The Autobiography of Malcolm X

by Malcolm X

could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man—and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their ‘differences’ in color.

turn to the spiritual path of truth—the only way left to America to ward off the disaster that racism inevitably must lead to.

Two American authors, best-sellers in the Holy Land, had helped to spread and intensify the concern for the American black man. James Baldwin’s books, translated, had made a tremendous impact, as had the book Black Like Me, by John Griffin.

I said that physically we Afro-Americans might remain in America, fighting for our Constitutional rights, but that philosophically and culturally we Afro-Americans badly needed to “return” to Africa—and to develop a working unity in the framework of Pan-Africanism.

The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks.

I’m a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”

believe it’s a crime for anyone who is being brutalized to continue to accept that brutality without doing something to defend himself. If that’s how “Christian” philosophy is interpreted, if that’s what Gandhian philosophy teaches, well, then, I will call them criminal philosophies.

The only true world solution today is governments guided by true religion—of the spirit.

St. Augustine, Florida—a city named for the black African saint who saved Catholicism from heresy—was

Under the steady lullabies sung by foxy liberals, the Northern Negro became a beggar. But the Southern Negro, facing the honestly snarling white man, rose up to battle that white man for his freedom—long before it happened in the North.

in the competitive American society, how can there ever be any white-black solidarity before there is first some black solidarity?

I said to Harlem street audiences that only when mankind would submit to the One God who created all—only then would mankind even approach the “peace” of which so much talk could be heard…but toward which so little action was seen.

on the American racial level, we had to approach the black man’s struggle against the white man’s racism as a human problem, that we had to forget hypocritical politics and propaganda.

black people had to build within themselves much greater awareness that along with equal rights there had to be the bearing of equal responsibilities.

Thicker each year in these ghettoes is the kind of teen-ager that I was—with the wrong kinds of heroes, and the wrong kinds of influences.

I saw Malcolm X too many times exhilarated in after-lecture give-and-take with predominantly white student bodies at colleges and universities to ever believe that he nurtured at his core any blanket white-hatred.

“True, sir! My trip to Mecca has opened my eyes. I no longer subscribe to racism.

blunt criticism of Malcolm X than ever before in his career. There were, variously expressed, two primary complaints. One was that actually Malcolm X only talked, but other civil-rights organizations were doing. “All he’s ever done was talk, CORE and SNCC and some of them people of Dr. King’s are out getting beat over the head.”

“He said he wanted to present an alternative; that it might be easier for whites to accept Martin’s proposals after hearing him (Malcolm X).

“Whenever you make any appointment with a minister,” he said to his young lady assistant, “you have to call them two or three hours before time, because they will change their mind. This is typical of ministers.”