Malcolm X

by Manning Marable

  Joseph decided that Thomas should be assigned to provide security for Malcolm, which included doing routine errands and odd jobs for his family. At that time, Thomas thought Malcolm was “the greatest thing walking . . . I don’t know any commentator, news people, that could handle him.” Thomas’s daily duties usually began when Malcolm traveled from his home in Queens to the Harlem mosque. Regardless of the weather, Thomas was expected to stand outside, reserving a parking spot for the minister's car. He also drove Malcolm to appointments. Once a month, Betty gave him a list of household items to purchase at the Shabazz supermarket in Brooklyn, driving back afterward to unpack. He noticed that Malcolm avoided going home “if he could.” Malcolm confided, “‘Man, if I go [home], all them women . . . no telling what I might say, how I’m going to respond.’ And he’d say, 'Let's go down to Foley Square.’ So we would.” Sometimes Malcolm would be deeply engrossed in reading some book very obscure to Thomas. One author he vividly recalled was philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. “Hegel was his man,” Thomas recalled, possibly referring to the same passages on “lordship and bondage” that had also fascinated Frantz Fanon.

  And yet something about Thomas made Malcolm uneasy. On one occasion he voiced his concerns to Joseph, saying that he was uncomfortable simply because Thomas rarely talked. Thomas, for his part, told Joseph, “I didn’t think I was qualified to interject and have a lot of conversation with him. I was just interested in doing my job.” Things remained as they were.

  Within a growing number of mosques—most notably the Newark, New Jersey, mosque—a storm of criticism against Malcolm began to gather. The standard charges were that he coveted the Messenger's position, that he craved material possessions, and that he was using the Nation to advance himself politically and in the media. Malcolm routinely responded to such barbs by building up the cult around Elijah, which he felt was the most effective way to dispel doubts. Muhammad appreciated such labors on his behalf, and around this time told Malcolm that he wanted him to “become well known,” because it was through his fame that Elijah’s message would be heard. But Malcolm needed to realize, he added, “You will grow to be hated when you become well known.”

  George Lincoln Rockwell may have thought himself white America’s answer to Malcolm X. Square jawed and solidly built, he cut a striking figure when commanding the stage at rallies held by the group he had founded and led, the American Nazi Party. Rockwell’s extreme conservatism had grown at first along conventional lines; a longtime naval reservist, he opposed racial integration and despised communism, and for a brief time was employed by William F. Buckley, Jr., the editor of National Review. Only after reading Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion did his supremacist beliefs merge with a deep hatred for Jews. In March 1959, he established the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists, which soon became the American Nazi Party. Despite his loathsome politics, Rockwell possessed a gift for manipulating the media that brought the party outsized attention. On April 3, 1960, he delivered a two-hour speech on the National Mall in Washington that attracted more journalists than supporters; yet, even within the fringes of the far right, he managed to maintain substantial press coverage, creating a greatly inflated image of his party’s actual number.

  In its early years, the American Nazi Party’s literature routinely described African Americans as “niggers,” morally and mentally inferior to whites. However, once Rockwell learned of the Nation of Islam’s anti-integrationist positions, he became fascinated by the concept of a white supremacist-black nationalist united front. He even praised the NOI to his followers, arguing that Elijah Muhammad had “gathered millions of the dirty, immoral, drunken, filthy-mouthed, lazy and repulsive people sneeringly called ‘niggers’ and inspired them to the point where they are clean, sober, honest, hard-working, dignified, dedicated and admirable human beings in spite of their color.”

  At some time in early 1961, Rockwell’s group had talks with Muhammad and several top aides in Chicago; Rockwell and Muhammad may even have met privately to work out an “agreement of mutual assistance.” The main concession that Rockwell wrung from Muhammad was permission to bring his Nazi storm troopers into NOI rallies, which he knew would provoke press coverage. For Muhammad, the attention carried greater risk, but he believed that it was outweighed by the opportunity to put on display the true nature of the white man. Rockwell’s group may have been at the fringe, but Muhammad saw its racial hatred and anti-Semitism as an honest representation of white America’s core beliefs. But there was another reason for the pairing: the authoritarianism of the NOI was in harmony with the racist authoritarianism of the white supremacists. Both groups, after all, dreamed of a segregated world in which interracial marriages were outlawed and the races dwelled in separate states.

  On June 25, 1961, the Nation of Islam held a major rally in Washington, D.C. Before an audience of eight thousand, Rockwell and ten storm troopers—all crisply dressed in tan fatigues and bright swastika armbands—were escorted to seats near the stage in the center of the arena. Representatives of the African-American press, stunned to see Nazis there, shouted questions to Rockwell, who announced, “I am fully in concert with [the NOI's] program and I have the highest respect for Mr. Elijah Muhammad.” Although Muhammad had been advertised as the keynote speaker, once again he was too ill, and it was left to Malcolm to make the main address. After his speech, the audience was asked for contributions, and when Rockwell put in twenty dollars, Malcolm asked who had donated the money. A storm trooper shouted, “George Lincoln Rockwell!” which generated polite applause from the Muslims. Rockwell was invited to stand up; the Nazi leader again received mild applause. Malcolm could not resist commenting, “You got the biggest hand you ever got.”

  Malcolm’s joke belied his deeper feelings about this alliance with the lunatic right, which had been engineered entirely by Elijah Muhammad and the Chicago headquarters. The stain of the Nazis could not quite match that of the Klan, but those meetings had been conducted in secret. Now Malcolm was receiving a cash donation from the leader of a notorious white hate group in front of an audience of thousands. However he felt about Rockwell’s usefulness to the NOI, he knew that the appearance would only hurt him with the black leaders who had recently begun courting his opinion.

  For his part, Rockwell came away from his contacts with the NOI impressed by their organization and discipline. “Muhammad understands the vicious fraud of the Jewish exploitation of the Negro people,” he later observed. “[T]he Muslims are the key to solving the Negro problem, both in the North and the South. And this guy Malcolm X is no mealy-mouth pansy like so many of the disgusting ‘integrationist’ leaders, both black and white. He is a MAN, whom it is impossible not to admire, even when blasting the White Race for its mishandling of the Black Man.” The following February, Rockwell attended NOI's Saviour's Day, held in Chicago before an audience of twelve thousand Muslims. After Elijah Muhammad finished his sermon, Rockwell was invited to speak and strolled to the stage, flanked by two bodyguards. “You know that we call you niggers,” he began. “But wouldn’t you rather be confronted by honest white men who tell you to your face what the others say behind your back?” He pledged to “do everything in my power to help the Honorable Elijah Muhammad carry out his inspired plan for land of your own in Africa. Elijah Muhammad is right—separation or death!”

  Most studies devoted to Malcolm X ignore or do not examine the connections between the NOI and the American Nazi Party. Even the scholar Claude Andrew Clegg, who is highly critical of Muhammad’s decision to allow Rockwell to speak in 1962, argues that the Nazi leader “was a sort of bugbear that Muhammad used to scare blacks into the NOI.ʺ This underestimates the common ground involved. In the April 1962 issue of Muhammad Speaks, Muhammad praised Rockwell as a man who had “endorsed the stand for self that you and I are taking. Why should not you applaud?” The Nazis “have taken a stand to see that you be separated to get justice and freedom.” For several years, Rockwell continued
to endorse the NOI's program. At an address in October 1962, for example, he stated: “[Elijah Muhammad] is a black supremacist and I’m a white supremacist: that doesn’t necessarily mean we gotta kill each other.”

  Dining with the devil requires more than a long spoon. Like the tête-à-tête with the Klan, the NOI's public identification with the Nazis undermined Malcolm’s efforts to reach out to moderate audiences, people who might have agreed with his critique of American racism but rejected his solutions. This was the challenge he faced when he again confronted Bayard Rustin, on January 23, 1962. The debate was held at Manhattan’s Community Church, a liberal east side congregation. The topic—“Separation or Integration?”—should have favored Rustin. The audience consisted largely of white liberals who strongly supported civil rights. However, Malcolm astutely did not condemn all whites as “devils,” emphasizing instead the negative effects of institutional racism on the black community. His arguments were persuasive to many whites in the audience. Rustin was forced to complain that too many whites in the gallery, including some of his own friends, were applauding Malcolm’s statements more vigorously than the Negroes in the audience: “May I explain the process. . . . It is, my friends, that many white people love to hear their kind damned to high water while they sit saying, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that that nice black man gives those white people hell? But he couldn’t be talking about me—I'm the liberal.’”

  Malcolm’s lectures and sermons in early 1962 rarely mentioned the core values of the Nation’s theology, and increasingly he was pulled into larger debates over the political future of black America. Probably to silence his critics within the NOI, he tried to give more attention to organizational matters. In January, both he and Joseph visited Mosque No. 23 in Buffalo, New York. And at the end of the same month he supervised the NOI's sponsorship of an African-Asian Bazaar at Harlem’s Rockland Palace. He also continued to use his speeches to build up the cult around Elijah Muhammad. The Messenger appreciated such labors on his behalf; yet before long, Muhammad’s opinion began to shift. He read the transcripts and recordings from Malcolm’s speeches and could see the political direction of his increasingly famous minister's mind. He decided to tighten the reins.

  On February 14, Muhammad wrote Malcolm formally about his schedule. ʺ[W]hen you go to these Colleges and Universities to represent the Teachings that Allah has revealed to me for our people, do not go too much into the details of the political side; nor into the subject of a separate state here for us.” Muhammad instructed him to “speak only what you know they have heard me say or that which you yourself have heard me say.” Malcolm was forbidden to express his independent opinions, even on questions that had no relationship with the NOI. The aging patriarch sought to reclaim his right to be the sole interpreter of Muslim teachings. “Make the public seek me for the answers,” he wrote. “Do not you see how I reject the devils on such subjects, by telling them I will say WHERE when the Government shows interest?” The NOI was a religious movement, not a political cause; Malcolm no longer had the authority to address issues like a separate black state or to speak about current events of a political nature, unless Muhammad gave his permission. Yet, of course, any discussion of black Americans’ affairs inevitably centered on the struggle for civil rights; Muhammad was making Malcolm’s position untenable.

  An opportunity soon arose to test Muhammad’s boundaries. On March 7, Cornell University invited Malcolm and CORE executive director James Farmer to debate the theme “Segregation or Integration?” During the previous year, Farmer's Freedom Riders had grabbed national headlines with their challenges to segregated bus systems in the South, and the promise of real gains to be made through concerted activism gave him a strong chip to play against Malcolm. In his opening remarks, Malcolm emphasized that black Americans were part of the “non-white world.” And just as “our African and Asian brothers wanted to have their own land, wanted to have their own country, wanted to exercise control over themselves,” it was reasonable for black Americans to desire the same. “It is not integration that Negroes in America want, it is human dignity.” Once more, he attacked integration as a scheme benefiting only the black bourgeoisie: We who are black in the black belt, or black community, or black neighborhood can easily see that our people who settle for integration are usually the middle-class so-called Negroes, who are in the minority. Why? Because they have confidence in the white man . . . they believe that there is still hope in the American dream. But what to them is an American dream to us is an American nightmare, and we don’t think that it is possible for the American white man in sincerity to take the action necessary to correct the unjust conditions that 20 million black people are made to suffer, morning, noon and night.

  But Farmer, like Rustin, was not intimidated, aggressively going after the conservatism and weaknesses in the NOI's program. “We are seeking an open society . . . where people will be accepted for what they are worth, will be able to contribute fully to the total culture and the total life of the nation,” he declared. Racism was America’s greatest problem. Turning to Malcolm, he asked, “We know the disease, physician, what is your cure? What is your program and how do you hope to bring it into effect?” Malcolm had been long on rhetoric but short on details. “We need to have it spelled out,” Farmer pressed him. “Is it a separate Negro society in each city? As a Harlem [or] a South Side Chicago?” He also effectively countered Malcolm’s claim that only the black middle class favored integration by pointing out that the majority of student Freedom Riders were from working-class and low-income families. In fact, Farmer argued, the opposite was true: black entrepreneurial capitalists favored Jim Crow, because it created a self-segregated black consumer market without white competition; it was usually the black middle class that opposed desegregation. Malcolm sensed that he was losing the debate and, to score points, resorted to mentioning that Farmer was married to a white woman.

  Unlike the NAACP representatives that Malcolm had previously debated, Farmer was able to explain the tactics of the Black Freedom Movement in clear, everyday terms. To Malcolm’s claim that desegregated lunch counters were unimportant, for instance, he had a sensible response: “Are we not to travel? Picket lines and boycotts brought Woolworth’s to its knees.” CORE's Freedom Riders had “helped to create desegregation in cities throughout the South.” What Malcolm undoubtedly grasped that night was that CORE's approach to desegregation was fundamentally different from that of the older civil rights establishment, which relied on litigation and legislation. CORE was actively committed to building mass protests in the streets—in Farmer’s words, “The picketing and the nationwide demonstrations are the reason that the walls came down in the South, because people were in motion with their own bodies marching with picket signs, sitting in, boycotting, withholding their patronage.” Ironically, the net result of the Farmer-Malcolm debate, which was widely discussed among movement activists, was to give greater legitimacy to the Black Muslim leader. Even integrationists who sharply rejected black nationalism found Malcolm’s argument persuasive. Within two years, entire branch organizations of CORE, especially in Cleveland, Detroit, Brooklyn, and Harlem, would become oriented toward Malcolm X.

  Perhaps Malcolm’s most important public address during the first half of 1962 was at Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, where Congressman Powell had invited him as part of a lecture series on the theme “Which Way the Negro?” Abyssinian church administrators informed the press that the overwhelming response they had received was larger “than all the previous Harlem ‘leaders’ combined.” To an audience of two thousand, Malcolm repeated his thesis. “We don’t think it is within the nature of the white man to change in his attitude toward the black man,” he argued, while also responding to charges that, although the NOI talked a militant line, it didn’t involve itself in the black community’s politics. “Just because a man doesn’t throw a punch doesn’t mean he can’t do so whenever he gets ready, so don’t play the Muslims and the [black] natio
nalists cheap.” Wisely, he praised Powell as a model of independent leadership. “Adam Clayton Powell is the only black politician who has been able to come off the white man’s political plantation, buck against the white political machine downtown, and still hold his seat in Congress.” Malcolm’s comments set the stage for what would become a much closer partnership between the two men in the year to come.

  Still, the divergence between his own views and those at the core of the NOI continued to trouble him, and he increasingly solicited the advice of those he trusted, though at times he found this circumstantially difficult. In Boston, a natural confidant would have been Louis X. However, throughout most of 1962, Louis was preoccupied with his fierce power struggle with Clarence 2X Gill over demands for selling bulk copies of Muhammad Speaks. Although Ella was no longer a member of the Boston mosque, Malcolm continued to be in touch, and may have reached out to her. She had also become interested in orthodox Islam during these years, which helped to draw them closer after their falling out over the power struggle in Boston.

  Despite the continuing tensions in their marriage, Malcolm also occasionally consulted Betty, who worried about their stability. Over the years she had become comfortable with many of the perks that were bestowed on her as the wife of the mosque’s minister. Her grocery shopping, done by others, was dutifully boxed and dropped off at her kitchen; Thomas 15X Johnson or other FOI members chauffeured her to NOI events. At official occasions Betty enjoyed front-row seats, and the applause of the adoring crowd. And occasionally, when the Messenger visited New York City, it was at Betty and Malcolm’s house that the honor of hosting him was extended. As James 67X later observed, “Every woman would have liked to [have been] in her position.”

  Unlike Malcolm, however, Betty was growing increasingly suspicious of the NOI leadership. Because of her husband’s high position in the hierarchy, she had ample opportunity to observe for herself the greedy behavior of Muhammad’s family and entourage. By comparison, she and Malcolm lived almost in poverty, owning virtually nothing beyond a small amount of household furniture, their clothing, and personal items. His Oldsmobile belonged to the NOI; likewise, the title to his home was not in his name, but the mosque’s. Through the early 1960s Malcolm received around three thousand dollars every month to cover his transportation, overnight accommodations, and meals when traveling. He kept meticulous records, collecting receipts for every expenditure to justify his account. The NOI forbade ministers from purchasing life insurance, Betty claimed, perhaps to make their representatives totally dependent on the sect. Quietly at first, then more forcefully, she pleaded with her husband to take appropriate measures to protect his family financially. She tried him with the Garveyite argument that black families should at least own their own homes. Malcolm’s stern response was that if anything should happen to him, the Nation would certainly provide for Betty and their children.