Part 12 (1/2)

On January 17, Malcolm showed up at a Harlem public vigil of one thousand people, standing in heavy snow, demanding school desegregation. Though he was constantly on the watch for NOI attacks, he seems to have decided that significantly large crowds presented a stronger deterrent to violence. In this case, he may have also been persuaded by the fact that most of the protesters were white, which made an attack even more unlikely. Organized by EQUAL, a parents group, the protest began at four p.m. on Sat.u.r.day afternoon and ended twenty-four hours later. Among those partic.i.p.ating were the Reverend Milton Galamison and Dr. Arthur Logan of the advocacy group HARYOU (Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited), two black liberals whose favor Malcolm sought.

Yet although he had braved the cold and potential threats to be there, Malcolm's comments about the effort reported by the Times Times were neither supportive nor encouraging. ”Whites should spend more time influencing whites,” he advised. ”These people have good intentions, but they are misdirected.” His complaint-that ”Harlem doesn't need to be told about integration”-largely missed the point. were neither supportive nor encouraging. ”Whites should spend more time influencing whites,” he advised. ”These people have good intentions, but they are misdirected.” His complaint-that ”Harlem doesn't need to be told about integration”-largely missed the point.

Malcolm frequently ran into trouble like this in his speeches and remarks in early 1965, partly because he was trying to appeal to so many different const.i.tuencies. He took different tones and att.i.tudes depending on which group he was speaking to, and often presented contradictory opinions only days apart. That he was not caught up in these contradictions more often owed to the fact that news traveled slowly across the country, that black politics were underreported, and that speeches were not regularly recorded. In his later speeches outside the United States, he was at his most revolutionary. There the Malcolm who sometimes advocated armed violence would appear, generating significant controversy, as would soon be the case in England. At home, he was more subdued, more conciliatory, yet on many occasions he would alternately praise King and other civil rights leaders one day and ridicule them and liberal Democrats the next. He also counted on the support of the Trotskyists, making overt appeals to them in speeches that seemed to be in support of a socialist system, often at the expense of building alliances to his ideological right. But Malcolm could not restrain himself, because he sincerely believed that blacks and other oppressed Americans had to break from the existing two-party system.

This balancing act partly explains his contradictions, but when it came to his ambivalence about King and movement liberals, Malcolm's political beliefs may have led him to misunderstand the fundamental importance of the mainstream civil rights struggle to the large majority of black Americans. Whereas he, along with an increasingly large faction of the black left, criticized the flaws in the nonviolent approach, they did not acknowledge how rewarding even incremental progress was. In several speeches, Malcolm explained away Lyndon Johnson's ma.s.sive electoral mandate from millions of black voters by claiming that African Americans had been duped and ”controlled by Uncle Tom leaders.” It apparently did not occur to him that great social change usually occurs through small transformations in individual behavior; that for blacks who had been denied voting rights for three generations, casting their ballots for reformist candidates wasn't betraying the cause or being ”held on the plantation by overseers.” To them, King was an emanc.i.p.ating figure, not an Uncle Tom.

He similarly misread the sentiment behind the EQUAL school desegregation rally. By 1965, the ma.s.ses of black parents and children were fed up with substandard schools and the racial tracking of black and Latino children into remedial education. The vigil was part of a citywide struggle for educational reform. Social change that matters to most people occurs around practical issues they see every day, yet Malcolm still failed to appreciate the necessary connection between gradual reforms and revolutionary change.

That same weekend, Jack Barnes and Barry Sheppard of the Trotskyist Young Socialist Alliance interviewed Malcolm for the group's publication, Young Socialist Young Socialist. In the resulting article, Malcolm explained why in recent months he had dropped the phrase ”black nationalism” to describe his politics. During his first visit to Ghana the previous May, he had been impressed by the Algerian amba.s.sador, ”a revolutionary in the true sense of the word.” When told that Malcolm's philosophy was ”black nationalism,” the Algerian asked, ”Where does that leave him? Where does that leave the revolutionaries of Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, Mauritania?” The phrase ”black nationalism” was highly problematic in a global context, because it excluded too many ”true revolutionaries.” This was the main reason that Malcolm increasingly sought refuge under the political rubric of Pan-Africanism. But he may also have recognized that there were enormous difficulties with this theoretical category as well, which ranged from the anticommunism of George Padmore to the angry Marxism-Leninism of Nkrumah in exile after 1966.

Despite his newfound reluctance at being described as a black nationalist, Malcolm still perceived political action in distinctly racial categories, which may further explain why he made no moves to integrate his groups. For example, when Barnes and Sheppard asked what contributions antiracist young whites and especially students could make, he urged them not to join Negro organizations. ”Whites who are sincere should organize among themselves and figure out some strategy to break down the prejudice that exists in white communities.” In the year ahead, Malcolm predicted more blood in the streets, as white liberals and Negro moderates would fail to divert the social unrest brewing. ”Negro leaders have lost their control over the people. So that when the people begin to explode-and their explosion is fully justified, not unjustified-the Negro leaders can't contain it.”

The next day Malcolm flew to Toronto, to be the guest on the Pierre Berton Show Pierre Berton Show on CFTO television. He resisted discussing Muhammad's out-of-wedlock children, but still managed to castigate him as a false prophet. ”When I ceased to respect him as a man,” he told Berton, ”I could see that he was also not divine. There was no G.o.d with him at all.” Malcolm now claimed that G.o.d embraced Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike-”We all believe in the same G.o.d”-and denied that whites were ”devils,” insisting ”this is what Elijah Muhammad teaches. . . . A man should not be judged by the color of his skin but rather by his conscious behavior, by his actions.” Malcolm explicitly rejected the separatist political demand for a black state or nation, stating, ”I believe in a society in which people can live like human beings on the basis of equality.” When Berton asked whether his guest still believed in the Nation of Islam's eschatology of ”an Armageddon,” Malcolm artfully turned this NOI theory into the language of revolution and Marxist cla.s.s struggle: on CFTO television. He resisted discussing Muhammad's out-of-wedlock children, but still managed to castigate him as a false prophet. ”When I ceased to respect him as a man,” he told Berton, ”I could see that he was also not divine. There was no G.o.d with him at all.” Malcolm now claimed that G.o.d embraced Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike-”We all believe in the same G.o.d”-and denied that whites were ”devils,” insisting ”this is what Elijah Muhammad teaches. . . . A man should not be judged by the color of his skin but rather by his conscious behavior, by his actions.” Malcolm explicitly rejected the separatist political demand for a black state or nation, stating, ”I believe in a society in which people can live like human beings on the basis of equality.” When Berton asked whether his guest still believed in the Nation of Islam's eschatology of ”an Armageddon,” Malcolm artfully turned this NOI theory into the language of revolution and Marxist cla.s.s struggle: I do believe that there will be a clash between East and West. I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice, and equality for everyone, and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think that it will be based upon the color of the skin, as Elijah Muhammad has taught it.

At the next OAAU public rally, held on January 24, he spoke on African and African-American history, from ancient black civilizations and slavery up to the present era. The OAAU leaders.h.i.+p planned for Malcolm to follow this lecture with two others: a second a.n.a.lyzing current conditions, and a third about the future, presenting the organization's program to the public.

Malcolm extensively read history, but he was not a historian. His interpretation of enslavement in the United States cast black culture as utterly decimated by the inst.i.tution of slavery and framed slavery's consequences in America as the very worst forms of racial oppression. As historical a.n.a.lysis, this approach did not adequately measure the myriad forms of resistance mounted by enslaved blacks. But in political terms, his emphasis on American exceptionalism and its unrelenting oppression of blacks was a brilliant motivating tool for African Americans. Peter Goldman explained that Malcolm ”differentiated between America and the rest of the world. . . . I don't think he romanticized Western Europe, but I think he probably thought they were doing a little better than we were.” Placing the United States on the last level of racial oppression, even below South Africa, in a curious way recognized the importance of the African-American struggle.

Two days after his history lecture at the OAAU rally, Malcolm gave an address at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hamps.h.i.+re. The talk was arranged by a Muslim undergraduate student, Omar Osman, who was affiliated with the Islamic Center in Geneva. Demand for admission was so great that while fifteen hundred attended, five hundred more were unable to get in. Malcolm's lecture built upon his new image as a human rights advocate. Barriers like religion, race, and color could no longer be used as excuses for inaction against injustice. ”We must approach the problem as humans first,” he stated, ”and whatever else we are second.”

Bold lectures like this before large crowds stood in stark contrast to the scrambling he often took to avoid altercations with the Nation, though he continued even at this late date, and despite all warnings from those who cared about him, to provoke his former brothers. He had not let go of his involvement in the paternity lawsuit pending against Elijah Muhammad in Los Angeles, which was now on the verge of proceeding. The case had been delayed until a hearing was finally set on January 11, 1965. However, on the day of the hearing neither Evelyn Williams nor Lucille Rosary showed up. The judge consequently removed the case from the calendar until an explanation was given, and when it came it was hardly surprising: the women had been so intimidated by the NOI that they had become frightened for their own safety. They were living together in Los Angeles, but had moved twice out of fear. When contacted by Los Angeles attorney Gladys Towles Root, Malcolm encouraged her to speed up her efforts, saying, ”If the case doesn't get to trial soon, I won't be alive to testify.”

His prophecy gained credence almost immediately. At approximately eleven fifteen p.m. on January 22, Malcolm opened the front door of his home and took several steps outside when suddenly several Muslims who had been hiding rushed toward him. ”They came at me three seconds too soon,” Malcolm later recounted. He ran back inside, secured the door, and called the police. But the Nation had made its point: once he left his home, Malcolm would be safe nowhere. The police arrived, searched the surrounding blocks, but unsurprisingly failed to find the attackers. Malcolm denied allegations in the press that he traveled only with a bodyguard. He retorted, ”My alertness is my bodyguard.” In truth, he routinely traveled with James 67X or Reuben Francis or both, and had recently taken to carrying a tear gas pen for self-defense.

Undeterred by the attack, Malcolm flew out to the West Coast, where on January 28 he met with Evelyn, Lucille, and Gladys Root to secure their continued commitment to the lawsuit. Malcolm promised personally to testify at the hearing. Then, by coincidence, a group of NOI loyalists ran into Malcolm in the lobby of his hotel. Over the next two days they closely tracked his movements, always staying close enough to let Malcolm know he was being watched and that they might strike at any moment. Root attested later that Malcolm seemed truly frightened throughout this trip. On the day he was to leave town, two carloads of Fruit tailed Malcolm's automobile on the highway to the airport. Without any weapon to defend himself, Malcolm found a cane in the car, poked it out a side window, and aimed it like a rifle. It was convincing enough; the would-be attackers quickly pulled back. At the airport, though, there were several more Muslims waiting. The LAPD responded by taking Malcolm through an underground tunnel to reach his plane. Prior to embarking, the captain of the flight ordered all the pa.s.sengers off and had the plane thoroughly searched for bombs. As soon as he arrived in Chicago, Malcolm was placed under close police guard.

The stop in Chicago was itself a bold provocation. Malcolm had come to the Nation's base for the very purpose of further undermining its reach. He was there to be interviewed by the Illinois attorney general's office, which was considering him as a witness in a legal case, Thomas Cooper v. State of Illinois Thomas Cooper v. State of Illinois. Cooper, a prisoner and follower of Elijah Muhammad at the Illinois state penitentiary, was suing the state on const.i.tutional grounds, claiming that while incarcerated he had been restricted from obtaining a copy of the Quran and other reading materials related to the Nation of Islam. As a witness, Malcolm was prepared to argue that the Nation was not a legitimately Islamic religious organization, and that therefore it did not merit access to penal inst.i.tutions. His newfound hostility to the Nation's religious activities inside prisons directly contradicted his extensive efforts to convert prisoners, going back to his own incarceration in the 1940s. But his opposition to the Nation was now so intense that he was willing to support the efforts of the Illinois attorney general to ban the Nation from access to those in the penal system. This purpose alone would have raised the Nation's hackles, but Malcolm did not pa.s.s quietly through town. Instead, he devoted nearly ten full hours to television, radio, and newspaper interviews, including a taped appearance on the popular Kup's Show Kup's Show on WBKB. on WBKB.

Though Malcolm returned safely to New York City on January 31, the incident in Los Angeles had left him shaken. That night he seemed subdued addressing an OAAU rally at the Audubon before a crowd of 550, an unusually large draw for the group. The next day, he gave a revealing interview to the Amsterdam News Amsterdam News. ”My death has been ordered by higher-ups in the movement,” he said of the NOI. He had become convinced that the greater the negative publicity concerning the Nation's attempts to kill him, the safer he would be; if any harm came to him, he figured, law enforcement would immediately place members of the Nation under arrest. The statement, however, had no immediate effect. Two days later, after he appeared as a panelist on the TV show Hotline Hotline, on WPIX in New York City, with Ossie Davis, Jimmy Breslin, and others, Nation thugs swarmed Malcolm's men outside the television studio, precipitating a violent brawl. Malcolm again escaped unharmed.

During these final days, many of Malcolm's closest a.s.sociates detected disturbing changes in his behavior and physical appearance. For years, Malcolm had come to public meetings and lectures impeccably dressed, always wearing a clean white s.h.i.+rt and tie. But now, he always seemed to be tired, even exhausted and depressed. His shoes weren't s.h.i.+ned; his clothing was frequently wrinkled. There was even ”a kind of fatalism” in his conversations, observes Malcolm X researcher Abdur-Rahman Muhammad. In his personal exchanges with Anas Luqman during this time, Malcolm ruminated that ”the males in his family didn't die a natural death.” To Luqman, just before the a.s.sa.s.sination, the leader seemed to resign himself to his fate: ”Whatever's going to happen, is going to happen.” The disenchantment of Malcolm loyalists in their leader was also directly related to the confusion and alienation they felt about the new political directions they had been given. In practical terms, as Abdur-Rahman Muhammad explains, the ex-Black Muslims who had followed Malcolm into the MMI ”didn't sign up for orthodox Islam. They didn't sign up for this OAAU thing. And they positively resented the fact that the OAAU seemed to be where Malcolm was putting all of his energy.”

Despite his growing uncertainty and bouts with depression, Malcolm steeled himself to press forward. On February 3 he took an early-morning flight from New York City, arriving in Montgomery, Alabama, around noon. An hour and a half later he was addressing three thousand students at Tuskegee Inst.i.tute's Logan Hall. The auditorium was so crowded that even before the formal program began hundreds had to be turned away. Malcolm's t.i.tle for the lecture, ”Spectrum on Political Ideologies,” did not reflect its content, which covered much of the same ground as his other recent addresses. He condemned the Ts...o...b.. regime, the Johnson administration's links to it, and the growing U.S. involvement in Vietnam, suggesting the United States was ”trapped” there. When asked about his disputes with Elijah Muhammad, he responded with a soft, theological argument: ”Elijah believes that G.o.d is going to come and straighten things out. . . . I'm not willing to sit and wait on G.o.d to come. . . . I believe in religion, but a religion that includes political, economic, and social action designed to eliminate some of these things, and make a paradise here on earth while we're waiting for the other.”

The students affiliated with SNCC who attended his lecture invited him to visit Selma, then the headquarters of the national campaign for black voting rights, and only one hundred miles west in the heart of the Black Belt. Malcolm could not refuse. The beauty of the Selma struggle was its brutal simplicity: hundreds of local blacks lined up at Selma's Dallas County building daily, demanding the right to register to vote; white county and city police beat and arrested them. By the first week in February thirty-four hundred people had been jailed, including Dr. King. Under cover of darkness, terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan hara.s.sed civil rights workers, black families, and households. On February 4, Malcolm addressed an audience of three hundred at the Brown's Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Significantly, while the event had been arranged through SNCC, after some negotiations it was formally cosponsored by King's SCLC. Malcolm's sermon praised King's dedication to nonviolence, but he advised that should white America refuse to accept the nonviolent model of social change, his own example of armed ”self-defense” was an alternative. After the talk he met with Coretta Scott King, stating that in the future he would work in concert with her husband. Before leaving, he informed SNCC workers that he planned to start an OAAU recruitment drive in the South within a few weeks. In this one visit, he had significantly expanded the OAAUs purpose and mission, from lobbying the UN to playing an activist role in the gra.s.sroots trenches of voting rights and community organizing.

Back in New York, he purchased air tickets for London, with stops in Paris and Geneva, for what would be his final trip out of the country. He planned to attend the first Congress of the Council of African Organizations, held in London on February 6-8, and then to move on to Paris to work with Carlos Moore in consolidating the OAAUs presence there. Arriving in London, he gave interviews to the New China news agency and the Ghanaian Times Ghanaian Times. As had happened so many times before, the good rapport he had developed with movement activists in Selma and Tuskegee quickly disappeared in favor of more radical sentiments. He told the Chinese media that ”the greatest event in 1964 was China's explosion of an atom bomb, because this is a great contribution to the struggle of the oppressed people in the world.” He deplored the 1964 Civil Rights Act as ”nothing but a device to deceive the African people,” and characterized U.S. racism as being ”an inseparable part of the entire political and social system.” And his opposition to the Vietnam War was escalating: the basic choice America had was ”to die there or pull out. . . . Time is against the U.S., and the American people do not support the U.S. war.”

In his interview with the Ghanaian Times Ghanaian Times, he promoted the call by Nkrumah for the establishment of an African union government. Those leaders who reject the creation of a union, he declared, ”will be doing a greater service to the imperialists than Moise Ts...o...b...” Once again Malcolm the visionary antic.i.p.ated the future contours of history, with the creation of the African Union a half century later. Addressing the conference on February 8, he encouraged the African press to challenge the racist stereotypes and distortions of Africans in the Western media. In the Western press, he noted, the African freedom fighter was made to look ”like a criminal.”

On February 9 he flew on to Paris, yet at customs the authorities detained him and refused to allow him to enter the country. During a subsequent two-hour delay, he learned that the government of Charles de Gaulle had determined that his presence was ”undesirable,” and that a talk he had scheduled with the Federation of African Students might ”provoke demonstrations.” Returning to London, he quickly organized a press conference, challenging the French decision. ”I did not even get as far as immigration control,” he complained. ”I might as well have been locked up.”

A telephone interview was arranged in London that was audiotaped and later played on speakers for a crowd of three hundred in Paris. The incident seemed to have pulled him back for the moment, and he once again returned to the language of unity and racial harmony. ”I do not advocate violence,” he explained. ”In fact, the violence that exists in the United States is the violence that the Negro in America has been a victim of.” On the issues of black nationalism and the Southern civil rights movement, he once again channeled King. ”I believe in taking an uncompromising stand against any forms of segregation and discrimination that are based on race. I myself do not judge a man by the color of his skin.”

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 pa.s.sport, 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 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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.” 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 a.s.sessment 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 ident.i.ty. ”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 ident.i.ty . . . they want to be Englishmen.” The same process of ident.i.ty 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 ma.s.sive 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 const.i.tuencies who looked to him for inspiration and leaders.h.i.+p. South Asians and West Indians who experienced ethnic and religious discrimination in the English working-cla.s.s town of Smethwick, for example, contacted him to solicit his support. The BBC, which at that time was filming a doc.u.mentary 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 b.l.o.o.d.y battle.”

A major national debate erupted, with the BBC roundly condemned for a.s.sisting Malcolm's investigations. Even the Sun 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 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. reporter. The West Indians in his town, he judged, were ”not the sort of people who would want to follow Malcolm X.

Before leaving the UK, Malcolm was interviewed by a correspondent for the liberal South African newspaper Sunday Express 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 n.o.bel 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 a.s.sociates 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 Was.h.i.+ngton,” 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.