Then Elijah cut him again. “I’m suspending you for an indefinite time,” he said coldly. “I’m going to be watching you to see if you become stronger, strong enough to resist this poison Wallace is pouring over my people.” And with that final message, Elijah slammed down the phone, leaving Malcolm wondering when he would hear from him again.
THE FOLLOWING DAY, Elijah called his trusted confidant Captain Joseph, informing him that James 3X, the head of Newark’s mosque, would assume all ministerial duties in Harlem, but Joseph would retain all authority there. Undoubtedly, Joseph’s loyalty belonged to Muhammad. Years earlier he’d been one of Malcolm’s most dependable lieutenants, yet their relationship had fractured in 1956 when the captain was accused of assaulting his wife. Before the entire mosque he’d faced a trial, with Malcolm serving as judge and jury. Joseph pleaded guilty, and the minister banned him from the temple for ninety days. Humiliated, Joseph never recovered from the ordeal. Although he eventually returned as captain, his relationship with Malcolm remained strained and tense. Since 1961, when Muhammad made all mosque captains accountable directly to Chicago, Joseph had become an independent potentate, untethered to Malcolm’s authority and nearly equal in power to him. Malcolm strongly disapproved of the way that Joseph disciplined the congregation and, in November 1963, had quietly petitioned Chicago to replace him as captain, a request that was denied.40
With Joseph assuming complete control over the Harlem mosque, the New York Muslims were directed to sever all ties with Malcolm. Muhammad informed the East Coast officials that the censured minister was suspended indefinitely and, through his aides, told his son Wallace that Malcolm had blamed him as the primary provocateur. Then he summoned Malcolm to Phoenix for a decisive trial, declaring, “I’m not through with Malcolm yet.”41
In Phoenix, Malcolm faced the court: Muhammad, Sharrieff, and Ali. Since they had last spoke on the phone, Elijah had become even more caustic toward him. Sitting across from Malcolm, he looked at him like a stranger. Malcolm sat uncomfortably until he finally confessed that he had told Captain Joseph and various ministers about Muhammad’s dalliances. Elijah demanded that he retract everything he said to them. “Go back and put out the fire you started,” he said.42
After Malcolm returned home, he learned that the Nation’s headquarters had made it known that no one in the sect could speak to him. Elijah had effectively quarantined him from his people, from his center of power. In Harlem, he learned that a mosque official told members of his congregation, “If you knew what the Minister did, you’d go out and kill him yourself.” When Malcolm heard that the brothers in his own mosque had started talking about his death, he knew it “could have been approved of—if not actually initiated—by only one man.”43
In isolation, Malcolm considered a new reality, a life without Elijah, one divorced from the Nation. He had built his entire world around the teachings of Muhammad, committing himself to his mission. Without the Messenger, he’d preached, he was nothing. Elijah was the one who woke him from the dead. But now he had been cast outside the Nation, and he feared that his worst nightmare was coming true: Elijah intended to bury him and send him “back to the grave.”44
MALCOLM ENDURED HIS exile in a daze. He tried ignoring the death talk, but he couldn’t. His headed pounded relentlessly, day after day. It hurt all the time, as if he suffered from dementia pugilistica. “I felt like my brain was damaged,” he told Alex Haley.45
His doctor examined him and recommended rest, but he didn’t know how to slow down. His life had become a blur. Everything was out of focus. On January 14, he met Haley on the fourth floor of the International Hotel at the JFK Airport. For seven hours, from seven p.m. to two a.m., Haley sat at his typewriter, listening to Malcolm as he paced around the room, sitting only to scribble notes to himself on napkins.46
Malcolm could hardly concentrate. He knew what happened to insubordinate Muslims. He had seen gruesome images of black men bludgeoned at the hands of Muhammad’s avengers. No one survived Muhammad’s wrath. He could well imagine stalkers from the Fruit attacking him at any moment.