Malcolm X (79 page)

That he continued to harangue the Nation even when he knew that doing so would leave little choice but to strike at him seems to suggest that on some level he may have been inviting death. As Malcolm became more aware of Islamic tradition in his last years, he probably learned about the third Shiite imam, Husayn ibn Ali, and his tragic murder. Husayn was the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, and the son of Ali ibn Abi Talib and Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad. After the murder of Ali and the abdication of his older brother, Hasan, Husayn became the object of allegiance for many Muslims. At Karbala in 680 CE in what today is Iraq, Husayn and a small band of supporters were attacked by religious opponents ; nearly all of them were killed or captured. Husayn died bravely and gloriously, so much so that his murder became central to the Shiite ethos of martyrdom, suffering, and resistance to oppression. The Shiite mourning observance of Ashura reenacts the tragedy as a passion play, in which participants engage in remorse and self-punishment over Husayn’s assassination, and rededicate themselves to the struggle for freedom and justice.

Like Husayn, Malcolm made the conscious decision not to avoid or escape death. This he could have accomplished easily; had he remained in Africa for several years, the level of the Nation of Islam’s animosity surely would have diminished. That he chose to return to the United States meant he recognized the real possibility of being killed at any moment, even while asleep inside his home. If he did not desire death, he still seemed prepared to embrace it as an inevitable part of his personal destiny. Such an interpretation would help explain why Malcolm was so insistent that no one at the Audubon be searched and that none of his men except Reuben X carry weapons. By not checking for guns, Malcolm made the assassination more likely; by disarming his security personnel, he protected them from being targets in an exchange of gunfire as Malcolm’s murderers probably would not shoot unarmed security personnel. If anyone should die, Malcolm may have reasoned, let it be him.

Law enforcement agencies acted with equal reticence when it came to intervening with Malcolm’s fate. Rather than investigate the threats on his life, they stood back, almost waiting for a crime to happen. “They had the mentality of wanting an assassination,” said Gerry Fulcher of the NYPD brass, though it is unlikely that NYPD officers were directly involved in the murder. “They would want to keep their hands clean from the actual thing.” Fulcher knew that the NYPD and BOSS had placed Gene Roberts inside the MMI and OAAU, but they had also recruited other informants who provided the police with internal information. By early 1965, Fulcher had been taping conversations at the MMI and OAAU office for over nine months. After Malcolm’s return from abroad, Fulcher listened carefully to his arguments and became even more convinced that the police were making a big mistake about him. “This is a guy we should be supporting,” he concluded. One of the favorite topics for cops was “‘them niggers on welfare.’ [Malcolm] wants them off, too,” he argued. Malcolm “should have been a companion, not an enemy” of law enforcement, Fulcher insisted. “But they always viewed him like the enemy.”

By that time, however, Malcolm and the NYPD had already reached a practical détente. Even before leaving the Nation, Malcolm had developed what Peter Goldman called “distant cooperation” with the police, hoping to avoid the confrontations and shootings that had occurred in Los Angeles. He consequently informed the police whenever he was having public rallies, and ordered Reuben X Francis and other subordinates to share information with them. In 1964 and 1965, the NYPD regularly assigned between one and two dozen officers to the MMI and OAAU rallies held at the Audubon. Several would be stationed inside the building but rarely the Grand Ballroom, where the rallies were held. Most were positioned outside the building, either clustered around the entrance or standing across the street in the small neighborhood park. The detail’s commander and one or two other policemen sat in a glassed-in booth on the second floor, overlooking the entrances to the building’s two ballrooms, the Rose and the larger Grand.

Across the Hudson in Newark, the small assassination crew that had been formed in the spring of 1964 had fallen apart when Malcolm was out of the country. But after his return, the question of whether, and how, to commit the murder became active once again. Talmadge Hayer had several conversations with Ben Thomas and Leon Davis. Hayer later told Goldman that, since Ben was a mosque administrator, he naturally assumed from the outset that senior NOI officials had authorized the mission. “I didn’t ask a whole lot of questions,” Hayer explained. “I thought that somebody was giving instructions: ‘Brother, you got to move on this situation.’ But I felt we was in accord.”

As the group began exploring how to go about the killing, they contemplated gunning Malcolm down outside of his East Elmhurst home; however, when they drove out one day to case the house, they found it heavily protected by armed guards. For a time they considered just following Malcolm around Harlem and striking at some public event where he was scheduled to talk, but, according to Hayer, practical considerations got in the way. All of the Newark conspirators worked full-time, and they couldn’t take off work to spend hours driving around Harlem. The group finally settled on a simple but bold tactical approach: shooting Malcolm at an Audubon rally, in front of hundreds of supporters and several dozen probably armed security people. The plan’s advantage was the element of surprise. Malcolm’s people believed he was safe at the rallies; they never considered a direct, frontal assault, because it would be suicidal. Yet every member of the assassination team was a devoted follower of Elijah Muhammad, prepared to sacrifice his life to kill Malcolm. If a would-be assassin is willing to die, anyone can be killed.

The likelihood of success was “a long shot,” Hayer remembered. “But we just felt we would have to move on it . . . and that’s what we did. Why there? . . . It was the only place we knew he’d be.” Hayer was familiar with weapons, so he was assigned to purchase the guns, using his own money. He and several others in the assassination crew attended an OAAU rally, probably in January 1965, where they were surprised to discover that no one was being searched at the main entrance. They sat down and studied where guards were positioned and when they were relieved. On the night of February 20, the group paid to enter a dance in the Audubon Ballroom, checking out all possible exits.

The conspirators then drove back to Ben Thomas’s home. It was decided that the initial round aimed at Malcolm, the decisive kill shot, would be fired by William Bradley. “Willie” had been a star athlete in high school, excelling in baseball. By his mid-twenties, however, he had grown fat, weighing over 220 pounds. But he was still athletic in his movements and he had learned how to handle a shotgun. Everyone agreed that the assassination would take place the next afternoon, Sunday, February 21.

On the morning of the twenty-first, a phone call awakened Malcolm in his room at the Hilton. A voice over the receiver menacingly said, “Wake up, brother.” He checked the time; it was eight o’clock on a winter morning, but the day would not be frigid. Still, Malcolm wasn’t taking chances with the weather. He put on long underwear beneath his suit—the same suit coat he had worn during his tour through Great Britain.

At about nine a.m., he phoned Betty, asking her to come to the afternoon rally, and to bring the children with her. His request surprised and pleased her. Since his return from Africa Malcolm had again discouraged her involvement in MMI and OAAU affairs, and earlier that week had strictly ordered her not to come on Sunday because of the threat of violence. He failed to explain why he had changed his mind. Betty and her daughters were still staying with the Wallaces, and around one p.m. she began getting ready. All of the little girls were stuffed into attractive children’s snowsuits. The children were thrilled. As Attallah Shabazz recalled, “It was still an exciting adventure to get ready and go see Daddy.” If Malcolm expected a day of reckoning, why would he ask Betty to bring the children to witness his possible murder? One reason might be that, despite his observations about the dangers surrounding his daily life, he still wasn’t absolutely sure. Or it might have been ambivalence as a kind of defense mechanism, a way of not thinking about something terrifying and inevitable. Perhaps, like Husayn, he wanted his death to be symbolic, a passion play representing his beliefs.

At one p.m. Malcolm checked out of the Hilton and drove uptown in his Oldsmobile. When he reached West 146th Street and Broadway in West Harlem, he pulled over and parked. He had made it a habit not to park his car at speaking venues, where he might be vulnerable to attack. As he waited for the uptown bus, an automobile with New Jersey plates slowed and stopped where he was standing. Malcolm did not recognize the driver, a young African American named Fred Williams, but he did know MMI member Charles X Blackwell in the backseat. Thus reassured, Malcolm slipped into the rear to join him. The car quickly covered the twenty blocks north to the Audubon Ballroom. It was by now just after two in the afternoon, but people were still standing about, indicating that no formal program had started on the main ballroom’s stage.

As Malcolm walked into the Audubon, he might have noticed the absence of the usual police presence stationed in front of the building. According to Peter Goldman, one of Malcolm’s “senior people had talked with the duty captain, requesting that the police leave the building and station themselves in a less public place.” Given the firebombing and the restrictions Malcolm had placed on the MMI's security—the lack of weapons, and no frisking at the main door—it is difficult to imagine the rationale for such an odd request, or why the police would grant it. In any event, about eighteen officers were relocated several blocks away, up Broadway, at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.

When Malcolm entered the Grand Ballroom on the second floor, he was immediately encountered by Peter Bailey, holding a bundle of copies of
Blacklash
. There was something in the OAAU's publication that wasn’t quite right, and Malcolm ordered him not to distribute copies of the issue. “For the first time,” remembered Bailey, Malcolm appeared “harried, not fearful . . . but just [like] somebody who had a lot on their mind.” Malcolm asked Bailey if he recognized the Reverend Galamison, and Bailey said that he could. Malcolm further asked him to wait near the main entrance downstairs for Galamison; when he arrived, the civil rights leader should be escorted to the rear room behind the Grand Ballroom’s main stage.

From its entrance to the far end of its plywood stage, the ballroom stretched 180 feet. Behind the stage, waiting in the small room for Malcolm to arrive, was his core MMI and OAAU staff: Sara Mitchell, James 67X, and Benjamin 2X. They immediately sensed that their leader was in a terrible mood. He flopped down on a metal folding chair, but a few minutes later was up, nervously pacing the floor. Benjamin recalled, “He was more tense than I’d ever seen him. . . . He just lost control of himself completely.” When James explained that Galamison’s secretary had contacted him hours before, saying that the minister's schedule was so crowded that afternoon that it would be impossible for him to drive uptown to address the Audubon audience, Malcolm demanded to know why he had not been informed earlier. James cautiously reminded Malcolm that he had neglected to notify him the previous day where he would be spending the night, so he had no idea where to contact him. Several hours ago, he explained, he had phoned Betty with this information and asked her to pass it on. Malcolm exploded: “You gave that message to a
woman
! ... You should know better than that!” He continued to lash out at anyone near him. When Sheikh Hassoun tried to embrace him, he yelled, “Get out of here!” Both Benjamin and Hassoun left the rear room together, and Benjamin walked up to the podium to start the program.

Within a few minutes Malcolm quietly apologized to those still left in the room. “Something felt
wrong
out there,” he told them. He added that he felt almost at his “wit’s end.” The OAAU program that was to have been announced at the rally, already postponed once because of the firebombing, was still not ready; Galamison and several other invited speakers would not be present. A successful event now all depended on his giving a suitably spirited speech. “When he came backstage, Malcolm was trying to brush aside his own problems,” Mitchell observed. “When someone suggested that he should let the people worry about
him
for a change, he answered with some irritation, ‘No matter what has happened to me, I can’t go out there complaining about it. What I say has to be said with their problems in mind.’ ”

Rattled by Malcolm’s anger, Benjamin spent the first few minutes of his remarks trying to find focus. Repeatedly he implored audience members to “remain seated” and to “keep the aisles clear.” It took about five minutes before he finally found his footing on familiar rhetorical terrain, and having established his rhythm, he reminded the audience that for more than a year, Malcolm had spoken frequently against the U.S. invasion of Southeast Asia. “So tonight, when Brother Minister Malcolm comes before you, I hope you will open your minds, open your ears,” he told the crowd. “He’ll try to do anything for us without the approval of the power structure that controls the policy systems that you and I live under.” Without mentioning the recent firebombing and the growing death threats, Benjamin underscored the leade’s personal courage and many sacrifices for their common cause. Any time such a person is “in our midst, he does not care anything about personal consequences, but only cares about the welfare of the people, this is a good man. A man like this,” Benjamin emphasized, “should be supported. A man like this should be successful. Because men like this don’t come every day. Few men will risk their lives for somebody else.” A person in the audience shouted with approval, “That’s right!” Most people would be “running away from death, even if they’re in the right,” Benjamin continued. Malcolm X was without question a leader who “cares nothing about the consequences, cares only for the people . . . I hope you understand.” At this, the Audubon audience burst into applause.