CHAPTER 7
Betty was suffering. For the three weeks prior to the birth of Qubilah, Malcolm had been traveling. On the day of her birth itself, he had devoted most of his time to the mass trial of members from Mosque No. 7. Now her husband was once again away. Within weeks, she would pack up Attallah and Qubilah and journey south to North Philadelphia, this time seeking temporary refuge at the home of her birth father, Shelman Sandlin.
As Malcolm waited in Atlanta to negotiate with the Ku Klux Klan, he worried that relations with Betty might have reached a point of no return. On January 25, 1961, they spoke by phone, but their conversation only troubled him further. Later that day he decided to write to her. Malcolm observed that his wife had undergone a meaningful change of character during recent weeks. Perhaps expressing his appreciation for the strength and sacrifices Betty had made, especially during her pregnancy and Qubilah’s birth, Malcolm conveyed his love for her. In an act of uncharacteristic generosity—for him—he even stuffed forty dollars into the envelope with the love letter.
These expressions of affection probably were insufficient to reassure Betty about his love. She had come to resent the fact that for Malcolm, the work of the Nation always came first—the letter had even included a request for Betty to iron out details about the possibility of an NOI show at Carnegie Hall. With little in the way of an emotional connection to build from, inviting his spouse to share in his duties for the NOI may have been his way of trying to bridge the distance between them.
If the great difficulties Malcolm encountered with Betty ever led him to wonder whether he’d made the right choice of partners, he must have been surprised to learn, sometime in late 1959, that Evelyn Williams, the woman he had turned away, was pregnant. Unmarried, she had been working for only a short time in the secretarial pool at the Nation’s Chicago headquarters, and her scandalous condition brought upon her the full weight of the NOIʹs draconian policy of punishment and scorn. Yet what no one including Malcolm knew, and would not know until 1963, was that the unborn child’s father was none other than the Messenger himself, Elijah Muhammad.
With his network of informants throughout the NOI, Muhammad was well aware of the troubles between Malcolm and Betty, and he certainly knew of the romantic feelings Evelyn still harbored toward Malcolm. And yet he selfishly chose to have her anyway. His decision, however, set off a chain reaction that quickly tested the limits of his control. Evelyn became pregnant in the middle of 1959, and by October she began phoning Muhammad at his home, demanding money. She strongly implied that she would cause trouble for him if it was revealed that she was carrying his child. Muhammad was outraged, convinced that he was being blackmailed. “You must think I’m a fool or Santa Claus,” he told her. After another telephone conversation with Evelyn, Muhammad turned to a minister who had heard the exchange and said coldly, “It looks like she will have to be put down.” In an organization where members were routinely beaten for transgressions as innocuous as smoking a cigarette, this statement could not be simply dismissed as tough talk. But Muhammad did nothing to harm Evelyn, and she gave birth to their daughter, Eva Marie, at St. Francis Hospital, in Lynwood, California, on March 30, 1960.
It would be easy to ascribe Muhammad’s trysts with Evelyn to some secret jealousy he felt over Malcolm’s growing media profile, but Evelyn’s case was not unique. Three months before her child was born, another unmarried NOI secretary, Lucille X Rosary, also gave birth to a child; two more children were born to NOI secretaries that year, in April and December. All were the progeny of Elijah Muhammad, who had taken advantage of the weeklong Chicago MGT tutorials—such as the one Betty had attended—to select attractive and talented young women for service in the national headquarters’ secretarial staff. Once they arrived, it took little for him to get what he wanted from them.
On the surface, Muhammad was not an impressive-looking man. He was short, mostly bald, homely, and his thin body had been crippled by severe bronchitis. But these external features obscured the attractive power that he exercised over his followers. They were convinced that he had actually spoken to God, and that his mission on earth was to redeem the black race. Muhammad radiated power and authority. When he demanded sex from a woman in his organization, it was inconceivable to him that his overtures would be rejected, or even questioned. The fact that his actions directly violated his own sect’s rules regarding sexual transgressions and morality were irrelevant to him.
For a time Muhammad’s long-suffering wife, Clara, pretended that she was unaware of her husband’s lascivious behavior, talking only to her daughter, Ethel Sharrieff, and other female confidantes. She complained bitterly to Ethel, for instance, when she discovered a love letter from one of his mistresses. When she refused to turn it over to him, he angrily stopped speaking to her. Clara Muhammad told her daughter, “I don’t know what he thinks my heart is, flesh and bone or a piece of wood or what.” Leading up to the February 1960 Saviourʹs Day, Clara became overwhelmed by news of additional relations concerning her husband. On February 13, 1960, after a shrill argument, Elijah abruptly abandoned his home. Tearfully, Clara complained to Ethel, “I’m sick of being treated like a dog.”
Thanks to its wiretaps and informants, the FBI was fully apprised of Muhammad’s infidelities. Having been frustrated in their attempts to find Malcolm’s weaknesses, Bureau officials now considered ways to turn Muhammad’s actions to their advantage. On May 22, 1960, FBI assistant director Cartha De Loach approved the text of a fictive anonymous letter to be sent to Clara Muhammad and several NOI ministers. The letter provocatively charged that “there appears to be a tremendous occupational hazard in being a young unmarried secretary employed in the household of Elijah Muhammad.” He had “preached against extramarital relationships but he doesn’t seem to be able to keep things under control in his own household.” To ensure greater privacy with his mistresses when in Chicago, Muhammad rented a love-nest apartment on South Vernon Avenue, but the Bureau kept one step ahead of him: its Chicago field office contacted the director, who gave approval for telephone taps and electronic bugging devices in the apartment. The Chicago field agent explained, “Muhammad, feeling he is secure in his ‘hideaway,’ may converse more freely with high officials of the NOI and his personal contacts. Through this it is hoped to obtain policy and future plans of Muhammad.”
By 1961, Muhammad had purchased a second, luxurious home at 2118 East Violet Drive in sunny Phoenix; NOI members were informed that due to the deterioration of Muhammad’s health from severe bronchitis, it was beneficial for him to spend most of the year in the arid southwest. The family home in Chicago, however, was retained. The new property also afforded Muhammad yet another layer of privacy for his sexual adventures. By early October the FBI counted at least five different NOI women who were regularly having sexual intercourse with Muhammad, two of whom were sisters. Like a young gigolo, Elijah tried to play one woman against the others as they competed for his affections.
Soon there were so many illegitimate children to take care of that new household arrangements were necessary. In October 1961, Muhammad telephoned Evelyn Williams in Chicago and asked her if she would be willing to raise and supervise his illegitimate children in a large home located on the West Coast. He approached with flattery, telling her that he needed to have his “Sweet and Honey come and stay with me for two or three months . . . or years.” Faced with financial burdens and a child, Evelyn agreed, but it didn’t take long for the new arrangement to sour. In July 1962, she phoned Muhammad demanding more money, and accused him of treating his illegitimate children like “stray dogs.” “You don’t allow your other children to live on $300 a month,” she argued. “All I want is money to pay the rent and to get some food and clothing.”
Muhammad once again complained of blackmail. “I won’t speak to you,” he told her, “or give you one red cent!” Stymied, Evelyn and Lucille Rosary took their children to Muhammad’s Phoenix home, and when no one answered the front door, they left the children at the entrance. Raymond Sharrieff eventually came to the front door and called out to the women to take their children back. Evelyn and Lucille refused, and left. Sharrieff went back inside and called the police, reporting that several small children had been abandoned on their doorstep. The children were subsequently turned over to social workers for investigation. The next day, Muhammad called Evelyn in a fury, but she refused to back down. “From now on, I’m not going to protect you in any way, shape or form,” she warned him. “If you want trouble, you’ll get it.” She told Muhammad that calling the police on his own children was “the dirtiest thing you could do.” Yet whether out of fear, love, or a lingering sense of loyalty, when police interrogated Evelyn about the father of her child, she would not divulge his name. Both Lucille and Evelyn were placed on notice for “child neglect,” but neither was formally charged. These emotional and legal conflicts could not be entirely suppressed or contained by national secretary John Ali, Raymond Sharrieff, or other Chicago officials. By mid-1962 rumors of Muhammad’s messy sex life were circulating widely in Chicago. Malcolm undoubtedly heard these rumors but continued to refuse to examine whether they were true and never imagined that Evelyn was involved.
Before leaving Atlanta during his travel to the South in January and February 1961, Malcolm attended an hourlong lecture delivered by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., at Atlanta University on January 17. At the time, Schlesinger was also a prominent adviser to president-elect John F. Kennedy. Schlesingerʹs talk, “America’s Domestic Future, Its Perils and Prospects,” was given before a standing-room-only audience and included a passing reference to the Nation of Islam: “Nothing can obstruct . . . recognition of the brotherhood of the human community more than the racist doctrines preached by the White Citizens Councils, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Black Muslims.” Schlesinger praised Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins for advancing “effective ways to [achieve] equality through the courts,” and applauded Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for promoting nonviolence as “the best way to attack prejudice.” After the talk, Schlesinger moved to the much smaller Dean Sage Auditorium on the Clark College campus to field questions; Malcolm was waiting.
Identifying himself only as “a Muslim,” he demanded to know on “what do you base your charge that the Black Muslims are racists and black supremacists?ʺ Schlesinger cited a recent article by the black journalist William Worthy. “But, sir, how can a man of your intelligence, a professor of history, who knows the value of thorough research, come here from Harvard and attack the Black Muslims, basing your conclusions on one small article?” Schlesinger asked if Malcolm had read Worthy’s article. Malcolm acknowledged that he had read it but noted that the article, which had quoted Schlesinger, did not attack the NOI as racist, but instead had focused on the negative conditions all blacks endured that had produced the Nation. The mostly black audience favored Malcolm’s arguments, but Schlesinger still insisted that the white racists and the “Black Muslims are two sides of the same coin.” He had no way of knowing how right he was, given Malcolm’s upcoming détente with the Klan. The black press, however, judged the confrontation between the Kennedy adviser and the NOI minister as a clear-cut victory for Malcolm. The Pittsburgh Courier declared that “the fiery Mr. X victoriously crossed swords” with Schlesinger, forcing the Harvard historian “into a ʹdiplomatic withdrawal’ of his earlier statement.” The February 4, 1961, issue of the New Jersey Herald also covered the debate with the headline “Muslims Give the JFK Man a Fit.” The informal debate with Schlesinger reinforced Malcolm’s belief that the Nation had to confront its critics. And there was no better venue for such confrontations than American universities.
During the next five months, he planned appearances at a series of colleges. Within the Nation, he explained that his purpose was to present the views of Elijah Muhammad and to challenge distortions about their religion. In fact, his objectives were to turn upside down the standard racial dialectic of black subordination and white supremacy, and to show off his rhetorical skill at the expense of white authorities and Negro integrationists. He had become convinced that the Nation’s elders were making a big mistake in shying away from public confrontations. The NOI’s survival depended on its ability to answer its critics, to divide white opinion about the group, and to win over converts.
Nowhere in the academic world was Malcolm’s and the NOIʹs divisiveness within the black community more prominently on display than at Howard University, the historically black college in Washington, D.C. The Howard campus chapter of the NAACP invited Malcolm to speak on February 14, 1961, as part of Negro History Week, a tradition established by the historian Carter G. Woodson and which would later be expanded into Black History Month. Though the national organization still found Malcolm too hot to touch, his growing reputation as a militant appealed to the NAACPʹs younger members, who increasingly sought him out for debates and speeches despite the reticence of the old guard. The invitation by Howard students rattled the school’s administrators, almost all of whom were staunch integrationists and who could little afford to have the university’s federal funding threatened by appearing to embrace the Nation of Islam’s most prominent spokesman. When the student group failed to clear approval with the student activities office, the lecture had to be canceled. Undaunted, the NAACP chapter then secured the use of New Bethel Baptist Church, but—probably under pressure from the university—it too decided to cancel, using the excuse that the sanctuary was too small to accommodate the anticipated audience. Writing to Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm explained that the whole affair was fortunate: “We really threw a ʹstone of stumbling’ onto the Howard University campus because they are all divided and arguing now, and it places us in an even better position to pour ‘boiling water’ on them when we get there.”
It was not until October 30, 1961, that Malcolm finally appeared at Howard, thanks largely to the efforts of E. Franklin Frazier. The author of Black Bourgeoisie, Frazier had been associated with Howard since 1934. A leftist during his early years, he had long been critical of the black middle class’s lack of social responsibility toward the black poor. He convinced the school administration to sanction Malcolm’s appearance, but as a concession the format would now be a debate, to ensure the presentation of a counterpoint to Malcolm’s opinions. To provide the opposing view, the school secured an appearance by the man who had frustrated and outmaneuvered Malcolm in the radio debate just a year earlier, Bayard Rustin.
The Howard debate would enter history as an important moment for both Bayard Rustin and Malcolm X. That evening, fifteen hundred people packed Howard’s brand-new Cramton Auditorium, and five hundred more crowded the building’s entrance in hopes of getting in. Malcolm had not forgotten the drubbing he had taken from Rustin during their first encounter, and he carefully worked on what he would say. Unlike the first debate, which had taken place in the isolation of a radio station studio, this appearance would give Malcolm the advantage of addressing a large black crowd and allow him to draw on his tremendous strength as a public speaker. He went for the rafters from his opening statement, telling the audience members that he stood before them not as a partisan of any major political party, or by religion or nationality: Malcolm announced that his only credential for speaking the truth was his identity as ʺA BLACK MAN!ʺ
Throughout the speech he hammered home the thesis of Frazierʹs Black Bourgeoisie—that the privileged African-American middle class had not played the leadership role it should assume to advance the black masses. At the center of Malcolm’s attack was his relentless criticism of “so-called Negro leaders. . . . The black man in America will never be equal to the white man as long as he attempts to force himself into his house.” Malcolm suggested that the entire philosophy of racial integration was doomed to failure, because the great majority of whites would never acquiesce to racial assimilation. As a result, a fraudulent black leadership had developed that did not effectively advocate the interests and concerns of African Americans. “The anemic Negro leader,” Malcolm sneered, “who survives and thrives off of gifts from white people, is dependent upon the white man whom he gives false information about the masses of black people.” Frequently employing humor in his presentation, Malcolm praised Elijah Muhammad’s method of isolating “ourselves from the white man long enough to analyze this great hypocrisy and begin to think black, and now we speak black.” He urged students not to seek the white man’s “love,” but rather to “demand his respect.”
It was not in Rustin’s character to abandon a fight, and he vigorously challenged Malcolm. At one point, a Chicago Defender reporter noted that Rustin “received loud cheers,” when he said to Malcolm, “you say America constituted is a sinking ship, and Negroes should abandon this ship, for another called ‘Separation’ or another state. If this ship sinks,” Rustin asked, “what possible chance do you think your ‘separate’ state would have?” But in front of a youthful black audience, Rustin’s warnings seemed tired and stale. As the reporter observed, it was Malcolm who effectively drew upon “reference(s) to history and his many sharp criticisms of current practices won over the majority of students.”
One other aspect of Malcolm’s address that was especially effective in appealing to civil rights organizers and leftists was proletarian appeal. He claimed that Muhammad and the Nation represented blacks who were unemployed, impoverished, and angry. The majority of urban blacks were confined to the ghetto, where they were subjected to police brutality; indeed, law enforcement authorities functioned like an occupying army under colonial conditions. In effect, Malcolm was using the analogy of postcolonial Africa to define the political conflict between black leaders in the United States. Although Frantz Fanon’s writings would not be known or translated in the United States until the late 1960s, Malcolm’s analysis anticipated Fanon’s famous “Wretched of the Earth” thesis. By the end of the great debate, despite the older man’s point-scoring, however, it was Malcolm who was largely setting the agenda now, capturing the militancy of most college students, black and white. As one bewildered faculty member at the debate admitted, “Howard will never be the same. I feel a reluctance to face my class tomorrow.”
Malcolm’s oratory brought him not just to the heights of esteemed black institutions, but to landmark locales in the upper-crust white world as well. On March 24 of the following year, he was invited to debate the black attorney Walter C. Carrington at the Harvard Law School Forum. The excitement generated by Malcolm’s appearance was so intense that at the last minute the venue was changed from Lowell Hall to Sanders Theatre, Harvard’s largest auditorium. There, on the stage that had hosted American presidents and foreign heads of state, Malcolm presented the NOI program to a record-breaking crowd. “Allah is now giving America every chance to repent and change before He destroys this wicked Caucasian world,” he declared. He went on to argue that desegregated public facilities and integrated schools were not enough. America’s twenty million blacks “number a nation in their own right.” For that nation to be successful, blacks “must have some land of our own.” Louis X, who had come out for the debate from the Boston mosque, recalled Malcolm’s powerful presence onstage. The white audience at Harvard, he remembered, was enamored with this black man who could handle their questions with ease. If Malcolm’s abrupt shift from political and international themes to jeremiads about the coming destruction of white civilization seemed jarring, this hodgepodge construction was not of his design; Elijah Muhammad, ever vigilant about Malcolm’s growing platform, would often dictate parts of his speeches; the Harvard debate was probably no exception. Chicago headquarters also insisted that Malcolm’s lectures be audio-recorded, with copies forwarded to them, so that both Muhammad and John Ali could monitor the addresses.
Through the spring of 1961, Malcolm’s campus speaking engagements took him far and wide, rarely failing to generate controversy or to prompt blistering debates about free speech. In California, for instance, students at UC Berkeley were scheduled to hear Malcolm, but the university administration banned the lecture, which had to be relocated to the local YMCA. On April 19, Malcolm was back in the Ivy League, at Yale, to debate Louis Lomax, and four days later he appeared on the NBC television program Open Mind as part of a panel that included the conservative George Schuyler and the writer James Baldwin. When host Eric Goldman introduced Malcolm as the NOIʹs “number two man,” at the first opportunity Malcolm denied that such a position existed. More important, the show’s taping marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship between Malcolm and Baldwin.
Although most of Malcolm’s public lectures were now aimed at university audiences, he also tried to establish an interfaith dialogue between the Nation and African-American Christians. As the Nation continued to deny the necessity of politics, it became even more important to establish its legitimacy within the black community as a real religious organization; acknowledgment by important Christian groups brought it closer to that goal. To this end, Malcolm organized events that brought groups of Muslims to a black church, where he would deliver a sermon focused on the connections between Christianity and Islam. Probably the first of these occurred on June 16, 1961, at Elder Solomon Lightfoot Michaux’s New York Church of God. In his sermon, Malcolm exuded praise “to Allah for putting into Elder Michaux’s heart to invite those of us who are Muslims here this evening to explain what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is teaching.” He explained that the NOI did not believe in politics, because no “president that has ever sat in the White House” has ever kept his promises to black people. Instead, he advised, we must “turn toward the God of our forefathers,” by emulating what “Moses taught his people to do in the house of bondage four thousand years ago.” If these interfaith gestures brought new respect to the Nation from outsiders, Malcolm’s internal speeches often undermined their sincerity. Speaking on July 14, only four weeks after his eloquent appeal at Elder Michaux’s Church of God, he bluntly told followers at the mosque that “Christianity is evil and also America is evil.” And he continued to characterize as “Uncle Toms” the mainstream civil rights leaders and integrationists, many of whom professed a deep Christian faith.
Increasingly, Malcolm had to address a growing variety of competing issues and demands: problems within the NOI, street demonstrations, debates with civil rights leaders and organizations. But he continued to balance these new obligations with his commitment to building Mosque No. 7. He still set aside a significant share of time for the Nation, even if his extensive travels in the early sixties left relatively little room for his mosque. His first sermon there after his January 1961 meeting with the Ku Klux Klan had been on February 6, when he melodramatically asserted that if a white man should hit a Muslim in the South, it could very well be “the start of a holy war.” But the next controversy involving the NOI did not begin in Dixie, but rather on Manhattan’s east side.
In the early dawn of independence in postcolonial Africa, Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba came to be recognized as a symbol for postcolonial African aspirations. He would not be beholden to colonial Western powers or the United States. On January 17, 1961, he was murdered by Belgian mercenaries in Congo’s Katanga province. The delayed news of Lumumba’s death was finally announced on February 13, leading to militant demonstrations throughout the world. The Soviets blamed UN troops stationed in the Congo for failing to protect Lumumba, and demanded secretary Dag Hammarskjöld’s firing. On February 15 a coalition of widely divergent groups put up several long picket lines blocking the entrance to the UN building in New York. One organization taking part, the Cultural Association for Women of African Heritage, included an individual who would later influence Malcolm’s life: the writer Maya Angelou, the association’s director. As the crowd grew, scuffles broke out between demonstrators and security guards. In the ensuing mêlée, forty-one people were injured, including eighteen UN personnel. Reporters and press photographers claimed they had been attacked by rioters with brass knuckles and knives. United States diplomats accused the demonstrators of being “Communist-inspired, linked [to] mob violence against Belgian embassies in Moscow, Cairo and Warsaw over the death” of Lumumba. New York police commissioner Stephen P. Kennedy blamed the rioting on the “Muslim Brotherhood, a fanatic Negro national cult, which is one of the most dangerous gangs in the city.” Somehow the police along with the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Adlai Stevenson, believed that the Muslim Brotherhood “gang” was affiliated with the NOI and Malcolm X. “It wasn’t us,” Malcolm responded bluntly. “We don’t involve ourselves in any politics, whether local, national, or international.” But Malcolm could not resist expressing Pan-Africanist solidarity with the protesters: “I refuse to condemn the demonstrations . . . because I am not Moise Tshombe, and will permit no one to use me against the nationalists.”
Several days after the UN riot, Maya Angelou and an associate contacted the NOI to arrange a meeting with Malcolm. The two went uptown to the NOI restaurant and met the minister in a rear room. “His aura was too bright and his masculine force affected me physically,” Angelou recalled years later. ʺA hot desert storm eddied around him and rushed to me, making my skin contract, and my pores slam shut. . . . His hair was the color of burning embers and his eyes pierced.” As representatives of the Cultural Association of Women of African Heritage, the women explained, they had been involved in the UN demonstration, but had not anticipated thousands of protesters turning out. Malcolm responded that the Muslims had not been involved in the protest. “You were wrong in your direction,” Malcolm said, chastising his guests. United Nations demonstrations “and carrying placards will not win freedom for anyone, nor will it keep the white devils from killing another African leader.” Angelou had anticipated receiving Malcolm’s endorsement of the protest and tried hard not to display her disappointment. But then, surprisingly, Malcolm’s voice softened, she remembered, “and for a time the Islamic preacher disappeared.” Malcolm warned the women that conservative African-American leaders would be used by the white power structure to denounce them as “dangerous and probably communists.” He promised that he would make a statement to the press describing the demonstration as “symbolic of the anger in this country.” Although Angelou left feeling the “fog of defeat,” her encounter with Malcolm struck her to the core. She would eagerly renew her acquaintance with him several years later, after she had moved to Ghana.
Throughout mid-1961, Malcolm would devote more time to his pastoral duties in Mosque No. 7. Lecturing there on July 9, for instance, he explained the Nation’s official interpretation of what would unfold during the final days. “In the next war, the War of Armageddon,” he predicted, “it will be a race war and will not be a ʹspooky war.’ ” Using a blackboard, he explained why the ideals of freedom, justice, and equality were impossible to achieve under the “American flag.”
He was also actively involved with many of the business-related aspects of the NOI. For instance, Elijah Muhammad wrote Malcolm in March asking whether C. Eric Lincoln’s book The Black Muslims in America should be carried by the Nation despite its criticism of the sect. The book’s publisher had agreed to sell five thousand copies at “a very good commission to the Muslims.” But Elijah also stressed in his letter, ʺTHIS IS NOT TO BE MENTIONED IN PUBLIC.ʺ Astutely, he realized that the deal was good business if not good publicity. Apparently the sale agreement went ahead and the NOI duly sold discounted copies of the book.
On August 11, Malcolm unexpectedly received a telegram from labor leader A. Philip Randolph: “I am appointing you to the Ad Hoc Working Committee of Unity for Action. First meeting scheduled for 3 p.m., Monday, August fourteenth, 217 West 125th Street.” Nothing in Randolph’s communication indicated what the committee’s agenda might be, or who else had been invited.
At the time, Randolph was a lion of the civil rights effort and, even at age seventy-two, had lost little of his enthusiasm for leading the charge; he remained the most powerful black labor leader in the United States. Still based in Harlem, he had seen the fight shift in recent years from demanding more black jobs at businesses on 125th Street to seeking full representation for blacks within the political system. Such an effort required a united front from Harlem’s black community, and Randolph knew that Malcolm represented an increasingly significant constituency. But his admiration for Malcolm likely had an ideological component. Almost fifty years before, Randolph had introduced newcomer Marcus Garvey to a Harlem audience, and though he never endorsed black nationalism, he maintained throughout his career a sense of admiration for its fundamental embrace of black pride and self-respect. Randolph was old enough to take the historical long view, and he saw Malcolm as a legitimate voice in the militant tradition of Garvey and Martin R. Delaney.
The respect was mutual; Malcolm put aside his reservations and attended the meeting. The goal of the committee, he learned, was to establish a broad coalition—from black nationalists to moderate integrationists—to address social and political problems in Harlem. To join officially, Malcolm realized, meant to go beyond the limited venture he had made into politics up to that time. Though he was interested, he knew he would have to justify his participation to the Nation.
Fortunately, Elijah Muhammad gave him an unintentional loophole. Throughout much of August, Malcolm and Mosque No. 7 were busily preparing to host a major address by Muhammad, to be held on August 23 at Harlem’s 369th Infantry Armory. Before an audience estimated at between five and eight thousand, the Messenger of Allah offered a bleak and dire vision:
It is not the nature of the white man to call the Negro a brother. The Negro ministers are taught to preach by white people. They are given licenses by white people and if they do not teach like white people want them to they are cut down. . . . Harlem should elect its own leaders and should not accept the leaders set up for them by the white man. We must elect our leaders and if they do not do right we should cut their heads off. We cannot integrate with the white man, we must separate.
In the call for Harlem to elect its own leaders, Malcolm saw an opportunity. Although Muhammad’s outlook was anchored to a separatist partition, he encouraged NOI members to support black-owned businesses and to back black leaders, and it was on this slender basis that Malcolm consented to work with Randolph’s committee. Its members, he found, were drawn largely from the Negro American Labor Council; many were representatives from business, civic, and faith institutions. One such member was Percy Sutton, a prominent Harlem lawyer who also served as branch president of the New York NAACP. Malcolm and Sutton came to respect each other, and within several years Malcolm would seek Sutton’s legal counsel on a range of sensitive matters. Bayard Rustin, who by that time had worked with Randolph for over twenty years, was also on the committee, and his presence may have further intrigued Malcolm about the group’s potential.
The first public event staged by what was then called the Emergency Committee was a rally in front of the Hotel Theresa in early September. Randolph carefully crafted the speakers’ list to reflect the range of Harlem politics. For the nationalists, there were black bookstore proprietor Lewis Michaux and James Lawson, head of the United African Nationalist Movement; for black labor, the militant Cleveland Robinson, secretary-treasurer for the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union’s District 65, as well as Richard Parrish, national treasurer of the Negro American Labor Council. About one thousand people attended. The Pittsburgh Courier, which covered the event, observed that the “most exciting speaker was Malcolm X, whom many in the audience had never heard before.” Malcolm won praise for his sharp condemnation of the NYPD, whom he blamed for the escalation of illegal narcotics, prostitution, and violence in New York’s black neighborhoods. What was curious, however, was his deferential approach to the police. He assured the crowd that he would encourage “his people” to obey the law, denied that NOI members had participated in any recent “uprisings in Harlem,” and denounced the call for a “march on the 28th Precinct Police Station,” which had been outlined in a leaflet distributed through the crowd. “We do not think this will accomplish anything,” he declared. The speech toed the line. It was forceful, yet conservative on action. Activists like Rustin would have noted that Malcolm had virtually replicated the paradox of the NOI: he had identified and condemned the problem yet refused to go further in embracing a working solution. Black Harlemites could no more escape interaction with the local police than set up a separate state.
Still, the importance of Malcolm’s role on the Emergency Committee is central to interpreting what happened to him after he broke with the NOI in 1964. The committee was the only black united front-type organization in which he participated during his years inside the Nation, and although it featured a range of ideological opinions, it was Randolph who controlled who was invited to join the committee, who spoke at the rallies, and what the program of action would be. His model of top-down leadership would later be uncritically adopted by Malcolm in the development of the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
In early October, the Emergency Committee produced a blueprint to combat the “social and economic deterioration” of New York City’s black communities. It called for a series of reforms, including the establishment of a citywide minimum wage set at $1.50; the creation of a Fair Employment Practices Committee, with powers that would include jail terms for violators; an investigation of all contracts, with the goal of eliminating discriminatory practices ; and forcing one of the city’s major employers, Consolidated Edison, to improve its record in the hiring and advancement of black employees. The blueprint identified Malcolm as a member of the committee, but next to his name, in parentheses, was written “Malik el-Shabazz.” Since the late 1950s, Elijah Muhammad had permitted his ministers who had not yet received original names to use Shabazz as a surname. For Malcolm, Malik el-Shabazz was an identity that rooted him to the NOIʹs imaginary history while at the same time granting him the freedom to operate as an individual in the secular world of politics.
Due to his speaking commitments, Malcolm’s presence at his home mosque became ever more limited throughout the rest of 1961. He began relying on his assistant ministers, especially Benjamin 2X Goodman. His absences also gave Joseph Gravitt unfettered authority over decisions, including disciplinary actions. This may have been part of the reason that, when Malcolm did speak at Mosque No. 7, he tended to adhere to Elijah Muhammad’s conservative, antiwhite positions. On December 1, for instance, he lectured on the nature of the devil. For those attending an NOI meeting for the first time, he said, he was “not speaking of something under the ground. . . . The devil is not a spirit, rather he has blue eyes, blond hair, and he has a white skin.”
Early in December, FOI captain Raymond Sharrieff, accompanied by his wife, Ethel, visited the mosque for several days. A visit from Sharrieff was second in import only to a visit from the Messenger himself, and when the couple arrived, they were treated like royalty. Malcolm went to considerable effort to ensure that their stay was memorable, summoning FOI members from Philadelphia and New Jersey and arranging for a karate performance to be held in their honor. At a mosque meeting on December 4, Sharrieff informed his troops: “All organizations follow their leaders. The ability to take an order is a Muslim’s number one duty. There should never be any dissension.” Though Sharrieff talked hard and, by virtue of his title, was head of the Nation’s paramilitary wing, he was not a thug like some local FOI captains. These men, often violent and unstable characters, carried out much of the Nation’s dirty work, organizing groups to mete out punishments that ran to beatings or worse, and Sharrieff understood keenly how important it was to reinforce his position at the top of the command structure.
Before the couple departed Harlem, the mosque put on a grand dinner. Sharrieff had already called upon members to donate money to Muhammad’s family in honor of the upcoming Saviourʹs Day, but on top of this he now asked them to give money toward a new luxury automobile for Sharrieff himself. James 67X was outraged: “That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I said, ‘I’m riding the number seven bus, and I’m supposed to contribute to his Lincoln Continental?’” The Nation had changed; for some members, it seemed as though the national leadership increasingly viewed the rank and file as a cash register, and resentment began to grow. At the dinner, however, anger over extortion soon gave way to confusion as the Sharrieffs launched into a pair of bizarre and inappropriate monologues. Ethel addressed the audience first and, according to James, “publicly started talking about some of the men not being able to fulfill the sexual requirements of their wives.” Even more surprising was her husband’s speech. The stern FOI leader came to the speakerʹs podium and began riffing on his wife’s talk, “making jokes about sexual nonperformance.”
The ribald, sex-oriented burlesque was designed to humiliate one person alone—Malcolm. The Sharrieffs had evidently read Malcolm’s heartfelt March 1959 letter to Elijah Muhammad about problems in his marriage. They wanted Malcolm to understand that there was no privileged communication with the Messenger. They also apparently wanted to convey their total contempt, and to ridicule him as a man. For Malcolm, the whole performance must have contributed to his doubts about his role within the NOI.
At some point in 1961, Elijah Muhammad may have briefly reduced Sharrieffʹs authority over the FOI by making local captains directly responsible to Malcolm. If this is true, it might explain Sharrieffʹs behavior. However, Malcolm had no ambitions to run the FOI; his interests were pastoral and political. At Mosque No. 7’s regular FOI meeting on December 18, he seemed to confirm Joseph’s role as boss of all NOI captains nationally; it is unclear what that would have meant for Sharrieff’s continued authority. Possibly, the endorsement was based merely on Joseph’s effective management.
What is certain is that, by 1962, the internal life of the Nation had moved to a new and unsettled place. Elijah Muhammad now spent most of his time in Arizona; when in Chicago, he was preoccupied with one or more of his mistresses in his hideaway apartment on the South Side, largely divorced from the Nation’s growing business affairs. Freed from his oversight, Sharrieff and John Ali became the de facto administrative heads of the NOI, and they reinvested the incoming cash from the members’ tithing into Nation-owned businesses and real estate of all kinds. Muhammad’s sons also took on a greater role in the NOIʹs affairs. Elijah, Jr., despite possessing a mediocre mind and poor language skills, traveled across the country as an enforcer, pressing mosques to produce more revenue for the Chicago headquarters. Malcolm was asked to cede editorship of Muhammad Speaks to Herbert Muhammad, who quickly made it clear to all mosques that they were expected to increase their quotas of newspapers, with all revenue remitted to Chicago. The success and growth of the NOI ironically created new problems with old business partners, who increasingly viewed the group as a competitor. Papers that for years had provided generous coverage to the Nation, such as the Chicago Defender and the Amsterdam News, sharply restricted their coverage with the emergence of Muhammad Speaks. By 1963, the Cleveland Call and Post, a black Republican paper, declared that the NOI was encountering “growing disenchantment among the masses they would lead to a black Utopia.”
Mosque No. 7 did not experience the intense upheaval that characterized many mosques during these years. Despite their personal feelings of hostility, Malcolm and Captain Joseph appeared to work closely together in public and generally agreed on all mosque matters. By 1962, only a minority of congregants could remember Joseph’s 1956 trial and humiliation. And as hundreds of new members continued to pour into the mosque, memories of the old conflicts faded. By 1959, Temple No. 7 had 1,125 members, 569 of them active. By 1961, the renamed Mosque No. 7 had 2,369 registered members, of whom 737 were defined as active. What types of individuals joined during these years? At a time when the vast majority of Negro leaders were promoting racial integration, the NOI stood almost alone. The vision of building a self-confident nation that blacks themselves controlled began to attract African Americans from different income groups and educational backgrounds. Each new convert seemed to have a unique explanation for joining. James 67X suspected that it was the Black Muslims’ reputation for being outside society’s mainstream, beyond the boundaries of “normalcy,” that drew in blacks who also felt frustrated and bitter. “Normalcy is something that is not highly regarded in the ghetto,” James advised. “Everybody got a story.”
One bearer of many different stories, who would within several years become extremely close to Malcolm, was Charles Morris. Born in Boston in 1921, as a teenager he had received training as a dental technician, but like Detroit Red he was drawn to show business, joining the Brown Skin Models show at a Seventh Avenue nightclub. In September 1942, he was inducted into the army and was eventually posted to Camp Shelby, Mississippi. For a proud black man raised in the North, being assigned to the segregated South was a disaster waiting to happen. On November 25, 1944, Morris was convicted by general court martial of organizing a mutiny, fighting with another private, and disrespecting a superior officer. He was sentenced to hard labor for six years, and after serving part of his sentence was discharged on September 13, 1946.
In later years, Morris would tell the FBI that he first met Malcolm in Detroit, where the latter was assistant minister. He was impressed by the young preacher, but not by the NOIʹs message. After Malcolm departed for Boston, he decided not to join the sect. By 1960, Morris had relocated to the Bronx and began to attend NOI meetings again. Finally, he converted, receiving the name Charles 37X, but although he became a familiar figure around the mosque, some of his fellow members thought there was something not quite right about him. The new recruit dressed extravagantly, laughed loudly, and used his charm and personality to curry favors. In retrospect, James 67X coolly observed, “he thought he was a whole lot more than he was, and he was very dangerous.” From August 1961 on, Charles was confined for several months at the Rockland State Hospital in Orange-burg, New York, evaluated as having “psychoneurosis—mixed type, mildly depressed but cooperative.” Despite this, from 1962 until his resignation from the mosque in 1964, he cultivated a network of friends, most prominently Malcolm. Charles was eager to provide security for Malcolm and appeared to be devoted to him. And despite James 67Xʹs deep misgivings, Malcolm developed bonds of trust and respect for his fellow ex-con—the man whom he would later refer to as “my best friend.”
Others entered the Nation searching for stability or for restored health—by ending their dependency on narcotics, for example. The complex journey of Thomas Arthur Johnson, Jr., was typical. Born in Pennsylvania in the mid-1930s and raised by his grandparents near Atlantic City, Johnson had what he described as a “really beautiful childhood.” He inherited a lifelong love of music from his grandfather, who had played the tuba and slide trombone in the Barnum & Bailey circus’s sideshow. As a teenager he spent much of his time loitering around jazz clubs. By the age of fifteen he had been ordered out of the house because of heroin use. In 1958, after several arrests, he was sentenced to twelve months in prison.
In the Islamic faith, the Arabic word ingadh means “to save, rescue, bring relief or salvation.” The faithful have a duty to save those in distress. In Thomas’s case, the call to ingadh had first come to his cell mate, a Times Square pickpocket who explained to him the fundamentals of the NOI, including Yacub’s History and Elijah’s role as Allah’s Messenger. All of it made complete sense to Johnson. Once free, he immediately went to Temple No. 7. Before long, his grandparents were stunned by the positive changes in his 'margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 12.0pt;line-height:normal'>For Johnson, the NOI was like a combat organization. “I didn’t see anybody making a stand, representing us in any way that would alleviate a lot of oppression and the abuse and the things that was going on in the South . . . the waves of killing African-American people,” he would later explain. After receiving his X—becoming Thomas 15X—he came to the attention of Captain Joseph for what were considered outstanding displays of devotion. “It was a very hostile atmosphere at that time, and we didn’t take no crap from nobody, see, so . . . they called me [the] ‘Reactor,’ because I was always jumping at everything,” he recalled. “[If] somebody threatened a Muslim or they beat up a Muslim or something, I would be the first one on the scene.”
Joseph decided that Thomas should be assigned to provide security for Malcolm, which included doing routine errands and odd jobs for his family. At that time, Thomas thought Malcolm was “the greatest thing walking . . . I don’t know any commentator, news people, that could handle him.” Thomas’s daily duties usually began when Malcolm traveled from his home in Queens to the Harlem mosque. Regardless of the weather, Thomas was expected to stand outside, reserving a parking spot for the ministerʹs car. He also drove Malcolm to appointments. Once a month, Betty gave him a list of household items to purchase at the Shabazz supermarket in Brooklyn, driving back afterward to unpack. He noticed that Malcolm avoided going home “if he could.” Malcolm confided, “‘Man, if I go [home], all them women . . . no telling what I might say, how I’m going to respond.’ And he’d say, ʹLetʹs go down to Foley Square.’ So we would.” Sometimes Malcolm would be deeply engrossed in reading some book very obscure to Thomas. One author he vividly recalled was philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. “Hegel was his man,” Thomas recalled, possibly referring to the same passages on “lordship and bondage” that had also fascinated Frantz Fanon.
And yet something about Thomas made Malcolm uneasy. On one occasion he voiced his concerns to Joseph, saying that he was uncomfortable simply because Thomas rarely talked. Thomas, for his part, told Joseph, “I didn’t think I was qualified to interject and have a lot of conversation with him. I was just interested in doing my job.” Things remained as they were.
Within a growing number of mosques—most notably the Newark, New Jersey, mosque—a storm of criticism against Malcolm began to gather. The standard charges were that he coveted the Messengerʹs position, that he craved material possessions, and that he was using the Nation to advance himself politically and in the media. Malcolm routinely responded to such barbs by building up the cult around Elijah, which he felt was the most effective way to dispel doubts. Muhammad appreciated such labors on his behalf, and around this time told Malcolm that he wanted him to “become well known,” because it was through his fame that Elijah’s message would be heard. But Malcolm needed to realize, he added, “You will grow to be hated when you become well known.”
George Lincoln Rockwell may have thought himself white America’s answer to Malcolm X. Square jawed and solidly built, he cut a striking figure when commanding the stage at rallies held by the group he had founded and led, the American Nazi Party. Rockwell’s extreme conservatism had grown at first along conventional lines; a longtime naval reservist, he opposed racial integration and despised communism, and for a brief time was employed by William F. Buckley, Jr., the editor of National Review. Only after reading Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion did his supremacist beliefs merge with a deep hatred for Jews. In March 1959, he established the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists, which soon became the American Nazi Party. Despite his loathsome politics, Rockwell possessed a gift for manipulating the media that brought the party outsized attention. On April 3, 1960, he delivered a two-hour speech on the National Mall in Washington that attracted more journalists than supporters; yet, even within the fringes of the far right, he managed to maintain substantial press coverage, creating a greatly inflated image of his party’s actual number.
In its early years, the American Nazi Party’s literature routinely described African Americans as “niggers,” morally and mentally inferior to whites. However, once Rockwell learned of the Nation of Islam’s anti-integrationist positions, he became fascinated by the concept of a white supremacist-black nationalist united front. He even praised the NOI to his followers, arguing that Elijah Muhammad had “gathered millions of the dirty, immoral, drunken, filthy-mouthed, lazy and repulsive people sneeringly called ‘niggers’ and inspired them to the point where they are clean, sober, honest, hard-working, dignified, dedicated and admirable human beings in spite of their color.”
At some time in early 1961, Rockwell’s group had talks with Muhammad and several top aides in Chicago; Rockwell and Muhammad may even have met privately to work out an “agreement of mutual assistance.” The main concession that Rockwell wrung from Muhammad was permission to bring his Nazi storm troopers into NOI rallies, which he knew would provoke press coverage. For Muhammad, the attention carried greater risk, but he believed that it was outweighed by the opportunity to put on display the true nature of the white man. Rockwell’s group may have been at the fringe, but Muhammad saw its racial hatred and anti-Semitism as an honest representation of white America’s core beliefs. But there was another reason for the pairing: the authoritarianism of the NOI was in harmony with the racist authoritarianism of the white supremacists. Both groups, after all, dreamed of a segregated world in which interracial marriages were outlawed and the races dwelled in separate states.
On June 25, 1961, the Nation of Islam held a major rally in Washington, D.C. Before an audience of eight thousand, Rockwell and ten storm troopers—all crisply dressed in tan fatigues and bright swastika armbands—were escorted to seats near the stage in the center of the arena. Representatives of the African-American press, stunned to see Nazis there, shouted questions to Rockwell, who announced, “I am fully in concert with [the NOIʹs] program and I have the highest respect for Mr. Elijah Muhammad.” Although Muhammad had been advertised as the keynote speaker, once again he was too ill, and it was left to Malcolm to make the main address. After his speech, the audience was asked for contributions, and when Rockwell put in twenty dollars, Malcolm asked who had donated the money. A storm trooper shouted, “George Lincoln Rockwell!” which generated polite applause from the Muslims. Rockwell was invited to stand up; the Nazi leader again received mild applause. Malcolm could not resist commenting, “You got the biggest hand you ever got.”
Malcolm’s joke belied his deeper feelings about this alliance with the lunatic right, which had been engineered entirely by Elijah Muhammad and the Chicago headquarters. The stain of the Nazis could not quite match that of the Klan, but those meetings had been conducted in secret. Now Malcolm was receiving a cash donation from the leader of a notorious white hate group in front of an audience of thousands. However he felt about Rockwell’s usefulness to the NOI, he knew that the appearance would only hurt him with the black leaders who had recently begun courting his opinion.
For his part, Rockwell came away from his contacts with the NOI impressed by their organization and discipline. “Muhammad understands the vicious fraud of the Jewish exploitation of the Negro people,” he later observed. “[T]he Muslims are the key to solving the Negro problem, both in the North and the South. And this guy Malcolm X is no mealy-mouth pansy like so many of the disgusting ‘integrationist’ leaders, both black and white. He is a MAN, whom it is impossible not to admire, even when blasting the White Race for its mishandling of the Black Man.” The following February, Rockwell attended NOIʹs Saviourʹs Day, held in Chicago before an audience of twelve thousand Muslims. After Elijah Muhammad finished his sermon, Rockwell was invited to speak and strolled to the stage, flanked by two bodyguards. “You know that we call you niggers,” he began. “But wouldn’t you rather be confronted by honest white men who tell you to your face what the others say behind your back?” He pledged to “do everything in my power to help the Honorable Elijah Muhammad carry out his inspired plan for land of your own in Africa. Elijah Muhammad is right—separation or death!”
Most studies devoted to Malcolm X ignore or do not examine the connections between the NOI and the American Nazi Party. Even the scholar Claude Andrew Clegg, who is highly critical of Muhammad’s decision to allow Rockwell to speak in 1962, argues that the Nazi leader “was a sort of bugbear that Muhammad used to scare blacks into the NOI.ʺ This underestimates the common ground involved. In the April 1962 issue of Muhammad Speaks, Muhammad praised Rockwell as a man who had “endorsed the stand for self that you and I are taking. Why should not you applaud?” The Nazis “have taken a stand to see that you be separated to get justice and freedom.” For several years, Rockwell continued to endorse the NOIʹs program. At an address in October 1962, for example, he stated: “[Elijah Muhammad] is a black supremacist and I’m a white supremacist: that doesn’t necessarily mean we gotta kill each other.”
Dining with the devil requires more than a long spoon. Like the tête-à-tête with the Klan, the NOIʹs public identification with the Nazis undermined Malcolm’s efforts to reach out to moderate audiences, people who might have agreed with his critique of American racism but rejected his solutions. This was the challenge he faced when he again confronted Bayard Rustin, on January 23, 1962. The debate was held at Manhattan’s Community Church, a liberal east side congregation. The topic—“Separation or Integration?”—should have favored Rustin. The audience consisted largely of white liberals who strongly supported civil rights. However, Malcolm astutely did not condemn all whites as “devils,” emphasizing instead the negative effects of institutional racism on the black community. His arguments were persuasive to many whites in the audience. Rustin was forced to complain that too many whites in the gallery, including some of his own friends, were applauding Malcolm’s statements more vigorously than the Negroes in the audience: “May I explain the process. . . . It is, my friends, that many white people love to hear their kind damned to high water while they sit saying, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that that nice black man gives those white people hell? But he couldn’t be talking about me—Iʹm the liberal.’”
Malcolm’s lectures and sermons in early 1962 rarely mentioned the core values of the Nation’s theology, and increasingly he was pulled into larger debates over the political future of black America. Probably to silence his critics within the NOI, he tried to give more attention to organizational matters. In January, both he and Joseph visited Mosque No. 23 in Buffalo, New York. And at the end of the same month he supervised the NOIʹs sponsorship of an African-Asian Bazaar at Harlem’s Rockland Palace. He also continued to use his speeches to build up the cult around Elijah Muhammad. The Messenger appreciated such labors on his behalf; yet before long, Muhammad’s opinion began to shift. He read the transcripts and recordings from Malcolm’s speeches and could see the political direction of his increasingly famous ministerʹs mind. He decided to tighten the reins.
On February 14, Muhammad wrote Malcolm formally about his schedule. ʺ[W]hen you go to these Colleges and Universities to represent the Teachings that Allah has revealed to me for our people, do not go too much into the details of the political side; nor into the subject of a separate state here for us.” Muhammad instructed him to “speak only what you know they have heard me say or that which you yourself have heard me say.” Malcolm was forbidden to express his independent opinions, even on questions that had no relationship with the NOI. The aging patriarch sought to reclaim his right to be the sole interpreter of Muslim teachings. “Make the public seek me for the answers,” he wrote. “Do not you see how I reject the devils on such subjects, by telling them I will say WHERE when the Government shows interest?” The NOI was a religious movement, not a political cause; Malcolm no longer had the authority to address issues like a separate black state or to speak about current events of a political nature, unless Muhammad gave his permission. Yet, of course, any discussion of black Americans’ affairs inevitably centered on the struggle for civil rights; Muhammad was making Malcolm’s position untenable.
An opportunity soon arose to test Muhammad’s boundaries. On March 7, Cornell University invited Malcolm and CORE executive director James Farmer to debate the theme “Segregation or Integration?” During the previous year, Farmerʹs Freedom Riders had grabbed national headlines with their challenges to segregated bus systems in the South, and the promise of real gains to be made through concerted activism gave him a strong chip to play against Malcolm. In his opening remarks, Malcolm emphasized that black Americans were part of the “non-white world.” And just as “our African and Asian brothers wanted to have their own land, wanted to have their own country, wanted to exercise control over themselves,” it was reasonable for black Americans to desire the same. “It is not integration that Negroes in America want, it is human dignity.” Once more, he attacked integration as a scheme benefiting only the black bourgeoisie:
We who are black in the black belt, or black community, or black neighborhood can easily see that our people who settle for integration are usually the middle-class so-called Negroes, who are in the minority. Why? Because they have confidence in the white man . . . they believe that there is still hope in the American dream. But what to them is an American dream to us is an American nightmare, and we don’t think that it is possible for the American white man in sincerity to take the action necessary to correct the unjust conditions that 20 million black people are made to suffer, morning, noon and night.
But Farmer, like Rustin, was not intimidated, aggressively going after the conservatism and weaknesses in the NOIʹs program. “We are seeking an open society . . . where people will be accepted for what they are worth, will be able to contribute fully to the total culture and the total life of the nation,” he declared. Racism was America’s greatest problem. Turning to Malcolm, he asked, “We know the disease, physician, what is your cure? What is your program and how do you hope to bring it into effect?” Malcolm had been long on rhetoric but short on details. “We need to have it spelled out,” Farmer pressed him. “Is it a separate Negro society in each city? As a Harlem [or] a South Side Chicago?” He also effectively countered Malcolm’s claim that only the black middle class favored integration by pointing out that the majority of student Freedom Riders were from working-class and low-income families. In fact, Farmer argued, the opposite was true: black entrepreneurial capitalists favored Jim Crow, because it created a self-segregated black consumer market without white competition; it was usually the black middle class that opposed desegregation. Malcolm sensed that he was losing the debate and, to score points, resorted to mentioning that Farmer was married to a white woman.
Unlike the NAACP representatives that Malcolm had previously debated, Farmer was able to explain the tactics of the Black Freedom Movement in clear, everyday terms. To Malcolm’s claim that desegregated lunch counters were unimportant, for instance, he had a sensible response: “Are we not to travel? Picket lines and boycotts brought Woolworth’s to its knees.” COREʹs Freedom Riders had “helped to create desegregation in cities throughout the South.” What Malcolm undoubtedly grasped that night was that COREʹs approach to desegregation was fundamentally different from that of the older civil rights establishment, which relied on litigation and legislation. CORE was actively committed to building mass protests in the streets—in Farmer’s words, “The picketing and the nationwide demonstrations are the reason that the walls came down in the South, because people were in motion with their own bodies marching with picket signs, sitting in, boycotting, withholding their patronage.” Ironically, the net result of the Farmer-Malcolm debate, which was widely discussed among movement activists, was to give greater legitimacy to the Black Muslim leader. Even integrationists who sharply rejected black nationalism found Malcolm’s argument persuasive. Within two years, entire branch organizations of CORE, especially in Cleveland, Detroit, Brooklyn, and Harlem, would become oriented toward Malcolm X.
Perhaps Malcolm’s most important public address during the first half of 1962 was at Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, where Congressman Powell had invited him as part of a lecture series on the theme “Which Way the Negro?” Abyssinian church administrators informed the press that the overwhelming response they had received was larger “than all the previous Harlem ‘leaders’ combined.” To an audience of two thousand, Malcolm repeated his thesis. “We don’t think it is within the nature of the white man to change in his attitude toward the black man,” he argued, while also responding to charges that, although the NOI talked a militant line, it didn’t involve itself in the black community’s politics. “Just because a man doesn’t throw a punch doesn’t mean he can’t do so whenever he gets ready, so don’t play the Muslims and the [black] nationalists cheap.” Wisely, he praised Powell as a model of independent leadership. “Adam Clayton Powell is the only black politician who has been able to come off the white man’s political plantation, buck against the white political machine downtown, and still hold his seat in Congress.” Malcolm’s comments set the stage for what would become a much closer partnership between the two men in the year to come.
Still, the divergence between his own views and those at the core of the NOI continued to trouble him, and he increasingly solicited the advice of those he trusted, though at times he found this circumstantially difficult. In Boston, a natural confidant would have been Louis X. However, throughout most of 1962, Louis was preoccupied with his fierce power struggle with Clarence 2X Gill over demands for selling bulk copies of Muhammad Speaks. Although Ella was no longer a member of the Boston mosque, Malcolm continued to be in touch, and may have reached out to her. She had also become interested in orthodox Islam during these years, which helped to draw them closer after their falling out over the power struggle in Boston.
Despite the continuing tensions in their marriage, Malcolm also occasionally consulted Betty, who worried about their stability. Over the years she had become comfortable with many of the perks that were bestowed on her as the wife of the mosque’s minister. Her grocery shopping, done by others, was dutifully boxed and dropped off at her kitchen; Thomas 15X Johnson or other FOI members chauffeured her to NOI events. At official occasions Betty enjoyed front-row seats, and the applause of the adoring crowd. And occasionally, when the Messenger visited New York City, it was at Betty and Malcolm’s house that the honor of hosting him was extended. As James 67X later observed, “Every woman would have liked to [have been] in her position.”
Unlike Malcolm, however, Betty was growing increasingly suspicious of the NOI leadership. Because of her husband’s high position in the hierarchy, she had ample opportunity to observe for herself the greedy behavior of Muhammad’s family and entourage. By comparison, she and Malcolm lived almost in poverty, owning virtually nothing beyond a small amount of household furniture, their clothing, and personal items. His Oldsmobile belonged to the NOI; likewise, the title to his home was not in his name, but the mosque’s. Through the early 1960s Malcolm received around three thousand dollars every month to cover his transportation, overnight accommodations, and meals when traveling. He kept meticulous records, collecting receipts for every expenditure to justify his account. The NOI forbade ministers from purchasing life insurance, Betty claimed, perhaps to make their representatives totally dependent on the sect. Quietly at first, then more forcefully, she pleaded with her husband to take appropriate measures to protect his family financially. She tried him with the Garveyite argument that black families should at least own their own homes. Malcolm’s stern response was that if anything should happen to him, the Nation would certainly provide for Betty and their children.
Malcolm may have publicly commanded his followers to obey the law, but this did little to lessen suspicion of the Muslims by law enforcement in major cities. Nowhere did tensions run hotter than in Los Angeles, where Malcolm had established Temple No. 27 in 1957. For most whites who migrated to the city, Los Angeles was the quintessential city of dreams. For black migrants, the city of endless possibilities offered some of the same Jim Crow restrictions they had sought to escape by moving west. As early as 1915, black Los Angeles residents were protesting against racially restrictive housing covenants; such racial covenants as well as blatant discrimination by real estate firms continued to be a problem well into the 1960s. The real growth of the black community in Southern California only began to take place during the two decades after 1945. During this twenty-year period, when the black population of New York City increased by nearly 250 percent, the black population of Los Angeles jumped 800 percent. Blacks were also increasingly important in local trade unions, and in the economy generally. For example, between 1940 and 1960, the percentage of black males in LA working as factory operatives increased from 15 percent to 24 percent; the proportion of African-American men employed in crafts during the same period rose from 7 percent to 14 percent. By 1960, 468,000 blacks resided in Los Angeles County, approximately 20 percent of the county’s population.
These were some of the reasons that Malcolm had invested so much energy and effort to build the NOIʹs presence in Southern California, and especially the development of Mosque No. 27. Having recruited the mosque’s leaders, he flew out to settle a local factional dispute in October 1961. Such activities were noticed and monitored by the California Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, which feared that the NOI had “Communist affiliations.” The state committee concluded that there was an “interesting parallel between the Negro Muslim movement and the Communist Party, and that is the advocacy of the overthrow of a hated regime by force, violence or any other means.” On September 2, 1961, several Muslims selling Muhammad Speaks in a South Central Los Angeles grocery store parking lot were harassed by two white store detectives. The detectives later claimed that when they had attempted to stop the Muslims from selling the paper, they were “stomped and beaten.” The version of this incident described in Muhammad Speaks was strikingly different, with the paper claiming that “the two ‘detectives’ produced guns, and attempted to make a ‘citizen’s arrest.’ Grocery packers rushed out to help the detectives . . . and black residents of the area who had gathered also became involved. For 45 minutes bedlam reigned.” About forty Los Angeles Police Department officers were dispatched to the scene to restore order. Five Muslims were arrested. At their subsequent trial, the store’s owner and manager confirmed that the NOI had been given permission to peddle their newspapers in the parking lot. An all-white jury acquitted the Muslims on all charges.
Following the parking lot mêlée, the LAPD was primed for retaliation against the local NOI. The city’s police commissioner, William H. Parker, had even read Lincoln’s The Black Muslims in America, and viewed the sect as subversive and dangerous, capable of producing widespread unrest. He instructed his officers to closely monitor the mosque’s activities, which is why, just after midnight on April 27, 1962, when two officers observed what looked to them like men taking clothes out of the back of a car outside the mosque, they approached with suspicion. What happened next is a matter of dispute, yet whether the police were jumped, as they claimed, or the Muslim men were shoved and beaten without provocation, as seems likely, the commotion brought a stream of angry Muslims out of the mosque. The police threatened to respond with deadly force, but when one officer attempted to intimidate the growing crowd of bystanders, he was disarmed by the crowd. Somehow one officerʹs revolver went off, shooting and wounding his partner in the elbow. Backup squad cars soon arrived ferrying more than seventy officers, and a full-scale battle ensued. Within minutes dozens of cops raided the mosque itself, randomly beating NOI members. It took fifteen minutes for the fighting to die down. In the end, seven Muslims were shot, including NOI member William X Rogers, who was shot in the back and paralyzed for life. NOI officer Ronald Stokes, a Korean War veteran, had attempted to surrender to the police by raising his hands over his head. Police responded by shooting him from the rear; a bullet pierced his heart, killing him. A coroner’s inquest determined that Stokes’s death was “justifiable.” A number of Muslims were indicted.
News of the raid shattered Malcolm; he wept for the reliable and trustworthy Stokes, whom he had known well from his many trips to the West Coast. The desecration of the mosque and the violence brought upon its members pushed Malcolm to a dark place. He was finally ready for the Nation to throw a punch. Malcolm told Mosque No. 7’s Fruit of Islam that the time had come for retribution, an eye for an eye, and he began to recruit members for an assassination team to target LAPD officers. Charles 37X, who attended one of these meetings, recalled him in a rage, shouting to the assembled Fruit, “What are you here for? What the hell are you here for?” As Louis Farrakhan related, “Brother Malcolm had a gangsterlike past. And coming into the Nation, and especially in New York, he had a tremendous sway over men that came out of the street with gangster leanings.” It was especially from these hardened men that Malcolm demanded action, and they rose to his cry. Mosque No. 7 intended to “send somebody to Los Angeles to kill [the police] as sure as God made green apples,” said James 67X. “Brothers volunteered for it.”
As he made plans to bring his killers to Los Angeles, Malcolm sought the approval of Elijah Muhammad, in what he assumed would be a formality. The time had come for action, and surely Muhammad would see the necessity in summoning the Nation’s strength for the battle. But the Messenger denied him. “Brother, you don’t go to war over a provocation,” he told Malcolm. “They could kill a few of my followers, but I’m not going to go out and do something silly.” He ordered the entire FOI to stand down. Malcolm was stunned; he acquiesced, but with bitter disappointment. Farrakhan believes Malcolm concluded that Muhammad was trying “to protect the wealth that he had acquired, rather than go out with the struggle of our people.”
A few days later Malcolm flew to Los Angeles, and on May 4 he held a press conference about the shootings at the Statler Hilton. The next day he presided over Stokes’s funeral. More than two thousand people attended the service, and an estimated one thousand joined in the automobile procession to the cemetery. Yet the matter was far from resolved. If Malcolm could not kill the officers involved, he was determined that both the police and the political establishment in Los Angeles should be forced to acknowledge their responsibility. The only way to accomplish this, he believed, was for the NOI to work with civil rights organizations, local black politicians, and religious groups. On May 20, Malcolm participated in a major rally against police brutality that attracted the support of many white liberals, as well as communists. “You’re brutalized because you’re black,” he declared at the demonstration. “And when they lay a club on the side of your head, they do not ask your religion. You’re black—that’s enough.”
He threw himself into organizing a black united front against the police in Southern California, but once more Elijah Muhammad stepped in, ordering his stubborn lieutenant to halt all efforts. “Brother, stay where I put you,” ran his edict, “because they [civil rights organizations] have no place to go. Hold your position.” Muhammad was convinced that integration could not be achieved; the civil rights groups would ultimately gravitate toward the Nation of Islam. When desegregation failed, he explained to Malcolm (and later to Farrakhan), “they will have no place to go but what you and I represent.” Consequently, he vetoed any cooperation with civil rights groups even on a matter as contentious as Stokes’s murder. Louis X saw this as an important turning point in the deteriorating relationship between Malcolm and Muhammad. By 1962, Malcolm was “speaking less and less about the teachings [of Muhammad],” recalled Farrakhan. “And he was fascinated by the civil rights movement, the action of the civil rights participants, and the lack of action of the followers of the Honorable Elijah.”
At heart, the disagreement between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad went deeper than the practical question of how to respond to the Los Angeles police assault. Almost from the moment Muhammad had been informed about the raid and Stokes’s death, he viewed the tragedy as stemming from a lack of courage by Mosque No. 27’s members. “Every one of the Muslims should have died,” he was reported to have said, “before they allowed an aggressor to come into their mosque.” Muhammad believed Stokes had died from weakness, because he had attempted to surrender to the police. Malcolm could hardly stomach such an idea, but having submitted to the Messengerʹs authority, he repeated the arguments as his own inside Mosque No. 7. James 67X listened as Malcolm told the congregation, “We are not Christian(s). We are not to turn the other cheek, but the laborers [NOI members] have gotten so comfortable that in dealing with the devil they will submit to him. . . . If a blow is struck against you, fight back.” The brothers in the Los Angeles mosque who resisted had lived. Roland Stokes submitted and was killed.
Some of Malcolm’s closest associates were persuaded that Elijah Muhammad had made the correct decision, at least on the issue of retaliation. Benjamin 2X Goodman, for one, would later declare, “Mr. Muhammad said, ‘All in good time’ . . . and he was right. The police were ready. It would have been a trap.” But Malcolm himself was humiliated by the NOIʹs failure to defend its own members. Everything that he had experienced over the previous years—from mobilizing thousands in the streets around Hinton’s beating in 1957 to working with Philip Randolph to build a local black united front in 1961-62—told him that the Nation could protect its members only through joint action with civil rights organizations and other religious groups. One could not simply leave everything to Allah.
The Stokes murder brought to a close the first phase of Malcolm’s career within the NOI. He had become convinced that Elijah Muhammad’s passive position could not be justified. Malcolm had spent almost a decade in the Nation, and for all his speeches, he could point to no progress on the creation of a separate black state. Meanwhile, in the state that existed, the black men and women who looked to him for leadership were suffering and dying. Political agitation and public protests, along the lines of CORE and SNCC, were essential to challenging institutional racism. Malcolm hoped that, at least within the confines of Mosque No. 7, he would be allowed to pursue a more aggressive strategy, in concert with independent black leaders like Powell and Randolph. In doing so, he speculated, perhaps the entire Nation of Islam could be reborn.