watching me take the notes, exclaim. "That devil's not going to print that, I don't care what he
says!" I would point out that the publishers had made a binding contract and had paid a sizable
sum in advance. Malcolm X would say, "You trust them, and I don't. You studied what he wanted
you to learn about him in schools, I studied him in the streets and in prison, where you see the
truth."
Experiences which Malcolm X had had during a day could flavor his interview mood. The most
wistful, tender anecdotes generally were told on days when some incident had touched him.
Once, for instance, he told me that he had learned that a Harlem couple, not Black Muslims, had
named their newbornson "Malcolm" after him. "What do you know about that?" he kept
exclaiming. And that was the night he went back to his own boyhood again and this time recalled
how he used to lie on his back on Hector's Hill and think. That night, too: "I'll never forget the day
they elected me the class president. A girl named Audrey Slaugh, whose father owned a car
repair shop, nominated me. And a boy named James Cotton seconded the nomination. The
teacher asked me to leave the room while the class voted. When I returned I was the class
president. I couldn't believe it."
Any interesting book which Malcolm X had read could get him going about his love of books.
"People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book." He came back
again and again to the books that he had studied when in prison. "Did you ever read The Loom
of Language?" he asked me and I said I hadn't. "You should. Philology, it's a tough science-all
about how words can be recognized, no matter where you find them. Now, you take 'Caesar,' it's
Latin, in Latin it's pronounced like 'Kaiser,' with a hard C. But we anglicize it by pronouncing a soft
C. The Russians say 'Czar' and mean the same thing. Another Russian dialect says 'Tsar.' Jakob
Grimm was one of the foremost philologists, I studied his 'Grimm's Law' in prison-all about
consonants. Philology is related to the science of etymology, dealing in root words. I dabbled in
both of them."
When I turn that page in my notebook, the next bears a note that Malcolm X had telephoned me
saying "I'm going to be out of town for a few days." I assumed that as had frequently been the
case before, he had speaking engagements or other Muslim business to attend somewhere and I
was glad for the respite in which to get my notes separated under the chapter headings they
would fit. But when Malcolm X returned this time, he reported triumphantly, "I have something to
tell you that will surprise you. Ever since we discussed my mother, I've been thinking about her. I
realized that I had blocked her out of my mind-it was just unpleasant to think about her having
been twenty-someyears in that mental hospital." He said, "I don't want to take the credit. It was
really my sister Yvonne who thought it might be possible to get her out. Yvonne got my brothers
Wilfred, Wesley and Philbert together, and I went out there, too. It was Philbert who really
handled it.
"It made me face something about myself," Malcolm X said. "My mind had closed about our
mother. I simply didn't feel the problem could be solved, so I had shut it out. I had built up
subconscious defenses. The white man does this. He shuts out of his mind, and he builds up
subconscious defenses against anything he doesn't want to face up to. I've just become aware
how closed my mind was now that I've opened it up again.
That's one of the characteristics I don't like about myself. If I meet a problem I feel I can't solve, I
shut it out. I make believe that it doesn't exist. But it exists."
It was my turn to be deeply touched. Not long afterward, he was again away for a few days.
When he returned this time, he said that at his brother Philbert's home, "we had dinner with our
mother for the first time in all those years!" He said, "She's sixty-six, and her memory is better
than mine and she looks young and healthy. She has more of her teeth than those who were
instrumental in sending her to the institution."
When something had angered Malcolm X during the day, his face would be flushed redder when
he visited me, and he generally would spend much of the session lashing out bitterly. When some
Muslims were shot by Los Angeles policemen, one of them being killed, Malcolm X, upon his
return from a trip he made there, was fairly apoplectic for a week. It had been in this mood that he