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Who taught you to hate the color of your skin?
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Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair?
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Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose? And the shape of your lips?
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Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?
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Who taught you to hate your own kind?
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Who taught you to hate the race you belong to?
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So much so that you don't want to be around each other.
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Befor you come asking Mr. Muhammed, does he teach hate you should ask yourself who taught you to hate being what god made you.
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Most of us blacks, or negroes as they call us really thought we were free.
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Without being aware that in our subconscious all those change we thought we had ??? was still there.
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And there were many ways where what really motivated us was our desire to be loved by the white man.
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Malcolm meant to ??? that sense of inferiority.
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He knew it would be painful. He knew that people would kill you because of it.
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But he dared to take that risk.
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He was saying something over and above than of any other leader of that day,
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While the other leaders were begging for entry into the house of their oppressor he was telling you to build your own house.
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He expelled fear for african americans. He said: "I'll speak out loud what you've been thinking."
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And he said: "You'll see. People will hear and they won't do anything to us necessarily. Okay.
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"But I will not speak it for the masses of people."
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But he said it in a very strong fashion. ???
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in a fashion that said: "I am not afraid to say what you've been thinking all these years."
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That's why we loved him. He said it out loud. Not behind closed doors.
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He took on America for us.
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And I, for one, as a muslim belief the white man is intelligent enough.
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If he were made to realize how black people really feel and how fed up we are without all that compromising sweet-talk.
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??? you the one that makes it hard for himself.
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The white man beliefs you when you go to him with all that sweet talk, because you've been sweet talking
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ever since he brought you here. Stop sweet talking.
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Tell him how you feel. Tell him how what kind of hell you been catching ??? and let him know that if he's not ready
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to clean his house up. He shouldn't have a house. It should catch ??? on fire and burn down.
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On these harlem street corners, for most of the century, black people had celebrated their culture
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and argued the question of race in america.
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It was here that Malcolm first joined the street orders who gave voice to harlems hope and its anger.
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I fought ???. And that means that I ?? this white man's country, because integration
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will never happen.
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You'll never as long as you live integrate into the white man's system.
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125th Str. and 7th Ave. was the center of activity among the black street artists ??.
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When Malcolm arrived, technically he had no corner.
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So he established his base you might say in front of ??? bookstore.
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When Malcolm would ascend the little platform he couldn't talk for the first four or five minutes.
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The people would be making such a ??? shout to him. And he was standing, taking his due.
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And then he would open his mouth.
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They call Mr. Muhammed a hate teacher. Because he makes you hate dope and alcohol.
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They call Mr. Muhammed a black surpremacist, because he teaches you and me not only that
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we are as good as the white man, but better than the white man.
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You are better than the white man.
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And that's not saying anything. You don't ?? to be equal to him. Who is he to be equal with?
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Look as his skin. You can't compare your skin with his skin, while your skin looks like gold beside his skin.
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There was a time when we used to drool in the mouth over white people.
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We thought that they ??? and that we were ??? We were dumb.
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We couldn't see them as they are.
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Since the honorable Elijah Muhammed has come and taught us the religion of islam ?? clean us up
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and ?? so we can see for ourselves. Now we can see ?? pale things to look exactly as we look.
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Nothing but an old pale thing/face ??
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I came away from that rally feeling that with him, once you heard him speak you never went back
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to where you were before. Even if you kept your position you had to re-think it.
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We weren't accustomed of being told that we were devils and that we were oppressors up here in our northern ???
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He was speaking for a silent mass of black people.
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And saying it out front on the devils own airwaves.
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And that was an acto of war.
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When he came off the stage I jumped off the ???, walked up to him
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and of course when I got to him the Bodyguards moved in front.
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And he just pushed them away and I went in front of him, extended my hand
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and said: "I like some of what you said. I didn't agree with all what you said, but
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I liked some of what you said."
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He looked at me, held my hand in a very gentle fasion and said: "One day you will, siter". And he smiled.
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To make his message clear, Malcolm used his own life as a lesson to all black americans.
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He preched it in fables and parables. And later in writing his autobiography with Alex Haley,
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he sought some control in how his life would be interpreted in the future.
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I would be rather ??? taken by a statement that he made of himself.
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He would say: "I am a part of all I admit." And by that he meant that all the things
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he had done in his earlier life had exposed him to things, that taught him skills of ???
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...all of which had synthesized ??? into the Malcolm who became the spokesman for the
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Nation of Islam.
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You were born in Omaha, is that right? - Yes sir.
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And your family left Omaha when you were about one year old? ???
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I imagine about a year old.
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Why did they leave Omaha? - To my understanding the Ku Klux Klan burned down one of their homes in Omaha.
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This made your family very unhappy I'm sure. - Well, insecure if not unhappy.
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So you must have a somewhat prejudiced POV, a personally prejudiced POV.
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You cannot look at this in a broad academic sort of way. - I think this ain't correct.
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Because despite the fact that that happened in Ohama and then when we moved to
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Lansing, Michigan our home was burned down again. My father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan.
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And despite all of that no one was more thoroughly integrated with whites than I.
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No one had lived more so in the society with whites than I.
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We were the only black children in the neighbourhood.
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On the back of our property we had a wooded area.
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So the white kids would all come to our house and they'd go back and play in the woods.
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So Malcolm would say: "Let's go play Robin Hood." So we would go back there and play
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Robin Hood and Robin Hood was Malcolm.
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And these white kids ???.
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Malcolm said he was the lightest skinned of the seven children born to Earl and Louis Little.
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A reminder, he said, of the white man who had raped his mothers mother.
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In 1929, when Malcolm was 4 years old his father, a carpenter and preacher moved the family
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to Lansing Michigan.
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Lansing was a small town and the west side was the side of town the blacks lived on.
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Malcolm and his family lived outside of the city.
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And they had a four acre parcel with a small house on it.
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So they were sort of considered as farmers.
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Three months after the Littles moved in white neighbours took legal action to evict them.
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A county judge ruled that the farm property was restricted to whites only.
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But Earl Little refused to move.
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Here in Michigan, Klu Klux Klan Membership was at least 7.000.
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Five times more than in Mississippi.
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For Malcolms family white hostility was a fact of life.
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Everybody was asleep in our house and all of a sudden we heard a big boom.
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And when we woke up fire was everywhere.
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And everybody was running into the walls and into each other, you know?
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What I recall about that was my mother telling us: "Get up, get up, get up! The house is on fire! Get out!"
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That's what I actually recall.
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I could hear my mother yelling, I could hear my father yelling.
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And so they made sure they got us all rounded up and got us out.
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The house burned down to the ground. No fire wagon came. Nothing. We were burned out.
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Malcolms father Earl Little accused local whites of setting the fire. The police accuse Earl and
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arrested him on suspicion on arson. The charges were later dropped.
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In the city where we grew up whites would refer to us as "Those uppity Niggers" or
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"Those smart Niggers who live outside of town."
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In those days whenever a white person refered to you as a "Smart Nigger" that was their way
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of saying a "Nigger you have to watch" because he's not dumb.
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My father was independent. He didn't want anybody to feed him.
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He wanted to raise his own food. He didn't want anybody to exercise authority over his children.
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He wanted to exercise the authority and he did.
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He was always speaking in terms of Marcus Garvey's way of thinking and trying to get black
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people to organize themselves. Not to cause any trouble but just to work in unity with each other
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toward improving their conditions.
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But in those days if you did that you were still considered a trouble maker.
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In the 1920's Marcus Garvey, a black nationalist preached that black americans should build a nation
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independent of white society.
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With memberships in the hundreds of thousands Garvey's "Universal Negro Improvement
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Association" sought closer ties with african countries.
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The UNIA had its own flag, its own National Anthem and and african legioun pledged to
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defend black people at home and abroad.
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The US Bureau of Investigation labeled Garvey one of the prominent Negro agitators.
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The federal government deported him in 1927 but Malcolm's parents remained Garvey-ans.
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Earl recruited new members, Louise wrote for the Garvey newspaper.
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My mother was the one who would read to us the Garvey paper which was called "The Negro world".
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And she also would talk to us about ourselves being independent ???.
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We shouldn't be calling ourselves Negros or Niggers and that we were black people.
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That we should be proud to call ourselves black people.
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What is your real name? - Maclolm X.
Is that your legal name? - As far as I'm
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concerned it is my legal name.
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Would you mind telling me what your fathers last name was=
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My father didn't know his last name. My father got his last name from his grandfather and his
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grandfather got it from his grandfather who got it from the slave master.
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The real names of our people were destroyed during slavery - Was there any line, any point
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in the genealogy of your family when you did have to use the last name, and if so, what was it?
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The last name of my forefathers was taken from them when they were brought to America
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and made slaves and then the name of their slavemaster was given which we refuse. We reject
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that name today... -
You mean you won't even tell me what your fathers
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supposed last name was or gifted last name was?
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I never acknowledge it whatsoever.
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September 1931. Malcolm was six years old when his mother had a premonition.
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We were all in the house and had dinner, supper together.
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And my mother was holding Wesley, who was my youngest brother.
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And she ??? nursing him 'cause when she fell asleep nursing, holding the baby ???
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My father had gotten up and went into the bedroom ??? to clean up and to go down
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and collect money.
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And she woke up and she said: "Earl, don't go downtown! If you go you won't come back."
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That night around 11 o'clock Earl Little was found in an isolated area outside Lansing.
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His body almost cut in to by the wheels of a streetcar.
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The police reported Earl Littles death an accident.
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There was a cloud over that whole issue, because at that time there was perceive that rather
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than an accident with a streetcar that Rev. Little had really been pushed under the wheels of
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the streetcar. As a matter of fact I remember hearing just that language, that he was probably pushed.
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under the wheels of that street car.
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My fathers death caused great, great shock in the family, because he was the power. He was the strenght.
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We were an organized and structured family. When we got out of school, me and my brothers
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and sisters we'd come right home and go to work.
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In the garden, clean the chicken shed and get ready for the night.
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And get up in the morning and all of this. We'd pump the water and bring in the house.
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This was ??? dad was alive. Because to not do this brought the consequences of a whipping.
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So we were disciplined.
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And than after my father got killed and my mothers inability to run as fast as I could run
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or Malcolm enabled us to get away with a lot of things we wouldn't even have tried get away with.
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So we got looser and looser.
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Louise Little struggled to raise her seven children through the years of gread depression.
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She was reduced to where shehad no income. She tried get jobs ???
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She was a proud lady. She had a lot of pride.
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She sold. She ?? people. She did alot of things not to be dependent sorely on welfare.
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She didn't like them telling her but she could ???
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And this is one of the main things that devestated her more than anything else.
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As time whent by you could see she was wearing down.
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For seven years as Malcolm grew into adolescents his mother slowly withdrew from her family.
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Two days vefore christmas 1938, Louise Little was diagonosed as paranoid and was sent to
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Kalamazoo State Hospital.
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When I came home from school one day and she wasn't there. I can remember feeling empty
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'cause my mother would never left us. ???
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And I felt the pain of her being gone everyday and it was only gonna be a couple of weeks.
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She was gonna get better and come right back home. And it turned into years.
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Louise Little would remain in Kalamazoo for the next 26 years.
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The 13 year old Malcolm watched as the court split up his family.
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Assigning the younger children to foster homes in Lansing and sending him to a white community
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ten miles away.
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In the past the greatest weapon the white man has had has been his ability to devide and
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conquer.
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When I take my hand and slap you, you don't even feel it. It might sting you because this digits are seperated.
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But all I have to do to put you back in your place is bring those digits together.
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He was a man who in the eight grade in Michigan, a school where I think he was the only black
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in his class and one of the very few in the school have been an outstanding straight A student.
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You know who had been incited ??? president of his class.
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And all the others were white in the eight grade and obviously he had to be exceptional to
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be those things.
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And then you had the Malcolm who had left school and who had gone to Roxbury, Massachusetts
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where he had gotten his first exposure to what might loosely ??? be told hustling.
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I called myself a little Hustler up in Roxbury in those days.
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And this particular day ??? Malcolm X had come into Buscity???, had on his zoot suit with the wide
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??? had with the long 3/4 lenght coat ?? with the chain that went down to your ankles.
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The last time I recall, Cab Calloway used that outfit for his stage uniform.
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When Malcolm left Lansing he had nothing but an old square suit on. White man suit as I call it.
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When he came back from Boston, oh Lord, Malcolm had a zoot suit on him and a wide brim hat with
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a chain from his hat down to his lapel. He was the top of the town. Everybody was talking
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about Malcolm.
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When he was dancing on the floor, and he was floating around those pants ??? like he was a floating balloon.
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And that coat was like a wing. The way he'd be dancing ??? flying around with that big ???.
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And this used to really shake up the girls.
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In Boston they called him "New York Red" in New York they called him "Detroid Red".
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?????????
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And he had pictures of him and Billy Holiday and all these people of that time out there.
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Who were just being made known to the rest of the black world.
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Malcolm works the kitchen crew on the New Haven Railroad between Boston, New York
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and Washington DC.
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In 1942 he moved to Harlem and at age 17 began travelling in a world of ??? after hour clubs and small time hustlers.
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He had reached a point at where he said: "You'll never make it on this janitory jobs and selling
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sandwiches on these trains and shining shoes and stuff like that. You never will get anywhere."
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He had the reputation of being a hustler.
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That he was a street person but he was a hustler.
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He was a con man.????
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When the white folks ??? came out at night and they wanted black women, he could arrange for
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them to get them. If they wanted bootleg-whiskey he knew where to get it. If they wanted drugs he knew where to get it.
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He made it possilbe. He knew what they wanted and he knew where to get it and he would be
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in the middle where he could make a profit off of it. And this is the way he started doing it.
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Looking back at that time, Malcolm said: "Only three things worried him.
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Jail, a job and the army.
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To avoid derving in WW2 he told his draft board that he wanted to organize black soldiers to
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kill whites.
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He was judged unfit for the military.
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Malcolms gambling and drugs and Harlems night life were expensive.
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He had already been arrested twice for petty crimes.
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When he moved back to Austin back in 1945 he organized a gang to burglurise homes of prominent families.
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The other gang members included his friend Malcolm Jarvis, his white girlfriend B. and
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two other white women.
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This girl knew that these people were down to Florida that time of the year. There was nobody
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home, so we broke into the house and we'd get some of their valuables and Malcolm would take
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most of the stuff and pawn it and get money for his gambling habit.
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After two weeks of doing this that's when the case broke ??? when he made the mistake of going to
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the pawn shop to retrieve a watch with over a thousand dollars that came out of one of
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the houses. That's when he was arrested by three police men.
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Malcolm Little, Malcolm Jarvis and the three women were charged with breaking and entering.
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The fact that two black men were with white women becaome an issue in the court.
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Malcolm was definitely involved with two white women and this is what made the case so
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powerful. So outrages.
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The women testified that Malcolm had forced them to participate in the burglaries.
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The two men received the maximum sentence. 8-10 years in state prison.
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When they said the ??? I went out of my mind. I reached up and grabbed the bars of the cage and
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I shook then almost right up off the ??? and I hollered at the judge. I said to him: "You might as
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well kill me as give me ten years in jail.
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Well, I was a ??? mad negro. I was one.
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And I knew what I saw was real. I don't know if ??? there was anything funny about it. ???
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I knew that when they laughed all together they were laughing: "Look what we did. We do'd it ???
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??? Negro.
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