The Autobiography of Malcolm X

by Malcolm X

I had not intended to stray off. I had been telling how in 1963, I was trying to cope with the white newspaper, radio, and television reporters who were determined to defeat Mr. Muhammad’s teachings. I developed a mental image of reporters as human ferrets—steadily sniffing, darting, probing for some way to trick me, somehow to corner me in our interview exchanges. Let some civil rights “leader” make some statement, displeasing to the white public power structure, and the reporters, in an effort to whip him back into line, would try to use me. I’ll give an example. I’d get a question like this: “Mr. Malcolm X, you’ve often gone on record as disapproving of the sit-ins and similar Negro protest actions—what is your opinion of the Montgomery boycott that Dr. King is leading?” Now my feeling was that although the civil rights “leaders” kept attacking us Muslims, still they were black people, still they were our own kind, and I would be most foolish to let the white man maneuver me against the civil rights movement. When I was asked about the Montgomery boycott, I’d carefully review what led up to it. Mrs. Rosa Parks was riding home on a bus and at some bus stop the white cracker bus driver ordered Mrs. Parks to get up and give her seat to some white passenger who had just got on the bus. I’d say, “Now, just imagine that! This good, hard-working, Christian-believing black woman, she’s paid her money, she’s in her seat. Just because she’s black, she’s asked to get up! I mean, s...