When this country here was first being founded, there were 13 colonies. The whites were colonized. They were fed up with this taxation without representation. So some of them stood up and said, liberty or death.

[Alex Hayley] wanted to show the negative aspects of the N.O.I.'s ideology, Yacub's history, and all of the ramifications of racial separatism that he felt were negative, and that Malcolm, being as charismatic as he was, a very attractive figure, nevertheless, he embodied these kind of negative traits.

[Alex] Haley had a tendency to write even more frequently and voluminously to his agents and his editors than he did putting pen to paper in his own books.

When this country here was first being founded, there were 13 colonies. The whites were colonized. They were fed up with this taxation without representation. So some of them stood up and said, liberty or death.

Elements within Malcolm's X own entourage, some of them were very angry with some of the changes that had occurred with Malcolm. One source of anger, curiously enough, was that - was the tension between MMI and OAAU, that the MMI, the Muslim Mosque Incorporated, these were women and men who had left the Nation of Islam out of loyalty to Malcolm, but then Malcolm continued to evolve rapidly.

Very few people have actually had a chance to see the raw material that was going to comprise these three chapters [of Malcolm X Autobiography]. The missing political testament that should have been in the autobiography, but isn't.

I have asked James Shabazz, I've asked other people who are members of the OAAU, Herman Ferguson and others, what led to that disastrous decision [that the guards didn't carry weapons]? James Shabazz said to me with a shrug, you just didn't know Malcolm. Malcolm was adamant, and that whatever Malcolm wanted, that's what we just did.