The Autobiography of Malcolm X

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ly read in history, science, politics, and religion. He Elijah Muhammed faced paternity law suits from two former secretaries. The young women charged that he fathered their four children, with a fifth on the way.

Muhammed rationalized his actions as “the fulfillment colm told some NOI officials, to help them prepare to Kennedy, and Malcolm X’s comment that it was a case of the “chickens come home to roost.” Muhammed “silenced” Malcolm. A stream of anonymous death threats followed. Assassins caught up with Malcolm in February 1965 at the Audubon Hotel, after he had broken with the NOI, and had made two major tours lieve that governmental authorities, recognizing that Malcolm represented a growing danger to America’s their skin, while kowtowing to the white boss man.

Malcolm’s reaction was to extol Black pride, and to ization. The challenge to the status quo was posed by er’s deteriorating mental health, which resulted in her the civil rights movement, by campaigns in solidarity Usage was a strict, eccentric religious sect. The Nation with anti-colonial struggles (including those in Cuba, of Islam (NOI) promotes Black economic self-reliance Algeria and Vietnam), and the first stirrings for radical City is covered, as is his involvement in organized change among students, youth in general, and women.

herence to a code of abstinence from drugs, sports, onment for six-and-a-half years (1946–1952). The gambling, and extra-marital sex. Rather than criticize munity, independent of the white power structure. book is Malcolm’s account of his transition from street capitalism as the system that grew out of the slave hustler to preacher, and his subsequent shift, however short-lived, to being a revolutionary Black nationalist ideology attracted tens of thousands of victims of paigns waged by Dr. Martin Luther King. He pointed racism and created one of the largest, most powerful in the direction of a united-front approach—that is, Black organizations in U.S. history. Although it echoed unity in action of people of diverse points of view, who vious—the hateful and exploitative discrimination the prevalent sexism and anti-Semitism of bourgeois can agree on the fight for specific change—and a turn against Blacks in employment, housing, education, the away from the insularity and sectarianism practised chological poison of low self-esteem that led many of his contemporaries to straighten their hair or bleach Socialist Action june 2012 9 “The Autobiography of Malcolm X, As Told to Alex Haley,” is a book worth reading again and again. Many have pointed out that Haley’s rendition of the life of the Black leader is flawed and incomplete—barely acknowledging the ways and the extent to which Malcolm’s political worldview radically evolved in the year before he was assassinated in 1965. Nevertheless, most readers will find the book to be both engrossing and richly informative.

“The Autobiography” is a survivor’s tale, to a tragic point, bearing witness to the institutional racism that persisted long after the formal abolition of slavery in America. Malcolm X moves painfully through great personal transformations, from individual to collective forms of resistance. The shifting forms of his combat reflect the dynamics of social radicalization against the prevailing order.

Born Malcolm Little (1925–1965), the iconic human rights leader felt the flames of racism early in life. Klansmen burnt the Littles out of their home in Omaha, and the racist Black Legion did the same to them near East Lansing, Mich., after the birth of Malcolm. The book describes his childhood in Michigan, the murder of his father—a preacher and devoted proponent of the ideas of Marcus Garvey—and his mothcommitment to a psychiatric hospital.

Little’s young adulthood in Boston and New York crime, which led to his arrest and subsequent imprispolitical leader.

The completely captivating quality of the book is Malcolm’s very frank, articulate, autopsy-like examination of racism in America. He delves below the obcourt system and political life. He excoriates the psypromulgate Black self-determination.

and separation from white society, and demands adtrade and that profits from racism today, the NOI posits a demonology centred on the “white devil race.”

society, it based itself on a vast population of the oppressed. That set it on a collision course with the overwhelmingly white, male, capitalist ruling elite.

Lousy in its hierarchy. line on the fire.”

The first organization to reach him with that mesWhatever else one may wish to say about it, NOI by the NOI.

Malcolm learned about the NOI from family members who visited him in prison. While incarcerated, Malcolm devoted himself to study, to improve his reading and writing skills. He acquired a prodigious vocabulary, and became widejoined the NOI and became one of its leading spokespersons. At the same time he became the object of jealOn July 3, 1963 the media reported that 67-year-old of prophecy”, a kind of test of the flock. But when Maldeflect the scandal, he was accused of “throwing gasoThen came the Nov. 22 assassination of President of the Middle East and Africa. There is reason to berulers, permitted or facilitated the assassination.

The country was undergoing a deepening radicalMalcolm X won a mass audience in the Black comIncreasingly, he indicated the need for mass independent Black political action.

Malcolm took an increasingly nuanced view of the liberal-led NAACP and the peaceful mass protest cam(continued on page 11)

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Nearly 1 million youths jobless Statistics Canada has a new acronym for it: NEET, “Not in Employment Education or Training.” But