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THE MILITANT che thing that strusk_ns_first was how Tret—Malcolm looked. (Ia the Autobiography, Alex Haley describes the 18-hour schedule he followed.) At one point toward the end of the interview, a yawn | ean be heard on the tape, followed - by the apology, “Excuse my tired mind.” We were a littl uncom- fortable at first, feeling that Mal-. eolm might need rest more ur- gently than we needed an inter- view and, because this was the. first time we had met, there was | some over-politeness on both sides, Malcolm sent out for cof- | fee for the three of us, making | his familiar ioke about his prefer- Seiisia® [USS SSS ie eit ence for light coffee, and after that the atmosphere warmed up. | After the formal interview, we | offered to type ft up and bring it : back, edited to fit our space re- quirements, for his final check and | corrections. We also asked him if | he would like the Young Socialist Alliance to organize a national | speaking tour of campuses for him later in the year. He ex- pressed interest in this, but did not commit himself, saying he | would discuss it the next time we — got! together. Trap Fails a Let us return to poor Wdrren. He’ tries to catch Malcolm in a contradiction, but Malcolm deftly avoids the trap and makes his own point, Warren's reaction: “1 discovered that that pale, dull yellowish face that had seemed so veiled, so stony, as though be- yond ail feeling, had flashed into its merciless, leering life — the sudden woifish grin, the pale pink lips drawn hard back to show the strong teeth, the unveiled ght of the eyes beyond the lenses, gi ing, the sense that the lenses w part of a clever dis that the eyes needed no help, ther suddenly see everything.” ; tm hed ruined his T scale te moar Heht at night ica oy POUT iugoii ay ae whild he was in prison, and jays in the Autobiography that he had astigmatism. Never mind the facts — Warren senses “that the lenses were only part of a clever dis- guise” (an elaborate scheme for fooling liberals somehow}. Warren didn’t really need ta look into Malcolm's eyes — he came to the t interview convinced that Malcolm | racist, demagogic and opper-. w nhist (“He may end at the bpr- neice. or in Congress. Or he mi bank”}, and that is what he away with. ot t even end on the board a i PAGE 3 CONT. True to Form Malcolm knew the white lib- eral type very well, and he must have haw to grin t 7“) when he saw how closely Warren was * conforming to the type. And when Warren asks Malcolm “if he be- lieves in political assassination" (!), it is mot hard to see why Malcolm might “turn the hard, impassive face and veiled eyes” upon Warren and say, “I wouldn’t know anything about that.” IT returned tc Malcolm's office less than a week after our ititer- view, bearing the edited transcript Barry had made from the tape. (If we had known this would be * the last thing we would get from him, we of course would not have shortened the transcript, even slightly.) Malcolm was talking to 4 young man in his inner office. While I waited, for about 10 min- utes, one of Malcolm’s co-workers, the only other person in the outer office, dozed at a reception #desk. A small stack of Militants Iby on the desk with a couple of dimes ae tan on Top. . q As Malcolm read the transcript, he began to grin, When he came to the question about capitalism and the statement, “It’s only a matter of time in my opinion be- fore it will collapse completely,” he said, “This is the farthest I've ever gone. They will go.wild over this.” I asked if he wanted te tone . it down and, without hesitation, he answered no. Ha csiA ha falt tha sharpened up what he had ori- ginaliy said; that he had been tired when he gave the interview. He made very few changes and 1 said that would be the final copy, just as he had left it. He said, editing had '“Make any additional changes - you want — it’s fine. This is the kind of editing it’s a pleasure to read.” Malcolm- then began to talk about young revolutionaries he had met and been Impressed by in Africa and Europe. He said he hadjA long list of them — he called them “contacts” — and vould give Me a copy so we couldjsend m the issue of the Youn So- cialist that contained his jnter- view. He also spoke abouf The MALCOLM XK: | i and how often he had seen it abroad. nate I told him I might be going to Algeria for the. World Youth Fes. fival {then scheduled for the : spring of 1965) and might be able tt es a 8 EE TORO epeainens TR cane ae ERIE En ae arpa No ie to meet some of his contacts there, He said, “Great, that would be a good experience; they have 4 hard time. believing that revolutionists exist in the United States.” We arranged that he would give me the list after the Young Socialist pame off the press. er ; I reminded him about our pro~ posal for a national campus tour, This time he responded very favorably; he must have thought about it further and may have dis cussed it with some of his co- workers, He said he had learned from much experience of speak- ing on campus that shidents were in general the only whites that seemed to be open-minded. He sald he was sure that the govern- ment would try to buy off the _ white students who were radical, that this was their main problem. He said they should “get in a closet” — away from the profes= sors and the job offers from gov- ernment and business — and think out their ideas more thor- oughly and basically. They could travel the road before them in one of two ways, he said, “— as mis. eidnartes or as revolutionaries.” He asked a lot of questions about the Young Socialist Alliance — how many locals, where, what campuses? He wanted to know how long the tour would last: he said he could not make it until after his return from another trip abroad that he was committed to make, but that would be the best time. I said I was sure that on most campuses we would be able to get broader sponsorship than the YSA for his speeches, ang he said he didn’t care how bread or how narrow the sponsorshlp would be, He asked me if I read French and then gave me a magazine from Paris with a story about his talk there in November 1964, He said he thought it was a communist magazine, and that “things are very different in Europe and Africa. There are communists and socialists all over, and no one makes a big deal out of it. They cary imagine how narrow-minded FO eee | this country is.” RECOLLECTIONS OF A VISIT