Another person toward whom Malcolm X felt similarly was the actor OssieDavis. Once in the
middle of one of our interviews, when we had been talking about something else, Malcolm X
suddenly asked me, "Do you know Ossie Davis?" I said I didn't. He said, "I ought to introduce you
sometime, that's one of the finest black men." In Malcolm X's long dealings with the staff of the
Harlem weekly newspaper Amsterdam News, he had come to admire Executive Editor James
Hicks and the star feature writer James Booker. He said that Hicks had "an open mind, and he
never panics for the white man." He thought that Booker was an outstanding reporter; he also
was highly impressed with Mrs. Booker when he met her.
It was he who introduced me to two of my friends today, Dr. C. Eric Lincoln who was at the time
writing the book The Black Muslims in America, and Louis Lomax who was then writing various
articles about the Muslims. Malcolm X deeply respected the care and depth which Dr. Lincoln was
putting into his research. Lomax, he admired for his ferreting ear and eye for hot news. "If I see
that rascal Lomax running somewhere, I'll grab my hat and get behind him," Malcolm X said once,
"because I know he's onto something." Author James Baldwin Malcolm X also admired. "He's so
brilliant he confuses the white man with words on paper." And another time, "He's upset the white
man more than anybody except The Honorable Elijah Muhammad."
Malcolm X had very little good to say of Negro ministers, very possibly because most of them had
attacked the Black Muslims. Excepting reluctant admiration of Dr. Martin Luther
King, I heard him speak well of only one other, The Reverend Eugene L. Callender of Harlem's
large Presbyterian Church of the Master. "He's a preacher, but he's a fighter for the black man,"
said Malcolm X. I later learned that somewhere the direct, forthright Reverend Callender had
privately cornered Malcolm X and had read him the riot act about his general attacks upon the
Negro clergy. Malcolm X also admired The Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, in hisCongressman
political role: "I'd think about retiring if the black man had ten like him in Washington." He had
similar feelings about the N.A.A.C.P. lawyer, now a New York State Assemblyman, Percy Sutton,
and later Sutton was retained as his personal attorney. Among Negro educators, of whom
Malcolm X met many in his college and university lecturing, I never heard him speak well of any
but one, Dr. Kenneth B. Clark. "There's a black man with brains gone to bed," Malcolm X told me
once, briefly lapsing into his old vernacular. He had very distinct reservations about Negro
professional intelligentsia as a category. They were the source from which most of the Black
Muslims' attackers came. It was for this reason that some of his most bristling counter-attacks
against "these so-called educated Uncle Thomases, Ph.D." were flung out at his audiences at
Negro institutions of higher learning.
Where I witnessed the Malcolm X who was happiest and most at ease among members of our
own race was when sometimes I chanced to accompany him on what he liked to call "my little
daily rounds" around the streets of Harlem, among the Negroes that he said the "so-called black
leaders" spoke of "as black masses statistics." On these tours, Malcolm X generally avoided the
arterial 125th Street in Harlem; he plied the side streets, especially in those areas which were
thickest with what he described as "the black man down in the gutter where I came from," the
poverty-ridden with a high incidence of dope addicts and winos.
Malcolm X here indeed was a hero. Striding along the sidewalks, he bathed all whom he met in
the boyish grin, and his conversation with any who came up was quiet and pleasant. "It's just
what the white devil wants you to do, brother," he might tell a wino, "he wants you to get drunk so
he will have an excuse to put a club up beside your head." Or I remember once he halted at a
stoop to greet several older women: "Sisters, let me ask you something," he said
conversationally, "have you ever known one white man who either didn't do something to you,
or take something from you?" One among that audienceexclaimed after a moment, "I sure
ain't!" whereupon all of them joined in laughter and we walked on with Malcolm X waving back
to cries of "He's right!"