Part 14 (1/2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even in his dreams, Farrakhan cannot escape his link to Malcolm. In a 2007 oral history interview, he shared this nocturnal revelation: As G.o.d is my witness, I had a vision of Brother Malcolm. He came to me in like a dream vision. . . . And gray is in his hair. You know he had this little hair, that knot sometime, you know, and I saw the gray in his hair. And he comes to me and he said, ”Brother Louis, what went wrong?” And I said to him, ”Brother, you were slated to sit in [Elijah Muhammad's] seat. He had to try you, to see what was in you. And you failed the test. It wasn't that he was against you, but he wanted to see what was really in you.” . . . I am here because my brother died that I might live. It's very difficult for me not to just beat him down, because I walked in his shoes. And I know what pain is when you love people, and you work for people, and they turn against you and seek to destroy you. I understand that.

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

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

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

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

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

EPILOGUE.

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

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

Malcolm's strength was his ability to reinvent himself, in order to function and even thrive in a wide variety of environments. He carefully crafted his physical presentation, the manner in which he approached others, drawing upon the past experiences from his own life as well as from African-American folklore and culture. He wove a narrative of suffering and resistance, of tragedy and triumph, that captured the imaginations of black people throughout the world. He lived the existence of an itinerant musician, traveling constantly from city to city, standing night after night on the stage, manipulating his melodic tenor voice as an instrument. He was consciously a performer, who presented himself as the vessel for conveying the anger and impatience the black ma.s.ses felt. Impoverished African Americans could admire Dr. King, but Malcolm not only spoke their language, he had lived their experiences-in foster homes, in prisons, in unemployment lines. Malcolm was loved because he could present himself as one of them.

One great gift of such remarkable individuals is the ability to seize their time, to speak to their unique moment in history. Both Martin and Malcolm were such leaders, but they expressed their pragmatic visions in different ways. King embodied the historic struggles waged by generations of African Americans for full equality. He established predominantly black political organizations, such as the Montgomery Improvement a.s.sociation in 1955 and the Southern Christian Leaders.h.i.+p Conference in 1957, but their emphasis was the achievement of desegregation and interracial cooperation. King never pitted blacks against whites, or used the atrocities committed by white extremists as a justification for condemning all whites. By contrast, throughout most of his public career Malcolm sought to place whites on the defensive in their relations.h.i.+p with African Americans. He keenly felt, and expressed, the varied emotions and frustrations of the black poor and working cla.s.s. His constant message was black pride, self-respect, and an awareness of one's heritage. At a time when American society stigmatized or excluded people of African descent, Malcolm's militant advocacy was stunning. He gave millions of younger African Americans newfound confidence. These expressions were at the foundation of what in 1966 became Black Power, and Malcolm was its fountainhead.

Malcolm came to occupy a central s.p.a.ce in the rich folk tradition of black outlaws and dissidents, fighting against the established social hierarchy. In the antebellum era, such men of resistance were Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner. In African-American music, this tradition includes the notorious folklore of Stagger Lee, the inventive blues guitarist Robert Johnson, and the charismatic hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur. What these black outlaws all had in common was a cool contempt for the bourgeois status quo, the system of white supremacy and its law and courts. More significantly, the tradition of the black outlaw was to transgress the established moral order. In this respect, Detroit Red as Malcolm constructed him was the antihero, the hepcat who laughed at conventional mores, who used illegal drugs and engaged in illicit s.e.x, who broke all the rules. A close examination of the Autobiography Autobiography ill.u.s.trates that many of the elements of Detroit Red's narrative are fictive; despite this, the character's experiences resonate with black audiences because the contexts of racism, crime, and violence are integral aspects of ghetto life. ill.u.s.trates that many of the elements of Detroit Red's narrative are fictive; despite this, the character's experiences resonate with black audiences because the contexts of racism, crime, and violence are integral aspects of ghetto life.

The other dimension of Malcolm's appearance was his ident.i.ty as a righteous preacher, the man who dedicated his life to Allah. Again, this was a role that resonated deeply with African-American culture. Through his powerful language, Malcolm inspired blacks to see themselves not as victims, but possessing the agency to transform themselves and their lives. Like Marcus Garvey, Malcolm boldly insisted to blacks that racism would not define their futures; that, instead, people of African descent were destined for greatness. He developed a profound love for black history, and he integrated into many of his lectures insights taken from the heritage of African-American and African people. Malcolm encouraged blacks to celebrate their culture and the tales of black resistance to European colonialism and white domination. And despite his genuine conversion to orthodox Islam, his spiritual journey was linked to his black consciousness. Only weeks following the a.s.sa.s.sination, the poet Amiri Baraka proclaimed, ”Malcolm's greatest contribution was to preach Black Consciousness to the Black Man. Now we must find the flesh of our spiritual creation.” To Baraka, Malcolm represented a black aesthetic, a set of values and criteria for cultural representations that affirmed the genius and creativity of people of African descent. Malcolm provided the template for what black artists should aspire to achieve. ”The Black artist is needed to change the images his people identify with, by a.s.serting Black feeling, Black mind, Black judgment,” Baraka a.s.serted. In March 1965, Baraka left Greenwich Village and migrated to Harlem, where he established the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/ School (BARTS). This became the foundation for the flowering of the modern black arts movement, involving thousands of poets, playwrights, dancers, and other cultural producers. Malcolm became their muse, the ideal expression of blackness. Even the New York Times New York Times, measuring his continuing influence in Harlem, observed that ”the central idea of Malcolm's that has taken hold since his death is that Negroes must hold fast to and nurture their own black culture, and not have it 'integrated out of existence.' ”

Stokely Carmichael, perhaps Black Power's most important architect, traced his own development directly back to Malcolm. In his autobiography, Carmichael explains that as an undergraduate at Howard University in the early 1960s he had first viewed Bayard Rustin as his political mentor. He attended the public debate between Rustin and Malcolm in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., on October 30, 1961, expecting Bayard ”to win the debate hands down.” But like others there he was overwhelmed by Malcolm's advocacy. ”What Malcolm demonstrated that night . . . was the raw power, the visceral potency, of the grip our unarticulated collective blackness held over us. I'll never forget it.” Three decades after Malcolm's triumph over Rustin, Carmichael was still inspired by the proud man who personified blackness: ”A spotlight picked him out as he strode, slim, erect, immaculately tailored, to the mike on an otherwise darkened stage.”

There is now a tendency of historical revisionism, to interpret Malcolm X through the powerful lens of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: that Malcolm was ultimately evolving into an integrationist, liberal reformer. This view is not only wrong, but unfair to both Malcolm and Martin. King saw himself, like Frederick Dougla.s.s, first and foremost as an American, who pursued the civil rights and civic privileges enjoyed by other Americans. King struggled to erase the color bar of stigmatization and exclusion that had relegated racial minorities to second-cla.s.s citizens.h.i.+p. As in the successful 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama, King wanted to convince white Americans that ”race doesn't matter”-in other words, the physical and color differences that appear to distinguish blacks from whites should be meaningless in the application of justice and equal rights.

In striking contrast, Malcolm perceived himself first and foremost as a black man, a person of African descent who happened to be a United States citizen. This was a crucial difference from King and other civil rights leaders. When he was a member of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm saw himself as a member of the tribe of Shabazz, the fictive Asiatic black clan invented by W. D. Fard. But by the final phases of his career, and especially in 1964-65, Malcolm linked his black consciousness to the ideological imperative of self-determination, the concept that all people have a natural right to decide for themselves their own destiny. Malcolm perceived black Americans as an oppressed nation-within-a-nation, with its own culture, social inst.i.tutions, and group psychology. Its memories of struggles for freedom were starkly different from those of white Americans. At the end of his life he realized that blacks indeed could achieve representation and even power under America's const.i.tutional system. But he always thought first and foremost about blacks' interests. Many blacks instinctively sensed this, and loved him for it.

King presented a narrative to white Americans that suggested that Negroes were prepared to protest nonviolently, and even die, to realize the promise of the nation's Founding Fathers. By contrast, Malcolm proposed that the oppressed had a natural right to armed self-defense. His narrative was that of the history of structural racism-from the transatlantic slave trade to ghettoization-and his remedy was black reparations, compensation for the years of exploitation blacks had endured. This is why Malcolm, had he survived to the 1990s, would not have been an enthusiastic defender of affirmative action as a centerpiece for civil rights reforms. Affirmative action was never designed to promote full employment or to transfer wealth to African Americans. What Malcolm sought was a fundamental restructuring of wealth and power in the United States-not a violent social revolution, but radical and meaningful change nevertheless.

Another critical difference between the two leaders was their relations.h.i.+p to the African-American middle cla.s.s. King was the product of Atlanta's well-educated, affluent black pet.i.te bourgeoisie. He was a graduate of More-house College and Boston University; Malcolm had left school without completing the ninth grade. His ”university” was Norfolk Prison Colony. More than any other twentieth-century black leader, Malcolm demanded that blacks in the professional and managerial cla.s.ses should be more accountable to the ma.s.ses of poor and working-cla.s.s African Americans. In speeches like ”Message to the Gra.s.sroots,” he sharply condemned middle-cla.s.s black leaders for their compromises with white power brokers. He demanded greater integrity and accountability from privileged blacks, as an essential element in the strategy for achieving black freedom.

In his 2003 oral history, Ossie Davis was asked why, in his famous eulogy, he had referred to Malcolm as a ”black s.h.i.+ning prince.” ”Because a prince,” Davis said, ”is not a king.” He implied that Malcolm's premature death cut short his maturity and full potential as a leader. Another way of examining Davis's insight is asking whether Malcolm's vision of racial justice was fully realized or achieved. Again, a comparison between Martin and Malcolm is illuminating. Following his a.s.sa.s.sination, King's image evolved from an anti-Vietnam protester and controversial civil rights advocate into a defender of a color-blind America. His birthday was celebrated by the U.S. government as a national holiday dedicated to public service. Politicians of all ideological stripes praise King's nonviolence but rarely examine his fierce impatience with racial injustice and its relevance to our times. By contrast for several decades Malcolm was pilloried and stereotyped for his racial extremism. However, to most black Americans he became an icon of black encouragement, who fearlessly challenged racism wherever he found it and inspired black youth to take pride in their history and culture. These aspects of Malcolm's public personality were indelibly stamped into the Black Power movement; they were present in the cry ”It's our turn!” by black proponents of Harold Was.h.i.+ngton in the Democrat's successful 1983 mayoral race in Chicago. It was partially expressed in the unprecedented voter turnouts in black neighborhoods in Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns of 1984 and 1988 and in the successful electoral bid of Barack Obama in 2008. Malcolm truly antic.i.p.ated that the black electorate could potentially be the balance of power in a divided white republic.

Malcolm's revolutionary vision also challenged white America to think and talk differently about race. In an era when some white entertainers still blackened their faces to perform, Malcolm challenged whites to examine the policies and practices of racial discrimination. Before postmodernists wrote about ”white privilege,” Malcolm spoke about the destructive effects of racism upon both its victims and its promulgators. Toward the end of his life he could imagine the destruction of racism itself, and the possibility of creating a humane social order devoid of racial injustice. He offered hope that whites could overcome centuries of negative socialization toward blacks, and that a racially just society was achievable. He did not embrace ”color blindness” but, like Frantz Fanon, believed that racial hierarchies within society could be dismantled.

Malcolm also changed the discourse and politics of race internationally. During a period when many African-American leaders were preoccupied with efforts to change federal and state policies about race relations, Malcolm saw that for the domestic struggle for civil rights to succeed, it had to be expanded into an international campaign for human rights. The United Nations, not the U.S. Congress or the White House, had to be the central forum. Equally important were the distinctions he made between black politics inside the United States versus liberation politics in Africa and the Caribbean.

Despite his radical rhetoric, as ”The Ballot or the Bullet” makes clear, the mature Malcolm believed that African Americans could use the electoral system and voting rights to achieve meaningful change. His position calling for ma.s.sive black voter education and mobilization was virtually identical to SNCC's, and would later be embraced by the Black Panther Party in Oakland in the 1970s. But outside of the United States, despite his respect for Nkrumah, he did not see electoral politics and gradual social change as a viable approach for transforming postcolonial societies. He endorsed revolutionary violence against the apartheid regime in South Africa, and guerrilla warfare against the neocolonial regime in Congo and in the Portuguese colonies of Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Nelson Mandela, who in 1961 founded Umkhonto we Sizwe (the Spear of the Nation), the secret armed wing of the African National Congress, was a hero to Malcolm because of his identification with guerrilla attacks against white South Africa. Although today Mandela is perceived as a racial reconciliator, much like King, a half century ago the future president of South Africa largely shared Malcolm's views about the necessity of armed struggle in Africa. So the view that there were ”two Malcolm Xs”-one who advocated violence when he was a Black Muslim, and a second who espoused nonviolent change-is absolutely wrong. To Malcolm, armed self-defense was never equated with violence for its own sake.