The Messenger, page 27
Unbeknownst to Schlesinger, Malcolm X and Professor Lonnie X Cross were among dozens of Muslims in the audience. When the floor was opened for questions, Malcolm X challenged Schlesinger’s arguments, leading him to make a hasty retreat. He apologized to the audience after admitting that he had “insufficient evidence” to support his assertions about the NOI.29 It seemed that every invitation Minister Malcolm accepted generated two more invitations, and middle-class black students slowly joined the NOI. A prominent black intellectual was horrified when his son announced that he intended to become a Muslim. He contacted Malcolm secretly and asked him to dissuade his son from doing so because he feared his white colleagues wouldn’t understand. Malcolm assured the intellectual that he would do everything within his power to discourage the boy from joining. Among the middle-class youths who did convert was Thomas Wallace of New York. Wallace was the younger brother of Ruby Wallace, better known as Ruby Dee, one of the country’s most prominent actresses, who starred on Broadway in 1959, in A Raisin in the Sun, along with her husband, Ossie Davis, and Sidney Poitier.30
The black intelligentsia’s fear of Malcolm X was highlighted by an incident at Howard University, proudly referred to by its students as “the black Harvard.” In early February 1961, the NAACP chapter on the Howard campus invited Malcolm X to speak. When Carl E. Anderson, director of student activities, heard that Malcolm X was coming, he moved quickly to quash the invitation. Citing a procedural formality, Anderson said that the Faculty Committee on Student Organizations and Activities had not approved the invitation as required.31 Owing to the demands of his schedule, Malcolm was unable to come to the campus once the matter was rectified. Then, in May 1961, the NAACP tried to minimize the embarrassment it suffered during debates by “prohibiting an appearance of NAACP staff members on the same platform as Muslim representatives.”32
Howard University students finally won their battle with Anderson over inviting Malcolm X to speak on campus, and on October 30, 1961, he and Bayard Rustin debated in Cramton Auditorium. The debate signaled that the Messenger was slowly abandoning not only his call for a return to Africa but even the demand for separate states. Rather, Malcolm X said, Muslims would follow the advice of DuBois, who suggested that blacks separate economically from white America. The Messenger would expand his “Buy Black” campaign from the NOI to all African Americans. As part of the campaign, blacks were urged to deposit their money in black-owned banks, to buy their goods from black-owned businesses, and to invest their money in black neighborhoods. That, he said, was the only way to create wealth.
The campaign began on the heels of economic studies showing that a dollar earned by an African American changed hands only once before leaving the black community, whereas a dollar earned by a Caucasian changed hands four or five times before leaving the community. Malcolm X also scored with the students by pointing out that
the NAACP has never in its 51 years elected a Negro as head of the organization and therefore must have doubts about Negroes. The [National] Urban League is similarly headed by whites and the head of the Council on Racial Equality dishonored his feelings about equality by marrying a white woman.
The students loved it. FBI agents monitoring the debate reported, “His attacks on the white man’s treatment of Negroes sparked the most enthusiastic response.”33
Outwardly, the NOI appeared to run as smoothly as a new Rolls Royce. But the goings-on behind the scenes were a different matter. On February 17, 1961, a secretary called Muhammad and told him that she was onto his philandering. She knew of at least seven other secretaries that he had been romantic with and she felt that he was abusing his power. “Little people like myself are sacrificed for your pleasure because you’re not suffering like my friends are suffering.” She warned him that he had better give her more money to take care of their new baby. Everyone knew the child was his, she added, because the baby “looks just like you when you were a baby.”34
Adding to Muhammad’s woes was a traffic mishap in late spring. On June 10, 1961, Muhammad was driving near his home when two small children suddenly ran from behind a bread truck and into the path of his Cadillac. They were both hit and fell in front of his car. Panic-stricken, he ran to their aid. Neither child was moving, and he feared that they were dead. But after a few seconds, they regained alertness and sat up. Muhammad and passersby tried to comfort the crying children as the sound of an ambulance siren grew louder. The ambulance driver assured the crowd that the children were all right; they had only suffered a few minor scrapes, but were going to be taken to Cook County Hospital as a precautionary measure.
As the crowd dispersed, a policeman on the scene took Muhammad to the police station to record his account of the accident. The incident had so rattled him that he could barely speak, let alone recount the accident. After the patrolman concluded his questioning, Muhammad called his son Herbert and told him to come and get him. A few minutes later, Muhammad was in his study calling the hospital to check on the children. To his relief, they had both been patched up and sent home.35 Although that was the end of the matter as far as police were concerned, the sixty-four-year-old patriarch considered himself lucky, and rarely drove after that. The accident forced him to face problems with his vision that he had tried to ignore. Upon his doctor’s recommendation, he began wearing dark glasses to reduce the pain caused by bright light.
On June 25, the Messenger flew to Washington to deliver a speech in the famous Uline Arena. Three months earlier, he and Malcolm had discussed how to attract 30,000 to Washington for the event. On the day of the so-called Freedom Caravan, only 3,000 showed up. The low turnout was no surprise, however, as Muhammad complained to one minister that he was having trouble filling six buses leaving Chicago for the event.36 The low turnout should have served as a warning to the Messenger that he was bleeding his followers dry, but apparently it didn’t. The harsh economic burdens imposed by the god-king of the royal court continued.
In the aftermath of the unsuccessful income tax probe, the COINTELPRO against Muhammad took a different approach. On August 1, 1961, the FBI tried to nail down reports from the Chicago field office that Muhammad “has in the past or is currently converting Nation of Islam (NOI) funds to personal use.”37 Two days later, FBI agents received more information that they hoped to use against him. Muhammad had suffered a mild heart attack in 1958, but had kept the episode a secret from everyone, including Malcolm. In July, however, he started experiencing heart problems, which he discussed on the phone with a physician. That was the kind of information the Bureau found extremely valuable, as it was making plans to maneuver some of its informants into positions from which they could disrupt the NOI upon Muhammad’s death. The Chicago SAC wrote to FBI headquarters:
Based on information [recently received] … it is possible Muhammad’s health is worse than previously received information had indicated and may involve a heart condition along with the bronchitis. This matter will be closely followed and any pertinent information received will be promptly furnished the Bureau in suitable form.38
The FBI knew that with Wallace Muhammad headed for prison, Malcolm would instantly assume leadership of the NOI if Muhammad died suddenly. At the time, it had only two men it considered reliable informants in Muhammad’s inner circle. One of them—Abdul Basit Naeem—had influence with Muhammad but not with Malcolm X.39 If it was going to disrupt the NOI, it would have to figure out some means of discrediting Malcolm or causing a split between Muhammad and Malcolm.
As the Bureau mulled over its options, Muhammad returned to his home at 2118 Violet Drive in Phoenix to get some rest. His bronchitis had become so severe, Malcolm recalled, that “when he talked with anyone, he would unpredictably begin coughing harder and harder, until his body was wracked and jerking in agonies that were painful to watch.”40 One doctor told him that he might have tuberculosis, and another said he had acute bronchitis. The difference of opinion only heightened Muhammad’s distrust of white physicians. He obtained several books on respiratory ailments, and then told several aides that he was believed he was actually suffering from “acute bronchitis asthma.” He also mentioned that he was switching to an Arab physician in whom he had more faith. “But my only real faith is in Allah.”41
After resting for about two months, Muhammad resumed the life he had enjoyed before the coughing spells had become so severe. In October 1961, Chicago notified FBI Headquarters that wiretaps had intercepted calls between Muhammad and at least five women with whom he was having adulterous affairs. Two of the women were sisters. In a telephone conversation on October 7 with a young secretary identified as June X, Muhammad urged her to be discreet about their relationship because he didn’t “want anyone to find out about us.”42 Two days later, he was taped as he told Evelyn X that he wanted to have “Sweet and Honey come and stay with me for two or three months … or years.” He also talked about buying a large house where all of his illegitimate children could be raised by only one of the mothers. When he asked Evelyn if she would be interested in being a mother to all of his children under such an arrangement, she replied that she would. Then he asked her if she would like to live on the West Coast. Again, she said yes.43 A few months later, the FBI identified the five women with whom Muhammad was committing adultery: Evelyn X Williams, June X, Lucille X Rosary, Bernique Cushmeer, and Ola X Hughes. Moreover, he was also making sexual advances to a sixth, Tynetta Nelson.44
Like his father, Wallace Muhammad was leading a complicated domestic life. After two years of dating Shirley X Allen, he married her in Chicago on April 28, 1959.45 At the time, he was free on bond while appealing his conviction for violating the Selective Service Act of 1948. Their first child, Laila, was born seven months later, but the marriage was stormy and ended before the child was a year old. While separated from his wife, Wallace began dating Lorraine X Washington, another member of the Chicago mosque. On September 16, 1961, Shirley was granted a divorce on the grounds of desertion, and Wallace was ordered to pay her $100 a month for child support. On October 27, Wallace married Lorraine at the Cook County courthouse, and three days later, he was in the Cook County jail. He had gone there as required by the U.S. Supreme Court, which on October 9 denied him a writ of certiorari on the draft conviction. The Court ordered him to surrender to the U.S. marshal in Chicago by November 1, 1961. Wallace complied on October 30—his twenty-eighth birthday.46 After a nine-day incarceration, he was taken to Sandstone to begin serving his sentence. The day that Wallace remarried, his father had told him that he shouldn’t surrender. “You should make them come and get you,” he said.47 That’s what he himself had done in 1942, but it was for naught. Wallace let him have his say, and quickly departed with his new bride for a brief honeymoon.
Emotionally exhausted at the conclusion of a three-year battle to keep his heir-apparent out of prison, Muhammad returned to Phoenix the week before Wallace turned himself in. His bronchitis worsened, and even when he was medicated and under an oxygen tent, he had difficulty sleeping. Bernique and Clara were there with him, though the combination proved as troublesome as the inclement weather. On November 1, he was suffering from a cold with a high fever. Wallace’s former wife, Shirley, called to speak to Clara. She cried and cried about Wallace’s fate, as though she was somehow to blame. “Don’t worry about Wallace,” Clara said reassuringly, “because this is something he has been in for years” and so has had time to prepare himself for the eventuality.48
Three weeks later, it was Clara who was depressed and crying. On November 21, her husband was talking to a paramour in Chicago about a diamond ring he was buying for her from the Zales Jewelry Store. He had deposited $500 toward the $1,300 ring. “Are you happy?” Elijah asked her. Yes, the young woman replied, saying that “the only jewelry I’ve ever owned was quartz.” They bantered about other rings he had considered for her but rejected because the stones were too small. As he hung up, Clara burst into the room and accused her husband of betrayal. She said that she was sick of him writing letters to his secretaries all over Creation and talking lovey-dovey on the phone and of catching him and Bernique in compromising situations. Elijah denied all the allegations. He had not received any letters from any women, nor had he been talking with them by phone. As for Bernique, well, that was all a misunderstanding.49
To avoid any further misunderstandings, Clara decided to leave. “I can’t stay in the same house with that woman,” she told her daughter during a call to Chicago.50 Bernique stayed with Muhammad, playing the role of secretary, nurse, and homemaker. After several weeks, he was beset with melancholy. He had no appetite and sustained a seventeen-pound weight loss, a lot for a frail man in poor health. Doctors urged him to go to the Mayo Clinic for treatment, but he refused.51 As if the loss of weight and missing the companionship of Wallace and Clara weren’t enough, the California State Senate Fact-Finding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities released a highly unfavorable report on the NOI, characterizing it as an un-American organization that operated schools for “the indoctrination of young Negroes with race hatred.” In a long rebuttal printed in Muhammad Speaks, the Messenger charged that the sole aim of the report was to “frighten already frightened so-called Negroes from coming to Allah.”52 American dictionaries, he wrote in his column, described an American as “one not belonging to one of the aboriginal races.” That, Muhammad contended, ruled out African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and even Native Americans. “We were brought here not to be made Americans, nor American citizens, but rather, to be slaves or servants for the true American citizens—whites who originally came from Europe.”53 Muhammad had the last word in the matter, or so it seemed. Given his fragile health, it is doubtful that he wrote the reply at all. Examined closely, the column read suspiciously like Malcolm’s rhetoric. At any rate, the report was nothing more than that; it was in a government warehouse somewhere before the ink on the last page was dry.
After Muhammad was feeling better, he accepted a call from an aide in Chicago who complained that Clara was so hostile that working inside Muhammad’s home was nearly impossible. She was argumentative and overbearing. They had to beg her for keys to get into parts of the house where she had locked the doors, and she refused to give even her household helpers keys to the car so they could go grocery shopping. “My wife is a very nervous woman,” Muhammad said, amused. He asked the aide to be patient with Clara, whom he characterized as a good woman having a bad time. After some coaxing by her daughters, Clara relented and flew back to Phoenix, and remained there with Elijah until early January.54
For some reason, Chicago NOI officials placed an unusual advertisement in several black-owned newspapers as the organization prepared for Saviour’s Day 1962. The advertisements challenged anyone with an “opinion and solution on the future of the so-called Negro” to attend a special gathering in Chicago on Sunday, February 25.55 As expected, none of the major civil rights leaders accepted the challenge. After a number of local black activists had their say at the convention, a Caucasian male in the audience stood and asked permission to speak. He identified himself as George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party. Rockwell, who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Virginia in 1960, said he had decided to take advantage of the advertisement, which stated that “all leaders” were invited—not simply all black leaders.56 The audience, some of whom had been saving money all year to come to Chicago and see Muhammad, was shocked that this cartoonish character was wasting time that would be better used by the man they called “Dear Holy Apostle.” Booing filled the room as Rockwell waited for a microphone. John Ali, the national secretary, pleaded with the audience to permit Rockwell to speak. Instead hundreds left.57
“I believe Elijah Muhammad will solve the race problem,” Rockwell shouted over the groans of his reluctant audience. His bodyguards, each of whom wore an armband bearing a swastika, surrounded him as he continued:
We don’t want to integrate. When we come to power, I promise you we will help you get what you want.… Elijah Muhammad has done some wonderful things for the so-called Negro. Elijah Muhammad is to the so-called Negro what Adolf Hitler was to the German people. He is the most powerful black man in the country. Heil Hitler!58
The booing quickly changed to thunderous applause as Rockwell and the neo-Nazis made their way back to their seats. They weren’t cheering for Rockwell but for the Messenger, who slowly made his way to the microphones up on stage. “We don’t need no help from you. We want to help you keep your race all white. We also want to keep ours all black.”59 The crowd gave him a standing ovation as he made his way back to his seat.
Some Muslims concluded that Rockwell’s presence was planned as a means to divert the attention of Muslims visiting Chicago from another drama being played out right under their noses. Members of the Chicago mosque were venting long pent-up anger against the royal family. Knowledge of Muhammad’s extramarital activities was no longer limited to an elite cabal; almost everyone in Mosque No. 2 knew. There were jokes about so-and-so carrying a little message from the Messenger, about how divine seed was sprouting all over the secretarial pool, and even a double entendre about secretaries spending most of their time in Muhammad’s office taking dictation.60
Clara sat anxiously through the annual ceremony. She knew that cruel things were being said about her, but felt economically enslaved to the Messenger. She made many long-distance calls to Akbar in Cairo before the convention about spending some time with him. When she found out that Elijah was involved with yet another woman, she felt she had to get away from him, from their homes in Phoenix and Chicago, from everything related to the NOI. On April 23, after still another argument with Elijah, she applied for a passport, which was issued the next day. According to the U.S. Passport Office, Clara indicated that she would be visiting her son in Cairo for approximately two months.61 The talking walls in her house, however, revealed another plan: that she wanted to leave her husband, and that she was thinking of remaining in Cairo permanently. On April 26, 1962, the Bureau began discussing ways to use the information it had gathered on Muhammad’s extramarital affairs as a COINTELPRO ploy. In a memo from FBI headquarters to the Chicago field office, a high-level FBI official wrote:
