Ghosts of Manila - Mark Kram [16]
With the arrival of the Black Panthers and their street sweepers, the Black Muslims by 1968 had become a revolutionary antique. Worse, the Muslims’ businesses, shops, newspapers, bakeries, were failing through systematic self-looting and bad management. Membership began to wane; they had always looked for confused kids, small-time thieves and whores; they were strong in prison, where inmates took a correspondence course from Chicago. There were rigid rules: Never eat pig, dress right, and pull your own weight; never forget the devil white man. They wanted contribution of man-hours and money. If you sold their paper, Muhammad Speaks, on the streets and didn’t make your quota, or if you were a backslider, they took you back to the temple and worked you over. Women were reduced to chattel. The Muslim goals were self-love and separatism; they wanted the United States to cede them a state.
“Ali is the Muslims,” Bundini Brown said, weary of the cadre of Muslims in black suits and little bow ties acting self-important. Were it not for Ali’s name the Muslims would be looked upon as a social club of dozing members. Whether he liked it or not, Elijah had a big cigar in his mouth, was the manager, overseer of a mere fighter, a long way from the day a strange man, W.D. Fard, tugged his arm on a Detroit street, said he was an emissary of Yacub, or God, said he wanted the white man destroyed, wanted Elijah to free the black race. Elijah became a prophet on the spot and, with a dash of science fiction, put up the Mothership, a mile wide, in the sky. Black men were at the controls, and they never smiled. There was no up or down, heaven or hell; that was a Christian concept. Just that plane up there, circling, watching, and waiting for the old man’s orders. Elijah was a wisp of a man, his face mottled by age spots, and he favored a hat with half-moons and stars. He was seldom in public view, had no flair for oratory. Did Ali and Elijah ever sit down much and talk?
“He too busy to talk,” he said. “He makes plans. He so wise.”
“Does he play cards? To pass time, maybe?”
“Prophets don’t play anything. Next thing you wanna know what he eats.”
“Does he?”
“Just soup and gruel.” He paused. “Hey, we’re not talkin’ ’bout an ordinary man. Do he eat? That’s not funny.”
Ali was sitting on the bed, eyes downcast, when Robinson entered his Loew’s room. Sugar said: “You got a fight tonight. You need sleep.” Ali got up and handed him a thousand dollars in cash. “What’s this for?” Sugar asked. “I told you I can’t be in your corner. I don’t have a second’s license.” Ali said: “Keep it. You’re a good friend.”
“What’s the trouble, champ?” Sugar asked.
“The army. They’re gonna want me soon. But I can’t go.”
“But you have to go. What’s this ‘can’t’?”
“Elijah Muhammad told me,” Ali said, “that I can’t go.”
Ray said: “You won’t see a gun. Box some exhibitions. It’ll be a snap. If you don’t, they’ll send you to jail, pick up your license. You want to blow up your career, all you have, for nothing.”
“Well,” Ali said, “Elijah Muhammad told me.”
“Forget the old man,” Ray said, annoyed now. “Is Elijah going to go to jail, and all those other Muslims?”
“But I’m afraid, Ray, I’m really afraid.”
“Afraid of what? Of the Muslims if you don’t do what they told you?”
Sugar pressed for an answer; he never got one. Years later he recalled: “He never answered. The kid was terrified. I left him with tears in his eyes. If you ask me, he wasn’t afraid of jail. He was scared of being killed by the Muslims. But I don’t know for sure.”
Malcolm had told Clay long before: “Nobody leaves the Muslims without trouble.” Hardly a comment easily forgotten. Now that Malcolm was pointing at the Muslims as a criminal organization, with extensive ties to the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan, his every move was being tracked. The Muslims, who owned his house in Queens, evicted him—with a firebomb. Betty Shabazz, Malcolm’s wife, went to Clay for help, saying: “You see it. You know. Stop it if you have any feeling at all.” Clay shrugged: “I ain’t doin’ nothin’ to him.”