Willie john mcbride autobiography of malcolm x

Ask yourself what half-hearted bullshit constitutes "If Malcolm X were not a Negro", passing off the enormous debt the US has to its history of slavery as an embarrassing pathos, a ploy, an "Oh, they kicked the puppy and now it's telling its story, of course it'll get attention. My beginning was a mention of a footnote of violence in a summary of the 20th century.

It took me more than ten years too long to extend my thinking beyond this roadblock. It is interesting to note how his message as a living embodiment of hope for those who have slipped through the cracks of well-to-do society has been seen as a mark against him. It is key to observe the contentions over the non-fictional aspect of this work, when the existence of Columbus Day renders the controversy not only absurd, but obscene.

Either do not discriminate in your pointing of fingers at act and advocation of physical violence, or don't do it at all. Whatever your personal alignments with the beliefs conveyed in this book, it is and shall always be a gift to the world. While it may be true that I would have to be restrained from punching Malcolm X in the face for his deriding of women, especially his "any country's moral strength, or moral weakness, is quickly measurable by the street attire and attitude of its women", my disagreement does not impact my appreciation of his importance.

What he believed in, he said, and the writing of this biography during the last few years of his life displays this dramatic evolution, all the more so because of Haley's keeping Malcolm X to his word of not changing the overarching message of any previous writing. It is his willingness to speak and question that led him on his pilgrimage to Mecca, it is this overhaul of both belief and character that led him from disenfranchised boy to city slick teenager to convict to minister to a crisis of conscience in full throes up to the point he was shot down.

There is no point to freedom of speech if you don't want to hear disagreeable things. Communication is worth as much as the controversy it provokes, and it is worth even more if the person communicating is willing to change in accordance to what is received by an open mind. In that, Malcolm X was a rare, rare breed, decrying the patronizing "equality" of the North as harshly as the blatant discrimination of the South, sometimes regretting his words but never recanting them.

Just look at his main counterpart, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Even his proclaimed message of nonviolence doesn't save him from being condensed to a speech, a slogan, a "If Martin Luther King were alive today And this is how much the legacy of the "peaceful" civil rights activist has been twisted. Before starting this book, I had a vague outline of race riots and Muslims.

Today, I know Malcolm X to have been a reader, a thinker, a leader cut down in the midst of shifts from wholesale condemnation to broader platforms of acceptance, a man learning to hate the game of societal oppression, not the multitude of players. Thirty-six years and a wide variety of beliefs both religious and otherwise separates his lifetime from mine, but we share a desire for willie john mcbride autobiography of malcolm x and ubiquitous equality, as well as a love for James Baldwin.

For that, I am glad to have finally made his literary acquaintance. Author 20 books followers. I'm in such awe of this book and the man behind it that I don't think I can really give it a fair review. I came late to Malcolm X - I didn't pick up his autobiography until I was twenty-five, during my third year teaching in the Bronx. He manages to so clearly articulate the injustice and anger that results from racism in America, and at the same time is unflinchingly honest regard his own life and his own failings.

Following the progression of his thought and philosophy changed the way I thought about race, class, and America. He was murdered just as he was truly becoming a massive force in America and the World, and the potential that was lost with him is staggering. For everyone who thinks of Malcolm X only as violent and hating white people, you need to read this book; he was much more aggressive and uncompromising than Martin Luther King, but he was equally beautiful and inspiring.

J Beckett. Several years ago I decided to make the reading of The Autobiography of Malcolm X mandatory for my high school Honor's English students I had read the book when it was first released. I taught in an "urban" Maryland public school, and most of the students, although considered honor's, were void of deeper literary exposure.

My decision to "teach Malcolm X" was not looked upon well by the administration, but after thorough student led discussions and tying the story to their personal journey, the book was relished, applauded and appreciated by the students and their parents. I still hold this book in highest regard and rank it as one of the greatest stories ever told.

Yara Yu. I will not attempt to add my two cents to the five decades of commentary that currently exist. But I will say this, when Malcolm says of Elijah Muhammad, "My black brothers and sisters, you have come from your homes to hear-now you are going to hear-America's wisest black man! America's boldest black man! America's most fearless black man.

It was you, Malcolm. It was you. Author 10 books 4, followers. I remember watching the movie, Malcolm X, and even enjoyed it so freaking much that I promised myself I would read the Autobiography as soon as I could. He was very much someone I could admire. Empathize with. Strongly disagree with. And finally, wholeheartedly agree with him.

Of course, to my everlasting shame, it's now Alex Haley helped Malcolm X turn his life into a brilliant narration, spent years talking, being friends, and after Malcolm X's assassination inalso recounts the tragedy of this wonderful man's death. But above all, Malcolm X was a real man. Courageous, smart, opinionated. He was honest about his entire life: his shortcomings, his youth as a hellion, a con, a drug dealer, and a thief.

About the way he treated women and his kin, his brothers. How he went to prison, fervently hating all white men. But then he changed. His life was all about change, honesty, and discovery. He discovered books, taught himself to read, and read voraciously. He found help and heart in the teachings of an American Muslim leader that showed him what he believed took on the heart of the matter.

That the endemic racism of all whites, the prejudice, the deviltry of their actions had taken everything from the black man. Their history, their bodies, the heart. Malcolm X devoted himself to this man and through his eloquence and charm brought 40, new believers to this Black Muslim community, building it up with anger and definite firebrand techniques.

But it wasn't until he went on the Hajj to Mecca that he understood something new, strange, and beautiful. That out of the 22 million angry black people in America, there were almost million black people living in relative peace and harmony around the world. Strangers and leaders and worldwide press were amazed and thrilled to see an American Muslim take on the Hajj and to take on the leadership of bringing the humanitarian plight of the Black people back in America to the world.

Was he in the right place at the right time? And it was precisely that sense of welcoming and harmony and community that Malcolm X got thrown into that changed his worldview forever. People were fundamentally decent. Blacks could work together, live and love each other in harmony. Whites, too.

Willie john mcbride autobiography of malcolm x

And it was this eye-opener that sent him back to America with a different message. He still fought with Martin Luther King Jr. He still called everyone out and spoke the truth, that there IS something really wrong, but now tempered it with wisdom, hope, and a new kind of truth. He was lionized in the wide world. He was vilified in America. The media blasted him for being THE angry, militant black man.

Blamed him for all of society's ills. He eloquently told them they were full of shit. He stood up. He didn't back down. His American Muslim church was torn with strife and jealousy and controversy, unfortunately, and Malcolm X, far from pointing fingers or complaining that all his funds had been stolen, continued speaking in universities, parliaments and media engagements while suffering multiple death threats from whom he thought were angry black Muslims under the instruction of his old teacher.

His house was firebombed. When he was finally shot down, his wife and four children were penniless and scared. Anyone who knew him in real life, and not through the general media, realized the kind of man he was. Fundamentally decent, smart, and unfailingly honest. Eloquent, forceful, and a real warrior of the spirit. He made lots of mistakes, but he always forged forth and admitted every one of his failings, striving always to make things right.

And let's face it, the times before the sixties DID need someone to stand up against the lynchings, the institutional cons, the ignorance, the prejudice, and the brutality. To say that a black man is a militant hate monger when he's standing up to protect himself from a tidal-wave of injustice is pure bullshit. I read this like a story because Alex Haley is a great storyteller, falling in and out of sympathy for the main character, rolling around in his joys, anxieties, and failings, getting lifted up in his great successes, and higher when he learns mercy, temperance, and a real justice beyond the simple, if all-consuming, hate of his youth.

I wonder what he would have become if he hadn't been cut down at this, the most excellent prime of his life. Most of all of our modern ideas on racism and how to solve it comes from Malcolm X. We can't ignore his beginnings. It makes the later discoveries all the more potent. I love you, man. I love you. Attallah Shabazz Alex Haley, the writer.

Normally one would think that a review of an autobiography could just jump around when talking about the book and the protagonist. One for each of those Z people, one that he believed about himself, and one that he really was. And the review will give you an idea of who I think he was. His father, who traveled between various Black churches within driving distance of their home, espousing the ideas of Marcus Garvey; who was reviled by local whites, and was probably murdered, when Malcolm was six.

His mother and siblings, who made do with almost no income for years, until the children were taken away and the mother put in an asylum when Malcolm was thirteen. The scattering of the children, to different foster homes. Malcolm lived with white families, whom he seems to remember fondly in the second chapter of the biography. His intelligence and popularity, his election as class president in seventh grade, one of the top students in school.

Then that fateful day when a white eighth-grade teacher asked him what he wanted to be in life. The stylish, tall, younger-than-he-looked manchild who, among many jobs, worked on a train so he could travel for free. The next year he was arrested, convicted, sentenced to 8-to years in Charlestown State Prison, where he began reading and studying.

The introduction, through fellow-inmates and letters from some of his siblings, to the Nation of Islam and the teachings of Elijah Muhammed. The interesting aspects of those teachings: how people of the white race had been created as devils, how their abiding goal was to subjugate all non-whites; how the white man attempted to further these aims by foisting a religion Christianity on non-whites — a religion which would help satisfy natural desires in this world by promising rewards in another.

How Malcolm came to accept these views as an explanation of the behavior of whites toward Black people. The notoriety X gained, once the white world in the U. The silencing of X by Elijah, accepted with humility by X. Then the pilgrimage to Mecca, on which everything changed. See below, So. Rowan, at that time Director of the U. Rowan became somewhat less vociferous about X with the passage of time.

In fact, some of this may have started almost as soon as the book here reviewed was published, the year after his death. The New York Times reviewer described it as a "brilliant, painful, important book". Two years later, historian John William Ward wrote that it would become a classic American autobiography. InTime named it one of the ten most important nonfiction books of the twentieth century.

Places that he lived are now adorned with Historic markers; many streets in Harlem, Brooklyn, Dallas, Lansing and schools have been named after him - grade schools, high schools, the El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz Academy, a public charter school with an Afrocentric focus, located in the building where he attended elementary school. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center.

The memorial is located in the Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm X was assassinated. And the U. Postal Service issued a Malcolm X willie john mcbride autobiography of malcolm x stamp in I never really did before. But first, an aside At the time that X was beginning his mission to found mosques for the Nation of Islam, I, like almost all whites in the U.

But my ignorance was much more long-lasting. Bywhen I graduated from high school, X had achieved a good deal of public notoriety. But I have no memories from that time of having heard his name. I was raised in a small town in willie john mcbride autobiography of malcolm x central Minnesota. Never a Black kid in school with me. And even though I was a reader, it was books I read, not newspapers.

Look, I imagine there were adults in town who had read something about Malcolm X. Well, then I went off to college. Out East. Okay, now I start knowing some Blacks, right? Not at Georgetown University in the years I was there. Specifically, to become more diverse in my outlook? But a Black? I just thought of a Black at Georgetown in those years.

A janitor who was often seen around the basketball arena. We all knew him, sort of. Maybe he did. But even in Februarywhen X was killed, I have no recollection of knowing anything about it — or about him. After twenty plus years of utter ignorance, and then a few more decades of knowing so little that I never even considered having an opinion about Malcom X, this is the way the book affected me.

A lot of the experiences that Malcolm had in the Harlem years were pretty much lived by Brown, starting when he was only about eight years old. Yes, here was an urban Black living by the way of the streets. But then, reading on, as X went to prison and then became familiar with the teachings of Mr. Elijah Mohammad, suddenly I was reading these views about whites being devils, all whites being racists — that stuff.

Not ALL whites. Not ME! And that really confusing state of mind, is what I would have been left with, had the book ended at the chapter before X went to Mecca. When Malcolm made his pilgrimage to Mecca inhe flew to Jedda, Saudi Arabia as a starting point. Omar Azzam. Yet Azzam treated him as if he, Malcom X, were royalty. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been.

From that day forward his ideas about racism in America began shifting significantly. When he arrived back in the U. My trip to Mecca has opened my eyes. I no longer subscribe to racism! I have adjusted my thinking to the point where I believe that whites are human beings … as long as this is borne out by their humane attitudes toward Negroes.

I condemn what whites collectively have done to our people collectively. At any rate, Haley tells us that in his last few weeks, X seemed often a confused man. Something like this kills a lot of argument. I was a zombie then — like all [of them] — I was hypnotized, pointed in a certain direction and told to march. It cost me twelve years.

This book is an honest telling of his story. As he changed at critical junctures, he gained and lost friends, admirers, disciples, enemies — on both sides of the color line. But I could be wrong. Read the book. Decide for yourself. Roy Lotz. Author 1 book 8, followers. The coincidence feels significant, if only because this is probably one of the most crucial books in my reading life.

I originally encountered the little paperback in university—borrowed from a roommate who had to read it for a class. Though I had only the vaguest idea of who Malcolm X was, the book transfixed me, even dominated me. Every page felt like a gut punch. My love of reading was substantially deepened by the experience. One decade later, The Autobiography of Malcolm X has lost none of its power.

This book has so many things going for it that it is a challenge to ennumerate its virtues. You can really hear him speak through the page—with humor, with wit, with passion, and most of all with righteous anger. What is more, the story that he tells is simply a good story on any terms, even if it were all made up. But what is most valuable about the book is, as Malcolm X himself says, its sociological import.

The first time I read this, I thought of it mainly as a historical document. All of the essential ingredients are still there: segregation de facto if not de jurelimited job opportunities, and mass incarceration. Indeed, while some things have gotten better, and much has remained the same, in some ways things have gotten worse. There is still a direct pipeline from the failing public school in the black neighborhood to the prison cell.

But the perspective that Malcolm X consistently articulates cannot be simply boiled down to violence. Few ethical or legal codes prohibit self-defense. And it is the height of moral hypocrisy to hold the oppressed to a higher ethical standard than the oppressors. Now, not being of any religious bent myself, I at first treated this as a vaguely mystical sentiment.

But I have to admit that, during the presidency of Donald Trump, I gradually came to see the real, practical truth in this statement. Racism is really a kind of psychic rot—not localized simply to our attitudes about race, but spreading in all directions, poisoning our sense of justice, spoiling our intelligence, stultifying our emotions. Though Malcolm X never gave up his insistence on the right to self-defense, he agreed with Baldwin in treating racism, not simply as a matter of prejudice to overcome, but a gnawing cancer at the heart of the country, capable of destroying it.

And, for my part, I am no longer inclined to view such statements as merely rhetorical. So in addition to being a thrilling story, wonderfully told, The Autobiography of Malcolm X presents us with a challenging indictment of America—still as true and valid as when he spoke it, fifty five years ago. But let us not forget the personality of Malcolm, the man—someone who radiates genuine charisma.

For my part, what I find most appealing and inspiring in Malcolm X is his intellectual side. Deprived of a formal education, he largely educated himself in prison by reading voraciously. And this curiosity stayed with him all his life. Aus May Colin Deans vs. Ita Nov Phillip Matthews vs. Aus Nov David Sole vs. Eng Oct Nick Farr-Jones vs.

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Eng Jun Rob Baxter vs. Por Dec Justin Marshall vs. NZ May David Humphreys vs. Eng May Will Greenwood vs. Sco Jun Bobby Skinstad vs. Geo May Hugh Vyvyan vs. Tun Jun Hugh Vyvyan vs. Esp Dec Mark Regan vs. SA May Mark Regan vs. Bel May Morgan Turinui vs. Ire Jun Mark Regan vs. Eng Dec John Smit vs. Aus May Martin Corry vs. Eng Jun Phil Waugh vs.

Aus Dec Victor Matfield vs. NZ May Xavier Rush vs. Eng Jun Xavier Rush vs. Ire Dec Matt Giteau vs. SA May Sergio Parisse vs. Eng Jun Sergio Parisse vs. Wal Nov Victor Matfield vs. Aus May John Smit vs. Eng May Mick O'Driscoll vs. Ire Jun John Smit vs. Wal May Mike Tindall vs. Screenplay adaptations [ edit ]. Missing chapters [ edit ]. Editions [ edit ].

X, Malcolm; Haley, Alex The Autobiography of Malcolm X 1st hardcover ed. New York: Grove Press. OCLC The Autobiography of Malcolm X 1st paperback ed. Random House. ISBN The Autobiography of Malcolm X paperback ed. Penguin Books. The Autobiography of Malcolm X mass market paperback ed. Ballantine Books. The Autobiography of Malcolm X audio cassettes ed.

Notes [ edit ]. Citations [ edit ]. The New York Times. October 29, S2CID Archived PDF from the original on September 23, Retrieved February 25, June 8, Archived from the original on August 6, Retrieved October 1, New York: W. Norton and Co. Archived from the original on April 23, Retrieved March 7, Democracy Now! Archived from the original on May 17, Archived from the original on July 23, Retrieved June 1, The Nation.

Archived from the original on March 6, Retrieved February 11, May Retrieved April 8, Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on January 11, Prison Writing in 20th-Century America. New York: Penguin Books. New York: Oxford University Press. Harvard University Press Blog. Harvard University Press. April 20, Archived from the original on November 24, Retrieved November 2, Emphasis and second ellipsis in original.

London: Verso. Archived from the original on June 2, Retrieved June 4, Archived from the original on April 28, Retrieved July 11, The New Yorker. Archived from the original on April 24, Retrieved April 27, Archived from the original on September 13, Retrieved June 2, Naperville, Ill. Archived from the original on January 14, Archived from the original on July 22, Retrieved May 31, Archived from the original on June 30, A Historical Guide to James Baldwin.

Retrieved October 16, Archived from the original on May 20, May 20, The Grio. Archived from the original on April 8, Retrieved March 28, Retrieved January 11, Sources [ edit ]. Andrews, William, ed. Englewood Cliffs, N. Bloom, Harold New York: Chelsea House Pub. Bradley, David Transition 56 : 20— JSTOR Archived from the original PDF on February 13, Carson, Clayborne New York: Ballantine Books.

Cone, James H. Maryknoll, N. Davidson, D. Book Review Digest 61st ed. New York: H. Dyson, Michael Eric Gallen, David, ed. Greetham, David, ed. Ann Arbor, Mich. Marable, Manning; Aidi, Hishaam, eds. Black Routes to Islam Hardcover ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Stone, Albert Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Terrill, Robert E.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Archived from the original on September 23, Retrieved August 23, Wolfenstein, Eugene Victor []. London: The Guilford Press.