The Autobiography of Malcolm X

by Malcolm X

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.

So early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.

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.

“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.”

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.

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 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.

that anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you’re both engaged in the same business—you know they’re doing something that you aren’t.

A Judge McClellan in Lansing had authority over me and all of my brothers and sisters. We were “state children,” court wards; he had the full say-so over us. A white man in charge of a black man’s children! Nothing but legal, modern slavery—however kindly intentioned. —

I truly believe that if ever a state social agency destroyed a family, it destroyed ours. We wanted and tried to stay together. Our home didn’t have to be destroyed. But the Welfare, the courts, and their doctor, gave us the one-two-three punch. And ours was not the only case of this kind.

Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.

What I am trying to say is that it just never dawned upon them that I could understand, that I wasn’t a pet, but a human being. They didn’t give me credit for having the same sensitivity, intellect, and understanding that they would have been ready and willing to recognize in a white boy in my position.

But it has historically been the case with white people, in their regard for black people, that even though we might be with them, we weren’t considered of them. Even though they appeared to have opened the door, it was still closed. Thus they never did really see me.

The jukeboxes were wailing Erskine Hawkins’ “Tuxedo Junction,” Slim and Slam’s “Flatfoot Floogie,” things like that.

Lucky Thompson and Milt Jackson,

Later, I remember, we came to the textbook section on Negro history. It was exactly one paragraph long. Mr. Williams laughed through it practically in a single breath, reading aloud how the Negroes had been slaves and then were freed, and how they were usually lazy and dumb and shiftless.

Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade”—his band was riding high then—or the Ink Spots, who were also very popular, singing “If I Didn’t Care.”

But I know that Charlie Barnet’s “Cherokee” and his “Redskin Rhumba” drove

Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, Cootie Williams, Jimmie Lunceford

Johnny Hodges—he

From Small’s, I taxied over to the Apollo Theater. (I remember so well that Jay McShann’s band was playing, because his vocalist was later my close friend, Walter Brown, the one who used to sing “Hooty Hooty Blues.”) From

I walked in and saw, along that jam-packed bar, such famous stars as Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dinah Washington.

Lionel Hampton was appearing that night—she was then Hamp’s vocalist. The ballroom made the Roseland in Boston look small and shabby by comparison. And the lindy-hopping there matched the size and elegance of the place. Hampton’s hard-driving outfit kept a red-hot pace with his greats such as Arnett Cobb, Illinois Jacquet, Dexter Gordon, Alvin Hayse, Joe Newman, and George Jenkins. I went a couple of rounds on the floor with girls from the sidelines.

The people kept shouting for Hamp’s “Flyin’ Home,” and finally he did it. (I could believe the story I’d heard in Boston about this number—that once in the Apollo, Hamp’s “Flyin’ Home” had made some reefer-smoking Negro in the second balcony believe he could fly, so he tried—and jumped—and broke his leg, an event later immortalized in song when Earl Hines wrote a hit tune called “Second Balcony Jump.”)

Dinah Washington. When she did her “Salty Papa Blues,” those people just about tore the Savoy roof off.

My friends now included musicians like Duke Ellington’s great drummer, Sonny Greer, and that great personality with the violin, Ray Nance. He’s the one who used to sing in that wild “scat” style: “Blip-blip-de-blop-de-blam-blam—” And people like Cootie Williams, and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, who’d kid me about his conk—he had nothing up there but skin.

That, in fact, was one of my biggest surprises: that Harlem hadn’t always been a community of Negroes.

Today, all these same immigrants’ descendants are running as hard as they can to escape the descendants of the Negroes who helped to unload the immigrant ships.

immigrant musical chairs game

But I knew that the white man is rare who will ever consider that a Negro can outsmart him.

White women in league with Negroes was their main obsession. The girls weren’t so-called “tramps,” or “trash,” they were well-to-do upper-middle-class whites. That bothered the social workers and the forces of the law more than anything else. How, where, when, had I met them? Did we sleep together? Nobody wanted to know anything at all about the robberies. All they could see was that we had taken the white man’s women. I

But people are always speculating—why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from birth, must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient.

Any person who claims to have deep feeling for other human beings should think a long, long time before he votes to have other men kept behind bars—caged. I am not saying there shouldn’t be prisons, but there shouldn’t be bars. Behind bars, a man never reforms. He will never forget. He never will get completely over the memory of the bars.

I had experienced, for the first time, the Muslim teaching, “If you will take one step toward Allah—Allah will take two steps toward you.”

“You don’t even know who you are,” Reginald had said. “You don’t even know, the white devil has hidden it from you, that you are a race of people of ancient civilizations, and riches in gold and kings. You don’t even know your true family name, you wouldn’t recognize your true language if you heard it. You have been cut off by the devil white man from all true knowledge of your own kind. You have been a victim of the evil of the devil white man ever since he murdered and raped and stole you from your native land in the seeds of your forefathers….”

Stated another way: only guilt admitted accepts truth. The Bible again: the one people whom Jesus could not help were the Pharisees; they didn’t feel they needed any help.

I was going through the hardest thing, also the greatest thing, for any human being to do; to accept that which is already within you, and around you.

For evil to bend its knees, admitting its guilt, to implore the forgiveness of God, is the hardest thing in the world.

I’ve never been one for inaction. Everything I’ve ever felt strongly about, I’ve done something about.

Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened.

In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.

I can remember accurately the very first set of books that really impressed me. I have since bought that set of books and have it at home for my children to read as they grow up. It’s called Wonders of the World. It’s full of pictures of archeological finds, statues that depict, usually, non-European people. I found books like Will Durant’s Story of Civilization. I read H. G. Wells’ Outline of History. Souls Of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois gave me a glimpse into the black people’s history before they came to this country. Carter G. Woodson’s Negro History opened my eyes about black empires before the black slave was brought

Nat Turner wasn’t going around preaching pie-in-the-sky and “non-violent” freedom for the black man.

I read, I saw, how the white man never has gone among the non-white peoples bearing the Cross in the true manner and spirit of Christ’s teachings—meek, humble, and Christ-like.

Some observers inside Red China have reported that the world never has known such a hate-white campaign as is now going on in this non-white country where, present birth-rates continuing, in fifty more years Chinese will be half the earth’s population. And it seems that some Chinese chickens will soon come home to roost, with China’s recent successful nuclear tests.

Socrates, for instance, traveled in Egypt. Some sources even say that Socrates was initiated into some of the Egyptian mysteries. Obviously Socrates got some of his wisdom among the East’s wise men.

As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.

I can’t think of a better case! Four hundred years of black blood and sweat invested here in America, and the white man still has the black man begging for what every immigrant fresh off the ship can take for granted the minute he walks down the gangplank.

I’ll tell you something. The whole stream of Western philosophy has now wound up in a cul-de-sac.

Here is an example: a British anthropologist named Dr. Louise S. B. Leakey is displaying some fossil bones—a foot, part of a hand, some jaws, and skull fragments. On the basis of these, Dr. Leakey has said it’s time to rewrite completely the history of man’s origin.