had made, in Los Angeles, the statement which caused him to be heavily censured by members
of both races. "I've just heard some good news!"-referringto a plane crash at Orly Field in Paris in
which thirty-odd white Americans, mostly from Atlanta, Georgia, had been killed instantly.
(Malcolm X never publicly recanted this statement, to my knowledge, but much later he said to
me simply, "That's one of the things I wish I had never said.")
Anytime the name of the present Federal Judge Thurgood Marshall was raised, Malcolm X still
practically spat fire in memory of what the judge had said years before when he was the
N.A.A.C.P. chief attorney: "The Muslims are run by a bunch of thugs organized from prisons and
jails and financed, I am sure, by some Arab group." The only time that I have ever heard Malcolm
X use what might be construed as a curse word, it was a "hell" used in response to a statement
that Dr. Martin Luther King made that Malcolm X's talk brought "misery upon Negroes." Malcolm
X exploded to me, "How in the hell can my talk do this? It's always a Negro responsible, not what
the white man does!" The "extremist" or "demagogue" accusation invariably would burn Malcolm
X. "Yes, I'm an extremist. The black race here in North America is in extremely bad condition. You
show me a black man who isn't an extremist and I'll show you one who needs psychiatric
attention!"
Once when he said, "Aristotle shocked people. Charles Darwin outraged people. Aldous Huxley
scandalized millions!" Malcolm X immediately followed the statement with "Don't print that, people
would think I'm trying to link myself with them." Another time, when something provoked him to
exclaim, "These Uncle Toms make me think about how the Prophet Jesus was criticized in his
own country!" Malcolm X promptly got up and silently took my notebook, tore out that page and
crumpled it and put it into his pocket, and he was considerably subdued during the remainder of
that session.
I remember one time we talked and he showed me a newspaper clipping reporting where a Negro
baby had been bitten by a rat. Malcolm X said, "Now, just read that, just think of that a minute!
Suppose it was your child!Where's that slumlord-on some beach in Miami!" He continued
fuming throughout our interview. I did not go with him when later that day he addressed a Negro
audience in Harlem and an incident occurred which Helen Dudar reported in the New York
Post.
"Malcolm speaking in Harlem stared down at one of the white reporters present, the only whites
admitted to the meeting, and went on, 'Now, there's a reporter who hasn't taken a note in half an
hour, but as soon as I start talking about the Jews, he's busy taking notes to prove that I'm anti-
Semitic.'
"Behind the reporter, a male voice spoke up, 'Kill the bastard, kill them all.' The young man, in his
unease, smiled nervously and Malcolm jeered, 'Look at him laugh. He's really not laughing, he's
just laughing with his teeth.' An ugly tension curled the edges of the atmosphere. Then Malcolm
went on: 'The white man doesn't know how to laugh. He just shows his teeth. But we know how
to laugh. We laugh deep down, from the bottom up.' The audience laughed, deep down, from the
bottom up and, as suddenly as Malcolm had stirred it, so, skillfully and swiftly, he deflected it. It
had been at once a masterful and shabby performance."
I later heard somewhere, or read, that Malcolm X telephoned an apology to the reporter. But this
was the kind of evidence which caused many close observers of the Malcolm X phenomenon to
declare in absolute seriousness that he was the only
Negro in America who could either start a race riot-or stop one. When I once quoted this to him,
tacitly inviting his comment, he told me tartly, "I don't know if I could start one. I don't know if I'd
want to stop one." It was the kind of statement he relished making.
Over the months, I had gradually come to establish something of a telephone acquaintance with
Malcolm X's wife, whom I addressed as "Sister Betty," as I had heard the Muslims do. I admired
how she ran a home, with, then, three small daughters, and still managed to take all of the calls
which came for Malcolm X, surely as many calls as would provide a job for an average
switchboard operator. Sometimes when he was with me, he would telephone home and spend as
much as five minutes rapidly jotting on a pad the various messages which had been left for him.