The FBI realized that if Muhammad’s followers learned about his affairs, the hypocrisy could lead to the downfall of the Nation. The Bureau’s agents recommended using “carefully selected informants” who would plant “the seeds of dissension through anonymous letters and/or telephone calls.” Specifically, they suggested mailing letters to his wife, Clara, even though she already knew all about his trysts.22
So did Malcolm X. Since 1955, he had heard whispers about Muhammad’s infidelities. Initially, he discounted them as unsubstantiated gossip, denying any possibility that the Messenger of Allah—his personal savior—would ever betray him and his followers. But the rumors persisted. He heard them everywhere he went, from New York to Chicago. By 1962, increasing numbers of Muslims began abandoning the Nation, forcing him to finally admit what he had suspected for years.23
In his solitude, Malcolm’s mind drifted to the image of Muhammad groping young women. Some nights he couldn’t sleep. Other nights he woke up damp with perspiration, panicked that the world would soon know Muhammad’s secret. Scandalous headlines jumped at him in his dreams. At some point, he feared, an investigative journalist would stick a microphone in his face and ask him, “Is it true, Mr. Malcolm X, this report we hear, that . . .” How would he answer the question? How could he come to terms with the idea that the man he had built up as a moral paragon was actually a fraud?”24
“I believed he was divine, divinely taught and divinely guided,” Malcolm later admitted. “And it was only when Elijah Muhammad—ah—something in his personal life—he found himself confronted with a moral question which he could not face up to as a man. And his failure to face up to that as a man made me begin to doubt him, not only as someone divine—divinely guided—but it made me doubt him as a man. And in the face of that, I began to analyze everything else he taught.”25
Malcolm was not the only one concerned about the Nation’s future. Inside the Chicago headquarters, Muhammad’s closest aides worried that his bronchial asthma and other ailments portended a leadership change. With Muhammad spending most of the year in Phoenix and his son Wallace serving prison time for draft evasion, Raymond Sharrieff, John Ali, and Muhammad’s sons Herbert, Akbar, and Elijah Jr. expanded their influence over the sect. The junta enjoyed their growing power and the benefits that came with it.26
They lived an extravagant lifestyle while Muhammad’s mostly poor followers struggled to survive and pay a weekly duty of three dollars and thirty cents. In some mosques, the Fruit demanded even higher tithes. Destitute blacks were urged to buy multiple copies of Muhammad Speaks, frequent the Nation’s businesses, and drop donations into collection plates during mass meetings. FBI informants noted that Muhammad’s followers were “continually harassed by NOI officials for greater and greater contributions.” Muhammad instructed his closest advisers “to purchase expensive cars and homes for him; to provide him with bodyguards and servants; and to give him other manifestations of affluence.” He even referred to the Nation’s relief funds as “my checking account.”27
In some ways, Elijah stoked his advisers’ fears that Malcolm might reduce their influence in the Nation. In February 1962, at the annual Saviours’ Day rally in Chicago, he openly referred to Malcolm as his “heir apparent” and “chief aide.” He also gave Malcolm the authority to resolve conflicts between members of different mosques. When Muhammad ordained him supreme authority by proxy, he gave Malcolm power that no other minister enjoyed, provoking deeper jealousies among his rivals.28
Malcolm’s enemies charged him with avarice, a baseless accusation. Although he had access to the Nation’s treasury, he and Betty, his wife of four years, lived on a strict budget, owning virtually nothing, not even the house they lived in. When he traveled, rather than pay for a taxi ride to and from the airport, he asked fellow Muslims to give him a ride. He avoided expensive restaurants, collected receipts for every expense, and kept meticulous records of his purchases. Whenever he received money for campus lectures, he made sure that the checks were always written out to the NOI and not himself. In his ascetic lifestyle, Malcolm completely rejected his old life as Detroit Red.29