The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley

by Alex Haley

  By some miracle, the adultery talk which was so widespread in Chicago seemed to only leak a little in Boston, Detroit, and New York. Apparently, it hadn’t reached other mosques around the country at all. In Chicago, increasing numbers of Muslims were leaving Mosque Two, I heard, and many non-Muslims who had been sympathetic to the Nation were now outspokenly anti-Muslim. In February, 1963, I officiated at the University of Islam graduation exercises; when I introduced various members of the Muhammad family, I could feel the cold chill toward them from the Muslims in the audience.

  Elijah Muhammad had me fly to Phoenix to see him in April, 1963.

  We embraced, as always—and amost immediately he took me outside, where we began to walk by his swimming pool.

  He was The Messenger of Allah. When I was a foul, vicious convict, so evil that other convicts had called me Satan, this man had rescued me. He was the man who had trained me, who had treated me as if I were his own flesh and blood. He was the man who had given me wings—to go places, to do things I otherwise never would have dreamed of. We walked, with me caught up in a whirlwind of emotions.

  “Well, son,” Mr. Muhammad said, “what is on your mind?”

  Plainly, frankly, pulling no punches, I told Mr. Muhammad what was being said. And without waiting for any response from him, I said that with his son Wallace’s help I had found in the Quran and the Bible that which might be taught to Muslims—if it became necessary—as the fulfillment of prophecy.

  “Son, I’m not surprised,” Elijah Muhammad said. “You always have had such a good understanding of prophecy, and of spiritual things. You recognize that’s what all of this is—prophecy. You have the kind of understanding that only an old man has.

  “I’m David,” he said. “When you read about how David took another man’s wife, I’m that David. You read about Noah, who got drunk—that’s me. You read about Lot, who went and laid up with his own daughters. I have to fulfill all of those things.”

  —

  I remembered that when an epidemic is about to hit somewhere, that community’s people are inoculated against exposure with some of the same germs that are anticipated—and this prepares them to resist the oncoming virus.

  I decided I had better prepare six other East Coast Muslim officials whom I selected.

  I told them. And then I told them why I had told them—that I felt they should not be caught by surprise and shock if it became their job to teach the Muslims in their mosques the “fulfillment of prophecy.” I found then that some had already heard it; one of them, Minister Louis X of Boston, as much as seven months before. They had been living with the dilemma themselves.

  I never dreamed that the Chicago Muslim officials were going to make it appear that I was throwing gasoline on the fire instead of water. I never dreamed that they were going to try to make it appear that instead of inoculating against an epidemic, I had started it.

  The stage in Chicago even then was being set for Muslims to shift their focus off the epidemic—and onto me.

  Hating me was going to become the cause for people of shattered faith to rally around.

  Non-Muslim Negroes who knew me well, and even some of the white reporters with whom I had some regular contact, were telling me, almost wherever I went, “Malcolm X, you’re looking tired. You need a rest.”

  They didn’t know a fraction of it. Since I had been a Muslim, this was the first time any white people really got to me in a personal way. I could tell that some of them were really honest and sincere. One of these, whose name I won’t call—he might lose his job—said, “Malcolm X, the whites need your voice worse than the Negroes.” I remember so well his saying this because it prefaced the first time since I became a Muslim that I had ever talked with any white man at any length about anything except the Nation of Islam and the American black man’s struggle today.

  I can’t remember how, or why, he somehow happened to mention the Dead Sea Scrolls. I came back with something like, “Yes, those scrolls are going to take Jesus off the stained-glass windows and the frescoes where he has been lily-white, and put Him back into the true mainstream of history where Jesus actually was non-white.” The reporter was surprised, and I went on that the Dead Sea Scrolls were going to reaffirm that Jesus was a member of that brotherhood of Egyptian seers called the Essene—a fact already known from Philo, the famous Egyptian historian of Jesus’ time. And the reporter and I got off on about two good hours of talking in the areas of archaeology, history, and religion. It was so pleasant. I almost forgot the heavy worries on my mind—for that brief respite. I remember we wound up agreeing that by the year 2000, every schoolchild will be taught the true color of great men of antiquity.

  —

  I’ve said that I expected headlines momentarily. I hadn’t expected the kind which came.

  No one needs to be reminded of who got assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.

  Within hours after the assassination—I am telling nothing but the truth—every Muslim minister received from Mr. Elijah Muhammad a directive—in fact, two directives. Every minister was ordered to make no remarks at all concerning the assassination. Mr. Muhammad instructed that if pressed for comment, we should say: “No comment.”

  During that three-day period where there was no other news to be heard except relating to the murdered President, Mr. Muhammad had a previously scheduled speaking engagement in New York at the Manhattan Center. He cancelled his coming to speak, and as we were unable to get back the money already paid for the rental of the center, Mr. Muhammad told me to speak in his stead. And so I spoke.

  Many times since then, I’ve looked at the speech notes I used that day, which had been prepared at least a week before the assassination. The title of my speech was “God’s Judgment of White America.” It was on the theme, familiar to me, of “as you sow, so shall you reap,” or how the hypocritical American white man was reaping what he had sowed.

  The question-and-answer period opened, I suppose inevitably, with someone asking me, “What do you think about President Kennedy’s assassination? What is your opinion?”

  Without a second thought, I said what I honestly felt—that it was, as I saw it, a case of “the chickens coming home to roost.” I said that the hate in white men had not stopped with the killing of defenseless black people, but that hate, allowed to spread unchecked, finally had struck down this country’s Chief of State. I said it was the same thing as had happened with Medgar Evers, with Patrice Lumumba, with Madame Nhu’s husband.

  The headlines and the news broadcasts promptly had it: “Black Muslims’ Malcolm X: ‘Chickens Come Home to Roost.’ ”

  It makes me feel weary to think of it all now. All over America, all over the world, some of the world’s most important personages were saying in various ways, and in far stronger ways than I did, that America’s climate of hate had been responsible for the President’s death. But when Malcolm X said the same thing, it was ominous.

  My regular monthly visit to Mr. Muhammad was due the next day. Somehow, on the plane, I expected something. I’ve always had this strong intuition.

  Mr. Muhammad and I embraced each other in greeting. I sensed some ingredient missing from his usual amiability. And I was suddenly tense—to me also very significant. For years, I had prided myself that Mr. Muhammad and I were so close that I knew how he felt by how I felt. If he was nervous, I was nervous. If I was relaxed, then I knew he was relaxed. Now, I felt the tension….

  First we talked of other things, sitting in his living room. Then he asked me, “Did you see the papers this morning?”

  I said, “Yes, sir, I did.”

  “That was a very bad statement,” he said. “The country loved this man. The whole country is in mourning. That was very ill-timed. A statement like that can make it hard on Muslims in general.”

  And then, as if Mr. Muhammad’s voice came from afar, I heard his words: “I’ll have to silence you for the next ninety days—so that the Muslims everywhere can be disa
ssociated from the blunder.”

  I was numb.

  But I was a follower of Mr. Muhammad. Many times I had said to my own assistants that anyone in a position to discipline others must be able to take disciplining himself.

  I told Mr. Muhammad, “Sir, I agree with you, and I submit, one hundred per cent.”

  I flew back to New York psychologically preparing myself to tell my Mosque Seven assistants that I had been suspended—or “silenced.”

  But to my astonishment, upon arrival I learned that my assistants already had been informed.

  What astonished me even more—a telegram had been sent to every New York City newspaper and radio and television station. It was the most quick and thorough publicity job that I had ever seen the Chicago officials initiate.

  Every telephone where I could possibly be reached was ringing. London. Paris. A.P., U.P.I. Every television and radio network, and all of the newspapers were calling. I told them all, “I disobeyed Mr. Muhammad. I submit completely to his wisdom. Yes, I expect to be speaking again after ninety days.”

  “Malcolm X Silenced!” It was headlines.

  My first worry was that if a scandal broke for the Nation of Islam within the next ninety days, I would be gagged when I could be the most experienced Muslim in dealing with the news media that would make the most of any scandal within the Nation.

  I learned next that my “silencing” was even more thorough than I had thought. I was not only forbidden to talk with the press, I was not even to teach in my own Mosque Seven.

  Next, an announcement was made throughout the Nation of Islam that I would be reinstated within ninety days, “if he submits.”

  This made me suspicious—for the first time. I had completely submitted. But, deliberately, Muslims were being given the impression that I had rebelled.

  I hadn’t hustled in the streets for years for nothing. I knew when I was being set up.

  Three days later, the first word came to me that a Mosque Seven official who had been one of my most immediate assistants was telling certain Mosque Seven brothers: “If you knew what the Minister did, you’d go out and kill him yourself.”

  And then I knew. As any official in the Nation of Islam would instantly have known, any death-talk for me could have been approved of—if not actually initiated—by only one man.

  —

  My head felt like it was bleeding inside. I felt like my brain was damaged. I went to see Dr. Leona A. Turner, who has been my family doctor for years, who practices in East Elmhurst, Long Island. I asked her to give me a brain examination.

  She did examine me. She said I was under great strain—and I needed rest.

  Cassius Clay and I are not together today. But always I must be grateful to him that at just this time, when he was in Miami training to fight Sonny Liston, Cassius invited me, Betty, and the children to come there as his guests—as a sixth wedding anniversary present to Betty and me.

  I had met Cassius Clay in Detroit in 1962. He and his brother Rudolph came into the Student’s Luncheonette next door to the Detroit Mosque where Elijah Muhammad was about to speak at a big rally. Every Muslim present was impressed by the bearing and the obvious genuineness of the striking, handsome pair of prizefighter brothers. Cassius came up and pumped my hand, introducing himself as he later presented himself to the world, “I’m Cassius Clay.” He acted as if I was supposed to know who he was. So I acted as though I did. Up to that moment, though, I had never even heard of him. Ours were two entirely different worlds. In fact, Elijah Muhammad instructed us Muslims against all forms of sports.

  As Elijah Muhammad spoke, the two Clay brothers practically led the applause, further impressing everyone with their sincerity—since a Muslim rally was about the world’s last place to seek fight fans.

  Thereafter, now and then I heard how Cassius showed up in Muslim mosques and restaurants in various cities. And if I happened to be speaking anywhere within reasonable distance of wherever Cassius was, he would be present. I liked him. Some contagious quality about him made him one of the very few people I ever invited to my home. Betty liked him. Our children were crazy about him. Cassius was simply a likeable, friendly, clean-cut, down-to-earth youngster. I noticed how alert he was even in little details. I suspected that there was a plan in his public clowning. I suspected, and he confirmed to me, that he was doing everything possible to con and “psyche” Sonny Liston into coming into the ring angry, poorly trained, and overconfident, expecting another of his vaunted one-round knockouts. Not only was Cassius receptive to advice, he solicited it. Primarily, I impressed upon him to what a great extent a public figure’s success depends upon how alert and knowledgeable he is to the true natures and to the true motives of all of the people who flock around him. I warned him about the “foxes,” his expression for the aggressive, cute young females who flocked after him; I told Cassius that instead of “foxes,” they really were wolves.

  This was Betty’s first vacation since we had married. And our three girls romped and played with the heavyweight contender.

  I don’t know what I might have done if I had stayed in New York during that crucial time—besieged by insistently ringing telephones, and by the press, and by all of the other people so anxious to gloat, to speculate and to “commiserate.”

  I was in a state of emotional shock. I was like someone who for twelve years had had an inseparable, beautiful marriage—and then suddenly one morning at breakfast the marriage partner had thrust across the table some divorce papers.

  I felt as though something in nature had failed, like the sun, or the stars. It was that incredible a phenomenon to me—something too stupendous to conceive. I am not sparing myself. Around Cassius Clay’s fight camp, around the Hampton House Motel where my family was staying, I talked with my own wife, and with other people, and actually I was only mouthing words that really meant nothing to me. Whatever I was saying at any time was being handled by a small corner of my mind. The rest of my mind was filled with a parade of a thousand and one different scenes from the past twelve years…scenes in the Muslim mosques…scenes with Mr. Muhammad…scenes with Mr. Muhammad’s family…scenes with Muslims, individually, as my audiences, and at our social gatherings…and scenes with the white man in audiences, and the press.

  I walked, I talked, I functioned. At the Cassius Clay fight camp, I told the various sports writers repeatedly what I gradually had come to know within myself was a lie—that I would be reinstated within ninety days. But I could not yet let myself psychologically face what I knew: that already the Nation of Islam and I were physically divorced. Do you understand what I mean? A judge’s signature on a piece of paper can grant to a couple a physical divorce—but for either of them, or maybe for both of them, if they have been a very close marriage team, to actually become psychologically divorced from each other might take years.

  But in the physical divorce, I could not evade the obvious strategy and plotting coming out of Chicago to eliminate me from the Nation of Islam…if not from this world. And I felt that I perceived the anatomy of the plotting.

  Any Muslim would have known that my “chickens coming home to roost” statement had been only an excuse to put into action the plan for getting me out. And step one had been already taken: the Muslims were given the impression that I had rebelled against Mr. Muhammad. I could now anticipate step two: I would remain “suspended” (and later I would be “isolated”) indefinitely. Step three would be either to provoke some Muslim ignorant of the truth to take it upon himself to kill me as a “religious duty”—or to “isolate” me so that I would gradually disappear from the public scene.

  The only person who knew was my wife. I never would have dreamed that I would ever depend so much upon any woman for strength as I now leaned upon Betty. There was no exchange between us; Betty said nothing, being the caliber of wife that she is, with the depth of understanding that she has—but I could feel the envelopment of her comfort. I knew that she was as faithful a servant of Allah as I w
as, and I knew that whatever happened, she was with me.

  The death talk was not my fear. Every second of my twelve years with Mr. Muhammad, I had been ready to lay down my life for him. The thing to me worse than death was the betrayal. I could conceive death. I couldn’t conceive betrayal—not of the loyalty which I had given to the Nation of Islam, and to Mr. Muhammad. During the previous twelve years, if Mr. Muhammad had committed any civil crime punishable by death, I would have said and tried to prove that I did it—to save him—and I would have gone to the electric chair, as Mr. Muhammad’s servant.

  There as Cassius Clay’s guest in Miami, I tried desperately to push my mind off my troubles and onto the Nation’s troubles. I still struggled to persuade myself that Mr. Muhammad had been fulfilling prophecy. Because I actually had believed that if Mr. Muhammad was not God, then he surely stood next to God.

  What began to break my faith was that, try as I might, I couldn’t hide, I couldn’t evade, that Mr. Muhammad, instead of facing what he had done before his followers, as a human weakness or as fulfillment of prophecy—which I sincerely believe that Muslims would have understood, or at least they would have accepted—Mr. Muhammad had, instead, been willing to hide, to cover up what he had done.

  That was my major blow.

  That was how I first began to realize that I had believed in Mr. Muhammad more than he believed in himself.

  And that was how, after twelve years of never thinking for as much as five minutes about myself, I became able finally to muster the nerve, and the strength, to start facing the facts, to think for myself.

  Briefly I left Florida to return Betty and the children to our Long Island home. I learned that the Chicago Muslim officials were further displeased with me because of the newspaper reports of me in the Cassius Clay camp. They felt that Cassius hadn’t a prayer of a chance to win. They felt the Nation would be embarrassed through my linking the Muslim image with him. (I don’t know if the champion today cares to remember that most newspapers in America were represented at the pre-fight camp—except Muhammad Speaks. Even though Cassius was a Muslim brother, the Muslim newspaper didn’t consider his fight worth covering.)