Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [127]
For Johnson, the NOI was like a combat organization. “I didn’t see anybody making a stand, representing us in any way that would alleviate a lot of oppression and the abuse and the things that was going on in the South . . . the waves of killing African-American people,” he would later explain. After receiving his X—becoming Thomas 15X—he came to the attention of Captain Joseph for what were considered outstanding displays of devotion. “It was a very hostile atmosphere at that time, and we didn’t take no crap from nobody, see, so . . . they called me [the] ‘Reactor,’ because I was always jumping at everything,” he recalled. “[If] somebody threatened a Muslim or they beat up a Muslim or something, I would be the first one on the scene.”
Joseph decided that Thomas should be assigned to provide security for Malcolm, which included doing routine errands and odd jobs for his family. At that time, Thomas thought Malcolm was “the greatest thing walking . . . I don’t know any commentator, news people, that could handle him.” Thomas’s daily duties usually began when Malcolm traveled from his home in Queens to the Harlem mosque. Regardless of the weather, Thomas was expected to stand outside, reserving a parking spot for the ministerʹs car. He also drove Malcolm to appointments. Once a month, Betty gave him a list of household items to purchase at the Shabazz supermarket in Brooklyn, driving back afterward to unpack. He noticed that Malcolm avoided going home “if he could.” Malcolm confided, “‘Man, if I go [home], all them women . . . no telling what I might say, how I’m going to respond.’ And he’d say, ʹLetʹs go down to Foley Square.’ So we would.” Sometimes Malcolm would be deeply engrossed in reading some book very obscure to Thomas. One author he vividly recalled was philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. “Hegel was his man,” Thomas recalled, possibly referring to the same passages on “lordship and bondage” that had also fascinated Frantz Fanon.
And yet something about Thomas made Malcolm uneasy. On one occasion he voiced his concerns to Joseph, saying that he was uncomfortable simply because Thomas rarely talked. Thomas, for his part, told Joseph, “I didn’t think I was qualified to interject and have a lot of conversation with him. I was just interested in doing my job.” Things remained as they were.
Within a growing number of mosques—most notably the Newark, New Jersey, mosque—a storm of criticism against Malcolm began to gather. The standard charges were that he coveted the Messengerʹs position, that he craved material possessions, and that he was using the Nation to advance himself politically and in the media. Malcolm routinely responded to such barbs by building up the cult around Elijah, which he felt was the most effective way to dispel doubts. Muhammad appreciated such labors on his behalf, and around this time told Malcolm that he wanted him to “become well known,” because it was through his fame that Elijah’s message would be heard. But Malcolm needed to realize, he added, “You will grow to be hated when you become well known.”
George Lincoln Rockwell may have thought himself white America’s answer to Malcolm X. Square jawed and solidly built, he cut a striking figure when commanding the stage at rallies held by the group he had founded and led, the American Nazi Party. Rockwell’s extreme conservatism had grown at first along conventional lines; a longtime naval reservist, he opposed racial integration and despised communism, and for a brief time was employed by William F. Buckley, Jr., the editor of National Review. Only after reading Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion did his supremacist beliefs merge with a deep hatred for Jews. In March 1959, he established the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists, which soon became the American Nazi Party. Despite his loathsome politics, Rockwell possessed a gift for manipulating the