During nineteen fifty-nine, when the public was becoming aware of the Muslims after the New Yorktelecast "The Hate That Hate Produced," I was in San Francisco, about to retire after twenty years inthe U.S. Coast Guard. A friend returned from a visit to her Detroit home and told me of a startling"black man's" religion, "The Nation of Islam," to which, to her surprise, her entire family wasconverted. I listened with incredulity to how a "mad scientist Mr. Yacub" had genetically "grafted" thewhite race from an original black people. The organization's leader was described as "The HonorableElijah Muhammad" and a "Minister Malcolm X" was apparently chief of staff.

　　When I entered a civilian writing career in New York City, I collected, around Harlem, a good deal ofprovocative material and then proposed an article about the cult to the _Reader's Digest_. Visiting theMuslim restaurant in Harlem, I asked how I could meet Minister Malcolm X, who was pointed outtalking in a telephone booth right behind me. Soon he came out, a gangling, tall, reddishbrownskinned fellow, at that time thirty-five years old; when my purpose was made known, hebristled, his eyes skewering me from behind the horn-rimmed glasses. "You're another one of thewhite man's tools sent to spy!" he accused me sharply. I said I had a legitimate writing assignment andshowed him my letter from the magazine stating that an objective article was wanted, one that wouldbalance what the Muslims said of themselves and what their attackers said about them. Malcolm Xsnorted that no white man's promise was worth the paper it was on; he would need time to decide ifhe would cooperate or not. Meanwhile, he suggested that I could attend some of the Harlem Temple Number 7 meetings ("temples" have since been renamed "mosques") which were open to non-MuslimNegroes.

　　Around the Muslim's restaurant, I met some of the converts, all of them neatly dressed and almostembarrassingly polite. Their manners and miens reflected the Spartan personal discipline theorganization demanded, and none of them would utter anything but Nation of Islam clich 俿. Evenexcellent weather was viewed as a blessing from Allah, with corollary credit due to "The HonorableElijah Muhammad."Finally, Minister Malcolm X told me that he would not take personal responsibility. He said that Ishould talk about an article with Mr. Muhammad personally. I expressed willingness, an appointmentwas made, and I flew to Chicago. The slightly built, shy-acting, soft-voiced Mr. Muhammad invitedme to dinner with his immediate family in his mansion. I was aware that I was being carefully sizedup while he talked primarily of F.B.I. and Internal Revenue Service close surveillance of hisorganization, and of a rumored forthcoming Congressional probe. "But I have no fear of any of them; Ihave all that I need-the truth," Mr. Muhammad said. The subject of my writing an article somehownever got raised, but Malcolm X proved far more cooperative when I returned.

　　He would sit with me at a white-topped table in the Muslim restaurant and answer guardedly anyquestions I asked between constant interruptions by calls from the New York press in the telephonebooth. When I asked if I could see Muslim activities in some other cities, he arranged with otherministers for me to attend meetings at temples in Detroit, Washington, and Philadelphia.

　　My article entitled "Mr. Muhammad Speaks" appeared in early 1960, and it was the first featuredmagazine notice of the phenomenon. A letter quickly came from Mr. Muhammad appreciating thatthe article kept my promise to be objective, and Malcolm X telephoned similar compliments. Aboutthis time, Dr. C. Eric Lincoln's book _The Black Muslims in America_ was published and the BlackMuslims became a subject of growing interest. During 1961 and 1962, the _Saturday Evening Post_teamed me with a white writer, Al Balk, to do an article; next I did a personal interview of Malcolm Xfor _Playboy_ magazine, which had promised to print verbatim whatever response he made to myquestions. During that interview of several days' duration, Malcolm X repeatedly exclaimed, afterparticularly blistering anti-Christian or anti-white statements: "You know that devil's not going toprint that!" He was very much taken aback when _Playboy_ kept its word.

　　Malcolm X began to warm up to me somewhat. He was most aware of the national periodicals' power,and he had come to regard me, if still suspiciously, as one avenue of access. Occasionally now hebegan to telephone me advising me of some radio, television, or personal speaking appearance he wasabout to make, or he would invite me to attend some Black Muslim bazaar or other public affair.

　　I was in this stage of relationship with the Malcolm X who often described himself on the air as "theangriest black man in America" when in early 1963 my agent brought me together with a publisherwhom the _Playboy_ interview had given the idea of the autobiography of Malcolm X. I was asked if Ifelt I could get the now nationally known firebrand to consent to telling the intimate details of his entire life. I said I didn't know, but I would ask him. The editor asked me if I could sketch the likelyhighlights of such a book, and as I commenced talking, I realized how little I knew about the manpersonally, despite all my interviews. I said that the question had made me aware of how carefulMalcolm X had always been to play himself down and to play up his leader Elijah Muhammad.

　　All that I knew, really, I said, was that I had heard Malcolm X refer in passing to his life of crime andprison before he became a Black Muslim; that several times he had told me: "You wouldn't believe mypast," and that I had heard others say that at one time he had peddled dope and women andcommitted armed robberies.

　　I knew that Malcolm X had an almost fanatical obsession about time. "I have less patience withsomeone who doesn't wear a watch than with anyone else, for this type is not time-conscious," he hadonce told me. "In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determines success or failure." Iknew how the Black Muslim membership was said to increase wherever Malcolm X lectured, and Iknew his pride that Negro prisoners in most prisons were discovering the Muslim religion as he hadwhen he was a convict. I knew he professed to eat only what a Black Muslim (preferably his wifeBetty) had cooked and he drank innumerable cups of coffee which he lightened with cream,commenting wryly, "Coffee is the only thing I like integrated." Over our luncheon table, I told theeditor and my agent how Malcolm X could unsettle non-Muslims-as, for instance, once when heoffered to drive me to a subway, I began to light a cigarette and he drily [sic] observed, "That wouldmake you the first person ever to smoke in this automobile." Malcolm X gave me a startled look when I asked him if he would tell his life story for publication. Itwas one of the few times I have ever seen him uncertain. "I will have to give a book a lot of thought,"he finally said. Two days later, he telephoned me to meet him again at the Black Muslim restaurant.

　　He said, "I'll agree. I think my life story may help people to appreciate better how Mr. Muhammadsalvages black people. But I don't want my motives for this misinterpreted by anybody-the Nation ofIslam must get every penny that might come to me." Of course, Mr. Muhammad's agreement wouldbe necessary, and I would have to ask Mr. Muhammad myself.

　　So I flew again to see Mr. Muhammad, but this time to Phoenix, Arizona, where the Nation of Islamhad bought him the house in the hot, dry climate that relieved his severe bronchial condition. He and Italked alone this time. He told me how his organization had come far with largely uneducatedMuslims and that truly giant strides for the black man could be made if his organization were aidedby some of the talents which were available in the black race. He said, "And one of our worst needs iswriters"-but he did not press me to answer. He suddenly began coughing, and rapidly grew worseand worse until I rose from my seat and went to him, alarmed, but he waved me away, gasping thathe would be all right. Between gasps, he told me he felt that "Allah approves" the book. He said,"Malcolm is one of my most outstanding ministers." After arranging for his chauffeur to return me tothe Phoenix airport, Mr. Muhammad quickly bade me good-bye and rushed from the room coughing.

　　 Back East, Malcolm X carefully read and then signed the publication contract, and he withdrew fromhis wallet a piece of paper filled with his sprawling longhand. "This is this book's dedication," he said.

　　I read: "This book I dedicate to The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, who found me here in America inthe muck and mire of the filthiest civilization and society on this earth, and pulled me out, cleaned meup, and stood me on my feet, and made me the man that I am today."The contract provided that all monies accruing to Malcolm X "shall be made payable by the agent to'Muhammad's Mosque No. 2,'" but Malcolm X felt this was insufficient. He dictated to me a letter totype for his signature, which I did: "Any and all monies representing my contracted share of thefinancial returns should be made payable by the literary agent to Muhammad's Mosque No. 2. Thesepayments should be mailed to the following address: Mr. Raymond Sharrieff, 4847 WoodlawnAvenue, Chicago 15, Illinois."Another letter was dictated, this one an agreement between him and me: "Nothing can be in thisbook's manuscript that I didn't say, and nothing can be left out that I want in it."In turn, I asked Malcolm X to sign for me a personal pledge that however busy he was, he would giveme a priority quota of his time for the planned 100,000-word "as told to" book which would detail hisentire life. And months later, in a time of strain between us, I asked for-and he gave-his permissionthat at the end of the book I could write comments of my own about him which would not be subjectto his review.

　　Malcolm X promptly did begin to pay me two-and three-hour visits, parking his blue Oldsmobileoutside the working studio I then had in Greenwich Village. He always arrived around nine or ten atnight carrying his flat tan leather briefcase which along with his scholarly look gave him aresemblance to a hard-working lawyer. Inevitably, he was tired after his long busy day, andsometimes he was clearly exhausted.

　　We got off to a very poor start. To use a word he liked, I think both of us were a bit "spooky." Sittingright there and staring at me was the fiery Malcolm X who could be as acid toward Negroes whoangered him as he was against whites in general. On television, in press conferences, and at Muslimrallies, I had heard him bitterly attack other Negro writers as "Uncle Toms," "yard Negroes," "blackmen in white clothes." And there I sat staring at him, proposing to spend a year plumbing hisinnermost secrets when he had developed a near phobia for secrecy during his years of crime and hisyears in the Muslim hierarchy. My twenty years in military service and my Christian religiouspersuasion didn't help, either; he often jeered publicly at these affiliations for Negroes. And althoughhe now would indirectly urge me to write for national magazines about the Muslims, he had told meseveral times, in various ways, that "you blacks with professional abilities of any kind will one of thesedays wake up and find out that you must unite under the leadership of The Honorable ElijahMuhammad for your own salvation." Malcolm X was also convinced that the F.B.I. had "bugged" mystudio; he probably suspected that it may even have been done with my cooperation. For the firstseveral weeks, he never entered the room where we worked without exclaiming, "Testing, testing-one,two, three. . . ." Tense incidents occurred. One night a white friend was in the studio when Malcolm X arrived a littleearlier than anticipated, and they passed each other in the corridor. Malcolm X's manner during all ofthat session suggested that his worst doubts had been confirmed. Another time when Malcolm X satharanguing me about the glories of the Muslim organization, he was gesturing with his passport in hishand; he saw that I was trying to read its perforated number and suddenly he thrust the passporttoward me, his neck flushed reddish: "Get the number straight, but it won't be anything the whitedevil doesn't already know. He issued me the passport."For perhaps a month I was afraid we weren't going to get any book. Malcolm X was still stifflyaddressing me as "Sir!" and my notebook contained almost nothing but Black Muslim philosophy,praise of Mr. Muhammad, and the "evils" of "the white devil." He would bristle when I tried to urgehim that the proposed book was _his_ life. I was thinking that I might have to advise the publisherthat I simply couldn't seem to get through to my subject when the first note of hope occurred. I hadnoticed that while Malcolm X was talking, he often simultaneously scribbled with his red-ink ballpoint pen on any handy paper. Sometimes it was the margin of a newspaper he brought in, sometimesit was on index cards that he carried in the back of a small, red-backed appointment book. I beganleaving two white paper napkins by him every time I served him more coffee, and the ruse workedwhen he sometimes scribbled on the napkins, which I retrieved when he left. Some examples arethese:

　　"Here lies a YM, killed by a BM, fighting for the WM, who killed all the RM." (Decoding that wasn'tdifficult, knowing Malcolm X. "YM" was for yellow man, "BM" for black man, "WM" for white man,and "RM" was for red man.)"Nothing ever happened without cause. Cause BM condition WM won't face. WM obsessed withhiding his guilt.""If Christianity had asserted itself in Germany, six million Jews would have lived.""WM so quick to tell BM 'Look what I have done for you!' No! Look what you have done _to_ us!""BM dealing with WM who put our eyes out, now he condemns us because we cannot see.""Only persons really changed history those who changed men's thinking about themselves. Hitler aswell as Jesus, Stalin as well as Buddha . . . Hon. Elijah Muhammad. . . ."It was through a clue from one of the scribblings that finally I cast a bait that Malcolm X took. "Womanwho cries all the time is only because she knows she can get away with it," he had scribbled. Isomehow raised the subject of women. Suddenly, between sips of coffee and further scribbling anddoodling, he vented his criticisms and skepticisms of women. "You never can fully trust any woman,"he said. "I've got the only one I ever met whom I would trust seventy-five per cent. I've told her that,"he said. "I've told her like I tell you I've seen too many men destroyed by their wives, or their women.
 
  "I don't _completely_ trust anyone," he went on, "not even myself. I have seen too many men destroythemselves. Other people I trust from not at all to highly, like The Honorable Elijah Muhammad."Malcolm X looked squarely at me. "You I trust about twenty-five per cent."Trying to keep Malcolm X talking, I mined the woman theme for all it was worth. Triumphantly, heexclaimed, "Do you know why Benedict Arnold turned traitor-a woman!" He said, "Whatever else awoman is, I don't care who the woman is, it starts with her being vain. I'll prove it, something you cando anytime you want, and I know what I'm talking about, I've done it. You think of the hardest-looking, meanest-acting woman you know, one of those women who never smiles. Well, every dayyou see that woman you look her right in the eyes and tell her 'I think you're beautiful,' and you watchwhat happens. The first day she may curse you out, the second day, too-but you watch, you keep on,after a while one day she's going to start smiling just as soon as you come in sight."When Malcolm X left that night, I retrieved napkin scribblings that further documented how he couldbe talking about one thing and thinking of something else:

　　"Negroes have too much righteousness. WM says, 'I want this piece of land, how do I get those coupleof thousand BM on it off?'""I have wife who understands, or even if she doesn't she at least pretends.""BM struggle never gets open support from abroad it needs unless BM first forms own united front.""Sit down, talk with people with brains I respect, all of us want same thing, do some brainstorming.""Would be shocking to reveal names of the BM leaders who have secretly met with THEM." (Thecapitalized letters stood for The Honorable Elijah Muhammad.)Then one night, Malcolm X arrived nearly out on his feet from fatigue. For two hours, he paced thefloor delivering a tirade against Negro leaders who were attacking Elijah Muhammad and himself. Idon't know what gave me the inspiration to say once when he paused for breath, "I wonder if you'dtell me something about your mother?"Abruptly he quit pacing, and the look he shot at me made me sense that somehow the chance questionhad hit him. When I look back at it now, I believe I must have caught him so physically weak that hisdefenses were vulnerable.

　　Slowly, Malcolm X began to talk, now walking in a tight circle. "She was always standing over thestove, trying to stretch whatever we had to eat. We stayed so hungry that we were dizzy. I rememberthe color of dresses she used to wear-they were a kind of faded-out gray. . . ." And he kept on talkinguntil dawn, so tired that the big feet would often almost stumble in their pacing. From this stream-ofconsciousness reminiscing I finally got out of him the foundation for this book's beginning chapters, "Nightmare" and "Mascot." After that night, he never again hesitated to tell me even the most intimatedetails of his personal life, over the next two years. His talking about his mother triggered something.

　　Malcolm X's mood ranged from somber to grim as he recalled his childhood. I remember his making agreat point of how he learned what had been a cardinal awareness of his ever since: "It's the hinge thatsqueaks that gets the grease." When his narration reached his moving to Boston to live with his half-sister Ella, Malcolm X began to laugh about how "square" he had been in the ghetto streets. "Why, I'mtelling you things I haven't thought about since then!" he would exclaim. Then it was during recallingthe early Harlem days that Malcolm X really got carried away. One night, suddenly, wildly, hejumped up from his chair and, incredibly, the fearsome black demagogue was scat-singing andpopping his fingers, "re-bop-de-bop-blap-blam-" and then grabbing a vertical pipe with one hand (asthe girl partner) he went jubilantly lindy-hopping around, his coattail and the long legs and the bigfeet flying as they had in those Harlem days. And then almost as suddenly, Malcolm X caught himselfand sat back down, and for the rest of that session he was decidedly grumpy. Later on in the Harlemnarrative, he grew somber again. "The only thing I considered wrong was what I got caught doingwrong. I had a jungle mind, I was living in a jungle, and everything I did was done by instinct tosurvive." But he stressed that he had no regrets about his crimes, "because it was all a result of whathappens to thousands upon thousands of black men in the white man's Christian world."His enjoyment resumed when the narrative entered his prison days. "Let me tell you how I'd get thosewhite devil convicts and the guards, too, to do anything I wanted. I'd whisper to them, 'If you don't,I'll start a rumor that you're really a light Negro just passing as white.' That shows you what the whitedevil thinks about the black man. He'd rather die than be thought a Negro!" He told me about thereading he had been able to do in prison: "I didn't know what I was doing, but just by instinct I likedthe books with intellectual vitamins." And another time: "In the hectic pace of the world today, there isno time for meditation, or for deep thought. A prisoner has time that he can put to good use. I'd putprison second to college as the best place for a man to go if he needs to do some thinking. If he's_motivated_, in prison he can change his life."Yet another time, Malcolm X reflected, "Once a man has been to prison, he never looks at himself or atother people the same again. The 'squares' out here whose boat has been in smooth waters all the timeturn up their noses at an ex-con. But an ex-con can keep his head up when the 'squares' sink."He scribbled that night (I kept both my notebooks and the paper napkins dated): "This WM createdand dropped A-bomb on non-whites; WM now calls 'Red' and lives in fear of other WM he knowsmay bomb us."Also: "Learn wisdom from the pupil of the eye that looks upon all things and yet to self is blind.

　　Persian poet."At intervals, Malcolm X would make a great point of stressing to me, "Now, I don't want anything inthis book to make it sound that I think I'm somebody important." I would assure him that I would trynot to, and that in any event he would be checking the manuscript page by page, and ultimately the galley proofs. At other times, he would end an attack upon the white man and, watching me take thenotes, exclaim. "That devil's not going to print that, I don't care what he says!" I would point out thatthe publishers had made a binding contract and had paid a sizable sum in advance. Malcolm X wouldsay, "You trust them, and I don't. You studied what he wanted you to learn about him in schools, Istudied him in the streets and in prison, where you see the truth."Experiences which Malcolm X had had during a day could flavor his interview mood. The mostwistful, tender anecdotes generally were told on days when some incident had touched him. Once, forinstance, he told me that he had learned that a Harlem couple, not Black Muslims, had named theirnewborn son "Malcolm" after him. "What do you know about _that_?" he kept exclaiming. And thatwas the night he went back to his own boyhood again and this time recalled how he used to lie on hisback on Hector's Hill and think. That night, too: "I'll never forget the day they elected me the classpresident. A girl named Audrey Slaugh, whose father owned a car repair shop, nominated me. And aboy named James Cotton seconded the nomination. The teacher asked me to leave the room while theclass voted. When I returned I was the class president. I couldn't believe it."Any interesting book which Malcolm X had read could get him going about his love of books. "Peopledon't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by _one_ book." He came back again and again tothe books that he had studied when in prison. "Did you ever read _The Loom of Language_?" he askedme and I said I hadn't. "You should. Philology, it's a tough science-all about how words can berecognized, no matter where you find them. Now, you take 'Caesar,' it's Latin, in Latin it's pronouncedlike 'Kaiser,' with a hard C. But we anglicize it by pronouncing a soft C. The Russians say 'Czar' andmean the same thing. Another Russian dialect says 'Tsar.' Jakob Grimm was one of the foremostphilologists, I studied his 'Grimm's Law' in prison-all about consonants. Philology is related to thescience of etymology, dealing in root words. I dabbled in both of them."When I turn that page in my notebook, the next bears a note that Malcolm X had telephoned mesaying "I'm going to be out of town for a few days." I assumed that as had frequently been the casebefore, he had speaking engagements or other Muslim business to attend somewhere and I was gladfor the respite in which to get my notes separated under the chapter headings they would fit. Butwhen Malcolm X returned this time, he reported triumphantly, "I have something to tell you that willsurprise you. Ever since we discussed my mother, I've been thinking about her. I realized that I hadblocked her out of my mind-it was just unpleasant to think about her having been twenty-some yearsin that mental hospital." He said, "I don't want to take the credit. It was really my sister Yvonne whothought it might be possible to get her out. Yvonne got my brothers Wilfred, Wesley and Philberttogether, and I went out there, too. It was Philbert who really handled it.

　　"It made me face something about myself," Malcolm X said. "My mind had closed about our mother. Isimply didn't feel the problem could be solved, so I had shut it out. I had built up subconsciousdefenses. The white man does this. He shuts out of his mind, and he builds up subconscious defensesagainst anything he doesn't want to face up to. I've just become aware how closed my mind was nowthat I've opened it up again.

　　 That's one of the characteristics I don't like about myself. If I meet a problem I feel I can't solve, I shutit out. I make believe that it doesn't exist. But it exists."It was my turn to be deeply touched. Not long afterward, he was again away for a few days. When hereturned this time, he said that at his brother Philbert's home, "we had dinner with our mother for thefirst time in all those years!" He said, "She's sixty-six, and her memory is better than mine and shelooks young and healthy. She has more of her teeth than those who were instrumental in sending herto the institution." When something had angered Malcolm X during the day, his face would be flushed redder when hevisited me, and he generally would spend much of the session lashing out bitterly. When someMuslims were shot by Los Angeles policemen, one of them being killed, Malcolm X, upon his returnfrom a trip he made there, was fairly apoplectic for a week. It had been in this mood that he had made,in Los Angeles, the statement which caused him to be heavily censured by members of both races.

　　"I've just heard some good news!"-referring to a plane crash at Orly Field in Paris in which thirty-oddwhite Americans, mostly from Atlanta, Georgia, had been killed instantly. (Malcolm X never publiclyrecanted this statement, to my knowledge, but much later he said to me simply, "That's one of thethings I wish I had never said.")Anytime the name of the present Federal Judge Thurgood Marshall was raised, Malcolm X stillpractically spat fire in memory of what the judge had said years before when he was the N.A.A.C.P.

　　chief attorney: "The Muslims are run by a bunch of thugs organized from prisons and jails andfinanced, I am sure, by some Arab group." The only time that I have ever heard Malcolm X use whatmight be construed as a curse word, it was a "hell" used in response to a statement that Dr. MartinLuther King made that Malcolm X's talk brought "misery upon Negroes." Malcolm X exploded to me,"How in the hell can my talk do this? It's always a Negro responsible, not what the white man does!"The "extremist" or "demagogue" accusation invariably would burn Malcolm X. "Yes, I'm an extremist.

　　The black race here in North America is in extremely bad condition. You show me a black man whoisn't an extremist and I'll show you one who needs psychiatric attention!"Once when he said, "Aristotle shocked people. Charles Darwin outraged people. Aldous Huxleyscandalized millions!" Malcolm X immediately followed the statement with "Don't print that, peoplewould think I'm trying to link myself with them." Another time, when something provoked him toexclaim, "These Uncle Toms make me think about how the Prophet Jesus was criticized in his owncountry!" Malcolm X promptly got up and silently took my notebook, tore out that page and crumpledit and put it into his pocket, and he was considerably subdued during the remainder of that session.

　　I remember one time we talked and he showed me a newspaper clipping reporting where a Negrobaby had been bitten by a rat. Malcolm X said, "Now, just read that, just think of that a minute!

　　Suppose it was _your_ child! Where's that slumlord-on some beach in Miami!" He continued fumingthroughout our interview. I did not go with him when later that day he addressed a Negro audience in Harlem and an incident occurred which Helen Dudar reported in the _New York Post_.

　　"Malcolm speaking in Harlem stared down at one of the white reporters present, the only whitesadmitted to the meeting, and went on, 'Now, there's a reporter who hasn't taken a note in half an hour,but as soon as I start talking about the Jews, he's busy taking notes to prove that I'm anti-Semitic.'

　　"Behind the reporter, a male voice spoke up, 'Kill the bastard, kill them all.' The young man, in hisunease, smiled nervously and Malcolm jeered, 'Look at him laugh. He's really not laughing, he's justlaughing with his teeth.' An ugly tension curled the edges of the atmosphere. Then Malcolm went on:

　　'The white man doesn't know how to laugh. He just shows his teeth. But _we_ know how to laugh. Welaugh deep down, from the bottom up.' The audience laughed, deep down, from the bottom up and,as suddenly as Malcolm had stirred it, so, skillfully and swiftly, he deflected it. It had been at once amasterful and shabby performance."I later heard somewhere, or read, that Malcolm X telephoned an apology to the reporter. But this wasthe kind of evidence which caused many close observers of the Malcolm X phenomenon to declare inabsolute seriousness that he was the onlyNegro in America who could either start a race riot-or stop one. When I once quoted this to him,tacitly inviting his comment, he told me tartly, "I don't know if I could start one. I don't know if I'dwant to stop one." It was the kind of statement he relished making.

　　 Over the months, I had gradually come to establish something of a telephone acquaintance withMalcolm X's wife, whom I addressed as "Sister Betty," as I had heard the Muslims do. I admired howshe ran a home, with, then, three small daughters, and still managed to take all of the calls which camefor Malcolm X, surely as many calls as would provide a job for an average switchboard operator.

　　Sometimes when he was with me, he would telephone home and spend as much as five minutesrapidly jotting on a pad the various messages which had been left for him.

　　Sister Betty, generally friendly enough on the phone with me, sometimes would exclaim inspontaneous indignation, "The man never gets any _sleep_!" Malcolm X rarely put in less than an 18hour workday. Often when he had left my studio at four A.M. and a 40-minute drive lay between himand home in East Elmhurst, Long Island, he had asked me to telephone him there at nine A.M.

　　Usually this would be when he wanted me to accompany him somewhere, and he was going to tellme, after reviewing his commitments, when and where he wanted me to meet him. (There were timeswhen I didn't get an awful lot of sleep, myself.) He was always accompanied, either by some of hisMuslim colleagues like James 67X (the 67th man named "James" who had joined Harlem's MosqueNumber 7), or Charles 37X, or by me, but he never asked me to be with him when they were. I wentwith him to college and university lectures, to radio and television stations for his broadcasts, and topublic appearances in a variety of situations and locations.

　　 If we were driving somewhere, motorists along the highway would wave to Malcolm X, the faces ofboth whites and Negroes spontaneously aglow with the wonderment that I had seen evoked by other"celebrities." No few airline hostesses had come to know him, because he flew so much; they smiledprettily at him, he was in turn the essence of courtly gentlemanliness, and inevitably the word spreadand soon an unusual flow of bathroom traffic would develop, passing where he sat. Whenever wearrived at our destination, it became familiar to hear "There's Malcolm X!" "_Where_?" "The tall one."Passers-by of both races stared at him. A few of both races, more Negroes than whites, would speak ornod to him in greeting. A high percentage of white people were visibly uncomfortable in his presence,especially within the confines of small areas, such as in elevators. "I'm the only black man they've everbeen close to who they know speaks the _truth_ to them," Malcolm X once explained to me. "It's theirguilt that upsets them, not me." He said another time, "The white man is afraid of truth. The truthtakes the white man's breath and drains his strength-you just watch his face get red anytime you tellhim a little truth."There was something about this man when he was in a room with people. He commanded the room,whoever else was present. Even out of doors; once I remember in Harlem he sat on a speaker's standbetween Congressman Adam Clayton Powell and the former Manhattan Borough President HulanJack, and when the street rally was over the crowd focus was chiefly on Malcolm X. I rememberanother time that we had gone by railway from New York City to Philadelphia where he appeared inthe Philadelphia Convention Hall on the radio station WCAU program of Ed Harvey. "You are theman who has said 'All Negroes are angry and I am the angriest of all'; is that correct?" asked Harvey,on the air, introducing Malcolm X, and as Malcolm X said crisply, "That quote is correct!" thegathering crowd of bystanders stared at him, riveted.

　　We had ridden to Philadelphia in reserved parlor car seats. "I can't get caught on a coach, I could getinto trouble on a coach," Malcolm X had said. Walking to board the parlor car, we had passed a diningcar toward which he jerked his head, "I used to work on that thing." Riding to our destination, heconversationally told me that the F.B.I. had tried to bribe him for information about ElijahMuhammad; that he wanted me to be sure and read a new book, _Crisis in Black and White_ byCharles Silberman-"one of the very few white writers I know with the courage to tell his kind thetruth"; and he asked me to make a note to please telephone the _New York Post's_ feature writerHelen Dudar and tell her he thought very highly of her recent series-he did not want to commend herdirectly.

　　After the Ed Harvey Show was concluded, we took the train to return to New York City. The parlorcar, packed with businessmen behind their newspapers, commuting homeward after their workdays,was electric with Malcolm X's presence. After the white-jacketed Negro porter had made several tripsup and down the aisle, he was in the middle of another trip when Malcolm X _sotto-voced_ in my ear,"He used to work with me, I forget his name, we worked right on this very train together. He knowsit's me. He's trying to make up his mind what to do." The porter went on past us, poker-faced. Butwhen he came through again, Malcolm X suddenly leaned forward from his seat, smiling at the porter.

　　"Why, sure, I know who you are!" the porter suddenly said, loudly. "You washed dishes right on thistrain! I was just telling some of the fellows you were in my car here. We all follow you!" The tension on the car could have been cut with a knife. Then, soon, the porter returned to Malcolm X,his voice expansive. "One of our guests would like to meet you." Now a young, clean-cut white manrose and came up, his hand extended, and Malcolm X rose and shook the proffered hand firmly.

　　Newspapers dropped just below eye-level the length of the car. The young white man explaineddistinctly, loudly, that he had been in the Orient for a while, and now was studying at Columbia. "Idon't agree with everything you say," he told Malcolm X, "but I have to admire your presentation."Malcolm's voice in reply was cordiality itself. "I don't think you could search America, sir, and findtwo men who agree on everything." Subsequently, to another white man, an older businessman, whocame up and shook hands, he said evenly, "Sir, I know how you feel. It's a hard thing to speak outagainst me when you are agreeing with so much that I say." And we rode on into New York under,now, a general open gazing.

　　In Washington, D.C., Malcolm X slashed at the government's reluctance to take positive steps in theNegro's behalf. I gather that even the White House took notice, for not long afterward I left offinterviewing Malcolm X for a few days and went to the White House to do a _Playboy_ interview ofthe then White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, who grimaced spontaneously when I said I waswriting the life story of Malcolm X. Another time I left Malcolm X to interview the U.S.

　　Nazi Party Commander George Lincoln Rockwell, who frankly stated that he admired the courage ofMalcolm X, and he felt that the two of them should speak together across the United States, and theycould thus begin a real solution to the race problem-one of voluntary separation of the white and blackraces, with Negroes returning to Africa. I reported this to Malcolm X, who snorted, "He must think I'mnuts! What am _I_ going to look like going speaking with a _devil_!" Yet another time, I went off toAtlanta and interviewed for _Playboy_ Dr. Martin Luther King. He was privately intrigued to hearlittle-known things about Malcolm X that I told him; for publication, he discussed him with reserve,and he did say that he would sometime like to have an opportunity to talk with him. Hearing this,Malcolm X said drily, "You think I ought to send him a telegram with my telephone number?" (Butfrom other things that Malcolm X said to me at various times, I deduced that he actually had areluctant admiration for Dr. King.)Malcolm X and I reached the point, ultimately, where we shared a mutual camaraderie that, althoughit was never verbally expressed, was a warm one. He was for me unquestionably one of the mostengaging personalities I had ever met, and for his part, I gathered, I was someone he had learned hecould express himself to, with candor, without the likelihood of hearing it repeated, and like anyperson who lived amid tension, he enjoyed being around someone, another man, with whom he couldpsychically relax. When I made trips now, he always asked me to telephone him when I would bereturning to New York, and generally, if he could squeeze it into his schedule, he met me at theairport. I would see him coming along with his long, gangling strides, and wearing the wide, toothy,good-natured grin, and as he drove me into New York City he would bring me up to date on things ofinterest that had happened since I left. I remember one incident within the airport that showed mehow Malcolm X never lost his racial perspective. Waiting for my baggage, we witnessed a touching family reunion scene as part of which several cherubic little children romped and played, exclaimingin another language. "By tomorrow night, they'll know how to say their first English word-_nigger_,"observed Malcolm X.

　　When Malcolm X made long trips, such as to San Francisco or Los Angeles, I did not go along, butfrequently, usually very late at night, he would telephone me, and ask how the book was comingalong, and he might set up the time for our next interview upon his return. One call that I never willforget came at close to four A.M., waking me; he must have just gotten up in Los Angeles. His voicesaid, "Alex Haley?" I said, sleepily, "Yes? Oh, _hey_, Malcolm!" His voice said, "I trust you seventy percent"-and then he hung up. I lay a short time thinking about him and I went back to sleep feelingwarmed by that call, as I still am warmed to remember it. Neither of us ever mentioned it.

　　Malcolm X's growing respect for individual whites seemed to be reserved for those who ignored on apersonal basis the things he said about whites and who jousted with him as a _man_. He, moreover,was convinced that he could tell a lot about any person by listening. "There's an art to listening well,"he told me. "I listen closely to the sound of a man's voice when he's speaking. I can hear sincerity." Thenewspaper person whom he ultimately came to admire probably more than any other was the _NewYork Times_' M. S. Handler. (I was very happy when I learned that Handler had agreed to write thisbook's Introduction; I know that Malcolm X would have liked that.) The first time I ever heardMalcolm X speak of Handler, whom he had recently met, he began, "I was talking with this devil-" andabruptly he cut himself off in obvious embarrassment. "It's a reporter named Handler, from the_Times_-" he resumed. Malcolm X's respect for the man steadily increased, and Handler, for his part,was an influence upon the inner Malcolm X. "He's the most genuinely unprejudiced white man I evermet," Malcolm X said to me, speaking of Handler months later. "I have asked him things and testedhim. I have listened to him talk, closely."I saw Malcolm X too many times exhilarated in after-lecture give-and-take with predominantly whitestudent bodies at colleges and universities to ever believe that he nurtured at his core any blanketwhite-hatred. "The young whites, and blacks, too, are the only hope that America has," he said to meonce. "The rest of us have always been living in a lie."Several Negroes come to mind now who I know, in one way or another, had vastly impressedMalcolm X. (Some others come to mind whom I know he has vastly abhorred, but these I will notmention.) Particularly high in his esteem, I know, was the great photographer, usually associated with_Life_ magazine, Gordon Parks. It was Malcolm X's direct influence with Elijah Muhammad which gotParks permitted to enter and photograph for publication in _Life_ the highly secret self-defensetraining program of the Black Muslim Fruit of Islam, making Parks, as far as I know, the only non-Muslim who ever has witnessed this, except for policemen and other agency representatives who hadfeigned "joining" the Black Muslims to infiltrate them. "His success among the white man never hasmade him lose touch with black reality," Malcolm X said of Parks once.

　　Another person toward whom Malcolm X felt similarly was the actor Ossie Davis. Once in the middleof one of our interviews, when we had been talking about something else, Malcolm X suddenly asked me, "Do you know Ossie Davis?" I said I didn't. He said, "I ought to introduce you sometime, that'sone of the finest black men." In Malcolm X's long dealings with the staff of the Harlem weeklynewspaper _Amsterdam News_, he had come to admire Executive Editor James Hicks and the starfeature writer James Booker. He said that Hicks had "an open mind, and he never panics for the whiteman." He thought that Booker was an outstanding reporter; he also was highly impressed with Mrs.

　　Booker when he met her.

　　It was he who introduced me to two of my friends today, Dr. C. Eric Lincoln who was at the timewriting the book _The Black Muslims in America_, and Louis Lomax who was then writing variousarticles about the Muslims. Malcolm X deeply respected the care and depth which Dr. Lincoln wasputting into his research. Lomax, he admired for his ferreting ear and eye for hot news. "If I see thatrascal Lomax running somewhere, I'll grab my hat and get behind him," Malcolm X said once,"because I know he's onto something." Author James Baldwin Malcolm X also admired. "He's sobrilliant he confuses the white man with words on paper." And another time, "He's upset the whiteman more than anybody except The Honorable Elijah Muhammad."Malcolm X had very little good to say of Negro ministers, very possibly because most of them hadattacked the Black Muslims. Excepting reluctant admiration of Dr. Martin LutherKing, I heard him speak well of only one other, The Reverend Eugene L. Callender of Harlem's largePresbyterian Church of the Master. "He's a preacher, but he's a fighter for the black man," saidMalcolm X. I later learned that somewhere the direct, forthright Reverend Callender had privatelycornered Malcolm X and had read him the riot act about his general attacks upon the Negro clergy.

　　Malcolm X also admired The Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, in his Congressman political role: "I'dthink about retiring if the black man had ten like him in Washington." He had similar feelings aboutthe N.A.A.C.P. lawyer, now a New York State Assemblyman, Percy Sutton, and later Sutton wasretained as his personal attorney. Among Negro educators, of whom Malcolm X met many in hiscollege and university lecturing, I never heard him speak well of any but one, Dr. Kenneth B. Clark.

　　"There's a black man with brains gone to bed," Malcolm X told me once, briefly lapsing into his oldvernacular. He had very distinct reservations about Negro professional intelligentsia as a category.

　　They were the source from which most of the Black Muslims' attackers came. It was for this reasonthat some of his most bristling counter-attacks against "these so-called educated Uncle Thomases,Ph.D." were flung out at his audiences at Negro institutions of higher learning.

　　Where I witnessed the Malcolm X who was happiest and most at ease among members of our ownrace was when sometimes I chanced to accompany him on what he liked to call "my little dailyrounds" around the streets of Harlem, among the Negroes that he said the "so-called black leaders"spoke of "as black masses statistics." On these tours, Malcolm X generally avoided the arterial 125thStreet in Harlem; he plied the side streets, especially in those areas which were thickest with what hedescribed as "the black man down in the gutter where I came from," the poverty-ridden with a highincidence of dope addicts and winos.

　　Malcolm X here indeed was a hero. Striding along the sidewalks, he bathed all whom he met in the boyish grin, and his conversation with any who came up was quiet and pleasant. "It's just what thewhite devil wants you to do, brother," he might tell a wino, "he wants you to get drunk so he will havean excuse to put a club up beside your head." Or I remember once he halted at a stoop to greet severalolder women: "Sisters, let me ask you something," he said conversationally, "have you ever known_one_ white man who either didn't do something to you, or take something from you?" One amongthat audience exclaimed after a moment, "I sure _ain't_!" whereupon all of them joined in laughter andwe walked on with Malcolm X waving back to cries of "He's _right_!"I remember that once in the early evening we rounded a corner to hear a man, shabbily dressed,haranguing a small crowd around his speaking platform of an upturned oblong wooden box with anAmerican flag alongside. "I don't respect or believe in this damn flag, it's there because I can't hold apublic meeting without it unless I want the white man to put me in jail. And that's what I'm up here totalk about-these crackers getting rich off the blood and bones of your and my people!" Said MalcolmX, grinning, "He's _working_!"Malcolm X rarely exchanged any words with those Negro men with shiny, "processed" hair withoutgiving them a nudge. Very genially: "Ahhhh, brother, the white devil has taught you to hate yourselfso much that you put hot lye in your hair to make it look more like his hair."I remember another stoopful of women alongside the door of a small grocery store where I had gonefor something, leaving Malcolm X talking across the street. As I came out of the store, one woman wasexcitedly describing for the rest a Malcolm X lecture she had heard in Mosque Number 7 one Sunday.

　　"Oooooh, he _burnt_ that white man, burnt him _up_, chile . . . chile, he told us we descendin' fromblack kings an' queens-Lawd, I didn't know it!" Another woman asked, "You believe that?" and thefirst vehemently responded, "Yes, I _do_!"And I remember a lone, almost ragged guitarist huddled on a side street playing and singing just forhimself when he glanced up and instantly recognized the oncoming, striding figure. "Huh-_ho_!" theguitarist exclaimed, and jumping up, he snapped into a mock salute. "My _man_!"Malcolm X loved it. And they loved him. There was no question about it: whether he was standing tallbeside a street lamp chatting with winos, or whether he was firing his radio and television broadsidesto unseen millions of people, or whether he was titillating small audiences of sophisticated whiteswith his small-talk such as, "My hobby is stirring up Negroes, that's spelled _knee_-grows the wayyou liberals pronounce it"-the man had charisma, and he had _power_. And I was not the only onewho at various tunes marveled at how he could continue to receive such an awesome amount ofinternational personal publicity and still season liberally practically everything he said, both in publicand privately, with credit and hosannas to "The Honorable Elijah Muhammad." Often I made sidenotes to myself about this. I kept, in effect, a double-entry set of notebooks. Once, noting me switchingfrom one to the other, Malcolm X curiously asked me what for? I told him some reason, but not thatone notebook was things he said for his book and the other was for my various personal observationsabout him; very likely he would have become self-conscious. "You must have written a million wordsby now," said Malcolm X. "Probably," I said. "This white man's crazy," he mused. "I'll prove it to you.

　　Do you think I'd publicize somebody knocking me like I do him?" "Look, tell me the truth," Malcolm X said to me one evening, "you travel around. Have you heardanything?"Truthfully, I told him I didn't know what he had reference to. He dropped it and talked of somethingelse.

　　From Malcolm X himself, I had seen, or heard, a few unusual things which had caused me some littleprivate wonder and speculation, and then, with nothing to hang them onto, I had dismissed them.

　　One day in his car, we had stopped for the red light at an intersection; another car with a white mandriving had stopped alongside, and when this white man saw Malcolm X, he instantly called across tohim, "I don't blame your people for turning to you. If I were a Negro I'd follow you, too. Keep up thefight!" Malcolm X said to the man very sincerely, "I wish I could have a white chapter of the people Imeet like you." The light changed, and as both cars drove on, Malcolm X quickly said to me, firmly,"Not only don't write that, never repeat it. Mr. Muhammad would have a fit." The significant thingabout the incident, I later reflected, was that it was the first time I had ever heard him speak of ElijahMuhammad with anything less than reverence.

　　About the same time, one of the scribblings of Malcolm X's that I had retrieved had read,enigmatically, "My life has always been one of changes." Another time, this was in September,1963, Malcolm X had been highly upset about something during an entire session, and when I read the_Amsterdam News_ for that week, I guessed that he had been upset about an item in Jimmy Booker'scolumn that Booker had heard that Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X were feuding. (Booker was laterto reveal that after his column was written, he had gone on vacation, and on his return he learned thatMalcolm X "stormed into the _Amsterdam News_ with three followers . . . 'I want to see JimmyBooker. I don't like what he wrote. There is no fight between me and Elijah Muhammad. I believe inMr. Muhammad and will lay down my life for him.' ")Also, now and then, when I chanced to meet a few other key Muslims, mainly when I was withMalcolm X, but when he was not immediately present, I thought I detected either in subtle phrasing,or in manner, something less than total admiration of their famous colleague-and then I would tellmyself I had misinterpreted. And during these days, Dr. C. Eric Lincoln and I would talk on the phonefairly often. We rarely would fail to mention how it seemed almost certain that seeds of trouble lay inthe fact that however much Malcolm X praised Elijah Muhammad, it was upon dramatic, articulateMalcolm X that the communications media and hence the general public focused the great bulk oftheir attention. I never dreamed, though, what Malcolm X was actually going through. He neverbreathed a word, at least not to me, until the actual rift became public.

　　When Malcolm X left me at around two A.M. on that occasion, he asked me to call him at nine A.M.

　　The telephone in the home in East Elmhurst rang considerably longer than usual, and Sister Betty,when she answered, sounded strained, choked up. When Malcolm X came on, he, too, soundeddifferent. He asked me, "Have you heard the radio or seen the newspapers?" I said I hadn't. He said,"Well, do!" and that he would call me later.

　　I went and got the papers. I read with astonishment that Malcolm X had been suspended by ElijahMuhammad-the stated reason being the "chickens coming home to roost" remark that Malcolm Xrecently had made as a comment upon the assassination of President Kennedy.

　　Malcolm X did telephone, after about an hour, and I met him at the Black Muslims' newspaper officein Harlem, a couple of blocks further up Lenox Avenue from their mosque and restaurant. He wasseated behind his light-brown metal desk and his brown hat lay before him on the green blotter. Hewore a dark suit with a vest, a white shirt, the inevitable leaping-sailfish clip held his narrow tie, andthe big feet in the shined black shoes pushed the swivel chair pendulously back and forth as he talkedinto the telephone.

　　"I'm always hurt over any act of disobedience on my part concerning Mr. Muhammad. . . . Yes, sir-anything The Honorable Elijah Muhammad does is all right with me. I believe absolutely in hiswisdom and authority." The telephone would ring again instantly every time he put it down. "Mr.

　　Peter Goldman! I haven't heard your voice in a good while! Well, sir, I just should have kept my bigmouth shut." To the _New York Times_: "Sir? Yes-he suspended me from making public appearancesfor the tune being, which I fully understand. I say the same thing to you that I have told others, I'm incomplete submission to Mr. Muhammad's judgment, because I have always found his judgment to bebased on sound thinking." To C.B.S.: "I think that anybody who is in a position to discipline othersshould first learn to accept discipline himself."He brought it off, the image of contriteness, the best be could-throughout the harshly trying nextseveral weeks. But the back of his neck was reddish every time I saw him. He did not yet put intowords his obvious fury at the public humiliation. We did very little interviewing now, he was so busyon telephones elsewhere; but it did not matter too much because by now I had the bulk of the neededlife story material in hand. When he did find some time to visit me, he was very preoccupied, and Icould _feel_ him rankling with anger and with inactivity, but he tried hard to hide it.

　　He scribbled one night, "You have not converted a man because you have silenced him. John ViscountMorley." And the same night, almost illegibly, "I was going downhill until he picked me up, but themore I think of it, we picked each other up."When I did not see him for several days, a letter came. "I have cancelled all public appearances andspeaking engagements for a number of weeks. So within that period it should be possible to finish thisbook. With the fast pace of newly developing incidents today, it is easy for something that is done orsaid tomorrow to be outdated even by sunset on the same day. Malcolm X."I pressed to get the first chapter, "Nightmare," into a shape that he could review. When it was ready in a readable rough draft, I telephoned him. He came as quickly as he could drive from his home-whichmade me see how grinding an ordeal it was to him to just be sitting at home, inactive, and knowinghis temperament, my sympathies went out to Sister Betty.

　　He pored over the manuscript pages, raptly the first time, then drawing out his red-ink ball-point penhe read through the chapter again, with the pen occasionally stabbing at something. "You can't blessAllah!" he exclaimed, changing "bless" to "praise." In a place that referred to himself and his brothersand sisters, he scratched red through "we kids." "Kids are goats!" he exclaimed sharply.

　　Soon, Malcolm X and his family flew to Miami. Cassius Clay had extended the invitation as a sixthwedding anniversary present to Malcolm X and Sister Betty, and they had accepted most gratefully. Itwas Sister Betty's first vacation in the six years of the taut regimen as a Black Muslim wife, and it wasfor Malcolm X both a saving of face and something to _do_.

　　Very soon after his arrival, he telegraphed me his phone number at a motel. I called him and he toldme, "I just want to tell you something. I'm not a betting man anymore, but if you are, you bet onCassius to beat Listen, and you will win." I laughed and said he was prejudiced. He said, "Rememberwhat I told you when the fight's over." I received later a picture postcard, the picture in vivid colorsbeing of a chimpanzee at the Monkey Jungle in Miami. Malcolm X had written on the reverse side,"One hundred years after the Civil War, and these _chimpanzees_ get more recognition, respect andfreedom in America than our people do. Bro. Malcolm X." Another time, an envelope came, and insideit was a clipping of an Irv Kupcinet column in the Chicago _Sun-Times_. Malcolm X's red pen hadencircled an item which read, "Insiders are predicting a split in the Black Muslims. Malcolm X, oustedas No. 2 man in the organization, may form a splinter group to oppose Elijah Muhammad." Alongsidethe item, Malcolm X had scribbled "Imagine this!!!"The night of the phenomenal upset, when Clay _did_ beat Liston, Malcolm X telephoned me, andsounds of excitement were in the background. The victory party was in his motel suite, Malcolm Xtold me. He described what was happening, mentioned some of those who were present, and that thenew heavyweight king was "in the next room, my bedroom here" taking a nap. After reminding me ofthe fight prediction he had made, Malcolm X said that I should look forward now to Clay's "quickdevelopment into a major world figure. I don't know if you really realize the world significance thatthis is the first _Muslim_ champion."It was the following morning when Cassius Clay gave the press interview which resulted in nationalheadlines that he was actually a "Black Muslim," and soon after, the newspapers were carryingpictures of Malcolm X introducing the heavyweight champion to various African diplomats in thelobbies of the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Malcolm X toured Clay about inHarlem, and in other places, functioning, he said, as Clay's "friend and religious advisor."I had now moved upstate to finish my work on the book, and we talked on the telephone every threeor four days. He said things suggesting that he might never be returned to his former Black Muslimpost, and he now began to say things quietly critical of Elijah Muhammad. _Playboy_ magazine asked me to do an interview for them with the new champion Cassius Clay, and when I confidently askedMalcolm X to arrange for me the needed introduction to Clay, Malcolm X hesitantly said, "I think youhad better ask somebody else to do that." I was highly surprised at the reply, but I had learned neverto press him for information. And then, very soon after, I received a letter. "Dear Alex Haley: A quicknote. Would you prepare a properly worded letter that would enable me to change the reading of thecontract so that all remaining proceeds now would go to the Muslim Mosque, Inc., or in the case of mydeath then to go directly to my wife, Mrs. Betty X Little? The sooner this letter or contract is changed,the more easily I will rest." Under the signature of Malcolm X, there was a P.S.: "How is it possible towrite one's autobiography in a world so fast-changing as this?"Soon I read in the various newspapers that rumors were being heard of threats on Malcolm X's life.

　　Then there was an article in the _Amsterdam News_: The caption was "Malcolm X Tells Of DeathThreat," and the story reported that he had said that former close associates of his in the New Yorkmosque had sent out "a special squad" to "try to kill me in cold blood. Thanks to Allah, I learned of theplot from the very same brothers who had been sent out to murder me. These brothers had heard merepresent and defend Mr. Muhammad for too long for them to swallow the lies about me without firstasking me some questions for their own clarification."I telephoned Malcolm X, and expressed my personal concern for him. His voice sounded weary. Hesaid that his "uppermost interest" was that any money which might come due him in the future wouldgo directly to his new organization, or to his wife, as the letter he had signed and mailed hadspecified. He told me, "I know I've got to get a will made for myself, I never did because I never havehad anything to will to anybody, but if I don't have one and something happened to me, there couldbe a mess." I expressed concern for him, and he told me that he had a loaded rifle in his home, and "Ican take care of myself."The "Muslim Mosque, Inc." to which Malcolm X had referred was a new organization which he hadformed, which at that time consisted of perhaps forty or fifty Muslims who had left the leadership ofElijah Muhammad.

　　Through a close associate of Cassius Clay, whom Malcolm X had finally suggested to me, myinterview appointment was arranged with the heavyweight champion, and I flew down to New YorkCity to do the interview for _Playboy_. Malcolm X was "away briefly," Sister Betty said on the phone-and she spoke brusquely. I talked with one Black Muslim lady whom I had known before she hadjoined, and who had been an admirer of Malcolm X. She had elected to remain in the original fold,"but I'll tell you, brother, what a lot in the mosque are saying, you know, it's like if you divorced yourhusband, you'd still like to see him once in a while." During my interviews with Cassius Clay in histhree-room suite at Harlem's Theresa Hotel, inevitably the questions got around to Clay's Muslimmembership, then to a query about what had happened to his formerly very close relationship withMalcolm X. Evenly, Clay said, "You just don't buck Mr. Muhammad and get away with it. I don't wantto talk about him no more."Elijah Muhammad at his headquarters in Chicago grew "emotionally affected" whenever the name of Malcolm X had to be raised in his presence, one of the Muslims in Clay's entourage told me. Mr.

　　Muhammad reportedly had said, "Brother Malcolm got to be a _big_ man. I made him big. I was aboutto make him a _great_ man." The faithful Black Muslims predicted that soon Malcolm X would beturned upon by the defectors from Mosque Number 7 who had joined him: "They will feel betrayed."Said others, "A great chastisement of Allah will fall upon a hypocrite." Mr. Muhammad reportedly hadsaid at another time, "Malcolm is destroying himself," and that he had no wish whatever to seeMalcolm X die, that he "would rather see him live and suffer his treachery."The general feeling among Harlemites, non-Muslims, with whom I talked was that Malcolm X hadbeen powerful and influential enough a minister that eventually he would split the mosquemembership into two hostile camps, and that in New York City at least, Elijah Muhammad'sunquestioned rule would be ended.

　　Malcolm X returned. He said that he had been in Boston and Philadelphia. He spent ample time withme, now during the day, in Room 1936 in the Hotel Americana. His old total ease was no longer withhim. As if it was the most natural thing in the world to do, at sudden intervals he would stride to thedoor; pulling it open, he would look up and down the corridor, then shut the door again. "If I'm alivewhen this book comes out, it will be a miracle," he said by way of explanation. "I'm not saying itdistressingly-" He leaned forward and touched the buff gold bedspread. "I'm saying it like I say that'sa bedspread."For the first time he talked with me in some detail about what had happened. He said that hisstatement about President Kennedy's assassination was not why he had been ousted from theMuslims. "It wasn't the reason at all. Nobody said anything when I made stronger statements before."The real reason, he said, was "jealousy in Chicago, and I had objected to the immorality of the manwho professed to be more moral than anybody."Malcolm X said that he had increased the Nation of Islam membership from about 400 when he hadjoined to around 40,000. "I don't think there were more than 400 in the country when I joined, I reallydon't. They were mostly older people, and many of them couldn't even pronounce Mr. Muhammad'sname, and he stayed mostly in the background."Malcolm X worked hard not to show it, but he was upset. "There is nothing more frightful thanignorance in action. Goethe," he scribbled one day. He hinted about Cassius Clay a couple of times,and when I responded only with anecdotes about my interview with Clay, he finally asked what Clayhad said of him. I dug out the index card on which the question was typed in advance and Clay'sresponse was beneath in longhand. Malcolm X stared at the card, then out of the window, and he gotup and walked around; one of the few times I ever heard his voice betray his hurt was when he said, "Ifelt like a blood big-brother to him." He paused. "I'm not against him now. He's a fine young man.

　　Smart. He's just let himself be used, led astray."And at another time there in the hotel room he came the nearest to tears that I ever saw him, and alsothe only time I ever heard him use, for his race, one word. He had been talking about how hard he had worked building up the Muslim organization in the early days when he was first moved to New YorkCity, when abruptly he exclaimed hoarsely, "We had the _best_ organization the black man's ever had_niggers_ ruined it!"A few days later, however, he wrote in one of his memo books this, which he let me read, "Childrenhave a lesson adults should learn, to not be ashamed of failing, but to get up and try again. Most of usadults are so afraid, so cautious, so 'safe,' and therefore so shrinking and rigid and afraid that it is whyso many humans fail. Most middle-aged adults have resigned themselves to failure."Telephone calls came frequently for Malcolm X when he was in the room with me, or he would makecalls; he would talk in a covert, guarded manner, clearly not wishing me to be able to follow thediscussion. I took to going into the bathroom at these times, and closing the door, emerging when themurmuring of his voice had stopped-hoping that made him more comfortable. Later, he would tell methat he was hearing from some Muslims who were still ostensibly Elijah Muhammad's followers. "I'ma marked man," he said one day, after such a call. "I've had highly placed people tell me to be verycareful every move I make." He thought about it. "Just as long as my family doesn't get hurt, I'm notfrightened for myself." I have the impression that Malcolm X heard in advance that the Muslimorganization was going to sue to make him vacate the home he and his family lived in.

　　I had become worried that Malcolm X, bitter, would want to go back through the chapters in which hehad told of his Black Muslim days and re-edit them in some way. The day before I left New York Cityto return upstate, I raised my concern to Malcolm X. "I have thought about that," he said. "There are alot of things I could say that passed through my mind at times even then, things I saw and heard, but Ithrew them out of my mind. I'm going to let it stand the way I've told it. I want the book to be the wayit was."Then-March 26, 1964-a note came from Malcolm X: "There is a chance that I may make a quick trip toseveral very important countries in Africa, including a pilgrimage to the Muslim Holy Cities of Meccaand Medina, beginning about April 13th. Keep this to yourself."While abroad, Malcolm X wrote letters and postcards to almost everyone he knew well. His lettersnow were signed "El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz."Then, in mid-May, Sister Betty telephoned me, her voice jubilant: Malcolm X was returning. I flew toNew York City. On May 21, the phone rang in my hotel room and Sister Betty said, "Just a minute,please-," then the deep voice said, "How are you?""Well! El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz! How are _you_?" He said, "Just a little bit tired." He had arrived on aPan-American Airlines flight at 4:30. He was going to have a press conference at seven P.M. at theHotel Theresa. "I'll pick you up at 6:30 at 135th and Lenox, on the uptown side-all right?"When the blue Oldsmobile stopped, and I got in, El-Hajj Malcolm, broadly beaming, wore a seersucker suit, the red hair needed a barber's attention, and he had grown a beard. Also in the carwas Sister Betty. It was the first time we had ever seen each other after more than a year of talkingseveral times a week on the telephone. We smiled at each other. She wore dark glasses, a bluematernity suit, and she was pregnant with what would be her fourth child.

　　There must have been fifty still and television photographers and reporters jockeying for position, upfront, and the rest of the Skyline Ballroom was filling with Negro followers of Malcolm X, or his well-wishers, and the curious. The room lit up with flickering and flooding lights as he came in the doorsquiring Sister Betty, holding her arm tenderly, and she was smiling broadly in her pride that this manwas her man. I recognized the _Times _'M.S. Handler and introduced myself; we warmly shook handsand commandeered a little two-chair table. The reporters in a thick semicircle before Malcolm X seatedon the podium fired questions at him, and he gave the impression that all of his twelve years'

　　oratorical practice had prepared him for this new image.

　　"Do we correctly understand that you now do not think that all whites are evil?""_True_, sir! My trip to Mecca has opened my eyes. I no longer subscribe to racism. I have adjusted mythinking to the point where I believe that whites are human beings"-a significant pause-"as long as thisis borne out by their humane attitude toward Negroes."They picked at his "racist" image. "I'm _not_ a racist. I'm not condemning whites for being whites, butfor their deeds. I condemn what whites collectively have done to our people collectively."He almost continually flashed about the room the ingratiating boyish smile. He would pick at the newreddish beard. They asked him about that, did he plan to keep it? He said he hadn't decided yet, hewould have to see if he could get used to it or not. Was he maneuvering to now join the major civilrights leaders whom he had previously bitterly attacked? He answered that one sideways: "I'll explainit this way, sir. If some men are in a car, driving with a destination in mind, and you know they aregoing the wrong way, but they are convinced they are going the right way, then you get into the carwith them, and ride with them, talking-and finally when they see they are on the wrong road, notgetting where they were intending, then you tell them, and they will listen to you _then_, what road totake." He had never been in better form, weighing, parrying, answering the questions.

　　The _Times_' Handler, beside me, was taking notes and muttering under his breath, "Incredible!

　　Incredible!" I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking, some of the time, that if a pebble weredropped from the window behind Malcolm X, it would have struck on a sidewalk eight floors belowwhere years before he had skulked, selling dope.

　　As I resumed writing upstate, periodic notes came from Malcolm X. "I hope the book is proceedingrapidly, for events concerning my life happen so swiftly, much of what has already been written caneasily be outdated from month to month. In life, nothing is permanent; not even life itself (smile). So Iwould advise you to rush it on out as fast as possible." Another note, special delivery, had a tone ofirritation with me: he had received from the publisher a letter which indicated that he had received a $2500 check when the book contract was signed, "and therefore I will be expected to pay _personal_income tax on this. As you know, it was my repeated specification that this entire transaction was tobe made at that time directly with and to the Mosque. In fact, I have never seen that check to this veryday."The matter was straightened out, and I sent Malcolm X some rough chapters to read. I was appalledwhen they were soon returned, red-inked in many places where he had told of his almost father-andson relationship with Elijah Muhammad. Telephoning Malcolm X, I reminded him of his previousdecision, and I stressed that if those chapters contained such telegraphing to readers of what would lieahead, then the book would automatically be robbed of some of its building suspense and drama.

　　Malcolm X said, gruffly, "Whose book is this?" I told him "yours, of course," and that I only made theobjection in my position as a writer. He said that he would have to think about it. I was heart-sick atthe prospect that he might want to re-edit the entire book into a polemic against Elijah Muhammad.

　　But late that night, Malcolm X telephoned. "I'm sorry. You're right. I was upset about something.

　　Forget what I wanted changed, let what you already had stand." I never again gave him chapters toreview unless I was with him. Several times I would covertly watch him frown and wince as he read,but he never again asked for any change in what he had originally said. And the only thing that heever indicated that he wished had been different in his life came when he was reading the chapter"Laura." He said, "That was a smart girl, a _good_ girl. She tried her best to make something out of me,and look what I started her into-dope and prostitution. I wrecked that girl." Malcolm X was busy, busy, busy; he could not visit my hotel room often, and when he did, it shortlywould get the feeling of Grand Central Station. It seemed that when the telephone was not ringing forhim, he was calling someone else, consulting the jotted numbers in his ever-ready memorandum book.

　　Now he had begun to talk a great deal with various people from the Middle East or Africa who werein New York. Some of these came to see him at the hotel room. At first, I would sit by the windowengrossed in reading while they talked by the room's door in low tones. He was very apologetic whenthis occurred, and I told him I felt no sensitivity about it; then, afterwards, I would generally step outinto the hallway, or perhaps take the elevator down to the lobby, then watch the elevators until I sawthe visitor leave. One day, I remember, the phone had rung steadily with such callers as C.B.S., A.B.C.,N.B.C., every New York City paper, the London _Daily Express_, and numerous individuals-he and Ihad gotten no work at all accomplished; then a television camera crew arrived and filled the room totape an interview with Malcolm X by A.B.C.'s commentator Bill Beutel. As the crew was setting up itsfloodlights on tripods, a Dayton, Ohio, radio station called, wishing to interview Malcolm X bytelephone. He asked me to ask them to call him the following day at his sister Ella's home in Boston.

　　Then the Ghana Ministry of Information called. I turned with a note to Malcolm X to whom thecommentator Beutel had just said, "I won't take much of your time, I just have a few probably stupidquestions." Glancing at my note, Malcolm X said to Beutel, "Only the unasked question is stupid," andthen to me, "Tell them I'll call them back, please." Then just as the television cameras began rolling,with Beutel and Malcolm X talking, the telephone rang again and it was _Life_ magazine reporterMarc Crawford to whom I whispered what was happening. Crawford, undaunted, asked if the open receiver could be placed where he could hear the interview, and I complied, relieved that it was oneway to let the interview proceed without interruption.

　　The manuscript copy which Malcolm X was given to review was in better shape now, and he poredthrough page by page, intently, and now and then his head would raise with some comment. "Youknow," he said once, "why I have been able to have some effect is because I make a study of theweaknesses of this country and because the more the white man yelps, the more I know I have strucka nerve." Another time, he put down upon the bed the manuscript he was reading, and he got up fromhis chair and walked back and forth, stroking his chin, then he looked at me. "You know this placehere in this chapter where I told you how I put the pistol up to my head and kept pulling the triggerand scared them so when I was starting the burglary ring-well," he paused, "I don't know if I ought totell you this or not, but I want to tell the truth." He eyed me, speculatively. "I palmed the bullet." Welaughed together. I said, "Okay, give that page here, I'll fix it." Then he considered, "No, leave it thatway. Too many people would be so quick to say that's what I'm doing today, bluffing."Again when reading about the period when he had discovered the prison library, Malcolm X's headjerked up. "Boy! I never will forget that old aardvark!" The next evening, he came into the room andtold me that he had been to the Museum of Natural History and learned something about theaardvark. "Now, aardvark actually means 'earth hog.' That's a good example of root words, as I wastelling you. When you study the science of philology, you learn the laws governing how a consonantcan lose its shape, but it keeps its identity from language to language." What astonished me here wasthat I knew that on that day, Malcolm X's schedule had been crushing, involving both a television andradio appearance and a live speech, yet he had gone to find out something about the aardvark.

　　Before long, Malcolm X called a press conference, and announced, "My new Organization of Afro-American Unity is a non-religious and non-sectarian group organized to unite Afro-Americans for aconstructive program toward attainment of human rights." The new OAAU's tone appeared to be oneof militant black nationalism. He said to the questions of various reporters in subsequent interviewsthat the OAAU would seek to convert the Negro population from non-violence to active self-defenseagainst white supremacists across America. On the subject of politics he offered an enigma, "Whetheryou use bullets or ballots, you've got to aim well; don't strike at the puppet, strike at the puppeteer."Did he envision any special area of activity? "I'm going to join in the fight wherever Negroes ask formy help." What about alliance with other Negro organizations? He said that he would considerforming some united front with certain selected Negro leaders. He conceded under questioning thatthe N.A.A.C.P. was "doing some good." Could any whites join his OAAU? "If John Brown were alive,maybe him." And he answered his critics with such statements as that he would send "armedguerrillas" into Mississippi. "I am dead serious. We will send them not only to Mississippi, but to anyplace where black people's lives are threatened by white bigots. As far as I am concerned, Mississippiis anywhere south of the Canadian border." At another time, when Evelyn Cunningham of the_Pittsburgh Courier_ asked Malcolm X in a kidding way, "Say something startling for my column," hetold her, "Anyone who wants to follow me and my movement has got to be ready to go to jail, to thehospital, and to the cemetery before he can be truly free." Evelyn Cunningham, printing the item,commented, "He smiled and chuckled, but he was in dead earnest." His fourth child, yet another daughter, was born and he and Sister Betty named the baby GamilahLumumbah. A young waitress named Helen Lanier, at Harlem's Twenty Two Club where Malcolm Xnow often asked people to meet him, gave him a layette for the new baby. He was very deeplytouched by the gesture. "Why, I hardly know that girl!"He was clearly irked when a _New York Times_ poll among New York City Negroes reflected thatthree-fourths had named Dr. Martin Luther King as "doing the best work for Negroes," and anotherone-fifth had voted for the N.A.A.C.P.'s Roy Wilkins, while only six per cent had voted for Malcolm X.

　　"Brother," he said to me, "do you realize that some of history's greatest leaders never were recognizeduntil they were safely in the ground!"One morning in mid-summer 1964, Malcolm X telephoned me and said that he would be leaving"within the next two or three days" for a planned six weeks abroad. I heard from him first in Cairo,about as the predicted "long, hot summer" began in earnest, with riots and other uprisings of Negroesoccurring in suburban Philadelphia, in Rochester, in Brooklyn, in Harlem, and other cities. The _NewYork Times_ reported that a meeting of Negro intellectuals had agreed that Dr. Martin Luther Kingcould secure the allegiance of the middle and upper classes of Negroes, but Malcolm X alone couldsecure the allegiance of Negroes at the bottom. "The Negroes respect Dr. King and Malcolm X becausethey sense in these men absolute integrity and know they will never sell them out. Malcolm X cannotbe corrupted and the Negroes know this and therefore respect him. They also know that he comesfrom the lower depths, as they do, and regard him as one of their own. Malcolm X is going to play aformidable role, because the racial struggle has now shifted to the urban North . . . if Dr. King isconvinced that he has sacrificed ten years of brilliant leadership, he will be forced to revise hisconcepts. There is only one direction in which he can move, and that is in the direction of Malcolm X."I sent a clipping of that story to Malcolm X in Cairo.

　　In Washington, D.C. and New York City, at least, powerful civic, private, and governmental agenciesand individuals were keenly interested in what Malcolm X was saying abroad, and were speculatingupon what would he say, and possibly do, when he returned to America. In upstate New York, Ireceived a telephone call from a close friend who said he had been asked to ask me if I would come toNew York City on an appointed day to meet with "a very high government official" who wasinterested in Malcolm X. I did fly down to the city. My friend accompanied me to the offices of a largeprivate foundation well known for its activities and donations in the civil-rights area. I met thefoundation's president and he introduced me to the Justice Department Civil Rights Section head,Burke Marshall. Marshall was chiefly interested in Malcolm X's finances, particularly how hisextensive traveling since his Black Muslim ouster had been paid for. I told him that to the best of myknowledge the several payments from the publisher had financed Malcolm X, along with fees hereceived for some speeches, and possible donations that his organization received, and that Malcolm Xhad told me of borrowing money from his Sister Ella for the current trip, and that recently the_Saturday Evening Post_ had bought the condensation rights of the book for a substantial sum thatwas soon to be received. Marshall listened quietly, intently, and asked a few questions concerningother aspects of Malcolm X's life, then thanked me. I wrote to Malcolm X in Cairo that night about the interview. Henever mentioned it.

　　The _Saturday Evening Post_ flew photographer John Launois to Cairo to locate Malcolm X andphotograph him in color. The magazine's September 12 issue appeared, and I sent a copy by airmail toMalcolm X. Within a few days, I received a stinging note, expressing his anger at the magazine'seditorial regarding his life story. (The editorial's opening sentence read, "If Malcolm X were not aNegro, his autobiography would be little more than a journal of abnormal psychology, the story of aburglar, dope pusher, addict and jailbird-with a family history of insanity-who acquires messianicdelusions and sets forth to preach an upside-down religion of 'brotherly' hatred.") I wrote to MalcolmX that he could not fairly hold me responsible for what the magazine had written in a separateeditorial opinion. He wrote an apology, "but the greatest care must be exercised in the future."His return from Africa was even more auspicious than when he had returned from the Hajj pilgrimageto Mecca. A large group of Negroes, his followers and well-wishers, kept gathering in the OverseasArrival Building at Kennedy Airport. When I entered, white men with cameras were positioned on thesecond level, taking pictures of all the Negroes who entered, and almost as obvious were Negro plainclothesmen moving about. Malcolm's greeters had draped across the glass overlooking the U.S.

　　Customs Inspection line some large cloth banners on which were painted in bold letters, "WelcomeHome, Malcolm."He came in sight, stepping into one of the Customs Inspection lines; he heard the cheering and helooked up, smiling his pleasure.

　　 Malcolm X wanted to "huddle" with me to fill me in on details from his trip that he wanted in thebook. He said that he was giving me only the highlights, because he felt that his carefully kept diarymight be turned into another book. We had intensive sessions in my hotel room, where he read whathe selected from the diary, and I took notes. "What I want to stress is that I was trying tointernationalize our problem," he said to me, "to make the Africans feel their _kinship_ with us Afro-Americans. I made them _think_ about it, that they are our blood brothers, and we all came from thesame foreparents. That's why the Africans loved me, the same way the Asians loved me because I wasreligious."Within a few days, he had no more time to see me. He would call and apologize; he was beset by ahost of problems, some of which he mentioned, and some of which I heard from other people. Mostimmediately, there was discontent within his organization, the OAAU. His having stayed awayalmost three times as long as he had said he would be gone had sorely tested the morale of even hiskey members, and there was a general feeling that his interest was insufficient to expect his followers'

　　interest to stay high. I heard from one member that "a growing disillusion" could be sensedthroughout the organization.

　　 In Harlem at large, in the bars and restaurants, on the street corners and stoops, there could be heardmore blunt criticism of Malcolm X than ever before in his career. There were, variously expressed, twoprimary complaints. One was that actually Malcolm X only talked, but other civil-rights organizationswere _doing_. "All he's _ever_ done was talk, CORE and SNCC and some of them people of Dr. King'sare out getting beat over the head." The second major complaint was that Malcolm X was himself tooconfused to be seriously followed any longer. "He doesn't know _what_ he believes in. No sooner doyou hear one thing than he's switched to something else." The two complaints were not helping theold firebrand Malcolm X image any, nor were they generating the local public interest that was badlyneeded by his small, young OAAU.

　　A court had made it clear that Malcolm X and his family would have to vacate the Elmhurst house forits return to the adjudged legal owners, Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam. And other immediateproblems which Malcolm X faced included finances. Among his other expenses, a wife and fourdaughters had to be supported, along with at least one full-time OAAU official. Upon his return fromAfrica, our agent for the book had delivered to me for Malcolm X a check for a sizable sum; soonafterward Malcolm X told me, laughing wryly, "It's _evaporated_. I don't know where!"Malcolm X plunged into a welter of activities. He wrote and telephoned dozens of acceptances toinvitations to speak, predominantly at colleges and universities-both to expound his philosophies andto earn the $150-$300 honorariums above traveling expenses. When he was in New York City, he spentall the time he could in his OAAU's sparsely furnished office on the mezzanine floor of the HotelTheresa, trying to do something about the OAAU's knotty problems. "I'm not exposing our size innumbers," he evaded the query of one reporter. "You know, the strongest part of a tree is the root, andif you expose the root, the tree dies. Why, we have many 'invisible' members, of all types. Unlike otherleaders, I've practiced the flexibility to put myself into contact with every kind of Negro in thecountry."Even at mealtimes, at his favorite Twenty Two Club, or elsewhere in Harlem, he could scarcely eat forthe people who came up asking for appointments to discuss with him topics ranging from personalproblems to his opinions on international issues. It seemed not in him to say "No" to such requests.

　　And aides of his, volunteering their time, as often as not had to wait lengthy periods to get his ear formatters important to the OAAU, or to himself; often, even then, he most uncharacteristically showedan impatience with their questions or their suggestions, and they chafed visibly. And at least onceweekly, generally on Sunday evenings, he would address as many Negroes as word of mouth andmimeographed advertising could draw to hear him in Harlem's Audubon Ballroom on West 166thStreet between Broadway and St. Nicholas Avenue, near New York City's famous Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.

　　Malcolm X for some reason suddenly began to deliver a spate of attacks against Elijah Muhammad,making more bitter accusations of "religious fakery" and "immorality" than he ever had. Very possibly,Malcolm X had grown increasingly incensed by the imminence of the court's deadline for him to haveto move his wife and four little daughters from the comfortable home in which they had lived for years in Elmhurst. And Sister Betty was again pregnant. "A home is really the only thing I've everprovided Betty since we've been married," he had told me, discussing the court's order, "and theywant to take that away. Man, I can't keep on putting her through changes, all she's put up with-man,I've _got_ to love this woman!"A rash of death threats were anonymously telephoned to the police, to various newspapers, to theOAAU office, and to the family's home in Elmhurst. When he went to court again, fighting to keep thehouse, he was guarded by a phalanx of eight OAAU men, twenty uniformed policemen, and twelveplain-clothes detectives. The court's decision was that the order to vacate would not be altered. WhenMalcolm X reached home in Long Island, one of his followers, telephoning him there, got, instead, atelephone company operator who said that the OL 1-6320 number was "disconnected." A carload ofhis OAAU followers, racing to Long Island, found Malcolm X and his family perfectly safe. Inquiry ofthe telephone company revealed that a "Mrs. Small" had called and requested that the service for thatnumber be disconnected, "for vacation." The OAAU followers drove back to Harlem. There was anensuing confrontation between them and followers of Elijah Muhammad in front of the Black Muslimrestaurant at 116th Street and Lenox Avenue. The incident wound up with policemen who rushed tothe scene finding two guns in the OAAU car, and the six OAAU men were arrested.

　　Malcolm X had a date to speak in Boston, but he was too busy to go, and he sent an OAAU assistantwho spoke instead. The car returning him to the Boston Airport was blocked at the East Boston Tunnelby another car. Reportedly, men with knives rushed out of the blockade car, but the Malcolm X forcesshowed a shotgun, and the attackers dispersed.

　　Malcolm X steadily accused the Black Muslims as the source of the various attacks and threats. "Thereis no group in the United States more able to carry out this threat than the Black Muslims," he said. "Iknow, because I taught them myself." Asked why he had attacked the Black Muslims and ElijahMuhammad when things had seemed to be cooled down, he said, "I would not have revealed any ofthis if they had left me alone." He let himself be photographed in his home holding an automaticcarbine rifle with a full double clip of ammunition that he said he kept ready for action against anypossible assassination efforts. "I have taught my wife to use it, and instructed her to fire on anyone,white, black, or yellow, who tries to force his way inside."I went to New York City in December for Malcolm X's reading of final additions to the manuscript, toinclude the latest developments. He was further than I had ever seen him from his old assured self, itseemed to me. He kept saying that the press was making light of his statements about the threats onhis life. "They act like I'm jiving!" He brought up again the _Saturday Evening Post_ editorial. "Youcan't trust the publishing people, I don't care what they tell you." The agent for the book sent to myhotel a contract dealing with foreign publication rights which needed Malcolm X's and my signature. Isigned it as he observed and handed the pen to him. He looked suspiciously at the contract, and said,"I had better show this thing to my lawyer," and put the contract in his inside coat pocket. Driving inHarlem about an hour later, he suddenly stopped the car across the street from the 135th StreetY.M.C.A. Building. Withdrawing the contract, he signed it, and thrust it to me. "I'll trust you," he said,and drove on.

　　 With Christmas approaching, upon an impulse I bought for Malcolm X's two oldest daughters twolarge dolls, with painted brown complexions, the kind of dolls that would "walk" when held by theleft hand. When Malcolm X next came to my room in the Hotel Wellington, I said, "I've gottensomething for you to take to Attallah and Qubilah for Christmas gifts," and I "walked" out the dolls.

　　Amazement, then a wide grin spread over his face. "Well, what do you know about that? Well, howabout that!" He bent to examine the dolls. His expression showed how touched he was. "You know,"he said after a while, "this isn't something I'm proud to say, but I don't think I've ever bought one giftfor my children. Everything they play with, either Betty got it for them, or somebody gave it to them,never me. That's not good, I know it. I've always been too _busy_." In early January, I flew from upstate New York to Kennedy Airport where I telephoned Malcolm X athome and told him that I was waiting for another plane to Kansas City to witness the swearing-in ofmy younger brother George who had recently been elected a Kansas State Senator. "Tell your brotherfor me to remember us in the alley," Malcolm X said. "Tell him that he and all of the other moderateNegroes who are getting somewhere need to always remember that it was us extremists who made itpossible." He said that when I was ready to leave Kansas, to telephone him saying when I wouldarrive back in NewYork, and if he could we could get together. I did this, and he met me at Kennedy Airport. He hadonly a little while, he was so pressed, he said; he had to leave that afternoon himself for a speakingengagement which had come up. So I made reservations for the next flight back upstate, then we wentoutside and sat and talked in his car in a parking lot. He talked about the pressures on himeverywhere he turned, and about the frustrations, among them that no one wanted to accept anythingrelating to him except "my old 'hate' and 'violence' image." He said "the so-called moderate" civilrights organizations avoided him as "too militant" and the "so-called militants" avoided him as "toomoderate." "They won't let me turn the comer!" he once exclaimed, "I'm caught in a trap!"In a happier area, we talked about the coming baby. We laughed about the four girls in a row already.

　　"This one will be the boy," he said. He beamed, "If not, the _next_ one!" When I said it was close totime for my plane to leave, he said he had to be getting on, too. I said, "Give my best to Sister Betty,"he said that he would, we shook hands and I got outside and stood as he backed the blue Oldsmobilefrom its parking space. I called out "See you!" and we waved as he started driving away. There was noway to know that it was the last time I would see him alive.

　　 On January 19, Malcolm X appeared on the Pierre Berton television show in Canada and said, inresponse to a question about integration and intermarriage:

　　"I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being-neither white, black, brown, or red; and when you are dealing with humanity as a family there's no question of integration or intermarriage.

　　It's just one human being marrying another human being or one human being living around and withanother human being. I may say, though, that I don't think it should ever be put upon a black man, Idon't think the burden to defend any position should ever be put upon the black man, because it is thewhite man collectively who has shown that he is hostile toward integration and toward intermarriageand toward these other strides toward oneness. So as a black man and especially as a black American,any stand that I formerly took, I don't think that I would have to defend it because it's still a reaction tothe society, and it's a reaction that was produced by the society; and I think that it is the society thatproduced this that should be attacked, not the reaction that develops among the people who are thevictims of that negative society."From this, it would be fair to say that one month before his death, Malcolm had revised his views onintermarriage to the point where he regarded it as simply a personal matter.

　　 On the 28th of January, Malcolm X was on TWA's Flight No. 9 from New York that landed at aboutthree P.M. in Los Angeles. A special police intelligence squad saw Malcolm X greeted by two closefriends, Edward Bradley and Allen Jamal, who drove him to the Statler-Hilton Hotel where MalcolmX checked into Room 1129. Said Bradley, "As we entered the lobby, six men came in right after us. Irecognized them as Black Muslims." When Malcolm X returned downstairs to the lobby, he"practically bumped into the Muslim entourage. The Muslims were stunned. Malcolm's face froze, buthe never broke his gait. Then, we knew we were facing trouble." Malcolm X's friends drove him topick up "two former secretaries of Elijah Muhammad, who (had) filed paternity suits against him,"and they went to the office of the colorful Los Angeles attorney Gladys Root. Mrs. Root said thatMalcolm X made accusations about Elijah Muhammad's conduct with various former secretaries.

　　After dinner, Malcolm X's two friends drove him back to the hotel. "Black Muslims were all over theplace," Bradley related. "Some were in cars and others stood around near the hotel. They had the hotelcompletely surrounded. Malcolm sized up the situation and jumped out of the car. He warned me towatch out and ran into the lobby. He went to his room and remained there for the rest of his stay inLos Angeles."The car in which Malcolm X left the hotel, bound for the airport, was followed, said Bradley. "Hardlyhad we got on the Freeway when we saw two carloads of Black Muslims following us. The cars startedto pull alongside. Malcolm picked up my walking cane and stuck it out of a back window as if it werea rifle. The two cars fell behind. We picked up speed, pulled off the airport ramp, and roared up to thefront of the terminal. The police were waiting and Malcolm was escorted to the plane through anunderground passageway. Then I saw Malcolm to the plane."Chicago police were waiting when the plane landed at O'Hare Airport that night at eight o'clock.

　　Driven to the Bristol Hotel, Malcolm X checked in, and the adjoining suite was taken by members ofthe police force who would keep him under steady guard for the next three days in Chicago. Malcolm X testified at the office of the Attorney General of the State of Illinois which had been investigating theNation of Islam. Another day he appeared on the television program of Irv Kupcinet; he describedattempts that had been made to kill him. He said he had on his desk a letter naming the personsassigned to kill him. When police returned Malcolm X to his hotel "at least 15 grim-faced Negroes(were) loitering nearby." Whispered Malcolm X to Detective Sergeant Edward McClellan, "Those areall Black Muslims. At least two of them I recognize as being from New York. Elijah seems to knowevery move I make." Later, in his room, he told the detective, "It's only going to be a matter of timebefore they catch up with me. I know too much about the Muslims. But their threats are not going tostop me from what I am determined to do." After that night spent in the hotel, Malcolm X was police-escorted back to O'Hare where he caught a plane to New York City's Kennedy Airport.

　　Right away, he was served with a court order of eviction from the Elmhurst home. He telephoned meupstate. His voice was strained. He told me that he had filed an appeal to the court order, that on thenext day he was going to Alabama, and thence to England and France for scheduled speeches, andsoon after returning he would go to Jackson, Mississippi, to address the Mississippi FreedomDemocratic Party, on February 19. Then he said-the first time he had ever voiced to me such anadmission-"Haley, my nerves are shot, my brain's tired." He said that upon his return fromMississippi, he would like to come and spend two or three days in the town where I was, and read thebook's manuscript again. "You say it's a quiet town. Just a couple of days of peace and quiet, that'swhat I need." I said that he knew he was welcome, but there was no need for him to tax himselfreading through the long book again, as it had only a few very minor editing changes since he hadonly recently read it. "I just want to read it one more time," he said, "becauseI don't expect to read it in finished form." So we made a tentative agreement that the day after hisprojected return from Mississippi, he would fly upstate to visit for a weekend with me. The projecteddate was the Saturday and Sunday of February 20-21.

　　Jet magazine reported Malcolm X's trip to Selma, Alabama, on the invitation of two members of theStudent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Dr. Martin Luther King was in a Selma jail whenMalcolm X's arrival sent officials of Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference "into atailspin." Quickly, the SCLC's Executive Director Reverend Andrew Young and Reverend James Bevelmet with Malcolm X, urging him not to incite any incidents and cautioning him that his presencecould cause violence. "He listened with a smile," said Miss Faye Bellamy, secretary of the SNCC, whoaccompanied Malcolm X to a Negro church where he would address a mass meeting. "Remember this:

　　nobody puts words in my mouth," he told Miss Bellamy. He told her that "in about two weeks" heplanned to start Southern recruiting for his Harlem-based OAAU. At the church where he wouldspeak, Malcolm X was seated on the platform next to Mrs. Martin Luther King, to whom he leanedand whispered that he was "trying to help," she told _Jet_. "He said he wanted to present analternative; that it might be easier for whites to accept Martin's proposals after hearing him (MalcolmX). I didn't understand him at first," said Mrs. King. "He seemed rather anxious to let Martin know hewas not causing trouble or making it difficult, but that he was trying to make it easier. . . . Later, in thehallway, he reiterated this. He seemed sincere. . . ." Addressing the mass meeting Malcolm X reportedly shouted: "I don't advocate violence, but if a mansteps on my toes, I'll step on his." . . ."Whites better be glad Martin Luther King is rallying the peoplebecause other forces are waiting to take over if he fails."Returned to New York City, Malcolm X soon flew to France. He was scheduled to speak before aCongress of African Students. But he was formally advised that he would not be permitted to speakand, moreover, that he could consider himself officially barred forever from France as "an undesirableperson." He was asked to leave-and he did, fuming with indignation. He flew on to London, andreporters of the British Broadcasting Corporation took him on an interviewing tour in Smethwick, atown near Birmingham with a large colored population. Numerous residents raised a storm ofcriticism that the B.B.C. was a party to a "fanning of racism" in the already tension-filled community.

　　On this visit, he spoke also at the London School of Economics.

　　Malcolm X returned to New York City on Saturday, February 13th. He was asleep with his familywhen at about a quarter of three the following Sunday morning, a terrifying blast awakened them.

　　Sister Betty would tell me later that Malcolm X, barking commands and snatching up screaming,frightened children, got the family safely out of the back door into the yard. Someone had thrownflaming Molotov cocktail gasoline bombs through the front picture window. It took the firedepartment an hour to extinguish the flames. Half the house was destroyed. Malcolm X had no fireinsurance.

　　Pregnant, distraught Sister Betty and the four little daughters went to the home of close friends.

　　Malcolm X steeled himself to catch a plane as scheduled that morning to speak in Detroit. He wore anopen-necked sweater shirt under his suit. Immediately afterward, he flew back to New York. Mondaymorning, amid a flurry of emergency re-housing plans for his family. Malcolm X was outraged whenhe learned that Elijah Muhammad's New York Mosque Number 7 Minister James X had told the pressthat Malcolm X himself had fire-bombed the home "to get publicity."Monday night, Malcolm X spoke to an audience in the familiar Audubon Ballroom. If he hadpossessed the steel nerves not to become rattled in public before, now he was: "I've reached the end ofmy rope!" he shouted to the audience of five hundred. "I wouldn't care for myself if they would notharm my family!" He declared flatly, "My house was bombed by the _Muslims_!" And he hinted atrevenge. "There are hunters; there are also those who hunt the hunters!"Tuesday, February 16th, Malcolm X telephoned me. He spoke very briefly, saying that thecomplications following the bombing of his home had thrown his plans so awry that he would beunable to visit me upstate on the weekend as he had said he would. He said he had also had to cancelhis planned trip toJackson, Mississippi, which he was going to try and make later. He said he had to hurry to anappointment, and hung up. I would read later where also on that day, he told a close associate, "I havebeen marked for death in the next five days. I have the names of five Black Muslims who have been chosen to kill me. I will announce them at the meeting." And Malcolm X told a friend that he wasgoing to apply to the Police Department for a permit to carry a pistol. "I don't know whether they willlet me have one or not, as I served time in prison."On Thursday he told a reporter, in an interview which did not appear until after his death: "I'm manenough to tell you that I can't put my finger on exactly what my philosophy is now, but I'm flexible."The blackboard in the OAAU office counseled members and visitors that "Bro. Malcolm Speaks Thurs.

　　Feb. 18, WINS Station, 10:30 P.M." Earlier Thursday, Malcolm X discussed locating another home witha real estate dealer. On Friday, he had an appointment with Gordon Parks, the _Life_ magazinephotographer-author whom he had long admired and respected. "He appeared calm and somewhatresplendent with his goatee and astrakhan hat," Parks would report later in _Life_. "Much of the oldhostility and bitterness seemed to have left him, but the fire and confidence were still there." MalcolmX, speaking of the old Mosque Number 7 days, said, "That was a bad scene, brother. The sickness andmadness of those days-I'm glad to be free of them. It's a time for martyrs now. And if I'm to be one, itwill be in the cause of brotherhood. That's the only thing that can save this country. I've learned it thehard way-but I've learned it. . . ."Parks asked Malcolm X if it was really true that killers were after him. "It's as true as we are standinghere," Malcolm X said. * 'They've tried it twice in the last two weeks." Parks asked him about policeprotection, and Malcolm X laughed, "Brother, nobody can protect you from a Muslim but a Muslim-orsomeone trained in Muslim tactics. I know. I invented many of those tactics."Recalling the incident of the young white college girl who had come to the Black Muslim restaurantand asked "What can I _do_?" and he told her "Nothing," and she left in tears, Malcolm X told GordonParks, "Well, I've lived to regret that incident. In many parts of the African continent I saw whitestudents helping black people. Something like this kills a lot of argument. I did many things as aMuslim that I'm sorry for now. I was a zombie then-like all Muslims-I was hypnotized, pointed in acertain direction and told to march. Well, I guess a man's entitled to make a fool of himself if he'sready to pay the cost. It cost me twelve years."Saturday morning, he drove Sister Betty to see a real estate man. The house that the man then showedthem that Malcolm X particularly liked, in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood also on Long Island,required a $3000 down payment. Sister Betty indicated her approval, too, and Malcolm X told the realestate man he thought they would take it. Driving Sister Betty back to the friends' home where shewas staying with the children, they estimated that it would cost them about another $1000 to make themove. He stayed until mid-afternoon with Sister Betty at the friends' home, talking. He told her that herealized that she had been under protracted great strain, and that he was sorry about it. When he gothis hat to leave, to drive into Manhattan, standing in the hallway, he told Sister Betty, "We'll all betogether. I want my family with me. Families shouldn't be separated. I'll never make another long tripwithout you. We'll get somebody to keep the children. I'll never leave you so long again.""I couldn't help but just break out grinning," Sister Betty would later tell me.

　　 She figured that he must have stopped at a nearby drugstore to use the telephone booth when I latertold her that Malcolm X had telephoned me upstate at about 3:30 that afternoon.

　　For the first time in nearly two years, I did not recognize immediately that the voice on the other endof the phone belonged to Malcolm X. He sounded as if he had a heavy, deep cold. He told me that inthe middle of the night he and some friends had helped a moving company's men take out of the otherhouse all of the family's furniture and other belongings salvageable after the fire-bombing-before asheriff's eviction party would set the things out on the sidewalk. "Betty and I have been looking at ahouse we want to buy"-he tried a chuckle-"you know nobody's going to _rent_, not to _me_, thesedays! "He said, "All I've got is about $150," and that he needed a $3000 down-payment plus $1000moving costs; he asked if I thought the publisher would advance him $4000 against the projectedprofits from the book. I said that when our agent's offices opened on Monday morning, I wouldtelephone and I knew that he would query the publisher to see if it couldn't be arranged, then Mondaynight I would call him back and let him know.

　　He said that he and Sister Betty had decided that although they were going to pay for the house, toavoid possible trouble they had gotten the agreement of his sister Ella who lived in Boston to let thehouse be bought in her name. He said that he still owed $1500 to his sister Ella which she had loanedhim to make one trip abroad. Eventually they would change the house's title into Sister Betty's name,he said, or maybe into the name of their oldest daughter, Attallah.

　　He digressed on the dangers he faced. "But, you know, I'm going to tell you something, brother-themore I keep thinking about this thing, the things that have been happening lately, I'm not all that sureit's the Muslims. I know what they can do, and what they can't, and they can't do some of the stuffrecently going on. Now, I'm going to tell you, the more I keep thinking about what happened to me inFrance, I think I'm going to quit saying it's the Muslims."Then-it seemed to me such an odd, abrupt change of subject: "You know, I'm glad I've been the first toestablish official ties between Afro-Americans and our blood brothers in Africa." And saying goodbye, he hung up.

　　After that telephone call, Malcolm X drove on into Manhattan and to the New York Hilton Hotelbetween 53rd and 54th Streets at Rockefeller Center. He checked the blue Oldsmobile into the hotelgarage and then, in the lobby, he checked himself in and was assigned a twelfth-floor room, to which abellman accompanied him.

　　Soon some Negro men entered the giant hotel's busy lobby. They began asking various bellmen whatroom Malcolm X was in. The bellmen, of course, never would answer that question concerning anyguest-and considering that it was Malcolm X whom practically everyone who read New York Citynewspapers knew was receiving constant death threats, the bellmen quickly notified the hotel'ssecurity chief. From then until Malcolm X checked out the next day, extra security vigilance wascontinuously maintained on the twelfth floor. During that time, Malcolm X left the room only once, to have dinner in the hotel's lobby-level, dimly lit Bourbon Room.

　　Sunday morning at nine o'clock, Sister Betty in Long Island was surprised when her husbandtelephoned her and asked if she felt it would be too much trouble for her to get all of the four childrendressed and bring them to the two o'clock meeting that afternoon at the Audubon Ballroom inHarlem. She said, "Of course it won't!" On Saturday he had told her that she couldn't come to themeeting. He said to her, "You know what happened an hour ago? Exactly at eight o'clock, the phonewoke me up. Some man said, 'Wake up, brother' and hung up." Malcolm X said good-bye to SisterBetty.

　　And four hours later, Malcolm X left his room and took an elevator down to the lobby, where hechecked out. He got his car and in the clear, warm midday of Sunday, February 21, he drove uptownto the Audubon Ballroom.

　　 The Audubon Ballroom, between Broadway and St. Nicholas Avenue, on the south side of West 166thStreet, is a two-story building frequently rented for dances, organization functions, and other affairs.

　　A dark, slender, pretty young lady, occupationally a receptionist and avocationally a hardworkingOAAU assistant to Malcolm X, has since told me that she arrived early, about 1:30 P.M. , having somepreliminary work to do. Entering, she saw that the usual 400 wooden chairs had been set up, withaisles on either side, but no center aisle; the young lady (she wishes to be nameless) noticed thatseveral people were already seated in the front rows, but she gave it no thought since some alwayscame early, liking to get seats up close to the stage, to savor to the fullest the dramatic orator MalcolmX. On the stage, behind the speaker's stand, were eight straight brown chairs arranged in a row andbehind it was the stage's painted backdrop, a mural of a restful country scene. The young lady'sresponsibilities for this day had included making arrangements and subsequent confirmations withthe scheduled co-speaker, the Reverend Milton Galamison, the militant Brooklyn Presbyterian who in1964 had led the two one-day Negro boycotts in New York City public schools, protesting "racialimbalance." She had similarly made arrangements with some other prominent Negroes who were dueto appeal to the audience for their maximum possible contributions to aid the work of Malcolm X andhis organization.

　　The people who entered the ballroom were not searched at the door. In recent weeks, Malcolm X hadbecome irritable about this, saying "It makes people uncomfortable" and that it reminded him of ElijahMuhammad. "If I can't be safe among my own kind, where can I be?" he had once said testily. For thisday, also, he had ordered the press-as such-barred, white or black. He was angry at what heinterpreted as "slanted" press treatment recently; he felt especially that the newspapers had not takenseriously his statements of the personal danger he was in. United Press International reporter StanleyScott, a Negro, had been admitted, he later said, when a Malcolm lieutenant decided, "As a Negro, youwill be allowed to enter as a citizen if you like, but you must remove your press badge." The samecriterion had applied to WMCA newsman Hugh Simpson. Both he and Scott came early enough sothat they obtained seats up near the stage.

　　 Malcolm X entered the ballroom at shortly before two o'clock, trudging heavily instead of with hisusual lithe strides, his young lady assistant has told me. By this time several other of his assistantswere filtering in and out of the small anteroom alongside the stage. He sat down sideways on a chair,his long legs folded around its bottom, and he leaned one elbow on a kind of counter before a ratherrickety make-up mirror that entertainers used when dances were held in the ballroom. He wore a darksuit, white shirt and narrow dark tie. He said to a little group of his assistants that he wasn't going totalk about his personal troubles, "I don't want that to be the reason for anyone to come to hear me." Hestood up and paced about the little room. He said he was going to state that he had been hasty toaccuse the Black Muslims of bombing his home. "Things have happened since that are bigger thanwhat they can do. I know what they can do. Things have gone beyond that."Those in the anteroom could hear the sounds of the enlarging audience outside taking seats. "The wayI feel, I ought not to go out there at all today," Malcolm X said. "In fact, I'm going to ease some of thistension by telling the black man not to fight himself-that's all a part of the white man's big maneuver,to keep us fighting among ourselves, against each other. I'm not fighting anyone, that's not what we'rehere for." He kept glancing at his wrist watch, anticipating the arrival of Reverend Galamison.

　　"Whenever you make any appointment with a minister," he said to his young lady assistant, "you haveto call them two or three hours before time, because they will change their mind. This is typical ofministers.""I felt bad, I felt that it was my fault," the young lady told me. "It was time for the meeting to start,too." She turned to Malcolm X's stalwart assistant Benjamin X, known as a highly able speaker himself.

　　"Brother, will you speak?" she asked-then, turning to Malcolm X, "Is it all right if he speaks? Andmaybe he could introduce you." Malcolm X abruptly whirled on her, and barked, "You know youshouldn't ask me right in front of him!" Then, collecting himself quickly, he said "Okay." BrotherBenjamin X asked how long he should speak. Malcolm X said, glancing again at his wrist watch,"Make it half an hour." And Brother Benjamin X went through the door leading onto the stage. Theyheard him expertly exhorting the audience about what is needed today by "the black man here in theseUnited States."The Reverend Galamison and other notables due hadn't arrived by three o'clock. "Brother Malcolmlooked so disappointed," the young lady says. "He said to me 'I don't think any of them are coming,either.' I felt so terrible for him. It did seem as if no one cared. I told him 'Oh, don't worry, they're justlate, they'll be here.'" (It was also reported by another source that Galamison, unable to come to themeeting, did telephone earlier, and that Malcolm X was told of this before he went out to speak.)Then Brother Benjamin X's half-hour was up, and the young lady and Malcolm X, alone back there inthe anteroom, could hear him entering the introduction: "And now, without further remarks, I presentto you one who is willing to put himself on the line for you, a man who would give his life for you-Iwant you to hear, listen, to understand-one who is a _trojan_ for the black man!"Applause rose from the audience; at the anteroom door, Malcolm X turned and looked back at his young lady assistant.

　　"You'll have to forgive me for raising my voice to you-I'm just about at my wit's end.""Oh, don't _mention_ it!" she said quickly, "I understand."His voice sounded far away, "I wonder if anybody _really_ understands-" And he walked out onto thestage, into the applause, smiling and nodding at Brother Benjamin X who passed him en route to theanteroom.

　　The young lady had picked up some paperwork she had to do when Benjamin X came in, perspiring.

　　She patted his hand, saying, "That was good!" Through the anteroom door, just ajar, she and BenjaminX heard the applause diminishing, then the familiar ringing greeting, "_Asalaikum_, brothers andsisters!""Asalaikum salaam!" some in the audience responded.

　　About eight rows of seats from the front, then, a disturbance occurred. In a sudden scuffling, a man'svoice was raised angrily, "Take your hand out of my pocket!" The entire audience was swiveling tolook. "Hold it! Hold it! Don't get excited," Malcolm X said crisply, "Let's cool it, brothers-With his own attention distracted, it is possible that he never saw the gunmen. One woman who wasseated near the front says, "The commotion back there diverted me just for an instant, then I turnedback to look at Malcolm X just in time to see at least three men in the front row stand and take aim andstart firing simultaneously. It looked like a firing squad." Numerous persons later said they saw twomen rushing toward the stage, one with a shotgun, the other with two revolvers. Said U.P.I, reporterStanley Scott: "Shots rang out. Men, women and children ran for cover. They stretched out on the floorand ducked under tables." Radio Station WMCA reporter Hugh Simpson said, "Then I heard thismuffled sound, I saw Malcolm hit with his hands still raised, then he fell back over the chairs behindhim. Everybody was shouting. I saw one man firing a gun from under his coat behind me as I hit it[the floor], too. He was firing like he was in some Western, running backward toward the door andfiring at the same time."The young lady who was in the backstage anteroom told me, "It sounded like an army had taken over.

　　Somehow, I knew. I wouldn't go and look. I wanted to remember him as he was."Malcolm X's hand flew to his chest as the first of sixteen shotgun pellets or revolver slugs hit him.

　　Then the other hand flew up. The middle finger of the left hand was bullet-shattered, and bloodgushed from his goatee. He clutched his chest. His big body suddenly fell back stiffly, knocking overtwo chairs; his head struck the stage floor with a thud.

　　In the bedlam of shouting, screaming, running people, some ran toward the stage. Among them SisterBetty scrambled up from where she had thrown her body over her children, who were shrieking; she ran crying hysterically, "My husband! They're killing my husband!" An unidentified photographersnapped shots of Malcolm X prone on the stage floor with people bent over him snatching apart hisbloody shirt, loosening his tie, trying to give him mouth-to-mouth artificial respiration, first a woman,then a man. Said the woman, who identified herself only as a registered nurse, "I don't know how I gotup on the stage, but I threw myself down on who I thought was Malcolm-but it wasn't. I was willingto die for the man, I would have taken the bullets myself; then I saw Malcolm, and the firing hadstopped, and I tried to give him artificial respiration." Then Sister Betty came through the people,herself a nurse, and people recognizing her moved back; she fell on her knees looking down on hisbare, bullet-pocked chest, sobbing, "They killed him!"Patrolman Thomas Hoy, 22, was stationed outside the Audubon Ballroom entrance. "I heard theshooting and the place exploded." He rushed inside, he saw Malcolm X lying on the stage, and thensome people chasing a man. Patrolman Hoy "grabbed the suspect."Louis Michaux, the owner of the Nationalist Memorial Bookstore at 125th Street and Seventh Avenuein Harlem, said, "I was arriving late at the meeting where Malcolm X had invited me, I met a largenumber of people rushing out."Sergeant Alvin Aronoff and Patrolman Louis Angelos happened to be cruising by in their radio carwhen they heard shots. "When we got there," said Aronoff, "the crowds were pushing out andscreaming 'Malcolm's been shot!' and 'Get 'im, get 'im, don't let him go!'" The two policemen grabbedby the arms a Negro who was being kicked as he tried to escape. Firing a warning shot into the air, thepolicemen pushed the man into their police car, not wanting the angry crowd to close in, and drovehim quickly to the police station.

　　Someone had run up to the Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital's Vanderbilt Clinic emergency entrance at167th Street and grabbed a poles-and-canvas stretcher and brought it back to the Audubon Ballroomstage. Malcolm X was put on the stretcher and an unidentified photographer got a macabre picture ofhim, with his mouth open and his teeth bared, as men rushed him up to the hospital clinic emergencyentrance. A hospital spokesman said later that it was about 3:15 P.M. when Malcolm X reached athird-floor operating room. He was "either dead, or in a death-appearing state," said the spokesman.

　　A team of surgeons cut through his chest to attempt to massage the heart. The effort was abandoned at3:30 P.M.

　　Reporters who had descended upon the hospital office fired questions at the spokesman, who keptsaying brusquely, "I don't know." Then he took the elevator upstairs to the emergency operating room.

　　A small crowd of friends and Sister Betty had also pushed into the hospital office when the hospitalspokesman returned. Collecting himself, he made an announcement: "The gentleman you know asMalcolm X is dead. He died from gunshot wounds. He was apparently dead before he got here. Hewas shot in the chest several times, and once in the cheek."The group filed out of the hospital office. The Negro men were visibly fighting their emotions; one kept smashing his fist into the other cupped palm. Among the women, many were openly crying.

　　Moments after the news flashed throughout Harlem (and throughout the entire world), a crowd beganto gather outside the Hotel Theresa where Malcolm X's OAAU had its headquarters. They learnedover transistor radios that the man whom the two policemen had taken from the murder sceneinitially identified himself as Thomas Hagan, 22 (he was later identified as Talmadge Hayer), in whoseright trousers pocket the policemen had found a .45 caliber cartridge clip containing four unusedcartridges, and then at Jewish Memorial Hospital doctors had reported that Hayer had been shot inthe left thigh, his forehead was bruised and his body was beaten. "If we hadn't gotten him away, theywould have kicked him to death," Sergeant Aronoff had said, and Hayer had been taken to theBellevue Hospital Prison Ward. By five P.M. , the crowd in front of the Theresa Hotel had beenquietly, carefully dispersed, and the Black Muslim Mosque Number 7 and its restaurant around thecorner, at 116th Street and Lenox Avenue, had been ordered closed as a precautionary measure, on theorders of the local 28th Precinct's Captain Lloyd Sealy, New York City's first Negro to command aprecinct. When reporters telephoned the Black Muslim restaurant, a man's voice stated, "No one isavailable to make any statement." When the OAAU office in the Theresa Hotel was tried, thetelephone kept ringing, unanswered. Precinct Captain Sealy soon appeared, walking by himself along125th Street, swinging his nightstick and conversing with people he met.

　　At the 28th Precinct station house on West 123rd Street, the forty policemen who were to have gone offduty at four P.M. had been told they must remain on duty, and two full busloads of the highly trainedNew York City Police Tactical Patrol Force had arrived at the precinct. Various high police officialsmade press statements. A Tactical Patrol Force Captain, Harry Kaiser, said no unusual occurrenceshad been noted, and he anticipated no trouble. Deputy Police Commissioner Walter Arm said that"hundreds" of extra policemen would be put into the Harlem area, including some members of theBureau of Special Services. An Assistant Chief Inspector, Harry Taylor, speculated that the assassinshad not rushed from the ballroom among the crowd, but had kept running past the stage and escapedon 165th Street. In the early evening, the police department's Chief of Detectives Philip J. Walsh quit avacation he was on to join the hunt for the killers, and he said he looked forward to "a long-drawn-outinvestigation." Police and reporters at the shooting scene had pictures taken of the stage, with whitechalk marks now circling five bullet holes in the speaker's stand; there were other holes in the stage'smural backdrop, indicating slugs or shotgun pellets which had either missed Malcolm X or passedthrough him. Police declined to discuss a rumor sweeping Harlem that they had some motion pictureswhich had been taken in the Audubon Ballroom as the murder took place. Another rumor that gainedswift momentum was that when Sister Betty had leaned over her husband's body, she had removedfrom his coat pocket a paper on which he had written the names of those he had supposedly learnedwere assigned to execute him.

　　Deputy Police Commissioner Walter Arm stressed that the department had made efforts to protectMalcolm X. Twenty different times the department had offered protection to Malcolm X or to some ofhis assistants, and the protection was refused, said Commissioner Arm, and seventeen timesuniformed police guards had been offered for the OAAU meetings at the Audubon Ballroom, the mostrecent time being "last Sunday." Asked about the pistol permit that Malcolm X had said publicly he planned to request, Commissioner Arm said that as far as he knew, Malcolm X had never actuallyfiled a request.

　　A number of questions have been raised. The "suspect" arrested by Patrolman Hoy as he was beingchased from the meeting has, at present writing, not been identified publicly. Deputy PoliceCommissioner Walter Arm's statement that Malcolm X refused police protection conflicts directly withthe statements of many of his associates that during the week preceding his assassination Malcolm Xcomplained repeatedly that the police would not take his requests for protection seriously. Finally,although police sources said that a special detail of twenty men had been assigned to the meeting andthat it had even been attended by agents of the Bureau of Special Services, these men were nowhere inevidence during or after the assassination, and Talmadge Hayer, rescued from the crowd and arrestedas a suspect immediately after the assassination, was picked up by two patrolmen in a squad carcruising by.

　　On long-distance telephones, reporters reached the Chicago mansion headquarters of ElijahMuhammad. He would not come to the telephone, but a spokesman of his said that Muhammad "hasno comment today, but he might have something to say tomorrow." No statement could be obtainedeither from Malcolm X's oldest brother, Wilfred X, the Black Muslim minister of Mosque Number 1 inDetroit. At his home, a woman told reporters that Minister Wilfred X was not there, that he had notgone to New York, and she didn't believe he had any plans to do so. (Minister Wilfred X, reachedlater, said that he anticipated attending the Black Muslim convention in Chicago on the followingSunday, and regarding his brother, "My brother is dead and there is nothing we can do to bring himback.")As dark fell, many Negro men and women assembled before Louis Michaux's bookstore, where mostof Harlem's Black Nationalist public activity centered. A small group of OAAU members opened theirHotel Theresa headquarters and sat in the room and would not make any statements to reporters.

　　The New York _Daily News_ came onto the newsstands with its cover page devoted to "Malcolm XMurdered" over the photograph of him being borne away on the stretcher, and a sub-caption,"Gunned Down at Rally." In Long Island, where she had been taken just after her father's murder, six-year-old At-tallah carefully wrote a letter to him, "Dear Daddy, I love you so. O dear, O dear, I wishyou wasn't dead." The body-still listed as "John Doe" because it had not yet been formally identified-had been movedlate Sunday to the New York City Medical Examiner's office at 520 First Avenue. The autopsyconfirmed that shotgun pellet wounds in the heart had killed Malcolm X. Chief Medical Examiner Dr.

　　Milton Helpern said that death followed the first sawed-off shotgun blast which caused thirteenwounds in the heart and chest, and he said that .38 and .45 caliber bullet wounds in the thighs and legsevidenced that Malcolm X had been shot at after he had fallen. Monday morning the officialidentification was made at the Medical Examiner's office by Sister Betty, who was accompanied by Percy Sutton, Malcolm X's Boston half-sister Mrs. Ella Collins, and Joseph E. Hall, General Manager ofthe large Unity Funeral Home in Harlem. Leaving the Medical Examiner's office at about noon to goand complete funeral arrangements, Sister Betty told reporters, "No one believed what he said. Theynever took him seriously, even after the bombing of our home they said he did it himself!"At the Unity Funeral Home on the east side of Eighth Avenue between 126th and 127th Streets, SisterBetty chose a six-foot-nine-inch bronze casket lined with egg-shell velvet. At her request, the funeralwould be delayed until the following Saturday, five days away. The funeral home's manager Hallannounced to the press that the body would be dressed in a business suit, and it would be put on viewunder a glass shield from Tuesday through Friday, then the Saturday services would be at a Harlemchurch.

　　Soon posted on the funeral home's directory was "El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz." In Brooklyn, orthodoxMoslem Sheik Al-Hajh Daoud Ahmed Faisal of the Islamic Mission of America said that the delayedfuneral services violated a Moslem practice that the sun should not set twice on a believer's body, thatthe Koran prescribed burial inside twenty-four hours if possible, and Moslems believed that when abody grows cold the soul leaves it and when the body is put into the earth it comes alive again.

　　In Chicago, where policemen were watching all bus depots, railways, terminals, O'Hare Airport andhighway entrances, Elijah Muhammad, under heavy guard in his three-story mansion, said, "Malcolmdied according to his preaching. He seems to have taken weapons as his god. Therefore, we couldn'ttolerate a man like that. He preached war. We preach peace. We are permitted to fight if we areattacked-that's the Scripture, the Koran, and the Bible, too. But we will never be the aggressor. I don'thave the right to be frightened, because I was chosen by Allah. If Allah gives me up to the hands of thewicked, I am satisfied. My life is in the hands of Allah." The grounds outside the mansion werepatrolled by both Chicago police and Fruit of Islam bodyguards. More of both patrolled before theUniversity of Islam high school, and the offices of the newspaper _Muhammad Speaks_.

　　Malcolm X's lawyer, Assemblyman Percy Sutton, said that the police now had the names of thosewhom Malcolm X had said planned to kill him. All over Harlem, reporters were interviewing people,and microphones were being put before the mouths of the man-in-the-street. At police precinct stationhouses, people being questioned were leaving by side entrances. Said Assistant Chief Inspector JosephCoyle, in charge of Manhattan North detectives, ". . . . a well-planned conspiracy. We're doing ascreening process of the four hundred people who were in the hall at the time." Fifty detectives wereon the case, he said, and he had been in touch with police in other cities.

　　Harlem was mostly asleep when around the Black Muslim Mosque Number 7, on the top floor of afour-story building at 116th Street and Lenox Avenue, an explosive sound at 2:15 A.M. ripped thenight. Firemen were instantly summoned by the four policemen who had been guarding the sidewalkentrance to the mosque. Within a few minutes flames burst through the building's roof and leapedthirty feet into the air. For the next seven hours firemen would pour water into the building. On anadjacent roof they found an empty five-gallon gasoline can, a brown, gasoline-stained shopping bag, and oily rags. Southbound IRT subway service was re-routed for a while, also three bus lines. At thespectacular five-alarm fire's height, a wall of the building collapsed; it smashed two fire engines at thecurb and injured five firemen, one seriously, and also a pedestrian who had been across the streetbuying a newspaper. By daybreak, when the fire was declared "under control," the Black Muslimmosque and the Gethsemane Church of God in Christ on the floor beneath it were gutted, and sevenstreet-level stores, including the Black Muslim restaurant, were "total losses." Fire Department sourcessaid that replacing the ruined equipment would cost "around $50,000." Joseph X of the Black Muslims,who once had been the immediate assistant of Malcolm X, said that Elijah Muhammad's followers hadtwo alternative mosques to meet in, one in Brooklyn and the other in Queens, Long Island. Both thesemosques were under continuous police guard.

　　Across the nation in San Francisco on Tuesday afternoon two policemen discovered a fire beginning inthe San Francisco Black Muslim Mosque, and quickly extinguished it. Kerosene had been splashed onthe sidewalk and door and set afire.

　　The body of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz originally had been scheduled to go on public view at 2:30 P.M.

　　Tuesday. Crowds stood in line behind police barricades waiting to be admitted and the policemenwherever one looked included numerous patrol cars and even sharpshooters on the roofs around theUnity Funeral Home. But the telephoned bomb-threats which had begun shortly after noon madenecessary two evacuations of the funeral home for bornb-squad searches, which proved futile. Asearch was conducted even in the 43rd Street offices of the _New York Times_ after a man telephonedcomplaining of an editorial about Malcolm X and said, "Your plant will be destroyed at four o'clock."At the funeral home in Harlem, policemen inspected all packages and floral pieces being delivered, aswell as the large handbags of women mourners. It was 6:15 P.M. when a cordon of policemen arrivedflanking Sister Betty and four close relatives and friends who entered the funeral home in a glare offlashbulbs. "She's a black Jacqueline Kennedy," observed a white reporter. "She has class, she knowswhat to do and when, she handles herself beautifully."It was 7:10 P.M. when the family party emerged and left. After ten minutes, the first of the waitingpublic was admitted. Between then and an hour before midnight, two thousand people, includingscores of whites, had filed past the open coffin in which the body lay dressed in a dark business suit, awhite shirt and dark tie, with a small, oblong brass plate above it inscribed,"El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz-May 19, 1925-Feb. 21, 1965." Malcolm X followers had been canvassing with growing anxiety for a Harlem church that wouldaccept the Saturday funeral. Officials of several churches had refused, including a spokesman for thecommunity's largest church, Abyssinian Baptist, of which Congressman-Reverend Adam ClaytonPowell is the pastor; others which turned down requests, according to the _Amsterdam News_,included the Williams C.M.E. Church and The Refuge Temple of The Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

　　  Then the funeral was accepted by Bishop Alvin A. Childs for the Faith Temple, Church of God inChrist located at 147th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. The Faith Temple, a former movie theaterwhich had been converted fifteen years previously, could seat a thousand in its auditorium andanother seven hundred in its basement. Bishop Childs, who in 1964 had been elected as Harlem's"locality mayor," told the press that it was "as a humanitarian gesture" that he made his churchavailable, and of Malcolm X, he said, ". . .a militant and vocal person. I did not agree with all of hisphilosophy, but this did not affect our friendship." Shortly after the news became known, BishopChilds and his wife began to receive the first of a succession of bomb threats telephoned both to thechurch and to their home.

　　Prominent Negro figures were being quoted by the various press media. The famed psychologist Dr.

　　Kenneth B. Clark told _Jet_ magazine, "I had a deep respect for this man. I believe that he wassincerely groping to find a place in the fight for Civil Rights, on a level where he would be respectedand understood fully. I looked forward to his growth along those lines. It doesn't matter so muchabout his past. It is tragic that he was cut down at the point when he seemed on the verge of achievingthe position of respectability he sought." A _New York Times_ correspondent in a London pressconference quoted the author and dramatist James Baldwin, who thought the death of Malcolm X was"a major setback for the Negro movement." Pointing at white reporters, Baldwin accused, "You did it. .

　　. whoever did it was formed in the crucible of the Western world, of the American Republic!"European "rape" of Africa began racial problems and was therefore the beginning of the end forMalcolm X, Baldwin said.

　　The bookstore owner in Harlem, Louis Michaux, a major voice in the community, told the_Amsterdam News_, "It's things like the murder of Malcolm X that drive the masses closer together.

　　He died in the same manner that Patrice Lumumba met his death in the Congo. . . . We must unite, notfight.""Malcolm X caused many young Negroes to take a new vision of themselves," said Bayard Rustin, amain figure in organizing the March on Washington in 1963. A "third party" was suspected of killingMalcolm X by CORE'S National Director James Farmer, who said, "Malcolm's murder was calculatedto produce more violence and murder and vengeance killings." A few days later, asked for his opinionof a rumor circulating about that a "Red Chinese" plot brought about the murder, Farmer said, "Iwould not say it is impossible.""For the Negroes in America, the death of Malcolm X is the most portentous event since thedeportation of Marcus Garvey in the 1920's," said Dr. C. Eric Lincoln, author of _The Black Muslims inAmerica_, who talked to the press at Brown University in Providence, R.I., where he was a visitingprofessor and research fellow. "I doubt there are 'international implications' in the slaying. The answeris closer to home. The answer is in the local struggle among contending rivals for leadership of theblack masses, which are potentially the most volatile sub-group in America." Said Roy Wilkins,Executive Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, "Master spellbinder that he was, Malcolm X in death cast a spell more far-flung and more disturbing than any hecast in life." The New York City police investigators who were pursuing the case were unhappy that Malcolm'sfollowers had "not come forward" to aid the investigation. At police request, the press printed atelephone number, SW 5-8117, for "strictly confidential" information that anyone might offerconcerning the slaying. The police had picked up and were holding Reuben Francis, described as aMalcolm X "bodyguard," who was believed to be the person who had shot the suspected assassinTalmadge Hayer during the melee the previous Sunday at the Audubon Ballroom. Hayer remained inthe Bellevue Prison Ward, awaiting surgery.

　　As thousands continued viewing the body of the slain Malcolm X amid intermittent new bomb-threatstelephoned to the funeral home, and to the Faith Temple where his funeral was scheduled forSaturday, a new organization, the Federation of Independent Political Action, threatened to picket allHarlem business establishments which would not close from Thursday afternoon until Mondaymorning "in tribute to Malcolm X." The FIPA's spokesman was Jesse Gray, the well-known rent-strikeleader; Harlem pedestrians began to be handed printed sheets reading, in part, "If the stores refuse toclose, they identify with our enemy-therefore we must close them-pass them by. Those that shopalong 125th Street during the hours that the stores are to be closed identify with the murderous stoogethat allowed the power structure to use his hands to kill Brother Malcolm." At a late evening FIPArally before Louis Mi-chaux's bookstore, Jesse Gray declared that in 1965 a Negro should run forMayor of New York "in the name of Malcolm," and speculated that such a candidate should receive100,000 votes. Shortly after the FIPA rally, merchants and other members of the Uptown Chamber ofCommerce met and swiftly passed a resolution urging all Harlem stores to remain open and "continueto serve their customers," and recommendation was made that full pay be given to any storeemployees who might wish to attend Malcolm X's funeral on Saturday morning. Then one afteranother, Harlem leaders sharply criticized the FIPA proposal as "irresponsible." Finally, nearly all ofthe Harlem stores kept their doors open for business. The FIPA got together about twenty pickets whopatrolled for a while before Harlem's largest store, Blumstein's; leading the pickets were two whitemen carrying signs reading "All Stores Should Close. Honor Malcolm X."The weather had turned very cold. Icicles hung from the collapsed roof of the fire-ruined building thathad housed BlackMuslim Mosque Number 7. The _Amsterdam News_, its offices barely a block down Eighth Avenuefrom the funeral home where Malcolm X's body lay, editorialized, "Steady, Eddie!" saying that orderlytributes to Malcolm X would "confound his critics, who would like nothing better than to see blackpeople rioting over his remains."The fear of serious mass rioting set off by some unpredictable spark hung steadily in the air. Anincreasing number of Harlem leaders declared that the principal reason for this was the downtownwhite press media, sensationalizing what was going on in a calm, dignified community. Finally theHarlem Ministers' Interfaith Association would issue a formal accusation: "The screaming headlines ofmany of our newspapers make it seem as if all of Harlem was an armed camp, ready to explode at anymoment. The vast majority of the citizens of the Harlem community is not involved in the unfortunate acts of violence that have been grossly overplayed by the press. Many times the slanting of the news isable to bring about an atmosphere through which a few depraved and reckless individuals can takeadvantage.""_Malcolm X Died Broke_"-that headline in Harlem's _Amsterdam News_ came as a shock to many inthe community. Few had reflected that Malcolm X, upon becoming a Black Muslim minister, hadsigned an oath of poverty, so that for twelve years he never acquired anything in his own name.

　　(Somewhere I have read that Malcolm X in his Black Muslim days received about $175 weekly to coverhis living and other expenses exclusive of travel.) "He left his four daughters and pregnant wife withno insurance of any kind, no savings, and no income," the _Amsterdam News_ story said (and itmight have added that he never drew up a will; he had made a February 26th appointment with hislawyer-five days after his death). Within the week, two groups had organized and were askingHarlemites for contributions to help Sister Betty raise and educate the children (since organized as theMalcolm X Daughters' Fund at Harlem's Freedom National Bank, 275 West 125th Street).

　　In Boston, Malcolm X's half-sister, Mrs. Ella Mae Collins, told a news conference that she wouldchoose the leaders of the OAAU to succeed Malcolm X. Mrs. Collins operated the Sarah A. LittleSchool of Preparatory Arts where, she said, children were taught Arabic, Swahili, French, and Spanish.

　　In 1959, she, too, had broken away from Elijah Muhammad's Black Muslims, to which she hadoriginally been converted by Malcolm X.

　　Far from Harlem, in lands where Malcolm X had traveled, the press had given the murder a coveragethat had highly irritated the Director of the United States Information Agency, Carl T. Rowan, himselfa Negro. In Washington, addressing the American Foreign Service Association, Rowan said that whenhe first heard of the murder, he knew it would be grossly misconstrued in some countries wherepeople were unaware what Malcolm X represented, and he said the USIA had worked hard to informthe African press of the facts about Malcolm X and his preachments, but still there had been "a host ofAfrican reaction based on misinformation and misrepresentation."Said USIA Director Rowan, "Mind you, here was a Negro who preached segregation and race hatred,killed by another Negro, presumably from another organization that preaches segregation and racehatred, and neither of them representative of more than a tiny minority of the Negro population ofAmerica-" Rowan held up some foreign newspapers. "All this about an ex-convict, ex-dope peddlerwho became a racial fanatic," continued Rowan. "I can only conclude that we Americans know lessabout what goes on in the minds of other peoples than we thought, or the need to inform is evengreater than we in USIA thought it to be."The _Daily Times_ of Lagos, in Nigeria, had said: "Like all mortals, Malcolm X was not without hisfaults . . . but that he was a dedicated and consistent disciple of the movement for the emancipation ofhis brethren, no one can doubt . . . Malcolm X has fought and died for what he believed to be right. Hewill have a place in the palace of martyrs." The _Ghanaian Times_, Accra, called Malcolm X "themilitant and most popular of Afro-American anti-segregationist leaders" and it added his name to "ahost of Africans and Americans" ranging from John Brown to Patrice Lumumba "who were martyred in freedom's cause." Also in Accra, the _Daily Graphic_: "The assassination of Malcolm X will go downin history as the greatest blow the American integrationist movement has suffered since the shockingassassinations of Medgar Evers and John F. Kennedy."The Pakistan _Hurriyet of Karachi_ said: "A great Negro leader"; the _Pakistan Times_ said, "Hisdeath is a definite setback to the Negro movement for emancipation." The Peking, China _People'sDaily_ said the killing happened "because Malcolm X . . . fought for the emancipation of the 23,000,000American Negroes." According to correspondents' reports, the first Algerian headline said "the KuKlux Klan" assassinated Malcolm X; the pro-Communist _Alger Republican_'s editorial on the slayingaccused "American Fascism," and the _Times'_ Algerian correspondent said Algerians showed "signs"of raising Malcolm X to martyrdom. The U.S. Consulate in Georgetown, British Guiana, was marchedon by pickets accusing "American imperialists." Another Peking, China paper, _Jenmin Jihpao_, saidthat the death showed that "in dealing with imperialist oppressors, violence must be met withviolence." _Pravda_ in Moscow carried only brief stories and no editorial comment, the _New YorkTimes_ Moscow correspondent said, and another in Poland said there was no noticeable reaction ofany kind, and that "few Poles had heard of Malcolm or were interested in the racial issue." Reportedly,the murder was only routinely reported with little special interest by the press in Cairo, Beirut, NewDelhi, and Saigon. In Paris and Western Europe, the story was "essentially a one-day sensation," withthe West German press handling it "as if it were in the Chicago gangster tradition." The _New YorkTimes_ said: ' The London newspapers have probably played the story harder and longer than most,giving continuing emphasis to the police work on the murder. The _London Times_ and the _LondonDaily Telegraph_ both carried editorial comments, but neither treated Malcolm X as a major figure."Also reported by the _New York Times_ London correspondent was that "a London group callingitself the Council of African Organizations had violently attacked the United States over the murder.

　　This group is made up of students and other unofficial African representatives here. A press releasedescribed Malcolm as a 'leader in the struggle against American imperialism, oppression andracialism.' It said, 'the butchers of Patrice Lumumba are the very same monsters who have murderedMalcolm X in cold blood.'"Friday morning New York City press headlines concerning Malcolm X's slaying were devoted to thepolice department's apprehension of a second slaying suspect. He was a stocky, round-faced, twenty-six-year-old karate expert named Norman 3X Butler, allegedly a Black Muslim, and a week later, thiswas followed by the arrest of Thomas 15X Johnson, also allegedly a Black Muslim. Both men had beenearlier indicted in the January, 1965, shooting of Benjamin Brown, a New York City Correction Officerand a Black Muslim defector. Both men were indicted, along with Haver, for the murder of Malcolm Xon March 10.

　　With the news announcement of Butler's arrest, and his at least tentative identification as a member ofElijah Muhammad's organization, tension reached a new high among all who had any role in the feud.

　　The Black Muslim National Convention was scheduled to begin that Friday in Chicago, to last forthree days. Early Friday morning in New York at the Kennedy Airport dozens of policemen spentforty minutes searching a plane belonging to Capital Airlines, which back in December 1964 hadaccepted a Mosque Number 7 charter flight to Chicago and return, at a fee of $5,175.54 which the mosque had subsequently paid in increments.

　　Altogether, about three thousand Black Muslims from their mosques in most sizable cities were inChicago for their annual "Saviour's Day" convention, regarded by them as similar to the holiday ofChristmas. In the order of arrival, each group from the different mosques and cities assembled outsidethe big sports coliseum south of Chicago's business district, the brothers of all ages dressed in neat,dark suits and white shirts and the sisters garbed in flowing silk gowns and headdresses-and everyindividual was filtered through an intense security check that Chicago police sources said wasunprecedented in Chicago except for a visiting President.

　　Searched even more closely were the relatively few non-Muslim Negroes who came to be spectators,and the press representatives both white and black. "Take off your hat, show some respect!" snapped aBlack Muslim guard at a white reporter. As each person was "cleared" a Fruit of Islam man usheredhim or her to a specific seat in the drafty interior of the 7500-seat coliseum. (Later, Muslim sourceswould blame the half-full house upon "the white man's dividing of Negroes," but observers whorecalled the packed coliseum in 1964 said that bombing fears kept away many non-Muslim Negroes.)The audience sat lightly murmuring under the two huge hanging banners proclaiming "WelcomeElijah Muhammad-We Are Glad To Have You With Us" and "We Must Have Some Of This Land"(referring to Elijah Muhammad's demand that "one or more states" be turned over to the "23 millionso-called Negroes" in America as partial reparation for "over a century of our free blood and sweat asslaves which helped to develop this wealthy nation where still today you show us you do not wish orintend to accept us as equals"). In front of the wide, raised speaker's platform were two nearly life-sized photographic blowups of Elijah Muhammad. Standing between the stage and the audience wereFruit of Islam guards. Others were prowling the aisles, scanning rows of faces, with intermittentperemptory demands for identification, "What mosque, brother?" Still more Fruit of Islam men wereinspecting the coliseum's vacant balcony, backstage, downstairs, and rafters and roof.

　　The ghost of Malcolm X was in the coliseum. First, in a high drama for the Muslims, ElijahMuhammad's son, Wallace Delaney Muhammad, who once had sided with Malcolm X, faced theaudience and begged forgiveness for his defection. Next, two brothers of Malcolm X, Wilfred andPhilbert, both of them Black Muslim ministers, urged unity with Elijah Muhammad. Said MinisterWilfred X of the Detroit mosque, "We would be ignorant to get confused and go to arguing andfighting among ourselves and forget who the real enemy is." Said Minister Philbert X, of the Lansingmosque, "Malcolm was my own blood brother, next to me. . . . I was shocked. No man wants to see hisown brother destroyed. But I knew that he was traveling on a very reckless and dangerous road. Imade attempts to change his course. When he was living, I tried to keep him living; now that he isdead, there is nothing I can do." Indicating the seated Elijah Muhammad, Minister Philbert X declared,"Where he leads me, I will follow"-and then he introduced the Black Muslim leader to make hisaddress.

　　Only the head of Elijah Muhammad was visible above the grim-faced Fruit of Islam men in a livingwall, Cassius Clay among them. Crescents, stars, moons and suns were in goldthread embroidery onthe small fez that Elijah Muhammad wore. He said in his speech: "For a long time, Malcolm stood here where I stand. In those days, Malcolm was safe, Malcolm was loved. God, Himself, protectedMalcolm. . . . For more than a year, Malcolm was given his freedom. He went everywhere-Asia,Europe, Africa, even to Mecca, trying to make enemies for me. He came back preaching that weshould not hate the enemy. . . . He came here a few weeks ago to blast away his hate and mudslinging; everything he could think of to disgrace me. . . . We didn't want to kill Malcolm and didn'ttry to kill him. They know I didn't harm Malcolm. They know I loved him. His foolish teachingbrought him to his own end. . . ."Both physically and emotionally worked up, often Elijah Muhammad would begin coughing. "Take iteasy! Take your time!" his audience pleaded with him. "He had no right to reject me!" ElijahMuhammad declared. "He was a star, who went astray! . . . They knew I didn't harm Malcolm, but hetried to make war against me." He said that Malcolm X would have been given "the most glorious ofburials" if he had stayed with the Black Muslims and had died a natural death; "instead, we standbeside the grave of a hypocrite! . . . _Malcolm_! Who was he leading? Who was he teaching? He has notruth! We didn't want to kill Malcolm! His foolish teaching would bring him to his own end! I am notgoing to let the crackpots destroy the good things Allah sent to you and me!"Elijah Muhammad drove his frail energy to speak for about an hour and a half. He challenged anywould-be assassins: "If you seek to snuff out the life of Elijah Muhammad, you are inviting your owndoom! The Holy Quran tells us not to pick a fight but to defend ourselves. We will fight!" It was mid-afternoon when Elijah Muhammad turned back to his seat with some three thousand Black Muslimmen, women, and children shouting "Yes, _sir_! . . . So sweet! . . . All praise to Muhammad!"In the Unity Funeral Home in the Harlem community of New York City in the mid-afternoon, thepublic's viewing of the body of Malcolm X was interrupted by the arrival of a party of about a dozenpeople whose central figure was a white-turbaned, dark-robed elderly man whose white beard fell tohis chest and who carried a forked stick. When reporters rushed to attempt interviews, another man inthe party waved them away, saying, "A silent tongue does not betray its owner." The man was SheikAhmed Hassoun, a Sudanese, a member of the Sunni Moslems, who had taught in Mecca for 35 yearswhen he had met Malcolm X there, and then had soon come to the United States to serve as MalcolmX's spiritual advisor and to teach at the Muslim Mosque, Inc.

　　Sheik Hassoun prepared the body for burial in accordance with Moslem ritual. Removing the Westernclothing in which the body had been on display, Sheik Hassoun washed the body with special holy oil.

　　Then he draped the body in the traditional seven white linen shrouds, called the _kafan_. Only theface with its reddish moustache and goatee was left exposed. The mourners who had come with SheikHassoun filed to the bier and he read passages from the Koran. Then he turned to a funeral homerepresentative: "Now the body is ready for burial." Soon, the sheik and his retinue left, and theviewing by the public resumed. When the word spread, numbers of persons who had come beforereturned for another wait in the long, slowly moving line, wanting to see the Moslem burial dress.

　　It was late during this Friday afternoon that I got into the quietly moving line, thinking about the Malcolm X with whom I had worked closely for about two years. Blue-uniformed policemen stood atintervals watching us shuffle along within the wooden gray-painted police barricades. Just across thestreet several men were looking at the line from behind a large side window of the "Lone Star BarberShop, Eddie Johns, Prop., William Ashe, Mgr." Among the policemen were a few press representativestalking to each other to pass the time. Then we were inside the softly lit, hushed, cool, large chapel.

　　Standing at either end of the long, handsome bronze coffin were two big, dark policemen, mostlylooking straight ahead, but moving their lips when some viewer tarried. Within minutes I had reachedthe coffin. Under the glass lid, I glimpsed the delicate white shrouding over the chest and up like ahood about the face on which I tried to concentrate for as long as I could. All that I could think wasthat it was he, all right-Malcolm X. "Move on"-the policeman's voice was soft. Malcolm looked to me-just waxy and _dead_. The policeman's hand was gesturing at his waist level. I thought, "_Well-goodbye_." I moved on.

　　Twenty-two thousand people had viewed the body when the line was stopped that night for good, ateleven P.M. Quietly, between midnight and dawn, a dozen police cars flanked a hearse that went thetwenty-odd blocks farther uptown to the Faith Temple. The bronze coffin was wheeled inside andplaced upon a platform draped in thick dark red velvet, in front of the altar, and the coffin's lid wasreopened. As the hearse pulled away, policemen stood at posts of vigil both inside and outside FaithTemple. It was crispy cold outside.

　　About six A.M., people began forming a line on the east side of Amsterdam Avenue. By nine A.M. , anestimated six thousand persons thronged the nearby blocks, behind police barriers, and faces were inevery window of the apartment buildings across the street; some stood shivering on fire escapes. From145th Street to 149th Street, policemen had blocked off all automobile traffic except for their own cars,the newspapers' cars, and the equipment trucks for radio and television on-the-spot coverage. Therewere hundreds of policemen, some on the rooftops in the immediate area. Combing the crowd's edgeswere reporters with microphones and notebooks. "He was fascinating, a remarkably fascinating man,that's why I'm here," a white girl in her mid-twenties told a _New York Times_ man; and a Negrowoman, "I'm paying my respects to the greatest black man in this century. He's a black man. Don't saycolored." Another woman, noticing steel helmets inside a television network car, laughed to thedriver, "You getting ready for next summer?"When the Faith Temple doors were opened at 9:20, a corps of OAAU members entered. Within thenext quarter-hour, twenty of the men had ushered in six hundred seat-holders. Fifty press reporters,photographers and television cameramen clustered beneath religious murals to the rear of the altar,and some stood on chairs to see better. A Negro engineer monitored recording equipment between thealtar and the coffin which was guarded by eight uniformed Negro policemen and two uniformedNegro policewomen. One Negro plain-clothes policeman sat on either side of heavily veiled SisterBetty in the second row. The raised lid of the coffin hid the Faith Temple's brass tithe box andcandelabra; the head of the Islamic Mission of America, in Brooklyn, Sheik Al-Haj Daoud AhmedFaisal, had counseled that any hint of Christianity in the services would make the deceased a _kafir_,an unbeliever. (The sheik had also dissented with the days of public exhibition of the body: "Death is aprivate matter between Allah and the deceased.") Before the services began, OAAU ushers brought in one floral wreath-a two-by-five arrangement ofthe Islamic Star and Crescent in white carnations against a background of red carnations.

　　First, the actor Ossie Davis and his wife, actress Ruby Dee, read the notes, telegrams and cables ofcondolence. They came from every major civil-rights organization; from individual figures such as Dr.

　　Martin Luther King; from organizations and governments abroad, such as The Africa-Pakistan-West-Indian Society of the London School of Economics, the Pan-African Congress of Southern Africa, theNigerian Ambassador from Lagos, the President of the Republic of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah: "Thedeath of Malcolm X shall not have been in vain."Next, Omar Osman stood, a representative of the Islam Center of Switzerland and the United States:

　　"We knew Brother Malcolm as a blood brother, particularly after his pilgrimage to Mecca last year.

　　The highest thing that a Moslem can aspire to is to die on the battlefield and not die at his bedside-"He paused briefly to wait out the applause from among the mourners. "Those who die on thebattlefield are not dead, but are alive!" The applause was louder, and cries rose, "Right! Right!" OmarOsman then critically commented upon the remarks which USIA Director Carl Rowan had made inWashington, D.C., about the foreign press reaction to the death of the deceased. From the audiencethen hisses rose.

　　Again, the actor Ossie Davis stood. His deep voice delivered the eulogy to Malcolm X which wasgoing to cause Davis subsequently to be hailed more than ever among Negroes in Harlem:

　　"Here-at this final hour, in this quiet place, Harlem has come to bid farewell to one of its brightesthopes-extinguished now, and gone from us forever. . . .

　　"Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy, controversial and bold young captain-andwe will smile. . . . They will say that he is of hate-a fanatic, a racist-who can only bring evil to the causefor which you struggle!

　　"And we will answer and say unto them: Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever touchhim, or have him smile at you? Did you ever really listen to him? Did he ever do a mean thing? Washe ever himself associated with violence or any public disturbance? For if you did you would knowhim. And if you knew him you would know why we must honor him: Malcolm was our manhood,our living, black manhood! This was his meaning to his people. And, in honoring him, we honor thebest in ourselves. . . . And we will know him then for what he was and is-a Prince-our own blackshining Prince!-who didn't hesitate to die, because he loved us so."Brief speeches were made by others. Then, the family, the OAAU members and other Muslims presentstood and filed by the coffin to view the body for the last time. Finally, the two plain-clothespolicemen ushered Sister Betty to have her last sight of her husband. She leaned over, kissing the glassover him; she broke into tears. Until then almost no crying had been heard in the services, but nowSister Betty's sobs were taken up by other women.

　　 The services had lasted a little over an hour when the three minutes of prayers said for every Muslimwho is dead were recited by Alhajj Heshaam Jaaber, of Elizabeth, New Jersey. At the phrase "AllahuAkbar"-"God is most great"-all Muslims in the audience placed their opened hands at the sides of theirfaces.

　　An official cortege, with the hearse, of three family cars, eighteen mourners' cars, twelve police carsand six press cars-followed by about fifty other cars-briskly drove the eighteen miles out of Manhattanand along the New York Thruway, then off its Exit 7 to reach the Ferncliff Cemetery in Ardsley, N.Y.

　　All along the route, Negroes placed their hats or hands over their hearts, paying their final respects. Ateach bridge crossing in Manhattan County, police cars stood watch; the Westchester County policehad stationed individual patrolmen at intervals en route to the cemetery.

　　Over the coffin, final Moslem prayers were said by Sheik Alhajj Heshaam Jaaber. The coffin waslowered into the grave, the head facing the east, in keeping with Islamic tradition. Among themourners, the Moslems knelt beside the grave to pray with their foreheads pressed to the earth, in theEastern manner. When the family left the gravesite, followers of Malcolm X would not let the coffin becovered by the white grave-diggers who had stood a little distance away, waiting. Instead, sevenOAAU men began dropping bare handfuls of earth down on the coffin; then they were given shovelsand they carried dirt to fill the grave, and then mound it.

　　The night fell over the earthly remains of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, who had been called Malcolm X;who had been called Malcolm Little; who had been called "Big Red" and "Satan" and "Homeboy" andother names-who had been buried as a Moslem. "According to the Koran," the _New York Times_reported, "the bodies of the dead remain in their graves until the Last Day, the Day of Judgment. Onthis day of cataclysm the heavens are rent and the mountains ground to dust, the graves open andmen are called to account by Allah.

　　"The blessed-the godfearing, the humble, the charitable, those who have suffered and been persecutedfor Allah's sake or fought in religious wars for Islam-are summoned to the Garden of Paradise.

　　"There, according to the teaching of Mohammed, the Prophet, they live forever by flowing streams,reclining on silken cushions, and enjoying the company of dark-eyed maidens and wives of perfectpurity.

　　"The damned-the covetous, the evildoer, the follower of gods other than Allah-are sent to Eternal Fire,where they are fed boiling water and molten brass. 'The death from which ye flee will truly overtakeyou,' the Koran says. 'Then will ye be sent back to the Knower of things secret and open, and He willtell you the truth of the things that ye did.'"After signing the contract for this book, Malcolm X looked at me hard. "A writer is what I want, not aninterpreter." I tried to be a dispassionate chronicler. But he was the most electric personality I have ever met, and I still can't quite conceive him dead. It still feels to me as if he has just gone into somenext chapter, to be written by historians.

　　New York, 1965

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