By the spring of 1964, Talmadge had returned to the Nation in good standing. In April, he unfolded the pages of Muhammad Speaks and found a provocative cartoon of Malcolm’s decapitated head, replete with satanic horns, bouncing toward a pile of skulls that belonged to the worst traitors in history. Talmadge read the cartoon clearly. This was a test, he realized, a challenge to the Fruit to eliminate the renegade minister who had betrayed the Messenger.2
On an early June afternoon, while Talmadge strolled through downtown Paterson, a black Chrysler rolled up alongside him. He recognized two young Muslim brothers from Mosque No. 25. After Ben X and Leon X opened a back door, Talmadge got in. The men began talking about how Malcolm had slandered the Messenger. Cautiously, they probed Talmadge for his attitudes about Malcolm and Muhammad. Talmadge told the men that Malcolm must be silenced. Nodding with approval, Ben and Leon had no doubt that he was committed to retaliation.3
When they mentioned killing Malcolm, Talmadge listened intently, assuming that Ben, an assistant secretary, was acting on orders from Minister James Shabazz. A good soldier, he acknowledged, followed orders, and he had a duty to carry out the mission. Soon, they began meeting at Ben’s home, plotting Malcolm’s death. According to Talmadge, Ben recruited two other men that he knew as Wilbur X and William X. Since Talmadge was familiar with guns, Ben charged him with acquiring the weapons they needed. He dutifully purchased a twelve-gauge shotgun, a Luger, and a .45 automatic. “I didn’t ask a whole lot of questions as to who’s giving us instructions and who’s telling us what,” he said later. “We just knew what had to be done.”
A FEW WEEKS before Ben and Leon approached Talmadge, on May 21, Malcolm returned home after traveling for more than month. Around four thirty p.m., Betty, the kids, and a few of his lieutenants greeted him at Kennedy Airport. Following a brief respite at home, a few minutes before seven p.m., Malcolm entered the Hotel Theresa’s eleventh-floor Skyline Ballroom, wearing a blue seersucker suit and a broad smile. Reporters hardly recognized the man with the reddish goatee. Some had heard that he was now using his Sunni Muslim name, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, but before he stepped to the podium one of his assistants introduced him as Minister Malcolm. When a writer asked him if “Shabazz” would replace his “X,” he replied with a grin, “I’ll probably continue to use Malcolm X as long as the situation that produced it exists.”4
More than fifty photographers, newswriters, and television reporters had crowded into the ballroom. After describing his journey, Malcolm announced his intention to work with African leaders who would support his charges against the United States for violating black Americans’ human rights. Immediately a writer asked him the one question everyone wanted him to answer. “Do we correctly understand that you now do not think that all whites are evil?”
“True, sir! My trip to Mecca has opened my eyes. I no longer subscribe to racism. I have adjusted my thinking to the point where I believe that whites are human beings,” he said, pausing contemplatively, “as long as this is borne out by their humane attitude toward Negroes.” He added that although he had seen Muslims of different races living in harmony in the Middle East, he remained unconvinced that such interracial brotherhood would ever exist in America.
When another writer inquired if he planned to cooperate with civil rights groups, Malcolm replied that he wanted to develop a “united front” with other organizations and that he was willing to meet various leaders. Sitting next to Alex Haley, the New York Times’ Mike Handler could not believe what he was hearing. “Incredible! Incredible!” he kept muttering.5
Malcolm’s willingness to work with civil rights leaders led many writers to conclude that his trip had fundamentally changed his political views. Some of his own followers, hearing him concede that he no longer considered all whites to be devils, began wondering if the minister sporting a reddish beard was an imposter. In private meetings, a few men challenged him, and sometimes the disagreements became physical. “I had to hold some brothers off Malcolm,” his aide Charles Kenyatta said later. While Malcolm’s perspective had changed—becoming more internationalist—he still identified himself as a minister and a teacher, a Muslim and a revolutionary. Most importantly, he still considered himself a proud black man.6