The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“I’ve often thought that if Mr. Ostrowski had encouraged me to become a lawyer, I would today probably be among some city’s professional black bourgeoisie, sipping cocktails and palming myself off as a community spokesman for and leader of the suffering black masses, while my primary concern would be to grab a few more crumbs from the groaning board of the two-faced whites with whom they’re begging to ‘integrate.’ All praise is due to Allah that I went to Boston when I did. If I hadn’t, I’d probably still be a brainwashed black Christian.” 

The moment when Mr. Ostrowski tells Malcolm that his goal of becoming a lawyer is unrealistic is the first and perhaps most significant turning point in Malcolm’s life. It is the moment when the generally subtle racism he faces everyday mutates into an explicit expression of how much the world devalues him as a young Black man. Ultimately, Malcolm is grateful to have reached this epiphany so early, before embarking on a professional path that would have made him one of White Christian society’s brainwashed enablers.

“What I thought I was seeing there in Roxbury were high-class, educated, important Negroes, living well, working in big jobs and positions. Their quiet homes sat back in their mowed yards. These Negroes walked along the sidewalks looking haughty and dignified, on their way to work, to shop, to visit, to church. I know now, of course, that what I was really seeing was only a big-city version of those ‘successful’ Negro bootblacks and janitors back in Lansing. The only difference was that the ones in Boston had been brainwashed even more thoroughly.”

No matter where Malcolm looks, he sees variations of the same hierarchies in Black communities. Rather than view relatively prosperous Black professionals as evidence of progress, Malcolm believes Black communities are trained to be satisfied with a small amount of wealth separating them from only the very poorest in their community. To him, a bank teller in Boston is no better off than a janitor in Lansing because both have risen as far as they can in their respective local communities.

“How ridiculous I was! Stupid enough to stand there simply lost in admiration of my hair now looking ‘white,’ reflected in the mirror in Shorty’s room. I vowed that I’d never again be without a conk, and I never was for many years. This was my first really big step toward self-degradation: when I endured all of that pain, literally burning my flesh to have it look like a white man’s hair. I had joined that multitude of Negro men and women in America who are brainwashed into believing that the black people are ‘inferior’—and white people ‘superior’—that they will even violate and mutilate their God-created bodies to try to look ‘pretty’ by white standards.” 

Few things symbolize teenage Malcolm’s lack of Black pride more profoundly than his conked hair. In addition to the shame he feels at transforming his natural hair to look more like that of a White man’s, Malcolm is mortified to have gone to such painful and gruesome lengths to achieve this transformation. To conk one’s hair, he believes, is to tacitly submit to the precepts of White supremacy.

“Shorty felt about the war the same way I and most ghetto Negroes did: ‘Whitey owns everything. He wants us to go and bleed for him? Let him fight.’” 

Given the systemic racism Malcolm perceives in American culture, he is loath to risk his life in a war on behalf of Western democracy. Preserving a grim status quo that systematically oppresses Black Americans like himself understandably holds little interest for Malcolm. And while many Black men believe that helping the U.S. win World War II will bring them more respect at home, the historical record shows that racism continued largely unabated in the postwar era, at least until the Civil Rights Movement. In a particularly stark example, 1.2 million Black Americans were denied the benefits of the G.I. Bill—benefits that White veterans enjoyed on their way to forming a massive and prosperous middle class.

“The Germans came first; the Dutch edged away from them, and Harlem became all German. Then came the Irish, running from the potato famine. The Germans ran, looking down their noses at the Irish, who took over Harlem. Next, the Italians; same thing—the Irish ran from them. The Italians had Harlem when the Jews came down the gangplanks—and then the Italians left. Today, all these same immigrants’ descendants are running as hard as they can to escape the descendants of the Negroes who helped to unload the immigrant ships.” 

In detailing the history of Harlem, Malcolm identifies a trend in which European immigrants flee the neighborhood upon the arrival of a new ethnic group. It often takes only one generation for new European immigrants to be included under the banner of Whiteness. Yet African Americans, despite having ancestors who have lived in North America as long as any non-Indigenous peoples, are still subject to White supremacy and discriminated against by those groups of immigrants newly anointed as “White.”

“I’ve often reflected upon such black veteran numbers men as West Indian Archie. If they had lived in another kind of society, their exceptional mathematical talents might have been better used. But they were black.” 

One of Malcolm’s most salient themes is the loss of Black intellectual potential thanks to White supremacy. This is true of both street-level operators like West Indian Archie and Black professionals, many of whom Malcolm views as wasting their college degrees and relatively lofty positions in society by accepting and even enabling White oppression. This loss of potential harms White and Black Americans by limiting the nation’s collective intellectual and technological capital.

“Later, when I had learned the full truth about the white man, I reflected many times that the average burglary sentence for a first offender, as we all were, was about two years. But we weren’t going to get the average—not for our crime.” 

To Malcolm, the ten-year prison sentence he and Shorty receive does not reflect the severity of their burglary charges; rather, it reflects the court’s unease—and the unease of White America in general—over the idea of young affluent White women conspiring with Black men to commit crimes. Although Sophia and her younger sister were willing and enthusiastic participants in Malcolm and Shorty’s crime spree, the predominantly White justice system assumes that the Black men corrupted the purity of the White women, a longstanding narrative used during slavery to incite fears over emancipation and to justify lynchings and other acts of anti-Black terrorism in the Jim Crow era.

“Any person who claims to have deep feeling for other human beings should think a long, long time before he votes to have other men kept behind bars—caged. I am not saying there shouldn’t be prisons, but there shouldn’t be bars. Behind bars, a man never reforms. He will never forget. He never will get completely over the memory of the bars.” 

In addition to the practical consequences of having been incarcerated—disenfranchisement, housing discrimination, and employment discrimination—there are also psychological effects that linger for a lifetime. Malcolm suggests this is particularly true for Black Americans, who carry the inherited trauma of 250 years of bondage as enslaved people. When viewing The Autobiography of Malcolm X as a rehabilitative success story, one must give enormous credit to Ella for securing Malcolm’s transfer to the Norfolk Prison Colony, an experimental jail with no bars, only walls.

“Bimbi was known as the library’s best customer. What fascinated me with him most of all was that he was the first man I had ever seen command total respect […] with his words.” 

Watching Bimbi gain respect and influence among fellow incarcerated individuals by virtue of his words alone is a transformative turning point for Malcolm. Prior to meeting Bimbi, Malcolm viewed respect through the lens of the street hustler, whose credibility depends on threatening or carrying out acts of violence. Going forward, however, Malcolm cultivates his skills as an orator and debater, starting down the path to become one of the most important and sought-after public speakers in America.

“We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, my brothers and sisters—Plymouth Rock landed on us.”

In one of his most famous lines, Malcolm picks apart America’s origin narrative—the pilgrims who sailed the Mayflower from England to Plymouth Rock in 1620. For Malcolm, America’s true origin story began a year earlier, when the first enslaved Africans were kidnapped from their homes and trafficked to Point Comfort, Virginia. From the beginning, Malcolm argues, Black Americans were excluded from America’s historical and cultural mythology, despite the fact that its economy was built in large part using their forced labor.

“They called an ambulance. When it came and Brother Hinton was taken to Harlem Hospital, we Muslims followed, in loose formations, for about fifteen blocks along Lenox Avenue, probably the busiest thoroughfare in Harlem. Negroes who never had seen anything like this were coming out of stores and restaurants and bars and enlarging the crowd following us. The crowd was big, and angry, behind the Muslims in front of Harlem Hospital. Harlem’s black people were long since sick and tired of police brutality. And they never had seen any organization of black men take a firm stand as we were.” 

The Hinton Johnson incident is a pivotal moment for Malcolm and the Nation of Islam. Prior to this, it was enormously difficult for Malcolm and other ministers to recruit Black men and women, most of whom were too attached to Christianity, aligned with other Black nationalist groups, or simply apolitical. Yet through this display of Black solidarity and resistance in the face of police brutality, the Nation of Islam shows Black Americans how potent, committed, and uncompromising their organization is.

“Here was one of the white man’s most characteristic behavior patterns—where black men are concerned. He loves himself so much that he is startled if he discovers that his victims don’t share his vainglorious self-opinion.” 

Here, Malcolm responds to one of the most common White criticisms of the Nation of Islam: that the organization incites and spreads hatred of White Americans. For Malcolm, the accusation is ludicrous—he believes Black Americans need no special inducement to hate a group of people who systematically launch attacks on their rights and bodies. Yet White supremacy is so entrenched in American society that many Whites cannot reckon with the idea that Black men and women do not agree that this oppression is right and natural.

“‘Mr. Malcolm X, why do you teach black supremacy, and hate?’ A red flag waved for me, something chemical happened inside me, every time I heard that. When we Muslims had talked about ‘the devil white man’ he had been relatively abstract, someone we Muslims rarely actually came into contact with, but now here was that devil-in-the-flesh on the phone—with all of his calculating, cold-eyed, self-righteous tricks and nerve and gall. The voices questioning me became to me as breathing, living devils.” 

Malcolm confronts White America literally, through interviews and on talk shows, rather than confronting it in an abstract sense as he did previously. Malcolm is exasperated by the false equivalency struck by White journalists and politicians between Black supremacy and White supremacy. Enshrined in laws and customs that predate the Constitution, White supremacy involves social and civic superstructures that create and reinforce disproportionately negative outcomes for Black Americans. Thus, comparing “Black supremacy” to centuries-old systems of White supremacy is laughable to Malcolm.

“‘That was one of the greatest magical feats ever performed in America,’ I’d tell them. ‘Do you mean to tell me that nine Supreme Court judges, who are past masters of legal phraseology, couldn’t have worked their decision to make it stick as law? No! It was trickery and magic that told Negroes they were desegregated—Hooray! Hooray!—and at the same time it told whites ‘Here are your loopholes.’” 

“‘That was one of the greatest magical feats ever performed in America,’ I’d tell them. ‘Do you mean to tell me that nine Supreme Court judges, who are past masters of legal phraseology, couldn’t have worked their decision to make it stick as law? No! It was trickery and magic that told Negroes they were desegregated—Hooray! Hooray!—and at the same time it told whites ‘Here are your loopholes.’” 

“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! It is a miracle that a nation of black people has so fervently continued to believe in a turn-the-other-cheek and heaven-for-you-after-you-die philosophy! It is a miracle that the American black people have remained a peaceful people, while catching all the centuries of hell that they have caught, here in white man’s heaven.” 

When journalists accuse him of inciting violence, Malcolm effectively counters that Black Americans need no additional motivation from him to feel justified in engaging in violence, given centuries of White supremacist oppression. Of course, since the overwhelming majority of Black men and women are peaceful, both in their lives and in their protests, the accusation of inciting violence rings hollow. A Black person is far more likely to be a victim of violence—often at the hands of the state—than a perpetrator of violence.

“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.”

This is one of Malcolm’s most persuasive defenses for his use of the term “white devils.” Although many White journalists and public figures are deeply offended by the term, Malcolm insists that “devil” is a useful and appropriate abstraction to describe the evils perpetrated in the name of American White supremacy. Malcolm sees no better way to characterize the torture and rape of the slave trade, the brutal lynchings of the Jim Crow South, and the dire economic conditions Black Americans face in Northern cities, than as the work of devils.

“Yes, I was there. I observed that circus. Who ever heard of angry revolutionists all harmonizing ‘We Shall Overcome…Suum Day…’ while tripping and swaying along arm-in-arm with the very people they were supposed to be angrily revolting against? Who ever heard of angry revolutionists swinging their bare feet together with their oppressor in lily-pad park pools, with gospels and guitars and ‘I Have a Dream’ speeches.” 

In Malcolm’s telling, the 1963 March on Washington was not the monumental event that popular American consciousness assumes it to be. The event was originally designed to be an informal grassroots march where poor and working-class Black Americans could air their grievances. Malcolm claims that the White establishment, through more moderate civil rights activists like Martin Luther King, Jr., co-opted the march, diluting the righteous anger Malcolm hoped to see displayed during the event.

“The black man in North America was sickest of all politically. He let the white man divide him into such foolishness as considering himself a black ‘Democrat,’ a black ‘Republican,’ a black ‘Conservative,’ or a black ‘Liberal’…when a ten-million black vote bloc could be the deciding balance of power in American politics, because the white man’s vote is almost always evenly divided.”

As Malcolm imagines a new movement independent of the Nation of Islam, he envisions creating a Black lobby with even more political influence than the biggest industry lobbies in America. This reflects Malcolm’s growing ambitions once he is no longer restrained by Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. It also reflects how sophisticated Malcolm’s thinking has become when it comes to building potent political coalitions within oppressive power structures.

“That morning was when I first began to reappraise the ‘white man.’ It was when I first began to perceive that ‘white man,’ as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. In America, ‘white man’ meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about ‘white’ men.” 

In his final major turning point of the book, Malcolm reaches an epiphany about the capacity for White and Black individuals to coexist. Given everything he saw, felt, and lost as a young Black man in America, Malcolm’s prior lack of faith in racial harmony is understandable. Only when he visits Mecca and sees a community of men and women united in their faith does he acknowledge that there are some things that transcend even race—that seemingly unbridgeable divide in America. Malcolm harbors no illusions about the severity of U.S. racial tensions that rest on a foundation of centuries-old White supremacy. Yet the mere fact that Malcolm finally acknowledges this possibility is a radical transformation of his opinion about White people’s potential role in the fight for Black human rights.

“Right there at my Ghanaian breakfast table was where I made up my mind that as long as I was in Africa, every time I opened my mouth, I was going to make things hot for that white man, grinning through his teeth wanting to exploit Africa again—it had been her human wealth the last time, now he wanted Africa’s mineral wealth.” 

Malcolm is prescient about White America’s ambitions for Africa’s natural resources. Although the transfer of resource wealth from Africa to Western superpowers was already under way when Malcolm visited the continent, these efforts accelerated dramatically in the last third of the 20th century and continue unabated into the present day. In collaboration with international financial institutions like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, multinational corporations extract tens of billions of dollars of wealth each year from African nations through natural resource industries.

“I knew I was back in America again, hearing the subjective, scapegoat-seeking questions of the white man. New York white youth were killing victims; that was a ‘sociological’ problem. But when black youth killed somebody, the power structure was looking to hang somebody. When black men had been lynched or otherwise murdered in cold blood, it was always said, ‘Things will get better.’ When whites had rifles in their homes, the Constitution gave them the right to protect their home and themselves. But when black people even spoke of having rifles in their homes, that was ‘ominous.’” 

Malcolm observes stark double standards in debates about race in America. White people see gun rights through the Second Amendment: Gun ownership is a form of performative patriotism. Yet Black Americans, beset by state and private violence, seeking armed self-defense, is a source of controversy for frightened Whites. Moreover, Malcolm argues that when White people commit murders, no one holds White political leaders responsible.

“Well, I 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.”

Given his resistance to White supremacist efforts to divide Black activists, Malcolm is reluctant to attack moderate civil rights leaders by name. Nevertheless, he feels compelled to explain his stance on protest philosophies that prioritize nonviolence. While Malcolm understands the tactical value of nonviolent protest and is not violent himself, he is loath to follow any philosophy that requires a person to endure violence without complaint. In fact, he views this as another example of how Christianity, as many Black civil rights leaders interpret it, is ill suited to the problems of Black Americans.

“I said I felt that as far as the American black man was concerned they were both just about the same. I felt that it was for the black man only a question of Johnson, the fox, or Goldwater, the wolf. ‘Conservatism’ in America’s politics means ‘Let’s keep the n*****s in their place.’ And ‘liberalism’ means ‘Let’s keep the knee-grows in their place—but tell them we’ll treat them a little better; let’s fool them more, with more promises.” 

Some of Malcolm’s most vitriolic attacks target White liberals. According to Malcolm, liberals and conservatives are equally invested in White supremacy, so these liberals are barely more helpful to the cause of Black Americans than ultraconservative segregationists. The key difference is that liberals deceive Black Americans into believing they have their best interests in mind to attract their support as voters. This is a point of some contention. President Lyndon Johnson’s legacy as a civil rights leader is enormously complex. While he played a significant role in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he also spent much of his career as a Senator stonewalling civil rights legislation and supporting segregation, to say nothing of his casual racism in private conversation.