He knew that he was not safe around the mosque or the Rockland Palace Ballroom on 155th Street and Eighth Avenue, where the Fruit of Islam had planned a dinner. So he sent Cassius Clay to the dinner in his place. On their flight from Miami, Malcolm had tutored Cassius, outlining a speech for him and explaining that some Muslims might not approve of their friendship, and the two had continued to rehearse the speech at Malcolm’s home in Long Island. Malcolm told Cassius that he wished he could go with him, but that that was not possible because he had a prior engagement.29
In front of about 1,200 Muslims, Clay delivered what Archie Robinson claimed was “an impromptu speech.” “There wasn’t anything planned,” Malcolm’s aide falsely insisted.30
“I’m a race man,” Clay began, “and every time I go to a Muslim meeting I get inspired.” The crowd thundered with applause as Cassius grinned with gratification. “I’m a free man, and I’m talking so much because of the [Muslims’] teachings.”31
Sonny Liston, according to Cassius, was not a race man like him. In poetry, he attacked his opponent as a race traitor, living next door to white people.
He’s not doing as he should,
Because he lives in a white neighborhood.
And because he doesn’t like black,
I’m going to put him on his back!
Again, a loud burst of laughter and applause. Cassius insisted that because he was a Muslim, he was purer than Liston too. He didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, and had never been arrested like Sonny. “I’m training on lamb chops and that big ugly bear is training on pork chops!”32
Then Cassius walked into a bear trap. He announced that he’d had another advantage during training in Miami: the wisdom imparted by his brother, Malcolm X. When Cassius declared that he was proud to walk the streets with Malcolm, the mood of the evening changed. The crowd was stunned. No one in the mosque talked publicly about Malcolm, let alone called him brother. An informant told the FBI that “the Muslims were very cold towards” Cassius for “defending Minister Malcolm,” especially after “the Messenger had said to put him down.”33
When William C. Sullivan, the assistant director of the FBI, learned about Clay’s presence at the Muslims’ dinner, he concluded that the boxer had joined the Nation of Islam. A few weeks earlier, Sullivan had circulated a memo among leading FBI officials encouraging a counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) to discredit Malcolm, Elijah Muhammad, Martin Luther King, and other prominent black figures. Special agents working in the Bureau’s covert program had infiltrated organizations like the Nation of Islam, disrupted their activities through wiretaps, surveillance, forged documents, and blackmail, and planted false media stories. Armed with information about Clay’s affiliations, Sullivan tipped off the press and added his name to a list of NOI targets.34
The day after his speech, reports about Clay and the Muslims appeared in New York newspapers. The Herald Tribune’s Dick Schaap, who had known Cassius since his amateur boxing days, was not sure if the fighter was “a card-carrying Muslim,” but he had no doubt that he sympathized with the Nation. “If Clay shares the anti-white sentiments of the Black Muslims,” he wrote, “he has always disguised his feelings well.” Although he had interviewed Malcolm in the past, when Schaap investigated the minister’s relationship with the boxer, he learned very little. “Malcolm won’t say anything publicly,” an acquaintance told Schaap, “and the one subject he won’t talk about even privately is Cassius Clay.”35
While Malcolm remained in New York, Cassius returned to Miami, where reporters pressed him for details about his trip. Promoter Bill MacDonald said that Clay “swore by all that’s holy” that he was not a member of the Nation. “I’m not a Black Muslim any more than you are,” he told the Miami Herald’s Pat Putnam. The Harlem dinner was not an exclusive NOI affair, either, he claimed. Members of the NAACP and Congress of Racial Equality had attended the event too.36
Yet his relationship with the Nation had just deepened significantly. The truth was that he had discarded his “slave name”—Clay—and received his “X” from Chicago. In the Nation, he was now officially “Cassius X.” Clearly, Malcolm was not the only Muslim betting on the heavyweight contender.
His denials fooled few reporters. They had seen him with Malcolm. While writers could not understand why he would associate with a man who had spoken so cruelly about the deceased president, Clay feigned ignorance. “If [Malcolm] said that about President Kennedy then he should be shot too,” he said. “I knew he said something about chickens coming home to roost, but that’s all I heard.”37