Glenn Coin

Sitting in his hotel room in Saudi Arabia in April 1964, civil rights activist Malcolm X penned a letter on hotel stationery to his friend and co-author, Alex Haley.

Malcolm X had just left the controversial Nation of Islam, a group whose leader denounced whites as “devils.” In Saudi Arabia, he completed the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, where the experience of eating and drinking with “fellow Muslims whose skin was the whitest of white” had changed his mind on race, he told Haley.

“What I have seen and experienced on this pilgrimage has forced me to ‘rearrange’ much of my thought patterns and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions,” he wrote.

Ten months later, Malcolm X was assassinated in New York City.

The letter – considered by many historians to capture a watershed moment in Malcolm X’s life and philosophy, became part of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” which Haley co-wrote and Grove Press published in 1965. Four years later, Grove’s owner agreed to give his company’s files – including the letter from Saudi Arabia — to Syracuse University, where they sit today on the sixth floor of Bird Library.

Now, Haley’s son wants that letter back.