Alex Haley (7 page)

In January 1963 the
Saturday Evening Post
published another profile of the NOI titled “Black Merchants of Hate,” which Haley co-authored with Alfred Balk, a white investigative reporter on the
Post
staff. Balk and Haley presented themselves as an interracial investigating team that discovered things both “heartening” and “deeply disturbing.” During their research, Balk was reporting to the FBI on his and Haley's research and getting information from the Bureau with the promise that he would not attribute it to the FBI. This was a common tactic at the Bureau in investigating organizations suspected of “un-American” activities.
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Haley and Balk's story began with how, in 1957, Malcolm dispersed a Harlem crowd assembled to protest the beating of an NOI member. “No man should have that much power,” a white policeman observed. Police in Chicago insisted that the NOI was not a mere cult but “a mass movement on a national scale.” Haley and Balk described an NOI meeting of five thousand that put them in mind of the “huge meetings at which Hitler screamed his doctrines of Aryan supremacy.” As quoted in the article, Elijah Muhammad declared that whites were corrupt and their civilization doomed: “Get away from them! . . . They was taught to do
evil!
They was taught to
hate
you and me! Stand up and fight the white man! . . .
We will rule!
” Haley and Balk quoted C. Eric Lincoln's characterization of NOI members as having been uneducated, unskilled, isolated from “the common values of society,” “shunned by successful whites and Negroes alike,” and hopeless until they heard Muhammad's prophecy of race supremacy.
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The article delivered the message of black subversion of traditional authority, which the FBI consistently advanced about black groups, including civil rights organizations.

“Black Merchants of Hate” carried a harsher tone about the NOI than Haley's 1960
Reader's Digest
piece. The
Post
had a history of racist fiction and edgy investigative journalism. It probably reflected the influence of Balk, and perhaps through him the anti-black views of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Haley had certainly been exposed to a much more complex understanding of black anger than was reflected in the
Post
piece.

The other noteworthy difference between the
Reader's Digest
piece and the
Saturday Evening Post
article was the latter's much more extensive focus on Malcolm X. He was portrayed as the most influential Black Muslim. The media attention contributed to a growing opposition to Malcolm in the close circle around Elijah Muhammad, especially on the part of Muhammad's aide John Ali, formerly a protégé of Malcolm, and of Muhammad's daughter and son-in-law, Ethel and Raymond Sharieff. In 1960 and 1961 Muhammad had disapproved of Malcolm's meeting with Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his public criticism of President Kennedy; the Messenger discouraged any activity that invited closer scrutiny and harassment by the federal government. Muhammad downplayed his unhappiness with Malcolm when they met, but the inner circle schemed against Malcolm with Muhammad's tacit approval. At the same time, people within the sect had been whispering that Muhammad had fathered a number of children with secretaries in the organization. The gossip was true, but Malcolm tried to ignore it. He saw himself as a loyal servant of the Messenger and wanted to be seen as such by others, even as his fame as the main public representative of the NOI grew.
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* * *

Haley's positive relationship with Malcolm X seemed not to suffer because of “Black Merchants of Hate.” When Haley asked him to do a
Playboy
interview, Malcolm and Muhammad again agreed. Spectorsky, who was Jewish, objected to the interview, probably because of the vicious anti-Semitism Malcolm expressed. Hefner overruled him, and the editors justified the interview on the grounds that “knowledge and awareness are necessary and effective antitoxins against the venom of hate.” Introducing the interview,
Playboy
characterized Malcolm as Muhammad's erudite disciple, who wielded “all but absolute authority over the movement and its membership as Muhammad's business manager, trouble shooter, prime minister and heir apparent.”
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In the interview, Malcolm said there had never been a sincere white man, ever, in history. Whites had brainwashed blacks, but now blacks had seen the truth of the white devils' malevolent influence, and the white man's influence in the world was finished. Christians of all varieties were evil, especially Catholics, who produced fascist and communist dictators. Jews liked to advise the black man, he said, “but they never advise him how to solve his problem the way Jews solved their problem.” Elijah Muhammad “cleans us up—morally, mentally and spiritually” from the “the mess that white men have made.” Blacks should be given their own territory in the United States. Muhammad taught that it was God's intention “to put the black man back at the top of civilization, where he was in the beginning—before Adam, the white man, was created.” Bourgeois Negroes pretended to be alienated from the Black Muslims, “but they're just making the white man
think
they don't go for what Mr. Muhammad is saying.”

Throughout the interview, Haley challenged Malcolm's interpretations of history and motive, but the minister never backed away from the anti-white doctrines of the NOI. Malcolm insisted to Haley that
Playboy
's editors would never print the interview as he gave it, and he was taken aback when in fact they did. Haley and Malcolm had created a seminal document of American history and a memorable expression of black alienation. The interview changed the course of both men's lives.

4

The Fearsome Black Demagogue

In early 1963 Charles Ferguson, Haley's editor at
Reader's Digest,
arranged for him to meet the literary agent Paul Revere Reynolds Jr. Ferguson and Reynolds were good friends and neighbors in the Westchester County town of Chappaqua, home of
Reader's Digest.
Reynolds, tall with silver hair, in his late fifties, gave the strong impression of a proper Yankee gentleman. Son of the first American literary agent to represent English writers in the U.S. market, including Winston Churchill, H. G. Wells, and Arthur Conan Doyle, Reynolds was now one of the most influential literary agents in New York. He represented Irving Wallace, Morris West, William Shirer, and Howard Fast and had nurtured Richard Wright's career with sensitivity to the racial indignities that he endured. Reynolds agreed to take on Haley as a client. Haley sent Reynolds two hundred pages of what he called “advance material” for the book he entitled “Henning, U.S.A.” This was Haley's original attempt to treat life in his Tennessee hometown as representative of race relations in the South. Reynolds's response was not encouraging. “I've got to be pretty pessimistic about this manuscript. I'm keen about you as a writer, about your ability as a writer. But these vignettes would be very difficult for a book publisher to sell in my opinion.” Haley was undaunted by the critique: “I have heard so much of the caliber of your judgment, and of the publishing field's respect for you, that I now feel as though a milestone has been achieved when my efforts at a book cause you to want to discuss it.”
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In late April 1963 the
New York Times
ran a story titled “Assertive Spirit Stirs Negroes,” written by M. S. “Mike” Handler, who had just returned to the United States from three decades of reporting on the origins and aftermath of World War II in Europe. Perhaps because he was out of the United States during the popular demonization of the Nation of Islam, Handler offered a more dispassionate evaluation of the black mood than it had received in the American media so far. Thirty years of experience in Europe had taught him that powerful forces in a struggle were frequently “buried beneath the visible surface and make themselves felt in many ways long before they burst out into the open.” He believed that ideas had more power than Americans typically afforded them, and he sensed that the opinions most influencing black thinking at the moment came from “those working in the penumbra of the [civil rights] movement—‘underground,' so to speak.” Handler defined Black Nationalism—giving its name in the upper case—as an assertive mood represented by the Nation of Islam and in particular by Malcolm X. All segments of the black population shared some of the black nationalist anger, but only the Black Muslims renounced integration with whites. Handler called Malcolm X “the dynamic leader” of the Black Muslims and said he now overshadowed Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm articulated black anger more powerfully than anyone else. Handler gave Malcolm the last word: “You cannot integrate the Negroes and the whites without bloodshed. . . . The only peaceful way is for the Negroes and whites to separate.” The story ran while Martin Luther King Jr. demonstrated in Birmingham, but his leadership of the civil rights movement was peripheral in Handler's story.
2

The Handler story coincided with the publication of Haley's
Playboy
interview with Malcolm. A great many Americans in 1963 would believe something was true only if they read it in the
New York Times,
and now Haley had that validation. He wrote to Reynolds about the man Haley now referred to as “the fearsome black demagogue.” He thought the combination of his
Playboy
interview and the
Times
article created a “tailored package to impress upon a publisher what Malcolm's signed book would offer.” Haley had that day discussed with Malcolm the idea of collaborating on a book. Malcolm was happy with the responses to the
Playboy
interview and said that he had Elijah Muhammad's tentative consent for the book but Haley would have to discuss the matter with the Messenger. Haley went to Muhammad and was told, “Allah approves.”

With that, Paul Reynolds made his way to the NOI restaurant for an audience with Malcolm. Reynolds recalled that Malcolm was an “erudite man” who quoted Shakespeare to him, which prompted the agent to respond, “Now will the winter of thy discontent be made into glorious summer by the writing of Haley.” That's from
Richard III,
Malcolm noted. Reynolds and Malcolm chatted amiably about the book contract. Haley later shared with Reynolds Malcolm's comment that “that White Devil himself hath class.” In a written agreement Malcolm and Haley set clear ground rules for the content of the book. Malcolm promised to give Haley enough time to elicit material sufficient for a hundred-thousand-word book. Nothing could appear in the book that Malcolm did not approve of, and anything Malcolm particularly wanted in it would be included. When Malcolm signed the contract, he said to Haley, “A writer is what I want, not an interpreter.” Later Haley got Malcolm to give permission for him to write his own comments at the end of the book, without Malcolm's review. Haley decided not to be listed as Malcolm's co-author because he thought that would imply that he shared Malcolm's views, “when mine are almost a complete antithesis of his.” The book would be by Malcolm, “as told to Alex Haley.”
3

Why did the NOI open itself to book-length scrutiny at a volatile time in American race relations? Haley was only vaguely aware that all the media attention given Malcolm had antagonized Elijah Muhammad and his inner circle. According to Manning Marable, Malcolm believed the autobiography would give him a means to reconcile with Muhammad by demonstrating in print his fealty to the Messenger. Both Malcolm and Muhammad tolerated negative interpretations of their movement for the sake of the publicity that men like Haley brought the NOI.
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Reynolds set the price of the book for prospective publishers—$20,000. He soon had an offer from Doubleday and Company. “They are a large house, a conservative house, a conscientious house, and publish quite a lot of distinguished writers,” he explained, without mentioning that Doubleday had recently published two books that Reynolds himself had written. In the post–World War II years, Doubleday had been the single largest publisher of books in the world, putting out a long list and operating many bookstores and a successful book club. The senior editor, Kenneth McCormick, oversaw a large group of successful writers, including Leon Uris, Irving Stone, Allen Drury, Dwight Eisenhower, and Richard Nixon. McCormick and his small army of assistants would edit Haley's book, which they wanted to bring out soon.
5

Haley was now connected to some of the most powerful people in American publishing. DeWitt Wallace and Charles Ferguson ran the most widely circulated magazine in the United States, Paul Reynolds was almost without peer among literary agents, and McCormick was one of the most influential and prolific editors in New York. The men saw each other socially and trusted one another professionally, and in 1963 they quickly brought Haley into their network.

Reynolds soon learned, however, that he would earn his fee for representing Haley. Malcolm informed Haley that his half of the advance should be made payable to Muhammad's Mosque No. 2, the NOI Chicago headquarters, and then wanted assurance that Reynolds would in fact pay out the Doubleday advance. Reynolds replied stiffly to Haley that Malcolm would not have to worry about collecting from him. Haley asked Reynolds for $500 of his advance before it came in from Doubleday. Reynolds sent the money but appended a note: “I can't always promise to be able to advance money at any time. I always tell authors that we're not bankers.” Haley promised to deliver the book by September 1, 1963, less than three months away, because there was not “as much complex composition as another book might take.” Reynolds replied that there was no need to rush, because Doubleday did not have time to publish the book in 1963.
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Haley immediately revealed a penchant for jumping ahead to another book before the one at hand was written. Just after signing the contract, he wrote to Reynolds, “It's my hope that quite early in 1964 I'm going to be able to hand over to you the first four chapters and remainder in outline of the novel that I nearly know by heart, ‘The Lord and Little David.'” Reynolds gently advised him to slow down. “You're going to do a lot of books and I don't want you to kill yourself with work.”
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The admonition went unheeded. Two months later, having submitted nothing of the Malcolm X book, Haley wrote, “You mentioned that after this project, we would talk of others. I have it, Mr. Reynolds. I guarantee you a fine book, perfect for these times, its title to be ‘Before This Anger.'” This idea was a slight variation on the one he had proposed for a book on Henning.
8

Haley struggled at first to win Malcolm's confidence. In their early meetings, the NOI spokesman remained tight-lipped and noncommittal. Malcolm's wife, Betty, was also reserved and suspicious when she met the writer, but Haley charmed her when he admired a pie she had baked. “Hey, this is delicious,” Haley, himself an experienced cook, said. “How on earth did you make it?” Betty soon decided Haley was wonderfully cosmopolitan: “I thought . . . this is a man of the world.” Betty's biographer called Haley her “periscope to an urbane, secular scene.” In the next few years, she and Haley often chatted amiably over the telephone, and their fondness for each other lasted for decades. Betty took care of several small children and took the unending telephone calls that came for Malcolm. Eventually she confided her frustrations with Malcolm to Haley. But she also mirrored Malcolm's growing affection for Haley. “I love Alex,” she said years later.
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Once the autobiography was under way, in June 1963 Malcolm began coming to Haley's apartment in Greenwich Village late at night, arriving in his blue Oldsmobile. Their sessions went on for hours, with Haley typing notes. Haley thought the interviews got off to a poor start because the two men were “spooky” of each other. Malcolm still addressed Haley as “Sir,” and his talk dwelt entirely on NOI philosophy and the evils of the white devil. He may have been reticent because he thought the FBI was bugging Haley's apartment. In the early interviews, Haley got little of a personal nature from Malcolm, and he feared he would have to tell the publisher that there was not going to be a book. He had to beg Malcolm for more interview time: “I badly need it. Justice to what the book can do for the Muslims needs it.” To loosen Malcolm up, he had George Sims sit in on the interviews, because Sims seemed to relax Malcolm. Haley's son, Fella, was sometimes there, too, and the teenager soon announced he wanted to join the Nation of Islam.
10

Haley noticed that Malcolm often doodled on napkins, writing sentences and phrases that revealed inner thoughts. For example, “[The white man] so quick to tell [the black man], ‘Look what I have done for you!' No! Look what you have done
to
us.” Another one: “[The] only persons [who] really changed history [were] those who changed men's thinking about themselves. Hitler as well as Jesus, Stalin as well as Buddha. . . . Hon. Elijah Muhammad.” One scribble went, “Woman who cries all time is only because she knows she can get away with it,” which prompted Haley to ask for Malcolm's views on women. “You can never fully trust any woman,” he said, adding that his wife, Betty, was the only woman he ever met he could trust 75 percent of the time. He had seen too many men destroyed by their wives. But he scribbled, “I have a wife who understands, or even if she doesn't she at least pretends.”
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Haley finally got access to Malcolm's personal life when he interrupted a rant against blacks who condemned Elijah Muhammad. “I wonder if you'd tell me something about your mother?” Malcolm's speech slowed down. “She was always standing over the stove, trying to stretch whatever we had to eat. We stayed so hungry that we were dizzy. I remember the color of dresses she used to wear—they were a kind of faded-out gray.” Malcolm talked until dawn, and from the memories he recounted, Haley got material for the first two chapters of
The Autobiography of Malcolm X,
which for many readers would be the most compelling parts. At that point in American literature, there was little besides Richard Wright's novel
Native Son
that gave insight into the inner-city black experience. As the two men talked about Malcolm's time on the streets as a hustler, Malcolm became more introspective and self-critical. “The only thing I considered wrong,” he said of those days, “was what I got caught doing wrong. I had a jungle mind, I was living in a jungle, and everything I did was done by instinct to survive.”
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Manning Marable portrays Haley as an opportunistic, bourgeois, and politically conservative opposite to Malcolm, one who saw his collaboration with the NOI minister mainly as a chance at writing fame. In fact, as Haley accompanied Malcolm to college lectures, television appearances, and walks through Harlem over the next few months, the two men became friends. Haley listened to Malcolm discuss his intellectual interests in philology, and, like Paul Reynolds, Haley was impressed with Malcolm's intelligence and learning. Indeed, Malcolm was much more than the “fearsome black demagogue” Haley had promoted to the publishing world. Haley began to see that Malcolm's grievance about the demagogue epithet was justified. The two men's understanding of the world and the people in it were not so different. Haley found that Malcolm did not really consider all whites devils. Nor did Malcolm actually dismiss all middle-class blacks as Uncle Toms. He admired the photographer Gordon Parks, the actor Ossie Davis, and the psychologist Kenneth Clark as forthright supporters of all blacks; at the same time Malcolm disliked Thurgood Marshall, Carl Rowan, Jackie Robinson, and Roy Wilkins, who had all caustically dismissed the Nation of Islam. Malcolm liked the black journalists Louis Lomax, James Hicks, and Jimmy Booker, who took Malcolm seriously, and he admired the Christian sociologist C. Eric Lincoln. Malcolm soon made it clear that he also liked the bourgeois, Christian Alex Haley.
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