Malcolm X

by Manning Marable

  Malcolm’s death set off a chain reaction of violence and intimidation that kept his supporters in fear and left his organizations crumbling. On the night of the murder, a fire ignited in Muhammad Ali’s Chicago apartment, but the fire was later determined to have been accidental. Ali informed the press that Malcolm had been his friend “as long as he was a member of [the Nation of] Islam. Now I don’t want to talk about him.” Perhaps still suspicious about his apartment fire, Ali protested, “All of us were shocked at the way [Malcolm] was killed.” Ali denied that Elijah Muhammad, or others in the NOI, had any involvement in the murder.

  Two days later, early in the morning on February 23, unknown parties ascended to the roof of a building next door to Mosque No. 7 and tossed Molotov cocktails into the mosque’s fourth floor, igniting a fire that soon raged out of control, with flames soaring as high as thirty feet. The fire quickly spread next door to the Gethsemane Church of God in Christ, and soon seventy-five firemen were working frantically to put it out. As a section of the mosque’s wall collapsed, five firefighters and a civilian were injured. Within an hour the entire building was gutted. The Fruit of Islam was mustered, and soon about three hundred people were watching the fire blaze away. As the crowd grew and emotions surged, the police became worried and called in reinforcements. In the frigid night air, Larry 4X Prescott huddled next to Captain Joseph, who had begun to weep. Larry was shocked to see the almost stoic, deeply private Joseph now overwhelmed with grief.

  The destruction of the mosque greatly increased public perceptions that an open gang war was imminent. The NYPD policed the Nation’s Brooklyn mosque and the ten businesses it owned in the surrounding neighborhood; the mosque in Queens was similarly protected. In Chicago, squads stood an around-the-clock vigil to protect the life of Muhammad, still cloistered in his Hyde Park mansion. Captain Joseph characterized the Harlem firebombing as “a vicious sneak attack. . . . The worst thing a man can do is tamper with your religious sanctuary.”

  The Nation would exact its revenge not in Harlem’s streets, but in Chicago at the Saviour’s Day convention. In preparation, administrators worked closely with the Chicago police to carry out extraordinary security measures around the convention hall. A police bomb squad thoroughly checked the facility; attendees were processed through police barricades before entering. Elijah Muhammad himself “will not make a move unless accompanied by at least six members of his security force, the Fruit of Islam brigade,” reported the Chicago Tribune. Twenty-five hundred members were present as the convention began on February 26. The event was orchestrated as a triumph of the victors. “Malcolm was a hypocrite who got what he was preaching,” Elijah Muhammad proclaimed. “Just weeks ago he came to this city to blast away with his hate and mudslinging. He didn’t stop here, either, but then went around the country trying to slander me.”

  The audience was treated to the spectacle of Wallace Muhammad and Malcolm’s brothers, Wilfred X and Philbert X, walking out onstage to ask forgiveness and to pledge fidelity to the Messenger. Wallace claimed that he had been confused, that it had been wrong to leave the Nation and his father. In tears, he announced that “only God was in a position to judge a figure so exalted” as Elijah Muhammad. Reading texts that had been prepared for them, both Wilfred and Philbert denounced their dead brother for “his mistakes” and made it clear they would not attend his funeral. Wilfred declared to the convention, “We must not let our natural enemy, the white man, come between us [to] get us to kill each other. I was shocked to hear the news of my brother’s death but from my heart I ask Allah to strengthen me as a follower of Elijah Muhammad.”

  Back in New York, there were by now serious questions about how Malcolm was to be buried. By Islamic standards, the autopsy itself had represented a desecration of his body. Muslim tradition also requires the prompt burial of the deceased, and on the opening day of the Saviour’s Day convention Malcolm’s corpse was lying in state for the fourth day at Harlem’s Unity Funeral Home, dressed in a Western-style business suit. Since Tuesday, about thirty thousand people had come to pay their respects. During the week Betty and others close to her had contacted more than a dozen Harlem churches, including Adam Clayton Powell’s Abyssinian Baptist, to host Malcolm’s last rites; all declined, fearing Nation of Islam retaliation. Finally, the Faith Temple Church of God in Christ, on Amsterdam Avenue in West Harlem, agreed to make its auditorium available. Within hours, the church received a series of bomb threats, but the ceremony went forward without incident. Just before the funeral, Sheikh Ahmed Hassoun prepared and wrapped Malcolm’s body in a kafan, a traditional Muslim burial sheet.

  More than a thousand people packed the Faith Temple Church on Saturday, February 27, to bear witness to Malcolm’s funeral. There were a small number of movement leaders—Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, Dick Gregory, and SNCC’s John Lewis and James Forman—but the majority stayed away, probably fearing violence. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., was not present, nor were most of Harlem’s civic leaders. Betty had asked Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee to preside over the program, and the two read out dozens of notes of condolence from a range of dignitaries, including King, Whitney Young, and Kwame Nkrumah. But it was Davis’s soliloquy on the meaning of Malcolm’s life to the black people of Harlem that captured the public’s imagination, and in subsequent decades would dwarf everything else that occurred that day. Using notes scribbled at his kitchen table, Davis spoke these words: Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy, controversial, and bold young captain—and we will smile. . . . And we will answer and say unto them: Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever touch him, or have him smile at you? . . . And if you knew him you would know why we must honor him: Malcolm was our manhood, our living black manhood! . . . And we will know him then for what he was and is—a prince—our own black shining prince—who didn’t hesitate to die, because he loved us so.

  Following Davis’s eulogy, Betty walked to the coffin to view her husband a final time. Accompanied by two plainclothes police officers, she bent down and kissed the glass cover that had been placed over his body. She then collapsed in tears. The funeral cortege, which included three family cars, twelve police vehicles, and eighteen mourners’ cars, headed north to Westchester County. About twenty-five thousand people braved the freezing weather along the route to the cemetery. Only two hundred people, including media representatives, were allowed at the gravesite. After the last prayers, the coffin was lowered into the grave. There was still time for a final moment of controversy, one that in many respects illustrates the dilemma Malcolm faced at the end of his life. Several MMI and OAAU brothers noticed that the cemetery workers waiting to bury the coffin were all white. No white men, they complained, should be allowed to throw dirt on Malcolm’s body. The workers were persuaded to surrender their shovels, and under a drizzling rain the brothers proceeded to bury Malcolm themselves.

  During the weeks after the mosque firebombing and the funeral, Malcolm loyalists feared for their lives. The Nation was convinced that die-hard Malcolmites were responsible for the fire, and that their actions merited fierce retribution. On March 12, Leon 4X Ameer, mostly recovered from the savage beating he had suffered at the hands of Clarence Gill and his men back in December, spoke to a meeting of Boston Trotskyists, claiming he had evidence that the U.S. government was involved in Malcolm’s death. The next day his body was found in his room at the Sherry Biltmore hotel. A medical examiner ruled that Ameer’s death was caused by a coma from a sleeping pill overdose. Another victim was Robert 35X Smith, one of Malcolm’s rostrum guards at the assassination. “Karate Bob,” as he was called, died when he either jumped or was pushed in front of a speeding subway car. When questioned years later about the death, Larry 4X Prescott curtly explained, “He got killed in the subway. They claimed that we pushed him off the subway [platform] or something, which I don’t believe.”

  Neither the OAAU nor MMI had cultivated procedures of collective decision making, and without Malcolm, the weak bonds
that had held the groups together came apart. Leaders worked on a volunteer basis out of personal devotion to Malcolm, and his death did more than deny them his physical presence: it froze their universe. He had become the cutting edge for rethinking black nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and their own homegrown version of Islam, and often his devotees stumbled behind him—even at times suppressing his letters because his shifts in ideology were too disturbing. Without the architecture of his expanding social vision, they found it almost impossible to build upon his legacy. Trust soon evaporated between most members, as people renounced their ties.

  In retrospect, Max Stanford said, “the OAAU was trying to put [itself] together too fast.” Collective leadership was the desired goal, but in reality “most people were mesmerized by Malcolm.” Even when Stanford expressed disagreements with Malcolm, he admitted, “Malcolm would mesmerize me. He was further developed” politically and intellectually than nearly all his followers. Consequently, when Malcolm became “a mass spokesman who’s world-acclaimed,” there was no one after the assassination prepared to assume his leadership mantle. At first, James 67X thought he might be up to the task. Several days after the assassination, he met with Revolutionary Action Movement members Max Stanford and Larry Neal. According to Stanford, James said that “Malcolm had formed a RAM cell somewhere in Muslim Mosque, Inc. and had said that if anything happened to him, I would know what to do.” RAM’s representatives agreed to work with James and other MMI activists. “The agreement was for [James] to continue to go internationally and around the country like Malcolm,” Stanford recalled, “because he could sound like Malcolm.” Yet James soon had his hands full simply trying to keep both groups alive. Because of the long-troublesome divisions between the MMI and the OAAU, there was no one in either group who could inspire the trust and confidence of members in the other group. The secular-oriented activists, moreover, had little interest in the MMI’s Islamic spiritual agenda. Given the absence of administrative resources or even a permanent office, neither organization could be sustained.

  As the core of Malcolm’s supporters disappeared or fell away, James alone was left to deal with Betty Shabazz. Even within hours of Malcolm’s murder, her relationship with the MMI and the OAAU had become confrontational. She blamed Malcolm’s supporters for his death; in her bitterness and anger, she instructed several OAAU members to dump into the garbage many of her husband’s important papers, all of which had been moved for safety to the Wallaces’ home. She demanded that James forward to her all MMI correspondence unopened, including letters addressed to Malcolm, allowing her to review everything first. James refused. “She was a grieving widow, a hero’s widow,” he explained, but one who had at best a limited comprehension of the MMI and OAAU’s work.

  The care and security of Betty and the children were largely assumed by Ruby Dee, Juanita Poitier, and other female friends, most of them celebrities. These women established the Committee of Concerned Mothers to provide support. Percy Sutton, James Baldwin, and John Oliver Killens also became actively involved. Within several weeks, over six thousand dollars was raised, including a five-hundred-dollar contribution from Shirley Graham Du Bois. In August, the committee organized a benefit concert that attracted a thousand people and generated another five thousand dollars for the purchase of a home. Malcolm’s core constituency, the black poor and working class, never abandoned Betty. She received many envelopes with small amounts of cash, sent either to the Hotel Theresa or to the MMI’s post office box. James 67X wrote to many of Malcolm’s international contacts requesting funds. Advertisements were placed on New York radio stations. Several aggressive MMI brothers even visited Harlem merchants and demanded cash and merchandise “contributions” for Betty and the children. Yet some Malcolm loyalists found Betty’s behavior at this time disturbing. To them, she seemed to be rejecting her husband’s poor and working-class black constituency, favoring instead overtures to the black bourgeoisie. Ferguson put Betty’s elitist politics in the context of Malcolm’s “Message to the Grassroots” speech: “She moved from the field slaves to the house slaves.”

  As James 67X’s most trusted allies dissipated, and the difficulties of working with Betty grew more apparent, he recalled his promise to Malcolm to work for him for twelve months. Mid-March 1965 marked the end of that obligation, and he now began considering other options. He was exhausted, and Charles Kenyatta’s scurrilous rumors also had a poisonous effect; some MMI members wondered why James had left the Audubon for nearly an hour following the shooting, and questioned his cordial relations with the Marxists in RAM. So when Ella Collins contacted James, demanding the right to take over the MMI and OAAU based on her blood tie with Malcolm, he at first resisted, but soon agreed to resign his post. Ella was also given the incorporation papers for Muslim Mosque, Inc., becoming the effective leader of both groups.

  On March 15, Ella held a press conference at OAAU and MMI headquarters. Described in the New York Times as “an ample figure in black skirt and large-buttoned blouse,” Collins was “terse and cryptic in speech,” a far cry from her charismatic brother. Collins’s claim to leadership was based on her questionable assertion that she had been executive director of Boston’s OAAU chapter since June 1964. She also asserted that Malcolm himself had appointed her as “his successor” on February 20, 1965. Collins generally expressed conservative views. She said that she had “no desire to fight against” Muhammad or the Nation of Islam; she attributed the firebombing of Malcolm’s Queens home to forces “much bigger than the Black Muslims”; and when asked whether the OAAU would reject “leftist or communist” support, Collins responded, “I believe so.” Within days, Collins’s reactionary politics—when compared to Malcolm’s—and her belligerent behavior drove out the few remaining veteran activists. Soon after, James 67X informed RAM that he planned to abandon all future political activity. At perhaps their final meeting, James announced mysteriously “that he was going to disappear, and that the initial cadre that was with Malcolm were going to go under[ground].” When RAM representatives suggested that youth organizing might offer new possibilities, James laughed, saying that they “were crazy” and “the youth were crazy.” And then, recalled Max Stanford, “he disappeared.”

  James had decided to go underground because both the OAAU and MMI quickly fell apart without Malcolm. The best—and worst—example was Charles Kenyatta. Within days of the assassination, he insinuated to the press that the killing was an inside job, carried out by Marxists and the Revolutionary Action Movement. He talked extensively with the NYPD, and on March 15 was interviewed by the FBI. He pointed out that it was “very odd that Malcolm X’s bodyguards were not beside him on the stage.” Nor had he recognized any of Malcolm’s bodyguards in the rear of the hall. He further claimed that he and Malcolm “were very close friends” and that they had frequently discussed “certain matters pertaining to the NOI and the MMI.” Kenyatta then proceeded to trash Malcolm’s most faithful supporters. Although the FBI report is redacted, it is clear that he told the FBI that James 67X was “not a Negro nationalist but a Marxist Communist,” and that Malcolm had deliberately lied in claiming that scholarships would be made available for MMI members to study in Cairo; this was “only stated by Malcolm to make him look important.” In summary, Kenyatta warned FBI agents he “may be next in line to be assassinated.”

  The trial of Hayer, Butler, and Johnson began the following winter, on January 12, 1966. The district attorney’s office was represented by veteran prosecutor Vincent J. Dermody. The judge was seventy-one-year-old Charles Marks, a law-and-order jurist who was personally responsible for sentencing one-fourth of all the prisoners on New York State’s death row. The case against Hayer was open and shut, because he had been shot attempting to flee the murder scene; in his pocket had been found an ammunition clip that matched the .45 caliber bullets taken from Malcolm’s body. In the cases of Butler and Johnson, however, there was of course no physical evidence connecting them with the murder. Both men had ali
bis for that Sunday afternoon, and there was no tangible connection between them and Hayer, beyond their NOI membership. There was also the problem of the chain of command: the police had no clue who had actually given the order to kill.

  The prosecution’s star witness was Cary 2X Thomas (also known as Abdul Malik). Born in New York City in 1930, by his mid-twenties he had become a heroin addict and narcotics dealer. For years he was in and out of jail on drug charges, and in early 1963 was assigned to Bellevue Hospital after a nervous breakdown. In December of that year he joined Mosque No. 7, but soon left, siding with Malcolm in the split. Thomas’s extremely short tenure in the Nation meant that he knew relatively little about the organization, or the reasons for Malcolm’s separation. After detectives interviewed him, the district attorney’s office decided to arrest him as a material witness. For almost a year he was held in protective custody. On one occasion, highly disturbed, he set fire to his jail mattress.

  In his original testimony to the grand jury, Thomas was one of the few OAAU members who claimed to have seen all three men—Hayer, Butler, and Johnson—at the murder. He explained that Butler and Johnson were the two who had tussled with each other while Hayer attacked Malcolm with the sawed-off shotgun. Since Hayer bore absolutely no physical resemblance to the shooter, the prosecutors and police persuaded Thomas to revise his testimony. At the 1966 trial, he was better prepared, insisting that Johnson, not Hayer, had wielded the shotgun; Hayer and Butler were the two handgun attackers. But he continued to make minor mistakes that undermined his testimony, for example, identifying Hayer as a member of Mosque No. 7; he also admitted to the jury that he had not actually seen guns in the hands of Butler or Hayer.