Malcolm X (43 page)

The
Saturday Evening Post
published Alex Haley and Alfred Balk’s collaboration “Black Merchants of Hate” on January 26, 1963, giving the story six full pages and including numerous illustrations. The article brought into stark relief the tensions simmering between Malcolm and the Chicago headquarters, and for anyone paying close attention it marked the shift in public perception of both the Nation and Malcolm in the previous two years. The article differed from “Mr. Muhammad Speaks” in several significant ways, opening with the dramatic story of Johnson X Hinton’s beating and the provocative response led by Malcolm. It briefly covered Elijah Muhammad’s personal history and role within the sect, whose national membership it estimated at the absurdly low figure of five to six thousand, with another fifty thousand sympathizers. Haley and Balk emphasized that the Nation of Islam was never part of the larger Muslim world: “Muhammad himself has no known tie with orthodox Islam.” But the greatest discontinuity from the initial article was the coverage given to Malcolm, whom the authors moved to center stage, succinctly charting his father's terrifying death, the vices and crimes of Harlem’s Detroit Red—incorrectly placing his incarceration “at the age of 19”—and his ultimate salvation as an NOI zealot:

By building up Malcolm’s role at Muhammad’s expense, and suggesting a possible internal conflict, “Black Merchants of Hate” fostered even greater jealousy and dissent within the NOI's ranks: exactly what the FBI had hoped for when it agreed to feed information to Balk. Still, the piece was so successful that Haley, who had begun conducting interviews for
Playboy
magazine, proposed Malcolm as his next subject, and the two men met over several days in the winter of 1963 at the NOI's restaurant in Harlem to generate material.

As Saviour's Day 1963 approached, Malcolm found himself increasingly at odds with Muhammad’s children and John Ali. Paranoid that the gravy train afforded them by the flow of tithe money to Chicago might be disrupted if Muhammad died, they had not been reassured by the tone of “Black Merchants of Hate.” By late 1962, the tales of their father's sexual adventures had reached New York City and the West Coast, further complicating matters and heightening their suspicions of Malcolm. For his part, Malcolm pretended that he knew nothing about the rumors, desperately hoping that somehow they would go away. In past years, he had traveled to Chicago a week or more in advance of Saviour's Day to prepare for the celebration, but now the antiharassment campaign in New York kept him mercifully busy. Meanwhile, NOI officials announced that the chronic illnesses of Elijah Muhammad had forced the patriarch to cancel his own appearances; Chicago headquarters reduced the program to one day, February 26, and placed Malcolm in charge. The absence of Muhammad and the shortened program reduced the turnout to three thousand NOI faithful, but the crowd still buzzed with whispers of impropriety. Muhammad’s illness surely made it ill-advised for him to fly up from Phoenix, but his decision to skip Saviour's Day was also partially motivated by a desire to discourage mosques from sending large delegations and to limit the discussions of swirling rumors. He also may have been reacting to the uninvited presence in Chicago of several unwed mothers of his illegitimate children. Writing later in his diary, Malcolm observed that Ola Hughes, the mother of Muhammad’s illegitimate two-year-old son, Kamal, was “telling everybody” and had a “very nasty attitude.”

At the convention, Muhammad’s family turned its embarrassment into angry tirades against Malcolm. Family members had sent notes demanding that Wallace Muhammad, recently released from prison, be permitted to address the assembly during Malcolm’s major Saviour's Day address. Yet Wallace, who had grown even more skeptical of his father's dogma while incarcerated, wanted no part of it, and he and Malcolm had agreed that Malcolm would find a way around the family’s demands. From the podium, Malcolm announced that, due to the program’s delayed start, there was no time left for Wallace to speak; but in a gesture of appreciation, he recognized Muhammad’s family members in the hall and solicited applause from the audience. It did little good: as FBI informants observed, “The family was especially resentful of [Malcolm’s] attempts to advise and tell the family what to do.”

Although there was pressing business at home, Malcolm remained in Chicago for several weeks, hoping to investigate for himself the rumors about Muhammad. The family thought that shortening the Saviour's Day program had solved the problem, but after Malcolm consulted with Wallace, who confirmed that the rumors were true, he knew that more needed to be done. In the next weeks, he met with three of Muhammad’s former secretaries, including Evelyn, and found they all had similar stories. Once their pregnancies had been discovered, they had been summoned before secret NOI courts and received sentences of isolation. Muhammad provided little or no financial support for his out-of-wedlock children.

The revelations should not have been a complete surprise to Malcolm, who first heard hints about Muhammad’s sexual misconduct in the mid-1950s. Yet for years, it had been impossible for Malcolm to imagine that the sect’s little lamb was using his exalted position to sexually molest his secretarial staff. Only when Malcolm confronted the women themselves did he see the truth—not just of the affairs, but of the way the Messenger had frequently talked him down to others. “From their own mouths I heard that Elijah Muhammad had told them I was the best, the greatest minister he ever had,” Malcolm recalled, “but that someday I would leave him, turn against him—so I was ‘dangerous.’ . . . While he was praising me to my face, he was tearing me apart behind my back.”

Hearing this broke Malcolm’s heart, but his greatest anguish was reserved for the violation of Evelyn, though she told him that she believed her pregnancy “to be prophetic” and reserved her hostility for the entourage surrounding the Messenger. Malcolm had known for years about Evelyn’s pregnancy and the birth of her daughter, but had simply assumed the father was a member of Mosque No. 2. Yet Evelyn was never far from his mind. At times, his unhappiness with Betty was so profound that he considered reestablishing his love affair with Evelyn. He even unburdened himself to Louis X, who sharply rebuked him, saying, “You are a married man!” Louis worried that Malcolm “would really hurt Betty.” Malcolm had agreed to back away from any involvement with Evelyn, at least for the time being. But now, with the realization that the father of Evelyn’s child was Muhammad, Malcolm must have felt a deep sense of betrayal. Two decades before, Malcolm had posed as a pimp, hustling prostitutes in Harlem. Now, unwittingly, he had been maneuvered into becoming Elijah Muhammad’s pimp, even bringing the woman he had loved to be violated.

Many NOI observers who did not know of Malcolm’s detective work interpreted his lingering presence in Chicago as a personal affront; to some it seemed he was merely indulging in media appearances. Spurred on by his angry children, Muhammad may have instructed Malcolm to return to New York City, which he did on March 10, canceling several scheduled appearances with the excuse that Betty had fallen and broken her leg. Arriving home, he mulled a course of action. He now sensed the outlines of the spiritual and moral journey that he knew lay ahead, but decided that he would try to find a way to remain inside the NOI if he could. He wrote to Muhammad requesting a meeting, and in early April flew to Phoenix to learn his future.

CHAPTER 9

“He Was Developing Too Fast”

April-November 1963

 

 

 

M
alcolm arrived at Muhammad’s residence on or around April 1. The two men embraced, and Elijah led the way to the rear of his home, where they strolled around the compound’s swimming pool. Malcolm recounted what was being said about Muhammad’s extramarital affairs and, without waiting for a reply, suggested a way forward. “Loyal Muslims could be taught that a man’s accomplishments in his life outweigh his personal, human weaknesses . . . Wallace Muhammad helped me to review the Quran and the Bible for documentation. David’s adultery with Bathsheba weighed less on history’s scales, for instance, than the positive fact of David’s killing Goliath.”

Muhammad immediately focused on Malcolm’s solution. “Son, I’m not surprised. You always have had such a good understanding of prophecy, and of spiritual things.” He did not focus on his sexual relationships with specific women, but chose instead to look to the biblical past to justify his behavior. “When you read about how David took another man’s wife, I’m that David,” he told Malcolm. Although the two men parted in friendship, in retrospect it is clear they already held two strikingly different agendas. Muhammad wanted to have the rumors suppressed. If Malcolm, in his sermons, employed Qur'anic and biblical teachings to justify his conduct, that was acceptable. Malcolm, however, left the meeting feeling more troubled than when he had arrived. As he tried to cope with the Messenger having confirmed his worst suspicions, he also knew that it would require careful work on his own part to protect the Nation going forward. He saw the rumors as a virus that could lead to an epidemic, and his goal was to “inoculate” the Nation’s rank and file.

Almost immediately he set to work, speaking first in Philadelphia and then several times over the course of four days at Mosque No. 7, at each event unfolding the new language that he hoped would ease the news of Muhammad’s transgressions. James 67X quickly noticed the shift in the minister's argument. “Malcolm had always taught that every two thousand years or so, the scriptures change. Anew messenger is needed, because that which has preceded has become corrupt.” He assumed that this was Malcolm’s way of establishing the superiority of Islam over Christianity, and also of affirming Fard’s divine status. “Then, one day, Malcolm . . . said something that shocked me. He said, ‘A prophet is in a scale. If he does more good than he did bad, then he’s considered good . . . A prophet, like everybody else, is weighed in the balance.’ I said to myself, ‘Well, what happened to this business about them always doing the right thing?’ ” James realized that Malcolm must be discussing Elijah Muhammad, but was reluctant to bring it up with him.

Malcolm’s increasing interest in discussing practical concerns now offered him an attractive alternative to speaking at length about the Messenger and his theology. Throughout 1963, he wrote in his
Autobiography,
“I spoke less and less of religion. I taught social doctrine to Muslims, and current events, and politics.” He significantly reduced his references to Muhammad while continuing to affirm his public loyalty. Muhammad acknowledged this at the end of April by greatly expanding Malcolm’s responsibilities. On April 25 he sent a letter addressed to “Malcolm Shabazz,” confirming his appointment as interim minister of Washington, D.C.'s Mosque No. 4. The former minister, Lucius X Brown, had been “dismissed from the ministry.” What was needed, he wrote Malcolm, was a minister “who has not only the love of Allah and Islam in his heart, but has enough intelligence and educational training to demand the respect of the Believers there in No. 4, and also the devils in that city.” This was not a maneuver to take Malcolm away from New York: he was expected to maintain his ministerial role at Mosque No. 7 while providing supervision in D.C. The appointment actually confirmed Muhammad’s continued trust in him, despite their recent confrontation. Malcolm told Mosque No. 7’s FOI that he would shuttle between Washington and New York each week. He also admitted that former minister Brown had been fired due to his “negative attitude” toward
Muhammad Speaks
. It is unclear whether Lucius’s complaints were about the paper’s contents or the aggressive sales policies forced upon members.

But if Muhammad still believed Malcolm to be trustworthy and dependable, the Chicago headquarters saw an opportunity in Malcolm’s frequent absences from New York, and John Ali began contacting Joseph directly on mosque matters. On April 25, Chicago had also widely circulated a letter bearing Elijah Muhammad’s signature and calling upon “all Ministers, Secretaries, and Captains . . . to get our paper,
Muhammad Speaks
, into the hands of our poor, blind, deaf, and dumb brothers and sisters . . . .” The paper, the letter stated, “will get to people who will not speak to us in the public; it will convert behind the door a hundred of our people to our one from the Speaker's Stand!” It was an unmistakable attack on Malcolm. Meanwhile, the information blackout of Malcolm in the paper itself became virtually complete.

The
Washington Post
reported Malcolm’s new appointment to the D.C. mosque, describing him as “the No. 2 man of the Black Muslim sect.” For Malcolm, the expanded responsibilities opened new doors; here was a chance to transplant much of the community building he had been pushing in New York to another city. Already the Nation had found great success in Harlem with several of their black improvement projects, most notably in combating juvenile delinquency. Washington’s desolate ghettos, in no better shape than Malcolm had found them during his Detroit Red years, offered an attractive new proving ground. He would also now be operating in the nation’s capital, close to the power center. At a press conference in Washington’s National airport, Malcolm insisted that he was not second in command, that the Nation did not “preach hatred of white people,” and that he intended to hold a series of blacks-only meetings over a four-week period to examine the causes and cures for black street crime in the nation’s capital.

On the same day that Malcolm had returned from Phoenix to begin dealing with the rumors surrounding Elijah Muhammad, the landscape of the Black Freedom Movement entered a tumultuous phase, sending tremors throughout the country. On April 3, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the SCLC began the long and devastating sit-in campaign to break segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. More than any previous protest, Birmingham focused the eyes of the nation on the civil rights struggle, as over the course of five weeks more than seven hundred nonviolent protesters, many of them children, faced arrest and jail time. Black newspapers like the
Pittsburgh Courier
and the
Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch
reacted with cautious optimism; the public outcry over the protesters’ brutal treatment at the hands of Birmingham police chief Bull Connor and his men had set the gears of Washington turning, and talk of new civil rights legislation percolated beyond the capital. More than ever, the time seemed ripe for action, yet Malcolm knew that with tensions between himself and Chicago still unresolved, his options remained limited. Several reporters had heard rumors that Malcolm was planning to go to Birmingham, although he himself announced that he would travel there only on the direct orders of Muhammad, or at the invitation of NOI regional leader, minister Jeremiah X. Asked about the protests, Malcolm chose to address King’s tactics rather than his goals: “I’ll say this, if anybody sets a dog on a black man, the black man should kill that dog—whether he is a four-legged dog or a two-legged dog.”