During the final weeks of Malcolm’s life, there were two topics that preoccupied his followers. First, the obvious political, ideological, and religious changes Malcolm was experiencing disoriented both his critics and supporters. His evolution seemed to keep unfolding toward tolerance and pluralism along racial and religious lines. In Rochester on February 19, Malcolm had told his audience, “I believe in one God, and I believe that God had one religion. . . . God taught all of the prophets the same religion. . . . Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, or some of the others. . . . They all had one doctrine and that doctrine was designed to give clarification of humanity.” This, along with his increasing statements about not judging men by the color of their skin, produced deep concern among followers who clung to the belief that Malcolm’s new pronouncements were merely cosmetic changes designed to increase his public appeal. Some die-hards like James 67X simply refused to believe that their boss had changed. Betty, for her own reasons, took the same position. But in the Harlem audience that had loyally turned out for Audubon rallies, there was tremendous uneasiness.
After Betty publicly accused Lynne Shifflett of sleeping with Malcolm, Shifflett resigned from her position as general secretary of the OAAU in late 1964. Weeks later, after Malcolm returned home from Africa, he replaced Shifflett with another articulate, intelligent black woman, Sara Mitchell, the young woman from the New Yorker who had written him in June. Although Mitchell shared some of Shifflett’s middle-class views about politics, at heart she was a progressive black nationalist who viewed Malcolm from that vantage point. Describing Malcolm’s 1965 activities years later, for instance, Mitchell argued that “underlying [his] efforts was his still unfulfilled and paramount ambition: the redemption of the ‘disgraced’ manhood of the American Blackman. That was the spur piercing him; it would not let him stop or even rest.” To Mitchell, the two new organizations Malcolm had established performed distinctly different functions. Muslim Mosque, Inc. “was set up to encourage study and consideration of a religious alternative” while the Organization of Afro-American Unity had been designed “for eventual correlation and unification of varied aspects of the black struggle.” She recognized the limitations of both groups, lacking resources and permanent, full-time staff. “Consequently,” she recalled, “deadlines were not met and postponements were inevitable. During the lagging interim, dissatisfied fingers shook in his face from all directions.”
Mitchell could sense that broad elements of the black nationalist community outside the Nation were displeased with Malcolm’s new orientation. Many African Americans had “experienced discreet self-pride” when Malcolm had promoted “black supremacy,” but as his change progressed “they were disappointed and annoyed; for he was no longer providing the bold, caustic, chastising voice.” She also thought that Malcolm’s preoccupation with lecturing at elite universities had a negative effect among sectors of the black dispossessed. “Grassroots black people began wondering if his participation on Ivy League type forums meant that 'their' Malcolm was abandoning them for the ‘good life’ and higher stakes.” From an organizational standpoint, Mitchell found this effect highly problematic. Virtually alone within Malcolm’s inner administrative circle, Mitchell worried that her leader's ideological leaps in new directions alienated many old core supporters, while not converting enough new followers. As a result, “isolation and loneliness were prices paid for his radical pioneering.”
James 67X was relieved to be rid of Lynne Shifflett and quickly found a much better working relationship with Mitchell. But the tensions and disaffections that Mitchell described created an atmosphere of uncertainty that benefited opportunists like Charles 37X Kenyatta. During December and part of January, after Malcolm had discovered his involvement with Betty, Kenyatta had disappeared from MMI and OAAU events. On January 24 he finally showed up at an OAAU rally, voicing complaints. He bitterly announced to several members that he was now “finished” with both the MMI and the OAAU. He hinted that James was responsible for financial irregularities. The “best way to get money is to go out and work for it,” Charles advised.
Yet the worries over Malcolm’s positions were trumped by fears about his safety. By early 1965 most of Malcolm’s closest associates believed that without a change of course he would soon be dead, and they grew preoccupied with exploring ways to save their leader's life. They knew that various African governments had offered him positions; Ethiopia had been willing to grant sanctuary; the Saudis would have permitted both him and his family to live in the kingdom as guests of the state. The entire African-American expatriate community in Ghana urged him to bring Betty and the children to Accra. Even Malcolm’s celebrity friends had offered their summer homes and second houses, where the family could live in anonymity. A nervous Ruby Dee had even suggested hiding Malcolm behind a secret wall in her home, a plan vetoed by her husband, Ossie Davis.
On Friday, February 19, Maya Angelou arrived from Ghana, ready to volunteer for the OAAU's staff. She had heard about the firebombing and was so shaken that she phoned Malcolm while still at JFK airport. “They almost caught me,” he admitted to her. Malcolm offered to pick up Angelou at the airport, but she informed him that she planned to travel straight to San Francisco to see her family first. However, when she returned home, her mother cautioned her not to work with that “rabble-rouser.” “If you feel you have to do that—work for no money—go back to Martin Luther King,” her mother advised.
Although most Malcolmites thought the Nation of Islam was actively conspiring to kill their leader, many also suspected the U.S. government as being behind the murder attempts. “We all knew what was happening to black people, and [Malcolm] always talked about the government being involved in the problems we were having,” Herman Ferguson recalled. Malcolm supposedly had been worried that “the CIA was out to kill him” when he was abroad, and his rejection at French customs made him further suspect government meddling in his affairs. Ferguson felt that during the final weeks OAAU members did too little to protect Malcolm: “We didn’t pick up on the signs that we should have picked up on. . . . Like cannon fodder, people sat around and talked about the danger that Malcolm was in. It was just like, ‘The brother should be more careful.’ ” Several OAAU members had places in Manhattan that Malcolm could use as safe houses to spend the night. There was some discussion about assigning him drivers, but nothing was done about it. The drift toward disaster continued.
It is difficult to know what Malcolm may have contemplated as he pondered the likelihood of impending murder. For decades after the assassination, James 67X struggled privately with the question of whether his leader truly wanted to die. He had lived for over a year with death threats coming from the Nation, and in his final days he seemed of two minds, partly accepting of what he believed to be his fate and partly wishing or hoping that the problems might disappear and allow him to go back to a normal life. In his last week, he spent much of his time away from his family, so as not to put them in danger. He also appears to have traveled around without bodyguards, though he had long had either James 67X or Reuben X accompanying him wherever he went. He communicated infrequently, and sometimes it was impossible for MMI and OAAU members to reach him with information. As the world closed in on him, Malcolm, always an extremely private individual, kept his own counsel. He fought desperately to shield others’ doubts and fears.
That he continued to harangue the Nation even when he knew that doing so would leave little choice but to strike at him seems to suggest that on some level he may have been inviting death. As Malcolm became more aware of Islamic tradition in his last years, he probably learned about the third Shiite imam, Husayn ibn Ali, and his tragic murder. Husayn was the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, and the son of Ali ibn Abi Talib and Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad. After the murder of Ali and the abdication of his older brother, Hasan, Husayn became the object of allegiance for many Muslims. At Karbala in 680 CE in what today is Iraq, Husayn and a small band of supporters were attacked by religious
opponents ; nearly all of them were killed or captured. Husayn died bravely and gloriously, so much so that his murder became central to the Shiite ethos of martyrdom, suffering, and resistance to oppression. The Shiite mourning observance of Ashura reenacts the tragedy as a passion play, in which participants engage in remorse and self-punishment over Husayn’s assassination, and rededicate themselves to the struggle for freedom and justice.
Like Husayn, Malcolm made the conscious decision not to avoid or escape death. This he could have accomplished easily; had he remained in Africa for several years, the level of the Nation of Islam’s animosity surely would have diminished. That he chose to return to the United States meant he recognized the real possibility of being killed at any moment, even while asleep inside his home. If he did not desire death, he still seemed prepared to embrace it as an inevitable part of his personal destiny. Such an interpretation would help explain why Malcolm was so insistent that no one at the Audubon be searched and that none of his men except Reuben X carry weapons. By not checking for guns, Malcolm made the assassination more likely; by disarming his security personnel, he protected them from being targets in an exchange of gunfire as Malcolm’s murderers probably would not shoot unarmed security personnel. If anyone should die, Malcolm may have reasoned, let it be him.
Law enforcement agencies acted with equal reticence when it came to intervening with Malcolm’s fate. Rather than investigate the threats on his life, they stood back, almost waiting for a crime to happen. “They had the mentality of wanting an assassination,” said Gerry Fulcher of the NYPD brass, though it is unlikely that NYPD officers were directly involved in the murder. “They would want to keep their hands clean from the actual thing.” Fulcher knew that the NYPD and BOSS had placed Gene Roberts inside the MMI and OAAU, but they had also recruited other informants who provided the police with internal information. By early 1965, Fulcher had been taping conversations at the MMI and OAAU office for over nine months. After Malcolm’s return from abroad, Fulcher listened carefully to his arguments and became even more convinced that the police were making a big mistake about him. “This is a guy we should be supporting,” he concluded. One of the favorite topics for cops was “‘them niggers on welfare.’ [Malcolm] wants them off, too,” he argued. Malcolm “should have been a companion, not an enemy” of law enforcement, Fulcher insisted. “But they always viewed him like the enemy.”
By that time, however, Malcolm and the NYPD had already reached a practical détente. Even before leaving the Nation, Malcolm had developed what Peter Goldman called “distant cooperation” with the police, hoping to avoid the confrontations and shootings that had occurred in Los Angeles. He consequently informed the police whenever he was having public rallies, and ordered Reuben X Francis and other subordinates to share information with them. In 1964 and 1965, the NYPD regularly assigned between one and two dozen officers to the MMI and OAAU rallies held at the Audubon. Several would be stationed inside the building but rarely the Grand Ballroom, where the rallies were held. Most were positioned outside the building, either clustered around the entrance or standing across the street in the small neighborhood park. The detail’s commander and one or two other policemen sat in a glassed-in booth on the second floor, overlooking the entrances to the building’s two ballrooms, the Rose and the larger Grand.
Across the Hudson in Newark, the small assassination crew that had been formed in the spring of 1964 had fallen apart when Malcolm was out of the country. But after his return, the question of whether, and how, to commit the murder became active once again. Talmadge Hayer had several conversations with Ben Thomas and Leon Davis. Hayer later told Goldman that, since Ben was a mosque administrator, he naturally assumed from the outset that senior NOI officials had authorized the mission. “I didn’t ask a whole lot of questions,” Hayer explained. “I thought that somebody was giving instructions: ‘Brother, you got to move on this situation.’ But I felt we was in accord.”
As the group began exploring how to go about the killing, they contemplated gunning Malcolm down outside of his East Elmhurst home; however, when they drove out one day to case the house, they found it heavily protected by armed guards. For a time they considered just following Malcolm around Harlem and striking at some public event where he was scheduled to talk, but, according to Hayer, practical considerations got in the way. All of the Newark conspirators worked full-time, and they couldn’t take off work to spend hours driving around Harlem. The group finally settled on a simple but bold tactical approach: shooting Malcolm at an Audubon rally, in front of hundreds of supporters and several dozen probably armed security people. The plan’s advantage was the element of surprise. Malcolm’s people believed he was safe at the rallies; they never considered a direct, frontal assault, because it would be suicidal. Yet every member of the assassination team was a devoted follower of Elijah Muhammad, prepared to sacrifice his life to kill Malcolm. If a would-be assassin is willing to die, anyone can be killed.
The likelihood of success was “a long shot,” Hayer remembered. “But we just felt we would have to move on it . . . and that’s what we did. Why there? . . . It was the only place we knew he’d be.” Hayer was familiar with weapons, so he was assigned to purchase the guns, using his own money. He and several others in the assassination crew attended an OAAU rally, probably in January 1965, where they were surprised to discover that no one was being searched at the main entrance. They sat down and studied where guards were positioned and when they were relieved. On the night of February 20, the group paid to enter a dance in the Audubon Ballroom, checking out all possible exits.
The conspirators then drove back to Ben Thomas’s home. It was decided that the initial round aimed at Malcolm, the decisive kill shot, would be fired by William Bradley. “Willie” had been a star athlete in high school, excelling in baseball. By his mid-twenties, however, he had grown fat, weighing over 220 pounds. But he was still athletic in his movements and he had learned how to handle a shotgun. Everyone agreed that the assassination would take place the next afternoon, Sunday, February 21.
On the morning of the twenty-first, a phone call awakened Malcolm in his room at the Hilton. A voice over the receiver menacingly said, “Wake up, brother.” He checked the time; it was eight o’clock on a winter morning, but the day would not be frigid. Still, Malcolm wasn’t taking chances with the weather. He put on long underwear beneath his suit—the same suit coat he had worn during his tour through Great Britain.
At about nine a.m., he phoned Betty, asking her to come to the afternoon rally, and to bring the children with her. His request surprised and pleased her. Since his return from Africa Malcolm had again discouraged her involvement in MMI and OAAU affairs, and earlier that week had strictly ordered her not to come on Sunday because of the threat of violence. He failed to explain why he had changed his mind. Betty and her daughters were still staying with the Wallaces, and around one p.m. she began getting ready. All of the little girls were stuffed into attractive children’s snowsuits. The children were thrilled. As Attallah Shabazz recalled, “It was still an exciting adventure to get ready and go see Daddy.” If Malcolm expected a day of reckoning, why would he ask Betty to bring the children to witness his possible murder? One reason might be that, despite his observations about the dangers surrounding his daily life, he still wasn’t absolutely sure. Or it might have been ambivalence as a kind of defense mechanism, a way of not thinking about something terrifying and inevitable. Perhaps, like Husayn, he wanted his death to be symbolic, a passion play representing his beliefs.
At one p.m. Malcolm checked out of the Hilton and drove uptown in his Oldsmobile. When he reached West 146th Street and Broadway in West Harlem, he pulled over and parked. He had made it a habit not to park his car at speaking venues, where he might be vulnerable to attack. As he waited for the uptown bus, an automobile with New Jersey plates slowed and stopped where he was standing. Malcolm did not recognize the driver, a young African American named Fred Williams, but he
did know MMI member Charles X Blackwell in the backseat. Thus reassured, Malcolm slipped into the rear to join him. The car quickly covered the twenty blocks north to the Audubon Ballroom. It was by now just after two in the afternoon, but people were still standing about, indicating that no formal program had started on the main ballroom’s stage.
As Malcolm walked into the Audubon, he might have noticed the absence of the usual police presence stationed in front of the building. According to Peter Goldman, one of Malcolm’s “senior people had talked with the duty captain, requesting that the police leave the building and station themselves in a less public place.” Given the firebombing and the restrictions Malcolm had placed on the MMI's security—the lack of weapons, and no frisking at the main door—it is difficult to imagine the rationale for such an odd request, or why the police would grant it. In any event, about eighteen officers were relocated several blocks away, up Broadway, at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.
When Malcolm entered the Grand Ballroom on the second floor, he was immediately encountered by Peter Bailey, holding a bundle of copies of Blacklash. There was something in the OAAU's publication that wasn’t quite right, and Malcolm ordered him not to distribute copies of the issue. “For the first time,” remembered Bailey, Malcolm appeared “harried, not fearful . . . but just [like] somebody who had a lot on their mind.” Malcolm asked Bailey if he recognized the Reverend Galamison, and Bailey said that he could. Malcolm further asked him to wait near the main entrance downstairs for Galamison; when he arrived, the civil rights leader should be escorted to the rear room behind the Grand Ballroom’s main stage.
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