Photographers popularized a fiery image of him lecturing at the podium, fist clenched, face masked with a snarl. Yet Malcolm’s behavior on stage belied the provocative image of the angry black man. Dressed in a conservative suit with his tie perfectly knotted, he appeared more like an intellectual than an itinerant preacher. Before responding to a question, Malcolm looked back at the moderator or his opponent, holding their full attention. Then, after calculating his response, he thoughtfully answered. Joseph Durso interviewed Malcolm, expecting “more of a platform speaker, somebody who was very militant.” But “he was more cerebral than physical. He reasoned. He was almost like a college professor.”44
On multiple occasions Malcolm matched wits with Bayard Rustin, the veteran civil rights activist and close friend and adviser of Martin Luther King. In January 1962, they debated at Manhattan Community Church, a liberal congregation made up mostly of whites. In the past two years, they had become friendly rivals, fully aware of each other’s tricks and strategies. Rustin, an advocate of racial cooperation and direct action against segregation, argued that separatism failed to address the problems facing black people. It left them powerless to change the oppressive conditions of the society they inhabited. Without any clear plan, Rustin charged, Malcolm resorted to emotionalism.45
“When a man is hanging on a tree,” Malcolm snapped, “and he cries out, should he cry out unemotionally?”
When a man is sitting on a hot stove and he tells you how it feels to be there, is he supposed to speak without emotion? This is what you tell black people in this country when they begin to cry out against the injustices that they’re suffering. As long as they describe these injustices in a way that makes you believe you have another one hundred years to rectify the situation, then you don’t call that emotion. But when a man is on a hot stove, he says, “I’m coming up. I’m getting up. Violently or nonviolently doesn’t even enter the picture—I’m coming up, do you understand?”46
Pleased by his decisive blow, Malcolm flashed a sardonic smile—the same satisfied grin that eased onto Jack Johnson’s face after the black boxer knocked his white opponents to the canvas.
As Malcolm’s celebrity grew, he became empowered, speaking more independently about politics. The less time he spent inside Mosque No. 7, the less he spoke about Muslim theology. Privately, Malcolm became convinced that the Nation needed to engage “in more action.” As Muhammad read news clippings and transcripts of Malcolm’s speeches and debates, he grew suspicious about his popular minister’s motives. In Chicago, Muhammad’s lieutenants whispered that Brother Malcolm was “trying to take over the Nation.”47
Muhammad suspected that Malcolm aspired to lead the Muslims into the front lines of protests, though he feared such involvement would only attract greater scrutiny from the government. On February 15, 1962, the Messenger wrote Malcolm, reminding him not to “go too much into details on the political side; nor into the subject of a separate state here for us.” The Nation’s patriarch ordered him to speak only about what “you yourself have heard me say.” He insisted that Malcolm avoid discussing political issues, an impossible request as long as Malcolm engaged civil rights activists.48
Less than a month after he received Muhammad’s edict, Malcolm debated James Farmer at Cornell University. Speaking first, Farmer, leader of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), shrewdly borrowed the minister’s standard speech about the white man’s crimes against blacks. He explained that everyone already knew that racism poisoned America. Then he aggressively criticized the Nation’s theology and separatist doctrine.
“The time has passed when we can look for pie in the sky, when we can depend upon someone else on high to solve the problem for us,” he said. “What we want Mr. X, the representative of the Black Muslims and Elijah Muhammad, to tell us today, is what his program is, what he proposes to do about killing this disease?” Turning toward his opponent, he attacked Malcolm’s flank, demanding an answer: “We know the disease, physician, what is your cure?”49
The question haunted Malcolm. Farmer had set the perfect trap. Malcolm slowly rose from his seat and took the microphone. He rambled for a few minutes, searching for the answer that the black masses were waiting to hear. But he could not give them what they wanted, not as long as Elijah Muhammad was listening.50
Chapter Three
“WHO MADE ME IS ME”
I’m a boxer, and I really don’t want anything to do with the civil rights program right now.
—CASSIUS CLAY