The next morning, Cassius and Archie Robinson greeted Malcolm and his family at the airport. Smiling as he shook Malcolm’s hand, Clay showed no fear of being seen with the suspended minister, whom he called his “brother.” After he hugged Sister Betty and lifted her three little girls up into his arms, Cassius, Archie, and Malcolm’s family packed into the Chrysler and headed to Brownsville, a segregated, middle-class black neighborhood.13
Sam Saxon, the Miami mosque captain since the late 1950s, was a little surprised to see Malcolm. Clay’s fight against Liston was still more than a month away. Malcolm told the brothers in Miami that he and Betty were celebrating their first vacation in more than six years. But he wasn’t on vacation. Malcolm, Saxon soon realized, “had another agenda in mind.”14
Malcolm and his family checked into the Hampton House Motel on Northwest Twenty-Seventh Avenue. A popular retreat for black tourists and locals, some of the most famous figures in America had booked one of the balconied rooms. Considered more glamorous than the black hotels in Overtown, the Hampton House was a resort, featuring valet parking, a courtyard swimming pool, a restaurant, and a jazz club famous for its mixed-race sessions lasting until sunrise.15
When he was not training, Clay visited the Hampton House and played with Malcolm’s daughters, teasing them like a big brother. Watching Cassius entertain them made Malcolm smile and, for a moment, forget all about his troubles. “I liked him,” Malcolm later admitted. “Betty liked him. Our children were crazy about him.” Watching her husband interact with Cassius, Betty could see that Malcolm “loved him like a younger brother.”16
Cassius brought out Malcolm’s warm, playful side. The minister laughed as he snapped pictures of the boxer clowning for his camera. But the pictures Malcolm took were not for a family photo album. In a private notebook, he began constructing photo captions and a narrative he entitled, “The Other Side of Malcolm: The Family Man.” The notebook and accompanying photos of Cassius, Malcolm, and his daughters, which were published in two black newspapers, the Chicago Defender and the New York Amsterdam News, suggest that he had begun to fashion a less threatening image of himself, one of a loving father and husband and an older brother to Cassius, someone more acceptable in the mainstream civil rights movement. It was also no coincidence that the pictures were published in the two cities where his enemies in the Nation could not miss them.17
In the early evenings, Malcolm walked with Cassius on the streets of Brownsville while FBI agents trailed closely behind. In all the time that they had spent together, in storefront mosques and crowded temples, in private meetings and family gatherings, Malcolm had learned that Cassius was an impressionable, inquisitive youngster who absorbed everything that he taught.
Cassius, he recognized, was perfect for his plan. He was a one-man publicity machine, capable of attracting Malcolm’s desired audience: young, idealistic, angry black men. Cassius, Malcolm told a reporter, “[has] as much untapped mental energy as he has physical power.” He possessed incredible potential to be something much more than a boxer. Studying Cassius with a crowd of journalists and a mob of black admirers, Malcolm could imagine him as a political force—someone “who should be a diplomat,” traveling the world with him, galvanizing a human rights movement at home and abroad.18
Whether Malcolm returned to the Nation or not, Cassius was ideally suited to follow him, to use his platform as a boxer to mobilize poor, disfranchised black Americans. Cassius, Malcolm noticed, “knows how to handle people, to get them functioning. He gains strength from being around people.” He could draw people in, shape their perceptions, and make them believe what Malcolm wanted them to believe.19
Nothing seemed to rattle Clay. “He has tremendous self-confidence,” Malcolm observed. “I’ve never heard him mention fear.” Perhaps he did not realize the depth of Malcolm’s problem. His public relationship with Malcolm irritated the Nation’s officials in Chicago, especially Elijah Muhammad. The Supreme Minister had directed all followers to avoid the censured minister, but Cassius had disobeyed him.20
In Miami, Malcolm became convinced that his future with the Nation depended on Clay winning the heavyweight championship. While most doubted his chances of beating Liston, Malcolm bolstered Clay’s inner strength, telling him that he was too smart, too fast, and too big to lose the fight. And Allah, he preached, had ordained that Clay would win. He believed in Clay so much that he called Alex Haley in New York and told him that if Haley bet on his friend, the underdog, he would win big. This fight was more than just another athletic contest; it was part of his larger plan. Clay would not just win, he would deliver a message—a message inspired by Malcolm.21