Apparently Robinson did not realize how eager some Muslims were to retaliate against those who had crossed them. After the former baseball star wrote a searing editorial denouncing Elijah Muhammad, two Muslim officials brought a copy of the Amsterdam News to the Nation’s Harlem restaurant. When a gang of Muslims overheard the lieutenants condemning Robinson, they figured that it might be worth their trouble if they hurt him. The only problem was that the avengers confused the former baseball player with a boxer. They staked out the offices of the Amsterdam News, looking for Sugar Ray Robinson, but when he didn’t appear they went to his house. Fortunately for him, he never came home. Eventually the Muslims drove away and both Robinsons escaped Allah’s vengeance.33
Even if Malcolm disagreed with Robinson’s views, he recognized the power of famous black athletes who engaged the freedom struggle, making Cassius Clay all the more valuable to his political aims. Before the early 1960s, most black professional athletes avoided overt political demonstrations, fearing negative consequences to their careers, while others evaded social action as a personal choice. Most black athletes let their performances on the field do the talking.
Yet in 1963, in the aftermath of the Birmingham crisis, some of the most prominent black athletes became important actors in the struggle, but most of them, like Robinson and Patterson, advocated integration as a racial ideal. So when Clay spoke out against the NAACP, he not only renounced the goals of the civil rights movement, he also rejected the accepted expectations for “Negro” athletes. The more time he spent with Malcolm, the more he began to sound like him. For now, though, reporters did not question the origins of his evolving political views. But soon the world would know that Cassius Clay had befriended Malcolm X.
AS A SUBJECT, WRITER Alex Haley found Malcolm X more fascinating than anyone he had ever interviewed. Everything he did seemed “dramatic and it wasn’t that he was trying to be,” Haley later recalled. “It was just the nature of him.” In the early winter of 1963, before Malcolm flew to Phoenix to confront Elijah, he met Haley at the Muslims’ Harlem luncheonette for a lengthy interview, which was later published in Playboy. Malcolm, as was his custom, sat facing the door, sipping coffee, while his aides occasionally whispered messages in his ear.34
The interview covered Malcolm’s redemption story, and the Black Muslims’ ideological beliefs. When Haley asked him if he regretted his comments about the plane crash that killed 120 white Atlantans, he replied, “Sir, as I see the law of justice, it says, as you sow, so shall you reap. The white man has reveled as the rope snapped black men’s necks. He has reveled around the lynching fire. It’s only right for the black man’s true God, Allah, to defend us—and for us to be joyous because our God manifests his ability to inflict pain on our enemy.”35
Malcolm knew that some of his answers would frighten people. He didn’t trust that Haley or the editors at Playboy would publish his comments verbatim, as they had agreed, though the editors kept their word. He also knew that whatever he said would be read by Elijah and other officials in the Nation, so when Haley suggested that he was “the real brains and power of the movement,” he immediately corrected him: “Sir, it’s heresy to imply that I am in any way whatever even equal to Mr. Muhammad. No man on earth today is his equal.” He insisted that no one, including himself, was worthy of replacing the Messenger.36
His answer must have pleased Muhammad. In May, after the magazine appeared on newsstands, Haley pondered something that Malcolm had said to him: “You wouldn’t believe my past.” Perhaps, he thought, the minister would talk more about his life, his evolution, how Malcolm Little became Malcolm X. When the writer asked him if he would consent to an autobiography, he looked stunned. “It was one of the few times I have ever seen him uncertain,” Haley later recalled. Malcolm told him that he would need to think about the offer.
After considering it, Malcolm told Haley that he would agree on two conditions: first, every penny of his royalties would go directly to the NOI; second, Elijah Muhammad must approve the project. When Haley visited Muhammad in Phoenix, he explained that the book would help spread his message. Nodding, Elijah answered, “Allah approves.”37
After Haley returned to New York City, he and Malcolm signed a contract with Doubleday, which included a twenty-thousand-dollar advance for them to split equally. After planning their next meeting, Malcolm handed him a handwritten dedication: “This book I dedicate to The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, who found me here in America in the muck and mire of the filthiest civilization and society on this earth, and pulled me out, cleaned me up, and stood me on my feet, and made me the man that I am today.” As promised, Haley filed away the dedication, oblivious of how much Malcolm’s life would change by the time he finished the manuscript.38