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By Root 1887 0

avoid further negative media coverage. The successes of the civil rights movement had emboldened America’s black communities and made the NOIʹs strict noninterventionist, antiactivist platform seem out of step or, worse, backward. To bolster his case in the court of public opinion, Muhammad and his Chicago lieutenants developed a ten-point policy statement that he unveiled in his address at the rally. Before a large crowd at the Arie Crown Theater on Lake Shore Drive, he presented a list of demands that preserved the Nation’s anti-integrationist stance—later codified as “What the Muslims Want”—and included religious freedom, an end to police brutality, and the release “of all Believers of Islam now held in federal prisons.” But the statement also astutely contained major concessions to the civil rights movement. “As long as we are not allowed to establish a state or territory of our own, we demand not only equal justice under the laws of the United States, but equal employment opportunities, now!ʺ Muhammad followed this statement with a twelve-point “What the Muslims Believe,” a summary of the Nation of Islam’s basic creed. Over the next thirteen years, until Muhammad’s death in 1975, these two statements would become the most widely disseminated of NOI manifestos. For Malcolm, who had pushed for greater involvement with the movement, the revelation was bittersweet; he had moved toward these ideas long before Chicago.

His own push for action renewed shortly in New York, where Mosque No. 7 now organized rallies almost every other week, focused mainly on bringing broad change to Harlem’s impoverished and embattled blacks. Malcolm’s involvement with A. Philip Randolph’s Emergency Committee continued to shape his efforts, and on July 21 he addressed a crowd of two thousand packed in front of the Hotel Theresa. The five-hour program featured a saxophone, drum, and bass trio, which helped attract onlookers. Fruit of Islam members circulated through the crowd, selling Muhammad Speaks and NOI-produced records featuring Louis X. Malcolm focused largely on Harlem’s social and economic conditions. “Unemployment, juvenile delinquency, prostitution, gambling, the dope traffic and other forms of organized crimes are on the rise,” he explained:

Even our women, young girls and boys, are falling victim to the organized evils that are destroying the moral fiber of the Negro community. The fuse has already been lit . . . if something is not done immediately, there will be an explosive situation in the Negro community more dangerous and destructive than a hundred megaton bombs.

The intensity of the speech reflected the growing depths of his own commitment to embracing a united black community. Covering the event, the Chicago Defender noted that Malcolm’s words contained such “sentiment and emotional drive” that the cries from the audience “became at times almost a chant, coming at the cadenced pauses in his oratory.” But the most significant feature of this largely NOI-sponsored rally was the list of guest speakers, which ran to far more moderate figures and included none other than Malcolm’s old sparring partner, Bayard Rustin.

The very next day, Betty gave birth to the couple’s third daughter. She was named Ilyasah, the feminized Arabic version of Elijah. By now, Malcolm’s quick departures after the births of his children had become almost routine; that same day, he ducked out and joined several FOI members to watch a labor rally of mostly blacks and Latinos held on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and organized by the Committee for Justice to Hospital Workers. Although forbidden to participate in civil rights-style demonstrations, the Muslims expressed their support from the sidelines. Malcolm even briefly addressed the strikers—technically a violation of Muhammad’s orders, but once again he presumably reasoned that in his own territory, so long as he sang Muhammad’s praises, neither Raymond Sharrieff nor anyone else had the power to stop him.

Ongoing legal issues stemming from events in Los Angeles continued to consume him throughout