became Elijah Muhammad’s most loyal and most successful disciple, preaching from Harlem Mosque Number Seven as well as on street corners and anywhere he could gather an audience. He discovered that he possessed the rare gift of spellbinding oratory, attributable to his intelligence, his extensive self-education, his strong motivation for self-fulfillment, and his deep belief in the teachings of his mentor. He quickly rose from assistant minister to minister to national minister in the Black Muslim organization.

Malcolm had such a bad reputation in prison that fellow inmates referred to him as “Satan.” His conversion to the Black Muslim faith, however, transformed his character. He gave up smoking, drinking, drugs, profanity, and sexual promiscuity. He gave up zoot suits, conked hair, and all the other flashy affectations he now considered clownish. His cropped hair and conservative business suits reflected his moral transformation.

Malcolm was Elijah Muhammad’s diligent disciple for more than ten years. Another major turning point in his life arrived when he became aware that his master was not the saintly character Malcolm had taken him to be. Malcolm discovered that Elijah Muhammad was not only interested in personal enrichment but also sexually promiscuous and had seduced several of his former secretaries, who had borne him illegitimate children.

Although disillusioned with his mentor, Malcolm remained a devout Muslim. He went to Mecca in search of further spiritual enlightenment and experienced a powerful religious conversion. He renamed himself el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. After this experience, he considered himself at least equal to Elijah Muhammad in religious enlightenment and founded his own Muslim organization, which he called the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

After Malcolm broke with the Black Muslim sect, he was harassed and threatened by its members, who presumably were working under orders from Elijah Muhammad. In speeches and interviews, Malcolm frequently predicted that he would be assassinated. His house was firebombed, and he had to send his wife and four daughters out of town for their own safety. His remarkable courage and dedication to his cause were evident in his behavior during this critical period. He refused to hide from his invisible enemies, making repeated public appearances in Harlem and elsewhere to proclaim his crusade for the spiritual and political unification of black people all around the world. He openly attacked Elijah Muhammad for “religious fakery” and “immorality.”

The most striking things about Malcolm X’s autobiography are his candor, his motivation, and his anger. Few characters in novels have undergone such transformations as this man did in real life. Reader see Malcolm change from an ignorant child into a sophisticated urbanite, then into a vicious criminal, then into an embittered convict, and finally into a highly devout, ascetic religious leader who is ready to sacrifice his life for the good of others. The one thing that remained consistent throughout his adult life was his anger at the way white society had cheated him by shutting its doors to opportunity and forcing him into a life of crime and degradation. He believed that his life story was the story of his race.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X ends with Malcolm living as a hunted man, having been repeatedly threatened by the followers of his former idol. In 1965, the year his autobiography was published, Malcolm died in a blaze of shotgun pellets and pistol bullets while addressing an audience in Harlem. Three followers of Elijah Muhammad eventually were convicted of the crime; however, countless conflicting rumors circulated concerning who might have been the masterminds behind the plot.

Like Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X became a martyr to the cause he believed in. Perhaps only King can be compared to Malcolm X for courage and dedication to the cause of ending racial bigotry in the United States.

In The Autobiography of Malcolm X, written in conjunction with Alex Haley, Malcolm X reveals his early life as a big-city hustler, defends his view of the white man as “the devil” and his conversion to Islam, and explains his eventual abandonment of the black separatist movement (which in its most extreme mode called for the United States Congress to grant land for a black state) in favor of a “Human Family,” a “Human Society” united under the one God and the one moral code of Islam. His purpose, simply put, was to invoke social change in America: “I have given to this book so much of whatever time I have because I feel, and I hope, that if I honestly and fully tell my life’s account, read objectively it might prove to be a testimony of some social value.”

At midpoint in the work, Malcolm states that his whole life “had been a chronology of—changes,” and his autobiography is an attempt to chronicle and explain these changes. The nineteen chapters of the autobiography can be thematically grouped into three parts. The first nine chapters chronicle Malcolm’s youth and adolescence in the Midwest, focusing on the strength of family relationships and hardships suffered from conflicts with the white community. Chapters 10 through 16 are devoted to his conversion to Islam and his rise and fall from power within the organization led by Elijah Muhammad, the Nation of Islam. In chapters 17 and 18, Malcolm recounts his trip to Mecca (referred to as his hajj) and the change it effected on his early extremist views of whites. The final chapter, titled “1965,” the year of Malcolm’s assassination, serves as a sort of epilogue in which he outlines his newly discovered sense of the need for international, interracial solutions to racism.

Malcolm was born in Omaha, Nebraska, but moved at an early age with his family to Wisconsin, then Michigan. Born Malcolm Little, son of a preacher and organizer for Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, he was a gifted student, popular among his many white classmates, and apparently destined for success. Then one day a teacher told him that despite his obvious intelligence he should pursue a career more appropriate for a black boy, that of a carpenter. Suddenly faced with the odds against his success in a white man’s world, Malcolm set off to the big city. He moved first to Boston to live with his elder sister, Ella, then to New York where he worked on the railroad before succumbing to drugs and crime.

In chapters 10 through 16, Malcolm relates his life in prison and his salvation through Islam. Arrested and incarcerated for robbery in 1946 at the age of twenty, he spent six years at Charleston State Prison and the Norfolk Massachusetts Prison Colony, where, influenced by his brother’s letters introducing him to Elijah Muhammad, he converted to Islam. While still in prison, he developed a passion for black history and began a five-year process of self-education which included reading and copying every page of the dictionary. He read so much and in such bad light that he permanently ruined his eyes. In the course of his reading, he developed a deep, blanket hatred of white men which was to last until the final years of his life. Rejecting even the name bestowed on him by the white man, he changed his name to Malcolm X.

After leaving prison he moved to Detroit, where he became increasingly involved with the Nation of Islam, eventually assuming the position of minister of Temple Seven in New York. There he met and was married to Betty X; they had five daughters, one born after his death. Malcolm rose swiftly within the Nation to become its most prominent spokesman and organizer. Under his direction two universities of Islam were established to educate school-age Muslim children in Detroit and Chicago. He entered the college lecture circuit promoting black nationalism with the support of Elijah Muhammad, even though the Nation eschewed overt involvement in political or social activities. Malcolm became so popular that rumors began to circulate that he was making a fortune for himself even though all of his earnings went directly to the Nation; in fact, after his assassination both his wife and his attorney revealed that he had died penniless, without even life insurance.

Malcolm later discovered that Elijah Muhammad had begun to attack him behind his back. The final rift came in 1963, when Malcolm made a comment after the death of President John F. Kennedy that his assassination was a case of “the chickens coming home to roost.” The statement was intended to indicate that the white man’s violence had finally come back on him, but was widely regarded as being a personal attack on the president. As a result of Malcolm’s comment, Elijah Muhammad silenced him for ninety days. Malcolm saw the censure as the first step in his expulsion from the Nation of Islam. He foresaw the next two steps in his ousting: He was suspended as a minister; then, he was isolated, which amounted to total ostracism by the members of the Nation. In anticipation of his expulsion, Malcolm left the Nation, and organized Muslim Mosque, Inc., of Harlem, and began plans for his first trip to Mecca.

Chapters 17 and 18 chronicle Malcolm’s trip to Mecca, where he saw at first hand the errors of the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, particularly those regarding attitudes toward white men in general, for he met many white Muslims who were “color-blind.” At this point he rejected his former condemnation of all whites but continued in his condemnation of the suppression of “the collective 22 million black people in the United States.”

After his hajj, Malcolm began a successful series of speaking engagements in Egypt, Lebanon, Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Senegal, and Morocco. Upon his return to New York, Malcolm called for an indictment of the United States before the United Nations on charges of “denial of human rights” to American blacks.

In the final months of his life, Malcolm reflected on his accomplishments and his failures. He voiced pride at having raised the consciousness of American blacks and whites. Proud of his leadership role, he accepted his labeling by critics as a “demagogue,” for he considered himself to be both model and teacher for his black brothers and sisters. He was proud to have arrived at an awareness that “it isn’t the American white man who is a racist, but it’s the American political, economic, and social atmosphere that automatically nourishes a racist psychology in the white man.” It was at this point in his life that Malcolm came to view racism not as a civil rights problem but as a “human rights” problem. Malcolm’s only regret, he stated, was not that he made mistakes, for he acknowledged that he had made many. Rather, he most regretted his lack of formal education, which he believed would have better armed him for his battles.

Appended to the work is a seventy-five page epilogue written by Alex Haley in which Haley recounts the events surrounding the composition of the work and the assassination of Malcolm on February 21, 1965.

In nineteen chapters, The Autobiography of Malcolm X traces his life from his birth as Malcolm Little in Omaha to his troubled youth and eventual imprisonment to his ultimate emergence as one of the most important and powerful voices for social change and black rights in the 1950’s and 1960’s. An introduction by M. S. Handler and an epilogue by Malcolm’s collaborator, Alex Haley, furnish perspectives on Malcolm as well as on the events leading up to and following his assassination in 1965. The book ends with a brief tribute to Malcolm by actor Ossie Davis, who delivered the eulogy at Malcolm’s funeral.

The first half of the autobiography outlines Malcolm’s youth, the breakup of his family, and his life on the streets. At age six, Malcolm lost his father, who was presumably murdered by white supremacists angered at Earl Little’s preaching of Marcus Garvey’s “back-to-Africa” philosophy. Six years later, Malcolm’s mother was placed in a mental institution, where she remained for twenty-six years, and her eight children were separated and sent to various foster homes. At fourteen, Malcolm quit school and went to live with his half sister Ella in Boston. Eventually moving to Harlem, Malcolm became a hustler, drug dealer, and finally leader of a burglary ring.

It was during six years of imprisonment for robbery that Malcolm’s life irrevocably changed. Introduced to the religion of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm began writing daily letters to Elijah Muhammad, the leader of this group, often referred to as the Black Muslims. Ashamed of the lack of education betrayed in his letters, Malcolm set out to educate himself, copying the entire dictionary to improve his vocabulary and reading all that he could obtain from the prison library.

Released from prison, Malcolm began his new life as a Black Muslim, eventually becoming minister of the church’s Harlem temple. Malcolm preached and lived the strict moral code of the Nation of Islam, which included sexual purity and abstinence from drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. It was his articulation of the Muslim belief that the “white man is the devil” that brought national attention to Malcolm and made him a highly visible spokesperson for black pride and the rights of African Americans.

The last few chapters of the book record Malcolm’s break with Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, his discovery of the “true Islam” in a pilgrimage to Mecca, and the beginnings of a new, more broadly based philosophy of race relations in which he counted as friends those who were “black, brown, red, yellow, and white.” His assassination by three members of the Black Muslims is told in Haley’s epilogue to the autobiography.

Struggle for Civil Rights in the 1950s and 1960s Until a number of court cases struck down segregation of the races in the United States, blacks were barred or restricted—sometimes by law—from a variety of public venues, such as restaurants, neighborhoods, golf courses, schools, and movie theaters. The 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka made separate schools for blacks illegal. Over the next couple years, the Supreme Court handed down a series of decisions invalidating segregation of golf courses, swimming pools, and beaches.

Some historians see Rosa Parks's spontaneous 1955 refusal to give up her seat in the front of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white man as the first step in the American civil rights movement. Parks, an African-American woman, was arrested and fined for violating the city's segregationist laws about where she was allowed to sit. Four days later, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a young Baptist minister in Montgomery, urged a local bus boycott, and various black organizations supported his effort. By 1956, the boycott supporters won a small but critical victory when a federal district court issued an injunction prohibiting the racial segregation of buses in Montgomery.

The boycott and subsequent events catapulted King into the national limelight as a civil rights leader. During the Montgomery protest, King was jailed and his house was bombed. King's philosophy of non-violence attracted a large following in the late 1950s and 1960s. His tactics included peaceful demonstrations and marches, sit-ins at segregated facilities, a willingness to go to jail, and public disobedience to law. While Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam never directly advocated violence to accomplish their goals, neither did they reject the possibility that violence might be necessary—in direct contradiction to King's philosophy. In his autobiography, Malcolm X is somewhat disdainful of leaders such as King and accuses them of being co-opted by whites.

From the late 1950s through the 1960s, African Americans and supportive whites engaged in sit-ins and freedom marches, often at risk to their lives. Many of the demonstrations were met with violence, such as the 1963 confrontation between police and marchers in Birmingham, Alabama. The local police commissioner responded to the largely peaceful demonstration by releasing dogs and using cattle prods against the civil rights protesters. Malcolm X recalled this incident when he spoke with Arabic and African Muslims during his overseas trips in 1963 and 1964.

One of the largest civil rights demonstrations of that era was the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, led by King. Nearly a quarter-million Americans of varying backgrounds gathered in front of the Washington Monument to hear King deliver his now-famous "I Have a Dream'' speech. Malcolm X belittles King and this demonstration in the book, calling the march the ‘‘Farce on Washington’’ and claiming that it was little more than an "integrated picnic.''

Night Life in Harlem The Cotton Club, a famous Harlem nightclub mentioned by Malcolm X in his autobiography, was open only to wealthy white patrons who wanted to sample some of the bawdy nightlife they had heard about. But African-American club owners opened their own establishments, some of which became popular after-hours spots for many of the black musicians with whom Malcolm spent time in Harlem.

Jazz and swing, two types of music Malcolm X mentioned enjoying while he was street hustler in both Boston and Harlem, gained a wide following from the mid 1930s onward and eventually became the most popular kind of music in the nightclubs frequented by Malcolm and his friends. Most dance establishments and nightclubs in the 1930s and 1940s were racially segregated. If blacks were allowed in white establishments it was usually on one specific night a week—such as the night Malcolm X remembered being reserved for domestic help at the famous Savoy in New York. As well, he remembered dancing to such jazz luminaries as Dinah Washington and Lionel Hampton at places such as the Savoy.

Origins and History of the Nation of Islam The Islamic religion was founded by the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The primary text for Islam is the Koran (or Qur'an), believed by Muslims (or Moslems) to be the final revelation by Allah, or God, to Muhammad. Muslims are to fulfill the five basic requirements, or "pillars," of Islam: belief that there is one God, Allah, and that Muhammad is the Messenger of God; performance of five daily ritual prayers; giving alms, also known as a religious tax; observance of the dawn-to-sunset fast during the lunar month of Ramadan; and making the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca.

The Nation of Islam dates back to 1930, when a door-to-door salesman peddling cloth and other items appeared in a Detroit ghetto, telling anyone who would listen that the true religion for African Americans was not Christianity but Islam. He went by various names, but he appears in The Autobiography of Malcolm X under the name Master W. D. Fard. He used both the Bible and the Koran in his preaching. The central teachings of the Nation as originally promulgated by Fard include the story of a black scientist named Yakub who, thousands of years ago, created a weaker race of white men who were permitted to have temporary dominance over the Earth. But soon, according to Nation doctrine, there would be an apocalyptic clash between the force of evil (whites) and good (blacks), with blacks winning. It is this theology that Malcolm X rebelled angrily against at the end of his autobiography, embracing, instead, what he called the "true Islam'' of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

Elijah Muhammad, also known as Elijah Poole, was one of Fard's most trusted lieutenants, taking the reins of the Nation of Islam after Fard's mysterious disappearance in 1934. Muhammad maintained leadership of the Nation for the next four decades, establishing that Fard had been Allah and had appointed Muhammad as his official messenger.

The Nation approached the problems of racism in America in two ways: they urged economic independence for blacks (including a separate nation) and pushed members to recover their identities, which the Nation felt had been stolen from blacks when they were enslaved and brought to America. The Nation encouraged an almost Puritanical ethic for its members, including hard work, frugality, cleanliness, debt avoidance, and the prohibition of alcohol, drugs, smoking, and pork. The Nation of Islam became famous for its restaurants that sold bean pies and whiting—part of Muhammad's efforts to improve the health of the African-American community.

Foreshadowing Malcolm X uses foreshadowing to highlight how far his life has taken him as well as to prepare his readers for disappointment and trauma. For example, early in the book he speaks of his successes as well as of his less admirable points. When he moves to Boston, he relates, he hears about Harvard Law School. "No one that day could have told me I would give an address before the Harvard Law School Forum some twenty years later,’’ he continues. A few sentences down the page, he hints, ‘‘I didn't know how familiar with Roseland I was going to become,’’ referring to the many nights he spent dancing and partying at the famed ballroom.

Malcolm X's references to his death increase as the autobiography moves toward its finale. Much of this, of course, has to do with his awareness that some in the Nation of Islam want him dead after his split from the organization; but Malcolm X's allusions to his own death are still remarkable in their context. For example, he says that he considers each day to be ‘‘another borrowed day’’ and that he is living each day ‘‘as if [he were] already dead.’’

Point of View This autobiography was ‘‘told to’’ another party, Alex Haley, who edited and organized the information Malcolm X related to him in numerous conversations. Nonetheless, the book is written in the first person, with Malcolm X as the "I" in the story. It is written in a conversational style, almost as if the author is sitting across from the reader. Malcolm X's life is presented in a chronological fashion, opening with his birth and ending in 1965 just before he is murdered.

The reader of any autobiography should realize that the information in the book is selected from all of the events in the subject's life. Events and conversations are remembered through the lens of time; in this book, Malcolm remembers events decades after they took place. In addition, there were two people who made judgments about what would appear in the autobiography: Malcolm X and Alex Haley. In fact, in his epilogue, Haley notes that he had to struggle to keep Malcolm X speaking about his own life and not about Elijah Muhammad and also that some of the stories Malcolm X told him may have been somewhat stretched.

1960s: In 1962, the Twenty-Fourth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution is proposed and, by 1964, is passed as law. One of its primary features is a ban on poll taxes in federal elections, giving the poor and many African Americans increased ability to vote. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act is passed, temporarily suspending literacy tests intended to restrict voting by African Americans and other minorities. Thanks to these two pieces of legislation, by the end of the decade there are 1,469 African-American elected officials in the United States, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Today: Currently, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies reports that there are nearly nine thousand African-American elected officials in the United States.

1960s: Malcolm X claims that there are approximately four hundred thousand members of the Nation of Islam in the United States.

Today: Nearly forty years after Malcolm X's assassination, there are an estimated one hundred thousand Nation of Islam members.

1960s: In 1963, the ‘‘I Have a Dream’’ speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. galvanizes nearly 250,000 participants in the March on Washington to support pending civil rights legislation.

Today: Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan headlines the 1995 Million Man March on the Mall in Washington, D.C., that asks participating men to recommit to their families, their communities, and their personal responsibility.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X was primary source material for 1992's Malcolm X, directed by Spike Lee and starring Denzel Washington as Malcolm X, Angela Bassett as Betty Shabazz, and Al Freeman, Jr. as Elijah Muhammad. Spike Lee and Arnold Perl wrote the screenplay, which was produced by Forty Acres and a Mule Film works. The movie was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of best leading actor for Washington and best costume design.

James Baldwin adapted portions of the autobiography for a screenplay published by Dial in 1973, entitled One Day When I Was Lost: A Scenario Based on Alex Haley's Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Sources Berthoff, Warner, "Witness and Testament: Two Contemporary Classics,’’ in New Literary History, Vol. 2, No. 2, Winter 1971, pp. 311-27.

Breitman, George, ed. (with prefatory notes), Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements. New York: Grove Press Inc., 1966.

Demarest, David P., Jr., ‘‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X: Beyond Didacticism,’’ in CLA Journal, Vol. 16, No. 2, December 1972, pp. 179-87.

Haskins, James, Profiles in Black Power, Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1972.

Holte, James Craig, ‘‘The Representative Voice: Autobiography and the Ethnic Experience,’’ in MELUS, Vol. 9, No. 2, Summer 1982, pp. 25–46.

Mandel, Barrett John, ‘‘The Didactic Achievement of Malcolm X' s Autobiography,'' in Afro-American Studies, Vol. 2, No. 4, March 1972, pp. 269-74.

Nelson, Truman, ‘‘Delinquent's Progress,’’ in Nation, Vol. 201, No. 15, November 8, 1965, pp. 336-38.

Ohmann, Carol, ‘‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X: A Revolutionary Use of the Franklin Tradition,’’ in American Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 2, Summer 1970, pp. 129-49.

Spengemann, William, The Forms of Autobiography, Yale University Press, 1980, pp. 1-2.

Stone, I. F., ‘‘The Pilgrimage of Malcolm X,’’ in New York Review of Books, Vol. 5, No. 7, November 11, 1965, pp. 3-5.

Warren, Robert Penn, "Malcolm X: Mission and Meaning,’’ in Yale Review, Vol. LVI, No. 2, December 1966, pp. 161-71.

Further Reading Archer, Jules, They Had a Dream: The Civil Rights Struggle from Frederick Douglass to Marcus Garvey to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, Puffin, 1993. This book comprises the biographies of four of the most prominent civil rights leaders in American history. It covers their mistakes and weaknesses as well as their strengths.

Branch, Taylor, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963, Touchstone Books, 1988. Parting the Waters is first in a series written by Taylor Branch about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement in the United States.

Collier-Thomas, Bettye, and V. P. Franklin, My Soul Is a Witness: A Chronology of the Civil Rights Era, 1954-1965, Henry Holt and Co., Inc., 1999. This book is a survey of the people, organizations, and events that comprised the American civil rights movement, with a day-to-day chronology.

Esposito, John L., Islam: The Straight Path, Oxford University Press, 1988. Esposito gives an overview of the Islamic faith in this book, including its origins and history. It gives an historical context in which to understand the diversity of Islam today.

Evanzz, Karl, The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad, Pantheon Books, 1999. The Messenger is a biography of the famed Nation of Islam leader, Elijah Muhammad, exposing his faults and contradictions.