The Autobiography of Malcolm X

by Malcolm X

I preferred the solitary that this behavior brought me. I would pace for hours like a caged leopard, viciously cursing aloud to myself. And my favorite targets were the Bible and God. But there was a legal limit to how much time one could be kept in solitary. Eventually, the men in the cellblock had a name for me: “Satan.” Because of my antireligious attitude.

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. The very enormity of my previous life’s guilt prepared me to accept the truth.

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.

The hardest test I ever faced in my life was praying. You understand. My comprehending, my believing the teachings of Mr. Muhammad had only required my mind’s saying to me, “That’s right!” or “I never thought of that.” But bending my knees to pray—that act—well, that took me a week.

For evil to bend its knees, admitting its guilt, to implore the forgiveness of God, is the hardest thing in the world. It’s easy for me to see and to say that now. But then, when I was the personification of evil, I was going through it. Again, again, I would force myself back down into the praying-to-Allah posture. When finally I was able to make myself stay down—I didn’t know what to say to Allah.

If the American black man will start thinking about his human rights, and then start thinking of himself as part of one of the world’s great peoples, he will see he has a case for the United Nations.

Schopenhauer, Kant, Nietzsche, naturally, I read all of those. I don’t respect them; I am just trying to remember some of those whose theories I soaked up in those years. These three, it’s said, laid the groundwork on which the Fascist and Nazi philosophy was built. I don’t respect them because it seems to me that most of their time was spent arguing about things that are not really important. They remind me of so many of the Negro “intellectuals,” so-called, with whom I have come in contact—they are always arguing about something useless.

You have to be careful, very careful, introducing the truth to the black man who has never previously heard the truth about himself, his own kind, and the white man. My brother Reginald had told me that all Muslims experienced this in their recruiting for Mr. Muhammad. The black brother is so brainwashed that he may even be repelled when he first hears the truth. Reginald advised that the truth had to be dropped only a little bit at a time. And you had to wait a while to let it sink in before advancing the next step.

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

Reginald was not leading the disciplined life of a Muslim. And I knew that Elijah Muhammad was right, and my blood brother was wrong. Because right is right, and wrong is wrong. Little did I then realize the day would come when Elijah Muhammad would be accused by his own sons as being guilty of the same acts of immorality that he judged Reginald and so many others for.

After Elijah Muhammad himself was later accused as a very immoral man, I came to believe that it wasn’t a divine chastisement upon Reginald, but the pain he felt when his own family totally rejected him for Elijah Muhammad, and this hurt made Reginald turn insanely upon Elijah Muhammad.

I had never dreamed of anything like that atmosphere among black people who had learned to be proud they were black, who had learned to love other black people instead of being jealous and suspicious. I thrilled to how we Muslim men used both hands to grasp a black brother’s both hands, voicing and smiling our happiness to meet him again. The Muslim sisters, both married and single, were given an honor and respect that I’d never seen black men give to their women, and it felt wonderful to me.

Mr. Muhammad and I are not together today only because of envy and jealousy. I had more faith in Elijah Muhammad than I could ever have in any other man upon this earth.

My application had, of course, been made and during this time I received from Chicago my “X.” The Muslim’s “X” symbolized the true African family name that he never could know. For me, my “X” replaced the white slavemaster name of “Little” which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed upon my paternal forebears. The receipt of my “X” meant that forever after in the nation of Islam, I would be known as Malcolm X. Mr. Muhammad taught that we would keep this “X” until God Himself returned and gave us a Holy Name from His own mouth.

“Do you know why the white man really hates you? It’s because every time he sees your face, he sees a mirror of his crime—and his guilty conscience can’t bear to face it!

One day, I remember, a dirty glass of water was on a counter and Mr. Muhammad put a clean glass of water beside it. “You want to know how to spread my teachings?” he said, and he pointed to the glasses of water. “Don’t condemn if you see a person has a dirty glass of water,” he said, “just show them the clean glass of water that you have. When they inspect it, you won’t have to say that yours is better.” Of all the things that Mr. Muhammad ever was to teach me, I don’t know why, that still stands out in my mind, although I haven’t always practiced it. I love too much to battle. I’m inclined to tell somebody if his glass of water is dirty.

I would sit, galvanized, hearing what I then accepted from Mr. Muhammad’s own mouth as being the true history of our religion, the true religion for the black man. Mr. Muhammad told me that one evening he had a revelation that Master W. D. Fard represented the fulfillment of the prophecy.

The dramatization of slavery never failed intensely to arouse Negroes hearing its horrors spelled out for the first time. It’s unbelievable how many black men and women have let the white man fool them into holding an almost romantic idea of what slave days were like. And once I had them fired up with slavery, I would shift the scene to themselves.

And the big trouble, obviously, was that we were only one among the many voices of black discontent on every busy Harlem corner. The different Nationalist groups, the “Buy Black!” forces, and others like that; dozens of their step-ladder orators were trying to increase their followings. I had nothing against anyone trying to promote independence and unity among black men, but they still were making it tough for Mr. Muhammad’s voice to be heard.

I had learned early one important thing, and that was to always teach in terms that the people could understand. Also, where the Nationalists whom we had “fished” were almost all men, among the storefront Christians, a heavy preponderance were women, and I had the sense to offer something special for them.

The code, of course, had to be explained to any who were tentatively interested in becoming Muslims. And the word got around in their little storefronts quickly, which is why they would come to hear me, yet wouldn’t join Mr. Muhammad. Any fornication was absolutely forbidden in the Nation of Islam. Any eating of the filthy pork, or other injurious or unhealthful foods; any use of tobacco, alcohol, or narcotics. No Muslim who followed Elijah Muhammad could dance, gamble, date, attend movies, or sports, or take long vacations from work. Muslims slept no more than health required. Any domestic quarreling, any discourtesy, especially to women, was not allowed. No lying or stealing, and no insubordination to civil authority, except on the grounds of religious obligation.

I have had probably a couple of hundred Muslims tell me that it was attending one of our funerals for a departed brother or sister that first turned them toward Allah. But I was to learn later that Mr. Muhammad’s teaching about death and the Muslim funeral service was in drastic contradiction to what Islam taught in the East.

I wouldn’t have considered it possible for me to love any woman. I’d had too much experience that women were only tricky, deceitful, untrustworthy flesh. I had seen too many men ruined, or at least tied down, or in some other way messed up by women. Women talked too much. To tell a woman not to talk too much was like telling Jesse James not to carry a gun, or telling a hen not to cackle. Can you imagine Jesse James without a gun, or a hen that didn’t cackle? And for anyone in any kind of a leadership position, such as I was, the worst thing in the world that he could have was the wrong woman. Even Samson, the world’s strongest man, was destroyed by the woman who slept in his arms. She was the one whose words hurt him.

Attallah, our oldest daughter, was born in November 1958. She’s named for Attilah the Hun (he sacked Rome). Shortly after Attallah came, we moved to our present seven-room house in an all-black section of Queens, Long Island. Another girl, Qubilah (named after Qubilah Khan) was born on Christmas Day of 1960. Then, Ilyasah (“Ilyas” is Arabic for “Elijah”) was born in July 1962. And in 1964 our fourth daughter, Amilah, arrived.

Even so, my bitterness was less against the white press than it was against those Negro “leaders” who kept attacking us. Mr. Muhammad said he wanted us to try our best not to publicly counterattack the black “leaders” because one of the white man’s tricks was keeping the black race divided and fighting against each other. Mr. Muhammad said that this had traditionally kept the black people from achieving the unity which was the worst need of the black race in America.

“No sane black man really wants integration! No sane white man really wants integration! No sane black man really believes that the white man ever will give the black man anything more than token integration. No! The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches that for the black man in America the only solution is complete separation from the white man!”

The Western world’s most learned diplomats have failed to solve this grave race problem. Her learned legal experts have failed. Her sociologists have failed. Her civil leaders have failed. Her fraternal leaders have failed. Since all of these have failed to solve this race problem, it is time for us to sit down and reason! I am certain that we will be forced to agree that it takes God Himself to solve this grave racial dilemma.”

Every time I mentioned “separation,” some of them would cry that we Muslims were standing for the same thing that white racists and demagogues stood for. I would explain the difference. “No! We reject segregation even more militantly than you say you do! We want separation, which is not the same! The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that segregation is when your life and liberty are controlled, regulated, by someone else. To segregate means to control. Segregation is that which is forced upon inferiors by superiors. But separation is that which is done voluntarily, by two equals—for the good of both!

“The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the first black leader among us with the courage to tell us—out here in public—something which when you begin to think of it back in your homes, you will realize we black people have been living with, we have been seeing, we have been suffering, all of our lives! “Our enemy is the white man! “And why is Mr. Muhammad’s teaching us this such a great thing? Because when you know who your enemy is, he can no longer keep you divided, and fighting, one brother against the other! Because when you recognize who your enemy is, he can no longer use trickery, promises, lies, hypocrisy, and his evil acts to keep you deaf, dumb, and blinded!

“My black brothers and sisters—no one will know who we are…until we know who we are! We never will be able to go anywhere until we know where we are! The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is giving us a true identity, and a true position—the first time they have ever been known to the American black man!

As the addict’s new image of himself builds, inevitably he begins thinking that he can break the habit. For the first time he is feeling the effects of black self-pride. That’s a powerful combination for a man who has been existing in the mud of society. In fact, once he is motivated no one can change more completely than the man who has been at the bottom. I call myself the best example of that.

Our businesses sought to demonstrate to the black people what black people could do for themselves—if they would only unify, trade with each other—exclusively where possible—and hire each other, and in so doing, keep black money within the black communities, just as other minorities did.

Only a few of the letters fell into the “Dear Nigger X” category, or the death-threats. Most of my mail exposed to me the white man’s two major dreads. The first one was his own private belief that God wrathfully is going to destroy this civilization. And the white man’s second most pervading dread was his image of the black man entering the body of the white woman.

“Unless we call one white man, by name, a ‘devil,’ we are not speaking of any individual white man. We are speaking of the collective white man’s historical record. We are speaking of the collective white man’s cruelties, and evils, and greeds, that have seen him act like a devil toward the non-white man. Any intelligent, honest, objective person cannot fail to realize that this white man’s slave trade, and his subsequent devilish actions are directly responsible for not only the presence of this black man in America, but also for the condition in which we find this black man here. You cannot find one black man, I do not care who he is, who has not been personally damaged in some way by the devilish acts of the collective white man!”

Do you realize this is one of the major reasons why America’s white man has so easily contained and oppressed America’s black man? Because until just lately, among the few educated Negroes scarcely any applied their education, as I am forced to say the white man does—in searching and creative thinking, to further themselves and their own kind in this competitive, materialistic, dog-eat-dog white man’s world. For generations, the so-called “educated” Negroes have “led” their black brothers by echoing the white man’s thinking—which naturally has been to the exploitive white man’s advantage.

Today, in many ways the black man sees the collective white man in America better than that white man can see himself. And the 22 million blacks realize increasingly that physically, politically, economically, and even to some degree socially, the aroused black man can create a turmoil in white America’s vitals—not to mention America’s international image.

“I can’t turn around without hearing about some ‘civil rights advance’! White people seem to think the black man ought to be shouting ‘hallelujah’! Four hundred years the white man has had his foot-long knife in the black man’s back—and now the white man starts to wiggle the knife out, maybe six inches! The black man’s supposed to be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it’s still going to leave a scar!”

Yes, I will pull off that liberal’s halo that he spends such efforts cultivating! The North’s liberals have been for so long pointing accusing fingers at the South and getting away with it that they have fits when they are exposed as the world’s worst hypocrites.

The white Southerner was always given his due by Mr. Muhammad. The white Southerner, you can say one thing—he is honest. He bares his teeth to the black man; he tells the black man, to his face, that Southern whites never will accept phony “integration.” The Southern white goes further, to tell the black man that he means to fight him every inch of the way—against even the so-called “tokenism.” The advantage of this is the Southern black man never has been under any illusions about the opposition he is dealing with.

So what’s bound to face “integrated” marriages, except being unwelcomed, unwanted, “misfits” in whichever world they try to live in? What we arrive at is that “integration,” socially, is no good for either side. “Integration,” ultimately, would destroy the white race…and destroy the black race.

Why, some downtrodden, jobless, hungry Negro might have gotten trampled. Those “integration”-mad Negroes practically ran over each other trying to find out where to sign up. The “angry blacks” March suddenly had been made chic. Suddenly it had a Kentucky Derby image. For the status-seeker, it was a status symbol. “Were you there?” You can hear that right today.

At the outset, always I’d confront such panels with something such as: “Gentlemen, I finished the eighth grade in Mason, Michigan. My high school was the black ghetto of Roxbury, Massachusetts. My college was in the streets of Harlem, and my master’s was taken in prison. Mr. Muhammad has taught me that I never need fear any man’s intellect who tries to defend or to justify the white man’s criminal record against the non-white man—especially the white man and the black man here in North America.”

“Time and time again, the black, the brown, the red, and the yellow races have witnessed and suffered the white man’s small ability to understand the simple notes of the spirit. The white man seems tone deaf to the total orchestration of humanity. Every day, his newspapers’ front pages show us the world that he has created.

But around 1963, if anyone had noticed, I spoke less and less of religion. I taught social doctrine to Muslims, and current events, and politics. I stayed wholly off the subject of morality. And the reason for this was that my faith had been shaken in a way that I can never fully describe. For I had discovered Muslims had been betrayed by Elijah Muhammad himself.

The question-and-answer period opened, I suppose inevitably, with someone asking me, “What do you think about President Kennedy’s assassination? What is your opinion?” Without a second thought, I said what I honestly felt—that it was, as I saw it, a case of “the chickens coming home to roost.” I said that the hate in white men had not stopped with the killing of defenseless black people, but that hate, allowed to spread unchecked, finally had struck down this country’s Chief of State. I said it was the same thing as had happened with Medgar Evers, with Patrice Lumumba, with Madame Nhu’s husband.

I hadn’t hustled in the streets for years for nothing. I knew when I was being set up. Three days later, the first word came to me that a Mosque Seven official who had been one of my most immediate assistants was telling certain Mosque Seven brothers: “If you knew what the Minister did, you’d go out and kill him yourself.” And then I knew. As any official in the Nation of Islam would instantly have known, any death-talk for me could have been approved of—if not actually initiated—by only one man.

I walked, I talked, I functioned. At the Cassius Clay fight camp, I told the various sports writers repeatedly what I gradually had come to know within myself was a lie—that I would be reinstated within ninety days. But I could not yet let myself psychologically face what I knew: that already the Nation of Islam and I were physically divorced. Do you understand what I mean? A judge’s signature on a piece of paper can grant to a couple a physical divorce—but for either of them, or maybe for both of them, if they have been a very close marriage team, to actually become psychologically divorced from each other might take years.

Any Muslim would have known that my “chickens coming home to roost” statement had been only an excuse to put into action the plan for getting me out. And step one had been already taken: the Muslims were given the impression that I had rebelled against Mr. Muhammad. I could now anticipate step two: I would remain “suspended” (and later I would be “isolated”) indefinitely. Step three would be either to provoke some Muslim ignorant of the truth to take it upon himself to kill me as a “religious duty”—or to “isolate” me so that I would gradually disappear from the public scene.

The death talk was not my fear. Every second of my twelve years with Mr. Muhammad, I had been ready to lay down my life for him. The thing to me worse than death was the betrayal. I could conceive death. I couldn’t conceive betrayal—not of the loyalty which I had given to the Nation of Islam, and to Mr. Muhammad. During the previous twelve years, if Mr. Muhammad had committed any civil crime punishable by death, I would have said and tried to prove that I did it—to save him—and I would have gone to the electric chair, as Mr. Muhammad’s servant.

The first direct order for my death was issued through a Mosque Seven official who previously had been a close assistant. Another previously close assistant of mine was assigned to do the job. He was a brother with a knowledge of demolition; he was asked to wire my car to explode when I turned the ignition key. But this brother, it happened, had seen too much of my total loyalty to the Nation to carry out his order. Instead, he came to me. I thanked him for my life. I told him what was really going on in Chicago. He was stunned almost beyond belief.