The autobiography of Malcolm X (49 page)

I spoke at the University of Beirut the truth of the American black man's condition. I've previously made the comment that any experienced public speaker can feel his audience's reactions. As I spoke, I felt the subjective and defensive reactions of the American white students present-but gradually their hostilities lessened as I continued to present the unassailable facts. But the students of African heritage-well, I'll _never_ get over how the African displays his emotions.

Later, with astonishment, I heard that the American press carried stories that my Beirut speech caused a “riot.” What kind of a riot? I don't know how any reporter, in good conscience, could have cabled that across the ocean. The Beirut _Daily Star_ front-page report of my speech mentioned no “riot”-because there was none. When I was done, the African students all but besieged me for autographs; some of them even hugged me. Never have even American Negro audiences accepted me as I have been accepted time and again by the less inhibited, more down-to-earth Africans.

From Beirut, I flew back to Cairo, and there I took a train to Alexandria, Egypt. I kept my camera busy during each brief stopover. Finally I was on a plane to Nigeria.

During the six-hour flight, when I was not talking with the pilot (who had been a 1960 Olympics swimmer), I sat with a passionately political African. He almost shouted in his fervor. “When people are in a stagnant state, and are being brought out of it, there is no _time_ for voting!” His central theme was that no new African nation, trying to decolonize itself, needed any political system that would permit division and bickering. “The people don't know what the vote means! It is the job of the enlightened leaders to raise the people's intellect.”

In Lagos, I was greeted by Professor Essien-Udom of the Ibadan University. We were both happy to see each other. We had met in the United States as he had researched the Nation of Islam for his book, _Black Nationalism_. At his home, that evening, a dinner was held in my honor, attended by other professors and professional people. As we ate, a young doctor asked me if I knew that New York City's press was highly upset about a recent killing in Harlem of a white woman-for which, according to the press, many were blaming me at least indirectly. An elderly white couple who owned a Harlem clothing store had been attacked by several young Negroes, and the wife was stabbed to death. Some of these young Negroes, apprehended by the police, had described themselves as belonging to an organization they called “Blood Brothers.” These youths, allegedly, had said or implied that they were affiliated with “Black Muslims” whohad split away from the Nation of Islam to join up with me.

I told the dinner guests that it was my first word of any of it, but that I was not surprised when violence happened in any of America's ghettoes where black men had been living packed like animals and treated like lepers. I said that the charge against me was typical white man scapegoat-seeking-that whenever something white men disliked happened in the black community, typically white public attention was directed not at the cause, but at a selected scapegoat.

As for the “Blood Brothers,” I said I considered all Negroes to be my blood brothers. I said that the white man's efforts to make my name poison actually succeeded only in making millions of black people regard me like Joe Louis.

Speaking in the Ibadan University's Trenchard Hall, I urged that Africa's independent nations needed to see the necessity of helping to bring the Afro-American's case before the United Nations. I said that just as the American Jew is in political, economic, and cultural harmony with world Jewry, I was convinced that it was time for all Afro-Americans to join the world's Pan- Africanists. I said that physically we Afro-Americans might remain in America, fighting for our Constitutional rights, but that philosophically and culturally we Afro-Americans badly needed to “return” to Africa-and to develop a working unity in the framework of Pan-Africanism.

Young Africans asked me politically sharper questions than one hears from most American adults. Then an astonishing thing happened when one old West Indian stood and began attacking me-for attacking America. “Shut up! Shut up!” students yelled, booing, and hissing. The old West Indian tried to express defiance of them, and in a sudden rush a group of students sprang up and were after him. He barely escaped ahead of them. I never saw anything like it. Screaming at him, they ran him off the campus. (Later, I found out that the oldWest Indian was married to a white woman, and he was trying to get a job in some white-influenced agency which had put him up to challenge me. Then, I understood his problem.)

This wasn't the last time I'd see the Africans' almost fanatic expression of their political emotions.

Afterward, in the Students' Union, I was plied with questions, and I was made an honorary member of the Nigerian Muslim Students' Society. Right here in my wallet is my card: “Alhadji Malcolm X. Registration No. M-138.” With the membership, I was given a new name: “Omowale.” It means, in the Yoruba language, “the son who has come home.” I meant it when I told them I had never received a more treasured honor.

Six hundred members of the Peace Corps were in Nigeria, I learned. Some white Peace Corps

members who talked with me were openly embarrassed at the guilt of their race in America. Among the twenty Negro Peace Corpsmen I talked with, a very impressive fellow to me was Larry Jackson, a Morgan State

College graduate from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who had joined the Peace Corps in 1962.

I made Nigerian radio and television program appearances. When I remember seeing black men operating their _own_ communications agencies, a thrill still runs up my spine. The reporters who interviewed me included an American Negro from _Newsweek_ magazine-his name was Williams. Traveling through Africa, he had recently interviewed Prime Minister Nkrumah.

Talking with me privately, one group of Nigerian officials told me how skillfully the U.S. Information Agency sought to spread among Africans the impression that American Negroes were steadily advancing, and that the race problemsoon would be solved. One high official told me, “Our informed leaders and many, many others know otherwise.” He said that behind the “diplomatic front” of every African U.N. official was recognition of the white man's gigantic duplicity and conspiracy to keep the world's peoples of African heritage separated-both physically and ideologically-from each other.

“In your land, how many black people think about it that South and Central and North America contain over _eighty million_ people of African descent?” he asked me.

“The world's course will change the day the African-heritage peoples come together as brothers!”

I never had heard that kind of global black thinking from any black man in America.

From Lagos, Nigeria, I flew on to Accra, Ghana.

I think that nowhere is the black continent's wealth and the natural beauty of its people richer than in Ghana, which is so proudly the very fountainhead of Pan-Africanism.

I stepped off the plane into a jarring note. A red-faced American white man recognized me; he had the nerve to come up grabbing my hand and telling me in a molasses drawl that he was from Alabama, and then he invited me to his home for dinner!

My hotel's dining room, when I went to breakfast, was full of more of those whites-discussing Africa's untapped wealth as though the African waiters had no ears. It nearly ruined my meal, thinking how in America they sicked police dogs on black people, and threw bombs in black churches, while blocking thedoors of their white churches-and now, once again in the land where their forefathers had stolen blacks and thrown them into slavery, was that white man.

Right there at my Ghanaian breakfast table was where I made up my mind that as long as I was in Africa, every time I opened my mouth, I was going to make things hot for that white man, grinning through his teeth wanting to exploit Africa again-it had been her human wealth the last time, now he wanted Africa's mineral wealth.

And I knew that my reacting as I did presented no conflict with the convictions of brotherhood which I had gained in the Holy Land. The Muslims of “white” complexions who had changed my opinions were men who had showed me that they practiced genuine brotherhood. And I knew that any American white man with a genuine brotherhood for a black man was hard to find, no matter how much he grinned.

The author Julian Mayfield seemed to be the leader of Ghana's little colony of Afro-American expatriates. When I telephoned Mayfield, in what seemed no time at all I was sitting in his home surrounded by about forty black American expatriates; they had been waiting for my arrival. There were business and professional people, such as the militant former Brooklynites Dr. and Mrs.

Robert E. Lee, both of them dentists, who had given up their United States' citizenship. Such others as Alice Windom, Maya Angelou Make, Victoria Garvin, and Leslie Lacy had even formed a “Malcolm X Committee” to guide me through a whirlwind calendar of appearances and social events.

In my briefcase here are some of the African press stories which had appeared when it was learned that I was en route:

“Malcolm X's name is almost as familiar to Ghanaians as the Southern dogs, fire hoses, cattle prods, people sticks, and the ugly, hate-contorted white faces. . . .” “Malcolm X's decision to enter the mainstream of the struggle heralds a hopeful sign on the sickeningly dismal scene of brutalized, non-violent, passive resistance. . . .”

“An extremely important fact is that Malcolm X is the first Afro-American leader of national standing to make an independent trip to Africa since Dr. Du Bois came to Ghana. This may be the beginning of a new phase in our struggle. Let's make sure we don't give it less thought than the State Department is doubtless giving it right now.”

And another: “Malcolm X is one of our most significant and militant leaders. We are in a battle. Efforts will be made to malign and discredit him. . . .”

I simply couldn't believe this kind of reception five thousand miles from America! The officials of the press had even arranged to pay my hotel expenses, and they would hear no objection that I made. They included T. D. Baffoe, the Editor-in-Chief of the _Ghanaian Times_; G. T. Anim, the Managing Director of the Ghana News Agency; Kofi Batsa, the Editor of _Spark_ and the Secretary-General of the Pan-African Union of Journalists; and Mr. Cameron Duodu; and others. I could only thank them all. Then, during the beautiful dinner which had been prepared by Julian Mayfield's pretty Puerto Rican wife, Ana Livia (she was in charge of Accra's district health program), I was plied with questions by the eagerly interested black expatriates from America who had returned to Mother Africa.

I can only wish that every American black man could have shared my ears, my eyes, and my emotions throughout the round of engagements which had been made for me in Ghana. And my point in saying this is not the reception that I personally received as an individual of whom they had heard, but it was thereception tendered to me as the symbol of the militant American black man, as I had the honor to be regarded.

At a jam-packed press club conference, I believe the very first question was why had I split with Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. The Africans had heard such rumors as that Elijah Muhammad had built a palace in Arizona. I straightened out that falsehood, and I avoided any criticism. I said that our disagreement had been in terms of political direction and involvement in the extra-religious struggle for human rights. I said I respected the Nation of Islam for its having been a psychologically revitalizing movement and a source of moral and social reform, and that Elijah Muhammad's influence upon the American black man had been basic.

I stressed to the assembled press the need for mutual communication and support between the Africans and Afro-Americans whose struggles were interlocked. I remember that in the press conference, I used the word “Negro,” and I was firmly corrected. “The word is not favored here, Mr. Malcolm X. The term Afro-American has greater meaning, and dignity.” I sincerely apologized. I don't think that I said “Negro” again as long as I was in Africa. I said that the 22 million Afro- Americans in the United States could become for Africa a great positive force-while, in turn, the African nations could and should exert positive force at diplomatic levels against America's racial discrimination. I said, "All of Africa unites in opposition to South Africa's apartheid, and to the oppression in the Portuguese territories. But you waste your time if you don't realize that Verwoerd and Salazar, and Britain and France, never could last a day if it were not for United States support. So until you expose the man in Washington, D.C., you haven't accomplished

anything."

I knew that the State Department's G. Mennen Williams was officially visiting in Africa. I said, “Take my word for it-you be suspicious of all these American officials who come to Africa grinning in your faces when they don't grin in oursback home.” I told them that my own father was murdered by whites in the state of Michigan where G. Mennen Williams once was the Governor.

I was honored at the Ghana Club, by more press representatives and dignitaries. I was the guest at the home of the late black American author Richard Wright's daughter, beautiful, slender, soft- voiced Julia, whose young French husband publishes a Ghanaian paper. Later, in Paris, I was to meet Richard Wright's widow, Ellen, and a younger daughter, Rachel.