The ugly rumor was spreading swiftly-even among non-Muslim Negroes. When I thought how the
press constantly sought ways to discredit the Nation of Islam, I trembled to think of such a thing
reaching the ears of some newspaper reporter, either black or white.
I actually began to have nightmares... I saw headlines.
I was burdened with a leaden fear as I kept speaking engagements all over America. Any time a
reporter came anywhere near me, I could hear him ask, "Is it true, Mr. Malcolm X, this report
we hear, that.. ." And what was I going to say?
There was never any specific moment when I admitted the situation to myself. In the way that the
human mind can do, somehow I slid over admitting tomyself the ugly fact, even as I began
dealing with it.
Both in New York and Chicago, non-Muslims whom I knew began to tell me indirectly they had
heard-or they would ask me if I had heard. I would act as if I had no idea whatever of what they
were talking about-and I was grateful when they chose not to spell out what they knew. I went
around knowing that I looked to them like a total fool. I felt like a total fool, out there every day
preaching, and apparently not knowing what was going on right under my nose, in my own
organization, involving the very man I was praising so. To look like a fool unearthed emotions I
hadn't felt since my Harlem hustler days. The worst thing in the hustler's world was to be a dupe.
I will give you an example. Backstage at the Apollo Theater in Harlem one day, the comedian Dick
Gregory looked at me. "Man," he said, "Muhammad's nothing but a.. ."-I can't say the word he
used. Bam! Just like that. My Muslim instincts said to attack Dick-but, instead, I felt weak and
hollow. I think Dick sensed how upset I was and he let me get him off the subject. I knew Dick, a
Chicagoan, was wise in the ways of the streets, and blunt-spoken. I wanted to plead with him not
to say to anyone else what he had said to me-but I couldn't; it would have been my own
admission.
I can't describe the torments I went through.
Always before, in any extremity, I had caught the first plane to Mr. Elijah Muhammad. He had
virtually raised me from the dead. Everything I was that was creditable, he had made me. I felt
that no matter what, I could not let him down.
There was no one I could turn to with this problem, except Mr. Muhammad himself. Ultimately that
had to be the case. But first I went to Chicago to see Mr. Muhammad's second youngest son,
Wallace Muhammad. I felt that Wallacewas Mr. Muhammad's most strongly spiritual son, the son
with the most objective outlook. Always, Wallace and I had shared an exceptional closeness and
trust.
And Wallace knew, when he saw me, why I had come to see him. "I know," he said. I said I
thought we should rally to help his father. Wallace said he didn't feel that his father would
welcome any efforts to help him. I told myself that Wallace must be crazy.
Next, I broke the rule that no Muslim is supposed to have any contact with another Muslim in the
"isolated" state. I looked up, and I talked with three of the former secretaries to Mr. Muhammad.
From their own mouths, I heard their stories of who had fathered their children. And from their
own mouths I heard that Elijah Muhammad had told them I was the best, the greatest minister he
ever had, but that someday I would leave him, turn against him-so I was "dangerous." I learned
from these former secretaries of Mr. Muhammad that while he was praising me to my face, he
was tearing me apart behind my back.
That deeply hurt me.