*The very name of this chapter may seem innocuous as it was titled ‘The Negro.’ What’s more surprising is that this civil-rights leader had intended to invoke a harsher meaning than what most folks interpreted.

Documents That Were Buried by Private Hands

Back in mid-2018, a Black Culture research center had found something very shocking when they had won the bid to the 25-page missing chapter from Malcolm X’s autobiography. Another part of the transaction was the completed hand-written manuscript by the controversial leader himself along with his co-author – Alex Haley.

These documents were said to have been buried a long time ago by private hands and some even say Haley had a lot to do with this. Others say that the Detroit collector who auctioned off the book not knowing that he was keeping valuable information from the history books.

So What Was All the Hype About?

For all of us who are familiar with the terminology used in the 50s, the word ‘negro’ would sound very unnerving. For Malcolm, however, the word meant something very specific since he had come of the Nation of Islam.

The etymology Malcolm seemed to be connected to signified ‘necro’ as the root word of the much-used ‘negro’ and we all know what the former means. It means – ‘the dead’. From what the Black Culture researchers understood by this chapter was something along the lines of reform.  The so-named ‘negro’ had to be resurrected in America.

When Malcolm was using this word in the missing chapter, he was referring to a very specific concept. The chapter was written when he was still a part of the Nation of Islam and his relationship with them had begun transforming into a violent and toxic one.

In this chapter, Malcolm X spoke about the negro as ‘the dead’ and their need to be resurrected.

“The black man here in America, in every way he can be looked at and examined, is in a pitiful state of sickness. Sick economically. Politically. Mentally. Socially. Spiritually… Here is this sick, Christianity-duped, white man-duped, brainwashed race today, sittin-in and kneeling-in at the bottom of the ladder, looking up and hollering, ‘I’m just as good as you’ at the second and third and fourth-generation immigrants who are now the first-class citizens, and the aristocrats, of this so-called ‘melting pot’ country.”

 

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