by Barry Wolfe
“OK, but here’s what I don’t get. Why are you telling me your whole strategy since I’m one of the students you want to influence?” A smile plays briefly around Brandon’s mouth and then fades.
“You’re a commuter student, aren’t you Izzy?
“That’s right.”
“So you’re not so concerned about student life on campus.
“That’s mostly right.”
“But you do care about civil rights and social justice.
“Very much so.”
“Also, you’re on the basketball team, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Well, dig it, Jack. That makes you a BMOC.”
“At 5’7”, not so very big.” Brandon chuckles and nods.
“And BMOCs are listened to, ya dig?
“Even to white ones?”
“Especially to white ones.” Do you ever read the Hilltop?”
“Yeah. For a school newspaper, I’ve been pretty impressed.”
“Several of the Hilltop staff are members of NAG. That way NAG’s messages and ideas can reach the entire campus. But the only student organization that has any money is the Liberal Arts Student Council. So several NAG members got themselves elected to the student council, including yours truly. Now we have a budget to help us spread progressive ideas.” Brandon’s intense stare unnerves me a bit, but I am also impressed by his passion. “So what’s NAG working on now?”
“Have you heard of Project Awareness?”
“Yeah, I think I read about it in the Hilltop.”
“Yes you did, Jack, yes you did!” Brandon’s refrain emphasized that NAG’s plan is already working. “Project Awareness is an attempt to raise students’ consciousness on social issues by staging debates between well-known advocates on opposing sides of controversial questions. We’ve been careful to frame the proposal in terms of important academic values like freedom of inquiry, and open debate, and non-partisanship. You know the administration really doesn’t trust us. They view us as a potentially dangerous radical group. So when we gave them this apparently even-handed proposal, those cats were dumbfounded. They were mighty anxious folk. They stalled and delayed their decision for months. Eventually, they sent the proposal to President Nabrit who doesn’t trust us either. But he finally approved the idea in principal. Here’s the kicker though. He’s gonna review each and every debate before making any decision.
“When’s the first debate?” I’m not sure where Brandon is going with this.
“October 30th.”
“And who are the debaters?” Brandon has an impish smile on his face.
“Bayard Rustin, who by the way is a mentor to NAG and Minister Malcolm X of the Nation of Islam.”
“Oh My God!” I respond in a quivering voice. Brandon laughs and says, “That’s the same reaction we initially got from the Howard administrators. They were worried that the Dixiecrats in Congress would come down hard on the University’s budget to punish Howard administrators for displaying such insolence in supporting so-called ‘subversive’ programs. Now NAG actually has some sympathy for them here, but we aren’t going to let their problems become our problems. We’re not going to stop putting on controversial debates.”
“What are they debating?” I fight to keep the tremor out of my voice.
“We’re calling the debate ‘Separation or Integration?’ The question is whether Black people are better off trying to form alliances with progressive whites or creating a black-oriented power-base. At least I think that will be the gist of the debate.”
“And what is it that you want me to do?”
“OK, we need to fill Crampton Auditorium for this debate to prove to the Howard bureaucrats that Project Awareness is popular with the students. Since you’re a Little Big Man on Campus,” Brandon interrupts himself here with his own laughter. “I’m sorry man,” he says, still chuckling. “Since you’re a BMOC, we want you to encourage anyone you meet to come to this debate, but particularly the white students. The more white students we can convince to come, the more legitimacy the debates sponsored by Project Awareness will have with the bureaucrats. We think that Mr. White Basketball Player will have a large reach to help our cause.”
“I have my doubts, but I’m willing to give it a shot.” I say this more out of a response to Brandon’s charisma than out of any real desire to participate in NAG’s political machinations. One thing I’m sure of, I want to be at that debate. I am somewhat familiar with Malcolm X’s Black Nationalism, but I want to hear for myself his anti-white diatribe.
Brandon and I say our goodbyes and agree to touch base with each other in a week or so. I find my favorite seat by the sundial, and in my mind’s eye replay my meeting and conversation with Brandon Blackwell. Although his reputation has preceded him, Brandon’s presence, passion, and power astonish me. I’m already in awe of him and I know we are in agreement about the goal of social justice. And I loved the idea of Project Awareness, and of bringing together speakers with diametrically opposed opinions on the important issues of the day to debate. This can only enrich the education of every student at Howard University. But I’m also troubled by Brandon’s presentation. It seems as if he and NAG are less interested in the idealistic goals of Project Awareness than they are in the political and tactical significance for recruiting as many Howard students as possible to become activists. Yet being in his presence is intoxicating. I know I want his approval even as I question his manipulative approach to people.
For the next three weeks, I am the good soldier and I distribute announcements of the debate to as many students I can and encourage them to come. I especially seek out the white students. I’m amazed and appalled to learn that several professors encouraged their students not to attend the debate because of their fear and animosity towards Malcolm X. Nonetheless, I’m able to secure a few commitments from both black and white students.
The night before the debate, I get no sleep at all. I can’t shut off the worry spigot. What if the debate turns ugly; What if my presence , or that of the white students I convinced to attend , is resented by the mostly black audience? What if anti-white feelings run high? What if there’s a riot? Will I survive this debate? The only reassuring thought I have to challenge this avalanche of apprehension is my assumption that most people are going to support Bayard Rustin’s position on integration. Even the radical members of NAG are going to support their mentor, Rustin, I think, over Malcolm X’s expected hateful anti-white rhetoric.
I only have two classes on Monday, and my academic day is over by 3 pm. There’s no sense in going home since the debate is scheduled to begin in four hours. I hear through the NAG grapevine that some members who also work for the Hilltop will be interviewing Malcolm for the newspaper and then will have dinner with him. I’m not invited. It’s just as well because I have no desire to break bread with a white-hating (and, for all I knew, a Jew-hating) minister of the Nation of Islam. After hanging out in the library for a couple of hours, I make an early dinner stop at the Kampus Korner and make do with a fair-to- middling burger. By the time I finish my dinner and walk over to Crampton Auditorium, the place is beginning to fill up. It looks as if the new, 1500-seat auditorium is going to be completely filled and then some. Only a few white faces dot the large Negro crowd. I feel a sense of failure that I was unable to succeed in selling white students on the debate. But more worrisome is the return of all my anxious thoughts about the outcome of this debate. I go in and take a seat near the back in case I have to make a speedy exit. The auditorium is filled, and many people are still trying to get in before Professor E Franklin Frazier introduces the program and its speakers. I turn around and see the crush of people still trying to enter the auditorium. This only enhances my fears of an ensuing riot. I can see that the auditorium is packed, and there is a large crowd gathering outside the front door.
The lights dim, the crowd quiets, and Professor E. Franklin Frazier begins his introduction to Project Awareness. He explains its purposes
and its hopes. He then introduces Project Awareness’s first debaters. I can’t clearly see any of the participants on the stage, which is the major trade-off for choosing a seat in the back near the exit. I see one tall dark figure shaking hands with an even taller dark figure. Bayard Rustin is the first speaker. When he begins to speak, the pitch of his voice startles me. It is high and almost grating in its tone. But he’s very gracious. He notes the positive contributions of the Nation of Islam in helping many poor Negroes learn the benefits of middle class virtues. And he agrees with many points of Malcolm’s analysis of America’s treatment of black people. But then he contends that Malcolm’s solution is no solution and that he presents no adequate program.
“The Nation of Islam proposes that a Black State should be formed to be run by Black people, of Black, and for Black people. But where is this black state to come from?” He accuses the Black Muslims of fantasizing a utopian society and that his plan to help develop small Black businesses is no basis for improving the economic picture for all Black people. “If you don’t have an adequate program, and if you don’t rely on progressive allies, you throw yourself open to being utilized by people who have no interest in what we are doing. The Muslim movement basically fails to see the real problem. The problem cannot be stated as Black against white, but rather as man’s injustice to man. Any movement that starts out by blocking out the best minds many of which are white as well as black is doomed to failure. Change requires power and power requires allies. You can’t get allies if you avoid all contact with whites.” Then it is Malcolm’s turn. All I can see is this tall bespectacled brown man who moves slowly, gracefully to the mike. He starts with the traditional Islamic greeting, “Salaam aleikum.” The traditional response is bellowed back to him from the center of the auditorium, “Wa aleikum as salaam.” The responsive shout sends a surge of adrenaline through my body. As he speaks, I am surprised by a quality of warmth in his voice even as he sends volley after volley of condemnation against white people and America. He reminds the audience that before they were anything else—American, Republican, Democrat—they were Black. With each statement, the crowd roars. I’m startled. Malcolm has barely begun and the crowd seems to be with him. The previous Spring I had written a paper in one of my sociology classes on the Black Muslims, so I think I know what’s coming. I imagine that whites will be characterized as incorrigible devils. I’m close. Malcolm accuses the American white man as being the greatest racists, killers, and liars on the planet, and he’s only getting started. With each indictment, the audience erupts with a great enthusiastic roar of approval. I’m in shock. I contemplate leaping from my chair to beat a hasty retreat to the exit. Malcolm continues:
“We who are followers of the Honorable Elijah Mohammed do not make a choice between integration and segregation. Segregation, as we are taught by the Honorable Elijah Mohammed, is that which is forced upon inferiors by superiors. Separation is done voluntarily by two equals. When you find an all-white school they don’t call it a segregated school, they call it a separate school. When you find an all-Negro school, they call it a segregated school because it was set up by the white man. If it was an all-black school that had been set up by the black man with a curricula put in the schools by the black man himself, they would call it a separate school. But because the Negro schools in Harlem have been set up by the white man himself, on an inferior basis, with inferior teachers, in inferior buildings, black people who are defenseless, who are harmless, and because of your indoctrination and brain washing are brainless and senseless, have no intellect whatsoever of their own where they can think for themselves. It is because America has taken millions of black people from the East, from their own culture, from their own civilization, and brought them here and stripped them, and brought them down to the level of an animal, then turned around and taught them that they were savages in the jungle, cannibals eating people, when they were caught and brought here. This is supposed to justify the American white man’s treatment of these people. It’s like taking a horse, putting him in a cage, tying him up and putting another horse on the outside, and then telling everybody that the horse in the cage can’t run as fast as the one outside, and this is what you have done to the American Negro. You have brought us here and stripped us of everything we once had. You stripped us of our culture, you stripped us of our language, you stripped us of our God, our religion, our background. You cut off all our roots, our old ties we once had with our kind in the East. And after stripping us of our roots, and destroying us as a people, making us become dead as a people, mentally and otherwise, then you point the finger of scorn at us and tell the world we’re not ready for freedom; we’re not qualified for freedom.
It is for this reason that God is bringing America to its knees. It is for this reason that God is going to judge America. It is for this reason that America is doomed, and it is for this reason we who follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad feel that our only hope is not integration with a doomed society but separation from a doomed society.” Now people are standing at their seats and cheering wildly.
“South Africa practices what it preaches. Russia practices what it preaches. It’s a dictatorship. It doesn’t preach freedom. South Africa doesn’t preach freedom. Russia doesn’t call itself the leader of the free world. It’s America that looks upon herself and represents herself as the leader of the free world while she has 20 million black people here who aren’t even citizens. How can you and your government and your governmental leaders stand up in the United Nations and point the finger at South Africa for practicing what it preaches. It preaches apartheid and it practices apartheid. It preached the inferiority of the races and it practices the inferiority of the races, whereas you preach one thing and practice another thing. You say that this is the land of equality and 20 million of your black citizens, so-called black citizens, don’t have equality. You say this is the land of freedom and 20 million black people don’t have freedom. You say this is a land of justice and 20 million black people here don’t have justice. And the government from the Supreme Court, the Senate, and the Congress and the President, all of them combined are not able to bring about any change in the attitude of white America toward black America.” The audience’s cheers grow louder. And I grow more fearful. Toward the end of his talk, Malcolm suggests that, “A Black state should be constructed with territory in the continental United States and that America owes this to Black people as reparations for 300 plus years of brutalizing slavery. Then the Black man can take care of his own by creating businesses by black people for black people. But if you try and keep us here against our will and enforce segregation upon us, you are going to have violence throughout the country. You are going to have it whether you like it or not.” The walls of Crampton auditorium reverberate with the thunderous cheers and applause of the audience. This overwhelms me. I enter a zone of non-thinking, which I often do when I experience or imagine an unbearable threat.
During the rebuttal, Rustin seems up to the task, despite the unequal cheers he received. “My opponent says that the United States owes Black people territory making up the area of nine American states. And I say he can have Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas….” The rest of his countdown is drowned out by laughter. I relax a little. Bayard seems to be scoring real points with the audience. He also ridicules Malcolm’s small business plan for Negro advancement. “The Black Muslims have put forth no concrete program except speaking on 125th Street. I think he is leading Negroes down a primrose path and he does this by playing on your emotions.” Malcolm’s rebuttal is also spirited. “If the black man has spending power of $20 billion as the government economists say they do, we feel that the black man’s spending 20 billion dollars a year not setting up any businesses, not creating any industries, not creating any job opportunities for his own kind, he’s not in a moral position to point the finger today at the white man, and tell the white man that he’s discriminating against him for not giving him a job in factories that he
himself set up. If a black man has 20 billion dollars and those-so-called Negro leaders are such geniuses that they can integrate white restaurants, and integrate white factories, and force themselves into endeavors the white man has set up, they should use this same ingenuity to show the black people how to pool their wealth and set up something of our own. Then they won’t have to force our way into his anymore.
Rustin also says that all we do is speak on 125th street. We don’t waste our time on 125th street. But you can reach more people in the street who want a change than you can in bourgeois society, the bourgeoisie church and the bourgeoisie circles. Our program is directed toward the man in the street. So we spend our time in the street. What we do with that man, instead of trying to change the white man to make him accept us, we can change the mind of the black man and make him accept himself.” More thunderous applause and howling cheers!
When the debate is over, I sit dumbfounded, demoralized, and depressed. The students’ cheers for Malcolm continue to echo inside my head long after the debate has ended. I can’t understand why Malcolm X’s diatribe has such appeal. Oh, I understand the anger, the bitterness and sense of betrayal that Negroes feel about their treatment in this country. Whenever I attempt to imagine myself experiencing the tiniest bit of the brutality and humiliation that Negroes have experienced for the past three centuries, it sets my hair on fire. My meager attempt at empathy induces unbearable rage within me, and I want to kill the first honky I see. Anyone who does not feel rage at such barbaric treatment must be dead inside. What I can’t understand is the students’ apparent enthusiasm for Malcolm X’s remedies. Complete separation from whites? A Black state within the United States? From my perspective, Rustin ripped this nonsense to shreds. Yet here is a large portion of the 1500 attendees clapping, hooting, and hollering for the Black Muslim minister’s dystopian analysis of America and utopian solutions to the Negroes’ dilemma. I know intellectually that a race war is a preposterous fear, yet that fear crowds out all other thoughts. The worry spigot turns on again. Will an anti-white fervor begin to appear first in the eyes of my classmates then later in their actions? Will a general race war break out all across America? I can’t deny Malcolm X’s charisma or the considerable truth in his analysis of the treatment of Negroes by whites. But a race war would be disastrous for Negroes and whites and for America. I need to know what Brandon and the other members of NAG think about this debate and about the solutions proposed by Malcolm X.