Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [104]
Outcry notwithstanding, the show had effectively brought the NOI to a much wider audience. There was an “instant avalanche of public reaction,” recalled Malcolm. “Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, black and white, were exclaiming ‘Did you hear it? Did you see it? Preaching hate of white people!’ ” The controversy spread quickly. After the negative response from the New York press, the national weeklies followed, characterizing the NOI as “black racists,” “black fascists,” and even “possibly Communist-inspired.” Faced with heated criticism from the African-American community, Malcolm dismissed his black middle-class opponents as Uncle Toms.
The intense publicity changed the lives of nearly everyone connected with the series. It gave Wallace the break he needed; the national exposure led to an offer from a group of Westinghouse-owned stations to cover the 1960 presidential campaign, and in three years he was hosting the national morning news for CBS. Later, he would turn down Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon’s offer to become his press secretary, instead accepting a new assignment as a reporter on CBSʹs 60 Minutes, which became the longest-running news feature program in television history. Lomax also achieved success, in 1960 publishing his first book, The Reluctant African, which won the Anisfield-Wolf award. His reports on civil rights issues were regularly featured on network television. Both Wallace and Lomax continued to exploit their connections with the NOI. On July 26, 1959, however, the NOI barred Wallace from a massive rally at New York’s St. Nicholas Arena, which featured Elijah Muhammad as keynote speaker. At this event Muhammad accused Wallace and other white journalists of attempting to divide the NOI into factions. “Does he classify the truth as Hate?” he asked. “No enemy wants to see the so-called American Negro free and united.”
Inside the Nation, Malcolm’s critics blamed him for the negative publicity surrounding Hate. NOI ministers who were against media interviews now felt justified in banning members from talking to the press. The view from Chicago headquarters, however, was much less severe. When a young doctoral student, C. Eric Lincoln, asked for help with his dissertation about the NOI, Muhammad, Malcolm, and other Muslims consented. Lincoln’s study, published in 1961 under the title The Black Muslims in America, became the standard work for decades. As the dust settled, even Lomax found his way back into the Nation’s good graces. When he subsequently approached the NOI to write his own book about the sect, its leaders were generous with their time. Lomax’s 1963 study When the Word Is Given is perhaps the single best resource about the NOIʹs inner workings prior to Malcolm’s split from the sect. Despite his own commitment to racial integration, Lomax tried to present a balanced, objective critique of the NOIʹs strengths and weaknesses. He correctly identified the malaise among working-class blacks that several years later would feed the anger beneath Black Power. Lomax quoted the ever-eloquent James Baldwin: “Deep down in their hearts the black masses don’t believe in white people anymore. They don’t believe in Malcolm, either, except when he articulates their disbelief in white people. . . . The Negro masses neither join nor denounce the Black Muslims. They just sit at home in the ghetto amid the heat, the roaches, the rats, the vice, the disgrace, and rue the fact that come daylight they must meet the man—the white man—and work at a job that leads only to a dead end.”
Within the Nation itself, the most lasting impact of the series was the recognition that the sect had to exert greater control over its image. This required, at a minimum, a regularly published magazine or newspaper. In the fall of 1959, Malcolm produced his first