and softly meditate.

  Muslim children did likewise at school, and Muslim wives and mothers interrupted their chores to join the world’s 725 million Muslims in communicating with God.

  —

  Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays were the meeting days of the relatively small Detroit Temple Number One. Near the temple, which actually was a storefront, were three hog-slaughtering pens. The squealing of hogs being slaughtered filtered into our Wednesday and Friday meetings. I’m describing the condition that we Muslims were in back in the early 1950’s.

  The address of Temple Number One was 1470 Frederick Street, I think. The first Temple to be formed, back in 1931, by Master W. D. Fard, was formed in Detroit, Michigan. I never had seen any Christian-believing Negroes conduct themselves like the Muslims, the individuals and the families alike. The men were quietly, tastefully dressed. The women wore ankle-length gowns, no makeup, and scarves covered their heads. The neat children were mannerly not only to adults but to other children as well.

  I had never dreamed of anything like that atmosphere among black people who had learned to be proud they were black, who had learned to love other black people instead of being jealous and suspicious. I thrilled to how we Muslim men used both hands to grasp a black brother’s both hands, voicing and smiling our happiness to meet him again. The Muslim sisters, both married and single, were given an honor and respect that I’d never seen black men give to their women, and it felt wonderful to me. The salutations which we all exchanged were warm, filled with mutual respect and dignity: “Brother”…“Sister”…“Ma’am”…“Sir.” Even children speaking to other children used these terms. Beautiful!

  Lemuel Hassan then was the Minister at Temple Number One. “As-Salaikum,” he greeted us. “Wa-Salaikum,” we returned. Minister Lemuel stood before us, near a blackboard. The blackboard had fixed upon it in permanent paint, on one side, the United States flag and under it the words “Slavery, Suffering and Death,” then the word “Christianity” alongside the sign of the Cross. Beneath the Cross was a painting of a black man hanged from a tree. On the other side was painted what we were taught was the Muslim flag, the crescent and star on a red background with the words “Islam: Freedom, Justice, Equality,” and beneath that “Which One Will Survive the War of Armageddon?”

  For more than an hour, Minister Lemuel lectured about Elijah Muhammad’s teachings. I sat raptly absorbing Minister Lemuel’s every syllable and gesture. Frequently, he graphically illustrated points by chalking key words or phrases on the blackboard.

  I thought it was outrageous that our small temple still had some empty seats. I complained to my brother Wilfred that there should be no empty seats, with the surrounding streets full of our brainwashed black brothers and sisters, drinking, cursing, fighting, dancing, carousing, and using dope—the very things that Mr. Muhammad taught were helping the black man to stay under the heel of the white man here in America.

  From what I could gather, the recruitment attitude at the temple seemed to me to amount to a self-defeating waiting view…an assumption that Allah would bring us more Muslims. I felt that Allah would be more inclined to help those who helped themselves. I had lived for years in ghetto streets; I knew the Negroes in those streets. Harlem or Detroit were no different. I said I disagreed, that I thought we should go out into the streets and get more Muslims into the fold. All of my life, as you know, I had been an activist, I had been impatient. My brother Wilfred counseled me to keep patience. And for me to be patient was made easier by the fact that I could anticipate soon seeing and perhaps meeting the man who was called “The Messenger,” Elijah Muhammad himself.

  Today, I have appointments with world-famous personages, including some heads of nations. But I looked forward to the Sunday before Labor Day in 1952 with an eagerness never since duplicated. Detroit Temple Number One Muslims were going in a motor caravan—I think about ten automobiles—to visit Chicago Temple Number Two, to hear Elijah Muhammad.

  Not since childhood had I been so excited as when we drove in Wilfred’s car. At great Muslim rallies since then I have seen, and heard, and felt ten thousand black people applauding and cheering. But on that Sunday afternoon when our two little temples assembled, perhaps only two hundred Muslims, the Chicagoans welcoming and greeting us Detroiters, I experienced tinglings up my spine as I’ve never had since.

  I was totally unprepared for the Messenger Elijah Muhammad’s physical impact upon my emotions. From the rear of Temple Number Two, he came toward the platform. The small, sensitive, gentle, brown face that I had studied in photographs, until I had dreamed about it, was fixed straight ahead as the Messenger strode, encircled by the marching, strapping Fruit of Islam guards. The Messenger, compared to them, seemed fragile, almost tiny. He and the Fruit of Islam were dressed in dark suits, white shirts, and bow ties. The Messenger wore a gold-embroidered fez.

  I stared at the great man who had taken the time to write to me when I was a convict whom he knew nothing about. He was the man whom I had been told had spent years of his life in suffering and sacrifice to lead us, the black people, because he loved us so much. And then, hearing his voice, I sat leaning forward, riveted upon his words. (I try to reconstruct what Elijah Muhammad said from having since heard him speak hundreds of times.)

  “I have not stopped one day for the past twenty-one years. I have been standing, preaching to you throughout those past twenty-one years, while I was free, and even while I was in bondage. I spent three and one-half years in the federal penitentiary, and also over a year in the city jail for teaching this truth. I was also deprived of a father’s love for his family for seven long years while I was running from hypocrites and other enemies of this word and revelation of God—which will give life to you, and put you on the same level with all other civilized and independent nations and peoples of this planet earth….”

  Elijah Muhammad spoke of how in this wilderness of North America, for centuries the “blue-eyed devil white man” had brainwashed the “so-called Negro.” He told us how, as one result, the black man in America was “mentally, morally and spiritually dead.” Elijah Muhammad spoke of how the black man was Original Man, who had been kidnapped from his homeland and stripped of his language, his culture, his family structure, his family name, until the black man in America did not even realize who he was.

  He told us, and showed us, how his teachings of the true knowledge of ourselves would lift up the black man from the bottom of the white man’s society and place the black man where he had begun, at the top of civilization.

  Concluding, pausing for breath, he called my name.

  It was like an electrical shock. Not looking at me directly, he asked me to stand.

  He told them that I was just out of prison. He said how “strong” I had been while in prison. “Every day,” he said, “for years, Brother Malcolm has written a letter from prison to me. And I have written to him as often as I could.”

  Standing there, feeling the eyes of the two hundred Muslims upon me, I heard him make a parable about me.

  When God bragged about how faithful Job was, said Elijah Muhammad, the devil said only God’s hedge around Job kept Job so faithful. “Remove that protective hedge,” the devil told God, “and I will make Job curse you to your face.”

  The devil could claim that, hedged in prison, I had just used Islam, Mr. Muhammad said. But the devil would say that now, out of prison, I would return to my drinking, smoking, dope, and life of crime.

  “Well, now, our good brother Malcolm’s hedge is removed and we will see how he does,” Mr. Muhammad said. “I believe that he is going to remain faithful.”

  And Allah blessed me to remain true, firm and strong in my faith in Islam, despite many severe trials to my faith. And even when events produced a crisis between Elijah Muhammad and me, I told him at the beginning of the crisis, with all the sincerity I had in me, that I still believed in him more strongly than h
e believed in himself.

  Mr. Muhammad and I are not together today only because of envy and jealousy. I had more faith in Elijah Muhammad than I could ever have in any other man upon this earth.

  You will remember my having said that, when I was in prison, Mr. Muhammad would be my brother Wilfred’s house guest whenever he visited Detroit Temple Number One. Every Muslim said that never could you do as much for Mr. Muhammad as he would do for you in return. That Sunday, after the meeting, he invited our entire family group and Minister Lemuel Hassan to be his guests for dinner that evening, at his new home.

  Mr. Muhammad said that his children and his followers had insisted that he move into this larger, better eighteen-room house in Chicago at 4847 Woodlawn Avenue. They had just moved in that week, I believe. When we arrived, Mr. Muhammad showed us where he had just been painting. I had to restrain my impulse to run and bring a chair for the Messenger of Allah. Instead, as I had heard he would do, he was worrying about my comfort.

  We had hoped to hear his wisdom during the dinner, but instead he encouraged us to talk. I sat thinking of how our Detroit Temple more or less just sat and awaited Allah to bring converts—and, beyond that, of the millions of black people all over America, who never had heard of the teachings that could stir and wake and resurrect the black man…and there at Mr. Muhammad’s table, I found my tongue. I have always been one to speak my mind.

  During a conversational lull, I asked Mr. Muhammad how many Muslims were supposed to be in our Temple Number One in Detroit.

  He said, “There are supposed to be thousands.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Sir, what is your opinion of the best way of getting thousands there?”

  “Go after the young people,” he said. “Once you get them, the older ones will follow through shame.”

  I made up my mind that we were going to follow that advice.