Malcolm X

by Manning Marable

  The unease Malcolm had shown toward marrying Betty almost immediately manifested itself in their lives together as man and wife. The challenges they faced were linked, in part, to the general problems that many black Americans encounter when adopting Qur'anic standards for marriage. Many basic beliefs Muslims have about its purposes and duties are at odds with Western Christian values. Another serious issue is the concept of machismo that some African-American males carry into Islam. The Nation had long drawn its converts from the lowest rungs of black society, and many of its flock came from difficult or self-destructive backgrounds. Those who, like Malcolm, had converted while in prison often continued to bear painful scars, both physical and psychological, from that experience. Trauma can last an entire lifetime, and the Nation had no self-help program to assist men in overcoming such emotional problems. Malcolm’s prior sexual history had been largely defined by encounters with prostitutes and women like Bea Caragulian. Now he would have an obligation not only to provide financially for Betty, but to address her emotional and sexual needs.

  He did at least try. At the beginning of 1958, the newlyweds moved into a duplex house at 25-26 Ninety-ninth Street in East Elmhurst, Queens. Betty and Malcolm shared the upstairs living quarters with temple secretary John X Simmons, his wife, Minnie, and their four-month-old baby; also living there were an Edward 3X Robinson and his wife. Occupants in the basement and ground-level residence included John X and Yvonne X Molette, Mildred Crosby, Alice Rice, and her baby daughter, Zinina. All either were NOI members or were connected to the NOI through family ties. Betty quickly became pregnant and gave up her nursing career. For several months, Malcolm stopped extensive touring and tried to appear happy about the pregnancy. From the beginning, however, Betty’s behavior displeased him. Just as she had defied her parents’ wishes by transferring to nursing school and by marrying Malcolm, she retained an independent streak that her demanding husband found unacceptable. Even her continued attendance at MGT classes bothered him. For her part, Betty confided to one girlfriend that while Malcolm’s word was final inside the temple, in the privacy of their home “that attitude just didn’t go.” James 67X later characterized Betty’s combative opposition to the patriarchal behavior of both her husband and the NOI hierarchy as “continuous,” explaining with a smile that “no woman who has been brought up under the devil can accept this.” Although Betty’s foster parents were black, their entrenched Christian values and middle-class norms, as far as James 67X was concerned, were like those of whites.

  Years after Malcolm’s assassination, Betty would describe her marriage as “hectic, beautiful, and unforgettable—the greatest thing in my life.” In reality, the twenty-three-year-old was poorly prepared for married life. She had never learned to cook. Even after she joined the Nation, she knew how to make little more than bean dishes and a few beef and chicken recipes. Malcolm never cooked, so it was up to her to plan nutritious and varied meals on a limited budget. Any romantic fantasies she may have had about her future life were largely extinguished by the end of their first year together. Malcolm rarely, if ever, displayed affection toward her. They almost never spent the night out in each other’s company—throughout their seven years of marriage, he took her to a movie only once, in 1963. The most caring moments occurred around the births of their children. For example, Malcolm personally drove Betty for her regular appointments with her obstetrician, Dr. Josephine English (he’d made it clear that no male physician would touch his spouse). To allow for Malcolm’s hectic schedule, Dr. English set Betty’s appointments at seven a.m. at her hospital. Malcolm had convinced himself that his firstborn child would be male; indeed, he had told associates that the only name he had come up with was a boy’s. Then, on November 16, 1958, a girl was born and given the name Attallah. Whether Malcolm was disappointed or simply believed he had little postpartum role to play, he virtually disappeared following the birth. The next day he drove north to Albany to speak at an NOI gathering. Two days later, he was in Hartford, Connecticut, before moving along to Newark, New Jersey. He was back on the road, carrying on as though little had changed.

  His reaction dismayed Betty. Shortly after Attallah’s birth, she collected some clothing and her daughter and took the subway to the home of Ruth Summerford, a distant cousin. When Malcolm arrived back to discover his wife and child missing, he guessed where they had gone. He sensed that Betty was upset with his behavior, but he had no intention of offering an apology. Instead, he waited nearly two days before he drove over to Summerford’s house and ordered his wife to pick up their daughter and get into the car. Betty did as she was told.

  Marriage continued to be filled with surprises. During her years as a single woman, Betty had collected a small number of debts. Malcolm had no knowledge about these before their marriage, but now thought it best not to let his young wife think that “she had married a good thing,” so he allowed her to continue working to clear these debts. Still, he did not make it easy for her. When Betty asked him to drive her to work, which began at six a.m., he curtly refused. By keeping firm control of the family finances and denying Betty the opportunity to earn income beyond what was needed for the repayments, he kept his wife “in jail financially,” as he put it.

  If long days on the road had once turned Malcolm’s thoughts to marriage and stability, the difficulties of his marriage now renewed the road’s appeal, offering him a way to find solace and distance from his troubles. His first significant trip after his marriage was a monthlong visit to Los Angeles in the spring of 1958, which was in many ways as significant as his extended series of speeches in Detroit in the summer of 1957. Malcolm was determined to establish a strong NOI base on the West Coast. He also wanted to establish the NOI's Islamic credentials by engaging in public activities with Middle Eastern and Asian Muslim representatives in the region. In late March and early April, Malcolm addressed NOI members at meetings held at the Normandie Hall in Los Angeles. While in the city, he also attended a gala reception honoring the Republic of Pakistan, and spoke at a press conference at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, coordinated by Mohammad T. Mendi of Karbala, Iraq, using the platform to say it was “absurd” for the Arabs to expect fair treatment from the white media “since it is controlled by the Zionists.” On April 20 he was again the featured speaker at a public event designed to be an interfaith dialogue between Muslims and Christians. Three preachers walked out in protest when Malcolm criticized the wealth of some African-American churches and the poverty of their worshippers. He also arranged with Louis X to deliver a sermon at Boston’s temple in May. At its conclusion, Malcolm asked the audience if anyone wished to convert to the NOI. He was astonished to find among those standing his sister Ella; somehow their lives had come full circle.

  Malcolm grew increasingly troubled by Betty’s behavior. In a letter sent to Elijah in March 1959, he confessed that “the main source of our trouble was based upon SEX”: [S]he placed a great deal more stress upon it than I was physically capable of doing. Please forgive me for this topic, but I feel compelled to tell you of it, and would tell it to no one else but you. At a time when I was going all out to keep her satisfied (sexually), one day she told me that we were incompatible sexually because I had never given her any real satisfaction. From then on, try as I may, I began to become very cool toward her. I didn’t ever again feel right (free) with her in that sense, for no matter how happy she would act I’d see it only as a pretense. . . . She stayed miserable during her expectancy, and those were the nine most miserable months of my life . . . she often cursed the day she married and of being pregnant, and she cursed me too.

  From Betty’s perspective, marriage to Temple No. 7’s minister meant constantly sharing her husband with others, leaving little time for her. She also sensed that she had become the object of vicious gossip. Malcolm had grown too powerful to criticize openly, but Betty was an easy target. Some of the rumors circulating about her were cruel. For example, when she gave birth to a series of daughters, templ
e gossipmongers suggested that Allah was punishing her for her constant challenges to the male-dominated hierarchy. She would not be able to bear sons, they whispered, until she first learned to control her behavior. The more criticism that came Betty’s way, the more assertive she became. She also began to develop a circle of women friends inside the temple, providing some measure of support. But to critics, her group displayed arrogance and the willingness to divide MGT into feuding factions. “She made sure that you appreciated the distance between you and her,” James 67X tartly observed. “Because of her relationship with Malcolm, you and her were no longer equals.”

  In February 1959, Betty was again sent to an NOI training program at Chicago headquarters. It lasted several weeks. Upon her return, Malcolm informed Muhammad, “She said to me that if I didn’t watch out she was going to embarrass me and herself (which under questioning she later said she was going to seek satisfaction elsewhere).” For a Muslim male, cuckoldry was intolerable. For Malcolm, it would not only end his marriage but jeopardize his position as a minister. Perhaps he reasoned that the only way to keep Betty under control, or less sexually desirable to other males, was to keep her perpetually pregnant, so after six months of abstinence, he began having sex with his wife again. Betty’s response was to heap ridicule on her husband. She “told me that I was impotent . . . and even tho [sic] I could father a child I was like an old man (not able to engage in the act long enough to satisfy her).” Complicating matters, the entire temple knew about their disharmony; the other Muslims living in the same duplex as the battling couple kept Captain Joseph well apprised.

  Since their bitter break, Joseph’s feelings toward Malcolm had grown increasingly hostile, and he may have seized on Malcolm’s marital distractions to tip the balance of power in the Nation back in his direction. He undoubtedly reported Malcolm’s marital problems to his superior, Supreme Captain Raymond Sharrieff. Through Sharrieff, other members of Muhammad’s family would have learned about their difficulties. In the late fifties, the Chicago headquarters expanded Joseph’s authority to all temples in the northeastern United States, which gave him authority over the deployment of thousands of FOI members. Joseph could now influence the selection of captains across the country. Malcolm’s only means to contest this, and to minimize the stigma over his marital woes, was to throw himself even more single-mindedly into NOI affairs.

  On May 14, 1958, as Malcolm was lecturing in Boston, two detectives from the Astoria precinct, Joseph Kiernan and Michael Bonura, came to the front door of his East Elmhurst home. They had been ordered to serve a federal bench warrant issued for a woman named Margaret Dorsey, whose official residence was on East 165th Street in the Bronx but who supposedly lived on the ground floor of the Littles’ duplex. (Malcolm would later claim to BOSS detectives that the police officers had not asked for Dorsey, but for Alvin Crosby, age twenty-four, who resided with other families either in the ground-floor living quarters or in the basement.) The detectives were met at the front door by twenty-seven-year-old Yvonne X Molette, who politely explained that she would not admit them without a search warrant. The police tried to overpower her and enter the house. Several other women who were inside heard the commotion and ran to Yvonne’s aid. Together, they managed to slam the door shut. The detectives vowed that they would call again, this time with a warrant.

  They returned at about eight thirty p.m., with U.S. Postal Inspector Herbert Halls. Halls knocked on the front door, while Kiernan and Bonura went around to the duplex’s side entrance. There they were met by John X Molette, who had returned home after his wife called him about the detectives’ first attempt to enter. The police told Molette that they were looking for Margaret Dorsey, at which point Molette stepped outside, closing the door behind him. Impatient, Kiernan complained they “didn’t have time for all that foolishness.” He pushed Molette aside and tried to open the door and barge his way inside. As the three men wrestled in the doorway, Molette was pushed backward into the house, and with the assistance of his mother-in-law he managed to force the two policemen out and close the door. Undaunted, Kiernan shattered one of the door's glass panels and reached inside to let himself in. As the fight continued, Detective Bonura was struck by a bottle that had been hurled from an upper window. At this, Kiernan pulled his revolver and fired two shots through the door.

  The gunfire had a dramatic effect. The residents scattered and the police entered the house, following the occupants up the stairs. When they reached the top, they found the door to the Littles’ apartment locked. The officers threatened to shoot through the door unless the occupants opened it, and the women—Betty Shabazz and Minnie Simmons—did so. After searching the house, the police took both women as well as Yvonne and John Molette outside and lined them up against a wall next to the driveway. When a police patrol wagon arrived, they were taken to the 114th Precinct station house. Two others were also arrested, and all were eventually released on bail.

  When word of the incident reached Malcolm in Boston, it galvanized him, just as the showdown over Johnson X Hinton had done the year before. He flew immediately to New York City and launched into a media tirade against the NYPD, drawing parallels between “the [G]estapo tactics of white police who control the black belts” of American ghettos and occupation forces in controlling hostile territory. “Where else and under what circumstances,” he asked, “could you find situations where police can freely invade private homes, break down doors, threaten to beat pregnant women, and even try to shoot a 13-year-old girl . . . but right here in American Negro neighborhoods, where the ‘occupying army’ is in disguise as police officers?” The NOI immediately placed a picket line of silent protesters in front of the 114th Precinct, a bold move that, according to one press account, utterly amazed the police. The Hinton affair had taught Malcolm to put the authorities on the defensive with such demonstrations, a maneuver that also sent a signal to black non-Muslims that the conflict was a civil rights issue.

  Although neither Malcolm nor Betty probably realized it, her marriage to the NOI minister had triggered her surveillance by the FBI. As early as June 1958, FBI informants were reporting to the Bureau’s New York office that Betty had attended the Afro-Asian Educational and Crafts Display sponsored by Temple No. 7 and held at the Park Palace on February 8, 1958; they also noted her participation in the 1958 Saviour’s Day festivities in Chicago. Betty’s indictment for assaulting a police officer and for “conspiracy” led to more extensive FBI digging. Her credit history was thoroughly checked, and the FBI learned that Betty had a series of money problems that predated her marriage to Malcolm. For example, in late 1957, two separate judgments were filed against Betty in Westchester County, New York, one for $546.57 owed to Budget Charge Account, Inc., and another for $742.42 to Sacks Quality Stores, Inc. What emerges from the FBI surveillance of her is a confident, independent-minded black nationalist who expressed herself well. An FBI informant observing a talk Betty gave in Chicago in early 1959 noted that she praised Elijah Muhammad “for providing jobs and opportunity to all of us.” In her address, Betty outlined her own vision for the Nation’s economic growth: We are going to have a bank of our own here in Chicago and we are going to loan money. This bank is being organized on paper now. Everytime there are enough members to get a number for a temple we are going to have a restaurant, dress shop, and bakery just like we have in Chicago. We are also going to open a health center here. We want educated members with college degrees to help us so they can help their own people.

  Betty’s lecture illustrates that she possessed a clear and expansive view of the NOI’s future, based on an educated black middle class—people like herself. The point here is that she was not being manipulated by events; she was a committed, determined follower of Elijah Muhammad in her own right.

  The case took nearly a year to go to trial, and in the intervening months Malcolm frequently made reference to what had happened. He also gave several speeches primarily based on the event. When in March 1959 the case wa
s tried, only four of the six individuals originally arrested were prosecuted, including Betty Shabazz. The hearing lasted three weeks and at the time was the longest assault trial ever recorded in Queens County. Sixteen witnesses testified, as the defendants decried the police’s actions as a blatant violation of their property and constitutional rights. The Nation was determined to dominate the environment of the trial. It brought its own stenographers and deployed FOI guards at the court’s doors; anyone who entered the hallway leading to the trial room had their picture taken by one of three roaming NOI photographers.

  After the defense rested, the jury, which included three African Americans, deliberated for thirteen hours. At three p.m. on March 18, the jury informed Judge Peter T. Farrell that it had reached a verdict, but the judge was so intimidated by the presence of hundreds of angry Muslims in the courthouse that he took the unusual step of clearing all spectators before the jury revealed its decision. Two of those charged, Betty Shabazz and Minnie Simmons, were exonerated. The jury deadlocked over Yvonne and John Molette without reaching a unanimous decision, freeing them, but subject to a second prosecution. After the verdict was read, the jury was escorted to the subway under a tense police guard, surrounded by hundreds of shouting Muslims. Standing before his members on the courthouse steps, Malcolm instructed, “Any policeman who abuses you belongs in the cemetery. Be peaceful, firm and aggressive but if one of them so much as touch your finger, die.” The jury’s inability to acquit all the accused, according to Malcolm, was the fault of Judge Farrell, who had employed “kangaroo tactics” to protect the police. He harshly criticized Farrell’s “ambiguous interpretations of the law, and failure to charge the jury properly on key points that forced the jury into a deadlock.”