Even when he was inside the hotel room, he did not feel safe. He suspected that the FBI had bugged the room, a fear exacerbated by a radio broadcast he had heard just before the meeting claiming, falsely as it turned out, that the FBI and Rochester police considered him a suspect in an assassination plot against President Lyndon Johnson. He continued to agonize about what would happen if Elijah never reinstated him. Without his position, he would lose his monthly salary and his family’s home in East Elmhurst, Queens. He had no savings, no insurance, and no property. He had even signed a contract donating his future book royalties to the NOI.47
This was no time to write a book. Haley wanted Malcolm to focus on the stories from his past, but all he could think about was his future. What had first been only a vague idea began to take shape. He had long considered how he could benefit from the unique talents and fame of Cassius Clay, but mostly his musings had come from within the structure of the Nation. Now, if Elijah forced him out of the NOI, banished him from the organization that had given him sustenance, and made him move forward alone, Malcolm needed to consider how he could take Clay with him. How could he pry the boxer away from an organization and a theology that Malcolm had taught him was the foundation of all truth and reality? How could he convince Clay that everything Elijah preached was wrong?
Malcolm decided what Clay needed was a dose of political reality. He wanted Cassius to see the dark side of the movement and its leader. Malcolm fully understood that Elijah had ordered him not to talk with reporters and had commanded other members of the Nation not to associate with the defrocked minister—a directive that certainly applied to Cassius Clay. Yet instead of moving a step behind Elijah, reacting to the Supreme Minister’s edicts, Malcolm chose to take the lead and compel him to follow. If Malcolm went to Miami and flaunted his friendship with the boxer, he would challenge Elijah to either pull Malcolm back into the fold or punish Cassius. Either way, Malcolm thought, it would strengthen his relationship with Clay.
Chapter Ten
TROUBLE IN MIAMI
Where do you think I would be next week if I didn’t know how to shout and holler and make the public sit up and take notice? I would be poor, for one thing, and I would probably be down in Louisville, Kentucky, my hometown, washing windows or running an elevator and saying “yes suh” and “no suh” and knowing my place.
—CASSIUS CLAY
Sportswriter Robert Lipsyte, sent to Miami to record the all-but-certain destruction of Cassius Clay, wrote Sonny Liston’s comment into his notebook in red ink: “He’s a fag, I’m a man.”1
Liston was not the first member of the boxing fraternity to question Clay’s manhood. Since 1960, when he began training in Miami, rumors had persisted that he was gay, mostly because he defied simple stereotypes of boxers. From his first professional contest until the Liston match, he showed only a passing interest in women. To be sure, he talked about “foxes,” spent hours observing them, and engaged in good-natured, nonthreatening flirting, but that was about as far as he went. At this stage in his career, Cassius was “old school,” believing that any sort of sex drained strength and weakened fighters. “Masturbation is the curse of mankind,” The Ring editor Nat Fleischer wrote in his influential book Training for Boxers. By extension, sex while training was tantamount to career suicide. Determined to win the title and all the fame and money that went with it, Clay accepted the common beliefs and for the most part pushed women to the far corners of his life.2
Cassius Marcellus Clay Sr. was a frustrated artist who was convinced that white men had stunted his career. His rage shaped the man that his son became. But the father also resented the influence the Nation of Islam had over his eldest child. Getty Images
His androgynous behavior added to the rumors. Like Emile Griffith, who designed women’s hats and spoke in a wispy, breathless voice, Clay’s actions defied the conventional masculinity. He seemed obsessed with how he looked inside the ring. His polished white shoes and white satin trunks, Vaseline-coated body, and sleek defensive style seemed dictated more by his sense of aesthetics than any athletic imperative. And no boxer in a sport that almost guaranteed facial cuts and a flattened nose talked more compulsively about his appearance. Choosing feminine adjectives, he repeatedly asked before and after every match, “Ain’t I pretty?” or “Ain’t I beautiful?” Seldom, if ever, did he refer to himself as handsome.