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By Root 1731 0

telephoned to say he would do the autobiography, on two conditions. All royalties to which he was entitled would go to the NOI. And second, Haley must personally request permission from Elijah Muhammad. Haley flew to see Muhammad at his home in Phoenix, but without knowing that only weeks before Malcolm and Elijah had discussed the charges of adultery. Muhammad felt that the scandal placed him at a disadvantage in considering Haley’s request. He interpreted the book project as evidence of Malcolm’s vanity, but believed it was probably in his own best interest, at least temporarily, to cater to this. “Allah approves,” Muhammad managed to say to Haley between bouts of coughing. “Malcolm is one of my most outstanding ministers.” Whether he meant it or not, he had almost completely misread Malcolm’s intentions for the project, which were nearly the opposite of what Muhammad thought. Concerned about his increasingly strained relations with his mentor, Malcolm hoped to use the book as a reconciliation tactic, presenting his life as a tribute to the genius and good works of the Messenger.

Shortly after Haley had returned to New York City and secured a book contract with Doubleday for twenty thousand dollars, Malcolm presented him with a piece of paper containing a statement written in longhand. He told Haley, “This is the book’s dedication.” It read: “This book I dedicate to The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, who found me here in the muck and mire of the filthiest civilization and society on this earth, and pulled me out, cleaned me up, and stood me on my feet, and made me the man that I am today.” None of this language, of course, appeared in the final text of the Autobiography, a casualty to Malcolm’s spiritual and political transformation in the remaining years of his life.

On May 27, 1963, a “Memorandum of Agreement” was signed between Malcolm X—also described as “sometimes called Malik Shabazz”—Alex Haley, and a representative of Doubleday. The work was described as “an untitled non-fiction book,” with a length of eighty thousand to one hundred thousand words. The royalty advance of twenty thousand dollars was to be split equally between Haley and Malcolm. Upon signing the contract, the two men each received twenty-five hundred dollars. In a second document sent to Malcolm from Haley, the key terms of the contract were restated, calling for a book manuscript of 224 pages. Haley acknowledged Malcolm’s request that his royalty share be granted directly to NOI Mosque No. 2 in Chicago. A deadline of October 1963 was set for the completion of the book. With the contracts secure, the Doubleday staff began calculating how much it stood to gain financially from publishing Malcolm’s autobiography. On June 6, 1963, Doubleday estimated that the Autobiography, priced at $3.95 in paperback and $4.95 in cloth cover, should sell fifteen thousand copies in its initial year of publication, with projected total sales of twenty thousand.

Haley drafted clear ground rules for their collaboration. “It is understood,” he declared, “that nothing can be in the manuscript, whether a sentence, a paragraph, or a chapter, or more that you do not completely approve of. It is further understood that anything must be in the manuscript that you want in the manuscript.” Despite this reassurance, it took Malcolm at least a month to relax sufficiently to talk frankly about his personal life. The two men made an uneasy pair: the integrationist former coast guard man and the separatist preacher; each was skeptical of the other’s ideas, yet both could see what they stood to gain from their collaboration. From June until early October, they would usually meet at Haley’s Greenwich Village studio apartment, Malcolm arriving around nine p.m. and staying until midnight. Haley took detailed notes, but Malcolm would also scribble his own notes on scrap paper as he talked. After he had left, Haley would attempt to decipher the scrawls. By midsummer, the project was making progress, despite the reservations both men retained. “I had heard him bitterly attack other Negro