Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [154]
That same year, a federal judge had ruled that NOI member William T. X Fulwood had the constitutional right to attend religious services at the Lorton Reformatory, located in Virginia. Black prisoners all over the country were eagerly joining the NOI and demanding their right to religious services. Malcolm and Quinton X Roosevelt Edwards of Mosque No. 4 had conducted a service at Lorton back in May. In June, however, corrections officials turned down Malcolm’s request to continue services there, saying that he was a convicted felon and an “incendiary” who disrupted prison life. The D.C. branch of the American Civil Liberties Union at once took up the issue.
The oppressive reality of prison had a clear effect on Malcolm’s rhetoric, to the point where he began using it as a metaphor for the condition of being black in America. During an interview with psychologist Kenneth Clark on June 4, he asserted that the NOI was not a Black Muslim religion, saying, “We are black people who are Muslims because we have accepted the religion of Islam.” Malcolm then asserted that all black Americans, regardless of their religious views, were in effect prisoners under a racist system. Increasingly, a growing majority of blacks saw themselves as “inmates”; the American president, Malcolm added, was “just another [prison] warden.”
As the summer began, black Americans experienced twin polarities of joy and devastation. First, President Kennedy, ignoring his advisers, went on television and announced to the country the broad outlines of his new civil rights legislation. Then, a few hours later, a sniper assassinated NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi. With each new piece of news, the stakes grew higher, fueling black hopes and, in many places, white animosity.
Malcolm’s extensive engagement with the civil rights movement, and the well-publicized public protests by Mosque No. 7, had inspired Muslims in other cities to become involved in protests, but Chicago headquarters was anxious to quell the new mood. On June 21, Raymond Sharrieff warned a crowd in Chicago: “The whites are watching the Muslims to see what kind of stand they will take on demonstrations. . . . The NOI stands on total separation.” Therefore, “peaceful demonstrations” could accomplish nothing. Sharrieff informed Mosque No. 2 that he had been “shocked and surprised that some of the FOI want to take part in the so-called peaceful demonstrations by the so-called Negroes,” predicting that after his fellow blacks suffered mistreatment by the police and were “lied to” by King, “the so-called Negroes will be easy to get for Islam.” He then threatened, “If this is not plain enough for you, let me put it more clearly to you. Do not participate in any way in these demonstrations. If you are caught, you will wish you were dead.”
By the early sixties, some brothers inside the Nation were almost impossible to control. To a man, they were enthusiastic, loyal, and devoted, yet their propensity for violence and lockstep obedience to the Nation’s rigid chain of command made them useful tools only so long as they could be tethered. Gladly willing to sacrifice their lives for the NOIʹs cause, these men had become familiar faces to passersby in Harlem, Detroit, Miami, and Chicago, aggressively hawking Muhammad Speaks on street corners, in driving rain and freezing snow. Veteran captains like Joseph closely