Malcolm X: Make It Plain (Full PBS Documentary)

The 1994 PBS documentary on the life of Malcolm X

Who taught you to hate the color of your skin?

Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair?

Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose? And the shape of your lips?

Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?

Who taught you to hate your own kind?

Who taught you to hate the race you belong to?

So much so that you don't want to be around each other.

Befor you come asking Mr. Muhammed, does he teach hate you should ask yourself who taught you to hate being what god made you.

Most of us blacks, or negroes as they call us really thought we were free.

Without being aware that in our subconscious all those change we thought we had ??? was still there.

And there were many ways where what really motivated us was our desire to be loved by the white man.

Malcolm meant to ??? that sense of inferiority.

He knew it would be painful. He knew that people would kill you because of it.

But he dared to take that risk.

He was saying something over and above than of any other leader of that day,

While the other leaders were begging for entry into the house of their oppressor he was telling you to build your own house.

He expelled fear for african americans. He said: "I'll speak out loud what you've been thinking."

And he said: "You'll see. People will hear and they won't do anything to us necessarily. Okay.

"But I will not speak it for the masses of people."

But he said it in a very strong fashion. ???

in a fashion that said: "I am not afraid to say what you've been thinking all these years."

That's why we loved him. He said it out loud. Not behind closed doors.

He took on America for us.

And I, for one, as a muslim belief the white man is intelligent enough.

If he were made to realize how black people really feel and how fed up we are without all that compromising sweet-talk.

??? you the one that makes it hard for himself.

The white man beliefs you when you go to him with all that sweet talk, because you've been sweet talking

ever since he brought you here. Stop sweet talking.

Tell him how you feel. Tell him how what kind of hell you been catching ??? and let him know that if he's not ready

to clean his house up. He shouldn't have a house. It should catch ??? on fire and burn down.

On these harlem street corners, for most of the century, black people had celebrated their culture

and argued the question of race in america.

It was here that Malcolm first joined the street orders who gave voice to harlems hope and its anger.

I fought ???. And that means that I ?? this white man's country, because integration

will never happen.

You'll never as long as you live integrate into the white man's system.

125th Str. and 7th Ave. was the center of activity among the black street artists ??.

When Malcolm arrived, technically he had no corner.

So he established his base you might say in front of ??? bookstore.

When Malcolm would ascend the little platform he couldn't talk for the first four or five minutes.

The people would be making such a ??? shout to him. And he was standing, taking his due.

And then he would open his mouth.

They call Mr. Muhammed a hate teacher. Because he makes you hate dope and alcohol.

They call Mr. Muhammed a black surpremacist, because he teaches you and me not only that

we are as good as the white man, but better than the white man.

You are better than the white man.

And that's not saying anything. You don't ?? to be equal to him. Who is he to be equal with?

Look as his skin. You can't compare your skin with his skin, while your skin looks like gold beside his skin.

There was a time when we used to drool in the mouth over white people.

We thought that they ??? and that we were ??? We were dumb.

We couldn't see them as they are.

Since the honorable Elijah Muhammed has come and taught us the religion of islam ?? clean us up

and ?? so we can see for ourselves. Now we can see ?? pale things to look exactly as we look.

Nothing but an old pale thing/face ??

I came away from that rally feeling that with him, once you heard him speak you never went back

to where you were before. Even if you kept your position you had to re-think it.

We weren't accustomed of being told that we were devils and that we were oppressors up here in our northern ???

He was speaking for a silent mass of black people.

And saying it out front on the devils own airwaves.

And that was an acto of war.

When he came off the stage I jumped off the ???, walked up to him

and of course when I got to him the Bodyguards moved in front.

And he just pushed them away and I went in front of him, extended my hand

and said: "I like some of what you said. I didn't agree with all what you said, but

I liked some of what you said."

He looked at me, held my hand in a very gentle fasion and said: "One day you will, siter". And he smiled.

To make his message clear, Malcolm used his own life as a lesson to all black americans.

He preched it in fables and parables. And later in writing his autobiography with Alex Haley,

he sought some control in how his life would be interpreted in the future.

I would be rather ??? taken by a statement that he made of himself.

He would say: "I am a part of all I admit." And by that he meant that all the things

he had done in his earlier life had exposed him to things, that taught him skills of ???

...all of which had synthesized ??? into the Malcolm who became the spokesman for the

Nation of Islam.

You were born in Omaha, is that right? - Yes sir.

And your family left Omaha when you were about one year old? ???

I imagine about a year old.

Why did they leave Omaha? - To my understanding the Ku Klux Klan burned down one of their homes in Omaha.

This made your family very unhappy I'm sure. - Well, insecure if not unhappy.

So you must have a somewhat prejudiced POV, a personally prejudiced POV.

You cannot look at this in a broad academic sort of way. - I think this ain't correct.

Because despite the fact that that happened in Ohama and then when we moved to

Lansing, Michigan our home was burned down again. My father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan.

And despite all of that no one was more thoroughly integrated with whites than I.

No one had lived more so in the society with whites than I.

We were the only black children in the neighbourhood.

On the back of our property we had a wooded area.

So the white kids would all come to our house and they'd go back and play in the woods.

So Malcolm would say: "Let's go play Robin Hood." So we would go back there and play

Robin Hood and Robin Hood was Malcolm.

And these white kids ???.

Malcolm said he was the lightest skinned of the seven children born to Earl and Louis Little.

A reminder, he said, of the white man who had raped his mothers mother.

In 1929, when Malcolm was 4 years old his father, a carpenter and preacher moved the family

to Lansing Michigan.

Lansing was a small town and the west side was the side of town the blacks lived on.

Malcolm and his family lived outside of the city.

And they had a four acre parcel with a small house on it.

So they were sort of considered as farmers.

Three months after the Littles moved in white neighbours took legal action to evict them.

A county judge ruled that the farm property was restricted to whites only.

But Earl Little refused to move.

Here in Michigan, Klu Klux Klan Membership was at least 7.000.

Five times more than in Mississippi.

For Malcolms family white hostility was a fact of life.

Everybody was asleep in our house and all of a sudden we heard a big boom.

And when we woke up fire was everywhere.

And everybody was running into the walls and into each other, you know?

What I recall about that was my mother telling us: "Get up, get up, get up! The house is on fire! Get out!"

That's what I actually recall.

I could hear my mother yelling, I could hear my father yelling.

And so they made sure they got us all rounded up and got us out.

The house burned down to the ground. No fire wagon came. Nothing. We were burned out.

Malcolms father Earl Little accused local whites of setting the fire. The police accuse Earl and

arrested him on suspicion on arson. The charges were later dropped.

In the city where we grew up whites would refer to us as "Those uppity Niggers" or

"Those smart Niggers who live outside of town."

In those days whenever a white person refered to you as a "Smart Nigger" that was their way

of saying a "Nigger you have to watch" because he's not dumb.

My father was independent. He didn't want anybody to feed him.

He wanted to raise his own food. He didn't want anybody to exercise authority over his children.

He wanted to exercise the authority and he did.

He was always speaking in terms of Marcus Garvey's way of thinking and trying to get black

people to organize themselves. Not to cause any trouble but just to work in unity with each other

toward improving their conditions.

But in those days if you did that you were still considered a trouble maker.

In the 1920's Marcus Garvey, a black nationalist preached that black americans should build a nation

independent of white society.

With memberships in the hundreds of thousands Garvey's "Universal Negro Improvement

Association" sought closer ties with african countries.

The UNIA had its own flag, its own National Anthem and and african legioun pledged to

defend black people at home and abroad.

The US Bureau of Investigation labeled Garvey one of the prominent Negro agitators.

The federal government deported him in 1927 but Malcolm's parents remained Garvey-ans.

Earl recruited new members, Louise wrote for the Garvey newspaper.

My mother was the one who would read to us the Garvey paper which was called "The Negro world".

And she also would talk to us about ourselves being independent ???.

We shouldn't be calling ourselves Negros or Niggers and that we were black people.

That we should be proud to call ourselves black people.

What is your real name? - Maclolm X.
Is that your legal name? - As far as I'm

concerned it is my legal name.

Would you mind telling me what your fathers last name was=

My father didn't know his last name. My father got his last name from his grandfather and his

grandfather got it from his grandfather who got it from the slave master.

The real names of our people were destroyed during slavery - Was there any line, any point

in the genealogy of your family when you did have to use the last name, and if so, what was it?

The last name of my forefathers was taken from them when they were brought to America

and made slaves and then the name of their slavemaster was given which we refuse. We reject

that name today... -
You mean you won't even tell me what your fathers

supposed last name was or gifted last name was?

I never acknowledge it whatsoever.

September 1931. Malcolm was six years old when his mother had a premonition.

We were all in the house and had dinner, supper together.

And my mother was holding Wesley, who was my youngest brother.

And she ??? nursing him 'cause when she fell asleep nursing, holding the baby ???

My father had gotten up and went into the bedroom ??? to clean up and to go down

and collect money.

And she woke up and she said: "Earl, don't go downtown! If you go you won't come back."

That night around 11 o'clock Earl Little was found in an isolated area outside Lansing.

His body almost cut in to by the wheels of a streetcar.

The police reported Earl Littles death an accident.

There was a cloud over that whole issue, because at that time there was perceive that rather

than an accident with a streetcar that Rev. Little had really been pushed under the wheels of

the streetcar. As a matter of fact I remember hearing just that language, that he was probably pushed.

under the wheels of that street car.

My fathers death caused great, great shock in the family, because he was the power. He was the strenght.

We were an organized and structured family. When we got out of school, me and my brothers

and sisters we'd come right home and go to work.

In the garden, clean the chicken shed and get ready for the night.

And get up in the morning and all of this. We'd pump the water and bring in the house.

This was ??? dad was alive. Because to not do this brought the consequences of a whipping.

So we were disciplined.

And than after my father got killed and my mothers inability to run as fast as I could run

or Malcolm enabled us to get away with a lot of things we wouldn't even have tried get away with.

So we got looser and looser.

Louise Little struggled to raise her seven children through the years of gread depression.

She was reduced to where shehad no income. She tried get jobs ???

She was a proud lady. She had a lot of pride.

She sold. She ?? people. She did alot of things not to be dependent sorely on welfare.

She didn't like them telling her but she could ???

And this is one of the main things that devestated her more than anything else.

As time whent by you could see she was wearing down.

For seven years as Malcolm grew into adolescents his mother slowly withdrew from her family.

Two days vefore christmas 1938, Louise Little was diagonosed as paranoid and was sent to

Kalamazoo State Hospital.

When I came home from school one day and she wasn't there. I can remember feeling empty

'cause my mother would never left us. ???

And I felt the pain of her being gone everyday and it was only gonna be a couple of weeks.

She was gonna get better and come right back home. And it turned into years.

Louise Little would remain in Kalamazoo for the next 26 years.

The 13 year old Malcolm watched as the court split up his family.

Assigning the younger children to foster homes in Lansing and sending him to a white community

ten miles away.

In the past the greatest weapon the white man has had has been his ability to devide and

conquer.

When I take my hand and slap you, you don't even feel it. It might sting you because this digits are seperated.

But all I have to do to put you back in your place is bring those digits together.

He was a man who in the eight grade in Michigan, a school where I think he was the only black

in his class and one of the very few in the school have been an outstanding straight A student.

You know who had been incited ??? president of his class.

And all the others were white in the eight grade and obviously he had to be exceptional to

be those things.

And then you had the Malcolm who had left school and who had gone to Roxbury, Massachusetts

where he had gotten his first exposure to what might loosely ??? be told hustling.

I called myself a little Hustler up in Roxbury in those days.

And this particular day ??? Malcolm X had come into Buscity???, had on his zoot suit with the wide

??? had with the long 3/4 lenght coat ?? with the chain that went down to your ankles.

The last time I recall, Cab Calloway used that outfit for his stage uniform.

When Malcolm left Lansing he had nothing but an old square suit on. White man suit as I call it.

When he came back from Boston, oh Lord, Malcolm had a zoot suit on him and a wide brim hat with

a chain from his hat down to his lapel. He was the top of the town. Everybody was talking

about Malcolm.

When he was dancing on the floor, and he was floating around those pants ??? like he was a floating balloon.

And that coat was like a wing. The way he'd be dancing ??? flying around with that big ???.

And this used to really shake up the girls.

In Boston they called him "New York Red" in New York they called him "Detroid Red".

?????????

And he had pictures of him and Billy Holiday and all these people of that time out there.

Who were just being made known to the rest of the black world.

Malcolm works the kitchen crew on the New Haven Railroad between Boston, New York

and Washington DC.

In 1942 he moved to Harlem and at age 17 began travelling in a world of ??? after hour clubs and small time hustlers.

He had reached a point at where he said: "You'll never make it on this janitory jobs and selling

sandwiches on these trains and shining shoes and stuff like that. You never will get anywhere."

He had the reputation of being a hustler.

That he was a street person but he was a hustler.

He was a con man.????

When the white folks ??? came out at night and they wanted black women, he could arrange for

them to get them. If they wanted bootleg-whiskey he knew where to get it. If they wanted drugs he knew where to get it.

He made it possilbe. He knew what they wanted and he knew where to get it and he would be

in the middle where he could make a profit off of it. And this is the way he started doing it.

Looking back at that time, Malcolm said: "Only three things worried him.

Jail, a job and the army.

To avoid derving in WW2 he told his draft board that he wanted to organize black soldiers to

kill whites.

He was judged unfit for the military.

Malcolms gambling and drugs and Harlems night life were expensive.

He had already been arrested twice for petty crimes.

When he moved back to Austin back in 1945 he organized a gang to burglurise homes of prominent families.

The other gang members included his friend Malcolm Jarvis, his white girlfriend B. and

two other white women.

This girl knew that these people were down to Florida that time of the year. There was nobody

home, so we broke into the house and we'd get some of their valuables and Malcolm would take

most of the stuff and pawn it and get money for his gambling habit.

After two weeks of doing this that's when the case broke ??? when he made the mistake of going to

the pawn shop to retrieve a watch with over a thousand dollars that came out of one of

the houses. That's when he was arrested by three police men.

Malcolm Little, Malcolm Jarvis and the three women were charged with breaking and entering.

The fact that two black men were with white women becaome an issue in the court.

Malcolm was definitely involved with two white women and this is what made the case so

powerful. So outrages.

The women testified that Malcolm had forced them to participate in the burglaries.

The two men received the maximum sentence. 8-10 years in state prison.

When they said the ??? I went out of my mind. I reached up and grabbed the bars of the cage and

I shook then almost right up off the ??? and I hollered at the judge. I said to him: "You might as

well kill me as give me ten years in jail.

Well, I was a ??? mad negro. I was one.

And I knew what I saw was real. I don't know if ??? there was anything funny about it. ???

I knew that when they laughed all together they were laughing: "Look what we did. We do'd it ???

??? Negro.