The Autobiography of Malcolm X p 179 - 318

Once Malcolm gets out of prison, he begins to meet personally with Elijah Muhammad, and eventually becomes one of his ministers. As a minister for the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X makes speaking arrangements across the country and later opens his own mosque in Harlem. The paraphrased speechs are some of the most interesting passages in the book. Malcolm X speaks very harshly about the white power structure that has kept black people an underprivelidged minority for 400 years. He points out that black people have been in North America longer than English colonists and other European immigrants, yet they have stayed at the bottom.

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Malcolm X is probably more critical of black people who seek integration with the white people more than the white people themselves. He sees these people as a much bigger problem, and he constantly chides them for being so complacent and gullible to think that the white power structure will ever give them anything.

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One part that will always stick out to me is his criticism of the 1963 march on Washington that Malcolm calls the Farce on Washington. As he explains, black people had been talking of marching on Washington for years and years before it happened, but this march was not going to be very civil. As originally planned, but not well-organized, black people were talking of marching on Washington to make specific demands of the government and show how angry they were with the way they have been treated. As Malcolm X explains, the US government began making huge contributions to the rally that also came with some of their suggestions, which eventually watered down the march to a picnic. Malcolm X is very critical of the middle-class blacks that were at the rally to make a scene -- showing off for the white people, he says. He goes further to criticize Martin Luther King Jr. among others for allowing this to happen.

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Malcolm serves as a minister for the Nation of Islam for twelve years before he begins to hear rumors about Elijah Muhammad's sexual misconduct. Any other Muslim would have been excommunicated for doing what Elijah Muhammad had done, yet Malcolm X tries to find ways to rationalize and excuse Elijah Muhammad's actions. Malcolm X's stature in the Nation of Islam was already making Elijah Muhammad jealous, and when it reaches the point that his sexual misconduct is reaching the mass of Black Muslims, he uses some comments Malcolm X made about the assassination of John Kennedy to suspend him from the Nation of Islam.

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Malcolm X heres of the first orders for his death while hanging out in Miami with Cassius Clay.