Malcolm X
Page 28
“Instead of wasting all this energy fighting each other,” he wrote, “we should be working in unity with other leaders and organizations in an effort to solve the very serious problems facing all Afro-Americans.”
He asked ELIJAH MUHAMMAD how, since the Muslims did not resort to violence when they were attacked by “white racists” in Los Angeles and Rochester, N. Y., they could justify declaring war on each other.
MALCOLM X’s statement came on the heels of an announcement by MUHAMMAD’s followers that they had received a “tip” from one of MALCOLM’s followers that plans were being made to assassinate ELIJAH MUHAMMAD when he arrives at Kennedy International Airport Sunday morning.
MALCOLM X, reached at his Boston hotel, denied that he or his followers were plotting to kill the Muslim leader. “I’m surprised at the accusation,” he said. “No Muslim would think of assassinating MUHAMMAD. He has never been in any danger in his life.
“We don’t have to kill him. What he has done will bring him to his grave.”
MUHAMMAD’s followers said that they would take every precaution to protect their leader. “We have our own security guards,” they said. “We just want the police to know about the threat. MALCOLM wants to regain his position by killing the Messenger.”
MALCOLM X scoffed at the accusation and said that the assassination threat was an excuse by MUHAMMAD to bypass the June 28th speaking engagement [in New York]. “I just don’t think he’ll come,” he said.
ALLEGED THREATS AGAINST MALCOLM X
At New York
The New York Herald Tribune, a local New York daily newspaper, dated June 16, 1964, contained an article captioned “Eight Guards, Thirty-two Police for MALCOLM X.” In this article it is stated that the police and guards were guarding MALCOLM X because of anonymous telephone tips to the wire service and a newspaper that MALCOLM would be shot if he appeared in court for an eviction trial. MALCOLM is quoted as saying, “There is no people in the United States more able to carry out this threat than the Black Muslims. I know; I taught them myself.”
“MUHAMMAD was nobody until I came to New York as his emissary,” MALCOLM stated. “If they had left me alone I would not have revealed any of this.”
The New York World Telegram and Sun, dated June 18, 1964, contained an article captioned “MALCOLM X Man Marked for Death.” This article states in part that “police fear that MALCOLM X is a marked man. The former East Coast leader of the Black Muslims goes nowhere without police shadows and his own core of rifle-bearing bodyguards. His own adherents insist he is targeted for assassination by June 29.
MALCOLM X contacted the New York City Police Department on July 7, 1964 and advised them that an attempt was made on his life that day.
[BUREAU DELETION]
MALCOLM X contacted the New York City Police Department on July 3, 1964, and advised them that he was returning home alone in his car at 11:30 P.M.the same date and stopped in front of his home at 33-11 [sic] 97th Street, East Elmhurst, New York, when two unknown Negro males approached his car and touched the door, at which time he sped away, drove around the block and returned to his residence and the two unknown Negro males were nowhere in sight.
A police guard was placed in front of MALCOLM’s home until 4:00 P.M., July 4, 1964. It is believed that the complaint of MALCOLM X was a publicity stunt since he apparently notified the wire and news service as well as the police department about the incident.
[BUREAU DELETION]
MALCOLM X was contacted on July 5, 1964 [BUREAU DELETION], who advised MALCOLM that orders to kill him, MALCOLM, have come from Chicago and that witnesses can be furnished if MALCOLM wants to take the NOI to court.
[BUREAU DELETION]
At Boston, Massachusetts
On June 12, 1964, [BUREAU DELETION] Boston, Massachusetts, advised that at approximately 1:40 P.M. on the same date [BUREAU DELETION] had received an anonymous phone call concerning MALCOLM X. The caller stated that “MALCOLM X is going to be bumped off.”
[BUREAU DELETION] advised that police were sent to guard MALCOLM X who was appearing on a radio program, Station WEEI at 182 Tremont Street, Boston, Massachusetts from 2:10 P.M. until 5:00 P.M. and at 10:00 P.M. the same date MALCOLM X was to appear on Radio Station WMEX, Boston.
MALCOLM X appeared on the JERRY WILLIAMS Radio Program on WMEX, Boston, from 10:00 P.M., June 12, 1964, to 1:00 A.M., June 13, 1964. WILLIAMS introduced MALCOLM X as the former spokesman for ELIJAH MUHAMMAD and the Muslims. He stated he understood several threats had been made on MALCOLM’s life that day and MALCOLM stated that several threats had been made on his life during the last five months. MALCOLM then remarked that recently on a radio program in Chicago known as “Hot Line,” JOHN ALI, National Secretary of the Muslims, had been asked by a telephone caller if it was true that the Muslim Movement was trying to kill MALCOLM X. According to MALCOLM, JOHN ALI replied that they were trying to kill MALCOLM X and that he should be killed.
FOREIGN TRAVEL OF MALCOLM X
To Africa, April 13, 1964
through May 21, 1964
On May 21, 1964, Supervisor JOHN ADAMS, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport, New York, advised that MALCOLM X LITTLE, Passport Number C294275, using the name MALIK EL SHABAZZ arrived in the United States at 4:25 P.M., aboard Pan American flight 115 from Paris, France.
On July 13, 1964, [BUREAU DELETION] furnished an itinerary of MALCOLM X during his trip to Africa which indicated the following schedule:
April 13, 1964
He departed the United States for Cairo, Egypt.
April 14 to May 5, 1964
In Cairo, United Arab Republic, Beirut , Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, where he completed pilgrimage to Mecca.
May 6, 1964
In Lagos, Nigeria.
May 8, 1964
In Ibadan, Nigeria.
May 10, 1964
In Accra, Ghana.
May 18, 1964
Morocco.
May 19, 1964
In Algiers.
May 21, 1964
Returned to the United States.
At Ibadan, Nigeria
[BUREAU DELETION] made available on May 27, 1964 a copy of the newspaper Pilot, datelined Ibadan, Nigeria, dated May 8, 1964, [which] contained an article of an interview with MALCOLM X. According to this article MALCOLM X stated “United States Peace Corps are spies. They are missionaries of neo-colonialism and although white American Peace Corps were dangerous, enough to invoke protest from any country they were operating, Negro American Peace Corps were more dangerous and objectional.” This article also stated that MALCOLM X remarked that the “Negroes in Peace Corps were being used by the American Government to place a wedge between American Negroes and Africans with views toward ending concept of Africanization of Negroes.”
MALCOLM X added, “Peace Corps has been instructed to present such a repugnant image of American Negroes to the extent that Africans would be compelled to be unsympathetic to Negro causes in America.”
MALCOLM X arrived in Ibadan, Nigeria on May 8, 1964. He visited the university of Ibadan where he spoke before an audience of from four hundred to five hundred persons sponsored by the National Union of Nigerian Students.
At Accra, Ghana
[BUREAU DELETION] advised on June 11, 1964 that MALCOLM X arrived in Accra, Ghana on May 11, 1964. He was not officially invited to Ghana by the Ghanaian Government but came at the invitation of the “Marxist Forum,” a new student organization in the University of Ghana. He did not have an interview with President NKRUMAH nor did the government hold any official reception for him.
During his visit, MALCOLM spoke to the Association of Ghanaian Journalists and gave a lecture at the University of Ghana entitled “Will Africa Ignite America’s Racial Powder Keg?” He also spoke before the students of Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute and to an informal group of Parliament members.
MALCOLM emphasized the following basic themes during his tour to Ghana.<
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1. The Negroes were stolen from Africa and forced to forget their culture and traditions, yet they never have been accepted into American society.
2. The Christian religion has been used to oppress Negroes and encourage them to accept an inferior position.
3. Force is the only possible way to achieve equality.
4. The United States is the “master of imperialism” without whose support other imperialistic nations could not exist.
5. White America is guilty of dehumanizing the American Negro and putting him to death as a human being.
6. If America is not interested in human rights in America, how can she be interested in human rights in Africa? The American Government should not send the Peace Corps to Africa, they should send them to Mississippi and Alabama.
7. The only difference between apartheid in South Africa and racism in the United States is that “while South Africa preaches and practices segregation, the United States preaches integration and practices segregation.”
The New York Amsterdam News, local New York Negro newspaper, dated May 23, 1964, contained an article captioned “Is Mecca Trip Changing Malcolm X?” This article in part states:
Has the visit of Malcolm X, now El Hajj Malik El Shab-bazz, to Mecca and with Muslim leaders in Africa changed him to become more soft in his anti-white feelings and to become more religious?
This is the feeling of this reporter following receipt of a newsletter this week from Nigeria in which Malcolm, who is due to return to New York next week, said that he was being received with warm hospitality throughout Africa where he said “they love us as their long-lost brothers.”
Asserting that his trip to Mecca had officially established his new religious Muslim Mosque, Inc., at the Hotel Theresa, Malcolm said his trip had also established that Africans are interested in the plight of the nation’s 22 million African-Americans.
A possible clue to Malcolm’s suspected change in his militant racial attitudes was seen in a newsletter received this week by the Amsterdam News.
“As far as the Muslims of Asia, Arabia, and even Europe, are concerned, in regards to the plight of the 22 million African-Americans, the Koran compels all people who accept the Islam religion to take a firm stand on the side of anyone whose human rights are being violated, no matter what the religious persuasion of the victims may be.”
Fresh from a visit to the Muslim holy city of Mecca and a tour of several African nations, Malcolm X is scheduled to return to New York Thursday afternoon, May 21, to launch a drive urging closer ties between American Negroes and Africans.
Malcolm hinted his new philosophy in a letter to the Amsterdam News in which he said that “we can learn much from the strategy used by the American Jews. They have never migrated physically to Israel, yet their cultural, philosophical and psychological ties to Israel have enhanced their political, economic and social position right there in America.
“Pan Africanism will do for people of African descent all over the world the same that Zionism has done for Jews all over the world,” Malcolm wrote.
Malcolm’s letters to this newspaper during his almost two months in Africa indicate something of a change in his position to work for closer ties with civil rights leaders and a lessening of his anti-white attitudes. During his visit to Mecca he was the guest of the government for 12 days and was treated as a dignitary in most of the places he traveled, his letters asserted.
On May 23, 1964, MALCOLM X appeared on “Kup’s Show,” Channel 7-TV, Chicago, Illinois. On the panel show he was asked if he was able to get into Mecca, a closed city, by his own identification or did he have to pass some kind of test to prove that he was a Muslim.
MALCOLM said he arrived in Cairo about three in the morning and his inability to speak Arabic plus his American passport made him automatically suspect. So he was taken from the group that he originally started out from Cairo with and placed in a compound which has been built there in Jedda which houses all of the incoming pilgrims, and he thought about ninety thousand came in this year by plane alone. He was put in this place and he had to admit he was worried because he couldn’t communicate. And he stayed there about twenty hours and he was in a haram (phonetic) which is a two-piece towel outfit. Your waist from the belt downward is wrapped in one towel and from the waist upward in another. And after being in this particular plight for about twenty hours, he recalled that Dr. SCHWARBE (phonetic) from New York had given him a book that had been sent to him by ABDARAKMAN AZAM (phonetic). The name of the book is “The Eternal Message of Muhammad.” “So [MALCOLM] called his son and after reaching his son, his son came to the place where he was and used his authority to get him released, get [his] passport. He took him to his home where he met AZAM PARSHA (phonetic), and he gave him his suite at the Jedda Palace Hotel and the next morning he was visited by the son of Prince FAISAL (phonetic), MUHAMMAD FAISAL (phonetic). He informed him that he was to be a state guest so that the remaining twelve days that he was in Arabia, he was a guest of the state. They gave him a car—they placed a car at his disposal, gave him a guide—a mualam (phonetic), and a chauffeur and made it possible, after going before the highest committee of the court, for him to travel back and forth between Mecca and Jedda and Medina almost at will. He was given the highest honor and respect and hospitality that a visitor could receive anywhere.
On [BUREAU DELETION] 1964, [BUREAU DELETION] furnished a copy of a letter written by MALCOLM X from Jedda, Saudi Arabia, dated April 20, 1964, which stated that during his pilgrimage to Mecca, he observed many white persons who displayed the spirit of unity and brotherhood that he did not believe could ever have existed based on his previous American experience. He stated that America needs to understand Islam because it is the one religion that erases the race problem from society. He also stated that if whites and non-whites would accept Islam they would become changed people since it removes racism, and all members thus automatically accept each other as brothers and sisters. He went on in the letter to state “you may be shocked at these words coming from me” and he added that his pilgrimage has taught him that if Islam can replace the spirit of true brotherhood in the hearts of whites he has met there, it can also remove the “cancer of racism” from the heart of white America.
Travel to Africa from July 9,
1964 to November 14, 1964
On July 6, 1964, MALCOLM X, using the name HAJJ MALIK EL SHABAZZ with passport number C294275, purchased a one-way ticket to Cairo, Egypt via London, England. He was scheduled to depart from JFK International Airport, New York, on July 9, 1964, aboard Trans World Airlines (TWA) (light 700, due to arrive in London, England, 7:30 A.M., July 10, 1964. He was scheduled to depart London, England, 3:30 P.M., July 11, 1964, aboard United Arab Airlines, flight 790 to Cairo, Egypt. MALCOLM failed to make return reservations or airline bookings when he arrived in Cairo for his return trip to the United States.
At Cairo, Egypt
The New York Times, dated July 14, 1964, captioned “Malcolm X in Cairo Says He’ll See African Leaders.” This article, datelined Cairo, July 13, states:
Malcolm X the black nationalist leader said today that he had come to attend a meeting of the council of ministers of the Organization of African Unity as an observer. He arrived yesterday.
He said he intended to acquaint African heads of state “with the true plight of America’s Negroes and thus show them how our situation is as much a violation of the United Nations human rights charter as the situation in Africa and Mongolia.
The New York Journal American, dated August 5, 1964, contained an article captioned “Malcolm X and the Red Chinese” written by VICTOR RIESEL. This article, datelined Cairo, stated that:
Malcolm X, whom the Chinese Communists call the “chairman of the Afro-American unity organization,” spent a considerable amount of his time in the presence of international Communist propagandists here.
Not only did he endorse the rioting back home, but he publicly called for retaliation against the white c
ommunity. He said the time had come to meet “violence with violence; an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
He prepared a series of inflammatory anti-U.S. documents here on the pretext of presenting them to the recent meeting of the Organization of African Unity, and it was reported across the world that he attended the conference. This is nonsense. He did not get near the parley. He was not accredited to it.
Malcolm X was not at any of the conference sessions. I was informed that it “is ridiculous” and “undignified” to think for a moment that anyone such as Malcolm X would be heard by the African counterpart of the Organization of American States.
Malcolm X’s activity here was strictly a propaganda operation which he set up at the Hotel Semiramis, where some newsmen gathered. He made certain that his violent anti-U.S. diatribes were put in the hands of the Chinese Communist correspondents planted here by the New China News Agency.
But when Malcolm X wanted to be with his pro-Communist friends he came over to the Hotel Omar Khayam, a former palace. I vouch for this personally, I was there when he met Mrs. Shirley Graham DuBois, widow of the late Dr. W. E. DuBois, in the lobby. When the aged Dr. DuBois died recently, he was a member of the Communist Party, U.S.A. and had switched his citizenship to Ghana.
Hotel Omar Khayam was also the headquarters of the violently anti-U.S., pro-Communist Ghanaian delegation to the African States’ conference. On Thursday, July 16, Maicolm X and his frequent companion, Mrs. DuBois, met for hours in the garden restaurant of the hotel.
Mrs. DuBois and her late husband spent much time in Peking. They were frequent guests of Mao-Tse-tung. Dr. DuBois delivered many anti-U.S. speeches which were broadcast across the world by the powerful Chinese mainland radio.