Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [159]
As work on the Autobiography progressed, Haley peppered his agent, Paul Reynolds, and his editors at Doubleday with requests of all sorts. On August 5, Haley informed Reynolds’s assistant that he should replace the designation “Co-authored by Alex Haley” with “As told to Alex Haley.” He explained in a letter that he was “sometimes awed by [Malcolm’s] skill as a demagogue,” but wanted to assert a clear separation between Malcolm’s political perspectives and his own. “‘Co-authoring with Malcolm Xʹ would, to me, imply sharing his views—when mine are almost a complete antithesis of his.” One month later, after an “18-hour” session with Malcolm, Haley asked Reynolds for a five-hundred-dollar advance to fly to Chicago for an interview with Elijah Muhammad. Despite his many requests, work progressed slowly, and on September 22 Haley forwarded to Reynolds the book’s first two chapters. He was optimistic that he could complete the entire work by the end of October 1963. Still, he was having trouble working through the early phases of Malcolm’s life, and near the end of September he pressed Malcolm, trying to break through the ministerʹs reserve and lingering mistrust. Haley urged him “to make more gripping your catharsis of decision involving Reginald. I must build up your regard and respect for [him] when the two of you were earlier in Harlem.” He pleaded with Malcolm to give him three consecutive days that week to collaborate on the book, arguing that “night sessions here, such as we had, will be the most productive.”
Malcolm also sought to present Elijah Muhammad’s views about black women in a positive light. This may explain the New York Herald Tribune’s feature story about Betty Shabazz, published on June 30, 1963. For her first press interview, Betty presented an impressive figure:
She acknowledged us impressively, as a queen might greet a subject. She was wearing white gloves and a white veil over her hair, brushed smooth across her forehead. Her grey tweed two-piece cotton dress, buttoned to the neck, reached to the floor. Her manner was as formal as her dress, as neat and attractive as that of her husband.
The reporter was informed that Muslim women avoided publicity. The primary tasks of NOI women were caring for their families and “obeying the moral tenets dictated to them by Elijah Muhammad.” Betty stated that MGT leader Ethel Sharrieff represented the standard by which Muslim women judged themselves. “All of us try in some ways to copy her,” Betty explained to the reporter. Betty was reticent to reveal basic facts about her own life, such as at which New York hospital she had been employed as a nurse. She admitted that she did not “know the Koran very well,” but said that she read “the history of black people” to her children. Both Betty and Malcolm presented themselves as loyal followers of Muhammad. But Malcolm added, “Elijah teaches us that no two people should stay together who can’t get along.”
The idea of organizing a march on Washington, D.C., was born in the Harlem office of A. Philip Randolph sometime in December 1962, when Bayard Rustin visited Randolph there. The two old friends began talking about the Negro March on Washington Movement of 1941 that had pressured the Roosevelt administration into an executive order that outlawed hiring discrimination by defense plants. That mass mobilization never culminated in an actual event, but now Rustin conceived of a new march on a more ambitious scale, climaxing with two days of public activities. His draft proposal emphasized the acceleration of “integration in the fields of education, housing, transportation and public accommodations” and “broad national government action . . . to meet the problem of unemployment, especially as it related to minority groups.” At the outset, COREʹs Norman Hill was appointed director of field staff, traveling the country