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By Root 1951 0

writing to Betty that the event was “the biggest and warmest reception of my life.” The fact that Elijah Muhammad had been able to send only one African American to study at Al-Azhar—his son Akbar—while the MMI would soon be sending twenty students to enroll was certainly a “wonderful blessing.” A low point came several days later, on August 6, when at an Alexandria restaurant he ate an exotic dish called “spanish.” By midnight he was vomiting, with diarrhea and colic fits. In his diary, he admitted being “so miserable I thought I was really dying.” A physician finally arrived the next morning to give him a painful injection and some pills, but as if to prove his indestructibility, he did not scale back his schedule. Weeks later he would come to suspect he might have been poisoned deliberately.

By the second week of August Malcolm’s life had begun to settle into a routine. This included travels to the ancient port city of Alexandria, which held a special fascination for Malcolm. He enjoyed frequently taking the train there, eating at its restaurants, and making new contacts with scholars and local leaders.

On August 11 he leisurely munched watermelon at the Hilton restaurant with David Du Bois, Shirley’s son. Du Bois interviewed Malcolm for the Egyptian Gazette, along with another lengthy interview by a different Gazette reporter, and he did not return home until midnight. The next day, Malcolm began writing an article for the Gazette.

In the afternoon on August 15, Malcolm met with Sheikh Akbar Hassan, the rector of Al-Azhar University. Sheikh Hassan handed Malcolm a certificate granting him the authority to teach Islam. Soon, Malcolm would learn what the friendship of the Nasser government could mean, when he was moved to a luxurious suite at the Shepherd Hotel as a guest of state. Overwhelmed, Malcolm declared in his diary, “Allah has really blessed me.”

On August 19, Malcolm spent part of the day touring the Egyptian Museum and once more visited the pyramids, but he also discussed the U.S. political situation and the OAAU with local contacts Nasir al-Din and Kalid Mahmoud. Once again Malcolm met with David Du Bois. On August 21 he released a press statement in the name of the OAAU, summarizing the recent OAU summit.

First, his intended audience was, as he put it, “the well-meaning element in the American public.” Echoing Kwame Nkrumah, he called for continental Pan-Africanism, some kind of federation that could unite all countries. He praised President Nasser’s role in laying the foundations for a United States of Africa, and he was impressed by the African delegations’ commitment to overthrowing the apartheid regime of South Africa, as well as the African guerrillas battling European colonialism in countries like Angola and Mozambique. He also acknowledged that many summit participants “recognized that Israel is nothing but a base here on the northeast tip of the mother continent for the twentieth-century form of ‘benevolent colonialism.’”

But the most interesting features of the statement were Malcolm’s justifications for his presence at the conference, and the connections he drew between a united Africa and the interests of black Americans. “My coming to the Summit Conference was not in vain, as some elements in the American press have tried to ‘suggest,’ but instead . . . proved to be very fruitful.” He emphasized the political solidarity African delegates expressed to him: ʺI found no doors closed to me.ʺ

Malcolm’s article for the Egyptian Gazette, “Racism: The Cancer That Is Destroying America,” was duly published, to his pleasure. “I am not a racist,” the essay began, “and I do not subscribe to any of the tenets of racism. . . . My religious pilgrimage to Mecca has given me a new insight into the true brotherhood of Islam, which encompasses all of the races of mankind.” He went on to separate himself from any black nationalist agenda, insisting that all Negroes desired the same goals. “The common goal of 22 million Afro Americans is respect and HUMAN RIGHTS. . . . We can never get civil rights in America