Autobiography of Malcolm X

Finally the Harlem Ministers' Interfaith Association would issue a formal accusation: "The
screaming headlines of many of our newspapers make it seem as if all of Harlem was an armed
camp, ready to explode at any moment. The vast majority of the citizens of the Harlem
community is not involved in the unfortunate acts of violence that have been grossly overplayed
by the press. Many times the slanting of the news is able to bring about an atmosphere through
which a few depraved and reckless individuals can take advantage."
"Malcolm X Died Broke"-that headline in Harlem's Amsterdam News came as a shock to
many in the community. Few had reflected that Malcolm X, upon becoming a Black Muslim
minister, had signed an oath of poverty, so that for twelve years he never acquired anything in his
own name. (Somewhere I have read that Malcolm X in his Black Muslim days received about
$175 weekly to cover his living and other expenses exclusive of travel.) "He left his four daughters
and pregnant wife with no insurance of any kind, no savings, and no income," the Amsterdam
News story said (and it might have added that he never drew up a will; he had made a February
26th appointment with his lawyer-five days after his death). Within the week, two groups had
organized and were asking Harlemites for contributions to help Sister Betty raise and educate the
children (since organized as the Malcolm X Daughters' Fund at Harlem's Freedom National Bank,
275 West 125th Street).
In Boston, Malcolm X's half-sister, Mrs. Ella Mae Collins, told a news conference that she would
choose the leaders of the OAAU to succeed Malcolm X. Mrs. Collins operated the Sarah A. Little
School of Preparatory Arts where, she said, children were taught Arabic, Swahili, French, and
Spanish. In 1959, she, too, had broken away from Elijah Muhammad's Black Muslims, to which
she had originally been converted by Malcolm X.
Far from Harlem, in lands where Malcolm X had traveled, the press had giventhe murder a
coverage that had highly irritated the Director of the United States Information Agency, Carl T.
Rowan, himself a Negro. In Washington, addressing the American Foreign Service Association,
Rowan said that when he first heard of the murder, he knew it would be grossly misconstrued in
some countries where people were unaware what Malcolm X represented, and he said the USIA
had worked hard to inform the African press of the facts about Malcolm X and his preachments,
but still there had been "a host of African reaction based on misinformation and
misrepresentation."
Said USIA Director Rowan, "Mind you, here was a Negro who preached segregation and race
hatred, killed by another Negro, presumably from another organization that preaches segregation
and race hatred, and neither of them representative of more than a tiny minority of the Negro
population of America-" Rowan held up some foreign newspapers. "All this about an ex-convict,
ex-dope peddler who became a racial fanatic," continued Rowan. "I can only conclude that we
Americans know less about what goes on in the minds of other peoples than we thought, or the
need to inform is even greater than we in USIA thought it to be."
The Daily Times of Lagos, in Nigeria, had said: "Like all mortals, Malcolm X was not without his
faults... but that he was a dedicated and consistent disciple of the movement for the
emancipation of his brethren, no one can doubt... Malcolm X has fought and died for what he
believed to be right. He will have a place in the palace of martyrs." The Ghanaian Times, Accra,
called Malcolm X "the militant and most popular of Afro-American anti-segregationist leaders" and
it added his name to "a host of Africans and Americans" ranging from John Brown to Patrice
Lumumba "who were martyred in freedom's cause." Also in Accra, the Daily Graphic: "The
assassination of Malcolm X will go down in history as the greatest blow the American
integrationist movement has suffered since the shocking assassinations of Medgar Evers and
John F. Kennedy."
The Pakistan Hurriyet of Karachi said: "A great Negro leader"; the Pakistan Times said, "His
death is a definite setback to the Negro movement for emancipation." The Peking, China
People's Daily said the killing happened "because Malcolm X... fought for the emancipation
of the 23,000,000 American Negroes." According to correspondents' reports, the first Algerian
headline said "the Ku Klux Klan" assassinated Malcolm X; the pro-Communist Alger
Republican's editorial on the slaying accused "American Fascism," and the Times' Algerian