That could not have been all he heard. Malcolm spent days in Miami and talked with Cassius for hours. He knew exactly why Malcolm had time for a vacation. While Malcolm may not have disclosed the details about his deteriorating relationship with Muhammad, Cassius had close ties with various NOI officials who talked with him regularly and would have spoken of the tensions between the suspended minister and Muhammad. Clay’s ignorance about the Nation’s politics was just another act. He knew that he was harboring a renegade Muslim.
Talking to reporters, Cassius tried to finesse his opinions, staking out territory between the civil rights movement and the Nation of Islam. “I don’t believe in hate,” he said. “I don’t believe in violence; I don’t believe in forced integration. I believe the important thing is knowing where you belong and where you don’t belong. Then the farmers won’t come out with pitchforks. The cops won’t come with the clubs. And the firemen won’t come out with hoses.” Then he said something that sounded like it came directly from one of Malcolm’s speeches. “All I know is that I’m black and my people are catching hell. I want some answers.”38
The questions surrounding Cassius’s relationship with Malcolm troubled MacDonald, Dundee, and the Louisville Sponsoring Group. With disappointing ticket sales, they worried that too many fans would avoid the convention center in protest of his involvement with Malcolm and the Black Muslims. To counter the bad publicity, on Saturday night, January 25, he sparred for nine rounds at the Miami Beach Auditorium to raise money for a cerebral palsy organization. It was an attempt to repair his image and remind the public that he was “just a nice, sweet kid.”39 Yet if MacDonald and the LSG urged Clay to stop speaking his mind, he wasn’t listening.
Still weeks away from the championship fight, reporters needed stories to fill their columns. And they knew that Clay’s conversion to the Nation was a sensational scoop. Like bloodhounds on the trail, the best writers in the country followed the scent all the way to Miami. They needed few detective skills. Cassius was tired of running from reporters, weary of hiding the truth. “Sure, I talked to the Muslims,” he admitted, “and I’m going back again. I like the Muslims.”40
Lying on a massage table with a masseuse kneading his shoulders, Cassius relaxed while reporters asked him questions. Contrary to news reports, he was not brainwashed. He could see and think for himself. “In Cleveland, the Negroes tried to integrate and you could see what happened,” he said. “The white people hit the Negroes and the Negroes hit the white people.” Rising from the table, throwing wild punches and covering his face with his arms, he exclaimed, “Bam-bam, bam-bam!” The racial violence only proved what he had already learned from Muslim ministers: integration wasn’t just wrong, it was dangerous.41
The writers peppered him with questions. Are you actually a member of the Nation of Islam? one asked. “I was born a Muslim, I’m told. My race descended from the people in Egypt [and] Africa . . . whose religion had always made them Muslim.” For the first time writers heard him connect the struggles of black Americans and colonized Africans. It upset him that “the Africans are treated better in this country than the American Negro.” The “Negro” was not treated like an American, he said, echoing Malcolm.42
Cassius denied that the Muslims preached hatred. “I’m not mad at the white people. If they like me, I like them.” But a closer look at his childhood showed that he held deep suspicions toward whites. His father maintained that the Black Muslims had indoctrinated his boys ever since Cassius returned from Rome an Olympic champion, teaching them “to hate all white people; to hate women; and to hate their mother.”43
Clay Sr. was always stirring up trouble, and some of the Muslims in his son’s camp thought that he interfered too much. Sometimes he argued with them, shouting that they were a bunch of crooks robbing his family. He could not abide hearing his boys talk about the Nation, either. When they did, he erupted, “Don’t talk that Muslim stuff!” He complained that the Black Muslims kept him away from his boys because the Nation feared that he would drag them “right back to church.” But nothing irritated him more than when his youngest son called collect, identifying himself as “Rudolph X.” “I don’t know no Rudolph X!” he yelled at the operator, slamming the phone.44