The autobiography of Malcolm X (35 page)

White reporters, anger in their voices, would call us “demagogues,” and I would try to be ready after I had been asked the same question two or three times.

“Well, let's go back to the Greek, and maybe you will learn the first thing you need to know about the word 'demagogue.' 'Demagogue' means, actually, 'teacher of the people.' And let's examine some demagogues. The greatest of all Greeks, Socrates, was killed as a 'demagogue.' Jesus Christ died on the cross because the Pharisees of His day were upholding their law, not the spirit. The modern Pharisees are trying to heap destruction upon Mr. Muhammad, calling him a demagogue, a crackpot, and fanatic. What about Gandhi? The man that Churchill called 'a naked little fakir,' refusing food in a British jail? But then a quarter of a billion people, a whole subcontinent, rallied behind Gandhi-and they twisted the British lion's tail! What about Galileo, standing before his inquisitors, saying 'The earth _does_ move!' What about Martin Luther, nailing on a door his thesis against the all-powerful Catholic church which called him 'heretic'? We, the followers of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, are today inthe ghettoes as once the sect of Christianity's followers were like termites in the catacombs and the grottoes-and they were preparing the grave of the mighty Roman Empire!”

I can remember those hot telephone sessions with those reporters as if it were yesterday. The reporters were angry. I was angry. When I'd reach into history, they'd try to pull me back to the present. They would quit interviewing, quit their work, trying to defend their personal white devil selves. They would unearth Lincoln and his freeing of the slaves. I'd tell them things Lincoln said in speeches, _against_ the blacks. They would drag up the 1954 Supreme Court decision on school integration.

“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 reporters would try their utmost to raise some “good” white man whom I couldn't refute as such. I'll never forget how one practically lost his voice. He asked me did I feel _any_ white men had ever done anything for the black man in America. I told him, "Yes, I can think of two. Hitler, and Stalin. The black man in America couldn't get a decent factory job until Hitler put so much pressure on the white man. And men Stalin kept up the pressure-'

But I don't care what points I made in the interviews, it practically never got printed the way I said it. I was learning under fire how the press, when it wants to, can twist, and slant. If I had said “Mary had a little lamb,” what probably would have appeared was “Malcolm X Lampoons Mary.”

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.

But instead of abating, the black puppets continued ripping and tearing at Mr. Muhammad and the Nation of Islam-until it began to appear as though we were afraid to speak out against these “important” Negroes. That's when Mr. Muhammad's patience wore thin. And with his nod, I began returning their fire.

“Today's Uncle Tom doesn't wear a handkerchief on his head. This modern, twentieth-century Uncle Thomas now often wears a top hat. He's usually well-dressed and well-educated. He's often the personification of culture and refinement. The twentieth-century Uncle Thomas sometimes speaks With a Yale or Harvard accent. Sometimes he is known as Professor, Doctor, Judge, and Reverend, even Right Reverend Doctor. This twentieth-century Uncle Thomas is a _professional_ Negro . . . by that I mean his profession is being a Negro for the white man.”

Never before in America had these hand-picked so-called “leaders” been publicly blasted in this way. They reacted to the truth about themselves even more hotly than the devilish white man. Now their “institutional” indictments of us began. Instead of “leaders” speaking as themselves, for themselves, now their weighty name organizations attacked Mr. Muhammad.

“Black bodies with white heads!” I called them what they were. Every one of those “Negro progress” organizations had the same composition. Black “leaders”were out in the public eye-to be seen by the Negroes for whom they were supposed to be fighting the white man. But obscurely, behind the scenes, was a white boss-a president, or board chairman, or some other title, pulling the real strings.

It was hot, hot copy, both in the white and the black press. _Life_, _Look_, _Newsweek_ and _Time_ reported us. Some newspaper chains began to run not one story, but a series of three, four, or five “exposures” of the Nation of Islam. The _Reader's Digest_ with its worldwide circulation of twenty-four million copies in thirteen languages carried an article titled “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” by the writer to whom I am telling this book; and that led off other major monthly magazines' coverage of us.

***

Before very long, radio and television people began asking me to defend our Nation of Islam in panel discussions and debates. I was to be confronted by hand-picked scholars both whites and some of those Ph.D. “house” and “yard” Negroes who had been attacking us. Every day, I was more incensed with the general misrepresentation and distortion of Mr. Muhammad's teachings; I truly think that not once did it cross my mind that previously I never had been _inside_ a radio or television station-let alone faced a microphone to audiences of millions of people. Prison debating had been my only experience speaking to anyone but Muslims.

From the old hustling days I knew that there were tricks to everything. In the prison debating, I had learned tricks to upset my opponents, to catch them where they didn't expect to be caught. I knew there were bound to be tricks I didn't know anything about arguing on the air.

I knew that if I closely studied what the others did, I could learn things in ahurry to help me to defend Mr. Muhammad and his teachings.

I'd walk into those studios. The devils and black Ph.D. puppets would be acting so friendly and “integrated” with each other-laughing and calling each other by first names, and all that; it was such a big lie it made me sick in my stomach. They would even be trying to act friendly toward me-we all knowing they had asked me there to try and beat out my brains. They would offer me

coffee. I would tell them “No, thanks,” to please just tell me where was I supposed to sit. Sometimes the microphone sat on the table before you, at other times a smaller, cylindrical microphone was hung on a cord around your neck. From the start, I liked those microphones better; I didn't have to keep constantly aware of my distance from a microphone on the table.

The program hosts would start with some kind of dice-loading, non-religious introduction for me. It would be something like

-and we have with us today the fiery, angry chief Malcolm X of the New York Muslims. . . ." I made up my own introduction. At home, or driving my car, I practiced until I could interrupt a radio or television host and introduce myself.

"I represent Mr. Elijah Muhammad, the spiritual head of the fastest-growing group of Muslims in the Western Hemisphere. We who follow him know that he has been divinely taught and sent to us by God Himself. We believe that the miserable plight of America's twenty million black people is the fulfillment of divine prophecy. We also believe the presence today in America of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, his teachings among the so-called Negroes, and his naked warning to America concerning her treatment of these so-called Negroes, is all the fulfillment of divine prophecy. I am privileged to be the minister of our

Temple Number Seven here in New York City which is a part of the Nation ofIslam, under the divine leadership of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad-"

I would look around at those devils and their trained black parrots staring at me, while I was catching my breath-and I had set my tone.

They would outdo each other, leaping in on me, hammering at Mr. Muhammad, at me, and at the Nation of Islam. Those “integration”-mad Negroes-you know what they jumped on. _Why_ couldn't Muslims _see_ that “integration” was the answer to American Negroes' problems? I'd try to rip that to pieces.

“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!”

Anyone who has ever heard me on radio or television programs knows that my technique is non- stop, until what I want to get said is said. I was developing the technique then.

“The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that since Western society is deteriorating, it has become overrun with immorality, and God is going to judge it, and destroy it. And the only way the black people caught up in this society can be saved is not to _integrate_ into this corrupt society, but to _separate_ from it, to a land of our _own_, where we can reform ourselves, lift up our moral standards, and try to be godly. 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 teaches us that as long as our people here in America are dependent upon the white man, we will always be

begging him for jobs, food, clothing, and housing. And he will always control our lives, regulate our lives, and have the power to segregate us. The Negro here in America has been treated like a child. A child stays within the mother until the time of birth! When the time of birth arrives, the child must be separated, or it will _destroy_ its mother and itself. The mother can't carry that child after its time. The child cries for and needs its own world!"

Anyone who has listened to me will have to agree that I believed in Elijah Muhammad and represented him one hundred per cent. I never tried to take any credit for myself.

I was never in one of those panel discussions without some of them just waiting their chance to accuse me of “inciting Negroes to violence.” I didn't even have to do any special studying to prepare for that one.

“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! The _miracle_ is that the white man's puppet Negro 'leaders,' his preachers and the educated Negroes laden with degrees, and others who have been allowed to wax fat off their black poor brothers, have been able to hold the black masses quiet until now.”

I guarantee you one thing-every time I was mixed up in those studios with those brainwashed, “integration”-mad black puppets, and those tricky devils trying to rip and tear me down, as long as the little red light glowed “on the air,” I tried to represent Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam to the utmost.

Dr. C. Eric Lincoln's book was published amid widening controversy about us Muslims, at just about the time we were starting to put on our first big mass rallies.

Just as the television “Hate That Hate Produced” title had projected that “hate-teaching” image of us, now Dr. Lincoln's book was titled _The Black Muslims in America_. The press snatched at that name. “Black Muslims” was in all the book reviews, which quoted from the book only what was critical of us, and generally praised Dr. Lincoln's writing.

The public mind fixed on “Black Muslims.” From Mr. Muhammad on down, the name “Black Muslims” distressed everyone in the Nation of Islam. I tried for at least two years to kill off that “Black Muslims.” Every newspaper and magazine writer and microphone I got close to: “_No!_ We are black _people_ here in America. Our _religion_ is Islam. We are properly called 'Muslims'!” But that “Black Muslims” name never got dislodged.Our mass rallies, from their very beginning, were astounding successes. Where once Detroit's struggling little Temple One proudly sent a ten-automobile caravan to Chicago to hear Mr. Muhammad, now, from East Coast Temples-the older Temples as well as the new ones that all of the massive publicity had helped us to bring into being-as many as 150, 200 and even as many as 300 big, chartered buses rolled the highways to wherever Mr. Muhammad was going to speak. On each bus, two Fruit of Islam men were in charge. Big three-by-nine-foot painted canvas banners hung on the buses' sides, to be read by the highway traffic and thousands of people at home and on the sidewalks of the towns the buses passed through.