Blood Brothers (34 page)

While most black Americans rejected the theology of the Nation, many identified with Ali's politics of self-determination. Young urban blacks viewed his resistance to white authority through the prism of their own struggle for empowerment and freedom. Jill Nelson, a writer who grew up in Harlem during the 1960s, recalled, “We weren't about to join the Nation, but we loved Ali for that supreme act of defiance. It was the defiance against having to be the good Negro, the good Christian waiting to be rewarded by the righteous white provider.” Nelson and black youths across the country loved Ali for many reasons—his racial pride, his outspokenness, his independent attitude. But most of all, she said, they loved Ali because “he epitomized a lot of black people's emotions at the time, our anger, our sense of entitlement, the need to be better just to get to the median, the sense of standing up to the furies.”
¹⁶

Facing an onslaught of criticism, Ali stood his ground, refusing to retreat from his beliefs. When Americans challenged his religious freedom, he began to question America. He was tired of hearing that he should show more restraint and dignity. He could not understand why people hated him just for being a Muslim. “People are always telling me
what a good example I could be if I just wasn't a Muslim,” he said. “I've heard it over and over, how come I couldn't be like Joe Louis and Sugar Ray. Well, they're gone now, and the black man's condition is just the same, ain't it? We're still catching hell.”
¹⁷

“I
T
'
S GOING TO
be different now,” Malcolm explained to
New York Times
writer Mike Handler. “I'm going to join the fight wherever Negroes ask for my help, and I suspect my activities will be on a greater and more intensive scale than in the past.” The past—it's where Malcolm wanted to leave Elijah Muhammad and the Nation, but he could not break away from them, not as long as he lived. On Sunday, March 8, he drove to Handler's home and told him that he no longer represented Muhammad and the Nation. In the interest of peace, he advised all Blacks Muslims to continue following Elijah, even though a group of confidants from his old mosque had already joined him.
¹⁸

The front page of the next day's edition of the
Times
included Handler's story, headlined, “Malcolm X Splits with Muhammad.” He addressed his plans for the future: building a Black Nationalist political party, organizing a voting campaign, speaking at college campuses, and working with civil rights groups—all activities Elijah had discouraged.
¹⁹

Around the same time, he started talking more about armed self-defense and purchased a semi-automatic rifle. If he wished to broker peace with Muhammad, he showed no restraint in blaming him for turning their dispute into a blood feud. When Handler asked why he was leaving Muhammad's side, he answered, “Envy blinds men and makes it impossible for them to think clearly. This is what happened.”
²⁰

Malcolm, Elijah had declared, was a hypocrite, a word with a special meaning among the Black Muslims. In the Nation, a hypocrite was the “most hated by God.” Elijah preached, “They are double-crossers; they come in claiming belief and then go out disbelieving.” These wicked, “evil-tongued people” who deceived Allah and deviated from His Messenger would suffer Allah's wrath. A hypocrite like Malcolm was the enemy, and Allah would show him no mercy, Elijah warned.
²¹

On the Sunday that Malcolm spoke to Handler, Elijah sent Louis X to preach at Mosque No. 7 in Harlem. In a subsequent phone conversation, Elijah praised Louis for his good work replacing the exiled minister, though merely mentioning Malcolm's name aroused Elijah's
anger. It was time to make an example of “that no good long-legged Malcolm,” he exclaimed. Hypocrites like him could only be dealt with one way: “you . . . cut their heads off.”
²²

Elijah also stayed in close contact with his son Herbert, whom he had selected to manage Ali. He told Herbert that he wanted to meet with Ali in Chicago to ensure that the boxer had severed ties with Malcolm. He also wanted to discuss Ali's upcoming trip abroad because the “young fellow” needed to learn how to behave when he met with statesmen. He worried that Ali had never been out of the country, which was untrue, revealing how little he actually knew about the boxer's career. Elijah instructed Herbert not to let Ali make any “plans with anyone until” they met. Finally, he advised, add “four more pages to [our] paper,” so that the whole world could read about the famous Muslim champion.
²³

On Monday, March 9, Muhammad telephoned Captain Joseph and declared that Malcolm must give up everything that belonged to the Nation of Islam, including his home. Joseph sent word to Maceo X, the secretary of the New York mosque, to draft an eviction letter. That same day, Herbert's assistant called Malcolm to inform him that Elijah's son would now serve as Ali's manager and that Ali no longer planned to travel abroad with him.
²⁴

Malcolm fumed.
He
was the one who introduced Ali to African ambassadors.
He
was the one who had convinced Ali that he should embrace a larger role on the world stage and develop relationships with African leaders.
He
was the one who had strategically planned for Ali to visit Muslim countries in Africa and the Middle East, and now the Black Muslims had stolen his friend and his plan. But Malcolm was not ready to give up on Ali yet. Desperate to reach him, he telephoned Ali eight times that day, but he could not get through the men who surrounded the champ. In a phone interview, Ali told a reporter from the
Amsterdam News
that he still intended to tour Africa, but added, “I will not be traveling with Malcolm X.”
²⁵

After Malcolm announced his official break from the Nation, more reporters called Ali to learn about his future. He said that he disagreed with Malcolm's sanguinary rhetoric. “I am against violence,” the boxer said. “I am a fighter and I am religious,” but “I am not going to do anything that is not right. I don't know much about what Malcolm X is doing, but I do know that Muhammad is the wisest.”
²⁶

In front of newsmen at his Phoenix home, Muhammad wept, feigning disbelief over Malcolm's departure. “I am stunned,” he professed. “I never dreamed this man would deviate from the Nation of Islam. Every one of the Muslims admired him.” Muhammad's tears gave the impression that Malcolm had left the Nation under his own free will. Acting deserted and betrayed, Muhammad seemed to grieve the loss of a man whom he once considered his own flesh and blood, the same man that he had blamed for poisoning the Nation with lies about him.
²⁷

That same afternoon, March 10, Captain Joseph, Maceo X, and a squad from the Fruit showed up at Malcolm's East Elmhurst home on 97th Street in Queens. Joseph served Malcolm with eviction papers and demanded that he surrender some of the mosque's valuables. Malcolm handed over a few documents and securities from the Nation's treasury, but he refused to leave the house. Muhammad had once told him that the house was his, even though the deed showed that the home was the legal property of the Nation of Islam. The moment Captain Joseph showed up at his doorstep, Malcolm regretted ever taking a vow of poverty and determined that he would fight back.
²⁸

Malcolm knew that this was only the beginning. The war had just begun. “They've got to kill me,” he told a reporter. “They can't afford to let me live.”
²⁹

O
N
T
HURSDAY
, M
ARCH
12, around ten a.m., a sleek black Chrysler pulled up to the curb in front of the Midtown Park Sheraton Hotel. Malcolm stepped out of the car wearing a pearl gray pinchecked suit and carrying a briefcase. A cadre of black men followed him inside, through the noisy lobby and up to the packed second-floor Tapestry Suite, where a crowd of reporters, photographers, and undercover FBI agents waited for him. Before he stepped to the podium, his aides distributed press releases announcing his split from the NOI and the creation of Muslim Mosque, Inc. (MMI), a politically oriented Nationalist group of Muslims and secularists.
³⁰

Malcolm looked fried after a week of sleepless nights. Before he began speaking, he managed to smile, nodding at some of the reporters he recognized. Then he offered a chilling prelude to a long, hot summer in Harlem. “Because 1964 threatens to be a very explosive year on the racial front”—in fact, it would be one of the most violent in American
history —“and because I myself intend to be very active in every phase of the Negro struggle for human rights, I have called this press conference this morning to clarify my own position in the struggle.” In careful language he advised blacks to purchase guns, form rifle clubs, and defend themselves by any means necessary.
³¹

Malcolm offered only a vague description about the objectives of MMI, as he was not entirely sure of his own direction. He had said that whites were welcome to support his organization, but they could not join. There could be no unity between blacks and whites until blacks had unified themselves. And although he still rejected the goals and tactics of civil rights leaders, he claimed that he wanted to cooperate with those leaders, whom he had once derided as Uncle Toms.
³²

The media focused most of its attention on Malcolm's self-defense rhetoric, characterizing his message in simple, violent terms. Malcolm had never sounded so dangerous, writers fretted. Elijah Muhammad assured a
New York Times
writer that Malcolm was not nearly as threatening as the press made him sound. His former minister had no following, no guns, and no divine authority. Malcolm's plan sounded “silly” to him. “Where are they going to get guns and arms?”
³³

In the wake of Malcolm's press conference, black Americans debated his future in the freedom struggle. Bayard Rustin suggested that most blacks would never consider creating a separate state or migrating back to Africa, but they accepted Malcolm's “analysis of the evils that are being practiced on the Negro people,” and that could make him a potent leader. “In appearance, personality, and philosophical outlook,” a
Sepia
writer opined, “Malcolm comes closer to being a revolutionary than any other American Negro leader.”
Liberator
's Carlos Russell agreed. He found Malcolm charismatic and persuasive, but the Nationalist minister provided more slogans than answers to the black man's problems. If Malcolm ever developed an effective program, “he would indeed become the most formidable leader black people have ever known.”
³⁴

Freed from Elijah Muhammad's authority, many wondered if Malcolm had changed. Who was this independent Malcolm X? Was he a demagogue or revolutionary? Was he merely an orator or would he actually fight for freedom? Did he really hate white people or did he simply hate the injustices that he had witnessed?

Dick Schaap sought the answers when he visited with Malcolm at the Hotel Theresa. When the Muslim minister welcomed the Jewish reporter into his office, Schaap realized that Malcolm was nothing like the frightening agitator that he had read about. Malcolm was surprisingly friendly. “It is almost impossible, upon meeting him, not to like him,” he wrote. In private, other white writers learned that Malcolm did not love the white man, but he did not necessarily hate him either. “There were two Malcolms, really,” said Mike Handler, one of the few white journalists whose home Malcolm had visited. “There was the private Malcolm, a man of ineffable charm and courtesy, a born aristocrat. And there was the public Malcolm, Malcolm in combat, whose job was to frighten the white man out of his shoes.”
³⁵

Schaap departed Malcolm's office with a new perspective, yet he remained frustrated. Malcolm had avoided most of his questions, repeating old lines and delivering verbose answers. He left wondering if Malcolm would ever lead when action was needed. “No one really knows the extent of his power because he has never put his power to any real test.” But he could not dismiss Malcolm either. He was too eloquent and too intelligent to be ignored. Trying “to figure out Malcolm X,” he concluded, was as difficult as cracking a secret code. “It is a game that almost every thinking person in Harlem is playing these days.”
³⁶

E
LIJAH
'
S PRECIOUS TREASURE
finally arrived at his home. On Saturday, March 14, a day after Muhammad Ali took another army entrance exam in Louisville, the champ visited Elijah in Chicago. Before he drove to Elijah's mansion, a crowd of reporters met Ali at the airport, pestering him with questions about his relationship with Malcolm. “Muhammad taught Malcolm X everything he knows,” he said. “So I couldn't go with the child, I go with the daddy.”
³⁷

At the mansion, Ali and his brother embraced Elijah. Sitting on the living room couch with his arm around Elijah, Ali listened as the soft-spoken elder read from the Koran, lecturing about Allah. They discussed his victory over Liston, the backlash against his Muslim name, and his plans to travel abroad. Elijah told him that many Americans hated the idea of a Muslim champion because there was widespread “hatred of the Muslims and Islam in America.” That is why boxing
officials wanted to vacate his title, and why so many people refused to use his Muslim name. Ali left that night convinced of Elijah's wisdom and power. “Can't nobody prove Elijah Muhammad wrong,” he declared.
³⁸

During Ali's visit in Chicago, Elijah entrusted his third son to supervise Ali and manage his financial affairs. Herbert Muhammad spent most of his time in Chicago running various Muslim enterprises, chauffeuring his father, and editing
Muhammad Speaks
. A short, pudgy photographer with his own studio and limited formal education, Herbert knew very little about managing a boxer. When he was a boy, his father saw him punching a speed bag in the family garage and scolded him for wasting his time. “I don't want you around the ring, boxing for any little fat white man with a big cigar,” he lectured. “Don't be around any sport world. Sport is the ruin of our people. Turns them into children who're used and then left broken. Stay out of it.”
³⁹