MALCOLM HAD PACKED his bags. Before flying back to New York, he planned four more days of traveling in Senegal, Morocco, and Algiers. On Sunday morning, May 17, Maya Angelou, Alice Windom, and Julian Mayfield met him in front of the Ambassador Hotel. They were all laughing and talking about their time together when suddenly they heard loud American voices. One voice sounded especially familiar to Malcolm. He turned around and saw the handsome face of Muhammad Ali.32
“The next moment froze,” Angelou recalled, “as if caught on daguerreotype, and the next minutes moved as a slow montage.” Malcolm brightened at the sight of him. “Brother Muhammad! Brother Muhammad!” he shouted with a crooked smile, uncertain how Ali would react with everyone watching. At that instant, Ali had to make a split-second decision. He knew that he could not publicly embrace Malcolm, not as long as Herbert stood next to him, not as long as he had professed his loyalty to Elijah. Malcolm had betrayed the Messenger and the entire Nation, and no true Muslim could maintain a friendship with him.
Ali paused in the middle of his conversation, looking quizzically at Malcolm, who appeared almost unrecognizable sporting a reddish goatee, white robe, and sandals. At first, Ali said nothing. He just kept walking, slowly moving away from his friend, leaving him behind like an old suitcase, heavy baggage he no longer wished to carry. When he and his entourage reached a row of parked cars, Malcolm rushed up to him, hoping to flag him down before he drove away. “Brother Muhammad! Brother Muhammad!” Finally, Ali stopped and faced Malcolm.
“Brother, I still love you, and you are still the greatest,” Malcolm said.
Glaring, Ali shook his head. “You left the Honorable Elijah Muhammad,” he said, his voice as cold as his eyes. “That was the wrong thing to do, Brother Malcolm.”
Malcolm wanted to explain that he did not leave Elijah; he was forced out of the Nation. But there was no time to explain, no way to make Ali understand that he never intended to hurt him or Elijah. Ali abruptly marched away, leaving him puzzled and wounded. Malcolm had never expected his friend to treat him so harshly, not after he had shown him how much he cared for him, standing by his side in Miami when the whole world was against him, when Elijah refused to publicly claim him as one of his own. Malcolm did not have the words to convince Ali that they could remain friends. All he could do was sadly watch him walk out of his life.
Visibly shaken, Malcolm rejoined his friends, walking with his head down, his shoulders slumped. “I’ve lost a lot. A lot,” he repeated. “Almost too much.” Then, saying nothing else, he crammed his long legs into the front passenger seat of Maya’s tiny Fiat, “the heavy mood destined to stay.”
Ali’s encounter with Malcolm convinced him that everything he had heard about his old friend was true. Malcolm had gone mad, the Black Muslims said, and now Ali had no doubt that they were right. “Man, did you get a look at him?” he asked Herbert. “Dressed in that funny white robe and wearing a beard and walking with that cane that looked like a prophet’s stick? Man, he’s gone. He’s gone so far out he’s out completely.” Ali did not understand that Malcolm, like other penitents who had completed the hajj, wore traditional Muslim attire. “Doesn’t that just go to show, Herbert, that Elijah is the most powerful? Nobody listens to that Malcolm anymore.”33
If Ali hardly recognized him, Malcolm perceived that Ali had changed, too. He could see that the boxer was no longer the sweet, affable young man who had once bounced Malcolm’s daughters on his knee. This man, Muhammad Ali, was Elijah’s loyal subject, wearing a new mask, playing the part of the serious, vindictive Black Muslim. When Ali cut Malcolm out of his life, he revealed a new side of himself that the public had not yet seen, an angrier, crueler side that would develop more and more in the coming years. Whenever there were other Black Muslims around, he assumed this role, conforming to the expectations of the Nation, punishing anyone who crossed them, whether it was his father, Floyd Patterson, or Malcolm X.