addressing me as "Sir!" and my notebook contained almost nothing but Black Muslim philosophy,
praise of Mr. Muhammad, and the "evils" of "the white devil." He would bristle when I tried to urge
him that the proposed book was his life. I was thinking that I might have to advise the publisher
that I simply couldn't seem to get through to my subject when the first note of hope occurred. I
had noticed that while Malcolm X was talking, heoften simultaneously scribbled with his red-ink
ball-point pen on any handy paper. Sometimes it was the margin of a newspaper he brought in,
sometimes it was on index cards that he carried in the back of a small, red-backed appointment
book. I began leaving two white paper napkins by him every time I served him more coffee, and
the ruse worked when he sometimes scribbled on the napkins, which I retrieved when he left.
Some examples are these:
"Here lies a YM, killed by a BM, fighting for the WM, who killed all the RM." (Decoding that wasn't
difficult, knowing Malcolm X. "YM" was for yellow man, "BM" for black man, "WM" for white man,
and "RM" was for red man.)
"Nothing ever happened without cause. Cause BM condition WM won't face. WM obsessed with
hiding his guilt."
"If Christianity had asserted itself in Germany, six million Jews would have lived."
"WM so quick to tell BM 'Look what I have done for you!' No! Look what you have done to us!"
"BM dealing with WM who put our eyes out, now he condemns us because we cannot see."
"Only persons really changed history those who changed men's thinking about themselves. Hitler
as well as Jesus, Stalin as well as Buddha... Hon. Elijah Muhammad... ."
It was through a clue from one of the scribblings that finally I cast a bait that Malcolm X took.
"Woman who cries all the time is only because she knows she can get away with it," he had
scribbled. I somehow raised the subject ofwomen. Suddenly, between sips of coffee and further
scribbling and doodling, he vented his criticisms and skepticisms of women. "You never can fully
trust any woman," he said. "I've got the only one I ever met whom I would trust seventy-five per
cent. I've told her that," he said. "I've told her like I tell you I've seen too many men destroyed by
their wives, or their women.
"I don't completely trust anyone," he went on, "not even myself. I have seen too many men
destroy themselves. Other people I trust from not at all to highly, like The Honorable Elijah
Muhammad." Malcolm X looked squarely at me. "You I trust about twenty-five per cent."
Trying to keep Malcolm X talking, I mined the woman theme for all it was worth. Triumphantly, he
exclaimed, "Do you know why Benedict Arnold turned traitor-a woman!" He said, "Whatever else
a woman is, I don't care who the woman is, it starts with her being vain. I'll prove it, something
you can do anytime you want, and I know what I'm talking about, I've done it. You think of the
hardest-looking, meanest-acting woman you know, one of those women who never smiles. Well,
every day you see that woman you look her right in the eyes and tell her 'I think you're beautiful,'
and you watch what happens. The first day she may curse you out, the second day, too-but you
watch, you keep on, after a while one day she's going to start smiling just as soon as you come in
sight."
When Malcolm X left that night, I retrieved napkin scribblings that further documented how he
could be talking about one thing and thinking of something else:
"Negroes have too much righteousness. WM says, 'I want this piece of land, how do I get those
couple of thousand BM on it off?'"
"I have wife who understands, or even if she doesn't she at least pretends."