Autobiography of Malcolm X

head jerked up. "Boy! I never will forget that old aardvark!" The next evening, he came into the
room and told me that he had beento the Museum of Natural History and learned something
about the aardvark. "Now, aardvark actually means 'earth hog.' That's a good example of root
words, as I was telling you. When you study the science of philology, you learn the laws
governing how a consonant can lose its shape, but it keeps its identity from language to
language." What astonished me here was that I knew that on that day, Malcolm X's schedule had
been crushing, involving both a television and radio appearance and a live speech, yet he had
gone to find out something about the aardvark.
Before long, Malcolm X called a press conference, and announced, "My new Organization of
Afro-American Unity is a non-religious and non-sectarian group organized to unite Afro-
Americans for a constructive program toward attainment of human rights." The new OAAU's tone
appeared to be one of militant black nationalism. He said to the questions of various reporters in
subsequent interviews that the OAAU would seek to convert the Negro population from nonviolence
to active self-defense against white supremacists across America. On the subject of
politics he offered an enigma, "Whether you use bullets or ballots, you've got to aim well; don't
strike at the puppet, strike at the puppeteer." Did he envision any special area of activity? "I'm
going to join in the fight wherever Negroes ask for my help." What about alliance with other Negro
organizations? He said that he would consider forming some united front with certain selected
Negro leaders. He conceded under questioning that the N.A.A.C.P. was "doing some good."
Could any whites join his OAAU? "If John Brown were alive, maybe him." And he answered his
critics with such statements as that he would send "armed guerrillas" into Mississippi. "I am dead
serious. We will send them not only to Mississippi, but to any place where black people's lives are
threatened by white bigots. As far as I am concerned, Mississippi is anywhere south of the
Canadian border." At another time, when Evelyn Cunningham of the Pittsburgh Courier asked
Malcolm X in a kidding way, "Say something startling for my column," he told her, "Anyone who
wants to follow me and my movement has got to be ready to goto jail, to the hospital, and to the
cemetery before he can be truly free." Evelyn Cunningham, printing the item, commented, "He
smiled and chuckled, but he was in dead earnest."
His fourth child, yet another daughter, was born and he and Sister Betty named the baby Gamilah
Lumumbah. A young waitress named Helen Lanier, at Harlem's Twenty Two Club where Malcolm
X now often asked people to meet him, gave him a layette for the new baby. He was very deeply
touched by the gesture. "Why, I hardly know that girl!"
He was clearly irked when a New York Times poll among New York City Negroes reflected that
three-fourths had named Dr. Martin Luther King as "doing the best work for Negroes," and
another one-fifth had voted for the N.A.A.C.P.'s Roy Wilkins, while only six per cent had voted for
Malcolm X. "Brother," he said to me, "do you realize that some of history's greatest leaders never
were recognized until they were safely in the ground!"
One morning in mid-summer 1964, Malcolm X telephoned me and said that he would be leaving
"within the next two or three days" for a planned six weeks abroad. I heard from him first in Cairo,
about as the predicted "long, hot summer" began in earnest, with riots and other uprisings of
Negroes occurring in suburban Philadelphia, in Rochester, in Brooklyn, in Harlem, and other
cities. The New York Times reported that a meeting of Negro intellectuals had agreed that Dr.
Martin Luther King could secure the allegiance of the middle and upper classes of Negroes, but
Malcolm X alone could secure the allegiance of Negroes at the bottom. "The Negroes respect Dr.
King and Malcolm X because they sense in these men absolute integrity and know they will never
sell them out. Malcolm X cannot be corrupted and the Negroes know this and therefore respect
him. They also know that he comes from the lower depths, as they do, and regard him as one of
their own. Malcolm X is going to play a formidable role, because the racial struggle has now
shifted to the urban North.. .if Dr. King is convinced that he has sacrificed ten years of brilliant
leadership, he will be forced to revise his concepts. There is only one direction in which he can
move, and that is in the direction of Malcolm X." I sent a clipping of that story to Malcolm X in
Cairo.
In Washington, D.C. and New York City, at least, powerful civic, private, and governmental