• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1971 0

In the speech, he described the current situation as the “gravest crisis since the civil war.” The vast majority of blacks had “lost all confidence in the false promises of hypocritical white politicians.” His chief animus, however, was aimed at the “white liberals, who have been making a great fuss over the South, only to blind us to what is happening here in the North.” The root causes of American racism were to be found in the nation’s history. “The Revolutionary War and the Civil War were two wars fought on American soil, supposedly for freedom and democracy—but if these two wars were really for freedom and human dignity of all men, why are 20 million of our people still confined and enslaved?” Amajority of the “founding fathers,” men who signed the Declaration of Independence, owned slaves.

In the typed manuscript of this address, Malcolm made a handwritten correction that directly attacked the Kennedy administration, despite Muhammad’s advice. Crossing out the words “the American government,” he inscribed, “this present Catholic administration.” He correctly anticipated the white backlash against the affirmative action and equal opportunity policies that within a few years would drive millions of Southern Democrats and white workers into the Republican Party, but he still could not imagine the passage of landmark civil rights legislation, least of all led by a Southern Democrat and taking place within one year

On August 23, Malcolm answered listeners’ questions on WNOR radio, in Norfolk, Virginia, saying that Wallace D. Fard’s coming in the 1930s represented the realization of Jewish prophecies, as well as the fulfillment of Islamic expectations. He described Fard as “the son of Man,” making him divine—a status that Fard never claimed, at least not publicly. The day before, he had explained to a crowd the basics of the Nation’s strange cosmology, complete with the story of Yacub and the white devils. It seemed incongruous with the rest of his rhetoric, but either he still firmly accepted the key tenets of Elijah Muhammad’s world or he found it expedient to make it seem as though he did publicly. Politically, he was clearer: “The Muslims who follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad won’t have anything to do whatsoever with the March,” he insisted. It would not benefit blacks to “go down to a dead man’s statue—a dead President’s monument—who was supposed to have issued an Emancipation Proclamation a hundred years ago.”

It took only a few days before his negative comments about the forthcoming march began circulating in the national press. Meanwhile, thousands began to descend on Washington: the supposedly “Uncle Tom” leaders like Rustin, Randolph, and King had mobilized a quarter of a million people, well beyond the NOIʹs outreach. Across the country, tens of thousands of working-class blacks were also engaged in smaller protests. As Malcolm took in the march’s tremendous drawing power, he must have been of two minds. The turnout let him take the temperature of the nation’s black community; the massive mobilization showed that the gains made by King and other civil rights leaders in Birmingham and Montgomery had had a galvanizing effect. He could hardly deny their effectiveness in mobilizing blacks on a large scale. Yet he also believed that the NOI needed to delegitimize the march, to push back on the idea that this dramatic display of numbers could have any real effect on black Americans’ lives. According to Larry 4X Prescott, several days before the march Malcolm met with Mosque No. 7 members, instructing them again that Elijah Muhammad had forbidden them to participate, though he also informed Larry and others that he himself would be attending, having received permission from the Messenger. On the night before the march, hundreds of buses were stationed at departure points throughout New York City. NOI laborers went to virtually every bus to distribute copies of Muhammad Speaks. Malcolm was letting it be known, Larry explained, that this was “a part of history that we should be a part of.”

And yet publicly he was