Malcolm X (30 page)

Despite such ideological misgivings, the majority of the new generation of radicals increasingly came under the influence of the black left, best illustrated by the growing African-American fascination with Cuba. In January 1959, an unlikely band of guerrilla fighters led by Fidel Castro had wrested control of the country from dictator Fulgencio Batista. Though Castro traveled to Washington in April to reassure the Eisenhower administration of his good intentions, the U.S. government quickly concluded that the new regime was anti-American and set to work trying to destabilize it. American radicals who sympathized with the young revolution responded by establishing the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which attracted such notable intellectuals as Allen Ginsberg, C. Wright Mills, and I. F. Stone. A significant number of African-American artists and political activists joined the committee, or at least publicly endorsed Castro’s revolution. These included journalists William Worthy and Richard Gibson, writers James Baldwin, John Oliver Killens, and Julian Mayfield—and, unsurprisingly, Robert Williams.

In June 1960, the committee sponsored Williams’s first trip to Cuba, and the following month organized an African-American delegation, which he led. Its members included Mayfield, playwright/poet LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka), historian John Henrik Clarke, and Harold Cruse. Even for bitter anticommunists like Cruse, the experience was inspirational. “The ideology of a new revolutionary wave in the world at large,” he observed, “had lifted us out of anonymity of lonely struggle in the United States to the glorified rank of visiting dignitaries.” But Cruse struggled to maintain his objectivity—much as Malcolm did under similar circumstances several years later when he visited Africa. To Cruse the fundamental questions to be answered were, “What did it all mean and how did it relate to the Negro in America?” A significant lesson, he wrote, reflecting the increasingly militant feelings among black activists, was “the relevance of force and violence to successful revolutions.”

As the civil rights movement adopted an increasingly confrontational approach involving a mix of protest and politics, Malcolm and the NOI watched from a distance. Holding fast to its doctrine of strict separatism, the Nation had little to contribute to the dialogue over how best to change the existing order. Many of the Nation’s leaders did not truly understand the growing civil rights struggle; they were still convinced that they should distance themselves from anything controversial or subversive. Yet when it came to competing for the minds of black Americans, the issue-based platforms and forceful personalities within the Black Freedom Movement presented a direct challenge to the NOI. The positive press coverage received by King and other civil rights leaders gave them a relevance to political realities that the NOI lacked.

In a letter written in April 1959 to James 3X Shabazz, the newly appointed minister of Temple No. 25 in Newark, Muhammad expressed concern about “the all too frequent clashes with Law Enforcement Agents that we, the Believers of Islam, are being involved in.” He was troubled by the confrontation in Malcolm’s home between the NYPD and the NOI members, as well as by the publicity surrounding the subsequent trial. “Whenever an officer comes to serve a notice or to arrest you, you should not resist whether you are innocent or guilty,” he instructed. “We must
remember
that we are not in power in Washington, nor where we live, to dictate to the authorities. . . . Lawyers, bonds and fines are expensive, and being beat up and bruised is too painful to bear for nothing.” Allah would ultimately punish those who had mistreated his followers. “But,
remember
that you should not be the
cause
for them to take the opportunity to mistreat you, since you now know that the devil has no Justice for you.”

Privately, Malcolm disagreed. The extensive press coverage around the trial of the Molettes, Minnie Simmons, and Betty, he thought, generally presented the Nation of Islam in a favorable light. “If it had not been for the on-the-spot reporting of the
Amsterdam News
from the very beginning of the case,” he wrote in a public letter, “these innocent people would now be behind bars.” He astutely linked the NOI’s confrontation with the police to the larger struggle for civil rights and the need for a crusading African-American press. Some of “Malcolm’s Ministers” inside the NOI surely felt the same way.

He was looking beyond the NOI, to non-Islamic black Americans, and making overtures to blacks outside the Nation—as indeed he had done for several years. It was during this time that he was contacted by a young African-American representative of the local television station WNTA Channel 13, Louis Lomax, who was preparing a series of television programs about the NOI. Lomax was working on the project with another journalist, Mike Wallace, who by the late 1950s had become a familiar presence on New York-area television.

The two men had different reasons for approaching the NOI. Wallace was in his late thirties and had extensive media experience, but was still looking for his big break. Given Malcolm’s and the Nation’s rising profile, he sensed the possibility of controversy in exposing the NOI’s divisive racial ideas before a large audience. Lomax’s interests were more complicated. Born in 1922 in Valdosta, Georgia, he had earned a bachelor’s degree from Paine College, as well as master's degrees from American University and Yale (in 1944 and 1947 respectively). While studying at Yale, he had flourished, hosting a weekly radio program that “marked the first time a Negro had written and presented his own dramatic skits over the air in the District of Columbia.” But by 1949 he had fallen on harder times. After moving to Chicago’s South Side, he became involved in a scam leasing rental cars in Indiana and driving them to Chicago to be sold. The police easily tracked down the stolen cars and busted him; he was convicted of a series of larcenies and remained behind bars until paroled in November 1954, during which time his wife had divorced him.

In 1956, he had an unexpected reversal of fortune. That February, his parole officer gave him permission to work for the Associated Negro Press in Washington. The opportunity revitalized Lomax; during the next three years, he placed articles in such newspapers as the
New York Daily News
and the
New York Daily Mirror
and analytical pieces in magazines such as
Pageant
,
Coronet,
and
The Nation
. Through these his name reached Wallace, who offered him the job of conducting preinterviews with guests prior to their appearance on his show. It was Lomax who came up with the idea of a series devoted to the NOI, having secured Elijah Muhammad’s approval through Malcolm. Lomax may also have shared with Malcolm his history in prison, which would have strengthened their relationship.

Ideologically Lomax was an integrationist, yet he found much to admire in the self-sufficiency and racial pride exuded by Nation members. The NOI gave him permission to film Muhammad at a rally in Washington on May 31. After weeks compiling footage, Lomax delivered the reels to Wallace, who edited and narrated the series for maximum shock value. The confrontational title,
The Hate That Hate Produced
, was a covert appeal to white liberals, which reflected Wallace’s politics. After all, white America had tolerated slavery and racial segregation for centuries. Was it really so surprising that a minority of Negroes had become as racist as many whites?

The Wallace/Lomax series appeared on New York City’s WNTA-TV in five half-hour installments, from July 13 to July 17. One week later, the channel aired a one-hour documentary hosted by Wallace on the black supremacy movement, comprising segments from the earlier broadcasts. It was probably fortunate that Malcolm was out of the country when the programs appeared, because they sparked a firestorm. Civil rights leaders, sensing a publicity disaster, could not move quickly enough to distance themselves. Arnold Forster, head of the Anti-Defamation League’s civil rights division, charged that Wallace had exaggerated the size of the NOI and given it an “importance that was not warranted.” Other critics took issue with the series itself. In the
New York Times
, Jack Gould declared: “The periodic tendency of Mike Wallace to pursue sensationalism as an end in itself backfired. . . . To transmit the wild statements of rabble-rousers without at least some pertinent facts in refutation is not conscientious or constructive reporting.” Malcolm himself thought the show had demonized the Nation, and likened its impact to “what happened back in the 1930s when Orson Welles frightened America with a radio program describing, as though it was actually happening, an invasion by ‘men from Mars.’ ” But part of Malcolm always believed that even negative publicity was better than none at all.

Outcry notwithstanding, the show had effectively brought the NOI to a much wider audience. There was an “instant avalanche of public reaction,” recalled Malcolm. “Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, black and white, were exclaiming ‘Did you hear it? Did you see it? Preaching
hate
of white people!’ ” The controversy spread quickly. After the negative response from the New York press, the national weeklies followed, characterizing the NOI as “black racists,” “black fascists,” and even “possibly Communist-inspired.” Faced with heated criticism from the African-American community, Malcolm dismissed his black middle-class opponents as Uncle Toms.

The intense publicity changed the lives of nearly everyone connected with the series. It gave Wallace the break he needed; the national exposure led to an offer from a group of Westinghouse-owned stations to cover the 1960 presidential campaign, and in three years he was hosting the national morning news for CBS. Later, he would turn down Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon’s offer to become his press secretary, instead accepting a new assignment as a reporter on CBS's
60 Minutes
, which became the longest-running news feature program in television history. Lomax also achieved success, in 1960 publishing his first book,
The Reluctant African
, which won the Anisfield-Wolf award. His reports on civil rights issues were regularly featured on network television. Both Wallace and Lomax continued to exploit their connections with the NOI. On July 26, 1959, however, the NOI barred Wallace from a massive rally at New York’s St. Nicholas Arena, which featured Elijah Muhammad as keynote speaker. At this event Muhammad accused Wallace and other white journalists of attempting to divide the NOI into factions. “Does he classify the truth as Hate?” he asked. “No enemy wants to see the so-called American Negro free and united.”

Inside the Nation, Malcolm’s critics blamed him for the negative publicity surrounding
Hate
. NOI ministers who were against media interviews now felt justified in banning members from talking to the press. The view from Chicago headquarters, however, was much less severe. When a young doctoral student, C. Eric Lincoln, asked for help with his dissertation about the NOI, Muhammad, Malcolm, and other Muslims consented. Lincoln’s study, published in 1961 under the title
The Black Muslims in America,
became the standard work for decades. As the dust settled, even Lomax found his way back into the Nation’s good graces. When he subsequently approached the NOI to write his own book about the sect, its leaders were generous with their time. Lomax’s 1963 study
When the Word Is Given
is perhaps the single best resource about the NOI's inner workings prior to Malcolm’s split from the sect. Despite his own commitment to racial integration, Lomax tried to present a balanced, objective critique of the NOI's strengths and weaknesses. He correctly identified the malaise among working-class blacks that several years later would feed the anger beneath Black Power. Lomax quoted the ever-eloquent James Baldwin: “Deep down in their hearts the black masses don’t believe in white people anymore. They don’t believe in Malcolm, either, except when he articulates their disbelief in white people. . . . The Negro masses neither join nor denounce the Black Muslims. They just sit at home in the ghetto amid the heat, the roaches, the rats, the vice, the disgrace, and rue the fact that come daylight they must meet the man—the white man—and work at a job that leads only to a dead end.”

Within the Nation itself, the most lasting impact of the series was the recognition that the sect had to exert greater control over its image. This required, at a minimum, a regularly published magazine or newspaper. In the fall of 1959, Malcolm produced his first attempt,
Messenger Magazine
; he may have been drawing upon an older Harlem tradition, as a previous paper named the
Messenger
, edited by A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen, had been published from 1917 to 1928. The
Amsterdam News
advertisement promoting the journal promised it would present “Mr. Muhammad’s aims and accomplishments” and “the truth about the amazing success of the Moslems’ economic, educational, and spiritual growth among the Negroes of America.” The magazine failed to gain an audience, however, as did several other publishing ventures, until in 1960 Malcolm started printing a monthly newspaper,
Muhammad Speaks
. Temples began receiving hundreds of copies, and the publication quickly attracted tens of thousands of regular readers, the vast majority of them non-Muslims. The keys to its success were twofold. First, the publication hired legitimate, well-qualified journalists, who were given some leeway to cover their interests. Over time, the newspaper developed a schizophrenic character, with some articles praising Muhammad and promoting the NOI and the rest of the paper providing detailed coverage of black American issues, Africa, and the Third World. But the second reason was that all temples were ordered to sell a certain number of copies per week; the papers were doled out to individual FOI laborers, who were expected to place
Muhammad Speaks
everywhere.

Malcolm used the shake-up from
Hate
to recommend Temple No. 7’s secretary, John X Simmons, for the position of national secretary. Within a year Simmons would move to Chicago and be given an original name, John Ali, by Elijah Muhammad. The promotion pleased Malcolm, who believed he would have another strong ally in Chicago. He did not imagine that Ali would become one of his sharpest critics in the national headquarters.