The Autobiography of Malcolm X

by Malcolm X

“The white man is the devil” is a perfect echo of that black convict’s lifelong experience.

Latin root word adorare. It means much more than our “adoration” or “adore.” It means that my worship of him was so awesome that he was the first man whom I had ever feared—not fear such as of a man with a gun, but the fear such as one has of the power of the sun.

People such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, The Clara Ward Singers are examples, and there must be five hundred lesser lights of the same general order. Mahalia Jackson, the greatest of them all—she was a preacher’s daughter in Louisiana.

I once read that Mahalia said that every time she can, she will slip unannounced into some ghetto storefront church and sing with her people. She calls that “my filling station.”

You’ve heard that saying, “No man is a hero to his valet.” Well, those Negroes who waited on wealthy whites hand and foot opened their eyes quicker than most Negroes.

He said, one time, that no true leader burdened his followers with a greater load than they could carry, and no true leader sets too fast a pace for his followers to keep up.

“The Christian religion is incompatible with the Negro’s aspirations for dignity and equality in America,” the student had written. “It has hindered where it might have helped; it has been evasive when it was morally bound to be forthright; it has separated believers on the basis of color, although it has declared its mission to be a universal brotherhood under Jesus Christ. Christian love is the white man’s love for himself and for his race. For the man who is not white, Islam is the hope for justice and equality in the world we must build tomorrow.”