Malcolm X

by Clayborne Carson

  Malcolm’s primary function as a Muslim minister was not to advocate a political program but to present Elijah Muhammad’s religious ideas and recruit new members for the Nation. As a devoted follower of Elijah Muhammad, he saw civil rights leaders primarily as unworthy competitors to the person he proclaimed “the greatest Living Emancipator and Truth Bearer that the world has ever known.”23 Nevertheless, even as he verbally attacked white “devils” and “brainwashed” integrationist leaders, his effort to expand his audience eventually brought him into direct contact with civil rights activists. Despite his insistence that the Nation of Islam truly represented the black masses, the upsurge of Southern civil rights protests forced Malcolm to reassess his relationship to the Southern black struggle. For the most part, the most visible manifestations of mass militancy among blacks during the early 1960s were guided by representatives of the civil rights organizations that had been the targets of Malcolm’s verbal barbs against integrationism. Malcolm’s nationalism did not supplant the civil rights activism of the early 1960s. Instead, his mature thought represented a convergence of his earlier ideas and those that emerged from sustained black protest movements. The “Black Power” rhetoric of the period after Malcolm’s death owed much to his influence, but the new African-American racial consciousness also resulted from internal changes in the civil rights protest movement—particularly the increasing involvement of poor and working-class blacks and the growing emphasis on economic and political empowerment. As the Southern civil rights movement became a broadly focused, national freedom struggle, a new militant racial consciousness became evident among grass roots activists, even among those who had little awareness of Malcolm X. Organizers and activists who were involved in the grass roots mobilizations of 1963 and 1964 increasingly saw the ideas of Malcolm X as consistent with the conclusions drawn from their own movement experiences.

  Malcolm X, for his part, not only attracted increasing support from grass roots activists but also moved toward their confrontational tactics and away from Elijah Muhammad’s tactical accommodationism in anticipation of Allah’s eventual retribution. Although he was the Nation of Islam’s most effective proselytizer during the decade before his death, Malcolm increasingly recognized the insufficiency of the Nation’s religious and racial separatism as a means of achieving African-American advancement. He saw that his own early criticisms of the civil rights protest movement had overstated the Nation of Islam’s credentials as a force for social change and understated the potential of grassroots activists in the civil rights movement to become such a force. Malcolm abandoned his position as a dissenter affiliated with a small religious group in order to forge closer relations with black activists who had successfully mobilized mass protest movements. While remaining critical of cautious mainstream civil rights leaders, he acknowledged the success of some of these leaders in pushing the civil rights movement toward greater militancy.

  During the late 1950s, in the aftermath of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad reacted ambivalently to the emergence of King as a nationally known civil rights leader. According to a 1958 FBI report, Malcolm, apparently seeking to distance his organization from civil rights activism while securing the release of two jailed Muslims in Alabama, referred to King as a “traitor” “who is being used by the White man.”24 As Lewis V. Baldwin has demonstrated, these verbal attacks against King did not prevent Malcolm from seeking a dialogue with King and other civil rights leaders.25 In 1960, for example, Malcolm wrote to King, Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, and other leaders to invite each as “spokesman and fellow-leader of our people” to attend and, if they wished, to speak at an “Education Rally” in New York. Malcolm explained that by participating, civil rights leaders could hear Elijah Muhammad and then “make a more intelligent appraisal of his teachings, his methods and his programs.”26 Malcolm recognized that King had little to gain from attending the Muslim-sponsored rally, but the appeal for dialogue was a consistent theme in Malcolm’s speeches, even as he became more and more caustic in his attacks on civil rights leaders.

  While King continued to ignore numerous invitations from the Nation of Islam, Malcolm was occasionally successful in his efforts to interact with civil rights leaders directly. During late 1961 and early 1962, for example, he participated in a series of debates with Bayard Rustin at Howard University and the University of Chicago on the topic “Integration or Separation.” He also took part in similar debates with Edward Warren, president of the Los Angeles NAACP.27 Malcolm occasionally offered his support to non-Muslim protest activities. During 1962, he addressed Harlem rallies on behalf of unionized hospital workers. On one occasion, he joined black labor leader A, Philip Randolph on the podium and applauded the struggle of black and Spanish-speaking workers as part of a larger “fight for human rights and human dignity.”28 Later in the year, he joined a Harlem rally to protest police brutality, pointing out the inconsistency of blacks being asked to fight against the nation’s enemies abroad while turning the other cheek at home.29 Malcolm also apparently was invited to speak in Birmingham in the midst of the spring 1963 demonstrations. On another occasion, he attended a rally to protest the 1963 murder of four black girls in a Birmingham church bombing. Although rally organizer Jackie Robinson tried to keep him from speaking, audience members called for Malcolm and created a ruckus until he came to the platform and quieted them.30

  Writing in August 1963 to King and other civil rights leaders, Malcolm adopted a conciliatory tone, noting that the nation’s “racial crisis” demanded immediate steps “by those who have genuine concern before the racial powder keg explodes.” Malcolm argued that if Kennedy and Khrushchev could negotiate agreements, “it is a disgrace for Negro leaders not to be able to submerge our ‘minor’ differences in order to seek a common solution to a common problem posed by a Common Enemy.” He assured the civil rights leaders that, if they attended a Muslim-sponsored rally in Harlem, he would “guarantee order and courtesy for all speakers.”31

  As Malcolm’s outreach activities brought him into contact with grass roots activities throughout the nation, his dissatisfaction with Elijah Muhammad’s policies increased. In his autobiography, he noted his conviction “that our Nation of Islam could be an even greater force in the American black man’s overall struggle—if we engaged in more action.” He explained that he privately believed that the Nation should alter its “general non-engagement policy” and that “militantly disciplined Muslims” should participate in mass protests.

  It could be heard increasingly in the Negro communities: “Those Muslims talk tough, but they never do anything, unless somebody bothers Muslims.” I moved around among outsiders more than most other Muslim officials. I felt the very real potentiality that, considering the mercurial moods of the black masses, this labeling of Muslims as “talk only” could see us, powerful as we were, one day suddenly separated from the Negroes’ front-line struggle.32

  Malcolm recounted that his effort to politicize his Muslim ministry was already in progress during 1963. His disillusionment with Elijah Muhammad after learning of his infidelities had made him less comfortable stressing the moral teachings of the Nation. “If anyone had noticed,” he asserted, “I spoke less and less of religion” and instead “taught social doctrine . . . current events, and politics. I stayed wholly off the subject of morality.”33 Furthermore, he became increasingly restive at having to restrict his public statements because of the resentments of other Muslim officials. He recalled resenting having to refuse interviews during 1963 and having to restrain his comments on contemporary issues of concern to blacks.

  When a high-power-rifle slug tore through the back of NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers in Mississippi, I wanted to say the blunt truths that need to be said. When a bomb was exploded in a Negro Christian church in Birmingham, Alabama, snuffing out the lives of those four beautiful little black girls, I made comments—but not what should have been said about the climate of hate that the American w
hite man was generating and nourishing.34

  While suppressing such sentiments, Malcolm maintained his public stance of hostility toward national civil rights leaders. During the summer of 1963, after the major civil rights groups announced plans for a Washington March for Jobs and Freedom, Malcolm followed Elijah Muhammad’s instructions not to cooperate with the civil rights groups sponsoring the event. An FBI report noted that he warned NOI members that the march was likely to end in a bloodbath and that they would be expelled if they participated.35 Malcolm’s personal feelings about the march were probably more restrained. Because the Nation of Islam was coincidentally holding its annual convention during the week of the march, Malcolm was able to observe the demonstration, which attracted over 200,000 participants. Talking with reporters at the Statler Hilton, which serve as headquarters for march organizers, he remarked, “I am not condemning or criticizing the March, but it won’t solve the problems of black people.” In the Autobiography he acknowledged widespread black support for the march, explaining that he opposed national civil rights leaders. He spoke more positively of grass roots advocates of militant action who “envisioned thousands of black brothers converging together upon Washington—to lie down in the streets, on airport runways, on government lawns—demanding of the Congress and the White House some concrete civil rights action.”36 Speaking in November at a Northern Negro Leadership Conference in Detroit, Malcolm accused the leadership of subverting the initial grass roots enthusiasm for the march. “They joined it, became a part of it, took it over,” he charged. “And as they took it over, it lost its militancy. It ceased to be angry, it ceased to be hot, it ceased to be uncompromising.”37

  Although Malcolm’s sharp criticisms of the “Big Six” civil rights leaders drew the most attention from his audience, the “Message to the Grass Roots” marked a major turning point in his political orientation. The address was delivered at a conference called by the Reverend Albert B. Cleage as part of an effort to create a “Freedom Now” political party. Simply by attending the gathering, Malcolm implied that he was willing to ally himself with non-Muslim militants. “What you and I need to do is learn to forget our differences,” he advised. “You don’t catch hell because you’re a Baptist, and you don’t catch hell because you’re a Methodist.” Malcolm criticized the nonviolent tactics of the “Negro revolution,” insisting that the “black revolution” would involve bloodshed; but he also indicated a degree of respect for the militancy that had been displayed by local movements, such as those in Cambridge, Maryland, and Danville, Virginia. “The Negroes were out there in the streets,” Malcolm proclaimed.

  They were talking about how they were going to march on Washington. . . . That they were going to march on Washington, march on the Senate, march on the White House, march on the Congress, and tie it up, bring it to a halt, not let the government proceed. They even said they were going out to the airport and lay down on the runway and not let any airplanes land. I’m telling you what they said. . . . That was the black revolution.38

  Malcolm’s implicit support for civil rights militancy could not become explicit as long as he remained in the Nation of Islam. He realized that Elijah Muhammad had little sympathy for any form of militancy that assumed that racial advancement could come through reform of the American political system. Once he decided to break with Elijah Muhammad, however, Malcolm’s support for grass roots militancy opened the way for a concerted effort to inject himself into the African-American freedom struggle. On March 8, 1964, when he officially announced his departure from the Nation of Islam, Malcolm stated that he was “prepared to cooperate in local civil rights actions in the South and elsewhere. . . .” He insisted that he was not abandoning his black nationalist objectives but merely acknowledging that racial reforms were worthy immediate goals. “Good education, housing and jobs are imperatives for the Negroes, and I shall support them in their fight to win these objectives, but I shall tell the Negroes that while these are necessary, they cannot solve the main Negro problem.”

  Although NAACP executive director Roy Wilkins responded coolly to Malcolm’s overtures, other civil rights leaders reacted more favorably. Cecil Moore of the NAACP commented, “There’s always room for more in the civil rights struggle. So, we welcome Malcolm X into the field.”39 King remained ambivalent about establishing ties with one of the harshest critics of his nonviolent strategy. On March 26, 1964, the two men met briefly when King was at the U. S. Capital to testify on the pending civil rights legislation. Malcolm, clearly pleased by his success in finally having a direct encounter with King, grinned broadly as he shook hands with the smiling King, as the two posed for a photographer. A few months later, a King associate, probably acting with King’s approval, sought Malcolm’s help in obtaining a United Nations declaration on behalf of African-American rights. A proposed meeting of the two leaders never took place.40 Despite Malcolm’s break with Elijah Muhammad, the gulf that had developed between him and King could not be readily bridged. When King recalled the Washington encounter, he acknowledged that Malcolm was “very articulate” but remained disturbed by Malcolm’s “demagogic oratory,” particularly his call for armed self-defense by blacks. King warned, “And in his litany of articulating the despair of the Negro without offering any positive, creative alternative, I feel that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice.”41

  In his autobiography, Malcolm describes his trip to Mecca, in the spring of 1964, as a crucial turning point in the development of his worldview. His dramatic account of the resulting “radical alteration” of his racial outlook probably belies the more gradual maturation of his political outlook. Indeed, the suddenness of the transformation in Malcolm’s perspective while abroad suggest that his experiences in Arab and African nations strengthened inclinations that had been suppressed during his years in the Nation of Islam. This explains Malcolm’s sudden responsiveness to positive interracial contacts that previously would not have countered his ingrained skepticism. While in Lagos, Nigeria, he enthusiastically reported the warm reception he had received while abroad. He made public his new views regarding whites by referring to Islamic teachings that his previous international travels and extensive readings would certainly have brought to his attention. He claimed that a book he had read on the way to Jedda had made him “more open-minded.” He had become convinced that the Koran was against violations of the human rights of individuals of all religions. “Islam is a religion which concerns itself with the human rights of all mankind, despite race, color, or creed. It recognizes all (everyone) as part of one Human Family.”42

  After returning to the United States, Malcolm (now calling himself El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz Al-Sabban), established the Organization of Afro-American Unity to unite African Americans “around a non-religious and non-sectarian constructive program for Human Rights.” Writing to invite Roy Wilkins to an OAAU meeting in June 1964, Malcolm described the new organization as an effort to “transcend all superficial, man made divisions between the Afro-American people of this country who are working for Human Rights” and assured Wilkins that the OAAU “would in no way compete with already existing successful organizations.”43 Although Malcolm’s earlier criticisms made it difficult for him to improve relations with King, he increasingly recognized that the civil rights movement contained varied ideological tendencies. Still hostile to activism that he defined as integrationist and pacifistic, Malcolm began to express more positive attitudes toward the grass roots leaders and organizers of a mass movement that was becoming increasingly concerned with goals beyond civil rights.

  During the last year of his life, Malcolm’s political trajectory merged with that of many young activists in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the most militant of the black protest groups active in the South. SNCC workers’ intense full-time involvement in Southern black struggles placed them in the vanguard of the ideological transformation that would soon fracture the national civil rights coalition. Stokely Carmich
ael, for example, was initially skeptical about Malcolm’s views when he first encountered him at Howard University, but by 1964 he was among the SNCC workers questioning the idealistic inter-racialism that had once been dominant in the group.44

  A turning point in Malcolm’s relations with SNCC came unexpectedly during his second 1964 tour of Africa. SNCC chairman John Lewis and staff member Donald Harris crossed paths with Malcolm in Kenya on October 18. The two had been in Ghana soon after Malcolm had departed and were told of the “fantastic impressions” Malcolm had made during his visit. “Because of this, very often peoples’ first attitude or impression of us was one of skepticism and distrust,” Lewis and Harris reported. “Among the first days we were in Accra someone said, “ ‘Look, you guys might be really doing something—I don’t know, but if you are to the right of Malcolm, you might as well start packing right now ‘cause no one’ll listen to you.’ ” Africans in Ghana and other places they visited, the SNCC workers discovered, wanted to know what was SNCC’s relationship with the Organization of Afro-American Unity. “In every country he was known and served as the main criteria for categorizing other Afro-Americans and their political views.” Lewis and Harris were pleasantly surprised, therefore, when Malcolm arrived at their Nairobi hotel, and they used the chance encounter to begin extended discussions.