Explore "The Night Malcolm X Spoke at the Oxford Union" by Stephen Tuck on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I just returned from Mecca! This is indeed an eventful day. -Malcolm X, travel diary, April 18, 1964
When Malcolm X headed to Cairo airport on April 16, 1964, to fly to Jeddah under the name of Malik El-Shabazz, his feeling of expectation was matched by one of gratitude. Five years before, he had been unable to go to Mecca for the Hajj, out of deference to Elijah Muhammad. Now he was his own man, head of his own Muslim organization, free to join Muslims from around the world on the annual pilgrimage and thus fulfill the religious duty of every able-bodied Muslim who could afford to do so. His main purpose for making the Hajj, though, as he explained to a fellow pilgrim, "was to get an understanding of true Islam."