92 pages • 3 hours read
Malcolm X, Alex HaleyThe Autobiography of Malcolm X
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1965A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapter 19-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary: “1965”
Malcolm knows the futility of his efforts to convince Black Americans to view their hardship as an international human rights problem worthy of the United Nations. He writes, “The American white man has so thoroughly brainwashed the black man to see himself as only a domestic ‘civil rights’ problem” (419). Moreover, Malcolm admits that Christianity is too entrenched in Black communities for millions of Black men and women to follow him into Islam.
In 1965, Malcolm continues to be blamed for what is widely described as 1964’s “long, hot summer” (421) of racial unrest. His response to these accusations is logical: Given the disproportionate unemployment rates, education quality, and housing access afflicting Black communities, “[i]t takes no one to stir up the sociological dynamite” (421). Malcolm denies being a proponent of violence, calling himself instead a proponent of justice. Still, he argues that if laws fail to ensure justice for Black Americans, then they must use arms to protect and defend themselves: If the philosophy of nonviolence requires individuals to accept brutality without defending themselves, then it is a criminal philosophy. Malcolm still dismisses integration as a “desegregated cup of coffee” (426) in recompense for centuries of violence and oppression. Finally, he acknowledges that while White Americans are not inherently racist, White American society is.
Malcolm discusses his thoughts on the 1964 presidential campaign between President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, and his Republican challenger Barry Goldwater. While the openly racist Goldwater is a wolf, Johnson is a fox—sly enough to make Black Americans think he is a friend, even after he’s half-digested them.
Although Malcolm continues to be a lifelong Muslim, he wants to build a coalition around Black nationalism rather than Islam. He concludes, “[H]ow can there ever be any white-black solidarity before there is first some black solidarity?” (431). While he welcomes the help of sincere Whites, he also believes that the most productive way forward is for Black Americans and White Americans to work separately among their own kind toward a common goal. Whites, he believes, are most effective when working to convince other Whites not to be racist.
Finally, Malcolm addresses his belief that he is living on borrowed time. He is certain that any day, either a White racist or a Nation of Islam member will kill him. In closing, he adds, “And if I can die having brought any light, having exposed any meaningful truth that will help to destroy the racist cancer that is malignant in the body of America—then, all of the credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine” (439).
Epilogue Summary
Alex Haley explains how he came to collaborate with Malcolm on his autobiography. He also shares personal observations that contradict Malcolm’s public image—particularly his Nation of Islam persona. For example, while publicly delivering blanket statements against White Americans, Malcolm privately shares his affection for individual Whites, including New York Times reporter M.S. Handler, whom Malcolm describes as “the most genuinely unprejudiced white man I ever met” (460). Moreover, the evident pleasure Malcolm takes in discussing race and politics with White students makes Haley seriously doubt that his antipathy toward Whites could possibly be all-encompassing. The interviewer also observes Malcolm’s “reluctant admiration” (461) of Dr. Martin Luther King, one of a vanishingly small number of Black Christian ministers whom Malcolm does not actively disdain.
Haley details the final year of Malcolm’s life. As the schism between Malcolm and the Nation of Islam grows, Haley worries that Malcolm will want to revise the book to make it more critical of Mr. Muhammad and his organization. Ultimately, Haley convinces Malcolm to leave the pages as is, since they accurately represent his thoughts on the Nation of Islam in the moment.
Despite having publicly disavowed his hatred of Whites, Malcolm continues to battle a media narrative painting him as a “Black supremacist” hatemonger. Meanwhile, his new group, the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) takes shape. It is non-religious and non-sectarian, accepting all Black men and women. Nevertheless, the organization is proudly Black nationalist, barring entry for all Whites. Malcolm also softens his public attitude toward mainstream civil rights leaders like King and organizations like the NAACP.
Malcolm struggles to get his organization off the ground for two reasons. First, Malcolm continues to face criticism that all he does is talk, while the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and many of King’s acolytes are in the streets enduring beatings and jail time. Second, Malcolm’s views are clearly in a state of flux, leading many to question exactly what he believes. Malcolm later admits this: “I can’t put my finger on exactly what my philosophy is now, but I’m flexible” (492).
Malcolm and his family face serious financial trouble. His income was effectively zero during his time with the Nation of Islam, and now the organization wants to take away his home in Elmhurst, New York. Malcolm ramps up his public rhetoric against Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, which raises the already significant possibility that the group will assassinate him. In early January of 1965, Haley visits Malcolm briefly during a layover in New York. This is the last time Haley sees him alive.
In the middle of the night on Saturday, February 13, an unknown assailant firebombs Malcolm’s home while he, Betty, and their four daughters are asleep. Everyone escapes unharmed, but the house and roughly half of their belongings are destroyed.
Eight days later, on February 21, Malcolm drives to the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights, Manhattan, for an OAAU rally. As Malcolm addresses a 400-person audience, three gunmen emerge from the crowd and shoot him 21 times. By the time Malcolm reaches the hospital a few minutes later, he is already dead. The gunmen are members of the Nation of Islam: Talmadge Hayer, Norman 3X Butler, and Thomas 15X Johnson. Haley points out that questions remain about the police’s possible complicity in the assassination.
Chapter 19-Epilogue Analysis
The shift in tone in Haley’s Epilogue leaves little doubt that the rest of the book is Malcolm’s voice—albeit a voice that Haley guided and structured. Haley even uses the then-common journalistic term “Black Muslims” to describe Nation of Islam members—a term Malcolm hated because it seemed to flatten religion and race into a single construct.
Although Haley writes in the voice of a beat reporter, presenting hard facts in direct sentences, one can sense a profound sense of loss as the writer takes stock of the events leading up to Malcolm’s death. Haley notes the suspicions around possible FBI and NYPD involvement in the assassination. According to a recent New York Times article, questions about the complicity of larger institutional forces went unanswered because, according to civil rights historian David Garrow, “The vast majority of white opinion at that time was that this was black-on-black crime, and perhaps black-extremist-on-black-extremist crime.” (Leland, John. “Who Really Killed Malcolm X?” The New York Times. 6 Feb. 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/nyregion/malcolm-x-assassination-case-reopened.html.)
What’s more interesting to Haley, however, is Malcolm’s increasingly malleable philosophy toward the end of his life. Despite the media’s efforts to paint Malcolm and Martin Luther King as foils—efforts that continue to do this day—their work was far more symbiotic than it appeared. According to King’s wife Coretta Scott, Malcolm was “trying to help. He said he wanted to present an alternative; that it might be easier for whites to accept Martin’s proposals after hearing [Malcolm]” (490). Malcolm and King represented the voices of all Black Americans, with Malcolm speaking for the lower classes and King speaking for the middle and upper classes.
Haley suggests that the way history will view Malcolm is yet to be determined because at the time of his death, despite a lifetime of espousing his positions with absolute conviction, Malcolm’s beliefs were no longer certain. Haley writes, “[Malcolm] said ‘the so-called moderate’ civil-rights organizations avoided him as ‘too militant’ and the ‘so-called militants’ avoided him as ‘too moderate.’ ‘I’m caught in a trap!’” (487).
In a 2011 retrospective, the American author Ta-Nehisi Coates acknowledges Malcolm X’s difficult legacy, citing a flurry of possible interpretations of his life’s arc and pointing out his embrace of both capitalism and communism in the last year of his life. Coates concludes that the most enduring part of Malcolm’s legacy is his emphasis on breaking free from what White supremacist systems tell Black people about themselves, so they can create an identity steeped in Black pride and power:
Virtually all of black America has been, in some shape or form, touched by that rebirth. Before Malcolm X, the very handle we now embrace—black—was an insult. We were coloreds or Negroes, and to call someone “black” was to invite a fistfight. But Malcolm remade the menace inherent in that name into something mystical—Black Power; Black Is Beautiful; It’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand. (Coates, Ta-Nehisi. “The Legacy of Malcolm X.” The Atlantic, May 2011. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/05/the-legacy-of-malcolm-x/308438/.)
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