Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [123]
The respect was mutual; Malcolm put aside his reservations and attended the meeting. The goal of the committee, he learned, was to establish a broad coalition—from black nationalists to moderate integrationists—to address social and political problems in Harlem. To join officially, Malcolm realized, meant to go beyond the limited venture he had made into politics up to that time. Though he was interested, he knew he would have to justify his participation to the Nation.
Fortunately, Elijah Muhammad gave him an unintentional loophole. Throughout much of August, Malcolm and Mosque No. 7 were busily preparing to host a major address by Muhammad, to be held on August 23 at Harlem’s 369th Infantry Armory. Before an audience estimated at between five and eight thousand, the Messenger of Allah offered a bleak and dire vision:
It is not the nature of the white man to call the Negro a brother. The Negro ministers are taught to preach by white people. They are given licenses by white people and if they do not teach like white people want them to they are cut down. . . . Harlem should elect its own leaders and should not accept the leaders set up for them by the white man. We must elect our leaders and if they do not do right we should cut their heads off. We cannot integrate with the white man, we must separate.
In the call for Harlem to elect its own leaders, Malcolm saw an opportunity. Although Muhammad’s outlook was anchored to a separatist partition, he encouraged NOI members to support black-owned businesses and to back black leaders, and it was on this slender basis that Malcolm consented to work with Randolph’s committee. Its members, he found, were drawn largely from the Negro American Labor Council; many were representatives from business, civic, and faith institutions. One such member was Percy Sutton, a prominent Harlem lawyer who also served as branch president of the New York NAACP. Malcolm and Sutton came to respect each other, and within several years Malcolm would seek Sutton’s legal counsel on a range of sensitive matters. Bayard Rustin, who by that time had worked with Randolph for over twenty years, was also on the committee, and his presence may have further intrigued Malcolm about the group’s potential.
The first public event staged by what was then called the Emergency Committee was a rally in front of the Hotel Theresa in early September. Randolph carefully crafted the speakers’ list to reflect the range of Harlem politics. For the nationalists, there were black bookstore proprietor Lewis Michaux and James Lawson, head of the United African Nationalist Movement; for black labor, the militant Cleveland Robinson, secretary-treasurer for the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union’s District 65, as well as Richard Parrish, national treasurer of the Negro American Labor Council. About one thousand people attended. The Pittsburgh Courier, which covered the event, observed that the “most exciting speaker was Malcolm X, whom many in the audience had never heard before.” Malcolm won praise for his sharp condemnation of the NYPD, whom he blamed for the escalation of illegal narcotics, prostitution, and violence in New York’s black neighborhoods. What was curious, however, was his deferential approach to the police. He assured the crowd that he would encourage “his people” to obey the law, denied that NOI members had participated in any recent “uprisings in Harlem,” and denounced the call for a “march on the 28th Precinct Police Station,” which had been outlined in a leaflet distributed through the crowd. “We do not think this will accomplish anything,” he declared. The speech toed the line. It was forceful, yet conservative on action. Activists like Rustin would have noted that