“Then he is going to tell you who and what the devil is!”
“Make it plain.”
“Then he is going to show you why you had better hurry up and get out from among the devil before you get destroyed with him.”
This brings the crowd to their feet, cheering. The side door to the upstairs temple swings open and Malcolm X, a tall, rawboned, Ichabod-Crane-looking man, strolls in flanked by an Honor Guard. As he walks to the platform his light-skinned, granite face is stern. He looks and acts like a military officer who may give a fatal order any minute. His clothes, always a size or so too large, literally drape from his body, making him look more gaunt than he actually is.
“Big Red,” as Malcolm was called when he was peddling prostitutes and dope on the streets of Harlem, is a dashing and handsome man. Women of all races and creeds are drawn to him. He speaks with an authority that is all but hypnotic.
“When I say the white man is a devil,” Minister Malcolm shouts, “I speak with the authority of history.”
“That’s right,” the people shout back.
“The record of history shows that the white men, as a people, have never done good.”
“Say on, brother, say on.”
“He stole our fathers and mothers from their culture of silk and satins and brought them to this land in the belly of a ship—am I right or wrong?”