ON NOVEMBER 24, four days before Ali left the Boston City Hospital, Malcolm X returned to New York after spending nearly five months abroad. During his second tour of Africa, he’d met with several heads of state, dozens of ministers, and scores of cabinet members. Gradually, though, the trip had worn him down. Although African leaders welcomed him “with open minds, open hearts, and open doors,” he must have realized that some doors closed tightly when he left. While African leaders listened politely to his proposals, he learned that most could not risk losing American foreign aid by charging the United States with international crimes. In Ghana, his old friends Julian Mayfield, Leslie Lacy, and Maya Angelou could see his fears weighing on him. Suspicious and irritable, he was certain that someone was following him. He admitted that he had extended his trip abroad because there were men in Harlem waiting for him, willing to take his life “for a dime.”57
Malcolm knew that his time was up. Every day for nearly three months, he awoke wondering if this was the day that he would die. But dying did not scare him nearly as much as failing to help his people. He had so much work to do that hardly a night passed that he slept more than four hours. Late one evening in December, Malcolm called Claude Lewis, a reporter at the New York Post. Lewis could tell that something was wrong. Malcolm spoke with an urgency to “get something ‘on the record’” before it was too late. Shortly thereafter, they met at a crowded Harlem coffee shop on 135th Street. Malcolm insisted that they meet in public. Sitting in a booth with Malcolm’s bodyguard, Lewis asked a range of questions about his image, his new organization, his evolving politics, and the threats on his life.58
Listening to the fragile minister, Lewis sensed his vulnerability, that at any moment he might crack. The reporter waited to hear the old Malcolm, the fiery minister, bursting with rage and wrath. But the flame had burned out. The Malcolm he met that day looked exhausted and unraveled, beset with trepidation. Wondering how he would survive, Lewis asked about his future. Where was he headed? “I have no idea,” he repeated, “I have no idea.” All he knew was that he was “for the freedom of the 22 million Afro-Americans by any means necessary.” In the past, Malcolm had spoken in absolutes. Everything was black and white. Now, he lived in a world of grays. He remained open to anything that would bring freedom to black Americans. “I’m headed in any direction that will bring us some immediate results.”
By any means necessary. Those words were not just a slogan or an ideology. They conveyed the mentality of a man pushed to the edge, desperate for survival. “Whatever I say, I’m justified,” he told Lewis. “If I say the Negroes should get out of here right tomorrow and go to war, I’m justified. Really! It might sound extreme, but you can’t say it’s not justified.” Speaking like a soldier on the front lines, he insisted, “If I say right now that we should go down and shoot fifteen Ku Klux Klansmen in the morning, you may say well that’s insane, but you can’t say I’m not justified.”
Near the end of their interview, Malcolm talked about death. “I’ll never get old,” he said. Lewis asked him why. “Well,” he explained, “I’ll tell you what I mean and why I say that. When I say ‘by any means necessary,’ I mean it with all my heart, and my mind, and my soul.” A black man, he said, should be willing to sacrifice his own life for freedom. And “he should also be willing to take the life of those who want to take his. It’s reciprocal. When you really think like that, you don’t have long to live.”
Chapter Seventeen
WORTHY OF DEATH
The price of freedom is death.
—MALCOLM X
Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad foretold, would not survive Allah’s wrath. In his Muhammad Speaks column, he warned his former minister, “Allah is sufficient as a helper. You will not be able to help yourself pretty soon.” His acolytes interpreted these prophetic words as a directive. For months, since the spring of 1964, vicious men, some with criminal records, seethed, daring Malcolm to return from Africa. Condemning Malcolm as a gutless coward, his former protégé Louis X called him an “international hobo” too scared “to face the music.” During Malcolm’s time abroad, the Nation’s avengers threatened retribution if he ever set foot in America again. At the Richmond, Virginia, mosque, Minister Nicholas condemned him: “Malcolm X really should be killed for teaching against Elijah Muhammad.”1
Inside the pages of Muhammad Speaks, NOI officials published a series of cryptic articles predicting Malcolm’s death. In a five-page harangue, Louis pilloried his old mentor, denouncing him as a heretic. The Boston minister also praised Muhammad Ali for resisting Malcolm’s advances. True believers like Ali would never fall for Malcolm’s deceptions. “Only those who wish to be led to hell, or to their doom, will follow Malcolm,” he wrote. “The die is set, and Malcolm shall not escape, especially after such evil, foolish talk about his benefactor. . . . Such a man as Malcolm is worthy of death.”2
Although there is no evidence that Elijah Muhammad sent his disciples a direct order to assassinate Malcolm, in this climate no such command was necessary. The vengeful language espoused at Muslim meetings and in the pages of Muhammad Speaks conveyed a clear mandate: Allah’s Messenger blessed those who struck back against the most dangerous hypocrites.