Elijah Muhammad taught his followers to respect civil authority and avoid confrontations. “Be polite, courteous, and respectful so that you may inspire respect from the police officers,” he preached. “If you are attacked when peaceful, God comes to our rescue. If you are aggressive, you must fight your own battle without Allah’s help.” Yet nonviolence had its limits, as Muhammad acknowledged: “If attacked the Holy Koran says fight back.”6
Tired of wanton police violence against blacks, Harlem itched to fight back. In Harlem, most black men never dared to question a white man in uniform. So when Malcolm strode into the 28th Precinct, challenging white authorities, he inspired black Harlem. From there he marched at the front of a solid line of nearly one hundred Muslims and the sympathetic onlookers who had gathered at the precinct, leading them to the hospital.
As the Muslims advanced down Lenox Avenue, Harlem’s busiest thoroughfare, more than two thousand blacks clustered closely behind them. Shortly after they arrived at the hospital the doctors treated Hinton, but then inexplicably released him and he was taken back to jail.7
Surging back toward the police headquarters in a fury, within an hour more than four thousand people stood in solidarity with the Nation outside the 28th Precinct. Standing in rank formation, “God’s angry men” stared straight ahead, arms crossed, waiting for the minister’s orders. Inside the station, Malcolm negotiated with the police, securing the release of two other Muslims who were arrested with Hinton. But the commanding officer refused to send the injured prisoner back to the hospital because he had to be incarcerated overnight to appear in court the next day.
By two thirty a.m., Malcolm sensed a stalemate and an opportunity to demonstrate his authority. The police pleaded with him to break up the crowd, promising that Hinton would continue to receive medical care. Fearing a violent confrontation between the police and his followers, he walked outside, turned toward one of his lieutenants, and whispered in his ear. Then he raised his fist, signaling for the Muslims to disperse. Without a word, the minister’s troops drifted into the darkness, as did the other blacks who had gathered in the street.8
The police had never witnessed a man control a crowd the way that Malcolm X did that night. Stunned by the scene, an officer looked at James Hicks, a reporter for the Amsterdam News, and said, “No one man should have that much power.”9
IN THE AFTERMATH of the Nation’s protest against police brutality, Malcolm X became a Harlem folk hero. “For the first time,” he later recalled, “the black man, woman, and child in the streets were discussing ‘those Muslims.’” The New York City Police Department instantly became interested in “those Muslims” too, urgently seeking more information about “Mr. X.” Undercover agents in the NYPD’s surveillance program, the Bureau of Special Services (BOSS), sat in parked cars monitoring the activities of the Harlem temple. Malcolm’s increasing visibility in New York concerned the FBI too, and about a year after BOSS began its surveillance, the FBI designated him “a key figure.” For the rest of his life, government agents would track his movements, document his speeches, and record his telephone calls. Malcolm could hardly smile, frown, or smell a flower without the FBI knowing about it. Meanwhile, public curiosity led increasing numbers of blacks to visit Malcolm’s temple. Before the Johnson Hinton episode, the New York temple had only a few hundred members; afterward, several thousand became followers of Elijah Muhammad at Temple No. 7.10
Benjamin Goodman was one such visitor. A tall young man with an angular face, Goodman was raised in the Christian churches of Virginia. After moving to New York, he bounced between unfulfilling jobs until he found a position in the shipping department of Vanguard Records. One of his friends at work insisted that he visit the temple at the corner of 116th Street and Lenox Avenue to hear “the Minister.”11