CHAPTER 5
The Johnson Hinton controversy introduced the Nation of Islam to hundreds of thousands of blacks, and Malcolm was quick to take advantage. He had already begun publishing a regular column outlining the NOI’s views, “God’s Angry Men,” in the Amsterdam News, and now he worked to broaden the group’s appeal. Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm argued in one column, was “a modern-day Moses who . . . would ask God . . . to destroy this wicked race and their slave empire with plagues of cancer, polio, [and] heart disease.”
Hundreds of new blacks, both those who had been inspired by the Hinton incident and those who were simply curious, started attending temple lectures. Instead of preaching to the converted, Malcolm now gave more attention to crafting a popular message, and he rarely failed to deliver a command performance. Slowly, he began to incorporate into his talks his growing awareness of global events, merging the situations and goals of repressed peoples around the world with those of blacks in America. At his June 21 sermon at Temple No. 7, for example, he linked Bandung’s theme of Third World solidarity with Elijah Muhammad’s apocalyptic vision:
Who is the Original Man? . . . It is the Asiatic Black Man. . . . The brown, red and yellow man along with the black outnumber the white man eleven to one. And he knows it. If ever they all got together to reclaim what the white man has taken from them the whites would not have a chance. How blind we are that we cannot see how badly our people, all our people, need to unite. But the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is here to unite us. The day is near. In the UN there is a pact of nations called the African-Asia block. It is a block comprised of some of the black nations on this earth. They are becoming stronger and it is just a bit more proof that the Black Men are beginning to realize that there is strength in numbers.
The summer of 1957 was one of tremendous growth for Malcolm, as he continued to make inroads to building greater legitimacy for the Nation while keeping up a demanding speaking schedule. In July, Temple No. 7 hosted an extravagant event, the Feast of the Followers of Messenger Muhammad, at Harlem’s Park Palace dance club. More than two thousand attended, including Rafik Asha, leader of the Syrian mission to the UN, and Ahmad Zaki el-Barail, the Egyptian attaché. The presence of the Muslim diplomats was an indication that Elijah Muhammad’s long-standing efforts to acquire greater legitimacy in the Islamic world were producing results. The featured speaker was not Malcolm but twenty-four-year-old Wallace Muhammad, born on October 30, 1933, and seventh among the children of Clara and Elijah. Wallace was an assistant minister in the Chicago temple, and his participation in New York City was significant. He had been tutored in Arabic as a teenager, and by the mid-1950s, troubled by the inconsistencies between his father’s teachings and the classical tenets of Islam, he relished the opportunity to make overtures to officials of Muslim nations. He may have expressed his doubts to Malcolm; what is certain is that this event initiated a closer relationship between the two young men.
In August, Malcolm took great strides toward bringing an older generation of Harlemites into the NOI fold. That month, a festival in honor of Marcus Garvey was organized in Harlem by a committee of local activists, including James Lawson’s African Nationalist Movement and the United African Nationalist Movement. A huge outdoor stand was erected to accommodate the performers, and an impressive lineup of speakers was present. Without question, however, Malcolm stole the show. “Moslem Speaker Electrifies Garvey Crowd,” reported the local Harlem paper, noting that “the fiery Mr. X . . . attacked the white race for being ‘responsible for the plight of the so-called Negroes in America’ and condemned the Negroes’ political and religious leaders as being nothing but ‘puppets for the white man.’” His bravura performance in front of the police station had captured respect, but it was his speech at this festival that converted hundreds of old-line Garveyites to his cause.
Malcolm and the Nation’s rising profile helped boost membership significantly, but it also put them more prominently in the sights of local and federal authorities. In the aftermath of the Hinton beating, the NYPD’s secret operations unit, the Bureau of Special Services and Investigation (BOSS or BOSSI) began to take a special interest. BOSS was an elite unit staffed with detectives and charged with providing security to dignitaries and public leaders visiting the city. It also engaged in covert activities, such as the wiretapping of telephones and the infiltration of organizations deemed politically subversive. On May 15, 1957, NYPD chief inspector Thomas A. Nielson sent a series of urgent telegrams and letters to various law enforcement agencies around the country requesting information about Malcolm. He wrote the Detroit Police Department; the Michigan parole commission; the police chiefs of Dedham and Milton, Massachusetts, and of Lansing, Michigan; and the superintendent of the Massachusetts Reformatory at Concord. From each, Nielson asked for “complete background [of] criminal information with photo showing full description.” The NYPD also began (or stepped up) tracking Malcolm at NOI public gatherings.
Late that summer, Elijah Muhammad gave Malcolm permission to deliver a four-week series of lectures at Temple No. 1 in Detroit, by now relocated to significantly larger quarters at 5401 John C. Lodge Street. Interest in the series was so extensive that the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the country’s most prominent black newspapers, ran an interview with Malcolm in which he denounced the Eisenhower administration, particularly its failure to support the desegregation of public schools across the South. “The root of the trouble and center of the arena is in Washington, D.C.,” he declared, “where the modern-day ‘Pharaoh’s Magicians’ are putting on a great show, fooling most of the so-called Negroes by pretending to be divided against each other.” The worst offender was Eisenhower himself, “the ‘Master Magician’” who was “too busy playing golf to speak out—and with the expert timing of a master general, when he does speak out, he is always too late.” Unlike Elijah Muhammad, who after his spell in prison rarely criticized the government and almost never cited individual officials, Malcolm was both outspoken and named names.
The Detroit public lectures were both a long-awaited homecoming and an announcement of what the future had in store for black militancy. Through family and friends, Malcolm’s remarkable story from criminality to public leadership was well known in black Detroit. The reporter for the Los Angeles Dispatch covering Malcolm’s talk on August 10, 1957, noted, “More than 4,000 Moslems and non-Moslems filled Muhammad’s Detroit Temple of Islam to capacity to hear young Malcolm X.” The paper quoted Malcolm describing the position of black Americans within the U.S. political system as
both strategic and unique. For, although the Negroes are deprived of most of their voting powers yet their diluted vote will swing the balance of power in the Presidential or any other election in this country. What would the role and the position of the Negro be if he had a full voting voice? . . . No wonder, then, the freedom or equal rights struggle of the Negro people is so greatly feared. . . . If the present leaders of the so-called American Negro don’t unite soon, and take a firm stand with positive steps designed to eliminate immediately the brutal atrocities that are being committed daily against our people, and, if the so-called Negro intelligentsia, intellectuals and educators won’t unite to help alter this nasty and most degrading situation; then the little man in the street will henceforth begin to take matters into his own hands.
This is an extraordinary passage on several levels. First, it anticipates the presidential election of 1960, which Kennedy narrowly won with 72 percent of the black vote. Years before the successful passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Malcolm appears to be linking the general empowerment of African Americans to the struggle for voter registration and education. Years before King, Malcolm understands the potential power of black bloc voting. Second, it proposes a broad-based coalition of civil rights organizations and other groups—presumably including the NOI—to address the collective problems of blacks. Third, the final sentence of the passage implies a stark warning to the Negro intelligentsia and middle class that the truly disadvantaged among the black masses might, out of impatience or despair, rise up violently. This theme would become the basis for Malcolm’s most famous address, his “Message to the Grassroots,” delivered in Detroit on November 10, 1963. The speech also anticipates his April 3, 1964, “Ballot or the Bullet” speech that envisioned a bloodless revolution led by blacks exercising their democratic voting rights.
What was truly paradoxical about the August 10, 1957, address was that the NOI was at this time strictly opposed to its members becoming involved in electoral politics, or even registering to vote. What remained paradoxical about the Nation was that, despite being organized to achieve power, its core philosophy was apolitical. Temple members were never encouraged to register in civil rights demonstrations or disrupt public places by engaging in civil disobedience. They were hardly “revolutionaries.” Perhaps one explanation is Congressman Powell’s growing influence on Malcolm. Abyssinian’s fifteen-thousand-strong voting bloc illustrated just how powerful a single black institution could be in the context of New York City’s fractious politics. Malcolm may have floated these ideas as part of an attempt to change Elijah Muhammad’s rigid antipolitics position.
Finally, the speech’s flowing construction displayed Malcolm’s growing rhetorical confidence. Although the talk was formally hosted by the Nation of Islam, its focus and style were profoundly secular: Malcolm no longer saw himself exclusively as an NOI minister, but someone who could speak to black politics.
The FBI of course monitored this and later lectures. One of its spies advised the Bureau that in September Malcolm had been named acting minister of Detroit’s temple. The informant added that “Little is well liked in Detroit and the meetings at which he spoke were well attended.” Two months on, Wilfred X Little would become head minister of Temple No. 1. The Amsterdam News also followed Malcolm’s Midwest road tour, reporting back that he had “been a great hit with the general Detroit Public.” His speaking venues in that city were “packed to capacity,” and his evangelical drive, the paper noted, had produced major gains for the Nation.
Malcolm’s high-impact speaking schedule kept members flowing in and media interest high, but it also battered his already weakened body. For a month after the Detroit lectures, he got by on only two to four hours of sleep each night, eating once daily, and keeping himself awake on coffee. Several days after a lecture on October 23, he began to feel severe pains in his chest and stomach. Fearing that he might have a coronary condition, he checked himself in to Harlem’s Sydenham Hospital. The physicians diagnosed heart palpitations and inflammation around the ribs, but attributed the problems to exhaustion and stress. They strongly advised that he take time off, but he adamantly refused.
Checking out of Sydenham after a two-day stay, he rushed up to Boston to preside over the dedication of a new temple and to offer support for his protégé Louis X, the Boston temple minister. Introduced as “the founder of the Boston temple,” Malcolm reminded his audience about the inequality that existed throughout America. Blacks “have died for this country and yet we are not [full] citizens.” Even other discriminated-against groups, such as the Jews, received better treatment. “A Jew is in the White House, Jews in the State House, the Jews run the country. You and I can’t go into a white hotel down south,” he argued, “but a Jew can.”
Malcolm continued his public criticisms of New York’s police department, writing a telegram to the police commissioner in which he demanded that the officers directly involved in the Hinton incident be suspended. In October, when a New York County grand jury opted not to indict those responsible, Malcolm condemned the decision. “Harlem is already a potential powder keg,” he warned. “If these ignorant white officers are allowed to remain in the Harlem area, their presence is not only a menace to society, but to world peace.” BOSS considered Malcolm’s words as a threat against the police and increased its surveillance by placing black undercover officers inside the Nation. On November 7, BOSS detective Walter A. Upshur visited William Traynham, the administrator of Sydenham Hospital in Harlem, to investigate Malcolm’s recent hospitalization. The detective learned that Malcolm’s “admitting diagnosis was coronary” and obtained the name and address of his private physician.
By November 10, Malcolm was back in Detroit, and soon after departed on a nearly three-week-long tour of the West Coast with the goal of establishing a strong temple in Los Angeles. Following this, he made an unscheduled return stop in Detroit to tell a standing-room-only audience that Islam was “spreading like a flaming fire awakening and uniting Negroes where it is heard.” Although Malcolm usually spoke at Muslim temples, his audiences increasingly consisted of both Muslim and non-Muslim blacks. In his language and style, Malcolm reached out to recruit black Christians to his cause.
His breakthrough as a national speaker generated a financial windfall for the Nation. Between five hundred and one thousand African Americans were joining almost every month. The demand for new temples must have seemed endless. Much of the new revenue went into commercial ventures overseen by Raymond Sharrieff, mostly in Chicago: a restaurant, a dry cleaning and laundry establishment, a bakery, a barbershop, a well-stocked grocery store. The Nation also purchased an apartment building on Chicago’s South Side, as well as a farm and a house in White Cloud, Michigan, valued at sixteen thousand dollars. The economic success of these ventures may have been responsible for Elijah Muhammad’s decision to stop mentioning some of the original tenets of Wallace D. Fard’s Islam—in particular the bizarre Yacub’s History—and to give greater emphasis to the Garveyite thesis that a self-sustainable, all-black capitalist economy was a viable strategy.
Malcolm’s popularity gave him unprecedented leverage with Muhammad, allowing him to achieve major concessions, such as NOI ministers being permitted the surname Shabazz rather than the standard X. Since, according to NOI theology, Shabazz was the original tribal identity of the lost-founds, it could be claimed as a legitimate surname. Contrary to the perception that “Malcolm Shabazz” emerged only after Malcolm’s break with the Nation in 1964, he was using this name widely by 1957.
Muhammad’s pride in Malcolm’s strategic judgments allowed the young minister to develop regional recruitment campaigns in areas where the NOI had never previously canvassed. The best, and in many ways the most problematic, example was in the South. Despite Malcolm’s establishment of the Atlanta temple in 1955, the NOI had virtually no presence below the Mason-Dixon line. Yet in the recent years of the Nation’s greatest growth, the region had become a racial powder keg. In Montgomery, Alabama, the successful bus boycott of 1955-56, initiated by Rosa Parks’s refusal to surrender her seat on a segregated bus, had brought to national attention the struggle to abolish legal Jim Crow. Since the Nation of Islam’s position favored racial separation, Malcolm thought it important that integrationist reformers like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., not be allowed to exercise too great an influence—Elijah Muhammad’s message of black solidarity, black capitalism, and racial separatism had to be carried into Dixie. These arguments made sense to Muhammad, who gave him permission to launch a Southern campaign. Though eager, Malcolm moved with some caution: when the press asked his opinions on the Montgomery boycott, he praised Rosa Parks’s courage, describing her as a “good, hard-working, Christian-believing black woman.” Rarely would he directly criticize the protests espoused by King.
Malcolm already had some experience stumping for the Nation of Islam in the South. In August 1956, one year after establishing the Atlanta temple, he had been the featured speaker for the first Southern Goodwill Tour of the Brotherhood of Islam. The convention attracted hundreds of people across the region, but to ensure an impressive turnout NOI temples from as far away as Atlantic City and Lansing sent their members. By the conclusion of the tour, the Atlanta temple had doubled its membership. The next February, Malcolm was again called to the South, this time to Alabama. While en route to attend the Saviourʹs Day convention in Chicago that year, a group of NOI members tangled with police at a train station in the small town of Flomaton. Two Muslim women had violated an ordinance by sitting on a whites-only bench, and police moved to confront them. When two young Muslim men, Joe Allen and George R. White, sought to protect the women, the local police chief, “Red” Hemby, pulled his revolver. In the struggle, Allen and White disarmed and severely beat the officer. Minutes later they were arrested and charged with attempted murder. Arriving in Flomaton, Malcolm used his influence to secure their release with only minor fines.
His second major Southern tour, the centerpiece of the campaign that Muhammad had approved, took place in September and October of 1958, beginning in Atlanta, which, with its flourishing temple, remained one of the few urban centers in the region to have a significant NOI presence. By September 29 he was in Florida, and over the next two weeks the state’s NOI members coordinated public lectures for him in Miami, Tampa, and Jacksonville. Apparently Malcolm did not modify his talks to address regional issues that were particularly relevant in the South. Nevertheless, his speeches did attract modest media coverage, and the tour enhanced the Nation’s profile, especially in Miami.
The NOI never captured the following in the South that it achieved in the mostly urban industrial Midwest, on the East Coast, and in California. Its organizational weakness in the region was compounded by several critical errors it made in its response to newly emerging desegregation campaigns. Following Muhammad’s lead, NOI leaders believed that white Southerners were at least honest in their hatred of blacks. The NOI could not imagine a political future where Jim Crow segregation would ever become outlawed. Consequently, Malcolm concluded, “the advantage of this is the Southern black man never has been under any illusions about the opposition he is dealing with.” Since white supremacy would always be a reality, blacks were better off reaching a working relationship with racist whites rather than allying themselves with Northern liberals. This was a tragic replay of Garvey’s disastrous thesis that culminated in his overtures to white supremacist organizations. “You can say for many Southern white people that, individually, they have been paternalistically helpful to many individual Negroes,” Malcolm was to argue in Autobiography. “I know nothing about the South. I am a creation of the Northern white man.”
Even though Malcolm’s Southern campaign ultimately scored limited gains, that effort paled in comparison to his remarkable success in growing the Nation of Islam across the country. Of the thousands of new converts he made in 1956-57, two would figure in his own life in ways he could not have imagined. One was James Warden, a New York City native and son of a labor organizer who may once have been a member of the Communist Party. After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science, Warden attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and then served a two-year stint in the military, returning home to enroll in an M.A. program at Columbia University’s East Asian Institute. Sometime in 1957, when he was twenty-five, a black friend persuaded him to go to the NOI temple to hear Malcolm. He took some convincing: Warden disliked everything he had heard about this strange, racist cult. “I was convinced that these people were saying, ‘The white man is the devil,’” he recalled. “I figured, hey, it’s some crazy group, [but] America is full of them.” Upon entering the temple at West 116th Street and Lenox Avenue, he was offended to find he had to submit to a physical search. When the program began, he met with further frustration; the evening’s speaker was not Malcolm but Louis X Walcott. As Louis launched wildly into his sermon, a bewildered Warden asked himself, “Has this man lost his mind?” The concept of whites literally as devils seemed ridiculous. Warden vowed to himself, “If I get out of this place without being arrested, I will never come back.”
But curiosity got the better of him. Five nights later he returned, but once again was disappointed when yet another minister addressed the congregation. Still, he persisted, and two nights later finally heard Malcolm. The experience was a revelation. On display was Malcolm’s great strength not merely as an orator, but as a teacher. For this sermon, as for many, he used a chalkboard as part of his presentation and employed evidence from academic sources to buttress his arguments. He also didn’t mind being challenged. When Warden left that night, he realized he wanted to return. For the next nine months, he continued to attend meetings regularly, though he stopped short of joining formally. What finally put him over was finding himself the target of racial insults from schoolmates at Columbia. When they ridiculed him as a “nigger,” he became infuriated. “I felt that I was in classrooms with people who because of our mutual interests had some kind of appreciation or respect for me as a person,” he said. “This was not the case.” Giving himself over to the Nation, Warden flourished, and by 1960 was named an FOI lieutenant. It was in this capacity that his friendship with Malcolm grew to dedication. Short, pugnacious, fluent in three foreign languages including Japanese, the workaholic Warden—renamed James 67X—would eventually become one of Malcolm’s most steadfast advisers.
Another significant recruit was Betty Sanders. Born on May 28, 1934, like Malcolm she had been raised in a household where race issues played a prominent role. Her foster parents, Lorenzo and Helen Malloy, had taken her in from a broken home as a young girl and provided her with a stable middle-class existence. Lorenzo Malloy was a graduate of Tuskegee Institute and a businessman who owned a shoe repair shop in Detroit. Helen Malloy was active in civil rights, serving as an officer in the National Housewives League, a group that initiated boycotts of white-owned businesses that refused to hire blacks or sell black products . She also belonged to the NAACP and to Mary McLeod Bethune’s National Council of Negro Women, two pillars of the black bourgeoisie. Betty attended Detroit’s Northern High School, and upon receiving her diploma in 1952 enrolled in the Tuskegee Institute, intent on studying education. After two years, she switched her major to nursing; against her parents’ advice she transferred to Brooklyn State College School of Nursing, where she earned her undergraduate degree in 1956, and soon began her clinical studies at the Bronx’s Montefiore Hospital.
Betty’s discovery of the NOI was, like Warden’s, entirely fortuitous. One Friday night in mid-1956, an older nurse at Montefiore invited her to an NOI-sponsored dinner, followed by a temple sermon. Betty found the main lecturer “bewildering.” With serious reservations, she consented to go one more time, and on this occasion Malcolm spoke. As she noted his thin frame, her first impression was one of concern. “This man is totally malnourished!” she thought. Following the lecture, she was introduced to him, and as they conversed Betty was struck by Malcolm’s relaxed manner. Onstage, he had seemed soldierly and stern; in private, he was personable, even charming. Intrigued, she began attending Temple No. 7 sermons, at first hiding her fascination with the Muslims from her parents. By that fall, Betty Sanders officially joined, becoming Betty X, and serving as a health instructor in the MGTʹs General Civilization Class. Her friends outside the temple believed that her newfound dedication to the Nation had a lot to do with her feelings for Minister Malcolm.
In late 1958, an African-American FBI informant candidly evaluated both Malcolm’s character and his standing within the NOI:
Brother MALCOLM ranks about third in influence. He has unlimited freedom of movement in all states, and outside of the Messengerʹs immediate family he is the most trusted follower. He is an excellent speaker, forceful and convincing. He is an expert organizer and an untiring worker. . . . MALCOLM has a strong hatred for the “blue eyed devils,” but this hatred is not likely to erupt in violence as he is much too clever and intelligent for that. . . . He is fearless and cannot be intimidated by words or threats of personal harm. He has most of the answers at his fingertips and should be carefully dealt with. He is not likely to violate any ordinances or laws. He neither smokes nor drinks and is of high moral character.
This assessment underscored the FBI’s problem. Though the Bureau saw Malcolm as a potential threat to national security, his rigid behavioral code and strong leadership skills would make him hard to discredit. He did not have obvious vulnerabilities, nor was he likely to be baited into making a mistake. Yet what the evaluation also gathered, quite astutely, was that Malcolm’s authority within the sect emanated directly from his closeness to Elijah Muhammad. It would not take the Bureau long to deduce that any conflict provoked between Muhammad and Malcolm could weaken the Nation as a whole.
By late 1957, Malcolm was becoming the NOI’s version of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.—a celebrity minister based in New York City, but whose larger role took him on the road for weeks at a time. His responsibilities still growing, he led a pressurized existence, his life often a blur of planes and trains, speeches and sermons. At some level, he must have felt a great weight of loneliness and frustration, especially as the freshness of new initiatives gave way to the inevitability of routine. The acclaim he found so intoxicating at the beginning came with equally significant burdens: the difficulties and humiliations that all blacks encountered when traveling across the country during these years; the administrative and budgetary puzzles of managing thousands of people; the challenges involved in pastoral work—going to see members in hospitals, overseeing funerals, preparing sermons and prayers. When he was in New York, he was expected to be a nightly presence in his temple, while the week’s schedule was strictly regimented. Every Monday was FOI night, where men were drilled in martial arts, as well as “the responsibilities of a husband and father,” as Malcolm put it. Tuesday evenings were “Unity Night, where the brothers and sisters enjoy each other’s conversational company.” Wednesday was Student Enrollment, with lectures explaining NOI theology. Thursdays were reserved for the MGT and General Civilization Class, at which Malcolm frequently lectured. Fridays were Civilization Night, with classes “for brothers and sisters in the area of the domestic relations, emphasizing how both husbands and wives must understand and respect each otherʹs true natures.” On Saturdays, members were free to visit each otherʹs homes, with Sundays reserved for the week’s main religious service.
Whether prompted by a gnawing sense of emptiness in his life or something less emotional, Malcolm’s thoughts turned to marriage. Such a move would have practical benefits; Malcolm calculated that he could be a more effective representative of Elijah Muhammad if he married. He had heard the many rumors about his romantic attachments, and had tried to suppress them. Everyone in Temple No. 7 undoubtedly knew about their ministerʹs long-term relationship with Evelyn Williams. It is impossible to know whether the minister rekindled sexual intimacies with his longtime lover, or if Islamic sanctions against premarital sex affected their behavior. In 1956, Malcolm proposed marriage and Evelyn accepted, but a few days later he retracted his offer. Of all the women with whom he was involved, Malcolm would later write to Elijah Muhammad, “Sister Evelyn is the only one who had a legitiment [sic] beef against me . . . and I do bear witness that if she complains she is justified.”
But Evelyn was not the only recipient of a marriage proposal from Malcolm in 1956. That same year, he asked another NOI woman, Betty Sue Williams. Little is known of her, though she was likely the sister of Robert X Williams, minister of the Buffalo temple. Both women, in different ways, were unsuitable choices. Malcolm sensed that he had built bonds of trust and spiritual kinship between himself, his religious followers, and to a growing extent the Harlem community. The woman he chose as his wife would impact all these relationships. Romantic love and sexual attractiveness, he reasoned, had little to do with fulfilling his primary roles as a minister and role model. Evelyn had known and loved him when he was Detroit Red, and though he had changed drastically, her claim on him by virtue of their shared past would always compete with his commitment to the Nation. For this reason, Malcolm believed it necessary for his spouse to have no knowledge of or connection to his prior life. And Betty Sue, who probably lived in Buffalo, four hundred miles from Harlem, was not a member of Temple No. 7’s intimate community. Malcolm was proud of the bonds he had established with both the members of Temple No. 7 and the Harlem community generally. The minister ’s wife, he felt, was an extension of himself ; she would sometimes be his representative at public occasions, and would have to possess the same commitment to Muhammad and the NOI that he had. Malcolm’s failed proposals in 1956 surely increased his sense of personal isolation and private loneliness.
If practical reasons came to dominate the way Malcolm thought about choosing a wife, it may have had much to do with the sense of betrayal he long harbored about his mistreatment at the hands of partners past, especially Bea. He had come to fear that it was impossible for him to love or trust any woman. “I’d had too much experience that women were only tricky, deceitful, untrustworthy flesh,” he complained. “To tell a woman not to talk too much was like telling Jesse James not to carry a gun, or telling a hen not to cackle.” And knowing when not to talk was a crucial skill for anyone who was to be Mrs. Malcolm Shabazz.
Malcolm also possessed firm ideas about the role a wife should play. “Islam has very strict laws and teachings about women,” he observed. “The true nature of a man is to be strong, and a woman’s true nature is to be weak . . . [a man] must control her if he expects to get her respect.” Because he viewed all women as inherently inferior and subordinate to males, he was not looking for a spouse with whom he would share his innermost feelings. He expected his wife to be obedient and chaste, to bear his children and to maintain a Muslim household.
These sentiments were much in keeping with those of the Nation at large, which were in turn similar to those of orthodox Islam. In the Qurʹanic tradition, the primary objectives of marriage (nikah) are sexual reproduction and the transfer and inheritance of private property from one generation to the next. Nikah also controls the temptation toward promiscuity. Carnal knowledge can easily lead to social chaos, or fitna, if not tightly controlled. To most Muslims, premarital sex, homosexuality, prostitution, and extramarital sexual intercourse are all absolutely forbidden.
Throughout the Islamic world, marriage is perceived as the uniting of two families or kinship lines rather than an act dictated by two individuals. In the negotiations with the relatives of the husband-to-be, a first-time bride is often represented by a wali, or guardian, who is normally a father or elder male relative. Premarital meetings between women and men are strictly supervised. Marriage is perceived as based on mutual respect, friendship, and a joint commitment toward an Islamic lifestyle. These processes, unfortunately, have tended to reinforce Islamic structures of patriarchy and domestic violence against women down through the centuries.
The Holy Qur’an is quite specific regarding Islamic expectations for the duties of women. Surah XXIV, verse 33, instructs “believing women”:
to lower their gaze and be modest, and to display of their adornment only that which is apparent, and to draw their veils over their bosoms, and not to reveal their adornment save to their own husband or fathers or husband’s fathers, or their sons or their husband’s sons, or their brothers or their brothers’ sons or sisters’ sons, or their women, or their slaves, or male attendants who lack vigour, or children who know naught of women’s nakedness. And let them not stamp their feet so as to reveal what they hide of their adornment.
The Nation attempted to incorporate some of these values within its own catechism. Elijah Muhammad’s views about gender relations would be set out in his 1965 manifesto Message to the Blackman in America. To Muhammad, males and females occupied separate spheres. Black women had been the mothers of civilization, and they would play a central role in the construction of the world to come. Metaphorically, they were the field in which a mighty Nation would grow; thus it was essential for black men to keep the devil, the white man, away from his “field,” because the black woman was far more valuable than any cash crop. There was no question that all women had to be controlled; the question was, who should exercise that control, the white man or the black? He also warned against birth control, a devilish plot to carry out genocide against black babies. It was precisely a woman’s ability to produce children that gave the weaker sex its value. “Who wants a sterile wom[a]n?” he asked rhetorically.
What attracted so many intelligent, independent African-American women to such a patriarchal sect? The sexist and racist world of the 1940s and 1950s provides part of the answer. Many African-American women in the paid labor force were private household workers and routinely experienced sexual harassment by their white employers. The NOI, by contrast, offered them the protections of private patriarchy. Like their middle-class white counterparts, African-American women in the Nation were not expected to hold full-time jobs, and even if Malcolm’s frequent misogynistic statements, especially in his sermons, were extreme even by the sexist standards of the NOI, it offered protection, stability, and a kind of leadership. Malcolm’s emphasis on the sanctity of the black home made an explicit promise “that families won’t be abandoned, that women will be cherished and protected, [and] that there will be economic stability.ʺ
Temple women during those years rarely perceived themselves as being subjugated. The MGT was its own center of activity, in which members participated in neighborhood activities and were encouraged to monitor their children’s progress in school. At the Newark NOI temple, not far from Temple No. 7, women were involved in establishing small businesses. They also took an active role in working with their local board of education as well as other community concerns. It is likely that Harlem’s women made similar efforts. As with those who were working in civil rights, women in the NOI had in mind the future of the black community. What attracted them to the Nation was the possibility of strong, healthy families, supportive relationships, and personal engagement in building crime-free black neighborhoods and ultimately an independent black nation.
In the Autobiography, Malcolm tells how his relationship with Betty Sanders evolved within the parameters defined by both Islam and the NOI. By early 1957 he was aware that Betty had joined Temple No. 7. He soon learned that she was from Detroit, had attended Tuskegee, and was currently at nursing school in the city. She was physically attractive—medium brown in color, dark hair, brown eyes, and a lively smile. Her education had given her the confidence and experience to stand before groups and lecture, and to direct the work of others. Malcolm began dropping in on Betty’s classes at the temple on Thursday evenings. His attitude toward her was formal but friendly. He eventually overcame his reservations to invite her out—to New York’s Museum of Natural History. As he recounted their first date, his sole purpose was to view several museum displays that would help her in her lectures. Betty agreed to go and an afternoon outing was set. Hours before their meeting, however, Malcolm got cold feet, calling her to say that he had to cancel; another matter had come up. Betty’s rejoinder was surprisingly blunt: “Well, you sure waited long enough to tell me, Brother Minister, I was just ready to walk out of the door.” Embarrassed, he recanted, and hastily agreed to keep the date after all. The afternoon went off well, and he was pleasantly surprised to be “halfway impressed by her intelligence and also her education.” The two continued to meet and work together, but Malcolm was paralyzed by the thought that if he showed he was romantically attracted to her she might reject him.
The NOI by now possessed the financial resources to fly Malcolm to Chicago each month to consult with Elijah Muhammad. At one of these meetings, Malcolm admitted that he might ask Betty to marry him. Since her foster parents were opposed to her membership in the Nation, Muhammad decided to investigate her suitability for his prized disciple. On the pretext of several days’ training at national headquarters, he invited Betty to Chicago. During her time there, she was the houseguest of Elijah and Clara Muhammad. Afterward, Muhammad told Malcolm approvingly that he thought Betty X was “a fine sister.”
In Malcolm’s telling (and in Spike Lee’s film), sexual attraction was the primary force drawing the two together, yet some of those who worked closely with Malcolm saw things differently. James 67X recalled that the minister saw his marriage as the fulfillment of an obligation to the Nation. Any personal feelings were secondary. “Brother, a minister has to be married,” Malcolm told him, alluding to the Islamic precepts. To avoid fitna, the threats of scandal and sin, even a loveless marriage could become a haven. Another confidant, Charles 37X Morris, became convinced that Malcolm “didn’t have no feelings for a woman,” an ambiguous statement that nonetheless suggests that his minister was not enthusiastic about marriage. Charles believed that it was Elijah, not Malcolm, who was the chief instigator of his lieutenant’s marriage. Years after Malcolm’s death, Louis Farrakhan insisted that Malcolm continued to be deeply in love with Evelyn Williams. Yet Betty herself—or Dr. Betty Shabazz, as she became known—would always insist that Malcolm had pursued her “persistently and correctly.”
Still, the unusual way Malcolm proposed to Betty suggests that his former lieutenants may have had a point. Early in the morning on Sunday, January 12, 1958, he stood in a pay telephone booth at a gas station in Detroit, having driven all night from New York City. He reached her at her hospital dormitory and immediately blurted out, “Look, do you want to get married?” Betty, overcome, dropped the receiver, but as soon as she had it in hand again said, “Yes.” She promptly packed her suitcase and immediately flew to Detroit.
As soon as Betty was in Detroit, the young couple went together to the Malloys, who were stunned. Betty recalled leaving Malcolm in the living room as she retreated with her parents to the back of the house to tell them the news. They did not respond well. Helen Malloy sobbed uncontrollably, complaining that Malcolm was too old and “not even a Christian.” Her father was even more direct: “What have we done to make you hate us so?” Betty began to weep as well, but she was determined to have her way. What Malcolm surmised from the raised voices and gales of sobbing is hard to know. He simply recalled that the Malloys “were very friendly, and happily surprised.”
The news received a better reception from the Littles. Malcolm’s siblings in the Detroit area were overjoyed, and probably extremely relieved, that their thirty-two-year-old brother was finally settling down. On January 14, Malcolm and Betty drove to nearby northern Indiana, where liberal marriage laws would make it easy to wed quickly. However, the state had recently established a mandatory waiting period, so the two went on to Philbert’s home in Lansing, where they learned it was possible to marry within two days. They obtained the necessary blood tests, bought a pair of rings, and filled out a marriage certificate. Then came the ceremony itself, on January 4. Malcolm’s rendering is both semicomical and bittersweet, because it reveals little sense of joy. “An old hunchback white man,” a justice of the peace, performed the ceremony. Wilfred and Philbert were there, although in Malcolm’s version of events all the witnesses were white. Malcolm was most offended when the justice of the peace instructed him to “kiss your bride.” Malcolm protested, “I got her out of there. All that Hollywood stuff!” He ridiculed “these movie and television-addicted women expecting some bouquets and kissing and hugging . . . like Cinderella.” The newlyweds spent the night at a hotel, Betty flying back to New York the next day to attend her classes.
When the news of Minister Malcolm’s nuptials reached Temple No. 7, there was pandemonium, and not all of it celebratory. The NOI was predominantly an organization in which males fraternized easily with each other, hugging and embracing in public. While physical contact between genders was prohibited, male-to-male contact, especially within the martial arts context, was routine. It was not a surprise to Malcolm, therefore, when some brothers at Temple No. 7 “looked at me as though I had betrayed them.” Malcolm was seen as a modern-day Abelard, the priest who had surrendered to earthly passions, abandoning his true calling. But he was far more intrigued with the temple sisters’ response to Betty. “I never will forget hearing one exclaim, ‘You got him!’ That’s like I was telling you, the nature of women. That’s part of why I never have been able to shake it out of my mind that she knew something—all the time. Maybe she did get me!”
Evelyn, who was at the temple when the news of Malcolm’s marriage was announced, ran from the building screaming. Undoubtedly Malcolm felt guilty; if, as Farrakhan suggested, he continued to harbor feelings for her, the formal ending of their relationship may have been almost as difficult for Malcolm. But just as practical considerations had motivated his desire to be married, it now drove his resolve to restore order within the temple. He consulted with Muhammad, and it was decided that Evelyn would relocate to Chicago, where the national office would employ her as one of Muhammad’s secretaries. This must have seemed like the best solution to Malcolm, because, even if he had heard the rumors that occasionally surfaced in the temple about the Messenger, he could not have guessed how the move would come to complicate his life.
The unease Malcolm had shown toward marrying Betty almost immediately manifested itself in their lives together as man and wife. The challenges they faced were linked, in part, to the general problems that many black Americans encounter when adopting Qurʹanic standards for marriage. Many basic beliefs Muslims have about its purposes and duties are at odds with Western Christian values. Another serious issue is the concept of machismo that some African-American males carry into Islam. The Nation had long drawn its converts from the lowest rungs of black society, and many of its flock came from difficult or self-destructive backgrounds. Those who, like Malcolm, had converted while in prison often continued to bear painful scars, both physical and psychological, from that experience. Trauma can last an entire lifetime, and the Nation had no self-help program to assist men in overcoming such emotional problems. Malcolm’s prior sexual history had been largely defined by encounters with prostitutes and women like Bea Caragulian. Now he would have an obligation not only to provide financially for Betty, but to address her emotional and sexual needs.
He did at least try. At the beginning of 1958, the newlyweds moved into a duplex house at 25-26 Ninety-ninth Street in East Elmhurst, Queens. Betty and Malcolm shared the upstairs living quarters with temple secretary John X Simmons, his wife, Minnie, and their four-month-old baby; also living there were an Edward 3X Robinson and his wife. Occupants in the basement and ground-level residence included John X and Yvonne X Molette, Mildred Crosby, Alice Rice, and her baby daughter, Zinina. All either were NOI members or were connected to the NOI through family ties. Betty quickly became pregnant and gave up her nursing career. For several months, Malcolm stopped extensive touring and tried to appear happy about the pregnancy. From the beginning, however, Betty’s behavior displeased him. Just as she had defied her parents’ wishes by transferring to nursing school and by marrying Malcolm, she retained an independent streak that her demanding husband found unacceptable. Even her continued attendance at MGT classes bothered him. For her part, Betty confided to one girlfriend that while Malcolm’s word was final inside the temple, in the privacy of their home “that attitude just didn’t go.” James 67X later characterized Betty’s combative opposition to the patriarchal behavior of both her husband and the NOI hierarchy as “continuous,” explaining with a smile that “no woman who has been brought up under the devil can accept this.” Although Betty’s foster parents were black, their entrenched Christian values and middle-class norms, as far as James 67X was concerned, were like those of whites.
Years after Malcolm’s assassination, Betty would describe her marriage as “hectic, beautiful, and unforgettable—the greatest thing in my life.” In reality, the twenty-three-year-old was poorly prepared for married life. She had never learned to cook. Even after she joined the Nation, she knew how to make little more than bean dishes and a few beef and chicken recipes. Malcolm never cooked, so it was up to her to plan nutritious and varied meals on a limited budget. Any romantic fantasies she may have had about her future life were largely extinguished by the end of their first year together. Malcolm rarely, if ever, displayed affection toward her. They almost never spent the night out in each other’s company—throughout their seven years of marriage, he took her to a movie only once, in 1963. The most caring moments occurred around the births of their children. For example, Malcolm personally drove Betty for her regular appointments with her obstetrician, Dr. Josephine English (he’d made it clear that no male physician would touch his spouse). To allow for Malcolm’s hectic schedule, Dr. English set Betty’s appointments at seven a.m. at her hospital. Malcolm had convinced himself that his firstborn child would be male; indeed, he had told associates that the only name he had come up with was a boy’s. Then, on November 16, 1958, a girl was born and given the name Attallah. Whether Malcolm was disappointed or simply believed he had little postpartum role to play, he virtually disappeared following the birth. The next day he drove north to Albany to speak at an NOI gathering. Two days later, he was in Hartford, Connecticut, before moving along to Newark, New Jersey. He was back on the road, carrying on as though little had changed.
His reaction dismayed Betty. Shortly after Attallah’s birth, she collected some clothing and her daughter and took the subway to the home of Ruth Summerford, a distant cousin. When Malcolm arrived back to discover his wife and child missing, he guessed where they had gone. He sensed that Betty was upset with his behavior, but he had no intention of offering an apology. Instead, he waited nearly two days before he drove over to Summerford’s house and ordered his wife to pick up their daughter and get into the car. Betty did as she was told.
Marriage continued to be filled with surprises. During her years as a single woman, Betty had collected a small number of debts. Malcolm had no knowledge about these before their marriage, but now thought it best not to let his young wife think that “she had married a good thing,” so he allowed her to continue working to clear these debts. Still, he did not make it easy for her. When Betty asked him to drive her to work, which began at six a.m., he curtly refused. By keeping firm control of the family finances and denying Betty the opportunity to earn income beyond what was needed for the repayments, he kept his wife “in jail financially,” as he put it.
If long days on the road had once turned Malcolm’s thoughts to marriage and stability, the difficulties of his marriage now renewed the road’s appeal, offering him a way to find solace and distance from his troubles. His first significant trip after his marriage was a monthlong visit to Los Angeles in the spring of 1958, which was in many ways as significant as his extended series of speeches in Detroit in the summer of 1957. Malcolm was determined to establish a strong NOI base on the West Coast. He also wanted to establish the NOIʹs Islamic credentials by engaging in public activities with Middle Eastern and Asian Muslim representatives in the region. In late March and early April, Malcolm addressed NOI members at meetings held at the Normandie Hall in Los Angeles. While in the city, he also attended a gala reception honoring the Republic of Pakistan, and spoke at a press conference at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, coordinated by Mohammad T. Mendi of Karbala, Iraq, using the platform to say it was “absurd” for the Arabs to expect fair treatment from the white media “since it is controlled by the Zionists.” On April 20 he was again the featured speaker at a public event designed to be an interfaith dialogue between Muslims and Christians. Three preachers walked out in protest when Malcolm criticized the wealth of some African-American churches and the poverty of their worshippers. He also arranged with Louis X to deliver a sermon at Boston’s temple in May. At its conclusion, Malcolm asked the audience if anyone wished to convert to the NOI. He was astonished to find among those standing his sister Ella; somehow their lives had come full circle.
Malcolm grew increasingly troubled by Betty’s behavior. In a letter sent to Elijah in March 1959, he confessed that “the main source of our trouble was based upon SEX”:
[S]he placed a great deal more stress upon it than I was physically capable of doing. Please forgive me for this topic, but I feel compelled to tell you of it, and would tell it to no one else but you. At a time when I was going all out to keep her satisfied (sexually), one day she told me that we were incompatible sexually because I had never given her any real satisfaction. From then on, try as I may, I began to become very cool toward her. I didn’t ever again feel right (free) with her in that sense, for no matter how happy she would act I’d see it only as a pretense. . . . She stayed miserable during her expectancy, and those were the nine most miserable months of my life . . . she often cursed the day she married and of being pregnant, and she cursed me too.
From Betty’s perspective, marriage to Temple No. 7’s minister meant constantly sharing her husband with others, leaving little time for her. She also sensed that she had become the object of vicious gossip. Malcolm had grown too powerful to criticize openly, but Betty was an easy target. Some of the rumors circulating about her were cruel. For example, when she gave birth to a series of daughters, temple gossipmongers suggested that Allah was punishing her for her constant challenges to the male-dominated hierarchy. She would not be able to bear sons, they whispered, until she first learned to control her behavior. The more criticism that came Betty’s way, the more assertive she became. She also began to develop a circle of women friends inside the temple, providing some measure of support. But to critics, her group displayed arrogance and the willingness to divide MGT into feuding factions. “She made sure that you appreciated the distance between you and her,” James 67X tartly observed. “Because of her relationship with Malcolm, you and her were no longer equals.”
In February 1959, Betty was again sent to an NOI training program at Chicago headquarters. It lasted several weeks. Upon her return, Malcolm informed Muhammad, “She said to me that if I didn’t watch out she was going to embarrass me and herself (which under questioning she later said she was going to seek satisfaction elsewhere).” For a Muslim male, cuckoldry was intolerable. For Malcolm, it would not only end his marriage but jeopardize his position as a minister. Perhaps he reasoned that the only way to keep Betty under control, or less sexually desirable to other males, was to keep her perpetually pregnant, so after six months of abstinence, he began having sex with his wife again. Betty’s response was to heap ridicule on her husband. She “told me that I was impotent . . . and even tho [sic] I could father a child I was like an old man (not able to engage in the act long enough to satisfy her).” Complicating matters, the entire temple knew about their disharmony; the other Muslims living in the same duplex as the battling couple kept Captain Joseph well apprised.
Since their bitter break, Joseph’s feelings toward Malcolm had grown increasingly hostile, and he may have seized on Malcolm’s marital distractions to tip the balance of power in the Nation back in his direction. He undoubtedly reported Malcolm’s marital problems to his superior, Supreme Captain Raymond Sharrieff. Through Sharrieff, other members of Muhammad’s family would have learned about their difficulties. In the late fifties, the Chicago headquarters expanded Joseph’s authority to all temples in the northeastern United States, which gave him authority over the deployment of thousands of FOI members. Joseph could now influence the selection of captains across the country. Malcolm’s only means to contest this, and to minimize the stigma over his marital woes, was to throw himself even more single-mindedly into NOI affairs.
On May 14, 1958, as Malcolm was lecturing in Boston, two detectives from the Astoria precinct, Joseph Kiernan and Michael Bonura, came to the front door of his East Elmhurst home. They had been ordered to serve a federal bench warrant issued for a woman named Margaret Dorsey, whose official residence was on East 165th Street in the Bronx but who supposedly lived on the ground floor of the Littles’ duplex. (Malcolm would later claim to BOSS detectives that the police officers had not asked for Dorsey, but for Alvin Crosby, age twenty-four, who resided with other families either in the ground-floor living quarters or in the basement.) The detectives were met at the front door by twenty-seven-year-old Yvonne X Molette, who politely explained that she would not admit them without a search warrant. The police tried to overpower her and enter the house. Several other women who were inside heard the commotion and ran to Yvonne’s aid. Together, they managed to slam the door shut. The detectives vowed that they would call again, this time with a warrant.
They returned at about eight thirty p.m., with U.S. Postal Inspector Herbert Halls. Halls knocked on the front door, while Kiernan and Bonura went around to the duplex’s side entrance. There they were met by John X Molette, who had returned home after his wife called him about the detectives’ first attempt to enter. The police told Molette that they were looking for Margaret Dorsey, at which point Molette stepped outside, closing the door behind him. Impatient, Kiernan complained they “didn’t have time for all that foolishness.” He pushed Molette aside and tried to open the door and barge his way inside. As the three men wrestled in the doorway, Molette was pushed backward into the house, and with the assistance of his mother-in-law he managed to force the two policemen out and close the door. Undaunted, Kiernan shattered one of the doorʹs glass panels and reached inside to let himself in. As the fight continued, Detective Bonura was struck by a bottle that had been hurled from an upper window. At this, Kiernan pulled his revolver and fired two shots through the door.
The gunfire had a dramatic effect. The residents scattered and the police entered the house, following the occupants up the stairs. When they reached the top, they found the door to the Littles’ apartment locked. The officers threatened to shoot through the door unless the occupants opened it, and the women—Betty Shabazz and Minnie Simmons—did so. After searching the house, the police took both women as well as Yvonne and John Molette outside and lined them up against a wall next to the driveway. When a police patrol wagon arrived, they were taken to the 114th Precinct station house. Two others were also arrested, and all were eventually released on bail.
When word of the incident reached Malcolm in Boston, it galvanized him, just as the showdown over Johnson X Hinton had done the year before. He flew immediately to New York City and launched into a media tirade against the NYPD, drawing parallels between “the [G]estapo tactics of white police who control the black belts” of American ghettos and occupation forces in controlling hostile territory. “Where else and under what circumstances,” he asked, “could you find situations where police can freely invade private homes, break down doors, threaten to beat pregnant women, and even try to shoot a 13-year-old girl . . . but right here in American Negro neighborhoods, where the ‘occupying army’ is in disguise as police officers?” The NOI immediately placed a picket line of silent protesters in front of the 114th Precinct, a bold move that, according to one press account, utterly amazed the police. The Hinton affair had taught Malcolm to put the authorities on the defensive with such demonstrations, a maneuver that also sent a signal to black non-Muslims that the conflict was a civil rights issue.
Although neither Malcolm nor Betty probably realized it, her marriage to the NOI minister had triggered her surveillance by the FBI. As early as June 1958, FBI informants were reporting to the Bureau’s New York office that Betty had attended the Afro-Asian Educational and Crafts Display sponsored by Temple No. 7 and held at the Park Palace on February 8, 1958; they also noted her participation in the 1958 Saviour’s Day festivities in Chicago. Betty’s indictment for assaulting a police officer and for “conspiracy” led to more extensive FBI digging. Her credit history was thoroughly checked, and the FBI learned that Betty had a series of money problems that predated her marriage to Malcolm. For example, in late 1957, two separate judgments were filed against Betty in Westchester County, New York, one for $546.57 owed to Budget Charge Account, Inc., and another for $742.42 to Sacks Quality Stores, Inc. What emerges from the FBI surveillance of her is a confident, independent-minded black nationalist who expressed herself well. An FBI informant observing a talk Betty gave in Chicago in early 1959 noted that she praised Elijah Muhammad “for providing jobs and opportunity to all of us.” In her address, Betty outlined her own vision for the Nation’s economic growth:
We are going to have a bank of our own here in Chicago and we are going to loan money. This bank is being organized on paper now. Everytime there are enough members to get a number for a temple we are going to have a restaurant, dress shop, and bakery just like we have in Chicago. We are also going to open a health center here. We want educated members with college degrees to help us so they can help their own people.
Betty’s lecture illustrates that she possessed a clear and expansive view of the NOI’s future, based on an educated black middle class—people like herself. The point here is that she was not being manipulated by events; she was a committed, determined follower of Elijah Muhammad in her own right.
The case took nearly a year to go to trial, and in the intervening months Malcolm frequently made reference to what had happened. He also gave several speeches primarily based on the event. When in March 1959 the case was tried, only four of the six individuals originally arrested were prosecuted, including Betty Shabazz. The hearing lasted three weeks and at the time was the longest assault trial ever recorded in Queens County. Sixteen witnesses testified, as the defendants decried the police’s actions as a blatant violation of their property and constitutional rights. The Nation was determined to dominate the environment of the trial. It brought its own stenographers and deployed FOI guards at the court’s doors; anyone who entered the hallway leading to the trial room had their picture taken by one of three roaming NOI photographers.
After the defense rested, the jury, which included three African Americans, deliberated for thirteen hours. At three p.m. on March 18, the jury informed Judge Peter T. Farrell that it had reached a verdict, but the judge was so intimidated by the presence of hundreds of angry Muslims in the courthouse that he took the unusual step of clearing all spectators before the jury revealed its decision. Two of those charged, Betty Shabazz and Minnie Simmons, were exonerated. The jury deadlocked over Yvonne and John Molette without reaching a unanimous decision, freeing them, but subject to a second prosecution. After the verdict was read, the jury was escorted to the subway under a tense police guard, surrounded by hundreds of shouting Muslims. Standing before his members on the courthouse steps, Malcolm instructed, “Any policeman who abuses you belongs in the cemetery. Be peaceful, firm and aggressive but if one of them so much as touch your finger, die.” The jury’s inability to acquit all the accused, according to Malcolm, was the fault of Judge Farrell, who had employed “kangaroo tactics” to protect the police. He harshly criticized Farrell’s “ambiguous interpretations of the law, and failure to charge the jury properly on key points that forced the jury into a deadlock.”
Although Malcolm seldom referred to the case after 1960 or so, it was just as significant as the Johnson Hinton incident. The resolution to fight the case, and to identify it in civil rights terminology, created sympathy and solidarity among most blacks, even those who did not share the NOIʹs separatist views. Malcolm absorbed this lesson from this chaotic event: when the NOI came out in solidarity with civil rights and civil liberties groups addressing problems like police brutality that affected nearly all blacks, the NOI was rewarded with favorable media attention and swelling membership. Meanwhile, the FBI’s New York office informed its director that it would “continue to follow LITTLE’s activities” and issue a surveillance update every six months.
The FBI had the resources to hire scores of black informants to infiltrate the Nation, but it failed to comprehend the nature of the sect it had deemed so dangerous. It was convinced that the NOI was subversive because it promoted “black hate.”
The FBI never understood that the NOI did not seek the destruction of America’s legal and socioeconomic institutions; the Black Muslims were not radicals, but profound conservatives under Muhammad. They praised capitalism, so long as it served what they deemed blacks’ interests. Their fundamental mistake was their unshakable belief that whites as a group would never transcend their hatred of blacks. The FBI also viewed the Islamic elements of the Nation as fraudulent. As a result, the Bureau never grasped the underlying concerns that motivated Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad, and how both men had constructed a dynamic organization that attracted the membership of tens of thousands of African Americans and the admiration of millions more. The NOIʹs theology certainly “demonized” whites, yet its program in many ways merely channeled the profound sense of alienation that already existed among working-class blacks, born of the reality of Southern Jim Crow segregation and Northern discrimination.
Malcolm and Muhammad did not look to the American political system to redeem itself or to solve the problems of “black Asiatics” in America. It would only be through the grace of Allah, and the building of strong black institutions, that blacks would rediscover their strengths. Malcolm at this time did not consider his pubic addresses “political,” but rather spiritually inspired, based on the prophetic teachings of both the Qurʹan and the Bible, in anticipation of the final days. A time would soon come, however, when the separation between spirituality and politics was no longer a tenable position.