Away from the studio, accompanied by the ever-present Rudy and a few black friends, Cassius ventured into Harlem. There, he attended NOI rallies and had private meetings with Malcolm. By the summer of 1963, after three years of feature stories about him in Time, Life, Ebony, Jet, Sports Illustrated, and other national publications, scores of television appearances, and his photograph in hundreds of newspaper stories, Clay’s face was too well known to go unrecognized.
On August 10, he attended an outdoor rally on the corner of 115th Street and Lenox Avenue, where Malcolm spoke to a large audience about the upcoming March on Washington. The Nation, he said, would not participate in the march, which he suggested had been hijacked by the Kennedy administration. “When the white man found out he couldn’t stop [the march], he decided to join it,” he claimed. It was just another example of “black men with white hearts,” and of the fact that Martin Luther King and his ilk had too cozy a relationship with white politicians.44
An undercover agent from the NYPD’s Bureau of Special Services spied Cassius Clay at the rally, listening intently to Malcolm. Now the top-ranked heavyweight contender, Clay was far from being an invisible man.45
ON AUGUST 28, 1963, the entire country focused its attention on the nation’s capital for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The television networks assigned hundreds of people to cover the march, setting up dozens of cameras between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. On the morning of the demonstration, more than two thousand buses, twenty-one special trains, ten chartered flights, and armies of cars converged on the capital. From all over the country, thousands of people, young and old, black and white, came to DC to witness a historic occasion.46
Elijah Muhammad had forbidden his followers from joining. In the months leading up to the Freedom March, FOI captains reminded the faithful that there were serious consequences for violating his edict. In Chicago, Supreme Captain Raymond Sharrieff issued a directive: “Let me put it more clearly to you. Do not participate in these demonstrations. If you are caught, you will wish you were dead.”47
Although Malcolm publicly maintained that no Black Muslim would attend the march, he could not resist being near the center of the action. After Muhammad granted him special permission, he traveled to the capital to witness what he called “the Farce on Washington.” In the lobby of the Statler Hilton Hotel, he engaged young demonstrators and reporters, offering political opinions, but never divulged his frustrations with the Nation’s disengagement from the movement.48
Later that afternoon, sitting in his hotel room, he watched Martin Luther King deliver his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, an idealistic vision of interracial brotherhood. When reporters asked him what he thought about the Freedom March, Malcolm compared it to a sporting event—“the Rose Bowl game, the Kentucky Derby, and the World Series”—the kind of event where people went simply to say, “I was there.” The Freedom March had done nothing but create false hope for blacks, he insisted.49
A few weeks later, Malcolm traveled to Chicago to visit Elijah. Before he arrived at the mansion, C. Eric Lincoln, the author of The Black Muslims in America, waited in the foyer to meet the Supreme Minister. He wondered how Elijah would receive him since many Muslims had expressed dissatisfaction with his book. One angry minister told him that he wanted to “burn them as fast as they came off the presses.” But Elijah greeted him with a firm handshake and welcoming eyes, though he did not smile. In fact, Lincoln thought, he had never seen him smile—except moments later, when Malcolm entered the living room. Elijah embraced Malcolm, kissing him gently on both cheeks, and asked about Betty and their children. Lincoln never suspected friction between them. “There was genuine affection here between these two,” he observed, “not unlike the affection between a father and son who has done well for the family name.”50
If Malcolm felt uneasy being around Elijah, he masked his anxiety. Lincoln sensed that the bond between them was stronger than ever. After they all sat down, the Messenger lectured the ministers while Malcolm dutifully wrote notes, transcribing his every word. Since their meeting in Phoenix, Malcolm had submitted, “getting [Elijah’s] permission before doing anything, like he should have been doing all the time.” Lincoln was unaware that Malcolm’s faith in the Messenger had already begun to erode.51