Malcolm X (18 page)

Once he had started reeducating himself, there was no limit to his search for fact and inspiration. Through Norfolk’s library, Malcolm devoured the writings of influential scholars such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, and J. A. Rogers. He studied the history of the transatlantic slave trade, the impact of the “peculiar institution” of chattel slavery in the United States, and African-American revolts. He learned with satisfaction about Nat Turner’s 1831 uprising in Virginia, which to him provided a clear example of black resistance: “Turner wasn’t going around preaching pie-in-the-sky and ‘non-violent’ freedom for the black man.” Nor did Malcolm restrict his studies to black history. He plowed through Herodotus, Kant, Nietzsche, and other historians and philosophers of Western civilization. He was impressed by Mahatma Gandhi’s accounts of the struggle to drive the British out of India; he was appalled by the history of China’s opium wars, and the European and American suppression of the 1901 Boxer Rebellion. “I could spend the rest of my life reading,” he reflected. “I don’t think anybody ever got more out of going to prison than I did.” Malcolm had undertaken his studies with the idea of becoming, like Bembry, the well-respected figure of wisdom behind the prison’s walls. But as 1948 drew to a close, his breadth of understanding had transformed him into a trenchant critic of white Western values and institutions. There was something passive about teaching, and Malcolm was not passive.

His routine at Norfolk provided him with the leisure time to correspond extensively with family members and friends, and he now became a devoted letter writer. In an undated note to Philbert, probably written mid-1948, he was preoccupied with family gossip. “Phil, I love all my brothers and sisters. In fact, they are the only ones in the world I love or have. However,” he emphasized, “never say ‘we are happy to own you as a brother.’” Such language smacked of tolerance rather than love. “Under no circumstances don’t ever preach to me,” he warned. Malcolm also continued to correspond with Elijah Muhammad, and by late November the tone of his letters to Philbert had been transformed. He now opened each letter with the declaration: “In the Name of ‘Allah,’ the Beneficent, the Merciful, the Great God of the Universe . . . and in the Name of His Holy Servant and Apostle, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad . . .” He praised family members for bringing him into the grace of Elijah Muhammad’s guidance. Now a devoted NOI follower, he shared his belief that “things are jumping out there . . . I’m unaware of what is actually occurring, but I know it is being Directed by the Hand of Allah and will rid the planet of these wretched devils.” Malcolm’s new commitment undoubtedly provided another reason to figure out some way out of prison.

His letters were also filled with lines of verse. He explained, “I’m a real bug for poetry. When you think back over all of our past lives, only poetry could best fit into the vast emptiness created by men.” Later that same month, he wrote, “I will have three years in [prison] on the 27th of this month. I want to get
out this year
if I can.” But he recognized how improbable his parole would be. “It’s my own fault I’m here,” he admitted. “The whole ordeal, though, has benefited me immensely because I have fully awakened to what I’m surrounded by. I certainly woke up the hard way, hmm?”

In another letter to Philbert, his thoughts turned to racial politics. “Yes, I’m aware many Brothers were put into the federal institutions for not taking active part in the war. Surely you must remember, I would have taken imprisonment first also.” Although he had not been aware of Elijah’s teachings during World War II, Malcolm claims that “I was even at that time aware of the devil and knew it to be foolish for yours truly to risk his neck fighting for something that didn’t exist.” He also expressed a new appreciation for their mother.

Reginald visited in late 1949, but all was not well. Malcolm was dumbfounded when his brother began to speak ill of Elijah Muhammad. He learned subsequently that Reginald had been expelled from the Nation of Islam for having sexual relations with the female secretary of the New York City temple. Reginald was his closest Little sibling, and his disaffection provoked a crisis of faith within Malcolm, which he only partially revealed later in the
Autobiography
. How could a religion devoted to the redemption of all black men expel Reginald? Frustrated and confused, he promptly wrote to Elijah in his brother's defense. The next night, in the solitude of his prison cell, he thought he had been awakened by a vision of someone next to him:

He would come to believe that his vision had been that of “Master W. D. Fard, the Messiah.” Days later, Elijah Muhammad sent a stern reply, chastising his new disciple for his pleas. “If you once believed in the truth, and now you are beginning to doubt the truth, you didn’t believe the truth in the first place,” he charged.

Such a letter of rebuke, combined with the twilight vision of “Master Fard,” convinced Malcolm that Reginald’s censure was not only justified but absolutely necessary. His actions could not be tolerated within the Nation’s small community. Months later, when Reginald visited again, Malcolm noted his physical and mental deterioration, and reasoned that this was evidence of “Allah’s chastisement.” Several years later, Reginald’s complete mental collapse led to his being institutionalized. To Malcolm, struggling to make sense of his brother's fate, there was only one explanation: Reginald had been used by Allah “as a bait, as a minnow, to reach into the ocean of blackness where I was to save me.”

By early 1950, Malcolm had converted several black inmates, including Shorty. The small group began to demand concessions from the prison administrators, on the grounds that they were exercising their rights of religious freedom. They requested that Norfolk’s menu be changed, to accommodate the dietary restrictions of Muslims, and also refused to submit to standard medical inoculations. Norfolk’s officials viewed these requests as disruptive, and in March 1950 Malcolm and Shorty were told that they would be transferred back to Charlestown along with several other Black Muslims. Norfolk’s officials also recorded that Malcolm’s letters provided indisputable evidence of “his dislike for the white race.”

Malcolm rationalized the transfer as best he could. “Norfolk was getting on my nerves in many ways, and I didn’t have as much Solitude as I wished for,” he complained to Philbert. “Here we are in our cells for seventeen of the twenty-four hours in each day . . .” He also recounted a brief visit by their sister. “Ella wants to try to get me out. What should I do? Previously when she had asked me if I wanted out I have said ‘not particularly.’ But Saturday I told her to do whatever she can.”

He began agitating for even greater concessions, impelled by the requirements of his faith. He and other Muslims not only insisted on changes in their food and on the rules governing typhoid inoculations; they asked to be moved into cells that faced east, so that they could pray more easily toward Mecca. When the warden rejected their requests, Malcolm threatened to take their grievances to the Egyptian consul’s U.S. office, at which point the warden backed down. The local media learned about the controversy, and several articles soon appeared, the first to present Malcolm to a public audience. On April 20, 1950, the
Boston Herald
reported the incident under the headline “Four Convicts Turn Moslems, Get Cells Looking to Mecca.” More colorful and descriptive was the
Springfield Union
: “Local Criminals, in Prison, Claim Moslem Faith Now: Grow Beards, Won’t Eat Pork, Demand East-Facing Cells to Facilitate ‘Prayers to Allah.’”

In the middle of the controversy, Malcolm sent a sober, detailed letter to the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Correction. His purpose was to provide examples of discrimination against Muslims, appealing for greater religious freedom. He highlighted the case of one Muslim who had been placed in solitary confinement at Norfolk for four months. “He wholeheartedly embraced Islam,” Malcolm argued, “and by doing this he incurred the wrath [of prison authorities]. Because the Brother wishes to be
Black
(instead of negro or collared [
sic
]), because of his desire to be a good Muslim . . . he is being maliciously prosecuted.”

In a second letter to the commissioner, and in subsequent correspondence, he shifted his argument, accusing Charlestown’s authorities of severely restricting the books by black authors that were available in the prison library. The tone was intellectual but increasingly intense and argumentative. “Is it actually against the ‘law’ for a Black man to read about himself? (let me laugh!),” he complained. He deplored the harassment experienced by Muslims who he claimed had done nothing wrong, and contrasted the example of one Black Muslim who had been rejected from enrolling in a prison literacy workshop with “the homosexual perverts” behind bars who “can get job-changes whenever they wish to change or acquire new ‘husbands.’” In more explicit language than ever before, he warned the commissioner that the Muslims would prefer to be kept separate from other prisoners, but if denied fair treatment they would be forced to become disruptive. “If it becomes the Will of Allah for peace to cease,” Malcolm predicted, “peace will cease!” This was a step beyond self-invention : Malcolm was in effect developing his powers of protest. He was teaching himself to be a great orator.

In June 1950, the United States initiated military actions in Korea, under the auspices of the United Nations, to suppress communist insurgency. On June 29, Malcolm brazenly wrote a letter to President Truman, declaring his opposition to the conflict. “I have always been a Communist,” he wrote. “I have tried to enlist in the Japanese Army, last war, now they will never draft or accept me in the U.S. Army. Everyone has always said MALCOLM is crazy so it isn’t hard to convince people that I am.”

It was this letter that brought Malcolm to the attention of the FBI, which opened a file on him that would never be closed. It also marked the beginning of their surveillance of him, which would continue until his death.

Malcolm kept up his letter-writing campaign throughout 1950 and into 1951, even reaching back to people who had known him as a juvenile delinquent. One such letter, dated November 14, 1950, was addressed to the Reverend Samuel L. Laviscount of Roxbury. Apparently, Malcolm had occasionally attended meetings at Laviscount’s St. Mark’s Congregational Church in 1941. “Dear Brother Samuel,” he began. “When I was a child I behaved like a child, but since becoming a man I have endeavored to put away childish things. . . . When I was a wild youth, you often gave me some timely advice; now that I have matured I desire to return the favor.” He recounted his involvement in crime, his arrest, and subsequent incarceration. But “this sojourn in prison has proved to be a blessing in disguise, for it provided me with the Solitude that produced many nights of Meditation.” The experiences of imprisonment had confirmed the validity of Elijah Muhammad’s indictments. Malcolm proclaimed that he had subsequently “reversed my attitude toward my black brothers,” and “in my guilt and shame I began to catch every chance I could to recruit for Mr. Muhammad.” The task of emancipating black people from the effects of racial oppression, he explained, required a fundamental rejection of white values: “The devil[’s] strongest weapon is his ability to conventionalize our Thought . . . we willfully remain the humble servants of every one else’s ideas except our own . . . we have made ourselves the helpless slaves of the wicked accidental world.”

After months back in Charlestown, however, the terrible conditions there took their toll. In a letter to Philbert sent in December 1950, Malcolm complained, “I have ulcers or something but I’ve had my fill of hospitals since being here. Ole man, I think I’m actually falling apart physically. Nothing more physically wrecks a man, than a steady prison diet.” He explained that he was “reading the Bible diligently,” but worried whether his interpretations of scriptures were “sound, or even on the correct track,” and looked forward to when he could listen to Elijah Muhammad’s latest teachings. For the first time, he signed his name, “Malcolm X (surprised?).” He also revealed that “a very wealthy man for whom I once worked, visited me today and is going to try and get me a recommendation from the parole board (Insha Allah) The Will of Allah will be done.” The “wealthy man” almost certainly was Paul Lennon. The most striking aspect of Malcolm’s continuing contacts with Lennon was that his affluent benefactor was white; given Malcolm’s professed hatred of all “white devils” (and his comments on homosexual inmates), his continuing contacts with Lennon may have indicated that his determination to get out of prison exceeded his commitment to Yacub’s History. Or perhaps the physical intimacies between the two men created a bond. Malcolm uncharacteristically stumbled somewhat as he explained, “By the way, he’s not an original”—meaning that he was not a Negro. “However he can give me a home and a job . . .”

Malcolm’s choice of words—“a home”—implies more than a business association. The fact that Lennon went to see Malcolm behind bars suggests a degree of friendship. But Malcolm’s commitment to the Nation eventually made any kind of continued contact with Lennon impossible. No correspondence between Malcolm and Lennon has been found following Malcolm’s prison sentence ending in 1952. Malcolm firmly put behind him the episodes with Lennon, along with some other events from Detroit Red’s life of drugs and criminality. Malcolm Little, petty criminal and trickster, had transformed himself into Malcolm X, a serious political intellectual and Black Muslim. That metamorphosis left no space for a rich gay white man.