Summary—Chapter Seventeen: Mecca
America needs to understand Islam, because
this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem.
See Important Quotations Explained
Malcolm explains that every Muslim must, if possible,
make a pilgrimage, or hajj, to the holy city of
Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Malcolm has no trouble receiving financial
backing from Ella, who has also withdrawn from the Nation of Islam.
When Malcolm applies for a hajj visa, he learns that his status
as a Muslim must be approved by Mahmoud Youssef Shawarbi, a Muslim
United Nations advisor.
Malcolm leaves the United States and goes to see sights
in Cairo. He then flies to Jedda, Saudi Arabia, where officials
confiscate his passport and tell him a high court must establish
whether or not he is a true Muslim. Officials send him to a crowded
airport dormitory, where he reflects on the various languages, colors,
and customs of the Muslims around him. Malcolm calls Omar Azzam,
a friend of Shawarbi’s, for help. Azzam vacates his father’s suite
at the Jedda Palace Hotel for Malcolm. This hospitality
impresses Malcolm, who enjoys fine food and conversation with Jedda’s
elite and is lent a car by Saudi Arabia’s Prince Faisal himself
to make the hajj to Mecca.
Malcolm describes his sense of wonder at Mecca. During
his visit, he admires the Islamic world’s lack of racial divisions.
At the end of the hajj, Malcolm writes letters home that express
his changed perspective on racial problems in the United States.
Having met white-skinned people who are untainted by racism, Malcolm now
locates America’s problems in the white attitude generated by four
hundred years of collective violence against blacks. He sees Islam
as a solution to America’s problems. Malcolm signs all of his letters
“El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz,” which becomes his official name, although
the world continues to refer to him as Malcolm X.
Summary—Chapter Eighteen: “El-Hajj Malik
El-Shabazz”
The American Negro has been entirely
brainwashed from ever seeing or thinking of himself, as he should,
as a part of the nonwhite peoples of the world.
See Important Quotations Explained
Malcolm learns that leaders and intellectuals of nonwhite
nations are interested in the plight of American blacks. Malcolm
flies to Lebanon, where he is warmly received. In Ghana, a high
commissioner gives Malcolm ceremonial robes. Malcolm then visits
Liberia, Senegal, and Morocco before returning home. In New York,
reporters besiege him with questions that imply a connection between
him and race riots erupting across the country. The press’s failure
to acknowledge Malcolm’s new outlook frustrates him.
Summary—Chapter Nineteen: “1965”
I’m for truth, no matter who tells it.
I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against.
See Important Quotations Explained
In Harlem Malcolm holds meetings for a new organization,
the Organization for Afro-American Unity. He emphasizes its inclusiveness
of people of any faith, though it excludes whites from membership.
Malcolm believes that whites should change their own communities
in separate organizations and that black people must unify before
they band together with whites to fight racism. Malcolm returns
to Africa and the Middle East for another eighteen weeks, meeting
with many world leaders. He confesses to feeling stifled in his
new endeavors by his reputation. He predicts that he will die a
violent death, doubting that he will live to see the publication of
his autobiography.
Analysis—Chapters Seventeen, Eighteen & Nineteen
Malcolm’s articulation of a new vision for black Americans,
urging them to see themselves as one of a number of nonwhite minorities seeking
justice worldwide, shows how his openness to new experiences allows
him to develop philosophies that greatly contrast with those he
espoused previously. His visits to several African nations that
have recently won their independence from European colonial powers,
as well as to socialist Egypt and anti-imperialist India, inspire
his vision of a worldwide context for the civil rights movement.
Instead of resisting the differences between their version of Islam
and his own, he thoughtfully considers how their philosophy can
be applied to blacks in America. Malcolm’s intention to bring the
United States in front of a U.N. tribunal on the charges of mass human
rights violations demonstrates the extent of his commitment to a
new kind of Islam.
Though Malcolm first espouses a worldwide view of racial oppression
in this chapter, earlier sections of the autobiography hint that
Malcolm will eventually relate the struggle of blacks in America to
the struggles of other oppressed groups. For example, while describing
his first impressions of New York City in Chapter Five, “Harlemite,”
Malcolm traces the history of the Harlem ghetto as a place where
minority racial groups have confined themselves. In seeing blacks
as part of a series of American immigrant groups’ struggle to escape
the ghetto, Malcolm relates racism against blacks to bias against
Germans, Italians, Jews, and the Dutch. But Malcolm feels that prejudice
against blacks, while similar to the prejudices against these other
groups, is more deep-rooted and more difficult to remedy. He aligns
the struggle of American blacks with the struggle of minorities
in other countries because he believes that the political and economical
problems of American blacks are more similar to the problems of
blacks in other parts of the world than to those of other groups
in America. Though ethnic minorities in America have had to fight
prejudice, they have not suffered the same degree of oppression
and subjugation as the many black peoples whom whites reduced to
slavery.
The great change that Malcolm undergoes at the
end of the autobiography parallels the change that he earlier undergoes
in prison. In both cases, he abandons his radical views on race
and broadens his perspective. His time in prison, during which he
educates himself and converts to Islam, shows him the need to bring
the struggle for equality to the black masses. After his release
from prison, he no longer wants to get by for himself; rather, he
wants blacks to unify and fight for their due as a people. Similarly,
his time in the Middle East exposes him to new points of view and
offers him new insight into how to resolve racial tensions. For
example, during his pilgrimage to Mecca and his subsequent stops
in the Middle East, Malcolm witnesses the “colorblindness” of the
Islamic world. This colorblindness refers to a model of racial integration
that Malcolm actively resists earlier. Seeing its effectiveness
in another environment, however, changes Malcolm’s attitude toward
it. He emerges from his travels convinced that oppressed nonwhite
groups throughout the world must unite to eliminate white oppression
altogether. In both cases, Malcolm’s openness to the wisdom around
him helps him develop a more mature outlook. His constant growth
as a person shows that he is not a mere angry revolutionary who
wants vengeance against whites but a leader sincerely interested
in achieving racial harmony.
