AHEAVY, dark-blue sedan stops at the

curb on Seventh Avenue where a

The scene is a familiar one for that part of
Harlem where poverty has forced thou-
their billy clubs twirling with suggestive
ease.
small group of men, women and chil- sands of human beings to co-exist with At the sight of the driver, the expres-
dren stands in sullen silence around a evictions, hunger and rats. It is as famil- sions of hopeless rage on the faces of the
pile of shabby furniture-the worldly iar and hated as the patrols of White little crowd melt into broad, deferential
possessions of a family without a home. rookie cops who casually saunter by, smiles. "Salaam aleikum, Brother Mal-
36 EBONY •February 1993
colm." "Salaam aleikum." lier belief that all Whites are evil?"
With a wide, good-natured grin that Malcolm X looks thoughtfully at his
bares a flawless set of large teeth, the large expressive hands. "True-my trip
reddish complexioned, scholarly look- to Mecca has opened my eyes. I no
ing man behind the wheel returns the longer subscribe to racism. I have ad-
Muslim greeting. With deep-set, pene- justed my thinking to the point where I
trating eyes behind a pair of horn- believe Whites are human beings-as
rimmed glasses he surveys the familiar long as this is borne out by their humane
scene. His voice sounds reassuring as he attitude toward Negroes."
reminds the people to attend "a very im- "Were you serious when you pro-
portant meeting tonight." After another posed to send armed guerrillas into Mis-
exchange of"salaams," he pulls from the sissippi to protect civil rights workers?"
curb and is soon swallowed up by the "Dead serious. We will not only send
dense traffic and the glare of the sun. them to Mississippi, but to any place
Around the nation, the name Mal- where Black people's lives are threat-
colm X triggers mixed emotions, but ened by White bigots. As far as I am con-
among the dispossessed masses of Har- cerned, Mississippi is anywhere south of
lem, it inspires devotion and hope. the Canadian border."
Since his ouster from the Black Muslim "How do you ihtend to carry out these
cult early this year-ostensibly for call- plans?"
ing President Kennedy's assassination a "With my new Organization of Afro-
case of "chickens coming home to American Unity, a non-religious and
roost" -he has pitted his own prestige non-sectarian group organized to unite
against that of his former chief, Elijah Afro-Americans· for a constructive pro-
Muhammad, in building a following of
his own. In the process, he has ripped
the Black Muslim movement into two
hostile camps whose bloody encounters
have become the order of the day.
Purged from the No. 2 spot he used to
occupy in the Black Muslim hierarchy,
he is now reaching for higher stakes-
participation in the Black revolt.
The entry of the firebrand advocate of
bloody retaliation into the rights strug-
gle which, as far as Blacks are con-
cerned, has been largely non-violent, is
viewed by many Blacks and Whites with
grave concern. But in Harlem's tene-
ments, where the pacific voice of Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. is but a whisper,
the new power bid of Malcolm X is wel-
come news.
Minutes after leaving the eviction
site, Brother Malcolm-as he prefers to
be called-turns up at a small restaurant
on West 135th Street. There is nothing
about his ingratiatingly polite demeanor,
or his loose-jointed six-foot-three fra~e
to betray that it is he who suggests taking
on Mississippi's Ku Klux Klan with
armed guerrillas. His impeccable seer-
sucker suit and brief case make him a
dead ringer for an up-and-coming attor-
ney, certainly not for a man about to en-
ter a revolt.
With gangling, yet purposeful strides,
Brother Malcolm walks to the rear of the
narrow room where he joins a Black re-
porter. Between sips of coffee and inces-
sant doodling he ponders the reporter's
questions, then lets loose with a barrage
of replies.
"Is it true," the reporter wants to
know, "that since your recent pilgrimage
to Mecca you no longer hold to your ear-
EBONY • February 1993
 my growing influence and my objections
to a breakdown of morality." He refers to
the paternity suits filed by two women
in Los Angeles against 67-year-old Elijah
Muhammad in which they charge the
cult leader with having fathered their
children while working for him as secre-
taries.
"What future do you foresee for the
Black Muslim movement?"
"None. The only thing that held the
movement together was the image of
morality reflected by Mr. Muhammad."
Malcolm X pointedly omits "the honor-
able," a standard prefix in his references
to his former chief before the break.
"The Black Muslim movement will
crumble," he continues, "because the
organization is held together by coer-
cion, by a Gestapo-type police force
within its own ranks."
Malcolm looks at his wrist watch and
rises. The interview has come to an end.
Paradoxically, despite the flood of pro-
nouncements that pours from his lips,
Malcolm X has remained an enigma to
the public, perhaps even to himself Is
he a charlatan or savior, an opportunist
or sincere leader dedicated to the libera-
tion of his race? Is he a genius or a slicks-
ter with a gift for eloquence? Is his
power real or imagined by a sensation-
mongering press? Almost everybody
ventures to guess, but nobody really
Street corner lecture by Black nationalist is followed with rapt attention by group of Malcolm X ad- knows.
mirers. When one asked about his views on the White backlash, Malcolm X sneered: "Let it To gauge Malcolm X, the man, re-
come; if it does, it will unleash a Black backlash that will escalate to international proportions."
quires an intimate knowledge of the
forces that shaped him-klan brutality,
MALCOLM X Continued lence. The benign expression vanishes hunger, slums, alcohol, dope, prostitu-
gram toward attainment of human and his eyes become fierce. "We don't tion and, finally, rehabilitation through
rights." advocate violence, but non-violent tac- Elijah Muhammad's message of a pro-
"How strong, would you say, is your tics based solely on morality can only Black Allah. Above all, it calls for an ac-
group at this point?" succeed when you are dealing with a ba- quaintance with the Black Muslim
Again that ingratiating smile. 'Tm not sically moral people," he explains. ''A movement which he helped create and
saying. You know, the strongest part of man who oppresses another man be- which, in turn, created him. It is that
the tree is the root. Once you expose the cause of his color is not moral. It is the group of people whose misery has
root, the tree dies. You never expose duty of every Afro-American to protect caused them to accept the rigid disci-
your strength." himself against mass murderers, plines laid down by Elijah Muhammad
''A.re you prepared to cooperate with bombers, lynchers, floggers, brutalizers in order to escape the frustrations inher-
other civil rights groups?" and exploiters. If the government is un- ent in being Black in White, race-con-
"We will cooperate with any group able or unwilling to protect us, we re- scious U.S.A. Their utopian goal of
that is for Black." serve our right as citizens to defend our- building a separate state within the
"Will you accept White members in selves by whatever means necessary. A boundaries of the United States has
your new organization?" man with a rifle or club can only be drawn condescending smiles from both
Malcolm X stiffens. "Definitely not." stopped by a person armed with a rifle or Whites and integration-minded Blacks
Then, after a characteristic tuck at a club." The last two sentences are accom- alike. But their militant assertion to en-
stray whisker in his reddish-blond panied by a staccato of thrusts with his gage the "White devils" in a mortal bat-
moustache, he adds: "If John Brown ballpoint pen. tle if attacked has not. It has made
were still alive, we might accept him. "Is it true that you were ousted by the Whites uneasy and struck a chord of em-
But I'm definitely not interested in non- Black Muslims because of disparaging pathy among Blacks throughout the na-
violent Whites or non-violent Blacks. If remarks about President Kennedy's as- tion in all walks of life.
you show me a non-violent Negro, I'll sassination?" The man who became the most artic-
show you a Negro whose reflexes don't "That wasn't the reason at all. I was ulate proponent of this militancy, who
work, one who needs psychiatric care." quoted out of context, but I have made for 12 years spread Elijah Muhammad's
Now the reporter wants to know stronger statements before and nobody incendiary prophecy of doom for the
whether Malcolm X suggests using vio- objected. The real reason was jealousy of White race and salvation for Blacks, is
38 EBONY • February 1993 Continued on Page 40
 guise of a kind lady, the director of the
detention home to which he had been
sent. "That woman liked me and let me
stay in her home with her family," Mal-
colm says. "But she liked me like one
likes a canary or chihuahua-not like a
human being." Tired of being a White
woman's "mascot," little Malcolm
skipped town. Somehow, he made it to
the Boston home of a half-sister, who
promptly enrolled him in the eighth
grade of an all-boys school. "In those
days," says Malcolm, "I was very inter-
ested in little girls. So when I looked
around in my class and all I saw was
boys, I just walked out. I haven't been
back to school since."
Malcolm began to roam the streets of
Boston, finally landed a job on the rail-
road by putting up his age. He was 15
years old at the time, but "looked big
"and my mother, whose mother was and old enough to pass for 21." Starting
raped by a White man, was light enough as a handyman in the commissary, he
to pass for White. I hate every drop of eventually advanced to fourth cook-"a
White blood in me because it is the euphemism for dishwasher." In that ca-
blood of a rapist." pacity he made runs on the Colonial be-
He had hardly learned to walk when tween Boston and Washington, D. C.,
he heard his mother's vivid accounts of and later on the Yankee Clipper to New
being victimized by the Ku Klux Klan. York. The cooks and waiters he met on
"My father was away on an organizing his runs took a liking to the lanky, sandy-
trip and my mother was pregnant with haired youth and treated him like a peer.
me when klansmen on horseback came "That grew me up real fast," says Mal-
looking for him in the middle of the colm, "because in those days, railroad
night. Before they left, they smashed men were about the hippest people in
every window in our house." town." During stops in New York, he
The Rev. Little took the klan's "hint," discovered and explored a strange and
and as soon as Malcolm was born, he fascinating world-Harlem. "Within a
moved with his family to Milwaukee, year on the road I had grown so wild that
Wis., and resumed his organizing activ- waiters made bets that I wouldn't live
ities. Before long he had made enough another year," he says.
enemies among Whites to find it advis- Frequently neglecting his duties, he
able to skip town again. This time, the was fired from his job. He no longer
Littles moved to Lansing, Mich., into an needed or, for that matter, wanted one,
all-White neighborhood. "We hadn't because now he was a "man with con-
At Brookdale Hospital Center nursery in Brooklyn, lived there a year," Malcolm remem- nections" on the way to the big time.
Malcolm and his wife, Betty, take a peek at bers, "when our home was burned to the The "big time" was night clubs, bars and
their newly born daughter Lumumbah. At top,
ground. Luckily we got out." The worst dance halls and his "connections" were
bedside chat with his convalescing wife offers
Black leader a brief respite from his 15-hour a was yet to come. Two years after the fire, barkeeps, waiters, street walkers, dope
day organizing routine. the Rev. Little was found bludgeoned to peddlers and pimps. ''Anywhere there
death under a street car. The killing, was a dance," he says, "I was there. I
Malcolm says, was officially listed as a practically lived in night clubs." At 18
MALCOLM X Continued traffic accident. "I was only six years at Malcolm Little had become "Big Red."
Malcolm X. He was born 39 years ago in the time, but I had already learned that His philosophy at the time: "The only
Omaha, Neb., and given the name Mal- being a Negro in this country was a lia- thing that is wrong is what you are
colm Little. His father, the Rev. Earl Lit- bility." caught doing wrong."
tle, an obscure Baptist preacher, spent When he was 11 years old, Malcolm, Although Harlem remained his regu-
more time recruiting followers for "dizzy from hunger most of the time" lar beat, he still traveled a great deal,
Marcus Garvey's back-to-Africa move- ran away from home. Already, the major using his void railroad pass instead of
ment than for Jesus Christ. There were portion of his formal education-most of money. "I could jive any train conductor
10 children (six boys and four girls) in the it in an all-White country school-was a into letting me on," he says. "I had a jun-
Little clan. matter of the past. He tramped to Ma- gle mind and everything I did was done
Malcolm's opinion of "White devils" son, Mich., where he moved in with a by instinct to survive."
was formed early in life, partially by sympathetic Black family. "Soon I was He started smoking reefers and finally
events that occurred even before he was wayward and on the way to reform sold them. His "jungle mind" did not let
born. "My father was the color of this,'' school," he recalls. But fate intervened him stop there. "I knew all the impor-
he recalls, pointing to his Black shoes, in the form of a "White devil" in the tant and respected White people down-
40 EBONY • February 1993 Continued on Page 42
 MALCOLM X Continued
town. They used to come to Harlem to
get their kicks. Most of them wanted Ne-
gro women and to get high; I got them
whatever they wanted. I used to sell
Black women to White men and White
women to Black men," he admits. Sen-
sing the status value of"having" a White
woman in those days, he made sure to
keep a liberal supply for himself "My re-
spect for White people-particularly
White women-dropped lower and
lower as I watched how they carried on.
Black women had to get drunk to do
what White women did sober."
Toward the end of 1945, Malcolm
went to Boston. There, easy money, and
with it his luck, ran out. "I needed some
cash real bad," he remembers, "so I
went to work with my integrated burglar
gang, including a woman. One day, I
took an expensive, stolen gold watch to a
Returning to his modest East
Elmhurst (Queens, N.Y.)
jewelry store to have the crystal re-
home (above), Black nation- paired. When I went to pick it up, there
alist plays with his daugh- was a cop waiting for me to arrest me. I
ters (I. to r.) Quibillah, 3, always carried a gun, but something told
Attalah, 5, and Ilyasha, 2. me not to use it. That saved my life, for
In background is a portrait
of Ghana President Kwame as we reached the street, I saw that the
Nkrumah. Below, Black place was surrounded by cops. Had I
leader mans hand-powered used the gun, I would never have left
lawnmower to give his that store alive."
backyard lawn a much-
needed clipping "before my
Malcolm was convicted for burglary
neighbors are talking about and got eight to ten years in the Charles-
me." Modest eight-room town State Prison in Boston. When the
home, which Black Mus- judge sentenced him, he recalls, he
lims provided for their for- cracked: "This will teach you to stay
mer minister as a
"parsonage," has become away from White girls." It not only
center of unsettled court taught him to stay away from White
dispute because of Mal- girls, but from White people, period.
colm's refusal to vacate it. After a year in Charlestown State, he
was transferred to the Concord (Mass.)
Reformatory and, after another year, to
the Norfolk (Mass.) Prison Colony. Even
in prison, he continued to stay "high" on
dope and booze. "You know," he says,
"you can get anything in prison that you
can get in the streets if you know how to
operate." A cum l.aude graduate of Har-
lem's vice dens, Malcolm knew "how to
operate." The person he credits with
helping him "come down and get out of
the fog bag I was in" was a fellow pris-
oner-an atheist intellectual. "At the
time, the extent of my reading was cow-
boy books," Malcolm admits. "This guy
started me reading serious books-you
know, books with intellectual vitamins."
Soon Malcolm became the most fre-
quent visitor to the prison library, de-
vouring volume after volume, from
Shakespeare to Hegel and Kant. He
beefed up his reading with correspon-
dence courses in English and German
and by attending prison school, a facility
most prisoners patronized merely to
break the monotony of the cell. But Mal-
ebruary l 993 Continued on Page 44
 Black Muslims at Detroit Mosque No. 1.
Like all practicing Black Muslims,
Malcolm shed his "slave name," Little,
and substituted it with an "X" (for ex-
slave). Along with his name, he shed his
vices-alcohol, nicotine, dope, women
and "hog." Obediently he prayed five
times daily facing Mecca and observed
Elijah Muhammad's dictates of keeping
"a clean body, a clean mind , clean
speech and a clean home." The transfor-
mation was complete. The "Christian
sinner" Malcolm Little alias Big Red had
become the ascetic Black Muslim Mal-
colm X.
"When I joined, I don't think there
were more than 400 Black Muslims in
the entire country-most of them older
people," Malcolm X maintains. "At that
time, Mr. Muhammad stayed pretty
much in the background. Many of the
brothers couldn't even pronounce his
name. Instead of revering him, they all
prayed for the return of Wallace Fard (an
itinerate silk peddler who started the
movement in 1932 and mysteriously dis-
appeared in 1934)."
Malcolm X changed all that. " Mr.
Muhammad agreed to let me present
him as the prophet and messenger of Al-
lah . I personally believed in Mr.
Muhammad because my brother Re-
ginald believed in him and I believed in
Reginald. Soon the people I talked to
believed in Mr. Muhammad, too."
For 12 years, Malcolm X talked, hon-
ing his natural gift for oratory and debate
to the keenness of a switchblade knife.
Aided by a computer-like brain that can
store and recall at will volumes of en-
cyclopaedic facts, he slashed at White
racism, taking on everyone from "Uncle
Tom Negroes:' to the U.S. Government.
Wherever he talked, new Black Muslim
temples sprang up while already exist-
ing ones increased their memberships.
To be sure, not all of his converts com-
prehended his mystic teachings of Black
Islam, but his provocative demands for
"back pay for 400 years of slave labor"
made sense to all.
Today, many of his explosive state-
Vigilant about possible attacks by "assassins," Harlem leader keeps automatic carbine with full double ments have been modified. He even
clip of ammunition ready for action in his home. "I have taught my wife to use one," he says, "and concedes that his one-time perennial tar-
instructed her to fire on anyone- White, Black or Yellow- who tries to force his way inside." get-the NAACP-" is doing some
good. " He makes it abundantly clear
MALCOLM X Continued that if he ever wanted to get out of jail, that he still hates, but says that his ha-
colm was a serious student. "Language he should "stop smoking and eating tred is now confined to those who hate
became an obsession with me," he re- hog." Having always looked up to his Blacks. Until put to a real test, the true
members. "I began to realize the mean- brother, Malcolm took his advice . intentions of Malcolm X-like the man
ing and the power of words." Within a year, after serving 77 months- himself-will remain shrouded in spec-
While in jail, Malcolm kept corre- j u s t seven months short of seven ulation and mystery. Only one thing is
sponding with his brothers, Philbert and years-Malcolm was paroled. clear: neither the Black Muslim move-
Reginald. Both had become converts of The year was 1952 and Malcolm went ment without him, nor the Civil Rights
Elijah Muhammad's Black Muslim cult. to Detroit to live with Philbert and Reg- Movement with him will ever be the
His eldest brother, Reginald, wrote him inald. Eventually he, too, joined the same.
44 EBONY • Februa ry 1993