A Quote by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

UCLA acknowledged this shift by bringing in Alex Haley (the co-author of The Autobiography of Malcolm X) and Eldridge Cleaver (Soul on Ice) as speakers. — © Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
UCLA acknowledged this shift by bringing in Alex Haley (the co-author of The Autobiography of Malcolm X) and Eldridge Cleaver (Soul on Ice) as speakers.
Over a period of about year-and-a-half, Malcolm X and [Alex] Haley agreed to work with each other. They met usually after a long business day that Malcolm put in very tired. He would get there at about - either at Haley's apartment or they would meet at then Idyllwild Airport at a hotel, and Malcolm would be debriefed by Haley. He would talk, Haley would take notes.
Let me put it in a positive light, with that archive [of Anne Romaine], we have gained extensive knowledge about how [Alex] Haley and Malcolm X actually worked and how the book, the autobiography, was constructed.
There's a hidden history. You see, Malcolm X and [Alex ] Haley collaborated to produce a magnificent narrative about the life of Malcolm X, but the two men had very different motives in coming together.
What Malcolm X did not know is that back in 1962, a collaborator of Alex Haley, fellow named - a journalist named Alfred Balk had approached the F.B.I. regarding an article that he and Haley were writing together for The Saturday Evening Post, and the F.B.I. had an interest in castigating the Nation of Islam, and isolating it from the mainstream of Negro civil rights activity.
Malcolm X had a habit of scribbling notes in small pieces of paper that [Alex] Haley would surreptitiously pick up at the end of their discussions.
[Alex] Haley's objective was quite different. Haley was a republican. He was an integrationist. He was very opposed to black nationalism.
We always had a central committee. They were mesmerized by Eldridge Cleaver.
What is striking is that from almost from the very beginning of certainly by September and October of 1963, as the book was being constructed, that [Alex] Haley was vetting - asking questions to the publisher and to the publisher's attorney regarding many of the things that Malcolm X was saying. He was worried that he would not have a book that would have the kind of sting that he wanted.
In the case of Alex Haley, Haley's material is located at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, primarily. But there are a whole series of elaborate steps that one has to - has to encounter in order to even begin to do research. There's an attorney. If you want to photocopy material from that archive, you have to get permission from the attorney beforehand.
You have a 45mm automatic pistol on your lap, and I have a 35mm camera on my lap, and my weapon is just as powerful as yours. (To Black Panther militant Eldridge Cleaver)
Very few people have actually had a chance to see the raw material that was going to comprise these three chapters [of Malcolm X Autobiography]. The missing political testament that should have been in the autobiography, but isn't.
There is no direct evidence that [Alex] Haley sat down with the F.B.I.
'The Autobiography of Malcolm X.' I've used it to demonstrate racial attitudes to people who I thought needed a better understanding of all human beings. Malcolm was not a racist. He was not looking for revenge. He realized that kindness and goodness did not come from any one kind of person.
Paul Robeson once said that the artist has the responsibility to either help liberate the community or further oppress it. And I think that when Eldridge Cleaver wrote it down it was interpreted as his, but there's a history of people saying things of that nature and meaning it. And what I do is in that tradition, in that mode.
Anne Romaine collected her own parallel archive to [Alex] Haley.
In 1967, the students at San Francisco State invited the poet Amiri Baraka to the campus for a semester. He attracted other influential black writers such as Sonia Sanchez, Ed Bullins, Eldridge Cleaver. What emerged was something we called the community communications program. That's how I got involved; I got involved in a little play
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