Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [111]
Malcolm’s membership on the welcoming committee put him in a prime position to turn the visit into an opportunity. Late in the evening of September 19, he and a few NOI lieutenants were granted an hour with Castro. Details of their conversation are at best sketchy; Benjamin 2X Goodman later claimed that Malcolm attempted to “fish” Castro, inviting him to join the NOI. Yet Malcolm surely sensed that any official relationship, while useful, would create great difficulties for him with the authorities. One report suggests that, after the meeting, Malcolm was repeatedly invited to visit Cuba, but made no commitments. Whatever transpired, he was clearly impressed by Castro personally and viewed this new connection as a diplomatic resource that the NOI could exploit. On September 21, speaking at Mosque No. 7, Malcolm instructed all FOI members to stand on “twenty-four-hour alert” so long as Castro remained in Harlem. He added that Castro was “friendly” to the Muslims. An FBI informant reported that “the FOI was being alerted to assist Castro in the event of any anti-Castro demonstrations.”
Though Muhammad Speaks eventually became a staunch defender of the Cuban Revolution, at the time Elijah Muhammad was extremely unhappy about the meeting between Malcolm and Castro. Since his return from the Middle East, his chronic pulmonary illness had worsened, and for all Malcolm’s efforts to venerate Muhammad, speculation remained rife throughout the Nation over whether Malcolm or Wallace Muhammad might soon assume the role of national leader. Since speaking together at the Feast of the Followers in 1957, Malcolm and Wallace had grown closer, despite Wallace’s increasing rejection of his fatherʹs theology and his disgust with what he saw as graft on the part of advisers like Raymond and Ethel Sharrieff. Malcolm’s militant attitude rubbed off on Wallace to the point that some NOI leaders worried about the potency of a potential alliance. Mosque No. 4 minister Lucius X Brown complained that the duo might “talk Elijah Muhammad into marching on the White House.” Even if Muhammad did not want to, Lucius suggested, “Malcolm and Wallace were after Muhammad’s job and Muhammad might do it to save face.”
The possibility of this power pairing appeared to be dashed on March 23, 1960, when Wallace Muhammad was convicted in federal court for refusing to be drafted into the military. In June of that same year, he was sentenced to three years’ incarceration. Wallace’s attorney appealed the decision, claiming him as a conscientious objector. While the appeal crawled through the system, Wallace continued his activities building the Philadelphia mosque, and he was a frequent visitor to Harlem Mosque No. 7. For example, on January 29, 1961, when Malcolm was away on an extended lecture tour, Wallace was advertised as the featured speaker at Mosque No. 7 in the Amsterdam News. At an October 1961 hearing, Wallace’s appeal was finally denied, and he was ordered to turn himself in for incarceration in a federal prison. On October 30, Wallace began serving a three-year term at the Federal Correctional Institution in Sandstone, Minnesota. Wallace Muhammad was paroled on January 10, 1963, and he immediately returned to resume his ministerʹs appointment