Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [112]
Wallace’s absence from NOI organizational life tended to increase paranoid rumors and fears about Malcolm, especially among Elijah Muhammad’s other children. Some of the hostility directed at Malcolm grew from his organizational function. As a national overseer, his responsibilities included resolving local feuds between members of various mosques. The role of troubleshooter was an unenviable one, because Malcolm was frequently forced to impose the authority of Chicago headquarters over local leaders who sought the semiautonomy and flexibility that he himself enjoyed.
Facing growing strife, Malcolm was concerned about protecting his allies within the NOI. No one was more important to him than Louis X Walcott. Louis had worked directly under Malcolm in New York City from October 1955 to July 1956, enough time for him to incorporate Malcolm’s oratorical style into his own. But when he had become Boston’s minister in 1957, he had considerable difficulty handling the job. He feared that he was unqualified, with the mosque having attracted a number of professionals far more experienced in business and civic affairs than he was. Farrakhan recalled: “[Malcolm] would come and look after his little brother and give me pointers. And Malcolm would go out in the street, man, and listen to the people, go in barbershops—‘What do you think about the mosque?’ And he would get the outside view of me and us. And he would come back and tell me what the people were saying and correct me.”
Malcolm was determined that his protégé become a national figure in his own right, and encouraged him to write two plays, Orgena and The Trial, both of which became wildly popular when performed before Muslim audiences. But before long Louis needed a different kind of help. Ella Collins, newly converted to the NOI, had quickly become leader of those who wanted Louis deposed. Years later he would describe her as a “genius woman,” then adding, “But in my weakness in administrative skill, she saw that weakness and raised a group in opposition to me.” With the same boundless energy with which she had established educational programs within the temple, she threw herself into battle. As tensions mounted, a fire broke out in Louis’s home; no one was injured, but most NOI members believed that Collins was responsible.
Both sides appealed to Elijah Muhammad. Louis argued that Ella continued to undermine his authority and should be disciplined, if not expelled. Ella urged Muhammad to name her captain of Mosque No. 11 and to fire Louis. Muhammad first offered a compromise: Louis would remain the minister, but none of the programs Ella had initiated at the mosque would be canceled. Ella tried to adhere to this plan, but her dislike for Louis was too strong, and she soon stopped attending the mosque. But the matter did not end there. Malcolm was invited to Boston as a mediator, where he explained to Louis that Ella was an extremely dangerous person. “Ella is the type of woman that—brother, she’ll kill you.” Malcolm had little choice but to back Louis’s decision to expel her, making her the second of his siblings, after Reginald, that Malcolm would sacrifice to his loyalty to the Nation.
By 1960, the black activist Bayard Rustin was almost fifty years old. Though his tireless civil rights work brought him into association with younger men like King, his agitation on behalf of African Americans had begun decades earlier. Rustin had briefly joined the Communist Party in the late 1930s, then in 1941 worked with A. Philip Randolph’s Negro March on Washington Movement, which forced President Roosevelt to outlaw racial discrimination in the defense industry. Like Malcolm, he had opposed black involvement in World War II, and his refusal to join the military landed him a three-year prison sentence. After his release, he participated in nonviolent demonstrations, challenging Jim Crow laws on public buses in the upper South; by the mid-1950s he had become an invaluable adviser and fund-raiser to King.
However, as the decade turned and