The Autobiography of Malcolm X

[theradicalchild]

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In grade school and college, I've always known about classic civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and what he stood for, but less about his contemporary and rival Malcolm X, who I knew had a different vision for Black America at the time and I knew opposed abrupt racial integration contrary to Dr. King, which I actually agree wasn't the best idea as many whites weren't remotely ready to accept blacks as equals (and vice versa, which still rings true in the modern United States). Leaders like X believed in black empowerment, which I definitely believe should have come well before racial integration.

I knew Malcolm X had written an autobiography with the help of black author Alex Haley, although I would not actually begin to read it until decades after I first heard about it. The Autobiography of Malcolm X opens with an introduction by M.S. Handler (nice name), where he describes his wife having tea with X akin to doing so with a black panther, which I assume is how the Black Panther Party got its name. X originally subscribed to Elijah Muhammad's history of the origins of man and the alleged genetic superiority of blacks over whites, but ultimately broke upon personal experiences with the latter and no longer believing them to be "devils," and that he had yet to fully comprehend Islam, being assassinated before his new ideology came to full fruition.

The first chapter begins with Malcolm X relating how Ku Klux Klansmen surrounded his home his Omaha, Nebraska due to his father, Reverend Earl Little's, belief in Marcus Garvey's back-to-Africa movement causing him hardship due to his alleged spreading trouble among the city's "good" Negroes. His family would ultimately move to Lansing, Michigan, only to discover the Negro equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan, The Black Legion, which would be a partial suspect in the death of his father, after which welfare officers would eventually drive his mother to mental illness and death, his family afterward breaking apart.

Malcolm X and his brother Philbert would become boxers, with the former noting that sports and showbusiness would be the only surefire businesses readily available to blacks. However, a match with a white boy would end his career, and the classic prank of a thumbtack on his teacher's chair would get him sent to reform school, where he was, ironically, treated well, in spite of regular use of the N-word. X would disdain the racial integration-hungry blacks at the institute and their white liberal friends, and would eventually be sent to a white school, where he would be mocked for his dream of becoming a lawyer, at which time he began to become prejudiced against whites.

He would find himself out of place in Boston when he ultimately moved there to be close to his sister Ella, with the high-class blacks looking down on the lower-class ones. X would visit the town's ghetto and shoot pool, meeting a man he called Shorty he would befriend. Another friend, Freddie, would teach him to become a shoeshiner at segregated dance parties, where he would earn money and buy a zoot, which was a clothing trend of the time. He could comb his hair with congolene, which burned his scalp, after which he would feel degradation for getting a conk hairstyle.

One day at his shoeshining gig, Malcolm X's Negro instincts would kick in at a dance party and really got down with it, after which he would quit due to whites mocking him. He would get a second zoot, afterward remembering his dance partner Laura and then becoming a soda jerk at a pharmacy. Laura suggests he try to become a lawyer again, with X's sister being impressed. He would cheat on Laura (not sexually) by dancing with Mamie, but Laura would suggest entering a dance competition, only for Shorty's love Sophia to get in the way. Laura would ultimately become a lesbian, after which X would become a busboy at a hotel and hear about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

He would get a railroad job in New York City, lying about his age, and at which time blacks were concerned about the draft due to America's entry into the Second World War. Malcolm X would visit Small's Place in Harlem and visit the NYC district's hotels, with the note that the district was essentially forbidden to white servicemen at the time. He indicates that white people were so obsessed with their importance that they would pay liberally for the impression of being catered to and entertained. X further gives factoids about the backstory of Harlem beginning with its being a Dutch settlement and that the other city districts would before be stomping grounds for blacks, alongside the American Communist Party being the first political party to have a black Vice-Presidential candidate.

Malcolm X would gamble the tips he received from his job, noting various gambling lingo and mentioning the Forty Thieves gang that specialized in clothing. He indicates that the "morals" of servicemen were heavily guarded, alongside the "Four Horsemen," who were the chief cops policing Sugar Hill, and included West Indian Brisbane. X received word of the morals of white men from women, with said men wanting to get away from wives that he termed psychologically-castrating. He would get exiled from Small's after playing into a black military spy, and while he would keep his railroad permit and work other lines, the draft board would catch up to him. X would ultimately be rejected from the Army due to his zoot mannerisms during a military psychologist's interrogation.

He would get into elicit businesses such as gambling at Grand Central Terminal and would do other extralegal activities such as becoming a robber and selling illegal drugs. He reflects upon the race riots in Harlem in 1935 when white cops killed a black (which would prelude those in modern America), with Mayor LaGuardia and the NAACP's then-secretary, Walter White, pleading for innocent blacks to go home and stay inside. He indicated that it was difficult to get a telephone during the Second World War, and that Harlem would be a sin den for white bigwigs at the time. X would find that whites had morals just as low as blacks, working with a Jew named Hymie who would be victim of the mob, and that West Indian Archie would call on him to cough up the money he received selling drugs.

X tried to play it cool, with a cop ultimately telling him to leave New York City, which he would do, ultimately sharing an apartment with Shorty. He would dress more conservatively, gamble, get a machine gun, and relapse to criminal activity, with he and his cohorts making their base in a Harvard Street apartment. He would test the mettle of his companions and become more efficient in his gang's activities, with drugs helping get through his toughest times. He would ultimately get busted by a Jewish cop and receive ten years in jail, during which he would discover Islam.

Malcolm X would first be incarcerated at Charlestown State Prison in Massachusetts, where he was a "fish," a nickname for a new inmate, further receiving the moniker "Satan" due to his disdain for Christianity. He would take a correspondence course and be under the tutelage of a fellow black inmate, Bimbi, and be transferred to Concord Prison, where he would do drugs to get himself through the experience. He would convert to Islam in prison, learning about The Honorable Elijah Muhammed, who gave his own version of the Earth's backstory, including the creation of the races starting with blacks and ending with the "white devils," among them being Moses and the Jews.

He would write Elijah Muhammad but would in his early interest in Islam find it difficult to pray, and most of his letters, even to politicians like President Truman, would go unanswered. X would improve his literary skills by studying the dictionary, and learn about slavery in the United States, of the slave revolts and resistance to white colonists elsewhere in places like China and India. This would further enforce his belief in white devilry, and he would attempt to bring his fellow white inmates out of their Stockholm Syndrome. He would learn more about the civil rights movement, believing that human rights should have come first and foremost, learning that Africans once had great civilizations prior to white explorers.

X would ultimately receive his parole in the spring of 1952 by the Massachusetts State Parole Board, afterward moving to Detroit. His brother Wilfred would get him a job as a furniture salesman, and he would be welcome in his household, delving into Islam during his stay. X's main religious stomping ground would be Detroit Temple Number One, which considered Christianity to be an enslaving religion while Islam was liberating for blacks. He would officially adopt the X initial to replace his "white slave" surname, and he would work for a factory that manufactured garbage truck bodies. White FBI agents would hound him for dodging the Korean War Draft, in which case X was right to do so as it was one of the first acts of American treachery against its former Soviet allies from the Second World War.

He would become an Islamic minister, visiting Lloyd X in Boston and discussing the horrors of the white man, preaching to blacks that they should defend themselves if attacked. Back in Boston, he caught up with his prior haunts, discovering that Shorty had a band, finding that Sammy was dead, and even finding West Indian Archie. He would fish for recruits from black Harlem churches, preaching respect for women, afterward spreading his faith in Philadelphia and Atlanta. X would continue to build the Nation of Islam, having a car accident in Connecticut with a swinger politician. He would meet and marry Sister Betty X and have several children, with Muslims, well before 9/11, making US newspaper headlines after New York City awarded a sizeable police brutality settlement to a black man.

The Nation of Islam would make headlines as well, with Malcolm X believing that Christianity was incompatible with black aspirations and taking a trip to Africa. His preaching of hatred for whites would make headlines, which irked black leaders, although X said that Mr. Muhammad was only teaching black empowerment, and that self-defense was a right. X would be accused of being a demagogue, although in response he would note that the term actually means "teacher of the people." He would further call out "integrated" blacks and oppose racial integration in general and noted that segregation and separation were different since the former meant controlling the ostracized population.

Malcolm X believed that black Muslims should have been instead called Muslims in general, and meetings consisting entirely of blacks would become more common, with his brothers becoming Islamic ministers. He would continue to call out whites, wanting salvation for blacks from integration, and would even criticize "liberal" white men, and believed that American Negroes should have worked towards building their own businesses and homes without nonwhite support. He called the iconic March on Washington the "Farce on Washington," given its support by white money and focusing almost exclusively on Southern racism and segregation while ignoring the sordid conditions of blacks and equivalent racial tension in the North.

Mr. Muhammad's health would go into decline, with Islam growing rapidly in New York City, although Malcolm X would be wary of high publicity, given that a bounty was offered for his death. Muhammad would be accused of adultery, tarnishing the Nation of Islam's reputation, with X formulating a defense in noting that numerous biblical heroes were degenerates as well, but he believed that humans should be remembered far more for their accomplishments than their faults. He would receive severe criticism for calling the Kennedy assassination a case of "the chickens coming home to roost" in that hatred of blacks would backfire upon whites in that JFK had been killed by another white man.

X would feel threatened in that the Nation of Islam ultimately ordered his assassination, yet would find refuge with boxer Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali, who would win championship against Christian boxers and symbolically in X's eyes prove the supremacy of Islam to the black community. Black anger would ferment in large cities (and continues to do so today), with X considered the only Negro at the time who could stop a race riot or start one, and he believed the most dangerous black man was a ghetto hustler. He touches upon politics at the time and rightfully notes that whites would divide them politically, further mentioning that American politics was ruled by special interests and lobbies and that blacks were at the bottom of everything economically, which still reigns true today.

He would start his own mosque with blacks from all walks of life sick of the racial charade in America, Muslim Mosque, Inc. and wanted to make the pilgrimage to Mecca to embrace "true Islam." X would meet Dr. Mahmoud Youssef Shawarbi, a devout Muslim who would give him the OK to go on the Hajj to Mecca; en route, X would discover Europeans to be more human, or humane, than Americans at the time, and would learn the rites of Islam, during which he changed his views on whites, noting that a Muslim who would pass as white would treat him far better than American whites. He believed that America would need to truly understand Islam, and believed racism would ultimately destroy the country.

Malcolm X would be a guest of the Saudi royal family, which adored him alongside other residents of the country. He believed that the worst mistake of American black organizations and their leaders was that they didn't have great communication between the independent nations of Africa and the blacks in the United States. X wanted to bring the cause of American blacks to the United Nations, receiving criticism from a West Indian who complained about him criticizing America. He noted that whites lusted for Africa's vast natural resources and that America supported tyranny across the world. X thought it appalling that American blacks had to beg whites for their civil whites while whites were killing blacks and getting off scot-free.

Back in America when he gave speeches, he didn't force his Islamic views onto blacks but believed that African around the world should unite, mocking the Civil War's very loose definition of "freedom" and thinking that self-defense should be a right for blacks. He correctly noted that America was conceived on the belief that the "merciless Indian Savages," were an inferior race, and indicated that Catholicism was conceived in Africa but became xenophobic when exported to Europe. Regarding the 1964 election, he didn't support Lyndon Johnson or Barry Goldwater but lauded the latter for being blunter in his beliefs. He had friends of different walks of life and ideologies, but ironically didn't mention liberals among them, and mentioned in the same chapter that he considered them "foxes," just as he considered conservatives "wolves."

In Alex Haley's epilogue, he noted that X believed him a government spy when he wanted to interview him, although X ultimately agreed and spoke in code. X noted that he hated other prominent blacks like Thurgood Marshall, who called Muslims thugs, although X was unapologetic for speaking the truth, and liked some white writers. He would talk about the learning he received in prison, and ultimately knew his life would be threatened when he was forced to leave him home along with his family, canceling public engagements, with the Black Muslims wanting him dead. Thomas Hagan, a former member of the Nation of Islam, would be Malcolm X's assassin, with Christians and Muslims alike mourning him, and the latter giving him a proper Islamic sendoff.

Overall, I didn't have any expectations when reading Malcolm X's autobiography, but I was constantly blown away by what he said, with his life experiences and beliefs. As an autistic, his message really resounded with me, and I will definitely do my best to defend myself from neurobigoted abuse and protect my independence "by any means possible." I actually like him way more than Dr. King, since he and mainstream civil rights leaders seemed to believe racial integration to be a cure-all for America's race woes, and today, blacks in the north still continue to live in horrid conditions and be exploited by whites, with politicians on the Left and the Right still keeping them in their places. I would rank it as a bucket-list autobiography that should be read by everyone with a passing interest in civil rights history, black, white, or otherwise.

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