Auction X

By Crispin Sartwell

In the last few weeks, a large cache of what are apparently personal documents of Malcolm X has appeared and is being auctioned off in San Francisco. The documents apparently include journals that Malcolm kept during the last year of his life as well as his personal Koran.

Scholars of the life and thought of Malcolm X, of which I am one, are intensely concerned that this material be made accessible for identification and interpretation. The auction breaks the documents into 21 separate lots, and it is possible that it could be dispersed or become inaccessible, particularly if they are obtained by members of the Nation of Islam.

The last year of Malcolm's life has always been a bit of an enigma. He broke with the Nation of Islam, and gradually tempered his black separatism and his assertion that white people were inherently evil. He traveled to Mecca and converted to orthodox Islam, changing his name to Malik El-Shabazz.

That is the familiar story told in one of the most important books of the twentieth century, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which he wrote with Alex Haley. The book has inspired millions of people - black, white, and other - with its intense commitment to truth and its withering self-examination, as well as with its story of survival and redemption.

But to what extent Malcolm had changed his views by the end of his life is a matter of debate, both among scholars and those who simply admire and want to understand his position.

Some have argued that Malcolm, who always advocated violence in self-defense, was drifting closer to the non-violent and integrationist approach of Martin Luther King, Jr. Others reject this claim and see a fundamental continuity in his thought from within the Nation of Islam and after he left it.

My own view is that Malcolm did not and would not have taken King's approach to race relations. The view that he espoused at the end of his life was black nationalism and Pan-Africanism.

His rhetoric was no longer that of anti-white bigot or a racial separatist. But he preached the unification of black people all over the world to resist white oppression, and he never repudiated violence in self-defense.

I believe that he would have settled into a position much closer to, say, Stokely Carmichael and Black Panther Party than to King. And I believe, too, that unlike the Panthers, he would have retained a deep spirituality in his teaching, and a private and public conduct that was beautifully controlled. Malcolm possessed a rare purity: he lived what he taught.

But my interpretation of where Malcolm was and where he was going is obviously controversial. It may be that the journals and other materials recently discovered could shed light on these and other questions.

Malcolm X was shot to death by members of the Nation of Islam, and his family certainly believed that Louis Farrakhan was involved. These documents might also shed light on who Malcolm believed was threatening him. It is essential that a responsible buyer with no ties to the Nation of Islam come forth.

The seller might reconsider offering these documents at auction. Or, if they are to be auctioned, some institution must step forward and purchase these items and make them available for scholarly examination as quickly as possible.

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Crispin Sartwell is the author of "Act Like You Know: African-American Autobiography and White Identity" (University of Chicago Press, 1998).