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 swearing-
in 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
to Sister Betty," he said that he would, we shook hands and I got outside and stood as he backed
the blue Oldsmobile from its parking space. I called out "See you!" and we waved as he started
driving away. There was no way to know that it was the last time I would see him alive.
On January 19, Malcolm X appeared on the Pierre Berton television show in Canada and said, in
response to a question about integration and intermarriage:
"I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being-neither white, black, brown, or red;
and when you are dealing with humanity as a family there's no question of integration or
intermarriage. It's just one human being marrying another human being or one human being living
around and with another human being. I may say, though, that I don't think it should ever be put
upon a black man, I don't think the burden to defend any position should ever be put upon the
black man, because it is the white man collectively who has shown that he is hostile toward
integration and toward intermarriage and toward these other strides toward oneness. So as a
black man and especially as a black American, any stand that I formerly took, I don't think that I
would have to defend it because it's still a reaction to the society, and it's a reaction that was
produced by the society; and I think that it is the society that produced this that should be
attacked, not the reaction that develops among the people who are the victims of that negative
society."
From this, it would be fair to say that one month before his death, Malcolm had revised his views
on intermarriage to the point where he regarded it as simply a personal matter.
On the 28th of January, Malcolm X was on TWA's Flight No. 9 from New York that landed at about
three P.M. in Los Angeles. A special police intelligence squad saw Malcolm X greeted by two
close friends, Edward Bradley and Allen Jamal, who drove him to the Statler-Hilton Hotel where