Malcolm X (76 page)

Already he suspected that the restriction on his travel went deeper than mere concern on the part of the French government, and the next day he forwarded a letter of protest to U.S. secretary of state Dean Rusk. “While in possession of an American passport, I was denied entry to France with no explanation.” He called for “an investigation being made to determine why this incident took place.” The enforced change of schedule allowed Malcolm to explore the racial politics of Great Britain for several additional days, and during this time he was interviewed by
Flamingo
magazine, a London-based publication read primarily by blacks in Great Britain. What is surprising is the harshness Malcolm displayed to distinguish himself from civil rights moderates in the States. “King and his kind believe in turning the other cheek,” he stated, almost in contempt. “Their freedom fighters follow the rules of the game laid down by the big bosses in Washington, D.C., the citadel of imperialism.” He once more disavowed any identification as a “racialist”: “I adopt a judgment of deeds, not of color.” He appeared to call not for voting rights and electoral change, but Guevara-inspired insurrection. “Mau Mau I love,” he stated, applauding the Kenyan guerrilla struggle of the 1950s. “When you put a fire under a pot, you learn what’s in it.” He added, “Anger produces action.” When asked about his reasons for leaving the Nation, he focused on politics, not personalities or religion. “The original brotherhood [of the NOI] became too lax and conservative.” He accused some NOI leaders of greed, in response to which “I formed the Muslim Mosque, which is not limited by civil rights in America, but rather worldwide human rights for the black man.”

On February 11 he delivered a lecture at the London School of Economics, a frank and lively assessment of the politics of race in the United States. Racial stigmatization, he explained, projects negative images of nonwhites as criminals; as a consequence, “it makes it possible for the power structure to set up a police state.” He then drew parallels between the U.S. treatment of African Americans with the conditions of the West Indian and Asian populations in Great Britain, where racist stereotypes promoted political apathy among minorities, making them believe that change was impossible. “Police state methods are used . . . to suppress the people’s honest and just struggle against discrimination and other forms of segregation,” he insisted.

Malcolm described a generational change that separated the older African leaders from the rising generation of young revolutionaries. The older “generation of Africans . . . have believed that they could negotiate . . . and eventually get some kind of independence.” The new generation rejected gradualism: “If something is yours by right, then you fight for it or shut up.” Next he addressed the problem of black cultural identity. “We in the West were made to hate Africa and to hate Africans.” West Indians in Britain, he said, “don’t want to accept their origin; they have no origin, they have no identity . . . they want to be Englishmen.” The same process of identity confusion occurred among African Americans. “By skillfully making us hate Africa . . . our color became a chain. It became a prison.” An appreciation of black culture would liberate blacks to advocate their own interests.

Finally, he returned to the concept of a two-stage African revolution—first gradual reform, then revolution. The same social process, he implied, might be at work in the United States. “The Black Muslim movement was one of the main ingredients in the civil rights struggle,” he claimed, remarkably, without referencing the massive evidence to the contrary. “[Whites] should say thank you for Martin Luther King, because Martin Luther King has held Negroes in check up to recently. But he’s losing his grip; he’s losing his control.”

For Malcolm, the strategic pursuit of Pan-African and Third World empowerment meant addressing new constituencies who looked to him for inspiration and leadership. South Asians and West Indians who experienced ethnic and religious discrimination in the English working-class town of Smethwick, for example, contacted him to solicit his support. The BBC, which at that time was filming a documentary on Smethwick, followed Malcolm around with a camera crew—although it was unsuccessful in its attempts to arrange a meeting between Malcolm and the right-wing Conservative Party member Peter Griffiths, who represented Smethwick’s parliamentary seat. After meeting with local minority leaders, Malcolm determined that town authorities were buying up vacant houses and selling them only to whites, thus restricting what houses were available for Asians and blacks. At a press conference in nearby Birmingham, he denounced the schemes to limit home sales and rentals in the town to non-Europeans. “I have heard that the blacks of Smethwick are being treated in the same way as the Negroes were treated in Birmingham, Alabama—like Hitler treated the Jews,” he charged. This was inflammatory enough, but as so often he took the argument even further, toward a call for violent revolution. “If colored people here continue to be oppressed,” he warned, “it will start off a bloody battle.”

A major national debate erupted, with the BBC roundly condemned for assisting Malcolm’s investigations. Even the
Sun
, at that time a liberal newspaper, editorialized that Malcolm’s visit had been a “deplorable mistake.” Cedric Taylor, the chairman of the Standing Conference of West Indian Organizations for the Birmingham district, condemned his visit. “Conditions here are entirely different from Alabama,” he told a
Los Angeles Times
reporter. The West Indians in his town, he judged, were “not the sort of people who would want to follow Malcolm X.ʺ

Before leaving the UK, Malcolm was interviewed by a correspondent for the liberal South African newspaper
Sunday Express
. His rhetoric grew even more heated, as he urged blacks in Angola and South Africa to employ violence “all the way. . . . I don’t give the [South African] blacks credit in any way . . . for restraining themselves or confining themselves to ground rules that limit the scope of their activity.” He dismissed the Nobel Peace Prize recipient Chief Albert Luthuli as “just another Martin Luther King, used to keep the oppressed people in check.” To Malcolm, South Africa’s “real leaders” were Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress and Robert Sobukwe, founder of the Pan-African Congress. He then entertained the possibility of the OAAU taking up the cause of Australian aborigines. “Just as racism has become an international thing, the fight against it is also becoming international. . . . [Racism’s] victims were kept apart from each other.” The larger point for him was to make the case for Pan-Africanism—that blacks regardless of nationality and language had a common destiny. “We believe,” he explained, “that it is one struggle in South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, and Alabama. They are all the same.”

Malcolm arrived back at John F. Kennedy airport on February 13 to grim news. Several weeks before, he had submitted to the Queens court a request for a “show cause” order aimed at staying his family’s scheduled eviction. It was now obvious, however, that his family would lose their home and would have to begin looking for temporary housing. Malcolm had also just learned that Betty was again pregnant, this time with twins. What had been an extremely difficult financial situation—supporting four children—would soon be even more challenging with six.

But his thoughts soon returned to politics. He had not been able to shake off the larger implication of his incident at French customs. As he entered his Hotel Theresa office, he admitted to his associates that he had been making a “serious mistake” by focusing attention on the NOI Chicago headquarters, “thinking all of my problems were coming from Chicago, and they’re not.” Colleagues asked where the “trouble” was coming from. “From Washington,” Malcolm replied.

After a few hours of conversation with staff at his office, he drove to his East Elmhurst home. This time, it was without incident. Malcolm was scheduled to wake up early to fly to Detroit to deliver an important public address that day. As on so many other nights, he fell asleep upstairs while working late into the night in his study.

At two forty-five a.m., the Shabazz family’s sleep was shattered by the crack of a window downstairs, and seconds later a Molotov cocktail exploded, quickly filling the entire house with black smoke. As Malcolm raced downstairs to the children’s room, a second bomb landed. A third struck a rear window but glanced off, without combusting. Malcolm helped Betty escape through the rear door, then gathered the children together and led them into the backyard. A few seconds later he dashed back into the now blazing house to retrieve important property and clothing. “I was almost frightened by his courage and efficiency in a time of terror,” Betty would later reflect. “I always knew he was strong. But at that hour I learned how great his strength was.” By the time firefighters arrived to put out the blaze, the house was engulfed in flames.

For decades there has been intense speculation regarding the firebombing of Malcolm’s home on February 14, 1965. The actions of three parties have been questioned: Malcolm himself, the Nation of Islam, and law enforcement. Since the Shabazz family faced imminent eviction, some thought that Malcolm firebombed the house out of malice. The argument placing the blame on the Nation was evident, based on the escalating violence aimed against Malcolm. Firebombing his home, endangering his wife and four small children, was a logical next step. There was also speculation that either BOSS or the FBI, or perhaps their informants, committed the bombing, which was the view held by OAAU stalwarts like Herman Ferguson and Peter Bailey. The most persuasive evidence pointed to the Nation of Islam. Almost forty years after the firebombing, NOI member Thomas 15X Johnson acknowledged that the Nation “definitely did it.” One participant, he recalled, was Edward X—“a close friend of mine, and I didn’t know until after it happened that he was a part of that.” Edward was “just a dedicated follower. Him and two other brothers did that firebombing [of the] house.”

Malcolm’s supporters had quickly gathered outside the burning house, where it was decided that Betty and the four girls would be taken to the home of Tom Wallace, who also lived in Queens. Standing outside in the freezing cold, Betty learned that Malcolm still intended to travel to Detroit that day, and she erupted into an almost uncontrollable rage. But his mind was made up. The firebombing would not frighten him into canceling his speaking commitments. Death had missed him and his family that night; he would not run from it tomorrow.

CHAPTER 15

Death Comes on Time

February 14-February 21, 1965

 

 

 

W
hen a bleary-eyed Malcolm disembarked at Detroit airport at nine thirty a.m. and checked in at the Statler Hilton hotel, his friends were worried for his safety and his sanity. His home had just been firebombed, and his wife and children were in hiding. His coat jacket stank of smoke; he had grabbed the clothing from the half-burned residence. Since being shaken from sleep by the firebombs, he had not slept. One Detroit friend gave him a sedative; Malcolm napped briefly, yet he had a schedule to keep, and soon he was awakened to be interviewed by WXYZ-TV at four p.m. He was then taken to the Ford Auditorium, where he delivered the keynote address at the first annual Dignity Projection and Scholarship Award, where Sidney Poitier and the opera star Marian Anderson also received honors. The program was sponsored by the Afro-American Broadcasting Company, and chaired by a good friend of Malcolm’s, attorney Milton Henry, who was also a leader of the Freedom Now Party in Michigan.

The Reverend Albert Cleage remembered Malcolm’s troubled condition backstage before the event, tired and irritable from the effects of smoke inhalation, and when he took the podium his usual sharpness had abandoned him. At first he rambled through stories of his African and Middle Eastern travels, but eventually found surer footing on the theme of cultural identity that had recently traced its way through his speeches. He characterized the decade 1955-65 as “the era in which we witnessed the emerging of Africa. The spirit of Bandung created a working unity that made it possible for the Asians, who were oppressed, and the Africans, who were oppressed . . . to work together toward gaining independence.” In the United States, the civil rights movement and the Black Muslims emerged. The Nation of Islam “frightened the white man so much he began to say, ‘Thank God for old Uncle Roy [Wilkins] and Uncle Whitney and Uncle A. Philip.’” The audience laughed; Malcolm not only ridiculed the moderates, he tried to paint the Nation of Islam’s role in the most favorable light. Black Muslims, he said, “made the whole civil rights movement become more militant, and more acceptable to the white power structure. . . . We forced many of the civil rights leaders to be even more militant than they intended.” But in 1965, the situation calls for “new methods. . . . It takes power to talk to power. It takes madness almost to deal with a power structure that’s so corrupt.”

Back in New York, a media circus had gathered outside the charred wreckage of his home. The Molotov cocktails had totally destroyed two of the rooms and left three others severely damaged. In a bold move, Captain Joseph drove to the house and met with reporters standing outside. “We own this place, man,” he protested. “We have money tied up here. . . . He didn’t even give us the courtesy of a phone call.” Allegations swirled suggesting the Nation’s involvement, but Newark minister James Shabazz told reporters that the Nation “was unlikely to bomb a house which it was about to repossess. Of course, we would rather have had our property than a burned-out building. . . . We sure didn’t bomb it.” Speculation was also rife that Malcolm had been responsible after detectives found a small bottle containing gasoline on a child’s dresser, and the Nation amplified these rumors in the press. For his part, Malcolm threw the blame back at them. “I have no compassion or mercy or forgiveness for anyone who attacks sleeping babies,” he told the press. “The only thing I regret is that two black groups have to fight and kill each other off.” Yet to confidants, he broached more conspiratorial possibilities. “The Nation of Islam does not attack women and children,” Herman Ferguson recalled him saying. “The Nation would not have burned my house with my wife and children in that house. That was the government.” He could not have known what Thomas 15X later confirmed, that the NOI had in fact been responsible.