Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [151]
But if Muhammad still believed Malcolm to be trustworthy and dependable, the Chicago headquarters saw an opportunity in Malcolm’s frequent absences from New York, and John Ali began contacting Joseph directly on mosque matters. On April 25, Chicago had also widely circulated a letter bearing Elijah Muhammad’s signature and calling upon “all Ministers, Secretaries, and Captains . . . to get our paper, Muhammad Speaks, into the hands of our poor, blind, deaf, and dumb brothers and sisters . . . .” The paper, the letter stated, “will get to people who will not speak to us in the public; it will convert behind the door a hundred of our people to our one from the Speakerʹs Stand!” It was an unmistakable attack on Malcolm. Meanwhile, the information blackout of Malcolm in the paper itself became virtually complete.
The Washington Post reported Malcolm’s new appointment to the D.C. mosque, describing him as “the No. 2 man of the Black Muslim sect.” For Malcolm, the expanded responsibilities opened new doors; here was a chance to transplant much of the community building he had been pushing in New York to another city. Already the Nation had found great success in Harlem with several of their black improvement projects, most notably in combating juvenile delinquency. Washington’s desolate ghettos, in no better shape than Malcolm had found them during his Detroit Red years, offered an attractive new proving ground. He would also now be operating in the nation’s capital, close to the power center. At a press conference in Washington’s National airport, Malcolm insisted that he was not second in command, that the Nation did not “preach hatred of white people,” and that he intended to hold a series of blacks-only meetings over a four-week period to examine the causes and cures for black street crime in the nation’s capital.
On the same day that Malcolm had returned from Phoenix to begin dealing with the rumors surrounding Elijah Muhammad, the landscape of the Black Freedom Movement entered a tumultuous phase, sending tremors throughout the country. On April 3, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the SCLC began the long and devastating sit-in campaign to break segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. More than any previous protest, Birmingham focused the eyes of the nation on the civil rights struggle, as over the course of five weeks more than seven hundred nonviolent protesters, many of them children, faced arrest and jail time. Black newspapers like the Pittsburgh Courier and the Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch reacted with cautious optimism; the public outcry over the protesters’ brutal treatment at the hands of Birmingham police chief Bull Connor and his men had set the gears of Washington turning, and talk of new civil rights legislation percolated beyond the capital. More than ever, the time seemed ripe for action, yet Malcolm knew that with tensions between himself and Chicago still unresolved, his options remained limited. Several reporters had heard rumors that Malcolm was planning to go to Birmingham, although he himself announced that he would travel there only on the direct orders of Muhammad, or at the invitation of NOI regional leader, minister Jeremiah X. Asked about the protests, Malcolm chose to address King’s tactics rather than his goals: “I’ll say this, if anybody sets a dog on a black man, the black man should kill that dog—whether he is a four-legged dog or a two-legged dog.”
Despite his extensive