656 The American Century: Literature since 1945institution, Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his half sister. He became involved
in the nightlife and underworld of Boston, then later Harlem; and in 1946 he was
arrested and imprisoned for armed robbery. During his prison years he experienced
a conversion to the Nation of Islam. Upon his release, he changed his name to
Malcolm X, the X signifying the unknown name of his African ancestors and their
culture that had been erased during slavery. Becoming a minister for the Nation of
Islam, which preached the idea that whites are devils, he helped build it into a
significant force in urban black life. However, in 1963 he split from the leader of the
Nation of Islam, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and he began to move from the
mainly spiritual philosophy of the Nation to a more political black nationalism.
About this time, too, he began to collaborate with the author Alex Haley (1921–1992),
whose later main claim to fame was a chronicle of his own ancestry, Roots (1976), on
The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The Autobiography was published in 1965, the
same year that Malcolm X was assassinated.
As an orator, especially in his last few years, Malcolm X was renowned for his
quick wit, fast talk, nervy syncopated rhythms, and for his erudition. “I don’t see any
American dream,” he declared in his speech “The Ballot or the Bullet” (1964), “I see
an American nightmare.” “I see America through the eyes of the victim,” he added.
And he enforced that vision, insisting that what he wanted was not so much “civil
rights” as “human rights,” using a punchy combination of argument and assertion,
sharp, memorable images and phrases, street language and rhythmic repetition.
“When you’re under someone else’s control,” he insisted, “you’re segregated”; “it’s
time for Negroes to defend themselves.” What he was after was power for the black
community by any means necessary, including violence. “This is the day of the gue-
rilla,” he argued; and, craftily recalling a famous slogan of the War of Independence,
prophesied that “It’ll be liberty or it’ll be death.” The Autobiography has the same
oracular, oral power as the speeches. Here, in a way typical of both American and
African-American autobiography, Malcolm X presents his own experience as exem-
plary. He shows, for instance, how the demeaning label of “nigger” applied to him
when he was young, even by white liberals, betrayed a general tendency to erase the
humanity of African-Americans. “What I am trying to say,” he explains, is that “it has
historically been the case with white people, in their regard for black people, that
even though we might be with them, we weren’t considered of them.” “Thus,” he con-
cludes, “they never really did see me.” In opposition to this erasure, Malcolm X
asserts his own presence, the reality of the many identities he realized during his life:
the hustler, the criminal, the spiritual leader, the political activist, and so on. He also
uses the autobiographical models of the spiritual narrative, the record of a conver-
sion experience, and the success story of a self-made man to inform, enliven, and
generalize this personal account. What he achieved in his relatively short life was
considerable, making him a charismatic figure and a catalyst for political activity.
And what he achieved in this, his account of that life is just as remarkable: whatever
else it is, and that is much, it is one of the great American autobiographies.
Unlike Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr. embraced a gospel of nonviolence in
the quest for racial equality. Like Malcolm X, he was the son of a minister. King grewGGray_c05.indd 656ray_c 05 .indd 656 8 8/1/2011 7:31:37 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 37 PM