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 NOI's 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 Saviour's 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 speaker's 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 Sharrieff's authority over the FOI by making local captains directly responsible to Malcolm. If this is true, it might explain Sharrieff's 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 NOI's 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 NOI's 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 67X's 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 behavior: permanently off drugs, he dressed neatly in suits and adhered rigidly to Muslim dietary laws.
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.”
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