Malcolm X

Today is the anniversary of Malcolm X's assassination.

I was on a plane between Algiers and Geneva and it just happened that two other Americans were sitting in the two seats next to me. None of us knew each other and the other two were white, one a male, the other a female. And after we had been flying along for about forty minutes, the lady, she says,"Could I ask you a personal question?"

I said, '"Yes." She said,"Well--" she had been looking at my briefcase, and she said,"Well, what does that X--" she says,"What kind of last name could you have that begins with X?" So I said,"That's it -- X." And she said,"Well, what does the 'M' stand for?" I said,"Malcolm." So she was quiet for about ten minutes, and she turned to me and she says,"You're not Malcolm X?"

You see, we had been riding along in a nice conversation like three human beings, you know, no hostility, no animosity, just human. And she couldn't take this, she said,"Well you're not who I was looking for," you know. And she ended up telling me that she was looking for horns and all that, and for someone who was out to kill all white people, as if all white people could be killed. This was her general attitude, and this attitude had been given her -- this image had been given [to] her by the press.

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