If he was not careful, Elijah warned, Malcolm might cost him much more. Captain Joseph called Elijah on March 4 and told him that Malcolm had informed a local radio station that his suspension was over and that he had been reinstated with his full responsibilities. Stunned, Elijah replied, “Well, I’ll stop him.” Muhammad then mailed Malcolm a letter informing him that his suspension remained indefinite. Furthermore, Elijah told Captain Joseph, Cassius should not visit the UN with Malcolm during his suspension. In the meantime, Muhammad continued to calculate his next move.14
The next afternoon, March 5, around one p.m., Cassius, Rudy, Archie, and Malcolm arrived at the United Nations, where they met with delegates from Africa and Asia. As the group entered the delegates’ lounge, African dignitaries greeted Cassius and Malcolm with invitations to visit their countries. “We’re proud of you. Come whenever you can,” a Liberian ambassador said. “Thank you, sir,” Cassius replied. “I have longed to go back home to Liberia.” Cassius floated in a room of important men, all paying homage to him. Esteemed political figures from around the world knew his name; they knew that he was champion—the first Muslim champion of the world—and they treated him with respect. He recognized that he was becoming a global figure, “champion of the whole world,” he emphasized. “The people are really shook up and they look at me as if I was a messenger or prophet or something.”15
During their conversations with African leaders, Clay deferred to Malcolm. He was uncomfortable speaking, and uneducated, about the issues concerning African nations. Watching Malcolm interact with ambassadors, Cassius recognized that Malcolm’s relationships with African leaders could help elevate his own standing in the world. It was “obvious,” journalist Murray Robinson concluded, that Malcolm had “set out to make the heavyweight champion an international political figure.”16
Reporters wondered if Malcolm had scripted the entire week in an effort to strengthen his bond with the champ. Malcolm’s critics suggested that he was just using Clay. The champ, a writer from Sport maintained, had become nothing more than a “tool in Malcolm X’s feud with the Muslims.”17
After Malcolm and Cassius made plans to travel the world together, writers speculated that Clay’s visa might be withheld given his uncertain military status. When the Louisville Courier-Journal published a story that Cassius had failed a military intelligence test, reporters pressed him about his case. He did not know if he passed the Selective Service exam he took on January 24 in Miami, but he insisted that it was difficult. “I finished Louisville Central High School,” he said, “but I wasn’t very bright. I was in the Golden Gloves and didn’t have time for studies.”18
If he passed the test and was drafted, writers asked, would he oppose military service on religious grounds? Did the NOI oppose military enlistment? Would he declare himself a conscientious objector? Cassius was unaware of the Nation’s opposition to the army and Elijah Muhammad’s past imprisonment for draft evasion. In fact, he had no idea what it meant to be a conscientious objector. “I just want to do what’s right,” he said. “I don’t want to go to jail, and I don’t want to get into trouble.”19
On the morning of March 6, around seven a.m., Malcolm picked up Rudy and Cassius at the Theresa in his dark blue Oldsmobile 98. During their drive back to the UN, Malcolm explained the crafty ways black men avoided military service, recounting his own experience evading the draft during World War II. In June 1943, when he was scheduled for induction, Malcolm made sure that army officials thought that he was mentally unstable. He showed up “costumed like an actor,” wearing a zoot suit, his hair frazzled “into a reddish bush of conk.” At the reception desk, he ran his mouth, talking nothing but jive, addressing a white officer as “daddy-o.” Finally, a man in a white coat pulled him out of the induction line and sent him to see a military psychiatrist. He appeared incredibly paranoid, rambling and whipping his head around as if somebody was spying on him. Suddenly, he bolted from his seat and peered beneath the door. Then he whispered into the psychiatrist’s ear, “I want to get down South. Organize them nigger soldiers, you dig? Steal us some guns, and kill us some crackers!” A few months later, Malcolm’s performance earned him a 4-F classification, mentally disqualified for duty.20
When they arrived at the UN, Malcolm and the Clay brothers had brunch with Simeon O. Adebo, an ambassador from Nigeria. Adebo thanked Cassius for befriending Nigerian boxer Dick Tiger and invited him to visit his country. Adebo also encouraged him to accept the responsibilities that came with being champion, a champion recognized by black people all over the world. “You are not now what you were before the fight,” he said. As the champion of the world, Adebo advised, he possessed cultural power, the kind of power that could unify black people “in the name of world brotherhood.”21