Part 11 (1/2)

With the onset of fall, the 1964 U.S. presidential election drew nearer, and President Johnson and the Democratic Party courted the civil rights movement, hoping to secure the black vote. As Malcolm watched from Africa, he may have factored the election into his plans to remain abroad until November. Nearly alone among prominent black leaders, he continued to support Barry Goldwater as the better candidate to address blacks' interests. Yet Goldwaters opposition to the Civil Rights Act made him the de facto candidate of Southern white supremacists, and the overwhelming majority of African Americans embraced the Democratic Party. Dr. King and other mainstream civil rights leaders had even decided to call a moratorium on demonstrations throughout the fall, in order to help Lyndon Johnson win. Malcolm must have recognized that his argument for Goldwater would have garnered little support. It was better to avoid the debate and not criticize civil rights leaders. The extra weeks abroad would give Malcolm even greater opportunities to make contacts with African political elites.

When on the evening of September 11 hundreds of Cairo students in the African a.s.sociation met to protest U.S. intervention in Congo, Malcolm was pleased to speak. Later that night, he phoned Betty. ”All is well, including 67X,” he wrote of the conversation, ”and that upped my low spirits.” Four days later, he met with Shawarbi, who informed him that in his upcoming visit to Kuwait he would be the guest of the local governor. In early September Malcolm took a two-day trip to Gaza, meeting a number of local government officials and visiting several Palestinian refugee camps near the Israeli border. He prayed at a local masjid masjid, accompanied by several religious leaders, before holding a press conference in Gaza's parliament building. The Nation had admired the state of Israel as a concrete expression of Jewish Zionism; henceforth Malcolm would view Israel as a neocolonial proxy for U.S. imperialism.

Malcolm also attended a press conference featuring Ahmed al-Shukairy, the first president of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. After the conference, the two men met privately. This meeting became the context for Malcolm's controversial essay in the Egyptian Gazette Egyptian Gazette, ”Zionist Logic,” in which he denounced Israeli Zionism as a ”new form of colonialism,” designed to ”deceive the African ma.s.ses into submitting willingly into their 'divine' authority and guidance.” Malcolm noted that the Israeli government had made a series of ”benevolent” overtures to African states, ”with friendly offers of economic aid, and other tempting gifts that they dangle in front of the newly independent African nations, whose economies are experiencing great difficulties.” This combination of U.S. imperialism and Israeli interference in Africans' affairs const.i.tuted ”Zionist dollarism,” which had led to the military occupation of Arab Palestine, an act of aggression for which there existed ”no intelligent or legal basis in history-not even in their own religion.”

Malcolm's newfound hostility toward Israel can be explained not only by his obligations to Na.s.ser but also by the s.h.i.+fting currents of one particular African state. In the 1950s, under the anticommunist influence of Pan-Africanist George Padmore, newly independent Ghana had been hostile to the Soviet Union and friendly toward Israel. Padmore died in 1959, and by 1962 Ghana was seriously considering becoming a Soviet client state on the model of Cuba. Trade between Egypt, a Soviet ally, and Ghana nearly doubled between 1961 and 1962, and Nkrumah displayed solidarity with Na.s.ser by announcing his own plan for the establishment of a ”separate state for Arab refugees from Palestine.” Malcolm's anti-Israeli thesis reflected the political interests of both these allies.

This calculated view reflected the broader balancing act he performed throughout his time in the Middle East. Egypt's secular government stood forcefully at odds with religious groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been implicated in a 1954 plot to kill Na.s.ser and subsequently banned from the country. Malcolm, indebted to both sides, could not afford to take positions that might offend either. During his stay in Cairo, his Islamic studies were directed by Sheikh Muhammad Surur al-Sabban, the secretary-general of the Muslim World League. This group was financed by the Saudi government and it reflected conservative political views, so Malcolm had to exercise considerable tact and political discretion. Simultaneously, he was also corresponding with Dr. Said Ramadan, the son-in-law of Ha.s.san al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Expelled from Egypt, Ramadan had also founded the World Islamic League, and in 1961 established the Islamic Center in Switzerland. Throughout their correspondence, Malcolm pressed Ramadan about race and Islam. At one point Ramadan appealed to him: ”How could a man of your spirit, intellect, and worldwide outlook fail to see in Islam . . . a message that confirms . . . the ethnological oneness and equality of all races, thus striking at the very root of racial discrimination?” Malcolm responded that regardless of Islam's universality, he was obligated to struggle on behalf of African Americans. ”As a black American,” he explained, ”I do feel that my first responsibility is to my twenty-two million fellow black Americans.” The cordial dialogue displays Malcolm's deepening interest in the Muslim Brotherhood's faith-based politics-an interest that he knew he had to keep from Na.s.sers government.

On September 16, Malcolm returned to Al-Azhar University, where he was given a certificate establis.h.i.+ng his credentials as an orthodox Muslim. He posed for photographs. Later that day he celebrated with Shawarbi and other friends. Leaving for Jeddah two days later, he was overwhelmed by the ”touching farewells” and generosity of his Arab friends, but he also pondered the crux of one friend's words of advice: ”the importance of not being sidetracked by needless fights with Elijah Muhammad.” On September 21, Prince Faisal designated Malcolm an official state visitor of Saudi Arabia, a status that covered all his local expenses and provided a chauffeured car.

At a meeting with Seyyid Omar el-Saghaf, the vice minister of Saudi Arabia's foreign affairs department, Malcolm presented his proposal and request for funds to establish a mosque, or Islamic center, in Harlem, to promote orthodox Islam. On September 22, writing to M. S. Handler, Malcolm praised the ”quiet, sane, and strongly spiritual atmosphere” of Saudi Arabia, a place where ”objective thinking” was possible. Under the Nation of Islam, ”I lived within the narrow-minded confines of the 'straightjacketed world . . . I represented and defended [Elijah Muhammad] beyond the level of intellect and reason.” He vowed that he would ”never rest until I have undone the harm I did to so many innocent Negroes” and affirmed that he was now ”a Muslim in the most orthodox sense; my religion is Islam as it is believed in and practiced by the Muslims here in the Holy City of Mecca.”

His new political goals, he went on, were firmly within the civil rights mainstream. ”I am not anti-American, un-American, seditious nor subversive. I don't buy the anti-capitalist propaganda of the communist, nor do I buy the anti-communist propaganda of capitalists.” He was trying hard to establish for himself a relatively objective Third World position of nonalignment. Unlike his earlier endors.e.m.e.nts of socialism over capitalism, in these comments to Handler he appears to retreat toward a more pragmatic economic philosophy. ”I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity (human beings) as a whole whether they are capitalist, communists or socialists, all have a.s.sets as well as liabilities. . . .” Then, in a remarkable pa.s.sage, he seems to repudiate not just Yacub's History but the fascist-like concept that all blacks, as blacks, had to exhibit certain cultural traits or adhere to sets of rigid beliefs, in order to justify their racial ident.i.ty: I am a Muslim who believes whole heartily that there is no G.o.d but Allah and that Muhammad ibn Abdullah . . . is the Last Messenger of Allah-yet some of my very dearest friends are Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics and even atheists-some are capitalists, socialists, conservatives, extremists . . . some are even Uncle Toms-some are black, brown, red, yellow and some are even white. It takes all these religious, political, economic, psychological and racial ingredients (characteristics) to make the Human Family and the Human Society complete.

In a second letter to Handler, dated the following day, he criticized his former belief in Elijah Muhammad ”as a divine leader who had no human faults.” What had prompted the letter, however, was the news that Surur al-Sabban had named Malcolm as the World Islamic League's representative in the United States, with the authority to start an official center in New York City. The league offered fifteen scholars.h.i.+ps to American Muslims to attend the Islamic University of Madinah (Medina). This gift, combined with the twenty scholars.h.i.+ps offered in Cairo, gave Malcolm thirty-five fully funded fellows.h.i.+ps.

In the final week of September he was back on the move. After a brief stop in Kuwait, where he tried unsuccessfully to obtain financial support for the MMI from the foreign secretary, Malcolm traveled to Beirut on September 29. He was welcomed at the Lebanese airport by a student leader named Azizah and about ten white American students, who informed him that the American University dean had extended permission for him to speak in one of the lecture halls. Malcolm, Azizah, and several other students had lunch at the apartment home of an African-American expatriate named Mrs. Brown. One of the white students there, Marian Faye Novak, reconstructed their brief encounter, and what is obvious is that even those friendly to Malcolm's cause still viewed him by the policies of the Nation of Islam rather than by his new beliefs. Another white student, Sara, said, ”I think you were absolutely right, Malcolm, . . . when you accused the white man of having the devil in him.” Upset by the remark, Novak replied defensively, ”I didn't choose this skin, but it's the only one I have.” Sara quickly apologized, Novak remembered, ”not just for herself and her particular ancestors, but for me and mine, too, while Malcolm X nodded and smiled.” Novak stereotypes Malcolm's response even though he did not utter a word during the exchange.

Though the group had only a few hours to advertise Malcolm's address that afternoon, American University students had not forgotten his stellar speaking performance from earlier in the year, and an overflow crowd turned out. Later that day Malcolm flew from Beirut to Khartoum, then traveled overnight directly to Addis Ababa, arriving on September 30. The major event in Addis Ababa was a lecture to an audience of more than five hundred students and faculty at the University College student union on October 2, which was remarkable for the amount of detail in the FBIs account of the event. The Bureau (and the CIA) had not curtailed its efforts to track Malcolm after his departure from Cairo, and it appears to have followed him closely for most of his time abroad. The intelligence report from Addis Ababa suggested that ”another goal of Malcolm's visit was to permit direct contact between the black people of the U.S. and Africa.”

On October 5, Malcolm flew to Nairobi, and after some time off to visit a national park, contacted vice president Oginga Odinga and set up a meeting for three days hence. When they met, Odinga seemed ”attentive, alert, and sympathetic,” and Malcolm subsequently received an invitation to address the Kenyan parliament on October 15. In the interim, he decided to visit Zanzibar and Tanzania, with the hope of solidifying the Pan-African political relations.h.i.+ps with Tanzanian leaders he had met at the Cairo conference. Most prominent among those he'd hoped to meet with was Abdulrahman Muhammad Babu, a Zanzibaran revolutionary Marxist who had helped engineer his island nation's 1964 social revolution and subsequent merger with then Tanganyika.

Over several days, Malcolm met a number of African-American expatriates living in Tanzania's capital city of Dar es Salaam, and he conducted several media interviews. He met with Minister Babu on October 12, although the high point of his Tanzanian excursion was a brief encounter with President Julius K. Nyerere the next day. Like Kwame Nkrumah, Nyerere had risen to power in the wave of colonial uprisings that swept through Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and unlike many leaders who fell as quickly as they rose during those tumultuous years, he would remain popular and in power until 1985. Accompanied by Babu, Malcolm a.s.sessed the man called by his citizens as mwalimu mwalimu, or ”teacher.” He is a ”very shrew[d], intelligent, disarming man who laughs and jokes much (but deadly serious).”

As Malcolm's travels brought him into more prominent power circles in African politics, he seemed to meet important figures wherever he turned. And as his presence in Dar es Salaam became more widely known, his schedule became more packed. On October 14 he visited the Cuban emba.s.sy to converse with the amba.s.sador, who was an Afro-Cuban. That evening Malcolm was the guest of honor at a dinner that included a number of prominent Tanzanians. He delayed his return to Nairobi for several days, and when he flew back to Nairobi a few days later, he found himself on the same plane as both the Kenyan president Jomo Kenyatta and the Ugandan prime minister Milton Obote. During the flight, which stopped first in Mombasa, one of Kenyatta's ministers informed the president who Malcolm was, and soon Malcolm was requested to move forward to a seat between the two leaders. Arriving late in Mombasa, Kenyatta decided to spend the night, but Malcolm continued to talk with Obote during the flight to Nairobi. After going through Kenyan customs, Tom Mboya, Kenya's second most powerful politician after Kenyatta, picked up Malcolm ”and put me back with the VIPs.”

As his stay in Kenya unfolded, famous faces mingled with familiar ones. On Sunday morning, October 18, Malcolm ran into two SNCC leaders, chairman John Lewis and Don Harris, who were on their way to Zambia. During the day, a formal invitation was delivered at Malcolm's hotel on behalf of Mboya, requesting his presence that evening at the gala premiere of Uhuru Films (uhuru means ”freedom” in Kiswahili). Malcolm attended the event, and at the intermission enjoyed chatting with both Mboya and his wife. Malcolm described Mboya, who would also later be a.s.sa.s.sinated, as the personification of ”perpetual motion.” After returning late to his hotel, Malcolm spoke with SNCCs Don Harris about ”future cooperation.” means ”freedom” in Kiswahili). Malcolm attended the event, and at the intermission enjoyed chatting with both Mboya and his wife. Malcolm described Mboya, who would also later be a.s.sa.s.sinated, as the personification of ”perpetual motion.” After returning late to his hotel, Malcolm spoke with SNCCs Don Harris about ”future cooperation.”

On October 20, Mboya and his wife picked Malcolm up at his hotel, and they drove to meet President Kenyatta. Taken to a parade's reviewing stand, he relished joining the VIPs who sat with the president for tea and coffee. Malcolm was seated next to Kenyatta's daughter Jane, and continued the conversation with her back at his hotel, the Equator Inn. That afternoon Malcolm had lunch with Mrs. Mboya, the president's family, and a white head of police. ”I had wine with my dinner,” Malcolm admitted to his diary. After lunch, Malcolm listened to Kenyatta's public address, in which he boldly a.s.sumed ”complete responsibility for organizing the Mau Mau,” the indigenous revolt against British rule in Kenya in the 1950s. At every step, Malcolm was treated like a visiting dignitary, and his prominence over the course of several days at social and public events must have stunned the CIA and FBI. The Bureau had spent years trying to split Malcolm from Elijah Muhammad, with the expectation that the NOI schism would weaken the organization and discredit its leaders. After Malcolm's supposed failure at the Cairo conference, he should have been greatly weakened. Yet with each stop in his itinerary, the FBI received fresh reports about Malcolm's expansive social calendar and his growing credibility among African heads of state. His media profile also continued to grow. The FBIs New York office reported to the director that while in Nairobi Malcolm ”appeared prominently at social functions.” On October 21, Malcolm was interviewed on local TV, where he explained that at every opportunity-in Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, and other cities-he had urged leaders ”to condemn the United States in the United Nations for racism.”

His popularity forced the U.S. government to step up its efforts. Several black Americans living in Nairobi were contacted by the U.S. emba.s.sy, Malcolm learned, warning them to stay away from him. A party that had been planned had to be canceled, as pressure was applied in an attempt to discredit him. U.S. authorities by now of course knew all about Malcolm's spiritual epiphany in Mecca, his break with the Nation, and even his overtures to the civil rights movement. But neither the State Department nor the intelligence agencies had any intention of telling the ”truth” about Malcolm.

Despite the covert opposition of the U.S. emba.s.sy, Malcolm achieved one of his greatest triumphs on October 15, when he spoke before Kenya's parliament. After his talk, the parliament proposed, and then pa.s.sed, what Malcolm called ”a resolution of support for our human rights struggle resolution of support for our human rights struggle. His plan, hatched in the wake of defeat in Cairo, had finally yielded results. For a sovereign African state to endorse his human rights formulation was a tremendous political breakthrough.

The resolution brought an immediate response from American authorities. Within hours, Malcolm met with the U.S. amba.s.sador and several aides, who grilled him on his relations.h.i.+ps with Kenyan officials and demanded details of all his recent interactions. To Malcolm's face, the amba.s.sador stated that he regarded him as a racist, but Malcolm kept his cool. He vigorously presented his positions and objectives, challenging the authorities to show he had done anything illegal.

From Nairobi, Malcolm flew back briefly to Addis Ababa before departing on October 28 for Nigeria, where his friend the scholar Essien-Udom had arranged several events. Malcolm arrived in Lagos two days later and had settled in for dinner alone before a phone call interrupted him: it was Nigerian president Nnamdi Azikiwe's secretary, seeking to arrange a private meeting the next morning. Writing later of the meeting, Malcolm found Azikiwe not lacking in humility, and noted that he had a good grasp of the key players in the U.S. civil rights struggle. Later that day, Malcolm went to a party attended by members of the press, the diplomatic corps, and Nigerian officials. ”A great deal of soul-searching was being done,” he recalled, about the difficult state of Nigerian politics. Malcolm must have shuddered in drafting this prediction, which regrettably would come all too true, with the Biafran War only several years away: ”It will take much bloodshed to straighten this country out and I don't believe it can be avoided.”

It was only during this trip that he fully grasped the profound divisions among Africans in the postindependence era. On November 1, for example, he was confronted by two young reporters for several hours, much to his surprise, who disagreed with the positive comments he had made about their president at a public event. The mood among young Nigerians, he pondered, ”is mostly impatient and explosive.”

During the twenty-four weeks from April through November 1964 when Malcolm was out of the United States, his followers were responsible for fas.h.i.+oning his image and message. It did not go well. ”Malcolm was aware of the fact that we were having problems,” Herman Ferguson later admitted. ”There was [MMI] resentment against the members of the OAAU because they didn't go through the struggle in the Nation of Islam.” Another source of conflict was the role of women in the organization. Former Black Muslims believed that ”women played a secondary role to the men. The men were out front, the protectors, the warriors,” Ferguson observed. Malcolm tried to break this patriarchy, insisting that in the OAAU ”women [should have an] equal position to the men.” His new commitment to gender equality confused and even outraged many members. ”A couple of brothers came to me,” Ferguson recalled. ”They wanted me to approach [Malcolm] about their concerns about the role of the women and how it was not sitting well with many of the brothers.” Ferguson decided against carrying the appeal directly to Malcolm. ”The women that Malcolm seemed to place a lot of confidence in, they were responsible, they were well educated.”

By midsummer the tensions between MMI and OAAU occasionally sparked into verbal combat. James 67X made no secret of his bitter hostility toward s.h.i.+fflett. The two fought each other constantly, over everything from the content of the OAAUs public rallies and speakers' invitations to the OAAUs struggling efforts to recruit new members. ”The Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the OAAU . . . drifted apart,” Ferguson explained. ”Some people came in and were not a part of the MMI, and all of the MMI people were not part of OAAU. So there was a gap.” Even inside the OAAU, there were growing divisions between the pragmatists like s.h.i.+fflett, who wanted OAAU to join forces with black elected officials and civil rights groups, and Ferguson, who considered himself a revolutionary nationalist and Pan-Africanist. What evolved was a core of ”dedicated people,” who performed the lion's share of all work without salaries, and the great majority of OAAU members, who came out only for the rallies.

As a result, by late July some of the OAAU committees that had been created a month earlier began falling apart. South Carolina activist James Campbell and Ferguson did establish the Liberation School, which held cla.s.ses and attracted a dozen or so students. Peter Bailey started the OAAUs newsletter, Blacklash Blacklash, and Muriel Gray led a very productive cultural arts committee. However, the factional discord upset many OAAU people, who felt discouraged and disoriented without their leaders presence. Most had joined after being inspired by Malcolm, but in his long absence members had to a.s.sume greater responsibilities. ”We sort of hoped [Malcolm] would be like the magnet that would draw the people in,” Ferguson explained. Hundreds would regularly turn out for OAAU events but refuse to pay the two-dollar members.h.i.+p fee. Paradoxically, Ferguson attributed the recruitment problems directly to Malcolm. ”When you became a known member of Malcolm's organization, you stuck out like a sore thumb. It was easier to be a Black Panther than a Malcomite.” Ferguson also blamed the OAAUs problems on the MMI, which was increasingly detached from providing any a.s.sistance. ”Malcolm recognized the limitations of the brothers,” he observed. ”They . . . would lay down their lives for him, and he knew that.” But ”in terms of building and developing and bringing people in, they would tend to frighten people.” Early one Sat.u.r.day morning at their Hotel Theresa office just before his second trip abroad, Malcolm became irate when he saw an MMI brother lounging in a comfortable chair. ”Don't you have anything to do?” he snapped. ”Go out and deliver some leaflets!” Ferguson narrated the story's bitter conclusion: ”The guy left and we didn't see him for several weeks. And then when we saw him next, he was all bandaged up. He went down in the subway, and Nation of Islam guys jumped him, and they put him in the hospital.”

Throughout this difficult time three individuals played key roles: James 67X Warden (Shabazz), Benjamin 2X Goodman (Karin), and Charles 37X Morris (Kenyatta). These close a.s.sociates of Malcolm's had all served in the military and had all joined the NOI; Benjamin and James had both risen to positions of authority in the NOI. When the split occurred, all of them placed their lives on hold to follow Malcolm even without knowing where he was going. The activities of this triumvirate largely defined how Malcolm was presented to the public during the second half of 1964.

James's power rested partially on the fact that he was the only person who could act, or write, on Malcolm's behalf. ”I paid the bills, I rented the Audubon Ballroom, [I wrote] every press release that he made.” He even purchased ”books on how to have press conferences, and advised Malcolm how to engage the media.” He also had the authority to send on behalf of Malcolm correspondence and press releases he wrote himself. For all his labors, James was paid a total of one hundred dollars during nearly a year. Despite all these sacrifices, Malcolm occasionally questioned his loyalty.

He got little thanks either from any of his fellow members, who viewed him as notoriously secretive and argumentative. He was constantly receiving a stream of orders from Malcolm, but though he could speak freely on his leader's behalf, he was rarely given full authority to render truly important decisions. On one occasion when he attended an OAAU business meeting, he became so frustrated by the group's disorganization and hopelessness at ”getting anything done” that he stood up and slammed his Samsonite briefcase on a nearby table. ”Brother Malcolm is holding me me responsible for the formation of this organization,” he warned. ”Now, I'm going to leave with these parting words: either responsible for the formation of this organization,” he warned. ”Now, I'm going to leave with these parting words: either you you organize it or organize it or I'll I'll organize it.” After this stern rebuke, ”things started happening.” organize it.” After this stern rebuke, ”things started happening.”

Benjamin 2X had an easier time ingratiating himself. His primary role kept him busy with MMI; unlike James, he was not tasked with an organization-building role in the OAAU, which made it easier for him to go out of his way to support its development. On July 18, when New York City police shot James Powell, the event that would precipitate the Harlem riot, Benjamin spoke as the OAAU representative at a protest rally that was hastily organized by CORE in Harlem. Though he did not take part in the riots, NYPD and FBI interest in him subsequently increased sharply. According to agents at the rally, Benjamin ”stirred them up by stating that Negroes should arm themselves for self-protection and that Negroes must be willing to spill blood for freedom.” Looking for someone to blame, especially with Malcolm out of the country, the FBI and Justice Department focused on Benjamin, though they eventually decided that there was insufficient evidence to arrest him.

Throughout the summer, James and Benjamin tried gamely to fill the hole left by their absent leader. On July 5 Benjamin spoke at the second public rally of the OAAU, held at the Audubon; then, on July 12, he presided over an OAAU rally that attracted 125 people and featured guest speakers Percy Sutton and Charles Rangel, who urged the audience to promote voter registration. Almost by default, James became Malcolm's emissary to the United States left. He addressed a meeting at Columbia University sponsored by the Trotskyist DeBerry-Shaw presidential campaign committee on July 23. About one week later he lectured at the Socialist Workers Party's Militant Labor Forum in Manhattan, charging that the recent Harlem riot was being used as a pretext to ”set down” the black community. As Malcolm's absence grew longer, by late summer James finally began making major political and financial decisions without his input. In early August, when a cl.u.s.ter of supporters wanted to initiate an MMI branch in Philadelphia, he promised that any funds collected locally should remain there until the group ”got on its feet.” James's decision not only represented a sharp break from the Nation's autocratic centralism, but it also fragmented the potential resources of pro-Malcolm forces.

As the summer rolled on, James found himself left with relatively few allies within the MMI because, ironically, members felt he had been excessively accommodating to the OAAU, allowing that group to usurp resources and s.p.a.ce at MMI headquarters. James recalled, ”We had a s.p.a.ce, and men tend to be territorial. . . . And they came in and wanted to do things their way, or spoke to the brothers in a way that brothers were not accustomed to.” James believed that OAAU members saw themselves ”as intellectually capable individuals who were taking over from these ex-criminals, these . . . nincomp.o.o.ps, and it caused resentment.” But if James bore the brunt of their anger, he was not the source of it. For that, the responsibility fell to Malcolm himself, and the changes he had made to his platform, by will or by concession, in order to broaden the appeal of his message. In separating his politics from religion, he had inadvertently undermined the political authority of the MMI. His determination to play a major role in the civil rights movement meant denouncing much of his old past and Nation of Islam beliefs, especially the forceful emphasis on cla.s.s divisions within the black community. But the MMI was an embodiment of that past, and its members resented those middle-cla.s.s, better-educated blacks who now pushed to encircle their minister. ”The OAAU seemed to be treating us as last years news,” James reflected bitterly. ”'We are replacing them,' see?”

James's own Marxist take on the black community left him deeply skeptical of the OAAUs mission, a sentiment at odds with his responsibility to help the group get off the ground. For him, the OAAUs artists like Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, and its intellectuals like John Oliver Killens, represented the black pet.i.te bourgeoisie that Malcolm had once portrayed as part of the problem. ”Their bread was b.u.t.tered on the integrationist side,” he complained. ”These were not people that were on welfare. They were middle cla.s.s for America and upper middle cla.s.s for black America. They didn't have to wonder whether there was milk in the refrigerator.” James believed that Malcolm had created the OAAU primarily to serve as a platform to carry out his international objectives. ”An African diplomat or African politician could see it and accept it [the OAAU] and understand that . . . what was good for the African-American people would be good for his group.” During his April-May visit to Africa, Malcolm had been surprised that ”some of the most revolutionary people over there said, 'Well, how does Martin Luther King stand on this?' And they felt that if Martin Luther King wasn't in it, who was this Johnny-come-lately Malcolm?” James continued. ”So [Malcolm] made adjustments.” Among them was to pursue a recruitment strategy bringing middle-cla.s.s blacks, liberal celebrities, and intellectuals into the OAAU. ”Besides,” added James, Malcolm's views were ”changing so rapidly that almost as soon as he reached a particular level [they would become] obsolete, because he was at another place.” This was pragmatic, self-interested politics: ”He needed people of stature and substance that would allow him to have that kind of dialogue with Africa, or with the UN, or international bodies. And people like Ossie Davis or Ruby Dee or Sidney Poitier are people who are well known.”

The tug-of-war between the OAAU and MMI finally surfaced into open conflict when several MMI brothers were arrested on weapons possession charges. Though the brothers were also OAAU members, the OAAU made no effort to post their bail. ”When they came out,” James recalled, ”they were behind in their annual [OAAU] dues. So they . . . went to go to [an OAAU] meeting, and the sisters said, 'No, you can't come to the meeting because you're behind in your dues.' ” The brothers were stunned, and over the next few months many MMI members with dual members.h.i.+p would quit the OAAU, or simply drift away from both organizations. One furious MMI member named Talfiq brought his grievances to James, who explained that Malcolm had given him the responsibility to build the OAAU. ”[This brother] had enough respect for me to abide his plans for revolution.” The fragmentation grew still worse when Betty initiated her own group of supporters. ”Betty had a group going on at her house, who thought they should [take over] the OAAU, because Lynne s.h.i.+fflett wasn't moving fast enough.” Betty also had a special dislike for s.h.i.+fflett, who she feared might be s.e.xually involved with her husband. According to Max Stanford, at an OAAU meeting, an irate Betty charged in and accused s.h.i.+fflett and an OAAU secretary of sleeping with Malcolm.