A handwritten, six-page letter by activist Malcolm X written just after his famed pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964 was discovered in a storage locker and is going up for sale for $1.25 million.
The letter — on stationery imprinted with Arabic writing and illustrations of historic sites — reads: “I have just completed my pilgrimage (Hajj) here to the Holy City of Mecca . . . which is absolutely forbidden for non-Muslims to even rest their eyes upon. I very much doubt that 10 American citizens have ever visited Mecca, and I do believe that I might be the first American-born Negro to make the actual Hajj itself.”
Recounting his experiences meeting “Muslims here of all colors and from every part of this earth,” Malcolm, who was assassinated in 1965, wrote that if Americans converted to Islam, it would stop racism.
“If white Americans could accept the religion of Islam . . . they, too, could then sincerely accept the Oneness of Men, and cease to measure others always in terms of their ‘difference in color,’ ” he wrote. “And with racism now plaguing America like an incurable cancer, all thinking Americans should be more respective to Islam as an already proven solution to the race problem.”
In Malcolm’s view of 51 years ago: “As America’s insane obsession with racism leads her up the suicidal path, nearer to the precipice that leads to the bottomless pits below, I do believe that Whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, through their own young, less hampered intellects, will see the ‘Handwriting on the Wall’ and turn for spiritual salvation to the religion of Islam, and force the older generation to turn with them. This is the only way white America can [ward] off the inevitable disaster that racism always leads to, and Hitler’s Nazi Germany was best proof of this.”
The letter is being sold off by California memorabilia dealer Moments in Time. The seller, Gary Zimet, told Page Six, “It was found in a storage locker and almost thrown out . . . Only because the owner saw some Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez autographs was it saved.”