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.
Chapters 16-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary: “Out”
In 1961, Elijah Muhammad’s respiratory condition worsens. By this point, he is living in Phoenix, Arizona, for its drier climate. The fact that he is too sick to speak at rallies is the first sign to rank-and-file Nation of Islam members that something is seriously wrong with their leader.
Around this same time, Malcolm hears that Elijah Muhammad and some members of his inner circle are speaking ill of Malcolm. They claim that Malcolm wants to take over the organization, even though he mentions “the Honorable Elijah Muhammad” (335) roughly once per minute in each speech. They also claim that Malcolm’s fame has brought him riches, even though he owns virtually no assets aside from his modest house and car. Malcolm’s claims of modest finances are supported by the fact that the I.R.S. has yet to go after him.
In 1962, Malcolm notices that the Muhammad Speaks newspaper he founded mentions him less and less until he is completely absent from its pages. While he does not mind the lack of publicity, he regrets that the paper now fails to report on important events because they happen to involve him.
Around 1963, Malcolm speaks less and less about moral conduct. This is because he discovers that Elijah Muhammad, despite routinely expelling individuals for far less serious infractions, engaged in multiple sexual affairs with Nation of Islam secretaries. In fact, those secretaries were themselves expelled from the organization for becoming pregnant out of wedlock with his children. Malcolm cannot help but recall his brother Reginald’s forced expulsion after engaging in premarital sex. Malcolm confirms the rumors about Elijah Muhammad’s affairs for himself by tracking down the excommunicated women involved—itself a violation of Nation of Islam teachings. They confirm that Elijah Muhammad is the father of their children, and that Elijah Muhammad routinely speaks ill of Malcolm behind his back.
In April 1963, Malcolm flies to Phoenix to confront Elijah Muhammad about the allegations. Elijah Muhammad admits to his improprieties, likening himself to the Biblical David, who committed adultery with Bathsheba, but is better remembered for slaying Goliath.
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy is assassinated. Given the extent to which Kennedy is beloved by the American public, Elijah Muhammad instructs his ministers not to talk about the assassination. But, when a reporter asks Malcolm for his thoughts on the Kennedy assassination, Malcolm replies honestly that it was a case of “the chickens coming home to roost” (347)—that Kennedy’s murder is not surprising because an America that tolerates White violence against Black Americans is an America where Whites will kill their head of state. Malcolm likens Kennedy to Medgar Evers, a Black civil rights activist assassinated earlier in the year.
Yet the media interprets his remarks as if he believes Kennedy deserved to be killed, and the Nation of Islam is all too happy to support that interpretation. Elijah Muhammad prohibits Malcolm from speaking in public for 90 days. Malcolm’s hustler instinct tells him this is a setup, especially after he hears that one of his assistants said, “If you knew what [Malcolm] did, you’d go out and kill him yourself” (349). To Malcolm, the fact that people are talking about his death means that Elijah Muhammad sanctioned it.
With enemies and threats all around him, Malcolm takes a long-awaited vacation with his family to Cassius Clay’s training camp in Miami. As he struggles to make sense of the revelations around Elijah Muhammad and the betrayals, Malcolm concludes, “That was how I first began to realize that I had believed in Mr. Muhammad more than he believed in himself” (353).
Back in New York, a former assistant at Temple Seven is ordered to kill Malcolm with a car bomb. Having seen Malcolm’s loyalty to the Nation of Islam firsthand too many times, he instead reveals his orders to Malcolm. Malcolm is finally “psychologically divorced” (351) from the Nation of Islam. He formulates a plan to build a united Black voting bloc as powerful as any industry lobby in Washington. Although the organization will be based out of a headquarters called Muslim Mosque, Inc., Malcolm will accept Black men and women of all faiths and philosophies—even atheism.
As Malcolm makes ambitious plans for the future, he believes it is only a matter of time before the Nation of Islam kills him. With that in mind, he borrows money from Ella to make the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Mecca”
Malcolm explains that every orthodox Muslim with the means to do so must undertake the Hajj, a pilgrimage to the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Under normal circumstances, Muslims converted in America are prohibited from the Hajj. Yet an exception is made for Malcolm, thanks to a signed letter of approval from Dr. Mahmoud Youssef Shawarbi, the Director of the Federation of Islamic Associations in the United States and Canada.
Malcolm quietly leaves the US and gets to the Jedda Airport outside Mecca. There, a judge doubts the authenticity of his letter and forces him to remain in a cramped airport dormitory until the letter can be authenticated. After days of waiting, Malcolm successfully gets in touch with Abd-al-Rahman Azzam, a close advisor to a Saudi prince whose contact information he received from Dr. Shawarbi. When Azzam’s son Omar arrives to pick up Malcolm and take him to his home, the man’s hospitality and generosity shocks Malcolm. Later, he feels the same way about Abd-al-Rahman Azzam, who opens his palace suite to Malcolm. Malcolm is shocked that such generosity comes from individuals whose complexion is White. Malcolm writes,
It was when I first began to perceive that ‘white man,’ as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. In America, ‘white man’ meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim word, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been (383).
Within a couple days, a judge approves Malcolm’s request to enter Mecca for the Hajj. At the Great Mosque and later on Mount Arafat, Malcolm is profoundly affected by the world community of Muslims, which he sees as a brotherhood that transcends race. He exclaims, “The brotherhood! The people of all races, colors, from all over the world coming together as one! It has proved to me the power of the One God” (388). After the pilgrimage, he writes a letter expressing this sentiment to family, friends, enemies, and the media. He also renames himself “El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz,” which signifies both the Hajj pilgrimage and the mythical lost African tribe of Shabazz.
Chapter 18 Summary: “El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz”
Malcolm spends the next few days travelling through the Middle East and Africa, and reaches a number of key conclusions. He believes conversions to Islam would triple if people discover the beauty and harmony of the Hajj. He sees that in the Muslim world, “the major single image of America seemed to be of discrimination” (396). Finally, he is determined to instill in Black America a need to think internationally and to embrace the resources available in countless African nations where heads of state are sympathetic to their struggles.
When Malcolm finally lands at New York’s Kennedy Air Terminal on May 21, 1964, reporters immediately swarm him. They probe him about the murder of a White woman in Harlem by two Black men who claim to belong to the “Blood Brothers,” a group reporters imply is a splinter Black Muslim organization Malcolm runs. They also accuse him of inciting Black Americans to form gun clubs. Malcolm points out the racist hypocrisy of both questions: When White people commit murder, no White leaders are held accountable; Whites who join rifle clubs or keep rifles in the home are said to be crusaders for the Second Amendment.
Malcolm formulates a response to the letter he wrote reexamining his opinions about White people. Malcolm is careful to point out that while racial harmony is possible in the Muslims world, the United States is presently too entrenched in White supremacist ideology for the minority of good, brotherly White Americans to make a difference without systemic change.
Chapters 16-18 Analysis
Following Chapter 15, titled “Icarus,” Chapter 16 details Malcolm’s downfall after flying too close to the sun, like the character from Greek mythology who drowns after his wax wings melt. Like Icarus, Malcolm used a father figure’s wings to fly—in his case, Elijah Muhammad’s. Yet unlike Icarus, Malcolm will soar even higher now that he is no longer psychologically tethered to this father.
The exact details of Malcolm’s split with the Nation of Islam are up for debate, with allies of Elijah Muhammad—particularly Louis X, later known as Louis Farrakhan—maintaining that Malcolm actively spread rumors about the Elijah Muhammad’s extramarital affairs before he had any evidence for them. Malcolm denies this, claiming that he verified the rumors with the women involved and Elijah Muhammad before telling his New York ministers—including Louis X—in order to prepare for public revelations he considered inevitable. Malcolm says Louis X already knew about the affairs, but Louis X later claims this was the first he heard about it.
Another point of contention surrounds Malcolm’s comments about John F. Kennedy. When asked about the assassination, Malcolm replied, “Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they always made me glad.” (“Malcolm X Scores U.S. and Kennedy.” The New York Times. 2 Dec. 1963). Understandably, newspapers interpreted the remark as an attack on Kennedy and an admission Malcolm was happy the president was killed. Malcolm argues that he only meant that Kennedy was a victim of the same racialized violence that killed Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, Medgar Evers, and the four young women who died in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Malcolm writes, “the hate in white men had not stopped with the killing of defenseless black people, but that hate, allowed to spread unchecked, finally had struck down the country’s Chief of State” (347).
Malcolm’s explanation of his ambiguous statement echoes the reaction to Kennedy’s assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
The unforgivable default of our society has been its failure to apprehend the assassins [of murdered Civil Rights leaders]. It is a harsh judgment, but undeniably true, that the cause of the indifference was the identity of the victims. Nearly all were Negroes. And so the plague spread until it claimed the most eminent American, a warmly loved and respected president. (King, Jr., Martin Luther. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Edited by Clayborne Carson, Warner Books, 1998.)
Though the Nation of Islam used Malcolm’s comments as a public excuse for his silencing as a spokesperson, the organization never censured Malcolm previously for celebrating the deaths of White people. In a particularly ugly example cited by Haley in his Epilogue, Malcolm welcomed the deaths of over 30 White Americans in a plane crash by exclaiming, “I’ve just heard some good news!” (453). It appears that drumming up controversy surrounding Malcolm, toward whom he and his lieutenants already felt envy because of his national recognition allowed Elijah Muhammad to deflect increased scrutiny on his moral conduct.
These chapters also detail the final profound shift in Malcolm’s life: his acknowledgement on the Hajj pilgrimage that America’s racial divide may be bridged after all, and that White people have a role to play in that restoration of justice. His embrace of traditional Sunni Islam, which welcomes followers from all ethnic and racial backgrounds, causes him to radically rethink his approach toward American race relations.
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