Malcolm X

by Manning Marable

  Since Cassius Clay had walked into the Students’ Luncheonette in Detroit and into Malcolm’s life, his reputation had continued to grow; after knocking out Archie Moore in July 1962, he proceeded to put down three more fighters, remaining undefeated and earning himself a title shot against the much favored heavyweight champion Sonny Liston. While training for the fight in Miami in the winter of 1963, Clay invited Malcolm and his family down to his camp in Miami Beach for a vacation. Grateful for the chance to escape New York, Malcolm accepted, and on January 15 he, Betty, and their three daughters flew south. His trip, and the fight, mustered little attention from Muhammad. Although the Chicago headquarters appreciated the young boxer's interest in the Nation of Islam, the Messenger made it known that he disapproved of the sport as a profession. Beyond this, NOI leaders were convinced that the loudmouthed Clay had no chance to defeat Liston, who had just annihilated the former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson. Publicly embracing him, they believed, would bring only embarrassment after his all but certain loss. But Malcolm, who had developed a solid friendship with Clay, possessed a surer sense of the boxer's skills. He also saw that Cassius was intelligent and possessed the charisma that could attract young blacks to Islam. And it probably occurred to him that, in the event of a showdown with the Chicago leaders, having Clay on his side was a plus.

  The Miami Beach excursion was the one and only vacation that Betty and Malcolm would ever share. Malcolm’s family was probably surprised when the young boxer himself met them at the Miami airport. This unexpected encounter was relayed to the local FBI office by an informant. Apparently, the Bureau had not yet established any connections between Clay and black separatists, and the FBI office in Miami found itself sufficiently nonplussed that it failed to forward the information to Washington, D.C., until January 21. For several days, the family did mostly tourist things: lounging at the beach, taking photos, buying postcards. Malcolm was able to set aside informal time with Clay, building up the young fighter's confidence. He also tried to use the trip as an opportunity to recraft his image, perhaps realizing finally the need to start presenting himself independent of the Nation. In a notebook he kept of the trip, he drafted several paragraphs about his family’s visit to Clay’s training camp that were designed to be the basis for a feature news story, “Malcolm X, the Family Man.” Most of his notes were captions designed to accompany photographs he had taken. One note indicated that he and Betty were celebrating their sixth wedding anniversary on the trip, that they were the parents of three daughters and were expecting their fourth child that June. This attempt to moderate his public image proved successful. The Chicago Defender published a beautiful portrait of the family, with Clay at the right, holding the couple’s youngest daughter, Ilyasah. A similar photograph was published in the Amsterdam News, and together they would mark the first time Malcolm presented his family to the public. They represented the beginning of what would prove to be Malcolm’s final reinvention, one that would culminate a few months later during his trip to Mecca for the hajj.

  Betty and the children returned home on January 19, but Malcolm lingered to spend more time alone with Cassius Clay. A few days later, when Malcolm flew back to New York, Clay went with him. He did not bother to ask his trainer, Angelo Dundee, for permission to leave, and though it is unheard of for a boxer to break camp one month before a championship fight, Dundee did not try to stop him. Arriving in New York on January 21, Clay finally discovered a city big enough to hold his outsized personality. He and Malcolm set about touring Harlem and other sights of the city, and Clay attended an NOI rally held at the Rockland Palace, though Malcolm stayed away, observing his suspension. Afterward Clay returned to Miami and resumed training.

  It was not long before news of Clay’s and Malcolm’s relationship made its way into the press. On January 25, the Amsterdam News noted Malcolm’s vacation in Florida with his family “as the guests of heavyweight boxer Cassius Clay.” The publicity caused great difficulties in Clay’s fight camp in Miami. As his fame had grown in the boxing world, the question of his involvement with the Nation had dogged him. With the sect identified primarily with antagonistic feelings toward whites, his affiliation threatened to damage him professionally, and so he had come to dance around the issue when questioned about it by the press. But now, in the days leading up to the Liston fight, Malcolm’s influence pushed him closer to open support. The Amsterdam News reported Clay’s twenty-minute-long remarks at the Rockland Palace: “I’m a race man, and every time I go to a Muslim meeting I get inspired.” On February 3, the Louisville Courier-Journal published an interview with Clay in which he all but admitted membership in the Nation. “Sure I talked to the Muslims and I’m going back again,” he declared. “Integration is wrong. The white people don’t want integration, I don’t want integration. I don’t believe in forcing it, and the Muslims don’t believe in it. So what’s wrong with the Muslims?”

  Throughout most of February Malcolm continued to appeal to Muhammad for reinstatement, but to no avail. He was now forced to consider emergency household issues. The Nation paid out a household stipend to its ministers to provide food, clothing, and household items. For Malcolm this amounted to about $150 per month. He was still considered a minister and technically could claim the stipend, but if fully stripped of his title he would have no monthly income and no claim on his family’s East Elmhurst home. According to an estimate by James 67X, from 1960 to 1963 Malcolm also received an expense account from the Nation of about $3,000 per month, covering his travel, hotel accommodations, meals, and incidental expenses. For Malcolm to exert the impact on the national media that he had in the early 1960s, a considerable investment by the Nation was required. For example, whenever he traveled to a city with a Nation of Islam mosque, local leaders were expected to take off from work and make automobiles, drivers, and security personnel available. If his itinerary involved a locale with no NOI presence, he frequently traveled with one or more FOI security members. His secretary at the mosque handled his routine correspondence. It was this elaborate infrastructure that helped turn a prominent local leader into a national figure. The question Malcolm now confronted was, what would happen if all this was taken away? What financial resources could he provide for Betty and the children? He had virtually no savings, and no insurance. He had even arranged for his future book royalties to go to the Nation. His faith in the Nation of Islam had been complete and unquestioning, leaving him no fallback, no path of escape if it turned out to be misplaced.

  It was this position of vulnerability that forced Malcolm to plead to Muhammad to allow him to be reinstated, in any capacity. In a notebook he kept during the last two weeks of January, he tried to work out his thoughts on the best way to present his case to Muhammad. “Had no bad motive. Had good intention,” he wrote.

  Feeling innocent, have felt extremely persecuted. Have felt lied about. Unjustly and unnecessarily . . . forced to find some way to defend myself, to retaliate against those enemies without hurting you. . . . If I’m wrong in these feelings and conclusions, I’m at least being truthful and not hypocritical, chance to serve Allah and you . . .

  As my last letter stated: 1. I believe in Our Savior, you and your program. 2. I know only what you taught me. 3. And am only what you have made me. 4. I have never exalted myself above you. 5. I have never acted independently. I made a serious mistake by not coming straight to you—and that mistake, led to my making others. I am sincerely sorry and pray to Allah for forgiveness, and I ask you to pray to Allah for my forgiveness. I cannot be an enemy to you without being an enemy to myself. I cannot speak against you without speaking against myself.

  Between January and late February, he wrote Muhammad a series of letters requesting reinstatement, appealing to their close personal relationship and casting the Chicago leadership as jealous and bent on driving them apart. The “others,” he wrote, leaving no question as to whom he meant, desired the end of their partnership “because they know Allah has blessed me t
o be your best representative as well as your best defender. . . . The only ones there who may think against you are the ones that are not really with you themselves. This is a dangerous position to be in, because it only adds division upon division.” Few of these letters have survived; there is also a good chance that Muhammad never read them, because his access to correspondence with Nation officials was controlled by Ali and his aides.

  Yet as his suspension persisted and Muhammad seemed unsympathetic, Malcolm eventually came to believe he had misjudged the situation. For all his difficulties with Chicago, he finally began to see that the real problem was not with John Ali or Raymond Sharrieff, but with Muhammad himself. In his diary, Malcolm drafted a four-item critique of Elijah Muhammad that had been suggested by Wallace: “1. John not to blame[,] you behind all John’s moves,” he wrote in his notebook. “2. You use John. 3. You not interested in Muslims, but self. 4. You use money to control all those around you.” Malcolm observed that he and Wallace shared extensive common ground in their complaints about the Nation’s leadership. Under the heading “Wallace’s analysis of [Mosque] No. 2,” Malcolm noted: “1. Chi[cago] officials scared and had changed (agreed). 2. Cold, impersonal, inconsiderate & hard on members (agreed). 3. Force & authority instead of instructions (agreed). 4. Protecting self, not you or the nation (agreed).” He complained to Wallace that under Joseph’s influence the FOI had been turned into an internal surveillance system. “Joseph had become a cop, and ceased being a bro (two-thirds a cop) same situation everywhere. Captains have become anti-Minister.”

  These notebook fragments are significant in explaining the differences that led to Malcolm’s split from the sect, and subsequently to his assassination. Most of Muhammad’s family and the Chicago secretariat opposed Malcolm for two basic reasons. First, they were convinced that he coveted the Messenger's position: that once Elijah was incapacitated, or dead, Malcolm would easily take command. Their material benefits derived from being the “royal family” would abruptly end. But equally important was the second reason: Malcolm’s militant politics of 1962-63 represented a radical break with the Nation of Islam’s apolitical black nationalism. Herbert Muhammad had already barred any publicity in Muhammad Speaks related to Malcolm one full year prior to the official silencing. To ensure that Chicago maintained tight control, officials increasingly deployed the Fruit of Islam as a surveillance and intimidation unit. As Malcolm noted, Joseph had “become a cop,” not a brother, a not so subtle reference to the beatings he inflicted. But Muhammad’s family totally misread Malcolm’s motives. He never saw himself as the heir apparent; if anyone should be groomed for the Messenger's role, Malcolm believed, it was Wallace. He preferred the itinerant life of an evangelist. He respected and loved Wallace and would have supported him as the successor had the Messenger died. Malcolm’s tragic mistake was believing that his militant political aims—the creation of an all-inclusive black united front against U.S. racism—could be constructed with the full participation of the Nation of Islam. The Nation was prepared to undergo Islamization, but it wasn’t ready for civil rights demonstrations, Third World revolution, or Pan-Africanism. It was politics, not personalities, that severed Malcolm’s relationship with the Nation of Islam.

  Only in February 1964 was Malcolm emotionally prepared to contemplate the possibility of life after the Nation of Islam. Politically, he would have to relate to a range of activist organizations, from the NAACP to the socialist left, in an entirely new way. Like many Harlemites, he respected the antiracist political work the Communist Party had done over four decades. But dialogue with them was difficult: they were atheists and, even worse, staunch integrationists. Their key theoreticians on race, notably James E. Jackson and Claude Lightfoot, had examined the Black Muslim phenomenon, characterizing black nationalism as a “conditioned reflex to white chauvinism”: a response to Jim Crow, job discrimination, and the social isolation of the ghetto. However, the Black Muslim emphasis on the teaching of Negro history and culture, and its opposition to drugs, alcoholism, and black-on-black crime, were all positive contributions to the black community. So, on balance, while the communists vigorously disagreed with the sect’s tenets, they favored what Lightfoot called “united front” coalitions on a case-by-case basis. There is evidence that Malcolm may have met with the leaders of the Communist Party’s Harlem branch in mid-February. However, there were no subsequent sessions, even after Malcolm had established the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

  Part of Malcolm’s inner turmoil over these months was caused by doubts about his faith. Leaving the Nation of Islam meant much more than departing a religious cult; he would be abandoning an entire spiritual geography. At many NOI lectures, a display about the future of black identity was depicted on a blackboard. On one side of the board was drawn the American flag, accompanied by a Christian cross and the words “Slavery,” “Suffering,” and “Death.” On the other was depicted the Muslim Crescent, with the words “Islam,” “Freedom,” “Justice,” and “Equality.” Beneath both sets of symbols and words was a question: “Which will survive the War of Armageddon? ʺ The Nation of Islam’s purpose here was twofold. First, Muhammad preached that not only was Islam the “natural religion” of all blacks, but it was only through the knowledge of Islam that African Americans could achieve their goals. Second, the Nation of Islam argued that Americanism and Christianity had brought blacks only slavery and social death. Thus the Nation presented to its converts a comprehensive global system of race, “pitting black Islam against white Christianity in a worldwide and historic struggle.” The essential tenets for the Nation’s religious remapping of the world rested on Yacub’s History—that whites were the devil, that Wallace D. Fard Muhammad was God in person, and that Elijah Muhammad had indeed been chosen by that God to represent his interests on earth. Despite Malcolm’s support for the Nation’s moves toward Islamization, as late as December 1963 he agreed with Yacub’s History and embraced the notion that Muhammad’s contacts with Fard were with Allah in human form. In his interview with Lomax in late December 1963, he insisted vigorously that Elijah had talked with God personally. When Wallace Muhammad in early 1964 expressed his belief that Fard was neither Allah nor God, Malcolm dissented.

  Yet if Elijah Muhammad’s greatest sin was not in impregnating his subordinates but in fraudulently representing himself as Allah’s Messenger, then the Fard narrative was a myth. Were Yacub’s History also false, then people of European descent were not devils to be fought against, but individuals who could oppose racism. Even at the level of NOI class instruction, a new religious remapping of the world based on orthodox Islam would not necessarily stigmatize or isolate the United States because of its history of slavery and racial discrimination. Instead of a bloody jihad, a holy Armageddon, perhaps America could experience a nonviolent, bloodless revolution. At some point, Malcolm must have pondered the unthinkable: it was possible to be black, a Muslim, and an American.

  There were also the practical implications of leaving the Nation. Without its backing, Malcolm would lack the financial means to travel across the country, to hold press conferences or give public speeches. He recognized that if he was to continue as a public figure, he would need to establish a secular organization, dedicated to his own political ideals and staffed by devoted assistants. With such a group, he could negotiate new relationships with civil rights organizations and their leaders.

  By the time Malcolm returned to Miami Beach only a few days before the Clay-Liston fight, wild rumors were swirling. Publicity about Clay’s NOI affiliations had swept through Miami, pleasing no one except perhaps Malcolm. The fight’s promoter, Bill MacDonald, had to gross $800,000 to break even, and the stories were turning off white fans and depressing the box office. Days before the fight, scheduled for February 25, less than one half of the Miami Convention Hall’s 15,744 seats had been sold. When Malcolm returned to Miami to rejoin Clay’s entourage, MacDonald threatened to cancel. A compromise was reached when Malcolm agreed to
maintain a lower profile, at least until the night of the fight. In return, the Muslim minister would receive celebrity treatment and a ringside view—seat 7, his favorite number.

  Malcolm primarily saw his role as Clay’s spiritual mentor. No one gave the brash pretender any chance of winning. Yet Malcolm reassured Clay that his impending victory had been prophesied centuries earlier. Clay’s win, he predicted, would not only be a triumph for the Nation of Islam, but for seven hundred million Muslims across the globe. But Malcolm’s continuing fascination with Clay, and the outcome of this particular bout, was at least in part influenced by his problematic status inside the Nation. The fight would be held only one day prior to the annual Saviour's Day convention, and here Malcolm saw an opportunity. He contacted Chicago headquarters and offered a deal: he would accompany Clay, once victorious over Liston, directly to Chicago to appear at the convention, in return for his full reinstatement. Chicago rejected the offer, in part because officials still doubted Clay’s boxing abilities, but primarily because by late February they had no intention of allowing Malcolm back in.