*You can thank Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez for saving a handwritten, six-page letter by the late civil rights activist Malcolm X.
Or rather autographs from the baseball greats, as California memorabilia dealer Moments in Time puts the long-lost note up for sale for $1.25 million, Page Six reports.
The seller, Gary Zimet, revealed the letter, which was written just after Malcolm X’s famed pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964, was discovered in a storage locker and was in danger of never seeing the light of day.
“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,” Zimet told Page Six.
Fortunately, the note was recovered in time. Recounting his pilgrimage, Malcolm X acknowledges how major it was for an American, let alone an “American-born Negro, to set foot in Mecca during a time when such a thing was a rarity.
“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,” Malcolm wrote in the letter, which was on stationery imprinted with Arabic writing and illustrations of historic sites. 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.”
As the letter continues, Malcolm details meeting “Muslims here of all colors and from every part of this earth,” as he voices the belief 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.”
“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,” Malcolm, who was assassinated in in 1965, continued regarding his feelings from 51 years ago. “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.”
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