By 1962, the secretary of every mosque was directly reporting to John Ali, who had become firmly allied with Malcolm’s critics. Farrakhan recalled that “the captains were under Raymond Sharrieff and Elijah, Junior . . . and the sister captains were under Ethel Sharrieff or Lottie, [the] Messenger's daughter. . . . They had these positions that they wanted to keep, [so] they began to persecute brother Malcolm from headquarters.” Muhammad Speaks began reducing its coverage of his speeches. “He would speak in places, and really he’d do a lot of great work,” said Farrakhan, “but our paper would hardly say anything.” Occasionally Malcolm expressed his disappointments to his Boston friend. “He would say things to me—he said, ‘You know, I work hard for the Nation, and, man, for me to be doing this and I get no recognition.’ So it began eating away at [my] brother.” Malcolm kept quiet about his unhappiness to his subordinates, but rather, following Muhammad’s instructions, began turning down college engagements—for instance, canceling a speaking event at the University of Bridgeport because of “throat trouble.”
To counter the animosity building against him in Chicago, he also drew closer to the allies that surrounded him in New York, chief among them Mosque No. 7’s assistant minister Benjamin 2X Goodman. Like many in the NOI, Goodman had come to the organization following an unhappy tenure in the armed forces during the years after World War II. Having enlisted in the air force in 1949, he was cited for “company punishment” four times before being court-martialed in August 1951 and discharged in late 1952. The experience hardly endeared him to white authority, and in 1957, shortly after his arrival in New York, he became a member of the Harlem temple. He showed immediate promise, and two years later, nearing his thirtieth birthday, he was named the instructor for the Great Black Man’s History course in Temple No. 7’s adult education program. To support himself, he started a bookselling business, and also found employment as a building supervisor. In 1961, NOI literature described Benjamin as manager of Crescent Book Sales, a “specialist in Islamic literature and history.”
Though Benjamin 2X had begun serving as a ministry assistant in 1958, it was not until the early 1960s that Malcolm came to rely on him for a wide variety of duties. Although Henry X remained Mosque No. 7’s official chief assistant minister, everyone knew that Benjamin was the closest to Malcolm. The spiritual bond between the two was second only to that between Malcolm and Louis X. In 1961-62, Benjamin’s role within the mosque significantly changed, and consequently so did his relationship with Malcolm. The FBI noted that Benjamin was increasingly given additional assignments. For example, from September 1961 until August 1962, he attended meetings to establish an NOI mosque in Bridgeport, Connecticut. During May and June 1962, he was one of several featured speakers at Philadelphia’s Mosque No. 12, and in mid-July of that year was named the mosque’s “main speaker.” He also increasingly accompanied Malcolm on out-of-town engagements.
His greatest value, so far as Malcolm was concerned, lay in the humble attitude he brought to his position. By all accounts, his disposition was pastoral and spiritual; he sought the meaning of his faith through the good works he did. Over the years, he enjoyed meals and other forms of fellowship in Malcolm’s home hundreds of times. He knew, and lovingly admired, his senior minister, making him the pastoral counterbalance to James 67X, the men representing two distinctive aspects of Malcolm’s personality. Yet unlike James, who was the only man who would vigorously argue with Malcolm to his face, there was always a distance, an absence of intimacy, between Benjamin and Malcolm. “He used to send me out of town, and I’d come back and go to his house maybe at one in the morning and we’d talk,” Benjamin recalled. “But we didn’t get close. Not in the buddy sense. He was always in command.ʺ
After his Sunday sermons at Mosque No. 7, Malcolm usually invited his assistants back home for dinner. The young ministers thought of such occasions as tutorials. Increasingly, however, they witnessed tense confrontations between Betty and Malcolm. Betty’s anger and anxiety became so overwhelming that by early 1963 she had fled again, to Detroit. When Malcolm arrived back home one evening after being away, he discovered his spouse and children were gone. This time he didn’t go looking. After a few days, Betty grew terribly worried; perhaps she finally had pushed her husband too far. Eventually Malcolm learned where she was, and he contacted her: “I don’t have a job where I can leave at a certain time. . . . You knew that when you married me. If you leave again, I’m not coming after you.” Sometimes, when the couple was experiencing difficulties, he dispatched Betty and the children to stay at the Boston home of Louis Farrakhan and his wife. “Because he knew I loved him,” Farrakhan explained, “and he knew that I would defend him. . . . It was a good place for Betty to be.”
By the early fall of 1962, Malcolm had decided that he would not seek an open confrontation with his critics inside the Nation. He greatly reduced the number of interviews and television appearances he accepted, to dispel the impression that he saw himself as Muhammad’s successor. Nevertheless, he still did some radio and television. On the night of September 30, when thousands of federal troops were occupying the University of Mississippi to ensure the enrollment of James Meredith, he was on the Barry Gray radio show, denouncing racial intermarriage. As for Meredith, Malcolm curtly commented, “One little black man going to a school in Mississippi in no way compensates for the fact that a million black people don’t even get to the grade school level in Mississippi.” At every opportunity he made plain his boundless belief in Elijah Muhammad’s perfection. At a Mosque No. 7 meeting on October 19, he drew attention to a negative newspaper article about the Messenger. No one, he preached, must be permitted “to defame the name of Elijah Muhammad,” adding that if he saw the reporter of the article on the street he would punch him “right in the mouth.”
One part of Malcolm’s strategy to promote the cult around Muhammad involved taking a more aggressive role in defending the Islamic legitimacy of the NOI's religious views, especially when criticized by orthodox Muslims, who often took great offense at Muhammad’s claim of connection with the divine. Near the end of the summer a Sudanese Muslim college student, Yahya Hayari, publicly criticized the NOI, prompting Malcolm to write him a letter of protest, not so much addressing the meat of Hayari’s critique, but taking him to task for airing his complaint publicly. It is “difficult for me to believe that you’re a Muslim from the Sudan,” Malcolm began. “No real Muslim will ever attack another Muslim just to gain the friendship of Christians.” Differences, he suggested, should be settled “in private . . . but never to the public delight of Jews and Christians.” Malcolm drew upon international conflicts to explain the dangers of Muslim disunity: “The Europeans are still in the Congo because the Congolese have been kept busy fighting each other. . . . It would be quite foolish for Muslim students to come here from the Sudan or any other part of Africa and allow themselves to be used to attack us in a Christian country, a white country, a country in which 20 million of their own ‘Darker Brothers’ are yet being held as Second-Class Citizens, which is only a modified form of 20th Century Colonialism.” Hayari’s criticisms against the Nation continued, prompting Malcolm to send a letter of protest to the Pittsburgh Courier. Hayari “has been in Christian America too long,” Malcolm advised, because he “sounds like . . . [a] brainwashed, American Negro.” Malcolm minimized the theological differences between his sect and global Islam, arguing that the tactics of “the police of the enemies of Islam have always been ‘divide and conquer.’ ” Hayari was clearly among those who “suffer” from a “colonial mentality.” Hayari’s response appeared in the October 27, 1962, issue of the Pittsburgh Courier. “Mr. Elijah does not believe in or teach Islam,” Hayari insisted. “What he teaches in the name of Islam is his own social theory.” Because of Muhammad’s heresies, “all those that follow him should know that they are being led straight to Hell.”
On November 24, Malcolm’s letter criticizing an Afghani Muslim’s critique of the NOI appeared in the
Amsterdam News. To demonstrate his fidelity to Islamic orthodoxy, Malcolm responded by citing verses from the Qur'an. “Messenger Elijah Muhammad’s followers here in America live by a higher moral code and practice a more strict form of religious discipline than Muslims do anywhere else on this earth,” Malcolm insisted. “Oh, you who believe, take not the Jews and the Christians for friends . . . And whoever takes them for friends he is indeed one of them,” Malcolm praised Elijah Muhammad as “Allah’s last messenger today, and by accepting his divine message we receive such strong spiritual strength from him that we are able to reform ourselves from the evils of this Christian world overnight.”
Also in 1962, another Sudanese Muslim, Ahmed Osman, studying at Dartmouth College, attended Mosque No. 7 services and directly challenged Malcolm X during a question and answer period. Osman was particularly agitated by the NOI's claims that Elijah Muhammad was the “Messenger of God,” and that whites were literally “devils.” Osman came away “greatly impressed with Malcolm,” but “unsatisfied” with his answers. He began sending literature from the Islamic Center in Geneva, Switzerland, and writing to him about the “true Islam.” Malcolm appreciated the literature and asked Osman for more. Yet despite his exposure to orthodox Islam, Malcolm was still unprepared to break from the Nation.
Yet the more challengers he engaged on the question of Islam, the more emerged to confront him. In March 1963, he debated Louis Lomax and others as part of a program on Los Angeles Channel 11, during which he appeared to distance himself from Muhammad. He explained, “One becomes a Muslim only by accepting the religion of Islam, which means belief in one God, Allah. Christians call him Christ, Jews call him Jehovah.” This statement was a tacit rejection of Yacub’s History, and of the NOI demonology of whites. Despite such modification, Malcolm adhered to other aspects of NOI orthodoxy, stating at one point in the debate, “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that God taught him that the white race is a race of devils and what a white person should do if he is not a devil is prove it. As far as I’m concerned, the history of the white race as it has been taught to us by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is pretty strong evidence against that particular race.” The debate ran late, and he and Lomax did not leave the television studio until after one thirty in the morning. When they reached the parking lot, they were confronted by a group of angry Arab students from UCLA who had viewed with dismay Malcolm’s “white devil” statements, which directly contradicted the color-blind, abstract orthodoxy of Islam. Malcolm explained that the phrase “white devils” was essential “in waking up the deaf, dumb and blind American Negro,” but the students were unconvinced. Malcolm, upset, left in a waiting automobile. What he was beginning to comprehend was that he could no longer claim to be part of Islam’s ummah while reviling all whites as a race beyond redemption. He would have to choose.
On November 15, 1962, aging boxing legend Archie Moore climbed into the ring in Los Angeles for a late-career fight against an opponent almost half his age. By round four he was finished, giving another victory to his brash challenger, who was as yet unbeaten in sixteen professional fights. In New York, Malcolm, due in the city the next week, kept an eye out for news of the fight. Though the Nation looked unfavorably upon boxing, and though Malcolm himself had never shown much interest in the sport, this particular young fighter presented a special case. Earlier that year, in Detroit, Malcolm had been relaxing at the Students’ Luncheonette next door to Mosque No. 1 when he was approached by a handsome, well-built black man who excitedly thrust out his hand to introduce himself: “I’m Cassius Clay.” Just nineteen years old, he and his brother, Rudy, had driven all the way from Louisville to hear Elijah Muhammad speak.
Few men would play such an outsized role in Malcolm’s life as this enigmatic, irrepressible figure, who would become legendary as Muhammad Ali. The two men shared important childhood connections: though Clay’s father, Cassius, Sr., remained very much alive well into his son’s life, like Earl Little he had been deeply influenced by Marcus Garvey and had imparted the lessons of black pride and self-sufficiency to his son. Born on January 17, 1942, Cassius, Jr., had taken up boxing at the age of twelve under the guidance of a local police officer, at once excelling. However, at first he won more plaudits for his charm than for his pugilistic skills, making a name for himself by spouting comedic rhymes celebrating his prowess. He broke through in 1960 by winning a gold medal in the 175-pound light heavyweight division at the Rome Olympics. Promptly turning professional, Clay was backed by a syndicate of wealthy white men calling themselves the Louisville Sponsoring Group.
Clay’s fierce individualism and Garvey-inspired sense of pride made him a natural fit for the Nation of Islam, and when he first encountered the group in 1959, it caught his attention. He had traveled to Chicago to fight in a Golden Gloves tournament and returned to Louisville clutching a long-playing record of Elijah Muhammad’s speeches. Still in high school, he pestered one of his teachers, unsuccessfully, to be allowed to write a paper about the sect. In March 1961, by this time a professional training in Miami, Clay encountered Captain Sam X Saxon (later Abdul Rahman) selling copies of Muhammad Speaks on the street. He struck up a conversation and Saxon invited him to attend the city’s small mosque. From his very first visit, the young boxer was fascinated. “This minister started teaching, and the things he said really shook me up,” he told Alex Haley.
Things like that we twenty million black people in America didn’t know our true identities, or even our true family names. And we were the direct descendants of black men and women stolen from the rich black continent and brought here and stripped of all knowledge of themselves and taught to hate themselves and their kind. And that’s how us so-called ʺNegroesʺ had come to be the only race among mankind that loves its enemies. Now, I’m the kind that catches on quick. I said to myself, listen, this man’s saying something!
He later claimed that it was “the first time I ever felt spiritual in my life.” Soon he started reading Muhammad Speaks regularly and developed friendships with NOI members, eventually coming to the attention of Jeremiah X, Atlanta’s minister and the NOI's regional boss, who traveled to Miami on several occasions to see him. Through Saxon, Clay obtained the services of a Muslim cook, who helped him observe Muslim dietary requirements.
To Malcolm, Clay was a jovial, “clean-cut, down-to-earth youngster.” He saw through Clay’s clown routine, which perhaps reminded him of his own comedic antics as Sandwich Red while serving whites on trains during the war. After their introduction at the luncheonette in early 1962, the two men stayed in contact throughout the year, and soon Malcolm asked his friend Archie Richardson (later Osman Karriem) to watch over Clay in Miami. Malcolm sensed that Clay had potential as a fighter; his conversion to the NOI could allow the sect to reach an entirely different audience. Ferdie Pacheco, Clay’s trainer, later observed, “Malcolm X and Ali were like very close brothers. It was almost like they were in love with each other.” To Clay, Malcolm was “the smartest black man on the face of the earth.” Even Pacheco was impressed. “Malcolm X was bright as hell, convincing, charismatic in the way that great leaders and martyrs are. It certainly rubbed off on Ali.”
Four days after Clay’s fight with Moore, Malcolm touched down in Los Angeles, where, according to the Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, he would be helping out with a fund-raising drive and teaching classes for two weeks. But this was only part of Malcolm’s new plan. He had decided to quietly countermand Elijah’s ban on cooperation with civil rights and non-Muslim groups. To that end, between November 19 and 24, he participated in forums on “Integration or Separation” and “Militants in Negro Leadership,” the latter largely organized by the Afro-American Association. Founded earlier in 1962 by activist Donald Warden, the association was a progressive network of largely militant black students. Some of the activists who emerged from this group would soon have a major impact on the Black Freedom Movement. The association chapter in the Bay Area claimed future Black Panther Party fou
nder Huey P. Newton as a member, and in Los Angeles the local leader was Ron Everett, who subsequently became the high priest of black cultural nationalism, known as Maulana Karenga.
Although the conference and rally managed to bring out only four hundred people—much smaller than the thousands of Harlemites that Mosque No. 7 regularly massed—it attracted the attention of the New York Times as well as the national black press. The daylong program featured a series of workshops under the theme “The Mind of the Ghetto.” In the plenary session, Wilfred Ussery of the Afro-American Association vigorously propounded CORE's nonviolent approach, but the crowd was overwhelmingly for Malcolm. The Times observed, “There appeared to be a considerable number of Black Muslim supporters, judging from shouts of approval that punctuated the statements made by Malcolm X.ʺ
The cheers reflected the increasing complexity of Malcolm’s relationship with the leftmost wing of the civil rights movement. Unlike the NAACP, whose discrete units largely moved in lockstep thanks to its rigid, multitiered hierarchy, CORE had a freer organizing structure with less oversight from national headquarters. Local branches often took on a different, more militant character that found greater common ground with the NOI's black nationalism. Whereas Malcolm and James Farmer had long disagreed on philosophy and tactics, in the CORE outposts more and more activists were aligning themselves with Malcolm.
At the conference, Malcolm did not obscure his political differences with CORE, criticizing the Freedom Rides as a waste of resources and repeatedly underscoring the fundamental difference that separated integrationist liberals from black nationalists: the former believed that the predominantly white political system possessed the capacity to reform itself on matters of race, whereas the latter viewed that as impossible. “Our problem will never be solved by the white man,” said Malcolm. “We must solve it for ourselves.” When eventually he returned from the Los Angeles visit, he had reached certain conclusions about his future. Despite Muhammad’s warnings, he would return to the lecture circuit. He also favored direct involvement in civil rights, engaging in frequently critical dialogues with militants in SNCC, CORE, and local groups such as the Afro-American Association. CORE may have moved toward Malcolm, but he was not himself unmoved.