1 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? 2 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? 3 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose, and the shape of your lips? 4 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Who taught you to hate yourself, from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? 5 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Who taught you to hate your own kind? 6 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Who taught you to hate the race that you belong to 7 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So much so that you don't want to be around each other 8 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You know. Before you come asking Mr. Muhammad does he teach hate, you should ask yourself 9 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 who taught you to hate being what God made you. 10 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Most of us, blacks, or negroes as he called us, 11 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 really thought we were free, 12 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 without being aware that in our subconscious, all those chains we thought had been struck off were still there 13 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And there were many ways, where what really motivated us 14 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 was our desire to be loved by the white man. 15 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Malcolm meant to lance that sense of inferiority. 16 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He knew it would be painful. 17 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He knew that people could kill you because of it, 18 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 but he dared to take that risk. 19 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He was saying something, over and above that of any other leader of that day 20 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 While the other leaders were begging for entry into the house of their oppressor, 21 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 he was telling you to build your own house. 22 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He expelled fear for African Americans. 23 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He said "I will speak out loud what you've been thinking" 24 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and he said "You'll see, people will hear, and it will not do anything to us, necessarily, ok? 25 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But I will not speak it for the masses of people." 26 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 When he said it in a very strong fashion, in this very manly fashion, in this fashion that says, 27 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 "I am not afraid to say what you've been thinking all these years." 28 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That's why we loved him 29 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He said it out loud, not behind closed doors, 30 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He took on America for us. 31 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And I, for one, as a Muslim believe that the white man is intelligent enough. 32 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 If he were made to realize how Black people really feel 33 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and how fed up we are without that old compromising sweet talk 34 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Why, you're the one who make it hard for yourself. 35 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The white man believes you when you go through with that old sweet talk 36 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 'cause you've been sweet talking to him ever since he brought you here 37 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Stop sweet talking him! 38 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Tell him how you feel! 39 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Tell him how, what kind of hell you've been catching, and let him know that if he's ready to clean his house up, if he's not ready to clean his house up, 40 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He shouldn't have a house. It should catch on fire, and burn down... 41 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 On these Harlem street corners, for most of this century, Black people have celebrated their culture, 42 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and argued the question of race in America. 43 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It was here that Malcolm first joined the street orators who gave voice to Harlem's hope, and its anger. 44 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I've taught nationalism, and that means that I want to go out of this white man's country, because integration will never happen 45 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You will never, as long as you live, 46 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 integrate into the white men's system 47 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 A hundred and twenty-fifth street and Seventh Avenue was 48 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 the center of activity among the black street orators. 49 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 When Malcolm arrived, technically he had no corner. 50 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So he established his base, you might say, in front of Elder Michaux's bookstore. 51 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 When Malcolm would ascent the little platform, he didn't, he couldn't talk for the first four, five minutes. 52 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The people would be making such a praise-shout to him 53 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and he would stand there, taking his due. 54 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and then he would open his mouth. 55 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They call Mr. Muhammad a hate-teacher 56 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 because he makes you hate dope and alcohol. 57 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They call Mr. Muhammad a black supremacist 58 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 because he teaches you and me not only that we are as good as the white man, 59 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 but better than the white man. 60 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Yes, better than the white man. 61 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You are better than the white man 62 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and that's not saying anything. 63 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That's not saying, you know we're just as equal with him. 64 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Who is he to be equal with? 65 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You look at his skin 66 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You can't compare your skin with his skin, 67 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Why your skin look like gold beside his skin. 68 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 There was a time when we used to drool in the mouth over white people. 69 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We thought they were pretty 'cause we were blind, we were dumb. 70 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We couldn't see them as they are. 71 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But since the honorable Elijah Muhammad has come and taught us the religion of Islam, 72 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 which have cleaned us up, and made us so we can see for ourselves 73 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 now we can see that old pale thing to look exactly as he look 74 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 nothing but an old, pale thing. 75 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I came away from that rally feeling that with him 76 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 once you heard him speak, 77 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 you never went back to where you were before. 78 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You had to, even if you kept your position you had to rethink it. 79 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We weren't accustomed to being told that we were devils 80 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and that we were oppressors up herein our wonderful northern cities. 81 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He was speaking for a silent mass of black people 82 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and sang it out front on the devil's own airwaves, and that was an act of war. 83 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 When he came off the stage, I jumped off the island, 84 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 walked up to him, and of course when I got to him the bodyguards, 85 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 you know, moved in front, and he just pushed them away. 86 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And I went in front of him and extended my hand, 87 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and said "I liked some of what you said. I didn't agree with what, all that you said, but I liked some of what you said" 88 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And he looked at me, held my hand in a very gentle fashion and says 89 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 "One day you will, Sister. One day you will, Sister", and he smiled. 90 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 To make his message clear, Malcolm used his own life as a lesson for all black Americans. 91 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He preached it in fables and parables 92 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and later, in writing his autobiography with Alex Haley, 93 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 he sought some control over how his life would be interpreted in the future. 94 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I would be rather taken by a statement he would make of himself 95 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He would say "I am a part of all I have met" 96 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and by that he meant that all the things he had done in his earlier life had exposed him to things 97 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and taught him skills of one or another sort, 98 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 all of which had synthesized into the Malcolm who became the spokesman for the Nation of Islam. 99 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You were born in Omaha, is that right? 100 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Yes sir 101 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And you left, your familiy left Omaha when you were about one year old? 102 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I imagine about a year old. 103 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Why did they leave Omaha? 104 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Well, to my understanding, the Ku Klux Klan burned down one of their homes in Omaha 105 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 There's a lot of Ku Klux Klan 106 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They made your family feel very unhappy, I'm sure. 107 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Well, insecure, if not unhappy. 108 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So you must have a somewhat prejudiced point of view, 109 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 a personally prejudiced point of view 110 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I mean you cannot look at this in a broad, academic sort of way, really, can you? 111 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I think that's incorrect, because despite the fact that that happened in Omaha 112 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and then when we moved to Lansing, Michigan,our home was burned down again 113 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 in fact my father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, 114 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and despite all of that, no one was more thoroughly integrated with whites than I 115 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 No one has lived more so in the society of whites than I. 116 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We were the only black children in the neighborhood 117 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 but on the back of our property we had a wooded area, 118 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 so the white kids would all come over to our house and they'd go back and play in the woods. 119 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So Malcolm would say "Well let's go play Robin Hood" 120 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Well, so we'd go back there to play Robin Wood 121 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Robin Hood was Malcolm. 122 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and these white kids would go along with it. 123 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Malcolm said he was the lightest skinned of the seven children born to Earl and Louise Little, 124 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 a reminder, he said, of the white man who had raped his mother's mother. 125 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In 1929, when Malcolm was four years old, his father, a carpenter and preacher, 126 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 moved the family to Lansing, Michigan. 127 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Lansing was a small town and the west side was the side of town that blacks lived on. 128 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Malcolm and his family lived outside of the city 129 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and they had a four-acre parcel with a small house on it, 130 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 so they were sort of considered as farmers. 131 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Three months after the Littles moved in, white neighbors took legal action to evict them. 132 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 A county judge ruled that the farm property was restricted to whites only. 133 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But Earl Little refused to move. 134 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Here in Michigan, Ku Klux Klan membership was at least 70,000, five times more than in Mississippi. 135 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 For Malcolm's family, white hostility was a fact of life. 136 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Everybody was asleep in our house and all of a sudden, we heard a big boom. 137 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And when we woke up, fire was everywhere and everybody was running into the walls and into each other, you know. 138 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Well, what I recall about that was my mother telling us to, 139 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 "Get up, get up, get up, the house is on fire," and to get out. That's what I actually recall. 140 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I could hear my mother yelling, I hear my father yelling. 141 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And so they made sure they got us all rounded up and got us out. 142 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The house burned down to the ground. No firewagon came, nothing, and we were burned out. 143 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Malcolm's father, Earl Little, accused local whites of setting the fire. 144 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The police accused Earl and arrested him on suspicion of arson. The charges were later dropped. 145 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In the city where we grew up, whites could refer to us as "those uppity niggers," or, 146 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 "those smart niggers that live out south of town." 147 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In those days, whenever a white person referred to you as a "smart nigger," that was their way of saying, "This is a nigger you have to watch because he's not dumb." 148 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 My father was independent. He didn't want anybody to feed him. 149 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He wanted to raise his own food. He didn't want anybody to exercise authority over his children. 150 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He wanted to exercise the authority, and he did. 151 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 He was always speaking in terms of Marcus Garvey's way of thinking and trying to get black people to organize themselves, 152 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 not to cause any trouble, but just to do, to work in unit with each other 153 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 toward improving their conditions. 154 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But in those days if you did that, you were still considered a troublemaker. 155 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In the 1920's Marcus Garvey, 156 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 a black nationalist, preached that black Americans should build a nation independent of white society. 157 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 With membership in the hundreds of thousands, Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association sought closer ties with African countries. 158 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The UNIA had its own flag, its own national anthem and an African legion pledged to defend black people at home and abroad. 159 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The U.S. Bureau of Investigation labeled Garvey, "one of the prominent Negro agitators." 160 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The federal government deported him in 1927, but Malcolm's parents remained Garveyites. 161 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Earl recruited new members. 162 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Louise wrote for the Garvey newspaper. 163 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 My mother is the one who would read to us the Garvey paper, which was called The Negro World. 164 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and she also would talk to us about ourselves as being independent. 165 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We shouldn't be calling ourself "Negroes," or "niggers" and that we were black people 166 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and that we should be proud to call ourself black people. 167 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 What is your real name? 168 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Malcolm. Malcolm X. 169 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Is that your legal name? 170 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 As far as I'm concerned, it's my legal name. 171 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Would you mind telling me what your father's last name was? 172 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 My father didn't know his last name. 173 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 My father got his last name from his grandfather and his grandfather got it from his grandfather who got it from the slavemaster. 174 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The real names of our people were destroyed 175 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Well, was there any 176 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 during slavery. 177 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Was there any line, any point in the genealogy of your family when you did have to use a last name and if so, what was it? 178 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The last name of my forefathers 179 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Yes? 180 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 was taken from them when they were brought to America and made slaves, 181 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and then the name of the slavemaster was given, which we refuse, we reject that name today and refuse to 182 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 You mean, you won't even tell me what your father's supposed last name was or gifted last name was? 183 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I never acknowledge it whatsoever. 184 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 September 1931 185 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Malcolm was six years old when his mother had a premonition. 186 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We were all at the house and we had dinner, supper together. 187 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And my mother was holding Wesley, who was my youngest brother. 188 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And she may have been nursing him, 'cause she was at the table, and she fell asleep, 189 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 nursing, holding the baby. 190 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And my father had gotten up and went in the bedroom to clean up and to go down and collect money. 191 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And she woke up and she said, "Earl, Earl, don't go downtown." 192 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 She says, "If you go, you won't come back." 193 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That night around 11 o'clock, Earl Little was found in an isolated area outside Lansing, 194 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 his body almost cut in two by the wheels of a streetcar. 195 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The police reported Earl Little's death an accident.