Blood Brothers (37 page)

Throughout his five-week tour of the Middle East and Africa, Malcolm recorded his thoughts in a diary. His journal revealed that he still considered Ali his brother, even though many assumed that once Ali sided with Elijah, his brotherhood with Malcolm was over. In his mind, they remained on good terms. On April 20, he wrote that Muslims in Saudi Arabia had “mistaken” him “for Cassius Clay,” but when they “learned that I am his friend, many questions [were] asked about him.” Malcolm quickly recognized that Ali was the most famous Muslim-American in the world. In Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where most people spoke Arabic, locals' understanding of boxing and their recognition of Ali allowed Malcolm to communicate without speaking. Muslim men, women, and children smiled when he proudly pointed at a picture of himself with Ali. By sharing that picture and his stories about Ali, Malcolm gained friends and credibility among Muslims abroad.
¹⁶

But Malcolm was not the same man that he was in the picture, smiling with his friend while he hid his fears about a life outside the Nation of Islam. By the time he reached Ghana, his thinking about race, religion, and politics had evolved. After making the pilgrimage to Mecca,
he completed his break from Elijah Muhammad's brand of Islam. Years earlier, in 1959, he had traveled to Egypt and Saudi Arabia as Elijah's emissary. During that trip, he witnessed orthodox Muslims of various races praying together and practicing rituals that conflicted with the Messenger's teaching. Although Elijah taught his followers that Islam was the “black man's religion” and that whites were devils, Malcolm had seen for himself that members of the
ummah
could belong to any nationality or race, as long as they performed the Five Pillars and observed other traditions. At that time he had avoided making the pilgrimage to Mecca because his “devotion to [Elijah]” made him “not want to go there ahead of him.” For years, he suppressed the truth about Elijah's faith, denying the contradictions between the Messenger's parochialism and the practices he encountered in Saudi Arabia. But when he completed the hajj in 1964, he finally accepted that Elijah's orthodoxy was incompatible with the Koran.
¹⁷

The hajj broadened his understanding of Islam and opened him to the possibility that blacks and whites could live together peacefully. When an Arab asked him what impressed him most about his experience, he answered, “The
brotherhood
! The people of all races, colors, from all over the world coming together as
one
! It has proved to me the power of the One God.” Visiting the Holy City inspired him to write letters to American friends describing his spiritual transformation. During his holy pilgrimage, he ate from the same plate, drank from the same cup, slept on the same cot, and prayed on the same rug with white Muslims. For the first time in his life he did not see these men as “white” because they did not identify themselves as whites did in America. He knew that when his letter to the
New York Times
reached American readers, they would be stunned to learn that he now professed that Islam had cleansed him of his belief that all whites were devils.
¹⁸

Yet he continued to rail against white Americans. The American white man was still his enemy. He could not absolve them of their sins against blacks; there was too much blood on their hands. Malcolm's belief that whites were not inherently evil developed gradually, but this realization did not alter his political ideology. At his core, Malcolm was a Black Nationalist, a soldier at war searching for allies in the black liberation movement.
¹⁹

In Ghana, he hoped to find solidarity with black expatriates and state officials. As the fountainhead of Pan-Africanism, Ghana had long served as a haven for expatriates like W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, and Julian Mayfield. After Malcolm spent a night at the Ambassador Hotel, Mayfield, Leslie Lacy, Maya Angelou, Alice Windom, and other exiles welcomed him “home.” As editor-in-chief of the
African Review
and one of Nkrumah's advisers, Mayfield offered the kinds of connections that Malcolm needed to build diplomatic ties with African leaders.
²⁰

At Mayfield's home, thirty to forty guests huddled around Malcolm as he described how the hajj had changed him. He said that he was still a Muslim but would no longer follow Elijah Muhammad, and that he intended to help unify “the various rights groups in America.” Maya Angelou could not believe that this was the same Malcolm who had served as “the bombastic spokesman” for Elijah Muhammad, preaching about the white man's doom. The man sitting in Mayfield's living room smiled easily, exuding a warmth and friendliness that she had never felt before in his presence. Freed from Elijah, Malcolm radiated a renewed energy, grinning and rubbing his sandy beard as he spoke about his new outlook.
²¹

Malcolm toured Accra with his camera, snapping pictures like a tourist. He absorbed the sights, sounds, and smells of the city. Immersed in Ghanaian culture, he spoke to street vendors, students, and intellectuals. He gave interviews, delivered university lectures, and attended lunches and dinners with government officials and ambassadors from various countries.
²²

Before he arrived in Ghana, Malcolm had determined that he would expose the hypocrisy of white Americans who claimed that they supported Africa. He bristled at the sight of whites “who spit in the faces of blacks” back home but “are seen throughout Africa, bowing, grinning and smiling in an effort to ‘integrate' with Africans.” Charging the United States as the “master of imperialism,” he urged African leaders to take a strong stand against the American government for violating blacks' human rights.
²³

Many Ghanaians praised Malcolm for questioning the State Department's claims about racial progress in America. His message echoed throughout Africa at a time when the United States' image abroad
suffered from civil rights protests. As the movement escalated during the early 1960s, international news coverage of brutal discrimination against blacks took on increased significance as the United States and the Soviet Union fought over the alignment of African countries. Appealing to African leaders, the United States promoted a narrative of color-blind democracy in America, while international correspondents and photographers told a different story. In the aftermath of the Birmingham crisis, images of police dogs and fire hoses unleashed on black children were published across Africa. In Accra, the US embassy reported that the American government took “a heavy beating in Ghana over Birmingham.” And after the March on Washington, a small group of Ghanaian protestors demonstrated outside the American embassy, carrying placards that read, “America, Africa is Watching You.”
²⁴

In the mid-1950s, Kwame Nkrumah was celebrated as a symbol of hope throughout the continent. Since 1957, when Ghana became the first sub-Saharan state to gain independence from colonial rule, Nkrumah's promise of democracy had gradually deteriorated into an authoritarian regime plagued by rigged elections, mass arrests, new taxes, and prison sentences for criticizing the government. Yet during the Kennedy administration, the United States courted Nkrumah, hoping that the president's charisma would persuade him to ignore the Soviet Union's overtures.
²⁵

But Nkrumah's mercurial personality made him unpredictable. Dependent on foreign investment, the Ghanaian government exploited the superpowers for financial aid. Still, Nkrumah harbored fears that the CIA, acting independently of the American government, was out to get him, a fear exacerbated by two assassination attempts against him. He also suspected that some black expatriates were working as foreign agents.

In February 1964, about a month after Nkrumah survived a second attempt on his life, two hundred workers from his Convention People's Party staged a protest outside the American embassy, shouting, “Yankees, go home!” A few days later, protestors lowered the American flag in front of the embassy. The state's official newspaper, the
Ghanaian Times
, accused the US of plotting against Nkrumah “because he is the biggest thorn in their neocolonialist ambitions, [and] because he is forging the path of Socialism.” In response, Undersecretary of State
W. Averell Harriman warned Nkrumah that if his government continued to criticize America, the United States would suspend funding for the Volta River hydroelectric dam project, the centerpiece of Ghana's industrialization.
²⁶

By the time Malcolm and Ali arrived in May, Nkrumah had expressed regret over the embassy protests, instructing all government media to cease disseminating anti-American propaganda. After Malcolm reached Accra, he asked Mayfield if he could arrange a meeting with the president, but the Ghanaian leader hesitated after US ambassador William Mahoney warned him that Malcolm's inflammatory rhetoric might damage the goodwill between their countries. Nkrumah made sure that as long as Malcolm, and Ali for that matter, were in Ghana, neither man would jeopardize his relationship with the United States. In Accra, American diplomats reported, “anti-American statements . . . by Malcolm X, militant former Black Muslim leader, and Cassius Clay . . . had received little attention in the press.”
²⁷

Nkrumah well understood the risks of engaging Malcolm. Having met him at a Harlem rally in 1960, he was aware of the minister's provocative image. Only after W. E. B. Du Bois's widow, Shirley, appealed to Nkrumah on Malcolm's behalf did he consent to a private meeting at the Christiansborg Castle, an old slave fort.
²⁸

On May 15, at about noon, Julian Mayfield dropped Malcolm off outside the castle. After guards patted Malcolm down, Nkrumah, a slight man, rose from behind his large office desk, offering a firm handshake and a warm smile. For about an hour they sat on a couch, discussing the plight of black Americans and the importance of Pan-Africanism. If Malcolm asked Nkrumah to support a UN resolution charging the United States with human rights violations, he left disappointed. The Ghanaian leader may have sympathized with his cause, but politics prevented him from considering such a proposal.
²⁹

Initially, the State Department viewed Malcolm's journey abroad as a threat to American foreign policy. If he'd convinced just one African nation to charge the US with human rights violations, he could have damaged America's international reputation. In the end, though, the State Department concluded that Malcolm lacked political leverage with the officials he met. He had nothing tangible to offer—no bridges, no dams, no money. The fact that he did not receive “an official
endorsement” from Nkrumah minimized “his impact.” “All in all,” American officials surmised, “Malcolm X created less of a stir than the Embassy feared.”
³⁰

Yet Malcolm's experience in Ghana deepened his commitment to Pan-Africanism. Talking with Africans who expressed a sincere interest in the struggle of African Americans convinced him that they all shared a common struggle against racial oppression. He left Ghana inspired. If there was a single lesson that he learned, it was that “our problems were their problems. We are all one people—Africans or of African descent. We are all blood brothers!”
³¹

M
ALCOLM HAD PACKED
his bags. Before flying back to New York, he planned four more days of traveling in Senegal, Morocco, and Algiers. On Sunday morning, May 17, Maya Angelou, Alice Windom, and Julian Mayfield met him in front of the Ambassador Hotel. They were all laughing and talking about their time together when suddenly they heard loud American voices. One voice sounded especially familiar to Malcolm. He turned around and saw the handsome face of Muhammad Ali.
³²

“The next moment froze,” Angelou recalled, “as if caught on daguerreotype, and the next minutes moved as a slow montage.” Malcolm brightened at the sight of him. “Brother Muhammad! Brother Muhammad!” he shouted with a crooked smile, uncertain how Ali would react with everyone watching. At that instant, Ali had to make a split-second decision. He knew that he could not publicly embrace Malcolm, not as long as Herbert stood next to him, not as long as he had professed his loyalty to Elijah. Malcolm had betrayed the Messenger and the entire Nation, and no true Muslim could maintain a friendship with him.

Ali paused in the middle of his conversation, looking quizzically at Malcolm, who appeared almost unrecognizable sporting a reddish goatee, white robe, and sandals. At first, Ali said nothing. He just kept walking, slowly moving away from his friend, leaving him behind like an old suitcase, heavy baggage he no longer wished to carry. When he and his entourage reached a row of parked cars, Malcolm rushed up to him, hoping to flag him down before he drove away. “Brother Muhammad! Brother Muhammad!” Finally, Ali stopped and faced Malcolm.

“Brother, I still love you, and you are still the greatest,” Malcolm said.

Glaring, Ali shook his head. “You left the Honorable Elijah Muhammad,” he said, his voice as cold as his eyes. “That was the wrong thing to do, Brother Malcolm.”

Malcolm wanted to explain that he did not leave Elijah; he was forced out of the Nation. But there was no time to explain, no way to make Ali understand that he never intended to hurt him or Elijah. Ali abruptly marched away, leaving him puzzled and wounded. Malcolm had never expected his friend to treat him so harshly, not after he had shown him how much he cared for him, standing by his side in Miami when the whole world was against him, when Elijah refused to publicly claim him as one of his own. Malcolm did not have the words to convince Ali that they could remain friends. All he could do was sadly watch him walk out of his life.

Visibly shaken, Malcolm rejoined his friends, walking with his head down, his shoulders slumped. “I've lost a lot. A lot,” he repeated. “Almost too much.” Then, saying nothing else, he crammed his long legs into the front passenger seat of Maya's tiny Fiat, “the heavy mood destined to stay.”