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By Root 1860 0

communicating the opposite. At an NOI rally just before the march, Malcolm pilloried the gathering as “the Farce on Washington,” decrying its effectiveness and challenging the idea that the march as planned represented the will of the majority of blacks. He argued that the mobilization “actually began as a spontaneous and angry action of protest from the dissatisfied black masses.” This had occurred, he admitted, because black people were overwhelmingly opposed to racial segregation. Malcolm claimed that the original intention was for black groups to tie up the Capitol through sit-ins and other civic disruptions. Inevitably, though, powerful whites began to influence events. Wilkins, Randolph, King, and other civil rights leaders supposedly had been ordered to call off the march. They informed the Kennedy administration that they were not in charge of the mobilization—that the black masses had taken control. Malcolm argued that the Kennedy administration decided to “co-opt” the demonstration. The president not only publicly endorsed the march’s goals, but encouraged Negroes to participate in it. Malcolm’s thesis was that the civil rights leaders were so craven and bankrupt that they were duped by whites in power.

This version of events was a gross distortion of the facts—yet it contained enough truth to capture an audience of unhappy black militants who had wanted the march to spearhead strikes and widespread civil disobedience. For all of Malcolm’s calls for unity, and for whatever the march represented in its mass outpouring of support, the Black Freedom Movement continued to be pulled in different directions. Many on the left, including much of SNCC, were inclined to agree with Malcolm’s position on the march’s ineffectiveness. They saw the event as representative of the overly cautious strategies of middle-class Negro leaders, and believed more forceful action would be necessary to make real gains. These disagreements played themselves out in backroom deals leading up to the march, most notably when SNCCʹs John Lewis found himself embroiled in controversy over his planned speech, which said essentially that the march was too little, too late; at the last minute, more conservative leaders pressured him to cut its most inflammatory passages. Malcolm’s rhetoric, unburdened by factors of diplomacy, did not shy away from making such points.

On the night before the march, Peter Goldman ran into Louis Lomax in a Washington hotel lobby. Goldman recalled that Lomax led him to a large suite crowded with about fifty middle-class African Americans:

And there [in the center] was Malcolm. And until I saw him, I had no clue that was what Lomax was leading me to. His attitude, his public attitude toward the march, was that this is a picnic, it’s a circus, it’s meaningless. . . . He was doing a very much muted version of that. He wasn’t addressing them. It was more kind of a cocktail party setting. Indeed, there were a lot of bourbons splashing, including into my glass. . . . There’s always one power center at a cocktail party, and he was it. . . . He knew that that was the capital . . . the epicenter of black America on that day.

Malcolm was indeed the center of attention wherever he went, usually followed by a gaggle of newsmen. Attorney Floyd McKissick, who in 1965 would become head of CORE, ran into him at the Washington Hilton. The two men hugged each other and began conversing before panicked CORE staffers hustled McKissick away, worried that any association with Malcolm would damage their image. Rustin encountered Malcolm on at least three occasions that night and the following day. The first time, he was leaving a strategy session with the march’s major speakers when he saw Malcolm holding court with some reporters. Instead of getting angry, he knew his old debating partner well enough by now to use humor to deflate him. “Now, Malcolm, be careful,” he warned. “There are going to be a half-million people here tomorrow, and you don’t want to tell them this is nothing but a picnic.” Malcolm replied, “What I tell them is