The Autobiography of Malcolm X

In 1959, journalist Louis Lomax asks Elijah Muhammad if the Nation of Islam would cooperate with him for a feature story on Mike Wallace’s television documentary program. Elijah Muhammad agrees. Around the same time, Boston University scholar C. Eric Lincoln begins writing his doctorate thesis on the Nation of Islam. As the media focuses increased attention on the Nation of Islam, Malcolm founds a Nation of Islam newspaper called Muhammad Speaks.

Later that year, the Mike Wallace documentary airs under the provocative title, The Hate That Hate Produced. Malcolm likens the panicked, incredulous public response to it to the way naïve audiences supposedly reacted to Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds broadcast about a fictional Martian invasion. Malcolm writes, “[The White man] loves himself so much that he is startled if he discovers that his victims don’t share his vainglorious self-opinion” (274).

Malcolm spends at least five hours a day on the phone, fielding calls from journalists, faith leaders, and politicians. The thrust of his counterargument against those who accuse the Nation of Islam of hate is, “For the white man to ask the black man if he hates him is just like the rapist asking the raped, or the wolf asking the sheep, ‘Do you hate me?’” (277). Malcolm points out that since White America can’t even agree to racial integration, it has no grounds to object to Nation of Islam’s stance on encouraging Black separation and self-sufficiency. He also uses his extensive knowledge of language and history to turn journalists’ words against them. For example, if a journalist mentions Abraham Lincoln, Malcolm unearths some of Lincoln’s most racist statements against Black people. And when accused of being a demagogue, Malcolm breaks down the word’s Greek roots as “teacher of the people” (278).

According to Malcolm, White elites enlisted Black civil rights leaders to characterize the Nation of Islam as “[a]n irresponsible hate cult” (275) and practitioners of “deplorable reverse-racism” (275). Malcolm is outraged by Black civil rights leaders, whom he views as begging for crumbs in the form of integration. That said, he rarely mentions these critics by name, due to Mr. Muhammad’s belief that one of White America’s strongest weapons is its efforts to divide Black people.

In his television and radio appearances, Malcolm repeatedly fields accusations of inciting violence. He responds by turning the accusation on its head:

The greatest miracle Christianity has achieved in America is that the black man in white Christian hands has not grown violent. It is a miracle that 22 million black people have not risen up against their oppressors—in which they would have been justified by all moral criteria, and even by the democratic tradition! (283).

Another major annoyance for Malcolm is that scholar C. Eric Lincoln’s book, though otherwise fair in its assessment of the Nation of Islam, is titled Black Muslims in America: “No! We are black people here in America. Our religion is Islam. We are properly called ‘Muslims’!” (284).

Malcolm also addresses the attention paid to the Nation of Islam by the FBI. In addition to tapping the phones of Malcolm and other ministers, the FBI sends Black agents to infiltrate the organization. Malcolm says many of these agents ultimately reveal their ruse and profess their loyalty to Elijah Muhammad after experiencing the Nation of Islam’s teachings firsthand.

In the wake of all this public attention, the Nation of Islam begins to hold massive rallies in New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., initially barring Whites from entry. At the rallies, Malcolm delivers an emphatic speech before inviting to the stage Elijah Muhammad, who talks for two hours to an awed crowd despite a steadily worsening respiratory disease. At the end, Malcolm asks the crowd to donate to the Nation of Islam, which, unlike other Black organizations, accepts neither money nor advice from White donors.

At the end of the chapter, Malcolm recalls that in private, Elijah Muhammad prophesied that Malcolm “will grow to be hated when you become well known. Because usually people get jealous of public figures” (305).

Most of the letters Malcolm receives in the wake of the documentary take issue with the Nation of Islam’s use of the term “white devils.” In response to this criticism, Malcolm emphasizes that it is a collective term that references the historical atrocities Whites perpetrated against Black men and women. He adds, “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!” (306).

Malcolm addresses efforts by White journalists to drive a wedge between the Nation of Islam and civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, whose tactics prize nonviolent protests. Rather than take the bait when asked about, for example, the Montgomery bus boycott, Malcolm redirects the conversation to argue that, by the same reasoning, Black men would be justified in boycotting the U.S. Army. Malcolm also criticizes the multiracial Northern Freedom Riders who travel South to boycott segregated buses. He argues that these activists should be protesting the abject poverty of Black neighborhoods in their own Northern cities. This reflects his broader antipathy toward Northern liberals who only pretend to be friends of Black Americans. He claims to prefer outright racists from the South because at least he knows where he stands with these individuals.

Malcolm’s criticism of mainstream civil rights leaders follows two main strains. First, he is sick of trying to secure so-called civil rights for Black Americans when they do not even have human rights. Second, he believes that the mainstream civil rights movement’s cautious approach only reinforces White America’s sense of superiority, an unsustainable lie that works to the detriment of Black and White Americans.

Malcolm outlines his opposition to integration. He believes the term is synonymous with assimilation, and points to Jews in early 20th century Germany as a cautionary tale against it. Despite making “greater contributions to Germany than Germans themselves had” (319), Jews became vulnerable to genocide because they thought they could assimilate.

Finally, Malcolm holds forth on the 1963 March on Washington—or, as he terms it, “The Farce on Washington” (320). According to Malcolm, at the behest of White elites mainstream civil rights leaders and organizations co-opted what began as a grassroots effort by largely lower-class Black men and women to march on the capital. The result was a toothless demonstration in which Black Americans sang anodyne songs and delivered anodyne speeches alongside “the very people they were supposed to be angrily revolting against” (323). Malcolm points out that this “‘integrated’ picnic” unsurprisingly did nothing to change the minds of any Congressperson who opposed the civil rights movement.