Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [170]
In mid-November, he revealed to Haley that when he visited Michigan in late October, he had driven with Philbert to Kalamazoo and secured the release of his mother from the state mental hospital. “It may shock you to learn that two weeks ago,” he wrote, “I had dinner with my mother for the first time in 25 years, and she is now home and residing with my brother Philbert in Lansing.” Haley meanwhile pushed on. He had just relocated from lower Manhattan to a small house in rural Rome, New York. He explained to Malcolm, “I don’t want [a telephone] even here,” until most of the Autobiography was completed. When he heard about Louise’s release, he responded: “Shocked? No, friend, I was most sincerely—moved very much . . . professionally, I was happy as I can be that there is added to the book for the millions of readers that it will have, this graphic human interest story, this caliber of a ‘happy ending.’ ”
Wallace Muhammad had invited Louis X to his Chicago home after Saviourʹs Day 1963. Over hot chocolate, he asked, “I want you to tell brother Malcolm that I would like to see him and you together. There’s something that I want to tell you both.” As fate would have it, for several months he was unable to schedule a meeting with Louis and Malcolm at the same time. He sat down with Malcolm alone in October, telling him that his fatherʹs extramarital sexual activity was “as bad as it ever was.”
Malcolm now had a choice. He could have stayed silent, continuing to give biblical and Qurʹanic analogies to explain away Muhammad’s errors in judgment. However, he felt that a more aggressive approach was needed, both to protect Muhammad and to stop the hemorrhaging of disillusioned members. He consulted with six or seven ministers whom he trusted. Among their number was, of course, Louis X—who knew significantly more than Malcolm suspected.
Malcolm’s initial conversation with Louis about the Messengerʹs transgressions had occurred in New York; as was his custom after their meeting, Malcolm drove Louis to the airport. According to Farrakhan, as Malcolm was driving to LaGuardia airport, Louis casually told him that he would have to inform Muhammad that Malcolm had been discussing the infidelities with other ministers. There was a brief silence. Then Malcolm, looking straight ahead, said, “Give me two weeks.” Malcolm wanted to explain his contacts with NOI ministers about the scandal first. Louis consented to Malcolm’s request. And although neither man knew this at the time, their roles and futures within the Nation would fundamentally change at that moment. When Louis gave his version of these events to Elijah Muhammad, the apostle would never fully trust Malcolm again, and he began to look at Louis as Malcolm’s possible successor.
It would be too easy to argue that the root cause of Malcolm’s disaffection from Elijah Muhammad was the knowledge that Evelyn, the woman with whom he had been romantically involved for years, had been impregnated by the Messenger. Farrakhan is the only one of his intimate friends to claim Malcolm was considering leaving Betty for Evelyn; no one else—not even James 67X—has made such a claim. Farrakhan may have a vested interest in exaggerating Malcolm’s anger about Evelyn in order to promote a nontheological reason for his break with the NOI, which set the stage for Farrakhan’s own rise to prominence. There is no doubt that Malcolm was extremely upset by this information, but in itself it seems unlikely he would have quit the NOI solely based on the incident with Evelyn.
Malcolm continued his hectic pace throughout the remainder of November. On November 20 he addressed a class at the journalism school of Columbia University. The short talk, followed by a lengthy discussion period, was an artful dance, incorporating politics, traditional NOI dogma,