Lessons I subconsciously learned from 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X'
Funny stories about Malcolm X and Alex Haley
I read “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” in sixth grade and saw the Spike Lee film one week after my 11th birthday. I loved both equally. Some of the stories were intense. Some of the movie scenes were even more impassioned. But I completely forgot about some of the funnier anecdotes in the epilogue of his book until my father forwarded one of a series of Black History Month digital church booklets to me. (He’s a deacon.)
Each week, a black icon is highlighted. On Valentine’s Day, the Sunday booklet had all these stories about Malcolm X. Malcolm X’s conversations with the author of his book, Alex Haley, came flooding back to my memory bank. Revisiting a few made me ponder about whether I’d internalized some of the lessons although forgetting the stories. After re-reading the epilogue in its entirety, these were the three stories that stood out the most.
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Malcolm X’s take on trust
Malcolm X told Haley he didn’t “completely trust anyone, not even myself. I have seen too many men destroy themselves. Other people I trust from not at all too highly, like The Honorable Elijah Muhammad. You, I trust about twenty-five percent.”
Interestingly, Malcolm X also felt “you never can fully trust any woman. I’ve got the only one I ever met whom I would trust seventy-five per cent.”