prophecy.
"Son, I'm not surprised," Elijah Muhammad said. "You always have had such a good
understanding of prophecy, and of spiritual things. You recognize that's what all of this isprophecy.
You have the kind of understanding that only an old man has.
"I'm David," he said. "When you read about how David took another man's wife, I'm that David.
You read about Noah, who got drunk-that's me. You read about Lot, who went and laid up with his
own daughters. I have to fulfill all of those things."
I remembered that when an epidemic is about to hit somewhere, that community's people are
inoculated against exposure with some of the same germs that are anticipated-and this prepares
them to resist the oncoming virus.
I decided I had better prepare six other East Coast Muslim officials whom I selected.
I told them. And then I told them why I had told them-that I felt they should not be caught by
surprise and shock if it became their job to teach the Muslims in their mosques the "fulfillment of
prophecy." I found then that some had already heard it; one of them, Minister Louis X of Boston,
as much as seven months before. They had been living with the dilemma themselves.
I never dreamed that the Chicago Muslim officials were going to make it appear that I was
throwing gasoline on the fire instead of water. I never dreamed that they were going to try to
make it appear that instead of inoculating against an epidemic, I had started it.
The stage in Chicago even then was being set for Muslims to shift their focus off the epidemicand
onto me.
Hating me was going to become the cause for people of shattered faith to rally around.
Non-Muslim Negroes who knew me well, and even some of the white reporters with whom I had
some regular contact, were telling me, almost wherever I went, "Malcolm X, you're looking tired.
You need a rest."
They didn't know a fraction of it. Since I had been a Muslim, this was the first time any white
people really got to me in a personal way. I could tell that some of them were really honest and
sincere. One of these, whose name I won't call-he might lose his job-said, "Malcolm X, the whites
need your voice worse than the Negroes." I remember so well his saying this because it prefaced
the first time since I became a Muslim that I had ever talked with any white man at any length
about anything except the Nation of Islam and the American black man's struggle today.
I can't remember how, or why, he somehow happened to mention the Dead Sea Scrolls. I came
back with something like, "Yes, those scrolls are going to take Jesus off the stained-glass
windows and the frescoes where he has been lily-white, and put Him back into the true
mainstream of history where Jesus actually was non-white." The reporter was surprised, and I
went on that the Dead Sea Scrolls were going to reaffirm that Jesus was a member of that
brotherhood of Egyptian seers called the Essene-a fact already known from Philo, the famous
Egyptian historian of Jesus' time. And the reporter and I got off on about two good hours of talking
in the areas of archaeology, history, and religion. It was so pleasant. I almost forgot the heavy
worries on my mind-for that brief respite. I remember we wound up agreeing that by the year
2000, every schoolchild will be taught the true color of great men of antiquity.
I've said that I expected headlines momentarily. I hadn't expected the kind which came.
No one needs to be reminded of who got assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.
Within hours after the assassination-I am telling nothing but the truth-everyMuslim minister
received from Mr. Elijah Muhammad a directive-in fact, two directives. Every minister was
ordered to make no remarks at all concerning the assassination. Mr. Muhammad instructed that if
pressed for comment, we should say: "No comment."
During that three-day period where there was no other news to be heard except relating to the
murdered President, Mr. Muhammad had a previously scheduled speaking engagement in New
York at the Manhattan Center. He cancelled his coming to speak, and as we were unable to get
back the money already paid for the rental of the center, Mr. Muhammad told me to speak in his
stead. And so I spoke.