Malcolm X

by Manning Marable

  Although the Nation of Islam was firmly opposed to the march’s integrationist goals, it would have been impossible for Malcolm not to have been affected by such an unprecedented mobilization. For one thing, Rustin’s headquarters was in Harlem—on West 130th Street. Throughout the summer, the black press speculated on whether the march would be successful, both in terms of turnout and in its ability to change Washington priorities. Despite the NOI's ban on participation in such demonstrations, Mosque No. 7 continued to be involved in similar activities. On June 29 it sponsored another major street rally, at the corner of Lenox Avenue and West 115th Street. The NOI's press release targeted “the Uncle-Tom Negro leaders” for doing little to halt “the dope traffic, alcoholism, gambling, prostitution, and other forms of organized crime . . . destroying the very moral fiber of the Black Community.” Despite such strident attacks, Malcolm extended speaking invitations to NAACP head Roy Wilkins, National Urban League director Whitney Young, CORE's James Farmer, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Only Powell seems to have responded, indicating that business commitments made it impossible for him to address the rally. The program brought out about two thousand people. The attitude of the NYPD was that of mild harassment, and FOI members were dispatched to the rooftops to observe both crowd and cops.

  On July 13, Mosque No. 7 threw a large banquet to celebrate a formal visit from the youngest son of Elijah Muhammad, Akbar Muhammad, and his wife, Harriet. The couple was in the process of returning home after a two-year stay in Cairo, where the twenty-five-year-old Akbar had been a student of Islamic jurisprudence. His arrival pleased Malcolm. After Wallace, Akbar had come to be counted first among Malcolm’s allies in Muhammad’s family. The youngest of the Messenger's children, he found that his time in the Middle East had accomplished for him what prison had done for Wallace: basically, completely disabuse him of any belief in his father's peculiar brand of Islam. Two days after his arrival in New York, the NOI held another public rally, drawing a crowd of four thousand, and Akbar was invited to speak. His talk had been advertised as a “Special Report on Africa for the People of Harlem, but once on his feet he called for a comprehensive united front of African Americans.” “We must have unity among Negroes,” he told the crowd. “It is time for all of us—CORE, the NAACP, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Black Muslims—to sit down together. . . . We must stop calling Dr. King names, and he must stop talking about us before the enemy.” For Akbar, the distinction between black separatism, symbolized by his father, and racial integration was secondary to the need to force coalitions. If such unity could be achieved, leaders of independent African states were “ready to help us win our freedom.”

  Akbar then made an extraordinary comment, sending murmurs through the crowd and certainly drawing Malcolm’s complete attention. “I don’t hate any man because of the color of his skin,” he declared. “I look at a man’s heart, I watch his actions, and I make my conclusions on the basis of what he does, rather than how he looks.” Listening to the speech, Louis Lomax recalled that Malcolm had preached a similar approach several years earlier, but he had also continued to denigrate King and other civil rights leaders. Akbar Muhammad’s address marked a potential schism. Here was a son of the Messenger, the one who had most thoroughly immersed himself in the world of orthodox Islam, offering a clear refutation of the very foundation of the Nation’s theology. Akbar’s position, said Lomax, “reflects the Arabs’ involvement with black unity throughout the world. . . . Malcolm X is closer to Elijah Muhammad, in terms of just what the American Negro should do, than is Elijah’s own son.” Akbar's emergence meant that “the Black Muslims will become more 'Islamic' and more ‘political’ in the days just ahead.”

  Though Akbar's speech challenged Nation of Islam orthodoxy far more directly than Malcolm had ever dared, Malcolm was well aware that the NOI's pace of Islamization had to be accelerated. He had been forced to continue his public defense of the Nation’s religious legitimacy, as more and more orthodox Muslims came forward to challenge the sect’s racial exclusivity. On July 15, the Chicago Defender published a story on Egypt’s powerful Muslim League, which “flatly disagrees with the anti-white, anti-Christian, anti-Jew, and anti-integration preachments of America’s Black Muslims.” The story also cited complaints from the Jami’at al-Islam Humanitarian Foundation of the United States, whose director, Ahmad Kamal, characterized Elijah Muhammad’s views as “anti-Muslim.” To this, Elijah Muhammad responded personally and forcefully: “Neither Jeddah nor Mecca have sent me! I am sent from Allah and not from the Secretary General of the Muslim League. There is no Muslim in Arabia that has authority to stop me from delivering this message that I have been assigned to.”

  As the summer progressed, Malcolm stepped up his involvement with on-the-ground demonstrations in support of civil rights. On July 22 he attended the picketing of a Brooklyn hospital construction site by more than a thousand workers who charged racial discrimination in the building industry. Hundreds of picketers began blocking huge construction trucks beginning at seven a.m. and the demonstration continued for nine hours; although the protesters observed nonviolent tactics, three hundred of them were dragged away by police. Malcolm carefully stood across the street, but he shook hands and expressed his support with participants. When asked by journalists why he wasn’t directly involved, he evaded the issue: “It would not be fair. You would see a different situation here. We would never let these policemen put us into those paddy wagons.” Joining him at a second demonstration was playwright/actor Ossie Davis, who briefly blocked the access of one construction truck. Malcolm brought along a 35-millimeter camera and busied himself taking photographs. “If there were no captions for these pictures, you’d think this was Mississippi or Nazi Germany,” he informed one New York Times reporter. “Only difference between the Gestapo and the New York police is that this is 1963.” Five days later, he turned up at a civil rights rally in Brooklyn that brought out more than three hundred people. Addressing the crowd, Malcolm emphasized the need for “unity” and said that there were “no real differences” between the various civil rights groups.

  The March on Washington was scheduled for August 28, and as it approached, Malcolm’s increased involvement in the business of pickets and protests began to expose yet another weakness in the Nation’s ideology. For years, mainstream civil rights leaders like Rustin and Farmer had criticized the NOI for having no real political plan. Now, as black activists increasingly found themselves facing the business end of billy clubs and fire hoses, the Nation risked further revealing itself as unable to live up to its militant rhetoric. For years, Malcolm had warned listeners not to underestimate the Muslims; he consistently told anyone who would listen that while his people were to be cooperative with police, if a Muslim was physically assaulted or attacked, it would bring down a rain of retributive violence. At an FOI meeting at the end of July that summer, he talked about the problem of police brutality. “When the NOI demonstrates, it demonstrates all the way.” He told the Fruit that while he did not publicly say so, he believed in violence to defend his rights, even claiming that he was prepared to “use his teeth” if he had to protect himself. Yet for all his talk of willingness to use violence, the only real damage the Nation had inflicted in the past half decade had targeted its own misbehaving members. It was a contradiction that increasingly troubled Malcolm.

  Still, he could point to some progress, certainly in terms of his increased recognition. His many media appearances and his public activities in the D.C. area even caught the attention of President Kennedy, who, referring to a controversy over the TFX fighter plane in early June, quipped, “We have had an interesting six months . . . with TFX and now we are going to have his brother Malcolm for the next six.” Muhammad continued to monitor these public addresses by his star lieutenant. It was now difficult for him to restrain Malcolm from tackling political issues, given Akbar's speech, which had been widely cover
ed. But he continued to be troubled by Malcolm’s frequent criticisms of Kennedy, who despite his administration’s sluggish record on civil rights remained popular among blacks. In a letter to Malcolm dated August 1, Muhammad advised, “Be careful about mentioning Kennedy in your talks and printed matters by name; use U.S.A. or the American Government.”

  As excitement about the March on Washington grew, Malcolm decided to increase the Harlem mosque’s outreach efforts. On August 10, Malcolm told a crowd of about eight hundred that the Nation would not participate in the march, but Elijah Muhammad was planning to be in Washington during that week to ensure that “there would be no skullduggery, no flimflam, no sell-out.” Malcolm also tried out, for the first time, his counterargument against the march, implying that it had been taken over by the Kennedy administration. This strategy characterized the main thrust of Malcolm’s attacks against both Kennedy and King. By taking aim at the top of the power structure and assuming a populist tone, he hoped to drive a wedge between average blacks and their leadership, to better bring them to the Nation’s position. Now he set about portraying the march as another example of the grassroots being co-opted by the establishment, which of course had its own selfish agenda. “When the white man found out he couldn’t stop [the march], he joined it,” Malcolm told the crowd. Four days later, Raymond Sharrieff gave a talk at Mosque No. 7, and he too discouraged participation by NOI members. “Some so-called Negroes believe in Martin King, and this is well and good,” he declared diplomatically. Elijah Muhammad and King “should be tried as leaders,” but ultimately Muhammad would be “on top because his works are greater.” He then warned, “In Islam today a test of the Muslim belief is being waged. You should be wise in your decision when choosing.”

  On August 18, Malcolm was in Washington, speaking at a local NOI meeting. In the speech, he described the current situation as the “gravest crisis since the civil war.” The vast majority of blacks had “lost all confidence in the false promises of hypocritical white politicians.” His chief animus, however, was aimed at the “white liberals, who have been making a great fuss over the South, only to blind us to what is happening here in the North.” The root causes of American racism were to be found in the nation’s history. “The Revolutionary War and the Civil War were two wars fought on American soil, supposedly for freedom and democracy—but if these two wars were really for freedom and human dignity of all men, why are 20 million of our people still confined and enslaved?” Amajority of the “founding fathers,” men who signed the Declaration of Independence, owned slaves.

  In the typed manuscript of this address, Malcolm made a handwritten correction that directly attacked the Kennedy administration, despite Muhammad’s advice. Crossing out the words “the American government,” he inscribed, “this present Catholic administration.” He correctly anticipated the white backlash against the affirmative action and equal opportunity policies that within a few years would drive millions of Southern Democrats and white workers into the Republican Party, but he still could not imagine the passage of landmark civil rights legislation, least of all led by a Southern Democrat and taking place within one year

  On August 23, Malcolm answered listeners’ questions on WNOR radio, in Norfolk, Virginia, saying that Wallace D. Fard’s coming in the 1930s represented the realization of Jewish prophecies, as well as the fulfillment of Islamic expectations. He described Fard as “the son of Man,” making him divine—a status that Fard never claimed, at least not publicly. The day before, he had explained to a crowd the basics of the Nation’s strange cosmology, complete with the story of Yacub and the white devils. It seemed incongruous with the rest of his rhetoric, but either he still firmly accepted the key tenets of Elijah Muhammad’s world or he found it expedient to make it seem as though he did publicly. Politically, he was clearer: “The Muslims who follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad won’t have anything to do whatsoever with the March,” he insisted. It would not benefit blacks to “go down to a dead man’s statue—a dead President’s monument—who was supposed to have issued an Emancipation Proclamation a hundred years ago.”

  It took only a few days before his negative comments about the forthcoming march began circulating in the national press. Meanwhile, thousands began to descend on Washington: the supposedly “Uncle Tom” leaders like Rustin, Randolph, and King had mobilized a quarter of a million people, well beyond the NOI's outreach. Across the country, tens of thousands of working-class blacks were also engaged in smaller protests. As Malcolm took in the march’s tremendous drawing power, he must have been of two minds. The turnout let him take the temperature of the nation’s black community; the massive mobilization showed that the gains made by King and other civil rights leaders in Birmingham and Montgomery had had a galvanizing effect. He could hardly deny their effectiveness in mobilizing blacks on a large scale. Yet he also believed that the NOI needed to delegitimize the march, to push back on the idea that this dramatic display of numbers could have any real effect on black Americans’ lives. According to Larry 4X Prescott, several days before the march Malcolm met with Mosque No. 7 members, instructing them again that Elijah Muhammad had forbidden them to participate, though he also informed Larry and others that he himself would be attending, having received permission from the Messenger. On the night before the march, hundreds of buses were stationed at departure points throughout New York City. NOI laborers went to virtually every bus to distribute copies of Muhammad Speaks. Malcolm was letting it be known, Larry explained, that this was “a part of history that we should be a part of.”

  And yet publicly he was communicating the opposite. At an NOI rally just before the march, Malcolm pilloried the gathering as “the Farce on Washington,” decrying its effectiveness and challenging the idea that the march as planned represented the will of the majority of blacks. He argued that the mobilization “actually began as a spontaneous and angry action of protest from the dissatisfied black masses.” This had occurred, he admitted, because black people were overwhelmingly opposed to racial segregation. Malcolm claimed that the original intention was for black groups to tie up the Capitol through sit-ins and other civic disruptions. Inevitably, though, powerful whites began to influence events. Wilkins, Randolph, King, and other civil rights leaders supposedly had been ordered to call off the march. They informed the Kennedy administration that they were not in charge of the mobilization—that the black masses had taken control. Malcolm argued that the Kennedy administration decided to “co-opt” the demonstration. The president not only publicly endorsed the march’s goals, but encouraged Negroes to participate in it. Malcolm’s thesis was that the civil rights leaders were so craven and bankrupt that they were duped by whites in power.

  This version of events was a gross distortion of the facts—yet it contained enough truth to capture an audience of unhappy black militants who had wanted the march to spearhead strikes and widespread civil disobedience. For all of Malcolm’s calls for unity, and for whatever the march represented in its mass outpouring of support, the Black Freedom Movement continued to be pulled in different directions. Many on the left, including much of SNCC, were inclined to agree with Malcolm’s position on the march’s ineffectiveness. They saw the event as representative of the overly cautious strategies of middle-class Negro leaders, and believed more forceful action would be necessary to make real gains. These disagreements played themselves out in backroom deals leading up to the march, most notably when SNCC's John Lewis found himself embroiled in controversy over his planned speech, which said essentially that the march was too little, too late; at the last minute, more conservative leaders pressured him to cut its most inflammatory passages. Malcolm’s rhetoric, unburdened by factors of diplomacy, did not shy away from making such points.

  On the night before the march, Peter Goldman ran into Louis Lomax in a Washington hotel lobby. Goldman recalled that Lomax led him to a large suite crowded with about fifty middle-class African Americans: And there [in the center] was Malcolm. And un
til I saw him, I had no clue that was what Lomax was leading me to. His attitude, his public attitude toward the march, was that this is a picnic, it’s a circus, it’s meaningless. . . . He was doing a very much muted version of that. He wasn’t addressing them. It was more kind of a cocktail party setting. Indeed, there were a lot of bourbons splashing, including into my glass. . . . There’s always one power center at a cocktail party, and he was it. . . . He knew that that was the capital . . . the epicenter of black America on that day.

  Malcolm was indeed the center of attention wherever he went, usually followed by a gaggle of newsmen. Attorney Floyd McKissick, who in 1965 would become head of CORE, ran into him at the Washington Hilton. The two men hugged each other and began conversing before panicked CORE staffers hustled McKissick away, worried that any association with Malcolm would damage their image. Rustin encountered Malcolm on at least three occasions that night and the following day. The first time, he was leaving a strategy session with the march’s major speakers when he saw Malcolm holding court with some reporters. Instead of getting angry, he knew his old debating partner well enough by now to use humor to deflate him. “Now, Malcolm, be careful,” he warned. “There are going to be a half-million people here tomorrow, and you don’t want to tell them this is nothing but a picnic.” Malcolm replied, “What I tell them is one thing. What I tell the press is something else.” Sometime later, Malcolm was with a group of marchers. Walking by, Rustin shouted out, “Why don’t you tell them this is just a picnic?” This time Malcolm just smiled. The next day, with the demonstration concluded, Rustin saw him one more time. Malcolm said seriously, “You know, this dream of King’s is going to be a nightmare before it’s over.” “You’re probably right,” Rustin replied.