The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley was published in 1965. It is national best seller about the life and times of Malcolm X. On May 19, 1925 Malcolm Little was born in Omaha, Nebraska. His father was a preacher who spoke out about the unity of black people. This caused several white racists to strike out against Malcolm’s father and his family violently. His family moved to Lansing, Michigan where Malcolm, his parents, brothers, and sisters were shot at, burned out of their home, harassed, and threatened. When Malcolm was 6 years old, his father was murdered by a white man. After his father’s death his mother had a nervous breakdown and the family got split up by welfare agencies. Malcolm was placed in a lot of different schools and boardinghouses. He was a good student and wanted to be a lawyer someday, but a teacher told him that because he was black he should take up carpentry instead. At age 15 he dropped out of school and moved to Boston to live with his half sister Ella. He quickly sees the fast pace life of Detroit. To get money he shined shoes, worked at a soda fountain, worked at a restaurant and on a railroad kitchen crew.

Later he moved to the black Harlem section of New York City where he sold drugs, became a thief, and was involved with a lot of hoodlums and pimps. He moved back to Boston and got arrested for burglary. While he was in prison he learned about the Nation of Islam and later joined the Islamic religion. He was released from prison in 1952 and went to be with his brother in Detroit where he replaced his last name, Little, with X to symbolize his lost true African family name. The Islamic religion taught that white people were devils so Malcolm went around speaking out against whites at universities and other places. He returned to New York and became minister of the Harlem temple. For 12 years he preached that the white man was the devil and Muhammad was God’s messenger. In 1964 he left the Nation of Islam and said "I feel like a man who has been asleep somewhat and under someone else’s control. I feel what I’m thinking and saying now is for myself. Before, it was for and by guidance of another, now I think with my own mind."(Haley 312) He was 38 years old when he left the Islamic religion and started his own group, Organization of Afro-American Unity.

He went to Mecca, known as the Hajj, and this is a religious obligation that every orthodox Muslim does at least once in a lifetime. On his pilgrimage to Mecca is where he started looking at things differently. He saw that in the Muslim world the white man is brotherly. He met with, talked to, and ate with people who in America were considered white. He now wanted to unite people of all races under the power of one God and believed that blacks all over the world should join to combat racism. Malcolm returned from the pilgrimage as El-Hajj Malik al-Shabazz. His pilgrimage broadened his outlook on life.

During his visit in the Holy Land he saw all races, all colors in true brotherhood living in unity, living as one, and worshipping as one. He was questioned about this because in the past he had preached out that whites were the devil and now he said that he will never be guilty of that again. His friends are now black, brown, red, yellow, and white, which includes capitalists, socialists, and communists. He now speaks out to his Harlem audience about peace and proclaims that he is not a racist in any form, and he doesn’t believe in any form of discrimination or segregation. On February 21, 1965 three audience members in a lecture at Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom, which Malcolm had rented for his new organization, shoot and killed Malcolm. Police arrested three suspects with Muslim affiliations who were later convicted.

A major theme of the book is that face of America which only the blacks can see every day, the ugly face of racism. And only the black Americans, who experience it right from their birth, can express what it is like to be discriminated in every aspect of life, only because of one's color. In the book, Malcolm X the writer, tries to dig as deep as possible into the history of the blacks. He goes back and traces their origins and states that blacks should not look to integrate into white society. By doing so, he believed that blacks would always be dependent on the whites for employment, education, etc. Instead, he believed that blacks should organize politically as well as economically to generate enough resources among the blacks to fulfill their employment and educational needs themselves.

The development of the character of Malcolm himself is greatly reflected on his changing views of racial problems in America. After seeing both of his parents destroyed by whites he has a feeling of lost hope when it comes to difficulties or obstacles of blacks. His views and attitude eventually change. After experiencing first hand, black ghettos, he develops a philosophy of not accepting any kind of aid from the white man. Malcolm’s view and character change even more when he goes to prison and learns about the ways of The Nation of Islam. This causes him to change his ways and have a more orderly hatred of whites. Later on his attitude changes again, contrasting from his previous beliefs. He would now encourage white involvement in the struggle for black emancipation.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X discusses the civil rights movement very in depth. Malcolm did not look at the question of racial discrimination as an internal or a civil rights issue. He believed that it was a human rights issue and should be an international question. He disagreed with the methods used by prominent civil rights leaders of that time, such as Martin Luther King Jr. He also believed that the blacks should not try to integrate into white society but rather remain independent of them.

The book illustrates a motif of status symbols by showing how status determines identity and sense of self worth in then and today’s society. Malcolm experiences this in his own family. He acquires a hierarchy in his family because of how his father favors him due to being the lightest skinned of his siblings. He also experiences this by the treatment of him by his foster family, along with being voted class president at school, which he goes from being proud to bitter due to feeling like what the whites consider the black ideal. Malcolm himself uses a status symbol of having a white girlfriend and proceeds to show her off. In all of these examples somebody is being degraded down to an object for the means of advancing another person in such a society.

Another motif illustrated in the book is that of travel and change. It seemed as if every time Malcolm traveled he experienced a dramatic change in his character