The Autobiography of Malcolm X 507he believed in himself.” This realization provided
Malcolm with the strength to face the facts of his
life and think autonomously. In Mecca, he grasped
the danger of considering anyone “divinely guided”
and “protected” and declared himself finished with
“someone else’s propaganda.”
The suffering that preceded this intellectual
emancipation exemplifies Malcolm’s dictum that
“it is only after the deepest darkness that the
greatest joy can come; it is only after slavery and
prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom
can come.” His anguish also indicates that revolu-
tion “means the destroying of an old system, and its
replacement with a new system.” Malcolm recog-
nizes that both the destruction that precedes cre-
ation, and the suffering that comes before renewal,
are two distinct phases of the same process, which
comprises life.
Jeffrey Bickerstaff
Work in The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Malcolm describes his father as a Baptist minister
committed to organizing for Marcus Garvey’s Uni-
versal Negro Improvement Association. Although
Malcolm rejected Christianity and embraced Islam,
the winding path of his life led him back to his
father’s footsteps. After experiencing firsthand the
limited range of choices available to young blacks,
Malcolm’s life came to be defined by his work as a
minister dedicated to improving the lives of black
people.
For Malcolm, honesty, dignity, and work were
inextricably linked. As a youth in Roxbury, he
scorned blacks who affected impressive job titles.
Neighbors described a bank janitor as being “in
banking” and a bond-house messenger as “in secu-
rities.” Cooks and maids assumed a haughty tone
when describing themselves as being “with an old
family.” Annoyed by such dishonesty, Malcolm
would later work to puncture “the indignity of that
kind of self-delusion.”
However, Malcolm’s early experiences with work
necessarily involved affectation. Hooked up with a
shoe-shining “slave” (a hipster term that meant
job), Malcolm soon learned that whites tipped
generously when he would “Uncle Tom a little,”
which included making the shine rag “pop like a
firecracker.” This sound was part of his hustle, “a
jive noise” that gave the impression he was exerting
more effort than he was.
Malcolm also applied this practice to his rail-
road waiter job. He quickly surmised that white
people would buy anything if he gave them a show.
Malcolm describes himself and his coworkers as
“servants and psychologists.” Cognizant of white
people’s delusions of self-importance, their work
required them to compromise their dignity and
“Uncle Tom” for whites eager to pay for a show of
black inferiority.
Malcolm’s route between Boston and New York
led to his involvement with Harlem’s underworld.
Malcolm ran numbers, peddled drugs, and steered
clients toward prostitutes. These clients, wealthy
white men, used Harlem as “their sin-den, their
fleshpot.” Malcolm describes how they took off the
“dignified masks they wore in their white world”
to indulge their sexual perversities. Consequently,
white talk about the Negro’s “low morals” angered
Malcolm. Malcolm came to see how America’s racial
system created Harlem, where, instead of finding
meaningful work that benefited the community,
almost everyone “needed some kind of hustle to
survive.” These hustles catered to whites’ illicit
appetites, which perpetuated the residents’ need to
“stay high” to forget all they had to do to survive.
Thus, the racial structure created a cycle that coerced
blacks into ghettoes and forced them to do whatever
was necessary to endure. The white beneficiaries of
this system could then indulge their appetites for
drugs and flesh by exploiting blacks desperate to
sustain themselves, while deriding them for having
low morals.
Malcolm’s criminal career culminated in his bur-
glary conviction. He converted to Islam in prison,
and upon his release he worked to spread a doctrine
of black self-reliance. Malcolm saw firsthand how
white merchants in ghettos drained money out of
the black community. As a minister in the Nation
of Islam, Malcolm recognized that Muslim-owned
grocery stores exemplified how blacks could break
their dependence on white money by hiring and
trading among themselves. Malcolm stresses that
the key to black self-respect is the building of their
own businesses and decent homes.