92 pages • 3 hours read
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
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Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Nightmare”
Malcolm’s narrative begins when he is still in the womb. In 1925, Ku Klux Klan riders terrorize his pregnant mother Louise Helen Little in Omaha, Nebraska. The Klan riders demand to see her husband Earl, a Baptist minister spreading the Pan-African teachings of Marcus Garvey, a highly controversial figure among Whites. When the riders learn that Earl is away preaching in Milwaukee, they smash all the windows of Louise’s home with their rifle butts. Rightly concerned about the safety of his family, Earl moves his wife and four children—Wilfred, Hilda, Philbert, and newborn Malcolm—to Milwaukee.
After a brief stay in Milwaukee, during which Louise gives birth to another son, Reginald, the family settles in Lansing, Michigan. There, Earl’s Pan-African teachings draw the ire of the Black Legion, a local White supremacist terrorist organization. In 1929, in what Malcolm calls one of his earliest memories, Black Legion members set fire to his home. The family barely escapes before the house collapses.
The Littles resettle in nearby East Lansing, where Earl continues to preach. Two years later in 1931, Earl’s body is found laid over a streetcar track, with his head crushed and his body nearly cut in half by a streetcar. Although the police rule this an accidental death, Louise and her Black neighbors maintain that the Black Legion is responsible.
Earl had two life insurance policies, the smaller of which pays for the funeral expenses. The insurance company, however, refuses to pay the larger policy, arguing unconvincingly that Earl killed himself. Louise barely makes ends meet by cleaning houses. Many of her clients only hire her because she passes as White; Louise’s father was a White man who raped her mother.
As conditions grow more dire, Louise swallows her pride and accepts welfare checks from the state. This, however, leads to frequent visits from social workers who seem determined to send the children to foster homes. To make matters worse, Louise begins to show signs of serious mental illness in 1937. Around that time, the state sends Malcolm to live with his neighbors, the Gohannas, where he frequently eats meals. The following year, Louise suffers a mental breakdown and is sent to the Kalamazoo State Mental Hospital by court order. The two eldest siblings, Wilfred and Hilda, are allowed to stay in the home, but the rest of the children are scattered to neighboring foster families.
Louise will remain in the hospital until 1963, when her adult children finally secure her release.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Mascot”
At 13, Malcolm is expelled from public school for placing a tack on his teacher’s chair. The state removes him from the Gohannas’ home and sends him to a detention home in Mason, Michigan. Run by a White couple named Mr. and Mrs. Swerlin, the detention home is a way station where wards of the state live before they are sent to a reform school. Though the Swerlins are “good people” (31) who treat Malcolm well, they also casually use vicious racial slurs in his presence. He feels like their pet: “They would talk about anything and everything with me standing right there hearing them, the same way people would talk freely in front of a pet canary” (31).
As the months pass and new adolescents come and go, Malcolm realizes Mrs. Swerlin has pulled strings to keep him from going to the reform school. He enters seventh grade at Mason Junior High School, where he is the only Black student in his grade. Malcolm is popular and well liked, though he believes this is mostly because he is a novelty. He excels in most subjects and is particularly drawn to history, even though his textbook devotes only one paragraph to Black history.
In his second semester, Malcolm is elected class president. Although he is surprised in the moment, looking back Malcolm understands why his classmates liked him so much. Aside from his strong grades and uniqueness as the only Black student, he believes that this coronation reflected how much his class appreciated his efforts “to be white” (37).
Malcolm’s attitude toward his own Blackness changes when he spends his 1940 summer break in Boston with his half-sister Ella, Earl’s adult daughter from a previous marriage. Described by Malcolm as “the first really proud black woman I had ever seen in my life” (39), Ella lives in Boston where she owns property and belongs to numerous Black social clubs. Meanwhile, Malcolm is in awe of the throngs of Black men and women in Ella’s Roxbury neighborhood, some of whom walk arm-in-arm with White partners.
Although Malcolm’s grades remain high, the Swerlins notice a change in his attitude after the Boston trip. A few months later, Malcolm experiences “the first major turning point of my life” (42). One day after class, Malcolm’s English teacher Mr. Ostrowski asks him what career he wants to pursue. When Malcolm says he wants to be a lawyer, Mr. Ostrowski replies, “A lawyer—that’s no realistic goal for a [n*****]” (43) and suggests that Malcolm pursue carpentry. Going forward, every time Malcolm hears that racial slur, he thinks of what Mr. Ostrowski told him.
Malcolm grows more and more withdrawn, writing to Ella multiple times a week to beg to live with her in Boston. Ella pulls strings to have custody transferred to her, and at the end of eighth grade, Malcolm moves to Boston. Ultimately, Malcolm is ruefully grateful for Mr. Ostrowski’s discouragement—otherwise, he says, “I’d probably still be a brainwashed black Christian” (46).
Chapter 3 Summary: “Homeboy”
Malcolm moves into an upstairs room in Ella’s home in Sugar Hill, an area of Roxbury full of Black professionals living in quiet homes with well-kept yards. In retrospect, Malcolm believes these individuals were brainwashed into believing they’d achieved success in America. He is especially critical of the euphemistic way his new neighbors discussed their jobs: “‘He’s in banking,’ or ‘He’s in securities.’ It sounded as though they were discussing a Rockefeller or a Mellon—and not some gray-headed, dignity-posturing bank janitor, or bond-house messenger” (49).
Malcolm is naturally drawn to the “town ghetto section” (51), which is full of bars, poolrooms, and storefront churches. In one poolroom, he approaches a man named Shorty about a job. Shorty is thrilled to learn that Malcolm is also from Lansing. Although Shorty is ten years older than Malcolm, Malcolm’s height makes him seem much older than 15. That very night, Shorty secures him a job shining shoes at the Roseland State Ballroom, a music hall that caters to both White and Black customers, albeit on different nights of the week. Later, a man named Freddie teaches Malcolm the tricks of the trade: Freddie spends as much time shining shoes as he does selling liquor, condoms, and marijuana to White patrons. On occasion, Freddie also arranges for White men to patronize Black sex workers.
Malcolm spends more and more time with Shorty and his friends—drinking, smoking weed and cigarettes, and gambling. Shorty also encourages Malcolm to buy a zoot suit on credit and to get a more fashionable hairdo—the conk, which is the result of straightening hair by applying burning lye to the scalp.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Laura”
Given that he would rather spend his nights dancing than working, Malcolm quits his shoe-shining job and gets a day job as a soda jerk at a drug store near Ella’s home in Sugar Hill. Although Malcolm meets countless beautiful women at the Roseland and in bars with Shorty, he is most drawn to Laura, a young studious woman his age who frequents the drug store. One day, Malcolm invites her to go dancing with him at the Roseland. To his surprise, this reserved young woman who lives with her pious grandmother is thrilled to accept. That weekend, Malcolm and Laura see Count Basie at the Roseland. Laura is the best dancer Malcolm’s ever seen.
The next time he and Laura go to the Roseland, she cries in the taxi for lying to her grandmother. Nevertheless, they both dance brilliantly that night, attracting praise from the crowd and even attention from Duke Ellington. Yet Malcolm’s eyes are drawn to a White woman named Sophia. Malcolm drops off Laura early and returns to the Roseland to be with Sophia. Later that evening, Sophia drives him to a side street outside Boston, and the two have sex.
Malcolm and Sophia continue to go out over the coming months. Dating an affluent White woman confers status on Malcolm in his community. Laura, meanwhile, stops coming to the drug store. She will later become a heroin addict who engages in sex work to support her habit. Malcolm writes, “One of the shames I have carried for years is that I blame myself for all of this. To have treated her as I did for a white woman made the blow double heavy” (80).
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
At the time of the Autobiography’s writing, little was known about Malcolm X’s past. As a loyal lieutenant of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, Malcolm spoke almost exclusively of the movement’s religious and political teachings. Although there were vague rumors of Malcolm’s involvement in the drug trade, sex work, and racketeering, his life prior to his conversion to Islam was largely a mystery. By laying bare his criminal, hedonistic past, Malcolm and Haley emphasize the dramatic transformation his conversion to Islam spurred. Malcolm X biographer Michael Eric Dyson argues that Malcolm X’s biography follows the conversion narrative made famous by Saint Augustine’s classic 5th century Confessions. (Dyson, Michael Eric. Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X. Oxford University Press USA, 1996.)
It is also worth making a point here about the book’s authorship. Unlike a traditional ghostwriter, Haley preserves Malcolm’s words and narrative voice. Still, Haley is much more than a mere stenographer—he makes key authorial decisions about content. For example, though Malcolm became estranged from the Nation of Islam during the writing of the Autobiography, rather than revise earlier chapters about the organization to make them more critical—as Malcolm initially requested—Haley convinced him to preserve his effusive praise of Elijah Muhammad to more fully capture the evolution of Malcolm’s feelings about the Nation of Islam.
In these chapters, we see Malcolm’s first conversion-like epiphany—his blinding realization of White supremacy in America. His earliest memory is of White supremacist terrorists burning his home to the ground. When he is six, the same Black Legion terrorists, a Ku Klux Klan splinter group, murder and mutilate his father for preaching Black nationalism. These horrifying incidents from his early childhood will eventually support one of Malcolm’s most common refrains: that there is no “Negro problem,” as conservatives and progressives frequently characterized racial tensions—there is only “the white man’s problem” (1).
At first, despite these early horrifying encounters with vicious and deadly racism, Malcolm remains “brainwashed” that most White people have his best interests at heart. He manages to bury the implications of that anti-Black violence—not to mention the casually delivered racist slurs to which he is constantly exposed—because of the success he enjoys as class president and budding valedictorian in his all-White class. He writes, “Mine was the same psychology that makes Negroes even today, though it bothers them down inside, keep letting the white man tell them how much ‘progress’ they are making” (35).
Malcolm, however, learns two painful yet valuable lessons in eighth grade when a teacher, using a vile racist slur, tells Malcolm it is unrealistic for a Black person to pursue a career in law. First, this shows Malcolm that White supremacy informs his encounters with even well-meaning, superficially kind White people. Second, the incident illustrates to him that no matter how successfully he assimilates into White culture, some doors will always be closed to him because he is Black.
Though the impact of this incident is profound, causing Malcolm to drop out of school and move out of his majority-White community to the more racially diverse Boston, his White “brainwashing” continues. One symbol of this for Malcolm is his straightened, or “conked,” hair. His views were still those of the majority of Black Americans, “who are brainwashed into believing that the black people are ‘inferior’—and white people ‘superior’—that they will even violate and mutilate their God-created bodies to try to look ‘pretty’ by white standards” (64). This act of willingly putting lye in one’s hair, burning the scalp to have more White-looking hair, is a powerful metaphor for the pain Black Americans endure as they contort themselves to fit a White supremacist society.
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