Malcolm X snorted that no white man’s promise was worth the paper it was on he would need time to decide if he would cooperate or not. I said I had a legitimate writing assignment and showed him my letter from the magazine stating that an objective article was wanted, one that would balance what the Muslims said of themselves and what their attackers said about them. “You’re another one of the white man’s tools sent to spy!” he accused me sharply. Soon he came out, a gangling, tall, reddish-brown-skinned fellow, at that time thirty-five years old when my purpose was made known, he bristled, his eyes skewering me from behind the horn-rimmed glasses. Visiting the Muslim restaurant in Harlem, I asked how I could meet Minister Malcolm X, who was pointed out talking in a telephone booth right behind me. When I entered a civilian writing career in New York City, I collected, around Harlem, a good deal of provocative material and then proposed an article about the cult to the Reader’s Digest. The organization’s leader was described as “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad” and a “Minister Malcolm X” was apparently chief of staff. Yacub” had genetically “grafted” the white race from an original black people. I listened with incredulity to how a “mad scientist Mr. A friend returned from a visit to her Detroit home and told me of a startling “black man’s” religion, “The Nation of Islam,” to which, to her surprise, her entire family was converted. The Autobiography of Malcolm X: Epilogue By Alex Haleyĭuring nineteen fifty-nine, when the public was becoming aware of the Muslims after the New York telecast “The Hate That Hate Produced,” I was in San Francisco, about to retire after twenty years in the U.S. On February 21, 1965, Malcolm is gunned down by three audience members while he is delivering a lecture at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. Haley emphasizes the tension and violence surrounding Malcolm’s final days, and describes in detail the death threats and close encounters that preceded Malcolm’s assassination. Haley begins work on the book shortly before Malcolm’s falling out with Elijah Muhammad, and the epilogue traces the last two years of Malcolm’s life. Slowly, after numerous interview sessions in Haley’s Greenwich Village writing studio, Malcolm opens up. “You, I trust about 25 percent,” he said, and Haley began to think the project might have to be abandoned. In Haley’s own words, he mentions, “We got off to a very poor start.” Malcolm was stiff and formal, spouting propaganda while revealing little of himself.
However, it takes a long time for Haley to win the trust of Malcolm. Having won the trust of Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad with the earlier pieces, Haley gets them both to agree to the project. Muhammad Speaks for Reader’s Digest in March 1960 and Black Merchants of Hate for The Saturday Evening Post on January 26, 1963-before a publisher proposes to Haley the idea of a biography. He writes a few articles on Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad-Mr. Haley first hears about the Nation of Islam in San Francisco in 1959, and first meets Malcolm X in New York in 1960. As such, Haley noted, “I asked for-and he gave-his permission that at the end of the book I could write comments of my own about him which would not be subject to his review.” These comments became the epilogue, which Haley wrote after the death of Malcolm. The epilogue of The Autobiography of Malcolm X is told from Alex Haley’s point of view.