CHAPTER 13
Malcolm’s return to Cairo marked the beginning of a nineteen-week sojourn to the Middle East and Africa. In departing New York, he left behind two fledgling organizations whose success depended almost entirely on his personal involvement, and the toll his absence took on both the MMI and OAAU was considerable. Yet several important factors conspired to keep him away. For as much as he wished to lay a foundation for his ideas, he continued during this time to undergo dramatic life changes, completing a transformation that had begun with his departure from the Nation of Islam and accelerated with his recent trip to the Middle East. Now, charged with bringing to Africa his plan to put the U.S. government before the United Nations over human rights violations, he experienced for the first time the fullness and profundity of his own African heritage. If the hajj had brought Malcolm to full realization of his Muslim life, the second trip to Africa immersed him in a broad-based Pan-Africanism that cast into relief his role as a black citizen of the world.
In a whirlwind nearly five months, he would become an honored guest of several heads of state and a beloved figure among ordinary Africans of many countries. Though not every moment of the trip was easy, it presented a stark contrast to the difficult slog of building the OAAU amid constant threats of violence from the Nation of Islam. Indeed, another reason why Malcolm ultimately stayed in Africa so long was safety: he was convinced that the Nation would try to kill him as soon as he returned home.
He had planned his visit to Egypt to coincide with an OAU conference (July 17-21) in Cairo, but eventually stayed in the city longer than originally planned, believing that the friendships he was forming would yield dividends in the long run. During the first two months, he threw himself into a detailed course of study prepared by Muslim clerics, associated with the Cairo-based Supreme Council on Islamic Affairs (SCIA). According to Dr. Mahmoud Shawarbi, the SCIA was also largely responsible for subsidizing Malcolm’s expenses in the Middle East, Africa, and Europe during his second tour. He was also in frequent communication with the Mecca-based Muslim World League (Rabitat al-Alam al-Islami) founded in Saudi Arabia in 1962 to promulgate religion and oppose the threats represented by communism. By seeking recognition from such organizations, he hoped to destroy the NOIʹs access to the orthodox Muslim world, as well as elevate his own position as the most prominent Muslim leader in the United States.
Most important of all to Malcolm, this was also a journey of self-discovery. As an NOI minister, he had preached a theology grounded in hatred. Only now, as his separation from the Nation of Islam grew wider, did he feel the urgent need to reexamine his life. If he packed away the starched white shirts, bow ties, and dark suits, how would he now convey his identity?
Malcolm arrived in Cairo after midnight on July 12, and stayed initially at the Semiramis Hotel. In the days that followed, as he waited for his clearance to attend the OAU conference as an observer, he occupied his time by getting settled in and making contact with key leaders. The evening after his arrival he contacted Dr. Shawarbi, who was so eager to engage him in political conversation that he and a small entourage of mostly African Americans drove over to his hotel lobby, where they talked together until three in the morning. Malcolm also met with a number of dignitaries, including the Kenyan political leader Tom Mboya as well as Hassan Sabn al-Kholy, director of Nasserʹs Bureau of General Affairs, and he dined with Shirley Graham Du Bois, whom he had previously met in Ghana. He visited Cairo University, the pyramids, and other sites (with an ABC cameraman in tow), and he gave interviews to the London Observer and UPI.
Once at the conference, he immediately began to circulate a memorandum, calling upon newly independent African nations to condemn the United States for its violations of black human rights. “Racism in America is the same that it is in South Africa,” he argued. He urged African leaders to embrace Pan-Africanist politics by endorsing the struggles of African Americans. “We pray that our African brothers” have not escaped the domination of Europe, Malcolm observed, only to fall victim to “American dollarism.”
In the end, Malcolm failed to persuade, though not for any great flaw in his argument or ebbing of his passion; his rhetoric simply could not overcome the cold logic of international politics. In the bipolar political world of the 1960s, backing a formal resolution that sharply condemned the United States for its domestic human rights violations would have been seen by the American government as an act of partnership with the Soviet Union or the communist Chinese. The OAU did pass a tepid resolution applauding the passage of civil rights legislation, but criticizing the lack of racial progress. By late July, media analysis of the meeting had filtered back to the United States, where Malcolm was generally described as having failed. A sympathetic New York Times analysis by M. S. Handler did, however, appear; after examining Malcolm’s eight-page memorandum, U.S. government officials said that had Malcolm “succeeded in convincing just one African Government to bring up the charge at the United Nations, the United States Government would be faced with a touchy problem.” The United States could be held in the same category as South Africa as a violator of human rights.
After the conference ended, Malcolm paused, deciding what to do next. The refusal by African governments to back him could only be overcome, he must have reasoned, by his visiting key countries to lobby for their support. Arranging the tour’s logistics and connecting with dozens of local contacts throughout Africa in advance would take at least one month to accomplish. The list was long, including: in Ghana, Maya Angelou, Ghanaian Times editor T. D. Baffoe, writer Julian Mayfield, and Alice Windom, recently appointed as administrative assistant for the UN Economic Commission for Africa; in Nigeria, scholar E. U. Essien-Udom; in Saudi Arabia, Prince Faisal, Muhammad Abdul Azziz Maged, and Omar Azzam; in Tanzania, Abdulrahman Muhammad Babu, minister of economic planning and foreign affairs; and in Paris, Alioune Diop, publisher and editor of Présence Africaine, the preeminent journal of Francophone black culture. Then there was the planning of accommodations and travel.
In a letter to Betty dated August 4, beginning, “My Dear Wife,” Malcolm instructed her to tell Lynne Shifflett to cooperate with attorney Clarence Jones and others in helping to bring racial issues before the United Nations. He indicated he would probably return to the United States sometime in September. Malcolm asked Betty to tell Charles Kenyatta that he recognized the difficulties in remaining abroad for so long, but “the gains outweigh the risks.”
He wanted to use his remaining time in Cairo to reexamine his identity and practices as a Muslim and as a person of African descent. During his twelve-year stint in the Nation, obeying the strict dietary instructions of Muhammad, he had eaten only one meal each day, surviving on countless cups of coffee. What if, he now asked himself, these rules in running one’s life and body were broken down, made less rigid? Egypt’s unique blend of Arabic, Islamic, and African cultures also created an environment very different from that of the United States. Meetings advertised to begin at six p.m. might not start until an hour and half later, if not beyond that; many people usually took midday naps and ate a late dinner. Social and public life had their own, slower pace.
Malcolm’s travel diary entries reveal that within several weeks he was experiencing a cultural metamorphosis. For example, he began eating lunch daily, a radical break from NOI orthodoxy. He started taking midday naps, usually between two and five p.m., and would generally dine with local contacts and friends at nine p.m. or later, returning to his hotel usually after midnight. He put away his starched white shirts and purchased Arabic- and African-style tunics and pants, which also underscored his appearance as a Pan-Africanist and Muslim. And he seized the opportunity to immerse himself in the culture, viewing many movies and plays—anathema to the NOI—including one, The Suez and the Revolution, at an outdoor theater. This is not to suggest that Malcolm withdrew from active political life; to the contrary, despite his changing habits he kept extremely busy—writing essays for the Egyptian press; giving interviews to newspapers, television networks, and wire services around the world; monitoring the activities of the OAAU and MMI and forwarding orders; meeting with African and Arab educators, political leaders, and government representatives; and studying the Qur’an. He met frequently with Elijah Muhammad’s youngest son, Akbar, who was enrolled in Cairo’s Al-Azhar University and had just resigned from the Nation of Islam over his fatherʹs failure to address the charges of immorality. What was new in his life, however, was the release he granted himself—his short trip to Alexandria to see the city’s aquarium, say, or his tourist junket to the Aswan Dam and Luxor at the end of August.
Malcolm’s public presence at the OAU conference also generated critical scrutiny back in the United States. One example of this was a Los Angeles Times column by Victor Riesel, with the provocative title “African Intrigues of Malcolm X.ʺ Riesel, who claimed to have been an observer at the Cairo conference, insisted Malcolm was not there: “He prepared a series of inflammatory anti-U.S. documents here . . . [giving the impression] that he attended the conference. This is nonsense. He did not get near the parley. He was not accredited to it.” Riesel believed that Malcolm was in league with the Chinese communists, whose “broadcasts have been featuring him and his splinter sect.” He had also observed Malcolm having dinner with Shirley Graham Du Bois, whom he accused of having been “long active in world communist circles.” A fervent anticommunist, Riesel probably drafted his columns using information taken directly from the surveillance of Malcolm that only the CIA would have had. He characterized Malcolm as an even greater menace to U.S. national security than he had been in the Nation of Islam: “I ran into his trail in several cities—especially in Ibadan, Nigeria, where he delivered speeches so anti-U.S., so incendiary, that they could be printed only on asbestos.”
A high point for Malcolm during his Egyptian stay was a reception in his honor in Alexandria, hosted by the Supreme Council on Islamic Affairs on August 2. More than eight hundred Muslim students representing ninety-three countries were present to hear the SCIA announce that it would award Malcolm’s organization twenty tuition-free scholarships to attend Al-Azhar University. Malcolm was overwhelmed, writing to Betty that the event was “the biggest and warmest reception of my life.” The fact that Elijah Muhammad had been able to send only one African American to study at Al-Azhar—his son Akbar—while the MMI would soon be sending twenty students to enroll was certainly a “wonderful blessing.” A low point came several days later, on August 6, when at an Alexandria restaurant he ate an exotic dish called “spanish.” By midnight he was vomiting, with diarrhea and colic fits. In his diary, he admitted being “so miserable I thought I was really dying.” A physician finally arrived the next morning to give him a painful injection and some pills, but as if to prove his indestructibility, he did not scale back his schedule. Weeks later he would come to suspect he might have been poisoned deliberately.
By the second week of August Malcolm’s life had begun to settle into a routine. This included travels to the ancient port city of Alexandria, which held a special fascination for Malcolm. He enjoyed frequently taking the train there, eating at its restaurants, and making new contacts with scholars and local leaders.
On August 11 he leisurely munched watermelon at the Hilton restaurant with David Du Bois, Shirley’s son. Du Bois interviewed Malcolm for the Egyptian Gazette, along with another lengthy interview by a different Gazette reporter, and he did not return home until midnight. The next day, Malcolm began writing an article for the Gazette.
In the afternoon on August 15, Malcolm met with Sheikh Akbar Hassan, the rector of Al-Azhar University. Sheikh Hassan handed Malcolm a certificate granting him the authority to teach Islam. Soon, Malcolm would learn what the friendship of the Nasser government could mean, when he was moved to a luxurious suite at the Shepherd Hotel as a guest of state. Overwhelmed, Malcolm declared in his diary, “Allah has really blessed me.”
On August 19, Malcolm spent part of the day touring the Egyptian Museum and once more visited the pyramids, but he also discussed the U.S. political situation and the OAAU with local contacts Nasir al-Din and Kalid Mahmoud. Once again Malcolm met with David Du Bois. On August 21 he released a press statement in the name of the OAAU, summarizing the recent OAU summit.
First, his intended audience was, as he put it, “the well-meaning element in the American public.” Echoing Kwame Nkrumah, he called for continental Pan-Africanism, some kind of federation that could unite all countries. He praised President Nasser’s role in laying the foundations for a United States of Africa, and he was impressed by the African delegations’ commitment to overthrowing the apartheid regime of South Africa, as well as the African guerrillas battling European colonialism in countries like Angola and Mozambique. He also acknowledged that many summit participants “recognized that Israel is nothing but a base here on the northeast tip of the mother continent for the twentieth-century form of ‘benevolent colonialism.’”
But the most interesting features of the statement were Malcolm’s justifications for his presence at the conference, and the connections he drew between a united Africa and the interests of black Americans. “My coming to the Summit Conference was not in vain, as some elements in the American press have tried to ‘suggest,’ but instead . . . proved to be very fruitful.” He emphasized the political solidarity African delegates expressed to him: ʺI found no doors closed to me.ʺ
Malcolm’s article for the Egyptian Gazette, “Racism: The Cancer That Is Destroying America,” was duly published, to his pleasure. “I am not a racist,” the essay began, “and I do not subscribe to any of the tenets of racism. . . . My religious pilgrimage to Mecca has given me a new insight into the true brotherhood of Islam, which encompasses all of the races of mankind.” He went on to separate himself from any black nationalist agenda, insisting that all Negroes desired the same goals. “The common goal of 22 million Afro Americans is respect and HUMAN RIGHTS. . . . We can never get civil rights in America until our HUMAN RIGHTS are first restored.” He also characterized the differences among civil rights organizations as merely over “methods of attaining these common objectives” and employed an argument made several years earlier by Frantz Fanon, about the destructive psychological impact of racism on the oppressed: “The denial of HUMAN RIGHTS psychologically castrates the victim and makes him a mental and physical slave of the system. . . .ʺ
From August 26 to August 29, he again became the eager tourist, visiting Aswan and Luxor by plane and spending the night in Luxor in some luxury at the New Winter Palace hotel before moving on to Tutankhamen’s tomb and other ancient temples in the Valley of the Kings. It was while sightseeing at Luxor that Malcolm expressed his fears in his diary that he may have “overplay[ed] my hand” by remaining abroad for so long.
Back in Cairo, a letter from Reuben Francis informed Malcolm that Muslim Mosque, Inc., had been admitted to the Islamic Federation of the United States and Canada, and that Malcolm was also named to the federation’s board of directors, two important stamps of legitimacy. MMI was now in the position of being the conduit for Arab financial aid and, indirectly, political support to African Americans. The federation’s actions would have the effect of isolating the Nation of Islam, making it difficult for Elijah Muhammad to develop major initiatives in, or even send delegations to, the orthodox Muslim world. Such success may also have sealed Malcolm’s fate among NOI leaders.
But the mail also contained troubling news. On September 1, Judge Maurice Wahl issued an order in favor of the Nation of Islam over Malcolm’s house; he and his family were ordered to vacate their Queens home by January 31, 1965. Meanwhile acting attorney general Nicholas Katzenbach wrote to J. Edgar Hoover suggesting that the FBI explore whether during his stay in Cairo Malcolm had violated the Logan Act, which made it illegal for citizens to enter into unauthorized agreements with foreign governments. Katzenbach’s letter establishes that both the FBI and the CIA were monitoring Malcolm in Africa. What is most remarkable about this was the David versus Goliath dimension. Malcolm had few resources and was traveling without bodyguards, yet the attorney general and the FBI director were so fearful of what he alone might accomplish that they searched for any plausible grounds to arrest and prosecute him upon his return to the United States.
With the onset of fall, the 1964 U.S. presidential election drew nearer, and President Johnson and the Democratic Party courted the civil rights movement, hoping to secure the black vote. As Malcolm watched from Africa, he may have factored the election into his plans to remain abroad until November. Nearly alone among prominent black leaders, he continued to support Barry Goldwater as the better candidate to address blacks’ interests. Yet Goldwaterʹs opposition to the Civil Rights Act made him the de facto candidate of Southern white supremacists, and the overwhelming majority of African Americans embraced the Democratic Party. Dr. King and other mainstream civil rights leaders had even decided to call a moratorium on demonstrations throughout the fall, in order to help Lyndon Johnson win. Malcolm must have recognized that his argument for Goldwater would have garnered little support. It was better to avoid the debate and not criticize civil rights leaders. The extra weeks abroad would give Malcolm even greater opportunities to make contacts with African political elites.
When on the evening of September 11 hundreds of Cairo students in the African Association met to protest U.S. intervention in Congo, Malcolm was pleased to speak. Later that night, he phoned Betty. “All is well, including 67X,” he wrote of the conversation, “and that upped my low spirits.” Four days later, he met with Shawarbi, who informed him that in his upcoming visit to Kuwait he would be the guest of the local governor. In early September Malcolm took a two-day trip to Gaza, meeting a number of local government officials and visiting several Palestinian refugee camps near the Israeli border. He prayed at a local masjid, accompanied by several religious leaders, before holding a press conference in Gaza’s parliament building. The Nation had admired the state of Israel as a concrete expression of Jewish Zionism; henceforth Malcolm would view Israel as a neocolonial proxy for U.S. imperialism.
Malcolm also attended a press conference featuring Ahmed al-Shukairy, the first president of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. After the conference, the two men met privately. This meeting became the context for Malcolm’s controversial essay in the Egyptian Gazette, “Zionist Logic,” in which he denounced Israeli Zionism as a “new form of colonialism,” designed to “deceive the African masses into submitting willingly into their ‘divine’ authority and guidance.” Malcolm noted that the Israeli government had made a series of “benevolent” overtures to African states, “with friendly offers of economic aid, and other tempting gifts that they dangle in front of the newly independent African nations, whose economies are experiencing great difficulties.” This combination of U.S. imperialism and Israeli interference in Africans’ affairs constituted “Zionist dollarism,” which had led to the military occupation of Arab Palestine, an act of aggression for which there existed “no intelligent or legal basis in history—not even in their own religion.”
Malcolm’s newfound hostility toward Israel can be explained not only by his obligations to Nasser but also by the shifting currents of one particular African state. In the 1950s, under the anticommunist influence of Pan-Africanist George Padmore, newly independent Ghana had been hostile to the Soviet Union and friendly toward Israel. Padmore died in 1959, and by 1962 Ghana was seriously considering becoming a Soviet client state on the model of Cuba. Trade between Egypt, a Soviet ally, and Ghana nearly doubled between 1961 and 1962, and Nkrumah displayed solidarity with Nasser by announcing his own plan for the establishment of a “separate state for Arab refugees from Palestine.” Malcolm’s anti-Israeli thesis reflected the political interests of both these allies.
This calculated view reflected the broader balancing act he performed throughout his time in the Middle East. Egypt’s secular government stood forcefully at odds with religious groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been implicated in a 1954 plot to kill Nasser and subsequently banned from the country. Malcolm, indebted to both sides, could not afford to take positions that might offend either. During his stay in Cairo, his Islamic studies were directed by Sheikh Muhammad Surur al-Sabban, the secretary-general of the Muslim World League. This group was financed by the Saudi government and it reflected conservative political views, so Malcolm had to exercise considerable tact and political discretion. Simultaneously, he was also corresponding with Dr. Said Ramadan, the son-in-law of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Expelled from Egypt, Ramadan had also founded the World Islamic League, and in 1961 established the Islamic Center in Switzerland. Throughout their correspondence, Malcolm pressed Ramadan about race and Islam. At one point Ramadan appealed to him: “How could a man of your spirit, intellect, and worldwide outlook fail to see in Islam . . . a message that confirms . . . the ethnological oneness and equality of all races, thus striking at the very root of racial discrimination?” Malcolm responded that regardless of Islam’s universality, he was obligated to struggle on behalf of African Americans. “As a black American,” he explained, “I do feel that my first responsibility is to my twenty-two million fellow black Americans.” The cordial dialogue displays Malcolm’s deepening interest in the Muslim Brotherhood’s faith-based politics—an interest that he knew he had to keep from Nasserʹs government.
On September 16, Malcolm returned to Al-Azhar University, where he was given a certificate establishing his credentials as an orthodox Muslim. He posed for photographs. Later that day he celebrated with Shawarbi and other friends. Leaving for Jeddah two days later, he was overwhelmed by the “touching farewells” and generosity of his Arab friends, but he also pondered the crux of one friend’s words of advice: “the importance of not being sidetracked by needless fights with Elijah Muhammad.” On September 21, Prince Faisal designated Malcolm an official state visitor of Saudi Arabia, a status that covered all his local expenses and provided a chauffeured car.
At a meeting with Seyyid Omar el-Saghaf, the vice minister of Saudi Arabia’s foreign affairs department, Malcolm presented his proposal and request for funds to establish a mosque, or Islamic center, in Harlem, to promote orthodox Islam. On September 22, writing to M. S. Handler, Malcolm praised the “quiet, sane, and strongly spiritual atmosphere” of Saudi Arabia, a place where “objective thinking” was possible. Under the Nation of Islam, “I lived within the narrow-minded confines of the ‘straightjacketed worldʹ . . . I represented and defended [Elijah Muhammad] beyond the level of intellect and reason.” He vowed that he would “never rest until I have undone the harm I did to so many innocent Negroes” and affirmed that he was now “a Muslim in the most orthodox sense; my religion is Islam as it is believed in and practiced by the Muslims here in the Holy City of Mecca.”
His new political goals, he went on, were firmly within the civil rights mainstream. “I am not anti-American, un-American, seditious nor subversive. I don’t buy the anti-capitalist propaganda of the communist, nor do I buy the anti-communist propaganda of capitalists.” He was trying hard to establish for himself a relatively objective Third World position of nonalignment. Unlike his earlier endorsements of socialism over capitalism, in these comments to Handler he appears to retreat toward a more pragmatic economic philosophy. “I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity (human beings) as a whole whether they are capitalist, communists or socialists, all have assets as well as liabilities. . . .” Then, in a remarkable passage, he seems to repudiate not just Yacub’s History but the fascist-like concept that all blacks, as blacks, had to exhibit certain cultural traits or adhere to sets of rigid beliefs, in order to justify their racial identity:
I am a Muslim who believes whole heartily that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad ibn Abdullah . . . is the Last Messenger of Allah—yet some of my very dearest friends are Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics and even atheists—some are capitalists, socialists, conservatives, extremists . . . some are even Uncle Toms—some are black, brown, red, yellow and some are even white. It takes all these religious, political, economic, psychological and racial ingredients (characteristics) to make the Human Family and the Human Society complete.
In a second letter to Handler, dated the following day, he criticized his former belief in Elijah Muhammad “as a divine leader who had no human faults.” What had prompted the letter, however, was the news that Surur al-Sabban had named Malcolm as the World Islamic League’s representative in the United States, with the authority to start an official center in New York City. The league offered fifteen scholarships to American Muslims to attend the Islamic University of Madinah (Medina). This gift, combined with the twenty scholarships offered in Cairo, gave Malcolm thirty-five fully funded fellowships.
In the final week of September he was back on the move. After a brief stop in Kuwait, where he tried unsuccessfully to obtain financial support for the MMI from the foreign secretary, Malcolm traveled to Beirut on September 29. He was welcomed at the Lebanese airport by a student leader named Azizah and about ten white American students, who informed him that the American University dean had extended permission for him to speak in one of the lecture halls. Malcolm, Azizah, and several other students had lunch at the apartment home of an African-American expatriate named Mrs. Brown. One of the white students there, Marian Faye Novak, reconstructed their brief encounter, and what is obvious is that even those friendly to Malcolm’s cause still viewed him by the policies of the Nation of Islam rather than by his new beliefs. Another white student, Sara, said, “I think you were absolutely right, Malcolm, . . . when you accused the white man of having the devil in him.” Upset by the remark, Novak replied defensively, “I didn’t choose this skin, but it’s the only one I have.” Sara quickly apologized, Novak remembered, “not just for herself and her particular ancestors, but for me and mine, too, while Malcolm X nodded and smiled.” Novak stereotypes Malcolm’s response even though he did not utter a word during the exchange.
Though the group had only a few hours to advertise Malcolm’s address that afternoon, American University students had not forgotten his stellar speaking performance from earlier in the year, and an overflow crowd turned out. Later that day Malcolm flew from Beirut to Khartoum, then traveled overnight directly to Addis Ababa, arriving on September 30. The major event in Addis Ababa was a lecture to an audience of more than five hundred students and faculty at the University College student union on October 2, which was remarkable for the amount of detail in the FBIʹs account of the event. The Bureau (and the CIA) had not curtailed its efforts to track Malcolm after his departure from Cairo, and it appears to have followed him closely for most of his time abroad. The intelligence report from Addis Ababa suggested that “another goal of Malcolm’s visit was to permit direct contact between the black people of the U.S. and Africa.”
On October 5, Malcolm flew to Nairobi, and after some time off to visit a national park, contacted vice president Oginga Odinga and set up a meeting for three days hence. When they met, Odinga seemed “attentive, alert, and sympathetic,” and Malcolm subsequently received an invitation to address the Kenyan parliament on October 15. In the interim, he decided to visit Zanzibar and Tanzania, with the hope of solidifying the Pan-African political relationships with Tanzanian leaders he had met at the Cairo conference. Most prominent among those he’d hoped to meet with was Abdulrahman Muhammad Babu, a Zanzibaran revolutionary Marxist who had helped engineer his island nation’s 1964 social revolution and subsequent merger with then Tanganyika.
Over several days, Malcolm met a number of African-American expatriates living in Tanzania’s capital city of Dar es Salaam, and he conducted several media interviews. He met with Minister Babu on October 12, although the high point of his Tanzanian excursion was a brief encounter with President Julius K. Nyerere the next day. Like Kwame Nkrumah, Nyerere had risen to power in the wave of colonial uprisings that swept through Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and unlike many leaders who fell as quickly as they rose during those tumultuous years, he would remain popular and in power until 1985. Accompanied by Babu, Malcolm assessed the man called by his citizens as mwalimu, or “teacher.” He is a “very shrew[d], intelligent, disarming man who laughs and jokes much (but deadly serious).”
As Malcolm’s travels brought him into more prominent power circles in African politics, he seemed to meet important figures wherever he turned. And as his presence in Dar es Salaam became more widely known, his schedule became more packed. On October 14 he visited the Cuban embassy to converse with the ambassador, who was an Afro-Cuban. That evening Malcolm was the guest of honor at a dinner that included a number of prominent Tanzanians. He delayed his return to Nairobi for several days, and when he flew back to Nairobi a few days later, he found himself on the same plane as both the Kenyan president Jomo Kenyatta and the Ugandan prime minister Milton Obote. During the flight, which stopped first in Mombasa, one of Kenyatta’s ministers informed the president who Malcolm was, and soon Malcolm was requested to move forward to a seat between the two leaders. Arriving late in Mombasa, Kenyatta decided to spend the night, but Malcolm continued to talk with Obote during the flight to Nairobi. After going through Kenyan customs, Tom Mboya, Kenya’s second most powerful politician after Kenyatta, picked up Malcolm “and put me back with the VIPs.”
As his stay in Kenya unfolded, famous faces mingled with familiar ones. On Sunday morning, October 18, Malcolm ran into two SNCC leaders, chairman John Lewis and Don Harris, who were on their way to Zambia. During the day, a formal invitation was delivered at Malcolm’s hotel on behalf of Mboya, requesting his presence that evening at the gala premiere of Uhuru Films (uhuru means “freedom” in Kiswahili). Malcolm attended the event, and at the intermission enjoyed chatting with both Mboya and his wife. Malcolm described Mboya, who would also later be assassinated, as the personification of “perpetual motion.” After returning late to his hotel, Malcolm spoke with SNCCʹs Don Harris about “future cooperation.”
On October 20, Mboya and his wife picked Malcolm up at his hotel, and they drove to meet President Kenyatta. Taken to a parade’s reviewing stand, he relished joining the VIPs who sat with the president for tea and coffee. Malcolm was seated next to Kenyatta’s daughter Jane, and continued the conversation with her back at his hotel, the Equator Inn. That afternoon Malcolm had lunch with Mrs. Mboya, the president’s family, and a white head of police. “I had wine with my dinner,” Malcolm admitted to his diary. After lunch, Malcolm listened to Kenyatta’s public address, in which he boldly assumed “complete responsibility for organizing the Mau Mau,” the indigenous revolt against British rule in Kenya in the 1950s. At every step, Malcolm was treated like a visiting dignitary, and his prominence over the course of several days at social and public events must have stunned the CIA and FBI. The Bureau had spent years trying to split Malcolm from Elijah Muhammad, with the expectation that the NOI schism would weaken the organization and discredit its leaders. After Malcolm’s supposed failure at the Cairo conference, he should have been greatly weakened. Yet with each stop in his itinerary, the FBI received fresh reports about Malcolm’s expansive social calendar and his growing credibility among African heads of state. His media profile also continued to grow. The FBIʹs New York office reported to the director that while in Nairobi Malcolm “appeared prominently at social functions.” On October 21, Malcolm was interviewed on local TV, where he explained that at every opportunity—in Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, and other cities—he had urged leaders “to condemn the United States in the United Nations for racism.”
His popularity forced the U.S. government to step up its efforts. Several black Americans living in Nairobi were contacted by the U.S. embassy, Malcolm learned, warning them to stay away from him. A party that had been planned had to be canceled, as pressure was applied in an attempt to discredit him. U.S. authorities by now of course knew all about Malcolm’s spiritual epiphany in Mecca, his break with the Nation, and even his overtures to the civil rights movement. But neither the State Department nor the intelligence agencies had any intention of telling the “truth” about Malcolm.
Despite the covert opposition of the U.S. embassy, Malcolm achieved one of his greatest triumphs on October 15, when he spoke before Kenya’s parliament. After his talk, the parliament proposed, and then passed, what Malcolm called “a resolution of support for our human rights struggle.ʺ His plan, hatched in the wake of defeat in Cairo, had finally yielded results. For a sovereign African state to endorse his human rights formulation was a tremendous political breakthrough.
The resolution brought an immediate response from American authorities. Within hours, Malcolm met with the U.S. ambassador and several aides, who grilled him on his relationships with Kenyan officials and demanded details of all his recent interactions. To Malcolm’s face, the ambassador stated that he regarded him as a racist, but Malcolm kept his cool. He vigorously presented his positions and objectives, challenging the authorities to show he had done anything illegal.
From Nairobi, Malcolm flew back briefly to Addis Ababa before departing on October 28 for Nigeria, where his friend the scholar Essien-Udom had arranged several events. Malcolm arrived in Lagos two days later and had settled in for dinner alone before a phone call interrupted him: it was Nigerian president Nnamdi Azikiwe’s secretary, seeking to arrange a private meeting the next morning. Writing later of the meeting, Malcolm found Azikiwe not lacking in humility, and noted that he had a good grasp of the key players in the U.S. civil rights struggle. Later that day, Malcolm went to a party attended by members of the press, the diplomatic corps, and Nigerian officials. “A great deal of soul-searching was being done,” he recalled, about the difficult state of Nigerian politics. Malcolm must have shuddered in drafting this prediction, which regrettably would come all too true, with the Biafran War only several years away: “It will take much bloodshed to straighten this country out and I don’t believe it can be avoided.”
It was only during this trip that he fully grasped the profound divisions among Africans in the postindependence era. On November 1, for example, he was confronted by two young reporters for several hours, much to his surprise, who disagreed with the positive comments he had made about their president at a public event. The mood among young Nigerians, he pondered, “is mostly impatient and explosive.”
During the twenty-four weeks from April through November 1964 when Malcolm was out of the United States, his followers were responsible for fashioning his image and message. It did not go well. “Malcolm was aware of the fact that we were having problems,” Herman Ferguson later admitted. “There was [MMI] resentment against the members of the OAAU because they didn’t go through the struggle in the Nation of Islam.” Another source of conflict was the role of women in the organization. Former Black Muslims believed that “women played a secondary role to the men. The men were out front, the protectors, the warriors,” Ferguson observed. Malcolm tried to break this patriarchy, insisting that in the OAAU “women [should have an] equal position to the men.” His new commitment to gender equality confused and even outraged many members. “A couple of brothers came to me,” Ferguson recalled. “They wanted me to approach [Malcolm] about their concerns about the role of the women and how it was not sitting well with many of the brothers.” Ferguson decided against carrying the appeal directly to Malcolm. “The women that Malcolm seemed to place a lot of confidence in, they were responsible, they were well educated.”
By midsummer the tensions between MMI and OAAU occasionally sparked into verbal combat. James 67X made no secret of his bitter hostility toward Shifflett. The two fought each other constantly, over everything from the content of the OAAUʹs public rallies and speakers’ invitations to the OAAUʹs struggling efforts to recruit new members. “The Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the OAAU . . . drifted apart,” Ferguson explained. “Some people came in and were not a part of the MMI, and all of the MMI people were not part of OAAU. So there was a gap.” Even inside the OAAU, there were growing divisions between the pragmatists like Shifflett, who wanted OAAU to join forces with black elected officials and civil rights groups, and Ferguson, who considered himself a revolutionary nationalist and Pan-Africanist. What evolved was a core of “dedicated people,” who performed the lion’s share of all work without salaries, and the great majority of OAAU members, who came out only for the rallies.
As a result, by late July some of the OAAU committees that had been created a month earlier began falling apart. South Carolina activist James Campbell and Ferguson did establish the Liberation School, which held classes and attracted a dozen or so students. Peter Bailey started the OAAUʹs newsletter, Blacklash, and Muriel Gray led a very productive cultural arts committee. However, the factional discord upset many OAAU people, who felt discouraged and disoriented without their leaderʹs presence. Most had joined after being inspired by Malcolm, but in his long absence members had to assume greater responsibilities. “We sort of hoped [Malcolm] would be like the magnet that would draw the people in,” Ferguson explained. Hundreds would regularly turn out for OAAU events but refuse to pay the two-dollar membership fee. Paradoxically, Ferguson attributed the recruitment problems directly to Malcolm. “When you became a known member of Malcolm’s organization, you stuck out like a sore thumb. It was easier to be a Black Panther than a Malcomite.” Ferguson also blamed the OAAUʹs problems on the MMI, which was increasingly detached from providing any assistance. “Malcolm recognized the limitations of the brothers,” he observed. “They . . . would lay down their lives for him, and he knew that.” But “in terms of building and developing and bringing people in, they would tend to frighten people.” Early one Saturday morning at their Hotel Theresa office just before his second trip abroad, Malcolm became irate when he saw an MMI brother lounging in a comfortable chair. “Don’t you have anything to do?” he snapped. “Go out and deliver some leaflets!” Ferguson narrated the story’s bitter conclusion: “The guy left and we didn’t see him for several weeks. And then when we saw him next, he was all bandaged up. He went down in the subway, and Nation of Islam guys jumped him, and they put him in the hospital.”
Throughout this difficult time three individuals played key roles: James 67X Warden (Shabazz), Benjamin 2X Goodman (Karin), and Charles 37X Morris (Kenyatta). These close associates of Malcolm’s had all served in the military and had all joined the NOI; Benjamin and James had both risen to positions of authority in the NOI. When the split occurred, all of them placed their lives on hold to follow Malcolm even without knowing where he was going. The activities of this triumvirate largely defined how Malcolm was presented to the public during the second half of 1964.
James’s power rested partially on the fact that he was the only person who could act, or write, on Malcolm’s behalf. “I paid the bills, I rented the Audubon Ballroom, [I wrote] every press release that he made.” He even purchased “books on how to have press conferences, and advised Malcolm how to engage the media.” He also had the authority to send on behalf of Malcolm correspondence and press releases he wrote himself. For all his labors, James was paid a total of one hundred dollars during nearly a year. Despite all these sacrifices, Malcolm occasionally questioned his loyalty.
He got little thanks either from any of his fellow members, who viewed him as notoriously secretive and argumentative. He was constantly receiving a stream of orders from Malcolm, but though he could speak freely on his leader’s behalf, he was rarely given full authority to render truly important decisions. On one occasion when he attended an OAAU business meeting, he became so frustrated by the group’s disorganization and hopelessness at “getting anything done” that he stood up and slammed his Samsonite briefcase on a nearby table. “Brother Malcolm is holding meresponsible for the formation of this organization,” he warned. “Now, I’m going to leave with these parting words: either you organize it or I’ll organize it.” After this stern rebuke, “things started happening.”
Benjamin 2X had an easier time ingratiating himself. His primary role kept him busy with MMI; unlike James, he was not tasked with an organization-building role in the OAAU, which made it easier for him to go out of his way to support its development. On July 18, when New York City police shot James Powell, the event that would precipitate the Harlem riot, Benjamin spoke as the OAAU representative at a protest rally that was hastily organized by CORE in Harlem. Though he did not take part in the riots, NYPD and FBI interest in him subsequently increased sharply. According to agents at the rally, Benjamin “stirred them up by stating that Negroes should arm themselves for self-protection and that Negroes must be willing to spill blood for freedom.” Looking for someone to blame, especially with Malcolm out of the country, the FBI and Justice Department focused on Benjamin, though they eventually decided that there was insufficient evidence to arrest him.
Throughout the summer, James and Benjamin tried gamely to fill the hole left by their absent leader. On July 5 Benjamin spoke at the second public rally of the OAAU, held at the Audubon; then, on July 12, he presided over an OAAU rally that attracted 125 people and featured guest speakers Percy Sutton and Charles Rangel, who urged the audience to promote voter registration. Almost by default, James became Malcolm’s emissary to the United States left. He addressed a meeting at Columbia University sponsored by the Trotskyist DeBerry-Shaw presidential campaign committee on July 23. About one week later he lectured at the Socialist Workers Party’s Militant Labor Forum in Manhattan, charging that the recent Harlem riot was being used as a pretext to “set down” the black community. As Malcolm’s absence grew longer, by late summer James finally began making major political and financial decisions without his input. In early August, when a cluster of supporters wanted to initiate an MMI branch in Philadelphia, he promised that any funds collected locally should remain there until the group “got on its feet.” James’s decision not only represented a sharp break from the Nation’s autocratic centralism, but it also fragmented the potential resources of pro-Malcolm forces.
As the summer rolled on, James found himself left with relatively few allies within the MMI because, ironically, members felt he had been excessively accommodating to the OAAU, allowing that group to usurp resources and space at MMI headquarters. James recalled, “We had a space, and men tend to be territorial. . . . And they came in and wanted to do things their way, or spoke to the brothers in a way that brothers were not accustomed to.” James believed that OAAU members saw themselves “as intellectually capable individuals who were taking over from these ex-criminals, these . . . nincompoops, and it caused resentment.” But if James bore the brunt of their anger, he was not the source of it. For that, the responsibility fell to Malcolm himself, and the changes he had made to his platform, by will or by concession, in order to broaden the appeal of his message. In separating his politics from religion, he had inadvertently undermined the political authority of the MMI. His determination to play a major role in the civil rights movement meant denouncing much of his old past and Nation of Islam beliefs, especially the forceful emphasis on class divisions within the black community. But the MMI was an embodiment of that past, and its members resented those middle-class, better-educated blacks who now pushed to encircle their minister. “The OAAU seemed to be treating us as last yearʹs news,” James reflected bitterly. “‘We are replacing them,’ see?”
James’s own Marxist take on the black community left him deeply skeptical of the OAAUʹs mission, a sentiment at odds with his responsibility to help the group get off the ground. For him, the OAAUʹs artists like Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, and its intellectuals like John Oliver Killens, represented the black petite bourgeoisie that Malcolm had once portrayed as part of the problem. “Their bread was buttered on the integrationist side,” he complained. “These were not people that were on welfare. They were middle class for America and upper middle class for black America. They didn’t have to wonder whether there was milk in the refrigerator.” James believed that Malcolm had created the OAAU primarily to serve as a platform to carry out his international objectives. “An African diplomat or African politician could see it and accept it [the OAAU] and understand that . . . what was good for the African-American people would be good for his group.” During his April-May visit to Africa, Malcolm had been surprised that “some of the most revolutionary people over there said, ‘Well, how does Martin Luther King stand on this?’ And they felt that if Martin Luther King wasn’t in it, who was this Johnny-come-lately Malcolm?” James continued. “So [Malcolm] made adjustments.” Among them was to pursue a recruitment strategy bringing middle-class blacks, liberal celebrities, and intellectuals into the OAAU. “Besides,” added James, Malcolm’s views were “changing so rapidly that almost as soon as he reached a particular level [they would become] obsolete, because he was at another place.” This was pragmatic, self-interested politics: “He needed people of stature and substance that would allow him to have that kind of dialogue with Africa, or with the UN, or international bodies. And people like Ossie Davis or Ruby Dee or Sidney Poitier are people who are well known.”
The tug-of-war between the OAAU and MMI finally surfaced into open conflict when several MMI brothers were arrested on weapons possession charges. Though the brothers were also OAAU members, the OAAU made no effort to post their bail. “When they came out,” James recalled, “they were behind in their annual [OAAU] dues. So they . . . went to go to [an OAAU] meeting, and the sisters said, ‘No, you can’t come to the meeting because you’re behind in your dues.’ ” The brothers were stunned, and over the next few months many MMI members with dual membership would quit the OAAU, or simply drift away from both organizations. One furious MMI member named Talfiq brought his grievances to James, who explained that Malcolm had given him the responsibility to build the OAAU. “[This brother] had enough respect for me to abide his plans for revolution.” The fragmentation grew still worse when Betty initiated her own group of supporters. “Betty had a group going on at her house, who thought they should [take over] the OAAU, because Lynne Shifflett wasn’t moving fast enough.” Betty also had a special dislike for Shifflett, who she feared might be sexually involved with her husband. According to Max Stanford, at an OAAU meeting, an irate Betty charged in and accused Shifflett and an OAAU secretary of sleeping with Malcolm.
Betty felt particularly vulnerable as an unhappy wife in a strained marriage. She had been left behind by Malcolm under the guard of Charles 37X Kenyatta, who held a position of some significance within the MMI. During Malcolm’s absence the relationship between protector and protected grew more complicated, and more intimate, than Malcolm could have imagined. Kenyatta, still one of Malcolm’s favorites thanks to his silky charm and easy nature, had never ingratiated himself with James 67X or some of the other former Nation stalwarts who had come over in the split. In the new era of the MMI their suspicion of him had not abated. Yet Malcolm had designated Kenyatta to be the sole bodyguard of his wife and children while he was out of the country, giving him the authority to control access to the Shabazz residence.
Kenyatta found himself presiding over a household on the verge of a breakdown as Betty struggled to shoulder the burden of Malcolm’s absence. She had given birth to their fourth child, Gamilah Lumumba, three days after the OAAUʹs founding, and it was just eight days later that Malcolm, with his old habit of disappearing whenever a new baby appeared, departed for Africa. Raising four children alone would have been hard enough, given the household’s meager income, at this point coming only from Malcolm’s book advances, lecture honoraria, and small donations from dedicated MMI members. Now, however, she had become the most accessible target of the Nation’s intimidation campaign. The telephoned death threats that Malcolm had left behind continued to ring with unbearable frequency in his home, wearing down his wife, who could not avoid them. Captain Joseph had devised a harassment strategy to instill further fear in the household. Fruit of Islam members were instructed to ring Malcolm’s home once every five minutes. If anyone picked up, the FOI member might say something threatening—or say nothing at all—and after a long silence would simply hang up. “You’ll never see your husband again,” one caller promised Betty. “We got him. We cut his throat.” The constant stream of such calls sapped Betty of her strength and patience during Malcolm’s long absence.
Although Kenyatta had been assigned to protect her, Betty must have felt utterly abandoned. With four children age five and under, without adequate finances, and caring for a newborn infant by herself, she could hardly have believed that her husband’s political responsibilities should take precedence over her personal needs. She came to dislike most of his key lieutenants, including James and Benjamin, for taking her husband away from her. Yet she soon grew closer to Kenyatta in ways that attracted the notice of the FBI and caused great consternation among Malcolm’s loyal lieutenants.
James 67X had seen troubling omens in what he considered Betty’s inappropriate behavior at her home when Malcolm was away. She seemed coquettish, almost inviting male guests to make sexual advances toward her. On one occasion, James experienced her amorous overtures himself. “This woman took my glasses off,” he recalled, “and put them behind her back and told me, ‘Come and get them.’ That’s why I would never go to that house again.” He soon found that Kenyatta was also giving him cause to be suspicious.
Malcolm frequently sent his instructions from abroad to his home address, and James discovered that Kenyatta had been withholding vital communications from him for days or even weeks. It marked the beginning of a power play: Kenyatta believed James to be his most important rival for Malcolm’s attention, and so he severely restricted his access to Betty.
In September 1964, the FBI observed that Kenyatta had been frequently traveling by car outside the city in the company of a woman who was identified as “Malcolm Xʹs [redacted].” This was indeed Betty Shabazz, who enjoyed going out on the town with the handsome man. Within weeks rumors were rife within the OAAU, MMI, and Mosque No. 7 that Betty and Kenyatta were sexually involved, and even planned to marry. The actual extent of their relationship is difficult to discern, but it set off alarms with James 67X and other leaders who heard about their liaisons. By the standards of orthodox Islam—and even by Nation of Islam standards—the relationship was highly inappropriate and threatened to bring shame upon everyone involved. Moreover, both parties were being extraordinarily conspicuous, given that both of them should have known that they were under FBI surveillance.
Yet Malcolm, clueless about what was transpiring in his absence, came to depend increasingly on Betty while he was away. For months, he corresponded with her through telegrams, letters, and phone calls. One letter, dated July 26, affirmed that he missed Betty and the children “much and I do pray that you are well and secure.” Much of his early correspondence described his activities in Cairo and at the OAU conference. “I realize many there in the States may think I’m shirking my duties as a leader . . . by being way over here,” he confessed. “But what I am doing here will be more helpful to the whole [Malcolm’s emphasis] in the long run.”
In another letter, dated August 4, he wrote, “It looks like another month at least may pass before I see you,” placing his return at that point in mid to late September. He also described his conversations with Akbar Muhammad, telling Betty that Akbar “says he knows his father is wrong and doesn’t go along with his fatherʹs claim of being a divine messenger. But I’m still watching him.” He continued, “I’ve learned to trust no one.”
Even during the period when Betty grew close to Kenyatta, she was sending letters and magazines to Malcolm, carrying out political tasks on his behalf, and trying to keep him at least partially informed. Late in his trip, she traveled to Philadelphia to attend a meeting of Wallace Muhammad’s followers, but was disappointed by what she heard. While Wallace had broken with his father and the Nation of Islam, he did not call for a merger with Malcolm‘s groups, instead characterizing Malcolm as having a “violent image.” Betty reported back that Wallace was “just like his father” and she believed that “everyone” was trying to use Malcolm “as a stepping stone.”
It was also during this time that Betty became directly involved in the schisms inside both the OAAU and MMI. Along with the group that met at her home and schemed to take over the OAAU, she also met secretly with MMI security head Reuben X Francis, who was planning to start a new youth group. The FBI picked up a phone call between Francis and Betty during which he explained that the group, the Organization of Afro-American Cadets, would function separately from the MMI because, he said, “I don’t want the officials to know too much about it.” MMI leaders were “corrupt,” and this new group had to be kept at arm’s length from them “to avoid contamination.” Perhaps playing to Betty’s favor, Francis also defended Charles 37X Kenyatta, claiming that MMI leaders “are trying to set him up to make him look bad in our eyes”; she agreed to meet him later that week. The fact that a dissident MMI member had the confidence to confide in her probably indicates that she was perceived as an influential political force in her own right. It also implies that her displeasure with James, and with how the MMI was run, was public knowledge.
In the fall of 1964, probably because of his relationship with Betty, Charles Kenyatta felt bold enough to publicly challenge James 67Xʹs leadership. The basic criticisms leveled against James were that he was secretive, dictatorial, and a closet communist—a Marxist who dishonestly presented himself as a black nationalist. Because of his administrative responsibilities, he had alienated many members; his unambiguous dislike of Shifflett and the OAAU guaranteed that he would have few allies in that organization. By contrast, Kenyatta maintained cordial relations with OAAU members and attended some of their events. As the power struggle between the two men became public, MMI members were divided. But old habits die hard. The NOI tradition of allowing the minister, or supreme leader, to make important decisions led the majority of MMI members to defer any judgments about the leadership until Malcolm’s return. Still, the long summer of disunity had left members of both groups with frazzled nerves and little sense of direction. Adding to their anxiety were the continuing conflicts with the Nation of Islam. Malcolm’s departure from the United States had done little to reduce the Nation’s vitriolic campaign against him and his defenders. Everyone craved Malcolm’s return, but feared that it would trigger a new escalation of violence.
By the beginning of November 1964, Malcolm had been away from the United States for four months. He was aware of the dissension and near collapse of his fledgling organizations. Undoubtedly, he missed his wife and children. Yet he had successfully fashioned a new image, another reinvention, on the African continent. No other private citizen from America, devoid of title or official status, had been welcomed and honored as Malcolm had been. Instead of being projected as a racist zealot, as was still too often the case in the American press, he was identified by African media as a freedom fighter and Pan-Africanist. But it was not the flattery that affected Malcolm; it was the romance with Africa itself, its beauty, diversity, and complexity. It was the African people who had embraced Malcolm as their own long-lost son. It must have been difficult to leave all of this behind, by returning to the United States and facing the death threats and escalating violence he knew was sure to come.
The final leg of his African tour brought him back to Ghana, and to the expat community for whom he had only grown in stature in the months since his last visit. Maya Angelou, Julian Mayfield, and others met him at the Accra airport on November 2, and soon various expats were once again competing with one another for his time and attention. The next day Malcolm enjoyed seeing Angelou, spending the morning together and dining at the home of the intellectual Nana Nketsia with about half a dozen artists and writers. He also spent several hours with Shirley Du Bois, by then the executive director of Ghanaian television, and together they toured Ghana’s national television and radio stations. Perhaps his looming return to the United States had made him restless, because during this time he found himself unable to sleep through the night, turning to sleeping pills for relief. Yet he was also exhausted, worn down from weeks of grinding international travel. He had loosened his rules about alcohol despite the Muslim restrictions against it; after a newspaper interview, he had grown tired, and noted in his diary that he’d had a rum and Coke in an attempt to wake up. He would have more to keep his thoughts filled soon enough, when news reached him that Lyndon Johnson had buried Goldwater in a landslide victory in the U.S. presidential election, capturing 96 percent of the black vote.
Shirley Du Bois, Julian Mayfield, and Malcolm sat down for a quick lunch with the Chinese ambassador before meeting with President Nkrumah in the early afternoon on November 5. Their talk once again went unrecorded, but its content might be gleaned from Malcolm’s speeches about the United Nations during the rest of his trip. Part of Malcolm’s agenda for returning to Accra was to promote the development of the OAAU on the African continent, and in the expat community his ideas, especially that of bringing U.S. race issues before the UN, were met with great excitement. “The idea was so stimulating to the community of African-American residents,” recalled Angelou, “that I persuaded myself I should return to the States to help establish the organization.” Maya’s decision to return home to help Malcolm won her immediate status among the expatriates. “My friends,” Maya remembered, “began to treat me as if I had suddenly became special. . . . My stature had definitely increased.”
On Friday, November 6, a delegation of admirers, including Shirley Du Bois, Nana Nketsia, Maya Angelou, and others, bid Malcolm a bon voyage. As his plane departed for Liberia, the reality of leaving Ghana sank in and he grew sad as he reflected on how much he had come to cherish the community there. As he watched Maya and another African-American female expatriate “waving ‘sadly’ from the rail,” he characterized Maya and her friend as “two very lonely women.” Arriving in Monrovia, Liberia, at about noon, Malcolm attended a dance held at city hall, then went out to a country club. After some sightseeing and a cocktail party the next day, Malcolm spent several hours being wined and dined—and being challenged in vigorous debate with expatriates and others about the role of Israel in Africa. Members of the Liberian elite made the case that African-American “technicians and of other skills” needed to migrate to Liberia, yet, like any other ruling class, they were candid about their determination to hold on to power. Black Americans would be welcomed to Liberia, “but we don’t want them to interfere with our internal political structure. Our fear is that they may get into politics.”
On the morning of November 9 Malcolm visited the Liberian executive mansion, where he was introduced to members of the cabinet; however, President William Tubman was “too busy” to meet him. Malcolm then headed to the airport to depart—after three packed days he was off to Conakry, Guinea. Arriving in the early evening, he was driven much to his amazement to President Sékou Touré’s “private home, where I will reside while in Conakory [sic]. I’m speechless! All praise is due Allah!” He was allocated three personal servants, a driver, and one army officer.
As Malcolm sought to process this extraordinary recognition of status, he reflected on how he had changed in the past few months: “My mind seems to be more at peace, since I left Mecca in September. My thoughts come strong and clear and it is easier to express myself.” Paradoxically, he then added, “My mind has been almost incapable of producing words and phrases lately and it has worried me.” What he appears to be saying is that his Middle East and Africa experiences had greatly broadened his mind, yet his limited vocabulary of black nationalism was insufficient to address the challenges he so clearly saw confronting Africa. Malcolm sensed that he needed to create new theoretical tools and a different frame of reference beyond race.
Malcolm was chauffeured around Conakry like a visiting head of state the morning after his arrival there. A quick visit at the Algerian embassy caused him brief embarrassment, due to the enthusiastic reception he received there. “It is difficult to believe that I could be so widely known (and respected) here on this continent,” Malcolm later reflected. “The negative image the Western press has tried to paint of me certainly hasn’t succeeded.” That evening he was finally introduced to President Touré, who enthusiastically embraced him. “He congratulated me for my firmness in the struggle for dignity.” They agreed to meet for lunch the next afternoon. That night Malcolm went to a nightclub, but perhaps because Guinea was an overwhelmingly Muslim country, he wisely stuck with coffee and orange juice.
At his lunch with President Touré and several other international guests the next day, Malcolm noted that Touré “ate fast, but politely, and several times added food to my plate.” After several guests had left, Touré returned to the topic that had animated him at their encounter the night before, the quest for “dignity.” Malcolm knew about the president’s extraordinary history—as a trade union militant and anti-French revolutionary, the sole leader in Francophone Africa to defy De Gaulle by rejecting union with metropolitan France in 1958. To Touré dignity meant African self-determination, concepts very close to his own new lexicon of Pan-Africanism. “We are aware of your reputation as a freedom fighter,” Touré told Malcolm, “so I talk frankly, a fighting language to you.”
Over the next several days Malcolm experienced a series of travel mishaps; unbeknownst to him his flight out of Conakry had been rescheduled, and he had to spend an extra night there. On his flight to Dakar on November 13 one brother recognized Malcolm, “and it was all over the airport” that the black American Muslim was present once he’d arrived. Travelers came up requesting autographs. He continued on, with a brief transfer stop in Geneva and then Paris, where he spent the night at the Hôtel Terminus St. Lazare. Malcolm flew to Algiers the next morning, but the visit was not productive. The French language barrier, Malcolm lamented, was so “tremendous” that it was almost impossible to communicate effectively. With his crisscross flight pattern continuing, Malcolm arrived in Geneva on the morning of November 16. His objective was to make contact with the city’s Islamic Center and to deepen his links to the Muslim Brotherhood. That afternoon, he had a surprise encounter with a young woman named Fifi, a United Nations secretary and Swiss national who had worked with Malcolm in Cairo. She met him at his hotel, chatting with him for hours and truly surprising him by saying that she “is madly in love with me and seems willing to do anything to prove it.” Malcolm slept late the next day, then went shopping, buying a new overcoat and suit. Dr. Said Ramadan of the Islamic Center came by, taking Malcolm first to his mosque, then to dinner with several guests. When Malcolm returned to his hotel at about nine p.m., “Fifi was knocking on my door as I came up the stairs.” She joined him in his room and left a couple hours later. Uncharacteristically, Malcolm did not record in his diary what transpired between the two of them; based on the diary, Fifi appears to be the only female he admitted to his private space during his entire time abroad. After her departure, Malcolm subsequently left the hotel and took a brief walk in the rain, “alone and feeling lonely . . . thinking of Betty.”
He arrived in Paris on November 18, checking in to the Hôtel Delavine, where he would stay for a week (despite receiving an invitation to visit London) to address a crowd at the Maison de la Mutualité five days later. His international reputation preceded him, and though his appearance at the Mutualité was not widely covered by the U.S. press, one reporter recalled, “There wasn’t a square inch of unoccupied space in the meeting room.” Those who arrived late stood or sat on the floor. Malcolm’s formal remarks were supposed to address the theme “The Black Struggle in the United States,” but as he confessed in his diary, he seemed to lack mental focus in the formulation of new political ideas, especially in the aftermath of Johnson’s presidential victory. Instead, the substance of his remarks consisted of responses to questions. From the beginning, he veered ideologically to the left. When asked, “How is it possible that some people are still preaching nonviolence?” he responded with an attack on King, saying, “That’s easy to understand—shows you the power of dollarism.” It was the “imperialists” who “give out another peace prize to again try and strengthen the image of nonviolence.” His trip to Africa and the Middle East also seemed to have revived his inflammatory anti-Semitic views. “The American Negroes especially have been maneuvered into doing more crying for the Jews than they cry for themselves,” he complained, going on to present a fictive history of progressive Jews and claiming, incorrectly, that they had not participated as Freedom Riders. “If they were barred from hotels they bought the hotel. But when they join us, they don’t show us how to solve our problem that way.”
Yet in other ways Malcolm had become more tolerant. He announced his new views about interracial romance and marriage: “How can anyone be against love? Whoever a person wants to love, that’s their business.” And he presciently speculated that in a multicultural future it was conceivable that “the black culture will be the dominant culture.” The day after his speech in Paris, November 24, 1964, Malcolm X finally arrived home in New York City; but his homecoming this day coincided with the killing of sixty white hostages during a joint Belgian-American rescue attempt staged against Congolese rebels in Stanleyville. As he disembarked at John F. Kennedy airport, about sixty supporters displaying signs reading “Welcome Back, Brother Malcolm” greeted him. He wasted no time in accusing both the U.S. government and the Congolese regime of Moise Tshombe for their responsibility in the Stanleyville slaughter. It was “Johnson’s financing of Tshombe’s mercenaries,” Malcolm declared, that had produced such “disastrous results.” Once more tempting fate, he described the U.S. involvement in the Congo as “the chickens coming home to roost.”