wouldn't remember that my picture was there because of my fervor in championing Mr.
Muhammad. They wouldn't simply reason that as vulnerable as the Nation of Islam was to
distorted rumors and outright lies, we needed nothing so little as to have our public spokesman
constantly denying the rumors. Common sense would have told any official that certainly Mr.
Muhammad couldn't be running all over the country as his own spokesman. And whoever he
appointed as his spokesman couldn't avoid a lot of press focus.
Whenever I caught any resentful feelings hanging on in my mind, I would be ashamed of myself,
considering it a sign of weakness in myself. I knew that at least Mr. Muhammad knew that my life
was totally dedicated to representing him.
But during 1963,I couldn't help being very hypersensitive to my critics in high posts within our
Nation. I quit selecting certain of my New York brothers and giving them money to go and lay
groundwork for new mosques in other cities-because slighting remarks were being made about
"Malcolm's ministers." In a time in America when it was of arch importance for a militant black
voice to reach mass audiences, Life magazine wanted to do a personal story of me, and I
refused. I refused again when a cover story was offered by Newsweek. I refused again when I
could have been a guest on the top-rated "Meet thePress" television program. Each refusal was a
general loss for the black man, and, for the Nation of Islam, each refusal was a specific loss-and
each refusal was made because of Chicago's attitude. There was jealousy because I had been
requested to make these featured appearances.
When a high-powered-rifle slug tore through the back of the N.A.A.C.P. Field Secretary Medgar
Evers in Mississippi, I wanted to say the blunt truths that needed to be said. When a bomb was
exploded in a Negro Christian church in Birmingham, Alabama, snuffing out the lives of those four
beautiful little black girls, I made comments-but not what should have been said about the climate
of hate that the American white man was generating and nourishing. The more hate was
permitted to lash out when there were ways it could have been checked, the more bold the hate
became-until at last it was flaring out at even the white man's own kind, including his own leaders.
In Dallas, Texas, for instance, the then Vice President and Mrs. Johnson were vulgarly insulted.
And the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, was spat upon and hit on the
head by a white woman picket.
Mr. Muhammad made me the Nation's first National Minister. At a late 1963 rally in Philadelphia,
Mr. Muhammad, embracing me, said to that audience before us, "This is my most faithful, hard-
working minister. He will follow me until he dies."
He had never paid such a compliment to any Muslim. No praise from any other earthly person
could have meant more to me.
But this would be Mr. Muhammad's and my last public appearance together.
Not long before, I had been on the Jerry Williams radio program in Boston, when someone
handed me an item hot off the Associated Press machine. I readthat a chapter of the Louisiana
Citizens Council had just offered a $10,000 reward for my death.
But the threat of death was much closer to me than somewhere in Louisiana.
What I am telling you is the truth. When I discovered who else wanted me dead, I am telling you-it
nearly sent me to Bellevue.
In my twelve years as a Muslim minister, I had always taught so strongly on the moral issues that
many Muslims accused me of being "and-woman." The very keel of my teaching, and my most