The Autobiography of Malcolm X is the autobiographical book of the African American Islamic spiritual leader, revolutionary and civil rights activist Malcolm Ix, written with the assistance of journalist Alex Haley and published in 1965. Hayley wrote the autobiography based on a series of interviews between 1963 and 1965 when Malcolm X was killed. The epilogue of the book was written after the murder, in which Haley described the process of their collaboration and events at the end of Malcolm X’s life. In 1998, Time magazine included Malcolm X’s Autobiography as one of ten documentary books that must be read. The book was adapted for the film by James Baldwin and Arnold Pearl. Their script was the basis of the movie “Malcolm X “directed by Spike Lee in 1992.
The hero of this book is Malcolm X. Many of our compatriots, or rather tell the majority, this name does not say anything. Who is he? To summarize in a few words, Malcolm X is a clear progressive contender for the African-American national freedom development of the 60s of the twentieth century. He was the focal figure in the good and ideological development of the African-American country. Malcolm X looked to change America’s nebulous, discouraged, frail and faceless mass of “negroes” into an undeniable, glad and independent individuals.
As a matter of first importance, he is a religious figure, and, not at all like the Rev. Martin Luther King, is he a Muslim religious figure. Today, according to the aesthetics established by the will of the West, this is not comme Iksa fault. However, if he was just a Muslim preacher as such, it is unlikely that his name would ever become a symbol of revolutionary resistance to the oppressors, a symbol almost as international as the name of Chef Guevara. This symbol – Malcolm X – inspires not only Africans and Muslims. Graffiti with its image can be found on the walls of the houses of Palestine and Lebanon, where Muslims and Christians have been fighting for several decades against the Zionist invaders, and in the Catholic neighborhoods of Ulster, where whites before the veins of the Irish Catholics, for centuries, have been subjected to the same racial oppression as black Americans, see Malcolm Ix is one of her heroes.
No, Malcolm was not only a Muslim minister. He was a minister of the Revolution – moral, mental, social and social. He was the encapsulation of progressive religiosity. A religious revolutionary can be, professing any religion. For example, one of the founders of the famous “Theology of Liberation” Padre Camilo Torres died in the jungles of Colombia, fighting in arms for the ideals of social justice.
The life path of Malcolm is amazing and symbolic. His example does not cease to inspire millions of people, not only in his country. Growing up in the Negro ghetto Malcolm little in his youth was involved in the world of crime, was a drug addict. Having fallen in the winter of 1946 for burglary in the prison of Norfolk, he gradually falls under the influence of the harsh moral standards of the African-American religious-nationalist movement “Nation of Islam” (“black Muslims”). Malcolm begins to create in himself a new personality, possessing an iron will, an indomitable force, tremendous magnetism. He actively supports revolutionary anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist revolutionary movements in third world countries, turns out to be the only American politician who met with Fidel Castro in the United States. At the same time, Malcolm X relentlessly struggled to build an African-American nation, calling for the moral correction of the African-American community, the elimination of vices, the growth of political and social consciousness and national solidarity. On February 21, 1965, a tragic death interrupted the further ideological growth and political activity of the great African American leader.
Until recently – the time of wide and accessible distribution of our Internet – the name of Malcolm X was known in our country almost to units. American publicism in its numerous publications on life in the US, invariably touching on the issue of the situation of Negroes in America, which was vulnerable to the enemy, and the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s almost always ignored this charismatic leader of the oppressed people of America. They wrote about Martin Luther King, but not about Malcolm Ix. Only in rare publications was talked about him – and even more, rarely said about him in a positive tone.
Such references include a chapter from the book by S. Losev and V. Petrusenko “US: destruction operations,” which is called “The Life and Death of Malcolm X.” He also sympathetically wrote about him in his book of essays on America, Malor Sturua, in the chapter “The Autogen Blade,” describing Malcolm’s speech at the London School of Economics in the winter of 1965. True, while the author freely changed many fragments of this speech.
In general, American journalism, if it wrote about Malcolm Iks and the movement of black Muslims, “The Nation of Islam,” assessed them and their activities from negative positions, dedicating the praises to Martin Luther King, with his Tolstoy ideas of non-resistance to evil by force, with his dreams of a future racial harmony in America. In the same way, ideological opponents of American publicists behaved like official American propaganda and related figures. They also negatively highlighted the work of Malcolm X as a “black racist” and “apostle of violence,” while singing the Monk King as a preacher of peace and love. Why did such a similarity of assessments of the activities of the great African American leader, the true leader of the African American Revolution of the 60s and 70s of the XX century?
On the one hand, the Khrushchev-Brezhnev partymnological satiety socialism already organically could not perceive and digest such a radically bright phenomenon as Malcolm X was. He did not need radicals, like Che Guevara and Malcolm, but the world’s pigeons, such as Martin Luther King and Salvador Allende. On the other hand, it is quite possible to understand the workers of the American ideological machine – after all, Malcolm X and the “Nation of Islam” was open enemies of America, the American state system, American culture, morality, and ideology. In short, “black Muslims” were (and remain) the most consistent anti-Americanists and anti-Westerners, raising the principles of anti-Westernism, community patriotism, and nationalism to the rank of religious faith.
First, the source in our narrative is the famous “Autobiography of Malcolm Iksa,” written by himself in co-authorship with the African-American writer Alex Haley. A rare book on its influence on the minds of people can be compared with Malcolm’s “Autobiography.” With his utmost sincerity, Malcolm X describes his life as a willful growth of personality, rising from dirt and darkness to a new life, the essence of which was constant self-education and revolutionary service to his people. This book is our main source.
Then follows the memoirs and memoirs of the family and associates his wife Betty Shabbaz, Benjamin 2X (later Benjamin Karim), James 67X (James Shabbaz, now Abdullah Abdur-Razzaq) and other assistants of Malcolm. Also, our sources are the speeches of Malcolm X, his sermons, various interviews and other historical documents. Also, there is a vast literature in America devoted to the study of the life and work of the great African American leader – what can be called malcolmology in analogy with Pushkin studies. Therefore, it is time to acquaint the reader with an unknown and forbidden hero for us, whose very name embodies a violent protest against all forms of slavery and oppression.
Works Cited
Malcolm X (Author). (1992). The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley. (A. Haley, Ed.) (Reissue ed). Ballantine Books.
