Next Week & More Lecture Notes on the Autobiography

Next Week: I'll be reading your journal entries over the weekend and should have them back to you on Tuesday. As I mentioned yesterday, be thinking about the film and your responses to the questions I want you to address in the family activity I described in a 2/20 post on this blog. I will give you some time next Tuesday to discuss this in class with your family members. You need to come to some consensus about your responses. On Tuesday 3/11 we will set aside some class time to hear from each of the families, and I also want each family to turn in a summary of your findings (which can be handwritten).

You should also be working on Essay I which I handed out yesterday. And remember, I want each of you to make a clear choice of which of Malcolm's conversions you believe was most significant and why.

I believe we are going to try to see "Malcolm X: Make It Plain" next Thursday, 3/6. This is one of the finest film biographies of anyone I have ever seen and it would be a fitting way to wrap up the Autobiography (which we should wrap up on Tuesday). Unfortunately, it is long (though not nearly as long as Spike Lee's movie) -- I believe 2 hrs and 15 minutes -- and I believe it is best seen as a whole. I hope most of you can stay the additional time (we should be able to wrap up by 5PM). I know a couple people will be absent, but you can see it on your own. It is the library's copy and in VHS format. If you don't have a VHS tape player, there is a room in the library where you can see it. Need to ask at the Circulation Desk. We can talk about this on Tuesday.

Below are some more lecture notes on the Autobiography. These should be the last ones I'll have to post. As you finish reading the Autobiography, make sure to read Alex Haley's Epilogue and Ossie Davis' "On Malcolm X."

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Chapter Eighteen: El Hajj Malik El Shabazz

A. Malcolm has an audience with Prince Faisal of Saudi Arabia. There is still the excitement about the "Muslim from America" (often mistaken for Muhammad Ali). Malcolm felt at a loss not knowing Arabic. Prince Faisal tells Malcolm bluntly that the American Black Muslims "have the wrong Islam." (p. 354)

B. Malcolm begins to think in more international terms -- says American power structure does not want Negroes to think internationally. Malcolm feels there is real concern abroad for the plight of Afro-Americans. He goes on to note that black leaders need to expand their vision: " I think the single worst mistake of the American black organizations, and their leaders, is that they have failed to establish direct brotherhood lines of communication between the independent nations of Africa and the American black people. Why, every day, the black African heads of state should be receiving direct accounts of the latest developments in the American black man's struggles -- instead of the U.S. State Department's releases to Africans which always imply that the American black man's struggle is being 'solved.'" (p. 353)

C. Malcolm makes an interesting comment (middle of p. 355) about how the lifestyles of women reflect the values of a culture.

D. Malcolm is also deeply impressed by the warm, down-to-earth, uninhibited reception he got from Africans. Nigerian Muslims even give him another name --"OMOWHALE" which means, "the son who has returned" (p. 357) In Nigeria, he seeks to counter the U.S. Information Agency propaganda that the American civil rights problem is being solved. Ghana receives him with open arms -- in particular a little expatriate colony of Afro-Americans, among them is Maya Angelou and the widow of W.E.B. DuBois. (p. 359) Malcolm regards his highest honor to be an audience with the leader of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

1. He also recounts an awkward encounter with Muhammad Ali who had chosen to stay with the NOI.

E. Malcolm comes back to America to face the U.S. press in NYC, most of whom asked questions about the racial violence in Harlem, as if he was somehow to blame. They did not want to hear of his plan to bring the issue of human rights in the case of Afro-Americans to the United Nations.

1. He acknowledges changes in his views of whites, yet he fairly argues that racism is so deeply engrained in the white consciousness that whites are not even aware of it. (see bottom p. 369 - 370)


That brings us up to Chapter Nineteen: 1965, where we will begin on Tuesday.