The Autobiography of Malcolm X

by Malcolm X

Let sincere whites go and teach non-violence to white people!

Anything I do today, I regard as urgent.

I have often known unexpected drastic changes.

I would not be one bit ashamed to go back into any New York City public school and start where I left off at the ninth grade, and go on through a degree.

his press, is going to identify me with “hate.” He will make use of me dead, as he has made use of me alive, as a convenient symbol of “hatred”—and

almost fanatical obsession about time. “I have less patience with someone who doesn’t wear a watch than with anyone else, for this type is not time-conscious,” he had once told me. “In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determines success or failure.”

Malcolm X was also convinced that the F.B.I. had “bugged” my studio; he probably suspected that it may even have been done with my cooperation.

“Testing, testing—one, two, three….”

Lol

“Here lies a YM, killed by a BM, fighting for the WM, who killed all the RM.”

“Only persons really changed history those who changed men’s thinking about themselves. Hitler as well as Jesus, Stalin as well as Buddha…Hon. Elijah Muhammad….”

“You never can fully trust any woman,” he said. “I’ve got the only one I ever met whom I would trust seventy-five percent. I’ve told her that,” he said. “I’ve told her like I tell you I’ve seen too many men destroyed by their wives, or their women.

“I don’t completely trust anyone,”

THEM.” (The capitalized letters stood for The Honorable Elijah Muhammad.)

Malcolm X caught himself and sat back down, and for the rest of that session he was decidedly grumpy.

‘If you don’t, I’ll start a rumor that you’re really a light Negro just passing as white.’ That shows you what the white devil thinks about the black man. He’d rather die than be thought a Negro!”

“In the hectic pace of the world today, there is no time for meditation, or for deep thought.

I’d put prison second to college as the best place for a man to go if he needs to do some thinking. If he’s motivated, in prison he can change his life.”

(Malcolm X never publicly recanted this statement,

I wonder if it’s a matter of standing your ground for him…

“That’s one of the things I wish I had never said.”)

The “extremist” or “demagogue” accusation invariably would burn Malcolm X.

“These Uncle Toms make me think about how the Prophet Jesus was criticized in his own country!” Malcolm X promptly got up and silently took my notebook, tore out that page and crumpled it and put it into his pocket, and he was considerably subdued during the remainder of that session.

Lmfao, I get his point. He was always thinking about the bigger picture

‘Now, there’s a reporter who hasn’t taken a note in half an hour, but as soon as I start talking about the Jews, he’s busy taking notes to prove that I’m anti-Semitic’

I later heard somewhere, or read, that Malcolm X telephoned an apology to the reporter.

he was the only Negro in America who could either start a race riot—or stop one.

“I’m the only black man they’ve ever been close to who they know speaks the truth to them,”

“He must think I’m nuts! What am I going to look like going speaking with a devil!”

privately intrigued to hear little-known things about Malcolm X that I told him;

(But from other things that Malcolm X said to me at various times, I deduced that he actually had a reluctant admiration for Dr. King.)

he enjoyed being around someone, another man, with whom he could psychically relax.

“I trust you seventy percent”—and

Lol, I wonder if Malcolm really said that seriously or if he had a dry sense of humor

he could tell a lot about any person by listening. “There’s an art to listening well,” he told me. “I listen closely to the sound of a man’s voice when he’s speaking. I can hear sincerity.”

“I don’t blame your people for turning to you. If I were a Negro I’d follow you, too. Keep up the fight!” Malcolm X said to the man very sincerely, “I wish I could have a white chapter of the people I meet like you.”

“Not only don’t write that, never repeat it. Mr. Muhammad would have a fit.”

first time I had ever heard him speak of Elijah Muhammad with anythin...

Bro.

??? 😂😂😂😂 did not expect Malcolm X to say bro

“Dear Alex Haley: A quick note. Would you prepare a properly worded letter that would enable me to change the reading of the contract so that all remaining proceeds now would go to the Muslim Mosque, Inc., or in the case of my death then to go directly to my wife, Mrs. Betty X Little?

“How is it possible to write one’s autobiography in a world so fast-changing as this?”

Evenly, Clay said, “You just don’t buck Mr. Muhammad and get away with it. I don’t want to talk about him no more.”

he had no wish whatever to see Malcolm X die, that he “would rather see him live and suffer his treachery.”

Actions speak louder than words

The general feeling among Harlemites, non-Muslims, with whom I talked was that Malcolm X had been powerful and influential enough a minister that eventually he would split the mosque membership into two hostile camps, and that in New York City at least, Elijah Muhammad’s unquestioned rule would be ended.

Malcolm X stared at the card, then out of the window, and he got up and walked around; one of the few times I ever heard his voice betray his hurt was when he said, “I felt like a blood big-brother to him.” He paused. “I’m not against him now. He’s a fine young man. Smart. He’s just let himself be used, led astray.”

he came the nearest to tears that I ever saw him, and also the only time I ever heard him use, for his race, one word.

“We had the best organization the black man’s ever had—niggers ruined it!”

One bad apple can fuck up the rest

“True, sir! My trip to Mecca has opened my eyes. I no longer subscribe to racism. I have adjusted my thinking to the point where I believe that whites are human beings”—a significant pause—“as long as this is borne out by their humane attitude toward Negroes.”

I’m not condemning whites for being whites, but for their deeds. I condemn what whites collectively have done to our people collectively.”

“I’ll explain it this way, sir. If some men are in a car, driving with a destination in mind, and you know they are going the wrong way, but they are convinced they are going the right way, then you get into the car with them, and ride with them, talking—and finally when they see they are on the wrong road, not getting where they were intending, then you tell them, and they will listen to you then, what road to take.”

They must realize they’re wrong first, before you can tell them the right way

What astonished me here was that I knew that on that day, Malcolm X’s schedule had been crushing, involving both a television and radio

appearance and a live speech, yet he had gone to find out something about the aardvark.

Lol

don’t strike at the puppet, strike at the puppeteer.”

“Anyone who wants to follow me and my movement has got to be ready to go to jail, to the hospital, and to the cemetery before he can be truly free.”