The autobiography of Malcolm X (65 page)

Elijah Muhammad drove his frail energy to speak for about an hour and a half. He challenged any would-be assassins: “If you seek to snuff out the life of Elijah Muhammad, you are inviting your own doom! The Holy Quran tells us not to pick a fight but to defend ourselves. We will fight!” It was mid-afternoon when Elijah Muhammad turned back to his seat with some three thousand Black Muslim men, women, and children shouting “Yes, _sir_! . . . So sweet! . . . All praise to Muhammad!”

In the Unity Funeral Home in the Harlem community of New York City in the mid-afternoon, the public's viewing of the body of Malcolm X was interrupted by the arrival of a party of about a dozen people whose central figure was a white-turbaned, dark-robed elderly man whose white beard fell to his chest and who carried a forked stick. When reporters rushed to attempt interviews, another man in the party waved them away, saying, “A silent tongue does not betray its owner.” The man was Sheik

Ahmed Hassoun, a Sudanese, a member of the Sunni Moslems, who had taught in Mecca for 35 years when he had met Malcolm X there, and then had soon come to the United States to serve as Malcolm X's spiritual advisor and to teach at the Muslim Mosque, Inc.

Sheik Hassoun prepared the body for burial in accordance with Moslem ritual. Removing the Western clothing in which the body had been on display, Sheik Hassoun washed the body with special holy oil. Then he draped the body in the traditional seven white linen shrouds, called the _kafan_. Only the face with its reddish moustache and goatee was left exposed. The mourners who had come with Sheik Hassoun filed to the bier and he read passages from theKoran. Then he turned to a funeral home representative: “Now the body is ready for burial.” Soon, the sheik and his retinue left, and the viewing by the public resumed. When the word spread, numbers of persons who had come before returned for another wait in the long, slowly moving line, wanting to see the Moslem burial dress.

It was late during this Friday afternoon that I got into the quietly moving line, thinking about the Malcolm X with whom I had worked closely for about two years. Blue-uniformed policemen stood at intervals watching us shuffle along within the wooden gray-painted police barricades. Just across the street several men were looking at the line from behind a large side window of the “Lone Star Barber Shop, Eddie Johns, Prop., William Ashe, Mgr.” Among the policemen were a few press representatives talking to each other to pass the time. Then we were inside the softly lit, hushed, cool, large chapel. Standing at either end of the long, handsome bronze coffin were two big, dark policemen, mostly looking straight ahead, but moving their lips when some viewer tarried. Within minutes I had reached the coffin. Under the glass lid, I glimpsed the delicate white shrouding over the chest and up like a hood about the face on which I tried to concentrate for as long as I could. All that I could think was that it was he, all right-Malcolm X. “Move on”-the policeman's voice was soft. Malcolm looked to me-just waxy and _dead_. The policeman's hand was gesturing at his waist level. I thought, “_Well-good-bye_.” I moved on.

Twenty-two thousand people had viewed the body when the line was stopped that night for good, at eleven P.M. Quietly, between midnight and dawn, a dozen police cars flanked a hearse that went the twenty-odd blocks farther uptown to the Faith Temple. The bronze coffin was wheeled inside and placed upon a platform draped in thick dark red velvet, in front of the altar, and the coffin's lid was reopened. As the hearse pulled away, policemen stood at posts of vigil both inside

and outside Faith Temple. It was crispy cold outside. About six A.M., people began forming a line on the east side of Amsterdam Avenue. By nine A.M. , an estimated six thousand persons thronged the nearby blocks, behind police barriers, and faces were in every window of the apartment buildings across the street; some stood shivering on fire escapes. From 145th Street to 149th Street, policemen had blocked off all automobile traffic except for their own cars, the newspapers' cars, and the equipment trucks for radio and television on-the-spot coverage. There were hundreds of policemen, some on the rooftops in the immediate area. Combing the crowd's edges were reporters with microphones and notebooks. “He was fascinating, a remarkably fascinating man, that's why I'm here,” a white girl in her mid-twenties told a _New York Times_ man; and a Negro woman, “I'm paying my respects to the greatest black man in this century. He's a black man. Don't say colored.” Another woman, noticing steel helmets inside a television network car, laughed to the driver, “You getting ready for next summer?”

When the Faith Temple doors were opened at 9:20, a corps of OAAU members entered. Within the next quarter-hour, twenty of the men had ushered in six hundred seat-holders. Fifty press reporters, photographers and television cameramen clustered beneath religious murals to the rear of the altar, and some stood on chairs to see better. A Negro engineer monitored recording equipment between the altar and the coffin which was guarded by eight uniformed Negro policemen and two uniformed Negro policewomen. One Negro plain-clothes policeman sat on either side of heavily veiled Sister Betty in the second row. The raised lid of the coffin hid the Faith Temple's brass tithe box and candelabra; the head of the Islamic Mission of America, in Brooklyn, Sheik Al-Haj Daoud Ahmed Faisal, had counseled that any hint of Christianity in the services would make the deceased a _kafir_, an unbeliever. (The sheik had also dissented with the days of public exhibition of the body: “Death is a private matter between Allah and the deceased.”)

Before the services began, OAAU ushers brought in one floral wreath-a two-by-five arrangement of the Islamic Star and Crescent in white carnations against a background of red carnations.

First, the actor Ossie Davis and his wife, actress Ruby Dee, read the notes, telegrams and cables of condolence. They came from every major civil-rights organization; from individual figures such as Dr. Martin Luther King; from organizations and governments abroad, such as The Africa- Pakistan-West-Indian Society of the London School of Economics, the Pan-African Congress of Southern Africa, the Nigerian Ambassador from Lagos, the President of the Republic of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah: “The death of Malcolm X shall not have been in vain.”

Next, Omar Osman stood, a representative of the Islam Center of Switzerland and the United States: “We knew Brother Malcolm as a blood brother, particularly after his pilgrimage to Mecca last year. The highest thing that a Moslem can aspire to is to die on the battlefield and not die at his bedside-” He paused briefly to wait out the applause from among the mourners. “Those who die on the battlefield are not dead, but are alive!” The applause was louder, and cries rose, “Right! Right!” Omar Osman then critically commented upon the remarks which USIA Director Carl Rowan had made in Washington, D.C., about the foreign press reaction to the death of the deceased. From the audience then hisses rose.

Again, the actor Ossie Davis stood. His deep voice delivered the eulogy to Malcolm X which was going to cause Davis subsequently to be hailed more than ever among Negroes in Harlem:

"Here-at this final hour, in this quiet place, Harlem has come to bid farewell to one of its brightest hopes-extinguished now, and gone from us forever. . . .

"Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy, controversial and bold young captain- and we will smile. . . . They will say that he is of hate-a fanatic, a racist-who can only bring evil to the cause for which you struggle!

"And we will answer and say unto them: Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever touch him, or have him smile at you? Did you ever really listen to him? Did he ever do a mean thing? Was he ever himself associated with violence or any public disturbance? For if you did you would know him. And if you knew him you would know why we must honor him: Malcolm was our

manhood, our living, black manhood! This was his meaning to his people. And, in honoring him, we honor the best in ourselves. . . . And we will know him then for what he was and is-a Prince- our own black shining Prince!-who didn't hesitate to die, because he loved us so."

Brief speeches were made by others. Then, the family, the OAAU members and other Muslims present stood and filed by the coffin to view the body for the last time. Finally, the two plain- clothes policemen ushered Sister Betty to have her last sight of her husband. She leaned over, kissing the glass over him; she broke into tears. Until then almost no crying had been heard in the services, but now Sister Betty's sobs were taken up by other women.

The services had lasted a little over an hour when the three minutes of prayers said for every Muslim who is dead were recited by Alhajj Heshaam Jaaber, of Elizabeth, New Jersey. At the phrase “Allahu Akbar”-“God is most great”-all Muslims in the audience placed their opened hands at the sides of their faces.

An official cortege, with the hearse, of three family cars, eighteen mourners' cars, twelve police cars and six press cars-followed by about fifty other cars-briskly drove the eighteen miles out of Manhattan and along the New York Thruway, then off its Exit 7 to reach the Ferncliff Cemetery in Ardsley, N.Y. All along the route, Negroes placed their hats or hands over their hearts,paying their final respects. At each bridge crossing in Manhattan County, police cars stood watch; the Westchester County police had stationed individual patrolmen at intervals en route to the cemetery.

Over the coffin, final Moslem prayers were said by Sheik Alhajj Heshaam Jaaber. The coffin was lowered into the grave, the head facing the east, in keeping with Islamic tradition. Among the mourners, the Moslems knelt beside the grave to pray with their foreheads pressed to the earth, in the Eastern manner. When the family left the gravesite, followers of Malcolm X would not let the coffin be covered by the white grave-diggers who had stood a little distance away, waiting. Instead, seven OAAU men began dropping bare handfuls of earth down on the coffin; then they were given shovels and they carried dirt to fill the grave, and then mound it.

The night fell over the earthly remains of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, who had been called Malcolm X; who had been called Malcolm Little; who had been called “Big Red” and “Satan” and “Homeboy” and other names-who had been buried as a Moslem. “According to the Koran,” the _New York Times_ reported, "the bodies of the dead remain in their graves until the Last Day, the Day of Judgment. On this day of cataclysm the heavens are rent and the mountains ground to dust, the graves open and men are called to account by Allah.

"The blessed-the godfearing, the humble, the charitable, those who have suffered and been persecuted for Allah's sake or fought in religious wars for Islam-are summoned to the Garden of Paradise.

"There, according to the teaching of Mohammed, the Prophet, they live forever by flowing streams, reclining on silken cushions, and enjoying the company of dark-eyed maidens and wives of perfect purity.

“The damned-the covetous, the evildoer, the follower of gods other than Allah-are sent to Eternal Fire, where they are fed boiling water and molten brass. 'The death from which ye flee will truly overtake you,' the Koran says. 'Then will ye be sent back to the Knower of things secret and open, and He will tell you the truth of the things that ye did.'”

After signing the contract for this book, Malcolm X looked at me hard. “A writer is what I want, not an interpreter.” I tried to be a dispassionate chronicler. But he was the most electric personality I have ever met, and I still can't quite conceive him dead. It still feels to me as if he has just gone into some next chapter, to be written by historians.

New York, 1965

OSSIE DAVIS ON MALCOLM X

[Mr. Davis wrote the following in response to a magazine editor's question: Why did you eulogize Malcolm X?] You are not the only person curious to know why I would eulogize a man like Malcolm X. Many who know and respect me have written letters. Of these letters I am proudest of those from a sixth-grade class of young white boys and girls who asked me to explain. I appreciate your giving me this chance to do so.

You may anticipate my defense somewhat by considering the following fact: no Negro has yet asked me that question. (My pastor in Grace Baptist Church where I teach Sunday School preached a sermon about Malcolm in which he called him a “giant in a sick world.”) Every one of the many letters I got frommy own people lauded Malcolm as a man, and commended me for having spoken at his funeral.

At the same time-and this is important-most of them took special pains to disagree with much or all of what Malcolm said and what he stood for. That is, with one singing exception, they all, every last, black, glory-hugging one of them, knew that Malcolm-whatever else he was or was not- _Malcolm was a man_!

White folks do not need anybody to remind them that they are men. We do! This was his one incontrovertible benefit to his people.

Protocol and common sense require that Negroes stand back and let the white man speak up for us, defend us, and lead us from behind the scene in our fight. This is the essence of Negro politics. But Malcolm said to hell with that! Get up off your knees and fight your own battles. That's the way to win back your self-respect. That's the way to make the white man respect you. And if he won't let you live like a man, he certainly can't keep you from dying like one!

Malcolm, as you can see, was refreshing excitement; he scared hell out of the rest of us, bred as we are to caution, to hypocrisy in the presence of white folks, to the smile that never fades. Malcolm knew that every white man in America profits directly or indirectly from his position vis-a- vis Negroes, profits from racism even though he does not practice it or believe in it.