Malcolm may have changed his name, but at his core he remained the same dedicated freedom fighter. Fiercely uncompromising, he carried himself with imperial restraint, striking a cool posture that could intimidate the most self-assured white man. For Malcolm, coolness meant speaking his mind, refusing to submit to white authority. Being cool meant being completely free.
In many ways, Malcolm X and Cassius Clay seemed the product of the same DNA. Both thrived on center stage surrounded by an audience. Standing beneath the spotlight—at Malcolm’s pulpit or in Clay’s ring—they responded to the thundering sound of applause and the deafening chorus of boos. Neither man could resist a platform, an interview, or a debate. Both enjoyed sparring with words and manipulating other men’s fears with sensational language. They were both fighters.
Before Cassius X became Muhammad Ali, Malcolm saw something in the young boxer that no one else did. “Not many people know the quality of the mind he’s got in there,” he told writer George Plimpton in 1964. Like Malcolm, he was absolutely self-assured, proud, and defiant. He carried himself with boundless confidence, boldly professing his own greatness the way that Malcolm fearlessly denounced white America. Studying Clay’s interactions with reporters, the way he spellbound audiences with his performances, Malcolm realized that he could become something more than an athlete. As the heavyweight champion of the world, Clay possessed the kind of far-reaching cultural power that could unify black people. Recognizing Clay’s global fame, Malcolm exploited him, envisioning a new movement that fused together Clay’s world and his into one built around celebrity and politics.
A MYTH HAS ENSHROUDED the encounters between Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. The stories are told and retold, fashioned in ways that obscure the reality. An anecdote here, a quote there, and before you know it a fabricated “truth” has emerged. Drawing on a few unsubstantiated observations by writer Alex Haley and a couple of self-serving comments by Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, historians and biographers have manufactured a convenient morality play involving two men who came together, formed a deep relationship, and then suddenly and dramatically broke apart. End of story. It was almost as if the two larger-than-life figures were planets, swinging close to each other in their orbits and then moving apart on separate paths.
But it was never that simple. Although their respective biographers have neglected to show that Ali and Malcolm were much more important to one another than previously acknowledged, we have uncovered and interpreted previously unexamined documents that reveal the personal and political dynamics between them. The complex friendship between Malcolm and Ali is interred in a labyrinthine jungle of sources—the private papers of Malcolm X, Alex Haley, and others; FBI files and surveillance reports; State Department records; archived news footage and television programs; long-unexamined interview transcripts; new interviews with people who knew Ali and Malcolm intimately; the daily press; and a variety of other published and unpublished materials.
Investigating their relationship, we have reconstructed the lives and movements of Ali and Malcolm, focusing especially on the period from the time they met in June 1962 through February 1965. Plotting their daily activities provided a key to deciphering redacted FBI files, revealing the events and conversations recorded in the Bureau’s records in a new light. Using these unique sources, we tracked their movements and, in the process, discovered how historians and biographers have misread the complicated relationship between them.