“I believe that it would be almost impossible to find anywhere in America a black man who has lived further down in the mud of human society than I have; or a black man who has been any more ignorant than I have been; or a black man who has suffered more anguish during his life than I have. But it is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come; it is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.”
—Malcolm X
Only After the Deepest Darkness: The “Lost” Chapter & Manuscript of The Autobiography of Malcolm X presents selections from writings by leader and political thinker Malcolm X. In 1963, at the height of his prominence as an activist, Muslim minister and public speaker, Malcolm X began a collaboration with writer Alex Haley that would result in publication of the landmark work The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965).
This exhibit presents newly-acquired selections of Malcolm X’s autobiographical writing, and includes photographs from existing collections in the Schomburg Center’s Photographs and Prints Division.
The partial, yet extensive manuscript of The Autobiography illustrates the influential text as a work-in-progress, and includes back-and-forth written dialogue between Malcolm X and Haley on everything from diction to timing and tone. The fragment on display shows Malcolm X’s reworking of key passages from the final pages of his autobiography, and is one of several fragments added to the collection through this acquisition.
The so-called lost chapter, removed from the manuscript during the editing process, is an example of Malcolm X’s profound use of both critical theory and political pragmatism, as he enunciates the meaning of “The Negro” and the potential promise of the 1964 national elections.
Experienced together, these newly-available writings complement existing materials by and related to Malcolm X at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
New manuscript pages will be displayed weekly through November 10, after which the manuscripts will be opened for research in the Schomburg Center’s Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division. All items in the exhibition are from the Malcolm X Manuscripts, unless otherwise noted.