car, and the six OAAU men were arrested.
Malcolm X had a date to speak in Boston, but he was too busy to go, and he sent an OAAU
assistant who spoke instead. The car returning him to the Boston Airport was blocked at the East
Boston Tunnel by another car. Reportedly, men with knives rushed out of the blockade car, but
the Malcolm X forcesshowed a shotgun, and the attackers dispersed.
Malcolm X steadily accused the Black Muslims as the source of the various attacks and threats.
"There is no group in the United States more able to carry out this threat than the Black Muslims,"
he said. "I know, because I taught them myself." Asked why he had attacked the Black Muslims
and Elijah Muhammad when things had seemed to be cooled down, he said, "I would not have
revealed any of this if they had left me alone." He let himself be photographed in his home
holding an automatic carbine rifle with a full double clip of ammunition that he said he kept ready
for action against any possible assassination efforts. "I have taught my wife to use it, and
instructed her to fire on anyone, white, black, or yellow, who tries to force his way inside."
I went to New York City in December for Malcolm X's reading of final additions to the manuscript,
to include the latest developments. He was further than I had ever seen him from his old assured
self, it seemed to me. He kept saying that the press was making light of his statements about the
threats on his life. "They act like I'm jiving!" He brought up again the Saturday Evening Post
editorial. "You can't trust the publishing people, I don't care what they tell you." The agent for the
book sent to my hotel a contract dealing with foreign publication rights which needed Malcolm X's
and my signature. I signed it as he observed and handed the pen to him. He looked suspiciously
at the contract, and said, "I had better show this thing to my lawyer," and put the contract in his
inside coat pocket. Driving in Harlem about an hour later, he suddenly stopped the car across the
street from the 135th Street Y.M.C.A. Building. Withdrawing the contract, he signed it, and thrust it
to me. "I'll trust you," he said, and drove on.
With Christmas approaching, upon an impulse I bought for Malcolm X's two oldest daughters two
large dolls, with painted brown complexions, the kind of dolls that would "walk" when held by the
left hand. When Malcolm X nextcame to my room in the Hotel Wellington, I said, "I've gotten
something for you to take to Attallah and Qubilah for Christmas gifts," and I "walked" out the dolls.
Amazement, then a wide grin spread over his face. "Well, what do you know about that? Well,
how about that!" He bent to examine the dolls. His expression showed how touched he was. "You
know," he said after a while, "this isn't something I'm proud to say, but I don't think I've ever
bought one gift for my children. Everything they play with, either Betty got it for them, or
somebody gave it to them, never me. That's not good, I know it. I've always been too busy."
In early January, I flew from upstate New York to Kennedy Airport where I telephoned Malcolm X
at home and told him that I was waiting for another plane to Kansas City to witness the swearingin
of my younger brother George who had recently been elected a Kansas State Senator. "Tell
your brother for me to remember us in the alley," Malcolm X said. "Tell him that he and all of the
other moderate Negroes who are getting somewhere need to always remember that it was us
extremists who made it possible." He said that when I was ready to leave Kansas, to telephone
him saying when I would arrive back in New
York, and if he could we could get together. I did this, and he met me at Kennedy Airport. He had
only a little while, he was so pressed, he said; he had to leave that afternoon himself for a
speaking engagement which had come up. So I made reservations for the next flight back
upstate, then we went outside and sat and talked in his car in a parking lot. He talked about the
pressures on him everywhere he turned, and about the frustrations, among them that no one
wanted to accept anything relating to him except "my old 'hate' and 'violence' image." He said "the
so-called moderate" civil rights organizations avoided him as "too militant" and the "so-called
militants" avoided him as "too moderate.""They won't let me turn the comer!" he once exclaimed,
"I'm caught in a trap!"
In a happier area, we talked about the coming baby. We laughed about the four girls in a row
already. "This one will be the boy," he said. He beamed, "If not, the next one!" When I said it
was close to time for my plane to leave, he said he had to be getting on, too. I said, "Give my best