CHAPTER 12
Malcolm’s growing fame in the wake of his split from the Nation of Islam attracted interest from people of many stripes, and throughout March and April secular activists, writers, and even celebrities tried to make personal contact with him. Hundreds of people craved his time and attention at a moment when he desperately needed to find peace. The hajj to Mecca was not unlike a journey to some undiscovered country to learn what a spiritual commitment to Islam would mean in his life. Yet thousands of miles distant from the site of this spiritual pilgrimage, a whirlwind of political activity continued to spiral around Malcolm X.
Within several weeks after Malcolm’s break, Muslim Mosque, Inc., had established a regular routine at its Hotel Theresa headquarters. In these early, often chaotic days, stability came at a premium. MMI business meetings were held on Monday nights. On Wednesday evenings, an Islamic religious service was held. On Thursday nights, the MMI office was turned over to MMI women, who were still referred to as MGT. On Sunday nights, if Malcolm was in the city, a public rally or event was scheduled at the Audubon. An FBI informant reported that at the March 26, 1964, MMI gathering about seventy-five people attended the “open meeting,” which was followed by a closed session restricted to about forty-five “registered Muslims.” James 67X ran the private meeting, focusing on security matters and warning the sisters and brothers “to be careful of the NOI.”
As Malcolm traveled and gave speeches throughout the country during this time, he encountered many young African Americans with no prior membership or contacts with the Nation who wanted to devote themselves to his cause. One of these idealistic young people who greatly impressed him was Lynne Carol Shifflett. Born January 26, 1940, Shifflett was raised in an upper-middle-class family, her childhood and teenage years in California filled with the elite social activities of the black bourgeoisie, such as membership in the Jack and Jill organization. Enrolling in Los Angeles City College in the fall of 1956, Shifflett was soon elected student body vice president. A three-month trip to Africa in 1958, in which she met Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, dramatically expanded her political and social outlook. Her parents, in solidarity with their activist daughter, staged a Freedom Gala to raise funds for Freedom Riders in the South.
By 1963, Shifflett had relocated to New York City, where she was among a handful of blacks then employed at NBC television in Rockefeller Center, and it appears to have been around this time that Malcolm met her. The confident young woman impressed him, and he entrusted her to identify young secular activists like herself who would help him start a new black nationalist group. One of her initial recruits was Peter Bailey, an aspiring young African American who also worked in Rockefeller Center, at Time, Inc. Two years her elder, Bailey was largely raised by his grandparents in Tuskegee, Alabama, and had served as an army medic before enrolling in Howard University in 1959. By the time of his first meeting with Shifflett, Bailey had already grown familiar with Malcolm through NOI rallies in Harlem. “Every Saturday we’d make it down to 116th and listen to him speak,” Bailey recalled. “I was fascinated by what he was saying intellectually because of my whole integrationist background.” Bailey did not join the Nation of Islam, but continued to attend public events featuring Malcolm as a speaker. After Malcolm’s silencing in December 1963, Bailey counted himself among many who felt that the ministerʹs “chickens” remark was fully justified: “All he was saying was that because the situation in this country allowed what happen to black people, that white people would also begin to feel the effects of this.”
In early 1964, Shifflett met with Bailey at breakfast, where she asked, “How would you like to be a part of the founding of a new black nationalist organization?” Although Shifflett was extremely secretive, Bailey agreed to help. “I’m going to call you Saturday morning at eight a.m. and tell you where to meet and what time,” Shifflett told him. “And don’t ask no questions, just be there.” When she rang him the next Saturday, she instructed him to go to a Harlem hotel on West 153rd Street, where he arrived to find a small gathering of about fifteen people. Moments later, he was stunned to see Malcolm walk in. These Saturday morning meetings, geared toward the creation of an independent, secular organization that supported Malcolm’s goals, soon became a regular event, though mostly without Malcolm’s personal direction. Knowing the danger posed by the Nation, Malcolm made sure that his people had no illusions about what they were getting into. Bailey explained, “Malcolm is telling us, ‘You know if you get involved with me that you might get harassed by the police and the FBI.’ . . . Everyone knew this already and it didn’t bother us.” It was among this small cadre of young followers that Bailey became, as he described it, a “true believer” completely dedicated to Malcolm. “Somehow this man could absorb the ideas. . . . He was very relaxed and he laughed and he’d joke.” Bailey claims the Saturday meetings started in January or February 1964, weeks prior to Malcolm’s break with the Nation. If true, this would explain the highly secretive character of these clandestine meetings, suggesting that perhaps Malcolm was pursuing a dual-track strategy: continuing to appeal to rejoin the Nation while simultaneously building an independent base loyal to himself.
Herman Ferguson, the Queens educator, soon became part of this new group. In Ferguson’s view, Malcolm had outgrown the Nation. “Long before I’d met Malcolm, [I felt] that he needed to break with the Nation of Islam because [it] held him back, his development.” What black nationalists like Ferguson were seeking was an “alternative to integration” and to Dr. King. “I didn’t know what would happen when he [Malcolm] left, but I had made up my mind if he left the Nation of Islam . . . that I would join up with anything that Malcolm did,” Ferguson said.
From the beginning, there were tensions and rivalries between the former Black Muslims in Muslim Mosque, Inc., and the secular activist newcomers like Shifflett and Ferguson. The MMI brothers and sisters “felt they owned him,” Ferguson complained. James 67X, Benjamin 2X Goodman, and the others had joined MMI “with the knowledge that the Nation of Islam would not be friendly toward them,” Ferguson went on. “So they felt, to a great extent, responsible for Malcolm and his safety.” In the weeks following the split, rallies at the Audubon featured MMI brothers who carried weapons while protecting Malcolm. “Their rifles and shotguns were carried openly,” Ferguson remembered. At the time, he convinced himself that this display of force was necessary: “I felt very proud that these were black men . . . escorting our leader out of the building, that he was safe, he had these weapons. . . . As far as I was concerned, [this] is the way that the movement would have to go.” Yet this aggressive stance ultimately provoked greater ire from the Nation and increased its members’ desire for retaliation. Nation members were not permitted to carry firearms; despite the small size of Muslim Mosque, Inc., three dozen well-armed men constituted a genuine threat to the much larger Mosque No. 7.
As Malcolm’s secular organization took shape, it drew in members, like Ferguson, who had been waiting for Malcolm to form a group distinct from the Nation. One of the recruits was, in fact, one of his oldest supporters. In Boston, it had been nearly five years since Ella had bitterly broken with Louis X and the local NOI mosque. She probably felt vindicated by her brotherʹs decision to leave the sect, and their relationship grew closer during this time. Her immediate concerns were to help Malcolm overcome his financial fears and personal doubts through this transition. When Doubleday’s promised advances fell behind due to the slow progress of the book, Ella subsidized her brother and his family. The money she lent him for his hajj had been intended to finance her own pilgrimage, but evidently the sacrifice made sense to her. Ella would later insist that, far from desiring the opportunity to experience the hajj, her brother initially resisted going. Supposedly, in an emotional midnight conversation she forced a tearful Malcolm to concede that the Nation of Islam would never readmit him.
A number of progressive African-American artists, playwrights, and writers also welcomed Malcolm’s departure from the Nation and anticipated his entry into civil rights causes. Actor and playwright Ossie Davis was one of the most prominent. Davis occupied a peculiar position within the Black Freedom Movement, not unlike that of James Baldwin—an artist who had credentials among integrationists and black separatists alike. Davis had served as master of ceremonies at the 1963 March on Washington, but in Malcolm he saw a proponent of the black class struggle, an advocate “for connecting with people out in the street, drug addicts, criminals, and hustlers—these were folks outside the middle class, people that Dr. King certainly couldn’t relate to.”
I remember walking on the street with Malcolm, and people would come up to him and he’d respond to them, and I would respond to them in a different way. While some would be chastising him, Malcolm always had something positive to say. Malcolm was an expert on the damage that slavery and racism had done to the black man’s image of himself. He was equally expert in what had to be done to remedy that egregious lack of self-esteem. He knew it would take more than civil rights legislation, jobs, and education to really save the black man. And he knew that none of the traditional organizations that serviced black folk, such as black churches, colleges, sororities and fraternities, the NAACP, the Urban League, were capable of doing what needed to be done. He felt, as did some of us, that to ask a man who had already been beaten up and beaten down to be nonviolent was only to change black pathology into another religion.
For his part, Malcolm had loved Davis’s 1960 play Purlie Victorious, which used comic stereotypes to make sharp criticisms of racism, and over the next few years the two men continued to run into each other at demonstrations. By 1964 Malcolm was on a first-name basis with Davis and his actor activist wife, Ruby Dee. Ruby’s brother, Tom Wallace, was so influenced by Malcolm that he joined the Nation of Islam, and later Muslim Mosque, Inc.
Writers and journalists who knew Malcolm also generally welcomed his latest move. Peter Goldman continued to maintain close contact and came away impressed with the “complexity and sophistication of [his] political thought.” Like many observers during the months of Malcolm’s silencing, the writer had been unaware of any impending split. “I’d been hearing rumors about jealousy of Malcolm’s prominence,” Goldman recalled, “but I didn’t know it had come to any kind of crisis.” After the fact, though, he came to see the break as necessary to Malcolm’s intellectual evolution; leaving the Nation, combined with his excursions in Africa, had prompted him to think “black politically. I think his nationalism had been enriched by his travels.” The earlier Malcolm had preached a simplistic, “mom-and-pop . . . economic model.” By 1964, he had transformed himself, “moving, I think, probably closer to Pan-Africanism, certainly to a connection with the nonwhite majority of the world.”
Malcolm’s departure from the Nation changed much about his life, but it also affected the Nation in interesting ways. For some key players, the departure of Malcolm and his supporters expanded opportunities. Twenty-six-year-old Norman Butler, a veteran of the navy, for example, had been an NOI member for barely a year, but during that brief tenure he had established a reputation as a tough security man. Mosque No. 7 normally ran two weekly training sessions, including martial arts, for the Fruit of Islam. When one of Malcolm’s men left, Butler assumed control of the Tuesday morning session, with dramatic results. From a modest group of three to five, word of mouth grew the group to “seventy to eighty brothers [who] were coming out, because of how we were doing.” Soon, Butler recalled, the Tuesday morning Fruit group “got to selling over five thousand papers” per week. Though Malcolm had promoted him to the rank of lieutenant, Butler made no bones about choosing sides during the split. “[Malcolm] made himself large,” he remembered years later with resentment. “He kept himself in front of the New York Times.” This, to Butler, was the crux of the problem that led to Malcolm’s expulsion. “He was trying to be bigger than all the other ministers” and was guilty of going “outside of or beyond the teaching that the Messenger wanted taught, say[ing] things that the Messenger didn’t want said. That’s what the rub was.”
Yet for all those who developed negative opinions of Malcolm, many Nation members who had sided with Elijah Muhammad in the split nevertheless retained strong feelings of affection for their former national minister. “I was really a student of his,” said Larry 4X Prescott. “I loved him. I admired him. I wanted to be able to do what he was doing. And that’s what he encouraged.” Larry considered the silencing a kind of moral “test.” Both he and other assistant ministers “hoped and prayed that Malcolm would pass whatever trial that the leader had put on him.” It was only in late February when Malcolm returned from Florida and “talked about the fight and Muhammad Ali” that Larry realized that the minister had gone too far. His interview at JFK airport “was a violation of the silence imposed on him by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.” For Larry, the subsequent break was Malcolm’s fault.
Larry vigorously contested the idea that Malcolm simply “outgrew” the Nation and that his departure was inevitable. As Larry recalled, the truly negative rumors began only in the days directly prior to Malcolm’s departure. Referring to young women Elijah Muhammad had bedded, Larry explained that Malcolm had known “about the wives” long before the silencing controversy. “Malcolm [could] see [that the NOI recruited] those dedicated young men, who came out of the streets of America, out of the prisons of America,” who benefited most from the Nation’s teachings. More educated converts, Larry conceded, may have “felt that the Nation was too confining, that they couldn’t make decisions for themselves.” When Malcolm formed Muslim Mosque but initially continued to praise Muhammad’s social program, Larry believed “that Malcolm felt he could direct people to the Nation . . . better from this [outside] position, because most people didn’t want some of the restrictions of the Nation. . . . That’s the way I saw it.”
The great changes in Malcolm’s life also landed hard on Betty, who now found herself forced to negotiate Malcolm’s five-week absence overseas with lieutenants in Muslim Mosque for whom she had little love. Before his departure Malcolm had instructed the leaders of MMI to provide security for his wife and children, knowing that while the Nation had yet to hurt the families of dissidents, they could not be trusted at this point to leave them alone. Charles 37X Kenyatta was designated to guard Betty and the children in their house, and no one else was permitted inside the home. Kenyatta would later claim that, at first, Betty resented his constant presence. “She hated me with a passion,” he recalled. “She didn’t like the role I was playing.” Betty similarly disliked James 67X, yet she knew that he represented Malcolm’s most likely point of contact in MMI, and she phoned him nearly every night during the weeks her husband was out of the country. In her efforts to keep tabs on him, she canvassed anyone likely to hear from him. Almost on a daily basis she phoned Haley, Malcolm’s attorney, Percy Sutton, and others who might have received letters or telegrams. Malcolm himself made an earnest effort to keep Betty informed through letters about the locations he was visiting, and he periodically phoned her as well. At home, she taped a world map on the living room wall so the children could chart the countries Malcolm had visited. Betty correctly sensed that her husband’s extensive new contacts with Muslims and others in the Middle East and Africa might liberate him from the Nation’s powerful influence. Attallah, the eldest daughter, would later express this sentiment: “The more he traveled, the freer he became, the freer we all became.”
Yet this freedom came at a cost, especially when Malcolm’s subsequent actions further fueled anger within the Nation’s ranks. On May 8, Muhammad Speaks featured the first of a two-part editorial attacking Malcolm by the “Minister Who Knew Him Best.” The editorial argued that the reasons Malcolm had given the white media for his “defection” were “filled with lies, slander and filth designed to cast aspersions upon Mr. Muhammad and his family.” Although Louis X was presented as the author of the polemic, the piece was likely ghostwritten by a Chicago NOI editor, a suggestion that gains credence from the misspelling of Louis’s name in the column as “Minister Lewis.”
In late April James 67X received a letter Malcolm had written just after his hajj experience, outlining his new views about race. Given the trend in Malcolm’s recent statements, James 67X was scared to open the envelope, knowing that the revelations contained in Malcolm’s communication could pose major problems with the MMI rank and file. Even James himself was hardly ready to embrace such a radical change. “I had come out of an organization that says Mecca is the only place in the world where a white man can’t go . . . ,” he explained. Malcolm’s affirmation that whites also could be Muslims meant a wholesale rejection of the Nation’s theology, which may have fit his own emerging outlook but remained deeply problematic for a group that had only recently departed the Nation and still found much to speak for in its views on race. At first, James 67X didn’t know what to do. “I’m walking around with this letter, saying, how am I gonna tell this to [these] people? . . . What do you mean by ‘white’? What did Malcolm mean by ‘white’?” After several days, James 67X circulated the letter to the MMI. However, he refused to believe that Malcolm “had embraced Sunni Islam.”
The ambiguity and confusion that surrounded the letter probably inadvertently helped keep Muslim Mosque together during Malcolm’s absence, as members were free to read their own interpretations of Malcolm’s feelings into the letterʹs message. Though Malcolm would go on to make his ideas more concrete upon his return, the question of his true, deep-seated beliefs continued to be debated by his followers. Herman Ferguson thought that Malcolm “had offered to white people the possibility of Islam correcting their sense of values,” but that, deep in his soul, he knew “they could never accept the teachings of Islam.” Even after Malcolm returned to the United States and personally spoke to MMI and OAAU members about his new views, Ferguson remained adamant that Malcolm’s inner politics were still race based. “Because if I had for a moment even suspected that Malcolm was changing his thinking,” Ferguson swore, “I would have walked away.” Over several decades, Betty gave inconsistent answers to questions about what impact the hajj, Islam, and travels to the Third World had on her husband’s racial views. In 1989, however, when Haley biographer Anne Romaine interviewed her and asked, “Do you think that your husband changed his views?” Betty curtly replied, “No.”
Despite the intransigence of many of his followers, the notion that Malcolm was undergoing some sort of transformation began to spread in the mainstream and black presses. On May 8, the New York Times published an article by M. S. Handler with a surprising title: “Malcolm X Pleased by Whites’ Attitude on Trip to Mecca.” Quoting an April 25 letter Malcolm had written in Saudi Arabia, Handler wrote that the black leader would soon return to the United States “with new, positive insights on race relations.” Throughout his hajj, Malcolm wrote in words that would be much quoted in years to come: “I have eaten from the same plate, drank from the same glass, slept on the same bed or rug, while praying to the same God . . . with fellow Muslims whose skins was the whitest of white, whose eyes were the bluest of blue . . . [for] the first time in my life. . . . I didn’t see them as ‘white’ men.” What he had witnessed was so profound, Malcolm admitted, that it had “forced me to ‘rearrange’ much of my own thought-pattern, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions.” Yet if Malcolm expressed optimism that America could transform itself on racial matters, he also professed to see Islam as the key to that transformation. “I do believe,” Malcolm wrote, “that whites of the younger generation, in colleges and universities, through their own young, less hampered intellect, will see the ‘handwriting on the wall’ and turn for spiritual salvation to the religion of Islam, and force the older generation of American whites to turn with them.”
Several weeks after the Times article, James Booker of the Amsterdam News posed the provocative question “Has the visit of Malcolm X, now El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, to Mecca and with Muslim leaders in Africa changed him to become soft in his anti-white feelings and to become more religious?” A clue to this apparent “change in his militant racial attitudes” was contained in a letter he had sent to the newspaper about one week earlier, in which he had written that the proponents of Islam were obligated “to take a firm stand on the side of anyone whose human rights are being violated, no matter what the religious persuasion of the victims may be.” Malcolm now understood that “Islam recognizes everyone as part of one human family.”
The increasing difficulties and uncertainties in Malcolm’s life were mirrored in the progress of his autobiography. When Malcolm was silenced by Elijah Muhammad in December 1963, Alex Haley panicked. Without consulting with Malcolm, Haley contacted Chicago to secure a meeting with the Messenger, who assured him that the suspension “wasn’t permanent.” Haley reported to his agent, Paul Reynolds, that the “real purpose” of Muhammad’s action was to underscore his supremacy and authority over the sect. “I assured him that the publisher, you and I, were concerned not to incur his displeasure,” Haley wrote to Reynolds. Muhammad “was interested in hearing about the book, and I sketched its pattern, chapter by chapter, which pleased him.” Like Peter Goldman, Haley did not at first see how deep ran the fissure, and neither Malcolm nor Elijah Muhammad found it prudent to illuminate it for him. Haley’s first priority remained publishing a profitable book, which he still thought required the blessing of Elijah Muhammad.
Haley finally had a lengthy working session with Malcolm just before Christmas 1963. Malcolm read the latest version of the chapter “Laura” and objected to the use of slang in the book, complaining that he no longer spoke that way. Haley consented but complained to his editors and agent, “Somebody said that becoming celebrated always will ruin a good demagogue.” And Malcolm was not the only one with money troubles during this time; Haley’s relocation to upstate New York left him strapped for cash. Doubleday agreed to give him additional advance payments of $750 upon the submission and approval of each of two new chapters. Deeply grateful, Haley stated, “I can write now for the first time not harassed by intermittent money pressures.” In early January, during a heavy snowstorm, Haley managed to drive down to the city to spend time with Malcolm, but found him distressed as his suspension unfolded. Reporting back to his agent and editors, Haley observed that his subject was “tense as the length of his inactivity grows.” Malcolm read several of Haley’s draft “strips,” or sections of narrative text that were the basis for each chapter. Haley was most excited, however, by the essays planned at the end of the book, which presented Malcolm’s social program and political agenda. “The most impact material of the book, some of it rather lava-like, is what I have from Malcolm for the three essay chapters, ‘The Negro,’ ‘The End of Christianity,’ and ‘Twenty Million Black Muslims,’ ” Haley observed. These three chapters represented a blueprint for where Malcolm at that moment believed black America should be moving, and his conviction that Muslims should take a leading role in the construction of a united front among all black people.
Yet for all his work, Haley was still months away from submitting a finished manuscript, which displeased Wolcott Gibbs, Jr., and other Doubleday executives when they were informed of it. Gibbs asked Haley to “please bear in mind that the more rewriting you do, the further we are away from having a finished book.” He pressed for a best estimate of the final manuscript date. Even before Gibbs’s request, Haley shipped off yet another rewritten chapter, “Detroit Red,” on January 28, but Reynolds didn’t like this version and sent off suggestions for revision. On February 6, Haley agreed to “come back to ʹDetroit Red’ and any other chapters and improve them in whatever ways you are good enough to point out to me.” He desperately wanted to finish a whole draft before revising and rearranging chapters, yet Reynolds’s displeasure with his recent work kept him busy fixing chapters he had already tweaked or rewritten. On February 7, Reynolds contacted Gibbs, explaining, “I’m worried about interfering with your function [as editor] but I do want to get a really good book on Malcolm X and I don’t believe you and Ken would quarrel with what I’m saying to him.”
Even by February 1964, Haley remained confused over Malcolm’s problems with the Nation, believing that the suspension was only temporary and that he would soon rejoin the group. On February 11, in a letter to Gibbs, he suggested “that the ban will . . . be lifted” sometime that month. He still envisioned the book’s climax as revolving around Malcolm’s embrace of Elijah, the subject turning “his life . . . around and he becomes arch—‘puritan’ so to speak, and blasts everything that went before.” Haley was not above enhancing the material when discussing it with his editors, partly because of the story’s real commercial possibilities, but also probably to justify the many extensions he required to complete it. On February 18, as he submitted his latest chapter, “Hustler,” he wrote to his editors, “We have here the book that, when it gets to the public, is going to run away from everything else. Because it has so much. . . . Exciting as is Malcolm’s criminal life that we’re now seeing, I tell you that it’s nothing compared with the front seat. We are going to hear of his in-prison subjective turnabout.” Haley anticipated that the book would be done by late March, with a brief afterword, which he would write to represent his own reflections about Malcolm, to be submitted the next month. Because Malcolm had not yet rejected the separatist vision of Muhammad, Haley felt that he had to insert himself into the text, reassuring white readers that the mainstream Negro truly did desire integration. As he explained to his editor and agents, “I plan to hit very hard, speaking from the point of the Negro who has tried to do all of the things that are held up as the pathway to enjoy the American Dream, and who . . . so often gets disillusioned and disappointed. . . . I am going to give some courses that every American and every Christian needs to wrestle with.”
When Malcolm left the Nation, it soon became clear that the book could not remain as written, prompting further work from Haley and a necessary reevaluation of his timetable for finishing. On March 21, Haley forwarded a letter to Reynolds and Doubleday editor Kenneth McCormick, explaining why “there has been, over the past couple of weeks, more time-gap than usual between chapters,” due to Malcolm’s recent moves, which he emphasized would “add, add, add to the book’s drama.” Once again Haley followed up a request for more time with boasts about the potential of the Autobiography: “Gentlemen, not in a decade, and maybe longer, [has there been] a book that is going to sweep the market like wildfire to equal this one.” But his primary objective in the letter was to explain how Malcolm’s break with the Nation might affect the book’s reception. He now envisioned a new chapter, “Iconoclast,” in which Malcolm was suspended by “the man he had come to revere (and says he still does).” He would explain Malcolm’s new organization and examine his relationship with Cassius Clay. He related Captain Joseph’s plot to bomb Malcolm’s car and suggested that the recent death threats, and the uncertainty of where Malcolm might turn next, made the whole story a tabloid dream. “For this man is so hot, so HOT, a subject, I know you agree . . . this book is so pregnant with millions or more sales potential, including to make foreign rights hotly bid for!”
At the end of March, Reynolds contacted Gibbs, informing him that Malcolm had asked for all future royalty payments to him to be paid to Muslim Mosque, Inc. Reynolds also enclosed a document signed by Malcolm approving of all chapters that had been completed. Malcolm pressed Doubleday for more money, asking for an advance of $2,500 on the outstanding $7,500 in advance payment he was to receive with the submission of the completed manuscript. McCormick approved Malcolm’s request, but it was not until mid-June, when Malcolm had again left the country, that Gibbs finally forwarded the check.
When Malcolm finally returned to the United States on May 21, 1964, his first priority was to reinvent his public image—and urgently. The appearance of celebrating violence—whether through allusions to the likelihood of black unrest or through his urging blacks to arm themselves—alienated blacks and whites alike and undermined his efforts with the civil rights establishment. It was equally important to claim the support of leaders from the Middle East and Africa for his new cause. Newly energized, he resumed speaking and traveling at a breakneck pace. Accompanied by James 67X, on May 22 he flew to Chicago and held a press conference covering a broad range of topics, from Africa’s resources to U.S. police brutality. The next night, before an audience of fifteen hundred at Chicago’s Civic Opera House, he unveiled his new views in a debate with Louis Lomax. “Separation is not the goal of the Afro-American,” he told the crowd—an announcement that must have created a stir among his black nationalist followers—“nor is integration his goal. They are merely methods toward his real end—respect as a human being.”
Lomax and others there that night recognized that they were hearing something new. But what were the political implications, especially as related to the Black Freedom Movement? Sounding remarkably like Martin Luther King, Malcolm appealed for a politics that explicitly rejected racial hatred. There was a “universal law of justice,” he declared, that was “sufficient to bring judgment upon those whites who are guilty of racism.” He insisted that “it is not necessary for the victims—the Afro-American—to be vengeful. . . . [We] will do better to spend our time removing the scars from our people.” Yet he also wanted to communicate the spirit of revolution he believed he had witnessed, especially in Cairo and Accra. According to the Los Angeles Times, the “greatest applause came when he said that ‘unless the race issue is quickly settled, the 22 million American Negroes could easily adopt the guerrilla tactics of other deprived revolutionaries.’”
Malcolm’s dilemma was that virtually all his enemies—and friends—perceived him as the high priest of black social revolution, and despite his letters from Mecca and abroad, and his dramatic address in Chicago, he continued to be perceived as an antiwhite demagogue. While the exhaustion of the civil rights movement had brought many activists around to his old way of thinking, his new ideas made for if not quite a reversal, then a major shift that caught them off guard. As Malcolm made his race-neutral views clear in Chicago, comedian and social critic Dick Gregory characterized him in a newspaper interview as a “necessary evil.” Gregory’s own position reflected the leftward shift away from the tactics of King. “I’m committed to nonviolence, but I’m sort of embarrassed by it,” he said. Black militancy was growing, and if the struggle for civil rights “lasts six months longer, Malcolm X is the man you’re all going to have to deal with.” Gregory further warned Los Angeles Times columnist Drew Pearson, “This is a revolution and a good many Negroes have guns. . . . Out of 22 million Negroes, only one million are with Malcolm X. But a lot of them are saying, ‘I’m tired of King.’ ” In Gregory’s mind, “Malcolm X is getting to be about the only man who can stop a race riot.” Yet most striking about these remarks was that Gregory and Malcolm were already largely in agreement. They had worked together on civil rights issues, and both men, despite real or imaginary differences on nonviolence, were members of ACT, the civil rights network established earlier that year that also included leaders as diverse as Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and SNCC chairman John Lewis. If Malcolm’s allies still perceived him as Gregory did, it was not surprising that others doubted the sincerity of his new views.
Malcolm’s struggle to establish where he stood also had internal consequences. By late May, Muslim Mosque, Inc.’s core membership was about 125 strong; to James’s dismay, however, the majority were not fresh from Mosque No. 7 but an eclectic bunch, most of whom had cut their ties to the Nation several years before. Malcolm’s discontent with the Nation was only one of many varieties, and many MMI members had departed the Nation for reasons that had little to do with his new agenda. Some, remembered James, “were brothers who wanted to go and set things right about Ronald Stokes,” in Los Angeles. They had quit the Nation back in 1962 “based upon Captain Joseph’s throwing cold water on their aspirations” to punish Los Angeles police. Others had fallen away due to the Nation of Islam’s rigor: “People who thought of [the NOI] as a good idea said, ‘Yeah, but I can’t make these moral adjustments in my life.’ Some former Muslims could not go back to Mosque No. 7 because they were living, as we say down South, common law. And they were supposed to get married.”
These MMI members would require a clear vision to direct their energies, but Malcolm had not fully defined the group’s purpose. James assumed that hostilities with the Nation would be inevitable because it would view Muslim Mosque as a competitive sect, but he himself was not so clear on what exactly MMI was as a religious organization, “because Brother Malcolm wasn’t specific.” Despite the regular meetings, things were so disorganized that he was already tempted to resign as MMI coordinator. Worse yet, many of the lapsed Muslims flocking to the MMI still believed in the Nation’s old theology. At a May 20 meeting, one questioner asked Malcolm whether “he had seen W. D. Fard” during his hajj to Mecca—receiving the reply that MMI members must reject “the old notions” of what constituted the Islamic faith and must embrace “reality.”
One of the few newspaper articles that presented Malcolm’s conversion in a positive light had appeared in the Washington Post on May 18. Dr. Mahmoud Shawarbi, by this time the director of the Islamic Center in New York City, was credited with being the “man who tamed Malcolm.” He informed the Post that some Arab Muslims living in the United States had voiced “opposition to his tutelage of Malcolm Xʺ stemming “from fears that [he] is not sincere and may use the religion and pilgrimage as a device to improve his public image.” Shawarbi gave a full-throated defense. “I have no doubt of his sincerity,” he said, recalling of Malcolm that “sometimes he would even cry while passages of the Holy Koran were being read.” He accurately predicted that Malcolm would soon disavow his call for Negroes to form rifle clubs, and that his political efforts would reach beyond blacks. “If he admits all people . . . and goes about things quietly and Islamically, I am sure it will be a very big movement,” he declared. The Post story noted, however, that the majority of civil rights observers in New York City were “adopting a wait and see attitude.”
The FBI had also not forgotten Malcolm. Early on May 29, Malcolm received a call from its New York office, requesting an interview at his home. He consented, but before the FBI agents arrived he set up a tape recorder hidden under his couch. The agents were investigating a federal case based in Rochester, in which a man awaiting trial had given an incriminating statement about Malcolm. The agents wanted to know if Malcolm had attended an evening meeting of Muslims in that city on January 14 to plan the assassination of President Johnson. Fortunately, he could prove that on that date and time he was with Alex Haley, working on his autobiography; the statement given to the FBI was “so ridiculous,” he later wrote, “that it sounds like to me that it was something that was invented even though it would be denied, it would still serve as a propaganda thing.” The FBI agents asked him to provide “any information you want to give us about the Muslims.” Yet the most curious part of the interview came when the agents questioned him on his current status in the NOI. Malcolm replied that he was still under the suspension ordered by Elijah Muhammad. “He is the only one who can give out any information. I couldn’t say nothing behind what he would say.” Far from revealing his break from the Nation, he instead vigorously defended its efforts in “cleaning up crime,” and said, “I frankly believe that what Mr. Muhammad teaches is 1,000 percent true. . . . I believe it more strongly today than I did ten years ago.” Why he should present himself as a faithful follower is puzzling, as he might have already guessed, or anticipated, that the Bureau would have infiltrated Muslim Mosque, Inc., and by this time would know something about the split. The most likely reason for his obfuscation is simpler. By going on record in support of the Nation, he may have been trying to lay the groundwork for his upcoming court case over the ownership of his home. Since Percy Sutton had contested legality of the Nation’s attempt at forcing Malcolm out of his East Elmhurst, Queens, parsonage, Malcolm’s legal strategy was to argue that the NOI had only suspended him; he was still the minister of Mosque No. 7 as well as the NOIʹs national minister. If he could establish a working relationship with the sect, then they might have success in arguing the right to the house in Queens.
Later that same day, Malcolm spoke at a public panel sponsored by the Trotskyist Militant Labor Forum. The forum was prompted by a series of newspaper articles about the supposed existence of a Harlem-based “hate gang” of young blacks who had been organized to kill whites. Malcolm took the opportunity to draw parallels between the legacies of European colonial rule he had seen in Africa with the system of institutional racism in the United States. Algeria under French colonial rule, he said, “was a police state; and this is what Harlem is. . . . The police in Harlem, their presence is like occupation forces, like an occupying army.” He also linked the African-American struggle to the Chinese and Cuban revolutions. “The people of China grew tired of their oppressors and . . . rose up. They didn’t rise up nonviolently. When Castro was up in the mountains in Cuba, they told him the odds were against him. Today he’s sitting in Havana and all the power this country has can’t remove him.”
Of even greater significance was the way in which the speech indicated a profound change in Malcolm’s economic program. For years, he had preached the Garvey-endorsed virtues of entrepreneurial capitalism, but here, when asked what kind of political and economic system he wanted, he observed that “all of the countries that are emerging today from under colonialism are turning toward socialism. I don’t think it’s an accident.” For the first time, he publicly made the connection between racial oppression and capitalism, saying, “It’s impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism.” Conversely, he noted, those who had a strong personal commitment to racial equality were usually “socialist or their political philosophy is socialism.” What Malcolm seemed to be saying was that the Black Freedom Movement, which up to that point had focused on legal rights and legislative reforms, would ultimately have to take aim at America’s private enterprise system. He drew an analogy to farm fowls to make his point: “It’s impossible for the chicken to produce a duck egg—even though they both belong to the same family of fowl. . . . The system in this country cannot produce freedom for an Afro-American. . . . And if ever a chicken did produce a duck egg, I’m quite sure you would say it was certainly a revolutionary chicken!”
The pro-socialist remarks were strikingly different from anything Malcolm had said before. While traveling through Africa, he had mentioned nothing about socialism and little about economic development. However, Nkrumah’s authoritarian regime in Ghana, the country that had most impressed him, was then embracing an economic alliance with the Soviet Union, and both Algeria and Egypt were already committed to versions of Arab socialism. These factors influenced his thinking, but perhaps weighing even more heavily was the Socialist Workers Party’s enthusiastic support for Malcolm himself. The Trotskyists perceived him as potentially the leader of an entirely new movement among Negroes, one that would ultimately radicalize the entire American working class. Malcolm must have been aware of this, and would have seen the value of moving toward embracing parts of a socialist perspective. Besides, there were elements of the Trotskyist agenda, such as opposition to both the Democratic and Republican parties, with which he agreed. So while this new economic direction seemed to contradict his previous views, more accurately it represented a gradual evolution and not a sharp rejection. He remained a black nationalist and continued to emphasize the development of black-owned businesses in black communities.
He also recognized that while Muslim Mosque, Inc., needed to be expanded to other cities to consolidate his followers among Muslims, his priority had to be the secular political organization that Lynne Shifflett and Peter Bailey had been quietly working to build for him. “Within the next eight days,” he promised in a May 30 interview, he would “launch an organization which will be open for the participation of all Negroes, and we will be willing to accept the support of people of all races.” The first goal of this new group would be to submit “the case of the American Negro before the United Nations.” What Malcolm envisioned with the United Nations was a strategic shift in civil rights activism within the United States. Instead of passing legislation reforms through Congress, he sought to present blacks’ grievances to international bodies in hopes of global intervention. Under the banner of human rights, issues that had long been perceived as domestic or parochial would be presented on a world stage.
He also appeared to offer an olive branch to the Nation of Islam over the issue of his Elmhurst home. A hearing on the case had been scheduled in Queens Civil Court for June 3, but now he told the Amsterdam News that if the officers of Mosque No. 7 allowed him to address their members and to defend himself against the charges, he was prepared to abide by the sentiments of the majority. If the NOI members asked him to move, “I’ll give the house up,” he vowed. “I want to settle this situation quietly, privately, and peacefully, not in the white man’s court, whom the Muslims preach is the devil.” But better than anyone else, he knew that the Nation was not a debating society with democratic procedures. He issued the appeal not because he expected reconciliation, but for public relations purposes: to illustrate a reasonable position to blacks outside the Nation of Islam.
Several days later, the Queens Civil Court postponed his eviction trial, and Malcolm once again complained to a reporter that this “should be brought before a Muslim court. . . . They are deviating from our religious principles by bringing me here.” Malcolm surely knew that the NOI, viewing him as a “heretic,” would never consent to resolve the dispute in a Muslim court. The fact alone that Malcolm had not purchased the property with his own funds made it extremely unlikely that he would prevail in court.
Meanwhile he continued to mobilize supporters for his new secular organization. Several weeks after returning from Africa, he assigned the task of drafting a founding document, the “Statement of Basic Aims and Objectives,” to a coterie of political activists, intellectuals, and celebrities, including novelist John Oliver Killens and historian John Henrik Clarke. Some of the working sessions of the group were held at a motel on West 153rd Street and Eighth Avenue, the northern boundary of Harlem. On June 4, Malcolm traveled to Philadelphia with Benjamin 2X Goodman, a guard named Lafayette Burton, and one other individual—probably James 67X—to attend several meetings, including one at a private home with seven other people, and another at a Philadelphia barbershop. His primary purpose was to consolidate his supporters in the city, with the immediate goal of starting a Muslim Mosque, Inc., branch there. But he also launched what could later be seen as the first salvo in a battle with the Nation of Islam that would soon grow into an all-out war. During these meetings he voiced for the first time his suspicion that NOI national secretary John Ali was an FBI informant; he said the same of prominent minister Lonnie X Cross.
In Washington, J. Edgar Hoover had grown similarly frustrated with the march of events. False reports concerning the Harlem “hate gang” had reached him, and his suspicion fell on Malcolm, whose rising popularity as a black leader had grown unexpectedly despite his expulsion from the Nation. On Friday, June 5, an irate Hoover sent a Western Union telegram to the Bureau’s New York office, with blunt orders: “Do something about Malcolm X enough of this black violence in New York.”
Malcolm could have chosen a different path, but something within him sought a final resolution between himself and the Nation of Islam. On a personal level, he was lashing out in anger and grief at the father figure who had betrayed him in the basest way. Yet he had become convinced that the successful propagation of orthodox Islam in the United States would not be possible until Elijah Muhammad’s infidelities and the internal corruption of the Nation were thoroughly exposed. What may have also prompted Malcolm was his recognition that the racial separatism he had preached as an NOI minister was counterproductive and that African Americans had to reach out, especially to Third World people, to achieve meaningful social change.
The Nation of Islam had not shied from making its stance plain. Throughout the month of May, Nation leaders and ministers continued to whip up antagonism toward Malcolm at every opportunity. In every NOI mosque, the faithful were obligated to swear fealty to Elijah Muhammad and to denounce Malcolm as a heretic. On May 15 the members of Mosque No. 7 were told that Malcolm was “a hypocrite and a liar.” They were reminded that their former minister himself “used to say that he would punch in the mouth anyone saying the wrong thing about Muhammad.” In Buffalo, at New York’s Mosque No. 23, members were read a letter from Chicago headquarters indicating that back in 1959 Elijah Muhammad had warned Malcolm not to appear on Mike Wallace’s program. “The wrath of Allah would be brought down on Malcolm X,ʺ the letter predicted, “for his actions in first believing and then not believing in the words of Allah.” At Mosque No. 17 in Joliet, Illinois, on May 31, members were warned that Malcolm had advocated gun clubs; therefore, they were advised not to keep firearms around their homes “because the ‘devil’ [white man] is watching.”
In a sense, Malcolm’s departure in itself represented a threat to the Nation, and his formation of a new organization that was likely to siphon members prompted a firm response. In May, Raymond Sharrieff had put the Fruit of Islam on guard against any attempt by Malcolm to gain a foothold. At one FOI meeting in Chicago Sharrieff informed members that Malcolm’s men were “drafting brothers” into the MMI. If any Fruit were approached, they were required to report back. “We want to discover what Malcolm is up to. If his men say they are Muslims and start trouble, they can make us look bad. Find out everything you can and report it to me right away.” The next month, Sharrieff addressed the Mosque No. 7 Fruit membership, telling the crowd that “Elijah Muhammad used to like former minister Malcolm X more than he did his own son, but Malcolm X hurt Elijah Muhammad deeply.” Sharrieff then predicted, “Malcolm will soon die out.” An FBI informant told the Bureau that Sharrieff had made clear how Malcolm was to be treated: “Big Red is the worst of the lot as a defector. He is a hypocrite and a snake in the grass. . . . If anyone misuses the name of Elijah Muhammad the Muslims should put their fist in the mouth of the infamy to the elbow.”
Whether motivated by strategy, expedience, or something deeper and more personal, in the early days of June Malcolm began to air publicly his grievances against the Nation of Islam. Occasionally, he drew back from this kind of criticism, as if he knew that he was provoking a response he would not be able to contain, but these moments were—like the FBI interview—probably intended to provide himself reasonable cover in his legal quest to keep his home. Yet the attacks, which cut deeply at the Messengerʹs claim of divinity, forced the Nation to a place where retaliation seemed necessary for survival. During the month of June the fight between Malcolm and the Nation of Islam arrived at a point of no return.
On June 6, Malcolm had the opportunity to engage in a Third World dialogue when three Japanese writers, representing the Hiroshima/Nagasaki World Peace Study Mission, visited Harlem. All three were hibakusha, atomic bomb survivors, and familiar with Malcolm’s activities. A reception was held at the Harlem apartment of Japanese-American activist Yuri (Mary) Nakahara Kochiyama, who soon joined the OAAU; Malcolm was invited to attend but never responded. A few minutes after the formal program began at two thirty p.m., however, Malcolm showed up, bringing James 67X, who spoke fluent Japanese, and several security people. Following the formal presentation, scores of friendly people surrounded him, wanting to shake his hand. Kochiyama recalled that Malcolm said to the Japanese delegation, “You have been scarred by the atom bomb. . . . We have also been scarred. The bomb that hit us was racism.” Several Japanese journalists also attended the event, giving Malcolm a platform. He praised the leadership of Mao Zedong and the government of the People’s Republic of China, noting that Mao had been correct to pursue policies favoring the peasantry over the working class, because the peasants were responsible for feeding the whole country. He also expressed his opposition to the growing U.S. military engagement in Asia, saying, “The struggle of Vietnam is the struggle of the whole Third World—the struggle against colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism.”
Several hours later, James 67X boarded a plane bound for the West Coast. His assignment was to obtain the signatures on legal documents of several women impregnated by Elijah Muhammad, arranging photographs of the women and setting up interviews with the Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch. James completed the assignment; although the women were prepared to file legal charges against Muhammad, they were extremely reluctant to set forth their accusations in the national media.
The next night Malcolm was scheduled to speak at an MMI rally at the Audubon Ballroom; the event had been advertised as a “Special Report from Africa to the People of Harlem.” In the hours before he was to appear, he made many phone calls to female Muslims in an attempt to find others who would corroborate the stories of Muhammad’s illicit lovers. Once onstage, prompted by a question from the audience, he declared that the Nation of Islam would commit murder in order to suppress the exposure of Elijah Muhammad’s serial infidelities and out-of-wedlock children, and he told the crowd that he knew of the infidelities from the Messengerʹs very own son, Wallace Muhammad. The rally marked the first time that Malcolm set forth, in a detailed manner, the sexual misconduct of Muhammad before a Harlem audience. Given the size of the crowd—about 450 people—several loyal members of Mosque No. 7 were sure to have been present. One can only imagine the fury of Captain Joseph and his enforcers. News of the comments quickly made its way back to Phoenix and Chicago. The next morning, Betty received an anonymous phone call, the first of what would be hundreds of death threats against Malcolm.
The following day Malcolm contacted CBS News, urging the network to air a nationally televised exposé of Muhammad. That evening he appeared on the Barry Gray Show on New York radio, yet during a fifty-minute-long appearance, he chose not to mention either the out-of-wedlock children or the infidelities. Instead, Malcolm talked about his African tour, describing the continent as the “greatest place on Earth”; he also insisted that there was no difference politically between segregationist governor George Wallace of Alabama and President Lyndon Johnson.
While he leveled his criticisms against the Nation of Islam, he continued to push his new organization. On June 9 the first decisive organizational meeting of Malcolm’s secular political advisers was held at the Riverside Drive apartment of Lynne Shifflett. Unlike previous clandestine discussions, it finally brought together the idealistic young activists and the seasoned Harlem veterans. In the latter group were the historian John Henrik Clarke, the photographer Robert Haggins, the novelist John Oliver Killens, and the journalist Sylvester Leeks. It was Clarke’s suggestion to give themselves the name Organization of Afro-American Unity, modeled after the Organization of African Unity, founded on May 25 the previous year. He thought that the OAUʹs charter might provide a blueprint for the OAAU. This may have been a little ambitious. First, the OAU was a bloc of African nations joining together to achieve strategic objectives, not an ad hoc coalition of individuals. The OAAU was not even a united front of black American groups but resembled more a top-down sect, with Malcolm as charismatic headman. Second, there was little consideration about how decisions would be made and who would be responsible for organizing—and paying for—public events.
Malcolm handled these difficult questions in characteristic manner: by dumping them into James 67Xʹs lap. Driving over to Shifflett’s apartment, he curtly explained to James that “he didn’t form” this group, but “he wanted it formed. He told me that I was responsible for it being formed.” James immediately sensed trouble, and when he reached Shifflett’s his suspicions were quickly confirmed. “I went up to [Shifflett’s] apartment there thinking the thing is being formed,” he recalled, “and they’re sitting around talking about what great organizers each of them is.” Malcolm later made Shifflett the OAAUʹs organizing secretary, a role equivalent to James’s for the MMI. Their competitive positions fostered an animosity so deep that even decades later James 67X could barely utter her name. From the beginning, James recalled, “Malcolm treated them in an entirely different manner than he treated us.” The OAAU people never contributed funds “in charity” to help support Betty and the household. MMI loyalists “were accustomed to be told what to do and doing it. We didn’t quarrel with Brother Malcolm. If he said such and such, if he hinted at something, I was on it and I told the brothers to do it.”
On the same day as the OAAU meeting, Malcolm was the featured guest on a Mike Wallace news program, broadcast by NBC in New York City, on which he emphasized his new position on race—and blamed his “previous antiwhite statements” on his former membership in the Nation of Islam. As the weekend approached, Malcolm prepared to depart for Boston, where that Sunday at Ella’s house he was to speak to a large number of potential supporters, including representatives from the National Urban League and CORE. By Friday the public campaign against the Nation had reached fever pitch, and when he appeared on the radio to blame his departure on “a moral problem” within the sect, the show’s host told listeners that Malcolm had arrived at the studio under armed guard for fear of attack. Malcolm went into detail on Muhammad’s misconduct and reported that Wallace Muhammad had confirmed the behavior that “was still going on.” He estimated that Muhammad had at least six out-of-wedlock children. That evening he went on to repeat these charges on the Jerry Williams program, aired in Boston on WMEX radio, and claimed that Louis X had known about them first.
The appearances ratcheted tensions in Boston, but the next morning Malcolm quietly departed the city ahead of schedule; a hastily organized meeting of civil rights insiders and prominent black entertainers at Sidney Poitierʹs home in upstate New York on June 13 called him away. This meeting was unprecedented in several respects. First, it brought together individuals, or their representatives, who reflected major currents within the Black Freedom Movement. Dr. King, at that moment in a Saint Augustine, Florida, jail for leading desegregation protests in that city, was represented by attorney Clarence Jones, the general counsel for the Gandhi Society for Human Rights; Jones had been “authorized to speak for King.” Also in attendance were Whitney Young of the National Urban League, representatives of A. Philip Randolph and CORE, Benjamin Davis of the Communist Party, and artists Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Sidney Poitier. Their conversation was probably focused on ways to build a common agenda between divergent groups within the Black Freedom Movement. It was Malcolm, however, who presented the most attractive proposal: his plan, as Ossie Davis put it, was “to bring the Negro question before the United Nations to internationalize the whole question and bring it before the whole world.” The tactic was similar to that of the black communist leader William Patterson, who in the late 1940s sought to present evidence of lynchings and racial discrimination in the United States before the UN. Clarence Jones was taken with this approach, suggesting that they should present their case to the United Nations that September. Malcolm was given the task of contacting those governments in Africa and the Middle East that might be expected to endorse the initiative. His subsequent activities abroad in the second half of 1964 were an attempt to implement this strategy.
Through illegal wiretaps and informants, the FBI was intensely aware of this clandestine meeting. On June 13 the Bureau’s New York office teletyped the director that it “consisted of a discussion of [the] general future of [the] civil rights movement in US . . . the best idea presented was subject’s idea to internationalize the civil rights movement by taking it to the United Nations.” A note attached to this report from the Domestic Intelligence Division dated June 14 indicated that it was being disseminated “to the Department, State, CIA and military intelligence agencies.”
In Boston the following day, a crowd of 120 people packed Ella’s home to hear Benjamin 2X, whom Malcolm had assigned to replace him. After the meeting, Benjamin set out to fly back to New York. He was accompanied by seven local supporters, who drove a convoy of three automobiles, with Benjamin in the first car. En route, a white Lincoln attempted to crash into the lead car, nearly forcing it off the road. Minutes later, as the convoy entered the Callahan Tunnel, which connects the downtown center to Logan airport, a Chevrolet packed with NOI members sped past Benjamin’s car and then attempted to force it into the tunnel’s concrete wall. One of the passengers in Benjamin’s car brandished a shotgun at the would-be assailants, who then eased back. Still carrying the shotgun for protection, the group entered the airport, where they were promptly arrested before the ticket counter. All eight men were arraigned in East Boston District Court on June 15 and released on one thousand dollars bail each.
The attempted ambush marked the first time that an NOI crew made a serious attempt to wound or kill Malcolm or his key lieutenants in a public setting. Moreover, the Nation recognized that most police departments held such animosity toward Malcolm that they would not aggressively investigate assaults against him or those associated with him.
News of the arrests quickly reached Malcolm in New York as he prepared for a Sunday rally at the Audubon. Onstage that night, eight MMI brothers with rifles flanked him as he bluntly laid out the case of Muhammad’s sexual misconduct. He also indicated that while he was still in the Nation, he had consulted with Louis X, Captain Joseph, Maceo X, and several others to resolve the scandal privately. Between 1956 and 1962, Elijah Muhammad had “fathered six to seven” out-of-wedlock children, he explained. The Messenger justified his actions by claiming that “Allah told him to do it.” Those Malcolm had consulted then “conspired” to expel him from the Nation. By expanding his grievance from Muhammad and the Chicago headquarters to include Louis X and other prominent ministers, Malcolm was declaring war on the entire leadership group of the Nation of Islam.
It was in this toxic atmosphere that the civil suit filed by the Nation was finally heard, the next morning, June 15, in Queens County Civil Court. The trial, which lasted two days, was heard by Judge Maurice Wahl; the Nation was represented by Joseph Williams and Malcolm’s attorney was Percy Sutton. Several local newspapers revealed that Malcolm’s life recently had been threatened; the NYPD responded by placing thirty-two officers at the trial for his protection. Muslim Mosque, Inc., sent a modest group of ten to the trial, while Mosque No. 7 was represented by a phalanx of fifty Fruit, who stared angrily at Malcolm’s people. One of Malcolm’s supporters was observed outside the crowded courtroom carrying a rifle. When questioned, he was found to be carrying two unloaded rifles and no ammunition, so no arrest was made.
Malcolm’s game plan at the trial was to take advantage of the general lack of interest in Muslim affairs on the part of the white media by suggesting that, contrary to much evidence, he was still a loyal follower of Elijah Muhammad, but his faith had been rewarded with perfidy and betrayal. The Queens house—which he had done nothing to lose—was bought for him and should remain his. At the beginning of his two-hour-long testimony, Malcolm noted that Mosque No. 7 had been incorporated in the state of New York in 1956, that he was one of “the original incorporators,” and that his services to that organization had “never been terminated.” His central argument was that not only had he not resigned from the Nation of Islam, but “no Muslim minister has ever resigned.” He described to the court his relatively recent appointment as acting minister of the Washington, D.C., mosque. The mosque’s former minister had been removed from his post, but had been permitted to defend himself in a hearing before the entire congregation, which Malcolm had chaired.
Under cross-examination by NOI attorney Williams, Malcolm argued that Muhammad’s involvement in the matter disqualified him from chairing such a committee over his own case. He blamed Captain Joseph for “poisoning the community here to the point where there could not be a hearing. They just put me in limbo until they had a chance to solidify their position with false information and this is why they could never give me a hearing in front of the Muslim[s].”
But Williams was unsatisfied with Malcolm’s arguments. “Isn’t it a fact,” he asked Malcolm, “that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad can remove any minister he wants to?” Malcolm reluctantly agreed, explaining that Muhammad “is a divine man. . . . He always follows the divine religious procedure. He is a stickler . . . it has always been his policy never to handle a person in any way that a person could accuse him of an injustice.”
Williams countered “that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad removes ministers with or without cause and that has been the custom since the movement started.” Malcolm vigorously disagreed. “No. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad has never removed a minister without cause.”
Williams then took a different tack. “When this suspension without cause was taken,” he asked, “did you ever seek any legal remedy to restore you to your position?”
“I tried to keep it private,” Malcolm replied. “I tried to keep it out of the court and I tried to keep it out of the public and I asked for a hearing in private . . . because there were facts that I thought would be destructive to the Muslim movement.”
“You are making it public now,” Williams replied.
“Yes,” Malcolm acknowledged, “only because they have driven me to the point where I have to tell it in order to protect myself.”
“Isn’t it a fact that you have organized another mosque?” Williams asked.
Malcolm at first dodged the question, but finally admitted that he had started Muslim Mosque, Inc., “to spread the Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s teaching among the twenty-two million non-Muslims.”
As Williams continued to hammer away, the framework of Malcolm’s argument—that he continued to be a faithful follower of Elijah Muhammad—fell apart. The evidence against him was simply all too plain for anyone willing to look closely. Williams noted, for example, that many MMI members were former NOI members. He pointed out that Malcolm had announced to the press that he was “no longer affiliated” with Mosque No. 7, and that he had renounced the leadership and spiritual authority of Muhammad. Therefore, he concluded, the East Elmhurst duplex rightfully belonged to the Nation of Islam.
But Malcolm wasn’t yet ready to concede. He pointed out that he actually held two formal positions within the NOI: minister of Mosque No. 7 and national minister. He had been suspended, technically, as Mosque No. 7’s head, but Muhammad had never abolished the national ministerʹs office. He argued that the East Elmhurst residence agreement was exclusively “between me and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad,” that the place had been “purchased for me,” and that the Messenger “told me the house should be mine.” Elijah himself had emphasized that this was truly a gift to him personally: “He told me over and over that it should be in my name, that it was for me because of the work I was doing and had been doing.”
Williams tried to undercut this argument by implying that Malcolm had been skimming money from the Nation for years—much of his public speaking honoraria surely had gone into his pocket. He tried to present Malcolm’s life in the Nation as a long, cushy ride on the organization’s dime, asking, “Isn’t it also a fact that every mosque you go to, that the mosque themself [sic] takes care of your expenses?” Malcolm fought back, denying such claims as slanderous, and asserting that the real reason for his “suspension” in December 1963 was due to a “very private” matter. “I never sought to gain anything personally from the Nation of Islam. This is why I lived [at the beginning of his ministry] in a room and then lived in three rooms.” But Williams continued to question Malcolm’s motives. “Now, sir, when this house was being purchased,” he noted, “you were not even around when they met to buy this house. When they had the first discussion in the mosque about the house, you weren’t around, were you?” He was astutely using Malcolm’s proselytizing travels to establish his lack of interest in the acquisition of the property.
Malcolm must have been in anguish, sitting before a white judge, listening to himself being accused of theft and corruption in an organization for which he once would have gladly sacrificed his life. He could accept many things, but not dishonor. And the legal maneuvering was merely a way of avoiding the central issue, the real reason for the split, which he remained hesitant to bring up on the record. He told Williams that the funds purchasing the residence never came from the incorporated Mosque No. 7; no mosque trustees met to issue a check covering the home’s down payment. “It came from the spiritual body from the Muslims.”
Then, after nearly two hours, he finally told the court that “the Honorable Elijah Muhammad had taken on nine wives besides the one that he had. . . . This is the reason for my suspension.” He emphasized that he had been prepared to keep “the whole thing secret and private if they would give me a hearing. . . . They would rather take the public court than keep it quiet among Muslims.”
What Malcolm may not have fully appreciated until the trial was that the ideological campaign against him was turning into a religious jihad, and the issues raised by the Queens trial only increased the tensions between the two camps. On the first day of courtroom proceedings, 180 men attended Mosque No. 7’s regular FOI meeting, whose topic was “So What if He [Elijah Muhammad] Is Not All Pure, Look What He Did for You and I [sic].ʺ During this lecture, the speaker asserted, “We should destroy Malcolm.” An FOI captain at the meeting—probably Joseph—instructed the Fruit, saying, “Malcolm is not to be touched, the rest is okay”—a statement that amounted to a declaration of open season on any Malcolm loyalist.
The next evening, shortly after eleven p.m., six of Malcolm’s followers, believing rumors that their leader had been either kidnapped or murdered, drove to Mosque No. 7, at 102 West 116th Street. The man instigating the confrontation was William George, who was armed with a .30 caliber M-1 carbine rifle containing a clip with thirty rounds of ammunition. Fifty-one-year-old Herbert Dudley, another Malcolmite, brought a 6.75 Beretta rifle. About thirty to thirty-five Nation members rushed out into the street to confront the attackers with improvised weapons of self-defense, such as broom handles. For a few minutes there was a tense standoff, since neither side was prepared to start the hostilities. The NYPD raced to the street scene and largely concurred with the NOI group that Malcolm’s people had provoked the incident. The Malcolmites were arrested and their firearms seized. A day later, at Mosque No. 24 in Richmond, Virginia, Minister Nicholas of Washington, D.C., declared that “Malcolm X really should be killed for teaching against Elijah Muhammad.”
For as much as the trial and the increasing threats on his life consumed Malcolm, they did not keep him from maintaining a hectic schedule of speeches and organization building. Already he sensed that his days were numbered—“I’m probably a dead man already,” he’d candidly told Mike Wallace—and as the summer progressed he pushed through events with great speed, straining to accomplish his goals. He accepted many speaking invitations, including one from Henry Kissinger at Harvard, and continued to work at simultaneously building the size and credibility of both Muslim Mosque, Inc., and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Chairing an MMI business meeting in Harlem, he announced that he was considering asking MMI members to tithe ten dollars weekly, for a period of six months. A report would then be circulated on “all the money taken in” along with all expenditures. His plan was to establish a newspaper similar to Muhammad Speaks. MMI branch organizations were also to be established in Boston and Philadelphia, then in other cities. It was finally clear that Malcolm envisioned a national Islamic network that one day could be truly competitive with the Nation of Islam. At an MMI rally in late June he praised Islam as “the only true faith” for black people and promoted the OAAU, which would develop “an educational program” to highlight blacks’ contributions to history. This new formation would not engage in sit-ins, he promised, but instead “they will take what is rightfully theirs.”
He also returned to his correspondence with a renewed sense of urgency. News of a workers’ strike in Nigeria had reached Malcolm, so he wrote to his friend Joseph Iffeorah, of the Ministry of Works and Surveys, asking for information. Malcolm was also highly attentive in efforts to recruit new followers. A letter he wrote on June 22 to a young, single African-American woman working at the New Yorker magazine displayed charm and flattery. “Your recent correspondence is really one of the best written letters that I’ve ever received,” she replied. It was “very poetic, but at the same time your thoughts were very clear.” The young woman told Malcolm that she did not want to join any organization because she wanted to feel “free.” Malcolm reminded her that it takes “organization to coordinate the talents of various people.” He urged her to come to the OAAUʹs founding public gathering at the Audubon on June 28: “Even if you have no desire to become an active participant, I do wish you would come out Sunday as a spectator.” The young woman, Sara Mitchell, not only attended that rally, but within several months became an invaluable leader of the OAAU.
The progress Malcolm made in these weeks was constantly under threat of being undone by the growing violence of his increasing public feud with the Nation. In the streets, things were getting out of control. In the Corona neighborhood of Queens, assistant minister Larry 4X Prescott had recently established a Muslim restaurant on Northern Boulevard. On June 22 seventeen-year-old Bryan Kingsley, a Malcolm supporter, was loitering at the restaurant’s entrance, talking tough. Larry went outside and smacked the boy hard across the head before—along with other NOI members—he chased Kingsley down the street. The boy telephoned Tom Wallace, Ruby Dee’s brother and a strong advocate of Malcolm’s. Wallace drove his station wagon to the restaurant, pulled out a rifle, and confronted Larry and another NOI member. “Thomas and I [had] worked together, and I knew something about [his] character,” Larry 4X recalled in a 2006 interview. “I said, ‘Well, go ahead and shoot if you’re going to shoot me.’ ” Wallace warned him not to approach him, but Larry walked toward him, convinced he would not pull the trigger. When he got close enough, Larry grabbed the rifle and, turning the weapon butt-first, “beat him with it. And then I broke out all of his car windows.” His face shattered and bloody, Wallace filed charges with the NYPD, which arrested Larry; Larry in return filed assault charges against Wallace, who was also arrested. Both men were charged five hundred dollars bail, with their cases remanded to the Queens Criminal Court.
Malcolm was extremely disturbed by Wallace’s beating. From a personal perspective, it was a deep betrayal: Larry 4X had been one of his trusted protégés. Perhaps worse, the incident threatened to damage connections he needed for his political work, as Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee had become pivotal to his access to the black arts and entertainment community. To the Amsterdam News, Malcolm asserted that Muhammad was responsible for the escalating violence. “The followers of Elijah Muhammad,” Malcolm explained, “will not do anything unless he tells them to.”
Larry 4X clearly recalled his Queens Criminal Court appearance because he had “my suit on, and bow tie.” All the other prisoners began to laugh. “They said, ‘Look at this guy, and he’s clean as a pimp, and he has assaulted somebody!’” Soon after Larry was taken to court, Malcolm entered the chamber: “He came over to me,” Larry recalled. “He said—and this is the part where I have lost my respect for him—he said, ‘Larry, you’re dead.’ ” The court dismissed the charges against both men, but the damage was done. “That was the last time I had any words with Malcolm,” Larry stated. “Then things just got progressively worse.”
The beating of Tom Wallace and similar incidents in these weeks prompted Malcolm to issue an “open letter” of conciliation to Elijah Muhammad. Both groups, Malcolm wrote, needed to address the civil rights issues confronting Southern blacks. “Instead of wasting all this energy fighting each other we should be working in unity . . . with other leaders and organizations.” On the surface, it was an appeal for the feuding sides to end the violence, but to those in the Nation who could read between the lines, Malcolm’s letter was yet another provocation. The appeal asked Muhammad how, since the Nation had refused to use violence in response to “white racists” in Los Angeles and Rochester, it could employ violence against another Black Muslim group. Muhammad’s earlier failure to authorize retaliatory violence against excessive police force was still a sore point for many of Malcolm’s followers.
In the midst of the feuding, Malcolm managed to steer the Organization of Afro-American Unity to its triumphant public birth. At a major rally on June 28, a thousand people gathered at the Audubon Ballroom to celebrate the group’s official founding. Just over twenty blocks away, the Nation of Islam was holding its own rally before a crowd at least six times as large, but at the Audubon a pivotal event in black American history was unfolding, with the emergence of a militant black nationalist political group that had the potential for redefining both the civil rights mainstream and black electoral politics. And unlike the Nation of Islam or even Muslim Mosque, Inc., the Organization of Afro-American Unity was purely secular, which vastly expanded its potential reach. As Herman Ferguson recalled, “I felt that if Malcolm could . . . present his politics minus the religious side of it, that would remove a lot of the concerns that many black people had.” This sentiment could be felt deeply among the group’s early organizers. Even before the founding rally, the “nonreligious people” like Shifflett, Ferguson, and others had long felt “they were not a part of the old guard. There was tension and resentment.” Finally, though, it was their moment, as Malcolm publicly reached out to the mainstream of the civil rights struggle and the most progressive elements of the black middle class. Present at the rally to acknowledge Malcolm’s turn were attorney Conrad Lynn, writer Paule Marshall, newspaper editor William Tatum, and Juanita Poitier, Sidney Poitierʹs wife.
The high point of the rally was Malcolm’s reading of the OAAUʹs “Statement of Basic Aims and Objectives,” in which the new group dedicated itself “to unify[ing] the Americans of African descent in their fight for Human Rights and Dignity” and promised to “dedicate ourselves to the building of a political, economic, and social system of justice and peace” in the United States. The statement praised, among other historic documents, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, which “are the principles in which we believe and these documents if put into practice represent the essence of mankind’s hopes and good intentions.” Central to the OAAUʹs program was Malcolm’s campaign to bring the United States before the United Nations, where “we can indict Uncle Sam for the continued criminal injustices that our people experience in this government.” The bold statement placed the OAAU firmly within the rich protest traditions of black America going back to Frederick Douglass in the nineteenth century.
Instead of demonizing whites, Malcolm now offered them a role in his human rights initiative. White allies could contribute financially to the OAAU, and they were encouraged to work for racial justice within white communities. Black liberation, however, came with a price: OAAU membership cost two dollars, and members were expected to donate one dollar each week to the organization. The group also promised to mobilize the entire African-American community “block by block to make the community aware of its power and potential.” Taken in the broad view, the OAAUʹs founding marked the first major attempt to consolidate black revolutionary nationalism since the age of Garvey.
In June, Paul Reynolds negotiated a “one-shot sale” of excerpts from the Autobiography that would appear in the Saturday Evening Post prior to the book’s publication. To obtain Doubleday’s consent, Reynolds volunteered to cut the authors’ advances to $15,000. Since Haley and Malcolm together had already been paid a total of $17,769.75, the authors had to agree to pay back $2,500, plus not to request any additional advance money from Doubleday until after the book was published. Unfortunately Haley was still hard-pressed for money, and the new Doubleday agreement provided no material incentive to finish the book project.
Although Malcolm’s schedule had become too hectic to accommodate new interviews with Haley, the two men continued to communicate. On June 8, Haley confessed that, after getting a postcard from Malcolm, he had submitted it to “one of the ranking grapho-analysts in the country” and wanted to include “such objective findings” in his afterword of the autobiography. The analyst described Malcolm as an outgoing personality, broad-minded and possessing “a definite feeling of purpose, a calling. His goals are practical.” But the subject was also “not a deep thinker” and showed “a lack of decisiveness in his makeup.” Despite the questionable basis of the report, Haley wrote confidently that “it comes very close to you, I feel, from my own personal appraisals.”
Less than two weeks later, Haley again wrote to Malcolm, as well as to Paul Reynolds. In his seven-page typed letter to Malcolm, he urged him to exercise caution: “I sometimes think that you do not really understand what will be the effect of this book. There has never been, at least not in our time, any other book like it. Do you realize that to do these things you will have to be alive?ʺ He pleaded with his subject to consider Betty’s predicament if he should die—”and for the rest of her life, trying to explain to your and her four children what a man you were.” To Reynolds, Haley revealed an entirely different agenda. Reviewing the “wealth of material” in the still unfinished manuscript, he wrote that the book could benefit from “careful, successive rewritings, distilling, aligning, [and] balancing . . . to get it right.” Its conclusion, he now recognized, was “all important,” because it placed his subject “on the world stage.” He cited an article by Malcolm, “Why I Am for Goldwater,” and the existence of his recent tour diary, a “soupçon of even fissionable international religious and political concerns.” Haley said that he wanted to edit and expand both, asserting that the texts would “keep [Malcolm] on-stage, while providing him with more funds.” (These extraordinary materials would not be seen by scholars or the general public until 2008. Malcolm never had the time, or opportunity, to develop his travel diaries into a second book.) Within the severe limitations of his schedule, he read through Haley’s Autobiography drafts as they were produced. The final essay chapters that had been prepared earlier were cut, a decision that may have been Haley’s alone; these are what today are called the book’s “missing chapters.” Malcolm probably sensed that the Autobiography might become a crucial part of his political legacy, and he became more determined to complete the project. Ironically, his extended absence from the United States beginning in July gave Haley an excuse for not working vigorously on the manuscript. As the summer began, Haley moved his attention to more potentially lucrative writing projects. He was already pitching to Kenneth McCormick a book manuscript idea called Before This Anger, which a decade later would become the best seller Roots.
In the meantime, Malcolm was besieged—by writers, by other activists seeking favors and alliances, and by people who just wanted to have a piece of history. Most met him only once or twice but were changed by these encounters; some were transformed by his rhetoric or writings, still others by his message.
Robert Penn Warren, one of America’s most respected Southern writers in the sixties, met Malcolm at the Hotel Theresa on June 2, where they engaged in a mutually revealing conversation. Warren was at first surprised at how animated Malcolm was: “I discovered that the pale, dull yellowish face that had seemed so veiled, so stony, as though beyond all feeling, had flashed into its merciless, leering life—the sudden wolfish grin, the pale pink lips drawn hard back to show the strong teeth.” Both intimidated and fascinated, Warren presented Malcolm with a series of scenarios in which white liberals had provided assistance to blacks. When Warren mentioned that “the white man” had been willing to go to jail to oppose segregation, Malcolm retorted, “My personal attitude is that he has done nothing to solve the problem.” Malcolm went on to emphasize the necessity to transform institutional arrangements in the U.S. political economy, if blacks were ever to exercise power. Stunned, Warren asked for another chance for liberalism: “You don’t see in the American system the possibility of self-regeneration?” “No,” Malcolm replied.
Malcolm was clearly toying with Warren—it was several weeks later that he would affirm precisely Warren’s point, in his appeal to the country’s founding documents at the opening conference of the OAAU, a claim on democracy he could not have advanced had he judged U.S. political institutions incapable of reform. Warren nervously went on to inquire about the new movement’s political objectives. In practical terms, what Malcolm sought was not fundamentally different from what waves of European immigrants—the Irish, Italians, and Jews—fought to achieve: equitable representation of their ethnic groups within all levels of government. “Once the black man becomes the political master of his own community, it means the politicians will also be black, which means that he will be sending black representatives even at the federal level.” Malcolm’s strategy was hardly a Leninist recipe for social revolution, but Warren, a guilty white liberal, could not understand his objectives. He gave far too much weight to Malcolm’s incendiary rhetoric and insufficient commentary on the social program he was advancing. At one tense moment Warren inquired if Malcolm believed in political assassination, “and [he] turns the hard, impassive face and veiled eyes upon me, and says, ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’ ”
At the other end of the political spectrum was a series of meetings between Malcolm and the political activist Max Stanford (later known as Muhammad Ahmed). The two had first met in 1962, when Stanford, then twenty-one, had sought out Malcolm to ask if he should join the Nation of Islam. Malcolm had shocked him by replying, “You can do more for the Honorable Elijah Muhammad by working on the outside.” The young man had taken Malcolm’s words to heart, and that same year he and Cleveland activist Donald Freeman created a small, militant nationalist group, the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM). Based originally at Central State University in Ohio, the network developed a presence in Philadelphia in the 1960s and soon had relationships with CORE chapters in Brooklyn and Cleveland. Ideologically, they were influenced by black militants like the exiled Robert Williams and the independent Marxists Grace Lee and James Boggs. The Revolutionary Action Movement perceived itself as an underground organization, “a third force,” Stanford later explained, “between the Nation of Islam and SNCC.ʺ In late May 1964, Stanford arrived in Harlem asking to see Malcolm. The two met at the Harlem restaurant 22 West, Malcolm’s favorite, where Stanford made an outrageously bold request: Would Malcolm consent to be RAMʹs international spokesman? Robert Williams had already agreed to be their international chairman.
At that time, the proposal likely appealed to Malcolm. For some time he had felt that the absence of clear objectives and a united front within the Black Freedom Movement was attributable, in part, to organizational deficiencies. The NAACP, CORE, SCLC, and other groups were like feuding factions at the national level; worse, the parochialism and personal jealousies of their leaders frequently disrupted cooperation at the grassroots level. Stanford argued that what was required was a more clandestine, cadrelike structure that could operate beyond the gaze of the media. ʺRAM would be the underground cadre organization,” Stanford explained, while “the OAAU would be the public front, united front.” At 22 West, Malcolm looked over RAMʹs organizational chart and said, “I see that you have studied the Nation of Islam’s structure.ʺ He was correct: the model did draw from the Nation of Islam, as well as from the Communist Party.
Stanford remained in New York City for several months, and at OAAU meetings he was struck by Malcolm’s finely honed ethnographic skills and powers of observation. He recalled:
It would be at times twenty to thirty people in our apartment, and Malcolm and John Henrik [Clarke] would be there. Malcolm would not chair the meeting. It would be somebody else chairing. And the discussion on the issue would go around the room. And people would be arguing different points of view. Malcolm would be the last person to say anything. He’d let people air out what they had to say. And then he’d say, “Can I say something?” You could hear a pin drop. And he said, “Sister so-and-so has a good point, and she thinks she’s in opposition to Brother so-and-so. And Brother so-and-so has a good argument. But—” And he would synthesize the whole argument. He would show everybody their strong points and everybody their weak points and how everything interrelated. . . . It was amazing. Here’s a man with an international reputation. [Yet he also] could have that [relationship] with brothers on the street [and] had that relation with sisters and brothers who graduated from college.
Stanford was also keenly tuned to Malcolm’s emotional state at the time. “The only time I ever saw Malcolm emotional, and in a sense irrational,” the younger man recalled, “was in his public actions against the NOI in June-July 1964.” These moves threatened to destroy a potential relationship with Stanford’s group. When Malcolm “accused Elijah of fornicating with his secretaries, [and] put it out in the street that he had illegitimate children,” RAM sharply dissented with his tactics. “Malcolm was very disturbed,” Stanford said, because, spiritually and personally, “he had not only misled people, but he had physically abused people for their violation of what he thought was Elijah’s policy. So he felt like the biggest fool on planet earth.”
Stanford claims that Malcolm finally agreed to some kind of association with RAM, and he ordered James 67X to serve as his liaison. However, Stanford was less successful in convincing him to relocate the OAAU. Malcolm was determined to “build a base” in New York, even though James and Grace Lee Boggs were urging him to relocate to Detroit, a city where he had thousands of enthusiastic supporters and where there was “more of the radical base.” RAM, Stanford explained, “wanted him to expand the OAAU all over the country because we felt that they couldn’t attack him if he had a national base.” But Malcolm would not budge. Perhaps he feared that if he moved his operations out of Harlem, the thousands of loyal Mosque No. 7 members would never allow him to reestablish a foothold there. By the 1960s Malcolm no longer lived in the Harlem community, yet Harlem remained the central metaphor for black urban America, and he understood that this sometimes magical, often tragic neighborhood’s fortunes were intertwined with his own.
By now, Malcolm had spent years under surveillance by both federal and local officials, but in the summer of 1964 the man listening on the other end of his wiretapped telephone would come to play an important, if hidden, role in Malcolm’s life. Gerry Fulcher had graduated from the city police academy less than two years earlier, and as a young Harlem-born cop he had internalized many of the racist, conservative views his father had held about blacks. “I was going to stop all crime in New York City . . . ,” he remembered about his attitude in the days fresh out of the academy. “I was going to be the supercop.” On his first day as a rookie officer, Fulcher and his partner were confronted by an African American who seriously injured Fulcherʹs fellow officer when the man hurled a chair at him. Fulcher managed to handcuff the suspect, and when his sergeant arrived at the scene, he gave a clear order: “I don’t want that nigger walking by the time you get back to the station house.” Fulcher may have been raw, but he wasn’t about to disobey. “So I, with the guy handcuffed, with his arms around his back, I beat the crap out of him,” he said. “And I was a hero.”
After one year on the streets, Fulcher advanced to detective and was transferred into the BOSS unit. By early 1964, he was given his first important assignment, the covert surveillance of Malcolm X. Fulcher had already decided that Malcolm was “one of the bad guys,” an opinion shared by many of his fellow cops. “The whole civil rights movement,” he would say later, “was considered a brand of communism in the cops’ mind back in those days.” Fulcher had Malcolm down as a “former junkie and a pusher, when he was called Big Red . . . we knew all that.” With his break from the Nation, Malcolm had become an even greater threat, the possible leader of civil unrest and black protest. From BOSSʹs perspective, all of Malcolm’s activities had to be closely monitored, which included the recruitment of black cops to join both Malcolm’s group and Mosque No. 7. Fulcherʹs assignment was no less invasive. A small room had been set up in the 28th Precinct station house with tape recording equipment connected to the bugs that operatives had placed in Malcolm’s phone at the Hotel Theresa. The listening devices could pick up any conversations in the room where the telephone was. Fulcherʹs task was twofold: to wiretap Malcolm, hand-delivering the tapes to police authorities on a daily basis; and to attend OAAU events, doing general surveillance.
Fulcher soon learned that wiretapping required diligence and an attention to detail that made the job difficult. “You had to listen to the bug all the time, and the minute you heard the phone ring you almost had to time with him picking it up,” Fulcher recalled. “And then I had to record, decide what I was putting on the [tape] reels.” At first, he proudly carried out his duties, believing that Malcolm hated whites and wanted to overthrow the U.S. government. “They are the enemies of police,” Fulcher stated, recalling his views in 1964 and 1965. “They [the police] would kill them every chance they have.” As far as the cops were concerned, Malcolm and his followers should be targeted.
Within a few weeks, as he listened to Malcolm’s telephone conversations, office meetings, and public speeches, “what I heard was nothing like I expected.” The officer was impressed by his subject’s political analysis and arguments. “I remember saying to myself, ‘Let’s see, he’s right about that. . . . He wants [blacks] to get jobs. He wants them to get education. Wants them to get into the system. What’s wrong with that?’ ” Fulcher soon concluded that Malcolm was not “the enemy of white people in general” after all, which led him to the further realization that the NYPDʹs entire approach to Malcolm, and more broadly the Black Freedom Movement, required rethinking. He raised his concerns with his superior officers but got nowhere. Inside BOSS, “all black organizations were suspect.” From then on, he kept his opinions to himself, while continuing his wiretaps and tape recordings. BOSS even placed a recording device under the stage at the Audubon, to ensure that law enforcement could transcribe and analyze Malcolm’s speeches.
The day after the OAAUʹs founding rally, Malcolm met with some members to take stock of the event and to begin planning for his second excursion abroad that year. That Sunday about ninety individuals filled out forms to join the OAAU, far fewer than anticipated. The New York Times had estimated the rally’s attendance at only six hundred. Malcolm was quick to attribute the low number of new members to the fact that most Harlemites did not have the initial two-dollar membership fee.
If the OAAU lacked for early members, it was not on account of any lull in the charge for civil rights. For the two weeks prior to the rally, news of the disappearance of three volunteers in Mississippi on the first day of the Freedom Summer project had gripped the nation, as activists across the country demanded a full investigation. King himself was still in Saint Augustine, in and out of jail and under tremendous strain. Early on the morning of June 30 Malcolm sent King a telegram expressing his concern about racist attacks against civil rights demonstrators in Saint Augustine. He indicated that if federal authorities were not willing to protect civil rights workers, then he was prepared to deploy his people in the South to organize self-defense units capable of fighting the Klan. To reporters, he characterized these groups as “guerilla squads. . . . The Klan elements in the South are well known. We believe that whenever they strike against the Negro, the Negro has a chance to strike back.”
Later that day he flew to Omaha, Nebraska, upon the invitation of the city’s Citizens Coordinating Committee for Civil Liberties. Upon arrival, he kept up his provocative banter, charging that “in Omaha, as in other places, the Ku Klux Klan has just changed its bedsheets for policemen’s uniforms.” After addressing a local audience at Omaha’s City Auditorium, he checked out of his hotel, at three a.m., and later that morning was in downtown Chicago. He was a call-in guest on a local radio program, which alerted thousands of angry NOI members that he was in the city. Although he’d confirmed he would appear on the Chicago television show Off the Cuff, he never made it to the station; threats on his life, now openly expressed on the streets, forced him to return immediately to New York.
At the beginning of July, Malcolm’s former fiancée, Evelyn Williams, and Lucille Rosary filed paternity suits against Elijah Muhammad. The formal legal charge brought the fighting in the Black Muslim world to a boil, with death threats against Malcolm now seeming to come from everywhere. That same day, James 3X Shabazz, the powerful minister of Newark’s mosque and active leader of Mosque No. 7, released a broadside against Malcolm, describing him as “the number one hypocrite of all time” and “a dog returning to his own vomit.” One night in early July, either the third or fourth, Malcolm contacted the NYPD, alerting them that he was returning alone to his home at eleven thirty p.m. and that their presence might be necessary. When he pulled up in front of his home, he saw no NYPD officers present, but what he could see was two unfamiliar black men approach his car on foot. He quickly accelerated, driving around the block and waiting before going home. Malcolm complained to the police and an officer was eventually placed in front of the residence, but only for twenty-four hours.
Despite this intimidation, Malcolm was not about to become a political fugitive in his own city. The next evening, the OAAU sponsored its second public rally, again at the Audubon. Although most MMI members did not belong to the OAAU, Benjamin 2X Goodman was handed the assignment of introducing Malcolm to the audience. Malcolm informed his audience, “Right now, things are pretty hot for me, you know. Oh, yes, I may sound like I’m cracking, but I’m facting.”
On July 8 Malcolm appeared again on the Barry Gray Show in New York. On July 9 he carried on correspondence with Hassan Sharrieff, the dissident son of Ethel and Raymond Sharrieff, who had recently broken with and denounced the Nation. Malcolm wrote to him saying he was unable to send Sharrieff funds, but pledged he would assist him in organizing “the believers” in Philadelphia, Chicago, and other cities “behind Brother Wallace” Muhammad.
Malcolm had reached a point where his own physical safety was secondary to the realization of his political objectives. Chief among them were, first, forging a Pan-Africanist alliance between the newly independent African states and black America; and, next, consolidating the MMIʹs relationships with officials in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the entire Muslim world—both goals requiring him to head overseas. This second trip abroad that year would also remove him from the Nation’s direct line of fire. Perhaps, he figured, the vicious jihad the Nation had waged against him might abate after a long absence outside the United States.
On the evening of July 9, traveling as Malik el-Shabazz, Malcolm boarded TWA Flight 700 for London. Arriving the next morning, Malcolm held an impromptu press conference in which he charged that the U.S. government “is violating the UN charter by violating our basic human rights.” He also predicted that in the summer of 1964 America “will see a bloodbath.”
Malcolm deeply believed in the power of prophecy, and only days after his departure from New York, the violence he had long warned of in his speeches finally erupted on the streets of Harlem. On July 18 the police shooting of a black fifteen-year-old sparked an angry march that ended with the crowd surrounding the 123rd Street NYPD station, the same station where Malcolm had led the Johnson Hinton protest in 1957. Only this time, when the police started making arrests, the people fought back; others ran through Harlem’s business district, smashing windows and stealing everything they could carry.
In London, though, ready for a momentous trip, he could not have imagined such particulars. After renting a hotel room for the night, Malcolm rang one of his contacts, who provided him with telephone numbers and other contact information for some African leaders. In his hotel lobby, Malcolm managed to attract three British journalists to do a twenty-minute interview. The next day, July 11, he was off to Cairo.
Malcolm’s great strength was his ability to speak on behalf of those to whom society and state had denied a voice due to racial prejudice. He understood their yearnings and anticipated their actions. He could now see the possibility of a future without racism for his people, but what he could not anticipate were the terrible dangers closest to him, in the forms of both betrayal and death. Just days prior to Malcolm’s return to Africa, Max Stanford recalled forty-five years later, Malcolm had introduced Max to Charles 37X Kenyatta, a member of his inner circle, at a private reception. Stanford quickly explained that Charles “had been in the penitentiary, and in the Nation, and that he trusted Charles more than any man in the world.” Malcolm assured both men “that the three of us would meet when he came back from Africa,” Stanford remembered. “And the last thing he said to Charles was ‘Take care of Betty for me.’ ”