In the second half of his address came the dichotomy of the house Negro and the field Negro. Malcolm ridiculed the “modern house Negroes” such as King and Wilkins, casting himself as a modern-day slave rebel. He denounced the March on Washington as a “sellout.” “And every one of those Toms was put out of town by sundown,” he added, to gales of laughter. The major Negro endorsers of the march should even receive Academy Awards “for the best supporting cast.” As he finished, the response was electrifying: people cheered and waved their hands. The talk had some obligatory references to Muhammad, but these were deleted from the tape recording several months later, when “Message to the Grassroots” was released as a record. The enthusiasm was provoked by the crowd’s recognition that Malcolm appeared to have broken free politically. Grace Lee Boggs, who was sitting next to the Reverend Cleage on the speakers’ platform, thought that Malcolm’s “speech was so analytical, so much less [black] nationalist and more internationalistʺ than all his previous talks. Excited, Boggs whispered to Cleage, “Malcolm’s going to split with Elijah Muhammad.”
In mid-November, he revealed to Haley that when he visited Michigan in late October, he had driven with Philbert to Kalamazoo and secured the release of his mother from the state mental hospital. “It may shock you to learn that two weeks ago,” he wrote, “I had dinner with my mother for the first time in 25 years, and she is now home and residing with my brother Philbert in Lansing.” Haley meanwhile pushed on. He had just relocated from lower Manhattan to a small house in rural Rome, New York. He explained to Malcolm, “I don’t want [a telephone] even here,” until most of the Autobiography was completed. When he heard about Louise’s release, he responded: “Shocked? No, friend, I was most sincerely—moved very much . . . professionally, I was happy as I can be that there is added to the book for the millions of readers that it will have, this graphic human interest story, this caliber of a ‘happy ending.’ ”
Wallace Muhammad had invited Louis X to his Chicago home after Saviour's Day 1963. Over hot chocolate, he asked, “I want you to tell brother Malcolm that I would like to see him and you together. There’s something that I want to tell you both.” As fate would have it, for several months he was unable to schedule a meeting with Louis and Malcolm at the same time. He sat down with Malcolm alone in October, telling him that his father's extramarital sexual activity was “as bad as it ever was.”
Malcolm now had a choice. He could have stayed silent, continuing to give biblical and Qur'anic analogies to explain away Muhammad’s errors in judgment. However, he felt that a more aggressive approach was needed, both to protect Muhammad and to stop the hemorrhaging of disillusioned members. He consulted with six or seven ministers whom he trusted. Among their number was, of course, Louis X—who knew significantly more than Malcolm suspected.
Malcolm’s initial conversation with Louis about the Messenger's transgressions had occurred in New York; as was his custom after their meeting, Malcolm drove Louis to the airport. According to Farrakhan, as Malcolm was driving to LaGuardia airport, Louis casually told him that he would have to inform Muhammad that Malcolm had been discussing the infidelities with other ministers. There was a brief silence. Then Malcolm, looking straight ahead, said, “Give me two weeks.” Malcolm wanted to explain his contacts with NOI ministers about the scandal first. Louis consented to Malcolm’s request. And although neither man knew this at the time, their roles and futures within the Nation would fundamentally change at that moment. When Louis gave his version of these events to Elijah Muhammad, the apostle would never fully trust Malcolm again, and he began to look at Louis as Malcolm’s possible successor.
It would be too easy to argue that the root cause of Malcolm’s disaffection from Elijah Muhammad was the knowledge that Evelyn, the woman with whom he had been romantically involved for years, had been impregnated by the Messenger. Farrakhan is the only one of his intimate friends to claim Malcolm was considering leaving Betty for Evelyn; no one else—not even James 67X—has made such a claim. Farrakhan may have a vested interest in exaggerating Malcolm’s anger about Evelyn in order to promote a nontheological reason for his break with the NOI, which set the stage for Farrakhan’s own rise to prominence. There is no doubt that Malcolm was extremely upset by this information, but in itself it seems unlikely he would have quit the NOI solely based on the incident with Evelyn.
Malcolm continued his hectic pace throughout the remainder of November. On November 20 he addressed a class at the journalism school of Columbia University. The short talk, followed by a lengthy discussion period, was an artful dance, incorporating politics, traditional NOI dogma, and classical tenets of Sunni Islam.
This class discussion represents one of the most revealing sessions ever conducted with Malcolm, because of the broad spectrum of issues covered. For example, in one of his rare comments about the nonblack Islamic community, Malcolm accused this group of largely Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants of not living up to the true tenets of the Islamic faith. These Muslims should give Elijah Muhammad credit for recruiting thousands to Islam and “not question his religious authenticity,” he said. When one student raised the American Nazi Party’s interest in the NOI, Malcolm responded, “More white people in the county are in sympathy with Nazism than they are with practicing democracy. . . . I don’t think any white is in a moral position to ask me what I think about Nazis in light of the fact you’re living in a country which in 1963 permits the bombing of Negro churches and the murder of little innocent and defenseless black children.” Without explaining why the NOI permitted Nazis to attend their gatherings, he insisted that “Rockwell couldn’t do what he’s doing . . . if there weren’t a large segment of whites in this country who think exactly like Rockwell does.” When asked about the administration’s civil rights policy, he stammered, “What about it?” Once again, he expressed his contempt for Kennedy : “Any time a man can become president, and after three years in office do as little for Negroes as he has done despite the fact that Negroes went for him 80 percent . . . I’ll have to say he’s the foxiest of the foxy.”
Even here, Malcolm continued to portray the NOI as a coiled snake ready to strike, despite all the missed chances to do so; he bragged that Muhammad taught Muslims to respect the law, “but any time anybody puts their hands on us, we should send them straight to the cemetery.” Someone asked about his attitude toward the newly created Freedom Now Party, for which he offered a convoluted quasi-endorsement. Because the NOI's position was to discourage its members from voting, he could not officially endorse any party, but he noted with interest the eight million unregistered black voters nationally. Imagine what “presidential candidates and others” would have to do if this group became active. “Why, they would upset the entire political picture.”
Although Malcolm’s responsibilities were now truly national, he tried hard not to neglect racial issues in New York City. Notably, he attended and supported a series of civil rights demonstrations occurring across the city. Herman Ferguson, a thirty-nine-year-old public school assistant principal who was actively involved in leading civil rights demonstrations in Queens, was pleasantly surprised when assistant minister Larry 4X and other Muslims offered their support. “Lots of them [Muslims] I had taught in school,” Ferguson explained. “They couldn’t become [directly] involved because they were not allowed to.” An agreement was reached where the Muslims would show up at the civil rights demonstrations to sell Muhammad Speaks but would also distribute the civil rights coalition’s flyers. Malcolm sent word through Larry that he supported the demonstrations, and he extended an invitation to Ferguson and other Queens activists to visit Mosque No. 7. Ferguson and the Queens activists began attending lectures there, and were deeply impressed. It was Ferguson who suggested organizing a major speaking event featuring Malcolm in Queens, an invitation Malcolm accepted. The Nation paid a New Jersey printer to produce attractive posters that were distributed throughout the largely black Queens neighborhood of South Jamaica.
/> Malcolm’s lecture was scheduled for the evening of Thanksgiving Day. Hundreds came out to attend, and the NYPD was also there in force. “It was like half the police force in Queens was assigned to that place that day,” Ferguson later recalled. “We didn’t realize the drawing power of Malcolm,” even on the Thanksgiving holiday.
There was an incident that day involving Malcolm that Ferguson would never forget. Shortly before going to the podium to speak, Malcolm was busily scrawling on a yellow legal pad, and Ferguson simply assumed the minister was making final notes on his speech. So he was truly surprised when Malcolm, looking out at the audience, said, “‘That fellow there is going with that white girl there,’” Ferguson recalled. “Now, there was quite a distance, a lot of space between them. . . . There was no indication, nobody would have known or suspected that there was anything going on.” Yet Malcolm was absolutely correct. Nearly every great speaker, like Malcolm, must also be a student of people and cultures. “He observed people and things that were going on around him, and from time to time he would make little comments, to let you know that he had picked up on something that was happening around him.”
Yet the central irony of Malcolm’s career was that his critical powers of observation, so important in fashioning his dynamic public addresses, virtually disappeared in his mundane evaluations of those in his day-to-day personal circle. Especially in the final years of his life, nearly every individual he trusted would betray that trust. As late as November 1963, Malcolm did not recognize that the political path he had deliberately chosen would quickly lead to his expulsion from the Nation. This was apparent, even to Ferguson, in 1963: “I felt that . . . eventually [he] would have to leave the Nation of Islam. He was just too political. . . . He was developing too fast.”
CHAPTER 10
“The Chickens Coming Home to Roost”
December 1, 1963-March 12, 1964
John F. Kennedy was assassinated in the early afternoon of Friday, November 22, 1963. When Elijah Muhammad was told, he was taken aback. He had frequently warned Malcolm of criticizing Kennedy, knowing of the president’s considerable popularity with black Americans, and now he took steps to ensure that the NOI would not be caught in the storm of anger and disbelief that was already roiling the nation. He released a short statement expressing shock “over the loss of our president,” and then arranged for his next column in Muhammad Speaks to be moved to the front page alongside a photo of Kennedy. He informed all NOI ministers to say nothing in public, going so far as to have one of his sons call Malcolm so he could dictate over the phone what he wanted his national minister to say if questioned about the assassination. With the stakes high and Malcolm already bridling at Chicago’s attempts to control him, Muhammad would leave nothing to chance.
Yet fate interceded when the Messenger was forced to cancel a long-planned speaking engagement at the Manhattan Center in midtown New York City on December 1. The Nation could not get out of its rental agreement, so Malcolm was selected as a substitute speaker for what would be the first major speech delivered by an NOI leader since the assassination. To make certain that the public program was handled properly, John Ali flew from Chicago to help out, and the decision was made to allow all reporters, including whites, to cover the speech. Malcolm’s advertised title, “God’s Judgment of White America,” was deliberately provocative, but he, Ali, and all the other NOI officials involved knew of Muhammad’s instruction to avoid any references to Kennedy.
The talk was an important one for Malcolm, and he prepared carefully, first drafting a detailed outline of the key issues he wanted to cover, then typing out the actual lecture he planned to deliver. The lecture reflected the two divergent realms of black consciousness that Malcolm occupied: the spiritual domain of the Nation of Islam and the political worlds of black nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and Third World revolution. He was sufficiently astute to express the obligatory remarks of homage to Elijah Muhammad, but also clearly visible was the militant political language of “Message to the Grassroots,” along with calls for a black global revolution and the destruction of white power. He knew that John Ali would be in the audience and would immediately report back to Muhammad with a negative review of the speech. By choosing to be provocative, Malcolm would push the NOI toward a more militant posture.
An audience of about seven hundred attended, a majority of them congregants of Mosque No. 7, but a significant minority were non-Muslim blacks. Captain Joseph had ordered Larry 4X to serve on Malcolm’s security detail; as instructed, he drove out to the minister’s home in Queens and tailed Malcolm’s Oldsmobile on its way to the Manhattan Center. Once Malcolm was secure in the building, Larry directed other Fruit of Islam to bar any whites, except reporters, from entering.
“God’s Judgment of White America” began with a sophisticated argument about political economies. “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us . . . it was the evil of slavery that caused the downfall and destruction of ancient Egypt and Babylon, and of ancient Greece, as well as ancient Rome,” Malcolm told his audience. In similar fashion, colonialism contributed to “the collapse of the white nations in present-day Europe as world powers.” The exploitation of African Americans will, in turn, “bring white America to her hour of judgment, to her downfall as a respected nation.” Malcolm’s core argument was that America, like the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome, was in moral decline. The greatest example of its moral bankruptcy, Malcolm argued, was its hypocrisy. “White America pretends to ask herself, ‘What do these Negroes want?’ White America knows that four hundred years of cruel bondage has made these twenty-two million ex-slaves too (mentally) [Malcolm’s parentheses] blind to see what they really want.”
“God’s Judgment” made an effort to put the NOI’s religious practices and beliefs within the larger Muslim world. Malcolm explained that Elijah Muhammad’s “divine mission” was essentially that of a modern prophet, not unlike “Noah, Moses, and Daniel. He is a warrior to our white oppressor, but a savior to the oppressed.” This claim that Elijah merited the status of prophet directly contradicted orthodox Islam’s interpretation of Muhammad of the Qur’an as being the Seal of the Prophets. Despite this deviation, Malcolm insisted that “the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us not only the principles of Muslim belief but the principles of Muslim practice.” Nation of Islam members, he insisted, adhered to the five pillars of Islam, including prayer five times daily, tithing, fasting, and making “the pilgrimage to the Holy City, Mecca, at least [once] during our lifetime.” He observed that Elijah and two of his sons had visited Mecca in 1959, adding that “others of his followers have been making [the Mecca pilgrimage] since then.” He deliberately avoided presenting Islam as a black religion, portraying it as a faith with an emancipatory message for African Americans.
There was an urgent emphasis on the coming apocalypse, which, while part of the Nation of Islam’s theology, was merged into a political jeremiad of destruction. A Muslim world could not come into existence unless God himself destroyed “this evil Western world, the white world, a wicked world, ruled by a race of devils, that preaches falsehood, practices slavery, and thrives on indecency and immorality.” America had now reached “that great Doomsday, the final hour,” where all the wicked would perish and only those who believed in Allah as God and who affirmed Islam as their faith would be saved.
Midway through this apocalyptic vision, however, Malcolm did an about-face, turning from eschatology to racial politics. He accused the government of “trying to trick her twenty-two million ex-slaves with promises she never intends to keep.” To retain power, liberals and conservatives alike cynically manipulate civil rights issues and Negro leaders who align themselves with white liberals “sell out our people for just a few crumbs of token recognition and token gains.” He equated the approximately three million blacks who were registered to vote as of 1960 with the “black bourgeoisie,” “who have been educated to think as patriotic ‘individualists’ with no racial pride, an
d who therefore look forward hopefully to the future integrated-intermarried [Malcolm’s emphasis] society promised them by white liberals and the Negro ‘leaders.’ ” But no racial progress was possible so long as those in power listened to this “white-minded minority” of Negro leaders and registered voters. “The white man should try to learn what the black masses want . . . by listening to the man who speaks for the black masses of America”—that is, Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm’s attempt to make the Messenger a black working-class hero and to equate bourgeois status with the act of voter registration were clever, if fraudulent. He certainly was aware that in 1963 millions of African Americans who wanted to vote were being denied franchisement, through harassment, intimidation, and murder, as in the case of Medgar Evers. The overwhelming majority were demanding access to public accommodations and full voting rights, issues that had nothing to do with upward class mobility or a lack of “racial pride.” This was Malcolm’s easy way to attack middle-class blacks.
Finally, he argued that it was the U.S. government and white liberals that controlled the Negro revolution. But far greater was the “black revolution . . . the struggle of the nonwhites of this earth against their white oppressors.” Black revolutionaries had already “swept white supremacy” out of Asia and Africa, and were about to do so in Latin America. “Revolutions,” Malcolm explained, “are based on land [Malcolm’s emphasis]. Revolutionaries are the landless against the landlord.” In an obvious reference to King, he echoed his language from “Grassroots”: “Revolutions are never peaceful, never loving, never nonviolent. Nor are they compromising. Revolutions are destructive and bloody.” The apocalypse would come about through the black masses and the wretched of the earth seizing the citadels of power. It was a powerful vision, but not one that Elijah Muhammad had in mind.
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