Malcolm X (37 page)

In the Islamic faith, the Arabic word
ingadh
means “to save, rescue, bring relief or salvation.” The faithful have a duty to save those in distress. In Thomas’s case, the call to
ingadh
had first come to his cell mate, a Times Square pickpocket who explained to him the fundamentals of the NOI, including Yacub’s History and Elijah’s role as Allah’s Messenger. All of it made complete sense to Johnson. Once free, he immediately went to Temple No. 7. Before long, his grandparents were stunned by the positive changes in his behavior: permanently off drugs, he dressed neatly in suits and adhered rigidly to Muslim dietary laws.

For Johnson, the NOI was like a combat organization. “I didn’t see anybody making a stand, representing us in any way that would alleviate a lot of oppression and the abuse and the things that was going on in the South . . . the waves of killing African-American people,” he would later explain. After receiving his
X
—becoming Thomas 15X—he came to the attention of Captain Joseph for what were considered outstanding displays of devotion. “It was a very hostile atmosphere at that time, and we didn’t take no crap from nobody, see, so . . . they called me [the] ‘Reactor,’ because I was always jumping at everything,” he recalled. “[If] somebody threatened a Muslim or they beat up a Muslim or something, I would be the first one on the scene.”

Joseph decided that Thomas should be assigned to provide security for Malcolm, which included doing routine errands and odd jobs for his family. At that time, Thomas thought Malcolm was “the greatest thing walking . . . I don’t know any commentator, news people, that could handle him.” Thomas’s daily duties usually began when Malcolm traveled from his home in Queens to the Harlem mosque. Regardless of the weather, Thomas was expected to stand outside, reserving a parking spot for the minister's car. He also drove Malcolm to appointments. Once a month, Betty gave him a list of household items to purchase at the Shabazz supermarket in Brooklyn, driving back afterward to unpack. He noticed that Malcolm avoided going home “if he could.” Malcolm confided, “‘Man, if I go [home], all them women . . . no telling what I might say, how I’m going to respond.’ And he’d say, 'Let's go down to Foley Square.’ So we would.” Sometimes Malcolm would be deeply engrossed in reading some book very obscure to Thomas. One author he vividly recalled was philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. “Hegel was his man,” Thomas recalled, possibly referring to the same passages on “lordship and bondage” that had also fascinated Frantz Fanon.

And yet something about Thomas made Malcolm uneasy. On one occasion he voiced his concerns to Joseph, saying that he was uncomfortable simply because Thomas rarely talked. Thomas, for his part, told Joseph, “I didn’t think I was qualified to interject and have a lot of conversation with him. I was just interested in doing my job.” Things remained as they were.

Within a growing number of mosques—most notably the Newark, New Jersey, mosque—a storm of criticism against Malcolm began to gather. The standard charges were that he coveted the Messenger's position, that he craved material possessions, and that he was using the Nation to advance himself politically and in the media. Malcolm routinely responded to such barbs by building up the cult around Elijah, which he felt was the most effective way to dispel doubts. Muhammad appreciated such labors on his behalf, and around this time told Malcolm that he wanted him to “become well known,” because it was through his fame that Elijah’s message would be heard. But Malcolm needed to realize, he added, “You will grow to be hated when you become well known.”

George Lincoln Rockwell may have thought himself white America’s answer to Malcolm X. Square jawed and solidly built, he cut a striking figure when commanding the stage at rallies held by the group he had founded and led, the American Nazi Party. Rockwell’s extreme conservatism had grown at first along conventional lines; a longtime naval reservist, he opposed racial integration and despised communism, and for a brief time was employed by William F. Buckley, Jr., the editor of
National Review
. Only after reading
Mein Kampf
and the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
did his supremacist beliefs merge with a deep hatred for Jews. In March 1959, he established the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists, which soon became the American Nazi Party. Despite his loathsome politics, Rockwell possessed a gift for manipulating the media that brought the party outsized attention. On April 3, 1960, he delivered a two-hour speech on the National Mall in Washington that attracted more journalists than supporters; yet, even within the fringes of the far right, he managed to maintain substantial press coverage, creating a greatly inflated image of his party’s actual number.

In its early years, the American Nazi Party’s literature routinely described African Americans as “niggers,” morally and mentally inferior to whites. However, once Rockwell learned of the Nation of Islam’s anti-integrationist positions, he became fascinated by the concept of a white supremacist-black nationalist united front. He even praised the NOI to his followers, arguing that Elijah Muhammad had “gathered millions of the dirty, immoral, drunken, filthy-mouthed, lazy and repulsive people sneeringly called ‘niggers’ and inspired them to the point where they are clean, sober, honest, hard-working, dignified, dedicated and admirable human beings in spite of their color.”

At some time in early 1961, Rockwell’s group had talks with Muhammad and several top aides in Chicago; Rockwell and Muhammad may even have met privately to work out an “agreement of mutual assistance.” The main concession that Rockwell wrung from Muhammad was permission to bring his Nazi storm troopers into NOI rallies, which he knew would provoke press coverage. For Muhammad, the attention carried greater risk, but he believed that it was outweighed by the opportunity to put on display the true nature of the white man. Rockwell’s group may have been at the fringe, but Muhammad saw its racial hatred and anti-Semitism as an honest representation of white America’s core beliefs. But there was another reason for the pairing: the authoritarianism of the NOI was in harmony with the racist authoritarianism of the white supremacists. Both groups, after all, dreamed of a segregated world in which interracial marriages were outlawed and the races dwelled in separate states.

On June 25, 1961, the Nation of Islam held a major rally in Washington, D.C. Before an audience of eight thousand, Rockwell and ten storm troopers—all crisply dressed in tan fatigues and bright swastika armbands—were escorted to seats near the stage in the center of the arena. Representatives of the African-American press, stunned to see Nazis there, shouted questions to Rockwell, who announced, “I am fully in concert with [the NOI's] program and I have the highest respect for Mr. Elijah Muhammad.” Although Muhammad had been advertised as the keynote speaker, once again he was too ill, and it was left to Malcolm to make the main address. After his speech, the audience was asked for contributions, and when Rockwell put in twenty dollars, Malcolm asked who had donated the money. A storm trooper shouted, “George Lincoln Rockwell!” which generated polite applause from the Muslims. Rockwell was invited to stand up; the Nazi leader again received mild applause. Malcolm could not resist commenting, “You got the biggest hand you ever got.”

Malcolm’s joke belied his deeper feelings about this alliance with the lunatic right, which had been engineered entirely by Elijah Muhammad and the Chicago headquarters. The stain of the Nazis could not quite match that of the Klan, but those meetings had been conducted in secret. Now Malcolm was receiving a cash donation from the leader of a notorious white hate group in front of an audience of thousands. However he felt about Rockwell’s usefulness to the NOI, he knew that the appearance would only hurt him with the black leaders who had recently begun courting his opinion.

For his part, Rockwell came away from his contacts with the NOI impressed by their organization and discipline. “Muhammad understands the vicious fraud of the Jewish exploitation of the Negro people,” he later observed. “[T]he Muslims are the key to solving the Negro problem, both in the North and the South. And this guy Malcolm X is no mealy-mouth pansy like so many of the disgusting ‘integrationist’ leaders, both black and white. He is a MAN, whom it is impossible not to admire, even when blasting the White Race for its mishandling of the Black Man.” The following February, Rockwell attended NOI's Saviour's Day, held in Chicago before an audience of twelve thousand Muslims. After Elijah Muhammad finished his sermon, Rockwell was invited to speak and strolled to the stage, flanked by two bodyguards. “You know that we call you niggers,” he began. “But wouldn’t you rather be confronted by honest white men who tell you to your face what the others say behind your back?” He pledged to “do everything in my power to help the Honorable Elijah Muhammad carry out his inspired plan for land of your own in Africa. Elijah Muhammad is right—separation or death!”

Most studies devoted to Malcolm X ignore or do not examine the connections between the NOI and the American Nazi Party. Even the scholar Claude Andrew Clegg, who is highly critical of Muhammad’s decision to allow Rockwell to speak in 1962, argues that the Nazi leader “was a sort of bugbear that Muhammad used to scare blacks into the NOI.ʺ This underestimates the common ground involved. In the April 1962 issue of
Muhammad Speaks
, Muhammad praised Rockwell as a man who had “endorsed the stand for self that you and I are taking. Why should not you applaud?” The Nazis “have taken a stand to see that you be separated to get justice and freedom.” For several years, Rockwell continued to endorse the NOI's program. At an address in October 1962, for example, he stated: “[Elijah Muhammad] is a black supremacist and I’m a white supremacist: that doesn’t necessarily mean we gotta kill each other.”

Dining with the devil requires more than a long spoon. Like the tête-à-tête with the Klan, the NOI's public identification with the Nazis undermined Malcolm’s efforts to reach out to moderate audiences, people who might have agreed with his critique of American racism but rejected his solutions. This was the challenge he faced when he again confronted Bayard Rustin, on January 23, 1962. The debate was held at Manhattan’s Community Church, a liberal east side congregation. The topic—“Separation or Integration?”—should have favored Rustin. The audience consisted largely of white liberals who strongly supported civil rights. However, Malcolm astutely did not condemn all whites as “devils,” emphasizing instead the negative effects of institutional racism on the black community. His arguments were persuasive to many whites in the audience. Rustin was forced to complain that too many whites in the gallery, including some of his own friends, were applauding Malcolm’s statements more vigorously than the Negroes in the audience: “May I explain the process. . . . It is, my friends, that many white people love to hear their kind damned to high water while they sit saying, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that that nice black man gives
those
white people hell? But he couldn’t be talking about
me
—I'm the liberal.’”

Malcolm’s lectures and sermons in early 1962 rarely mentioned the core values of the Nation’s theology, and increasingly he was pulled into larger debates over the political future of black America. Probably to silence his critics within the NOI, he tried to give more attention to organizational matters. In January, both he and Joseph visited Mosque No. 23 in Buffalo, New York. And at the end of the same month he supervised the NOI's sponsorship of an African-Asian Bazaar at Harlem’s Rockland Palace. He also continued to use his speeches to build up the cult around Elijah Muhammad. The Messenger appreciated such labors on his behalf; yet before long, Muhammad’s opinion began to shift. He read the transcripts and recordings from Malcolm’s speeches and could see the political direction of his increasingly famous minister's mind. He decided to tighten the reins.

On February 14, Muhammad wrote Malcolm formally about his schedule. ʺ[W]hen you go to these Colleges and Universities to represent the Teachings that Allah has revealed to me for our people, do not go too much into the details of the political side; nor into the subject of a separate state here for us.” Muhammad instructed him to “speak only what you know they have heard me say or that which you yourself have heard me say.” Malcolm was forbidden to express his independent opinions, even on questions that had no relationship with the NOI. The aging patriarch sought to reclaim his right to be the sole interpreter of Muslim teachings. “Make the public seek me for the answers,” he wrote. “Do not you see how I reject the devils on such subjects, by telling them I will say WHERE when the Government shows interest?” The NOI was a religious movement, not a political cause; Malcolm no longer had the authority to address issues like a separate black state or to speak about current events of a political nature, unless Muhammad gave his permission. Yet, of course, any discussion of black Americans’ affairs inevitably centered on the struggle for civil rights; Muhammad was making Malcolm’s position untenable.