"How are you?" It flashed through my mind how close we had been before the fight that had
changed the course of his life. I replied that I was fine-something like that-and that I hoped he
was, which I sincerely meant. Later on, I sent Cassius a message by wire, saying that I hoped
that he would realize how much he was loved by Muslims wherever they were; and that he would
not let anyone use him and maneuver him into saying and doing things to tarnish his image.
The "Malcolm X Committee" and I were exchanging goodbyes at the Accra airport when a small
motorcade of five Ambassadors arrived-to see me off! I no longer had any words.
In the plane, bound for Monrovia, Liberia, to spend a day, I knew that after what I had
experienced in the Holy Land, the second most indelible memory I would carry back to America
would be the Africa seething with serious awareness of itself, and of Africa's wealth, and of her
power, and of her destined role in the world.
From Monrovia, I flew to Dakar, Senegal. The Senegalese in the airport, hearing about the
Muslim from America, stood in line to shake my hand, and I signed many autographs. "Our
people can't speak Arabic, but we have Islam in our hearts," said one Senegalese. I told them
that exactly described their fellow Afro-American Muslims.
From Dakar, I flew to Morocco, where I spent a day sightseeing. I visited the famous Casbah, the
ghetto which had resulted when the ruling white Frenchwouldn't let the dark-skinned natives into
certain areas of Casablanca. Thousands upon thousands of the subjugated natives were
crowded into the ghetto, in the same way that Harlem, in New York City, became America's
Casbah.
It was Tuesday, May 19, 1964-my thirty-ninth birthday-when I arrived in Algiers. A lot of water had
gone under the bridge in those years. In some ways, I had had more experiences than a dozen
men. The taxi driver, while taking me to the Hotel Aletti, described the atrocities the French had
committed, and personal measures that he had taken to get even. I walked around Algiers,
hearing rank-and-file expressions of hatred for America for supporting the oppressors of the
Algerians. They were true revolutionists, not afraid of death. They had, for so long, faced death.
The Pan American jet which took me home-it was Flight 115-landed at New York's Kennedy Air
Terminal on May 21, at 4:25 in the afternoon. We passengers filed off the plane and toward
Customs. When I saw the crowd of fifty or sixty reporters and photographers, I honestly wondered
what celebrity I had been on the plane with.
But I was the "villain" they had come to meet.
In Harlem especially, and also in some other U.S. cities, the 1964 long, hot summer's predicted
explosions had begun. Article after article in the white man's press had cast me as a symbol-if not
a causative agent-of the "revolt" and of the "violence" of the American black man, wherever it had
sprung up.
In the biggest press conference that I had ever experienced anywhere, the camera bulbs flashed,
and the reporters fired questions.
"Mr. Malcolm X, what about those 'Blood Brothers,' reportedly affiliated with your organization,
reportedly trained for violence, who have killed innocent white people?".. ."Mr. Malcolm X, what
about your comment that Negroes should form rifle clubs?.. ."
I answered the questions. I knew I was back in America again, hearing the subjective, scapegoatseeking
questions of the white man. New York white youth were killing victims; that was a
"sociological" problem. But when black youth killed somebody, the power structure was looking to
hang somebody. When black men had been lynched or otherwise murdered in cold blood, it was
always said, "Things will get better. "When whites had rifles in their homes, the Constitution gave
them the right to protect their home and themselves. But when black people even spoke of having
rifles in their homes, that was "ominous."
I slipped in on the reporters something they hadn't been expecting. I said that the American black
man needed to quit thinking what the white man had taught him-which was that the black man
had no alternative except to beg for his so-called "civil rights." I said that the American black man
needed to recognize that he had a strong, airtight case to take the United States before the
United Nations on a formal accusation of "denial of human rights"-and that if Angola and South