Malcolm X (87 page)

In early 1978, radical attorney William Kunstler took up the cases of Thomas 15X Johnson and Norman 3X Butler, petitioning to the appellate division of the New York State Supreme Court for a new trial. His principal new evidence was a signed affidavit by Talmadge Hayer that identified four other men, “torpedoes from New Jersey,” who had been responsible for the killing of Malcolm X. Kunstler informed the supreme court that “the FBI knew all along that there were four [other] men involved in the killing and that two of the men convicted were innocent.” The FBI refused to release its findings about Malcolm’s assassination to the court. Kunstler also noted rumors, never confirmed, that Reuben Francis had recently resurfaced “around his old haunts spending large sums of money he allegedly received from the FBI.” Another affidavit was also submitted by Benjamin Goodman (then Ben Karim), who affirmed that “at no time did I see the faces of Butler or Johnson whom I knew well, and would have been sure to notice.”

On November 1, 1978, Justice Harold J. Rothwax of the state supreme court denied the motion to set aside the 1966 convictions of Butler and Johnson. The information in the affidavit might have exonerated those two men while identifying four others who, Hayer said, were guilty. However, the judge deemed the document insufficient to grant a new trial. Throughout 1978 and 1979 civil rights groups took up the Butler-Johnson case, first petitioning the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, requesting an investigation into Malcolm X’s death. The petition charged, “The ‘official version’ has it that Malcolm X was the victim of a Muslim vendetta. Many unanswered questions and unexplained events that predate the assassination . . . do not support the official version’ at all.” Signatories of the petition included Ossie Davis, African Methodist Episcopal bishop H. H. Brookins, California state assemblywoman Maxine Waters, and Huey P. Newton of the Black Panther Party. Despite the campaign’s efforts, no congressional hearings were held.

Norman Butler was paroled in 1985 and Thomas Johnson received parole in 1987. For decades both men agitated to clear their names. Johnson, who had changed his name to Khalil Islam, died on August 4, 2009. Butler changed his name to Muhammad Abdul Aziz, and in the early 1990s was employed as a supportive services counselor at a Harlem drug rehabilitation clinic. In 1998, Aziz briefly served as security chief for Harlem Mosque No. 7. Beginning in 1990, Hayer was incarcerated part-time at the Lincoln Correctional Facility in Manhattan, where he was confined for a total of twelve hours per week on weekends. After seventeen unsuccessful attempts, Hayer was finally granted full parole in April 2010. Hayer told the parole board, “I’ve had a lot of time . . . to think about [Malcolm X’s murder] . . . I understand a lot better the dynamics of movements . . . and conflicts that can come up, but I have deep regrets about my participation in that.” It was an oddly impersonal mea culpa, an apology without actually articulating the crime he had committed. Hayer’s parole provoked a negative response from the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee, which announced at a press conference that Hayer’s crimes were too serious to permit his release.

Other than Talmadge Hayer, the alleged assassins of Malcolm X, according to Hayer’s affidavit, continued their lives in the Nation of Islam as before. The senior member of the crew, Newark mosque administrator Benjamin Thomas, was killed in 1986, at age forty-eight. Leon Davis lived on in Paterson, New Jersey, employed at an electronics factory there; he continued his affiliation with the Nation and the FOI for decades. Businessman Wilbur McKinley also continued to be associated with the Newark mosque.

Alleged murderer Willie Bradley went into a life of crime. On April 11, 1968, the Livingston National Bank of Livingston, New Jersey, was robbed by three masked men brandishing three handguns and one sawed-off shotgun. They escaped with over $12,500. The following year Bradley and a second man, James Moore, were charged with the bank robbery and were brought to trial. Bradley, however, received privileged treatment, and he retained his own attorney separate from Moore. The charges against him were ultimately dismissed; meanwhile, after a first trial ending in a hung jury, Moore was convicted in a second trial.

Bradley’s special treatment by the criminal justice system in 1969-70 raises the question of whether he was an FBI informant, either after the assassination of Malcolm X or very possibly even before. It would perhaps explain why Bradley took a different exit from the murder scene than the two other shooters, shielding him from the crowd’s retaliation. It suggests that Bradley and possibly other Newark mosque members may have actively collaborated on the shooting with local law enforcement and/or the FBI. The existing evidence raises the question of whether the murder of Malcolm X was not the initiative of the Nation of Islam alone. In
The Death and Life of Malcolm X
, Goldman does not identify Bradley by name but seems to be referring to him when he notes that one of the assassins “was tracked to a New Jersey state prison, where he was serving seven and a half to fifteen years for an unrelated felony.”

Bradley continued to experience legal problems into the 1980s. In 1983, he was indicted on twelve counts, including robbery, “terroristic threat,” aggravated assault, and possession of a controlled substance. He first pled not guilty to the charges, but was eventually convicted of several of them and was incarcerated. His life was turned around through a romantic relationship with Carolyn F. Kelly. A longtime leader of Newark’s black community, Kelly, a Republican, led the defense for boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter in the 1970s, which helped overturn his murder conviction. The owner of First Class Championship Center, a boxing establishment in Newark, Kelly was the first black woman in the state to promote lucrative prize fights. By the 2000s, Bradley could usually be found on Friday afternoons at his wife’s boxing gymnasium. In October 2009, he was inducted into the Newark Athletic Hall of Fame for his baseball achivements in high school.

In 2010, Bradley even appeared briefly in a campaign video, promoting the reelection of Newark’s charismatic mayor, Cory Booker. Bradley’s metamorphosis from criminality to respectability seemed complete.

But things began falling apart in May 2010, with the Internet publication of an investigative article on Bradley by journalist Richard Prince. In the article, journalist Abdur-Rahman Muhammad directly accused Bradley of being “the man who fired the first and deadliest shot” killing Malcolm X. Journalist Karl Evanzz, the author of several studies on the Nation of Islam, called for Bradley’s exposure and prosecution “for depriving Malcolm X of his civil rights in the same way that the Klansmen who killed black activists were prosecuted. . . . Bradley killed Malcolm X to stop him from exercising his freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly.” Weeks later, filmmaker Omar Shabazz released a documentary film naming Bradley, Hayer, and the other Newark NOI members as the real killers of Malcolm X. The goal of these critics appears to be Bradley’s indictment by federal or local authorities.

The chief beneficiary of Malcolm’s assassination was Louis Farrakhan. Indeed, the transition from Minister Louis X of Boston to Louis Farrakhan was made possible only through the leadership model that Malcolm had established years earlier. For a decade Malcolm had spread the salvation message of Elijah Muhammad throughout the United States, and for another decade, 1965 to 1975, Farrakhan assumed the identical role as the Nation of Islam’s national minister. Just as Malcolm predicted, most of those inside the Nation who had criticized him and sought to undermine his influence were equally opposed to Farrakhan. Elijah Muhammad’s family was jealous and fearful of him, because as the patriarch approached death it seemed possible that Farrakhan might usurp the mantle of leadership.

But he never managed to escape the shadow of speculation and rumor regarding his possible role in Malcolm’s murder. Farrakhan’s vivid description of Malcolm as a man “worthy of death” may have sealed his reputation. In an interview with Mike Wallace decades after the killing, Farrakhan conceded, “In one sense I may have been complicit in the murder of Brother Malcolm in that when Malcolm spoke against the Messenger, I spoke against him, and this helped to create an atmosphere [in which] Malcolm was assassinated.” But that admission has never satisfied latter-day Malcolmites, many of whom continue to demand a reopening of the case. Farrakhan is fully aware that “even now there are some black people calling for a grand jury because there’s no statute of limitations on murder to bring me into a grand jury to question me.”

Even in his dreams, Farrakhan cannot escape his link to Malcolm. In a 2007 oral history interview, he shared this nocturnal revelation:

Today, Farrakhan still seeks to demonstrate his continuing filial devotion to Malcolm, despite his central role in advocating his death. His dream, however, places the cause of the murder in Malcolm’s own failures. Farrakhan suggests that Elijah Muhammad intended to make Malcolm his spiritual heir, setting aside the claims of Wallace and his other children. Muhammad was simply testing Malcolm, to determine if he had the leadership qualities necessary to direct the Nation. While it is true that Malcolm, after being silenced, at first desperately attempted to remain inside the Nation of Islam, once the break occurred he was liberated from the restrictions that had been imposed on him. What Farrakhan has difficulty admitting is that it was only when Malcolm accepted the universalism and humanism of orthodox Islam, explicitly rejecting racial separatism, that he could reach a truly global audience. Had he lived, Malcolm could have led an international campaign for human rights for blacks, but he could have accomplished this only by divorcing himself from the Nation of Islam’s sectarian creed.

Several weeks after the firebombing and destruction of Mosque No. 7 in February 1965, Louis was asked to visit and speak to the Nation’s congregation in New York. It was only months later that Elijah Muhammad telephoned to say that he would be transferred to serve as minister of Mosque No. 7 in Harlem. Under Louis’s supervision, the destroyed mosque would be reconstructed; he would move into Malcolm’s rebuilt home in Elmhurst. In August 1965, Muhammad announced Louis’s appointment before six thousand members in Detroit’s Cobo Center.

Upon being told about his new position, an overwhelmed Farrakhan jumped into his car and drove to a park on the outskirts of Boston. Years before, as a high school distance runner, it had been a place of solitude, where he would run and exercise. He recounts how he jogged out into the middle of a grassy field, tears streaming down his face, dropped to his knees, looking up into the sky, and confessed to Malcolm: “I didn’t mean to take your mosque—I didn’t mean to take your home!” As Farrakhan relates this story, it is powerful and it may even be plausible. But is it true?

Only three hours after the assassination of Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan delivered the guest sermon at Newark Mosque No. 25—the very mosque where the assassins had been recruited and organized. Was his presence in Newark on that fateful day simply coincidence, or something more?

Years from now, when thousands of pages of FBI and BOSS surveillance are finally accessible, more definitive judgments will be made about the connections between Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, and various law enforcement agencies. It would not be entirely surprising if an FBI transcript surfaced documenting a telephone call from Elijah Muhammad to a subordinate, authorizing Malcolm’s murder. At present, the evidence suggests that Farrakhan, for one, was not personally involved and had no prior knowledge of the plot; however, he surely understood the consequences of his fiery condemnation of Malcolm, as well as of the forces within the Nation of Islam that would rid Elijah Muhammad of the turbulent priest. He may have suspected that his order to speak at the Newark mosque that February 21, 1965, was not a wholly innocent pursuit. It was ambition, not direct involvement in the crime, that blinded Farrakhan to what was going on around him.

EPILOGUE

Reflections on a Revolutionary Vision

A
biography maps the social architecture of an individual’s life. The biographer charts the evolution of a subject over time, and the various challenges and tests that the individual endures provide insights into the person’s character. But the biographer has an additional burden: to explain events and the perspectives and actions of others that the subject could not possibly know, that nevertheless had a direct bearing on the individual’s life.

Malcolm X today has iconic status, in the pantheon of multicultural American heroes. But at the time of his death he was widely reviled and dismissed as an irresponsible demagogue. Malcolm deliberately sought to stand at the margins, challenging the United States government and American institutions. There was a cost to all this. The state branded him as a subversive and a security risk. J. Edgar Hoover’s animus toward Malcolm X, for example, set into motion acts of illegal wiretapping, surveillance, and disruption by law enforcement officers that probably surpassed anything Malcolm could have imagined. Malcolm was not fully aware, until too late, of the deep hostilities he had provoked inside the Nation of Islam that led a coterie of officials around Muhammad to call for his murder. He placed his trust in a bodyguard who may have planned and helped to carry out his public execution. Leaders like Malcolm have enormous confidence in themselves and in their ability to persuade others. It was extremely difficult for him to anticipate betrayal, or even to acknowledge it.