Malcolm feared the man might be angry. But Martin Luther King only smiled. It was a smile filled with mystery and sorrow. “I believe in black power, too,” he said.
And apparently, although his brain was still locked, Malcolm’s mouth was open for business. “No you don’t,” it said in a voice both scandalized and incredulous. Hearing himself, Malcolm brought a hand up, but of course, the hand was too late. The words were already out.
King only watched him from the shadows of that smile. “Yes, I do,” he said. “Black power is a call for black self-determination, isn’t it? It means economic and political power, doesn’t it? It means men demanding to be treated like men, right? Isn’t that what black power means?”
“Well,” said Malcolm, flustered, “yes.”
“Then yes,” said King, “of course I believe in black power. What else have I been fighting for?”
Malcolm gaped. “But then, why…?”
King got there first. “Why do I oppose the slogan?” Something melancholy came into his face then. “Every word has two meanings, Malcolm, the denotative meaning and the connotative meaning. The denotative meaning is—”
“The denotative is what it denotes,” interrupted Malcolm, “what it actually means. The connotative is what it connotes, what it implies or suggests.”
It was King’s turn to look surprised. “Yes,” he said, “exactly. And while the denotative meaning of the words is quite clear and unassailable, the connotative meaning is another matter. A white man—or any man, for that matter—who hears you cry out for black power is going to hear it as a threat, a call for violence and black supremacy. Is that what you want, Malcolm? You want to dominate white people?”
“No,” said Malcolm. “I just want them to leave us alone.”
King sighed. “Well, you’re hardly alone in that,” he said. “Our people are saying that same thing all over the world. They want to be left alone. They want their freedom and they want it now.”
King regarded Malcolm for a moment, then said, “But have you ever noticed: Jewish people have gained power in this country, but you never heard them cry, ‘Jewish power!’ The Irish man gained power, but he never cried, ‘Irish power!’ You see, they had a strategy for achieving that power and they followed it. But our people—our young people, at least—have fixated on a mere slogan that has no strategy whatsoever.”
Abruptly he stopped. “Aren’t you going to eat that?” he said, pointing.
Malcolm’s eyes followed King’s index finger to the boiled eggs and Coca-Cola bottle he had forgotten he was carrying. “Would you like one?” he asked.
King accepted the egg with a grateful nod. “I can’t remember the last time I ate,” he said. “It’s been a long day.” There was a low stone wall overlooking the river. King nodded toward it. “Brother Malcolm, let’s sit and eat while we talk.” So the janitor and the Nobel laureate moved to the wall, sat down next to each other, and began peeling hard-boiled eggs. Some part of Malcolm was watching this happen and did not believe what it was seeing.
“Would you like me to get you another egg?” he asked. “There’re plenty in the kitchen.”
“No, this is fine,” said King. “I just needed a bit of nourishment, is all.”
His face was puffy. And there was, now that Malcolm looked closely, a mourning in his eyes that seemed to go down for miles. Malcolm was suddenly concerned. “Are you all right, Dr. King? You look tired.”
“That’s because I am tired,” said King, working his thumb beneath the shell of the egg. “I’m exhausted, to tell you the plain truth, but I can’t seem to rest. Andy Young says I’m fighting a war on sleep.” A melancholy chuckle. “Too many things pulling at me, I suppose. I’m sure you saw what happened out there today? All that violence?” He winced. The word itself seemed to pain him.
Malcolm nodded. He felt the guilt rising in him like floodwaters.
King made a sound of mild disgust. “The press is going to have a field day with that in the morning.” Shaking his head, he waved the thought away as if shooing a fly. “Enough about that.” King sprinkled salt from the shaker Malcolm had sat between them onto his egg and said, “Tell me about yourself, Malcolm.”
Malcolm lowered his head. “There’s not much to tell.”
“Are you from here in Memphis?”
“Yes, sir. Born and raised.”
King took a bite from the egg. “You’ve been a janitor for a long time?”
“Only a few weeks,” said Malcolm. “I was in college until last month.”
“You dropped out?”
“Yes. I mean, sort of.”
“Did you run out of money? It’s nothing to be ashamed of, if you did. That’s a problem many of our young men have to deal with.”
“No, sir. I had a full scholarship.”
Confusion narrowed King’s eyes. “Then, why did you drop out?”
“Well, first they put me out. They put me on what they call administrative leave, but they said I could reapply to come back next semester. I’m not going to do that, though. College is not for me.”
“Why did they put you out?”
“For protesting.”
“Protesting?”
Malcolm sighed, embarrassed. “Well, for painting protest graffiti on the side of the administration building.”
Martin Luther King stared at him. Slowly, he began to shake his head. “Malcolm,” he said, “do you have any idea what a waste that is?”
“I disagree,” said Malcolm. “Dr. King, I want to help my people. And I don’t see how getting some sheepskin from some white man’s college is going to enable me to do that.”
“Malcolm,” said King, “science isn’t white. Mathematics isn’t white.”
“Yeah, but Shakespeare is white. The history they teach us, that sure is white.”
“Then change it,” said King. “Demand that they broaden the curriculum to include the black man’s literature and the black man’s history.”
“I’d rather just leave,” said Malcolm, pulling a piece of shell off his egg and flinging it toward the river.
“Yes, but think about what you’re throwing away.”
“Are you saying there’s something wrong with me just being a janitor?”
King shook his head, chewing thoughtfully on a mouthful of egg. “Of course not,” he said. “There is no shame in any honest work. The shame is in wasting an opportunity. Education is the key to much of what troubles our people, Malcolm. Education is the solution to joblessness and hopelessness. Education is the solution to the ghettoes and the slums. You say you want black power? Education is the source of black power. There are young men who would give anything they had to get an education. And they’ve given you one for free and you throw it away? That’s the waste, Malcolm.”
King paused. He considered Malcolm with a gimlet eye. “I’m curious,” he said. “What was the ‘protest’ graffiti you wrote that got you put on leave?”
Malcolm looked down. “I’d rather not say.”
“Oh, come now, brother Malcolm. There’s no one here but you and me and the Mississippi River. What did you write?”
Malcolm felt ten years old. “I’d rather not say it to you,” he clarified.
King laughed. It was a rich, homey sound. “Brother Malcolm,” he said, “you wrote it on a wall for the whole world to see. Surely, you can—”
“‘Fuck the system.’”
“Beg pardon?”
“‘Fuck the system.’ That’s what I wrote on the wall.”
“I see,” said King. “Yet despite your vivid scorn for it, the system still stands unchanged, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” conceded Malcolm.
“The only thing that was changed was your circumstance. You had been a student studying toward a goal of helping your people. Now you are a janitor working a graveyard shift.”
King sighed, ate the last of his egg. “Sometimes, if you’re not careful, Malcolm, the thing that makes you feel empowered
can be the thing that destroys you. You do something to satisfy your immediate longing to strike back without giving any thought to how that might damage you in the long term. Unfortunately, that’s what happened yesterday on Beale Street.”
And at last, Malcolm could not take it anymore. “I broke a window,” he heard himself say. He spoke in a small voice and he wasn’t sure King had heard him. Then he saw surprise widen the great sad eyes and he knew King had heard him just fine.
“I see,” said King.
“I’m sorry,” said Malcolm. “I ruined your march.”
“Well, you had help in that regard,” said King mildly. “It wasn’t just you.”
“But still,” said Malcolm, “I was part of it.”
“Why did you do it?” asked King.
Malcolm’s eyes met King’s. “You want the truth?”
King nodded.
Malcolm steeled himself and said, “Because your way is too slow. I get tired of begging white people to give us what we should have had all along. I want whitey to pay attention. I want them to hear what we’re saying. That’s why.”
King didn’t speak all at once. He took a sip of the amber liquid, giving Malcolm’s words space to breathe. When he did speak, some indefinable hardness had crept into his voice.
“Do you think you’re the only one who is impatient, Malcolm Marcus Toussaint?”
“No, but—”
“How old are you, man? Nineteen, maybe? I am 39 years old, Malcolm. So I am 20 years more impatient than you. I am 20 years more frustrated. And I am 20 years more exhausted. Especially tonight, after seeing what happened and knowing what white people—some white people, at least—are going to say about it.”
He paused. He sighed. “You say you want them to hear what you’re saying? Violence is not a language that encourages people to hear you, Malcolm. It’s a language that encourages them to fear you.”
“Maybe I want them to fear me. Maybe that’s a good thing.”
“And then what, Malcolm? They’ll give you better schools? They’ll provide more job opportunities? No. They’ll simply call out the army to lock you down in your own neighborhoods. Violence only begets more violence. Look at what is happening in Memphis as we’re sitting here, tanks and troops patrolling the streets, people forbidden to leave their homes. That’s what violence does. And the cycle won’t end until you end it, until you reach the place where you’re willing to meet physical force with soul force.”
Malcolm made a derisive sound. “You mean, let those crackers whip me upside the head and I don’t hit back? I’m sorry, Dr. King. That’s not going to happen.”
“So you hit them back.”
“Damn right.”
“And then what?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, they just hit you and you just hit back. What happens, then? They call the police?”
“Probably.”
“And let’s say the police officer hits you and you hit him back. Then what happens?”
Malcolm could see where this was going. He conceded the point with a sigh. “Probably, they pile on me and kick my ass.”
“Maybe they kill you.”
“Maybe. But at least I die knowing I stood up for myself. I didn’t let someone just walk all over me.”
“And then what?”
Malcolm shrugged. “And then nothing. I’m dead.”
“Yes, brother Malcolm, you’re dead. And nothing has changed. And the system is still in place. So your death is a futile act that accomplishes nothing. Just like writing graffiti on a schoolhouse wall.”
Malcolm shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dr. King,” he said. “I know you believe in nonviolence. But I just don’t. I can’t. I’ll never give the white man permission to believe he can do anything he wants to me and I won’t hit back.”
“‘The white man,’” repeated King. “You speak as if they were all one. They are not, you know. Viola Liuzzo was a white woman. She died for our freedom. James Reeb was a white man and he did, too. Jim Zwerg had his back broken in Montgomery for our freedom. White people are not all alike, any more than we are all alike. We seek to reach the ones who can be reached, to persuade the ones who can be persuaded. Violence can never do that. Only nonviolence can.”
Malcolm lowered his head. He found himself remembering the nurse at the hospital. He didn’t even know her name. All at once, he felt a sorrow welling in him. Somehow, it expressed itself in a smile. “You know,” he said, “I saved a white man’s life today. I don’t know how it happened.”
Malcolm glanced up. King’s eyes were steady on him. “He was a cop,” he heard himself say. “And this guy, this brother, had got his gun and was about to shoot him and for some reason, I jumped in front of the gun. I don’t know why I did that.”
Malcolm’s voice trembled. He was surprised to feel a tear overflow his right eye. “I saved his life, but this old woman who lived next door to me, she went out in the middle of that mess and had a heart attack. She died tonight, right before I came to work. And I could have stopped her, Dr. King. I could have told her what was going to happen, could have told her to stay away, but I didn’t.”
He brushed impatiently at the tears sliding down his cheeks. “She was like a second mother to me and I didn’t save her, even though maybe I could have. But this guy I did save, he was a white cop. And what’s worse, when I got a good look at him, he was the same white cop who sprayed Mace in my eyes last month and told me, ‘Nigger, go jump in the river.’”
King spoke softly. “Life is cruel sometimes. Unforgiving and cruel and filled with tragic paradoxes like this. You must try to learn to live with what happened today and your role in it, Malcolm, just the same as I. It won’t be easy, but you must. You cannot change what has already happened. But you can use the lessons learned from it to change the future. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Malcolm nodded. “I think so.”
“You’re going to have to forgive yourself, Malcolm. God will forgive you if you ask him. But you must also forgive yourself.”
Malcolm shook his head. “I don’t know if I can. Ever since the day that cop sprayed that Mace on me, I’ve just been angry. Sometimes, I feel like I can hardly breathe. I bought a gun and I’ve been carrying it ever since, because I said I’d never let that happen again, never let whitey treat me that way again.”
Malcolm looked back up into those eyes, still steady as high beams. King said, “A gun won’t give you comfort, Malcolm. A gun won’t ease your pain.”
“But they have to know they can’t keep pushing us around.” Malcolm’s voice was a plea. “They have to know we’re ready to fight back.”
There was a moment. Then King said, “You want to give up on white people, don’t you? All of them.”
Malcolm nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Especially lately.”
King smiled that sad smile. “Yes,” he said. “Sometimes I do, too. Sometimes, they can be bitterly disappointing—even our white liberal allies have their moments when they just don’t seem to understand, when they just don’t seem to hear what is coming out of their own mouths. But you know why I don’t give up on them?”
Malcolm looked up. “Because of Viola Liuzzo and James Reeb and that other guy, Zwerg?”
“Well, yes,” said King. “But also because I can never figure out what happens next.”
“What do you mean?”
King regarded him for a moment. Then he said, “You’ve named yourself after three revolutionaries. Well, Toussaint fought a war. But we’re not going to fight a war—22 million Negroes against 176 million whites? Even if I believed in violence, I would not like those odds. Garvey wanted to go back to Africa. How are you going to move 22 million Negroes—assuming they all wanted to go—to Africa? And why should we go to some developing nation to start all over again when all our claims are here, when our ancestors cleared this country’s fields and fought its wars? That leaves Malcolm X, and we both know black supremacy is no more o
f an answer than white supremacy. He himself said as much before he died. So if we’re not going to fight a war, and we’re not going away, and we’re not going to set up our own black supremacist government here, what other options do we have, Malcolm?”
The question was not rhetorical. King was looking hard at him, waiting for an answer. Malcolm lowered his eyes. He had none.
“Exactly,” said King. “So the only thing we are left is to wrestle with white people, to contend with them, try to make them see what they can’t see or won’t see. We have to trust that something in our humanity will touch something in their humanity so they’ll finally be able to recognize us as brothers. That’s really our only option. We can’t give up on white people, Malcolm, because if we do, we give up on ourselves. We might as well stop struggling and just accept our lives the way they are. No, we have to believe they can be redeemed—and we have to struggle until they are. We have no other choice.”
“That’s easy to say,” said Malcolm.
“We have no other choice,” repeated King.
“I don’t know if I can do that,” said Malcolm.
King looked at him. “We have no other choice,” he said.
Malcolm sighed. “I’ll think about it,” he said. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Maybe I am.”
Malcolm started to push up from the wall. “I should probably be getting back to work.”
“Malcolm?”
He paused. “Yes?”
“You are a bright young man with a sharp mind. Don’t waste these gifts. You say you want to help our people? You say you want to change the system? Go back to school.”
“I don’t know if—”
One last time, King got there first. “Yes you do,” he said. “Go back to school.”
There was a moment. Then Malcolm said. “I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all I ask,” said King.
Malcolm was about to reply when a voice behind him said, “There you are. Been looking for you. Break time’s about over, ain’t it? Still need you to—”
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