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By Root 1824 0

to the podium to speak, Malcolm was busily scrawling on a yellow legal pad, and Ferguson simply assumed the minister was making final notes on his speech. So he was truly surprised when Malcolm, looking out at the audience, said, “‘That fellow there is going with that white girl there,’” Ferguson recalled. “Now, there was quite a distance, a lot of space between them. . . . There was no indication, nobody would have known or suspected that there was anything going on.” Yet Malcolm was absolutely correct. Nearly every great speaker, like Malcolm, must also be a student of people and cultures. “He observed people and things that were going on around him, and from time to time he would make little comments, to let you know that he had picked up on something that was happening around him.”

Yet the central irony of Malcolm’s career was that his critical powers of observation, so important in fashioning his dynamic public addresses, virtually disappeared in his mundane evaluations of those in his day-to-day personal circle. Especially in the final years of his life, nearly every individual he trusted would betray that trust. As late as November 1963, Malcolm did not recognize that the political path he had deliberately chosen would quickly lead to his expulsion from the Nation. This was apparent, even to Ferguson, in 1963: “I felt that . . . eventually [he] would have to leave the Nation of Islam. He was just too political. . . . He was developing too fast.”

CHAPTER 10

“The Chickens Coming Home to Roost”

December 1, 1963-March 12, 1964

John F. Kennedy was assassinated in the early afternoon of Friday, November 22, 1963. When Elijah Muhammad was told, he was taken aback. He had frequently warned Malcolm of criticizing Kennedy, knowing of the president’s considerable popularity with black Americans, and now he took steps to ensure that the NOI would not be caught in the storm of anger and disbelief that was already roiling the nation. He released a short statement expressing shock “over the loss of our president,” and then arranged for his next column in Muhammad Speaks to be moved to the front page alongside a photo of Kennedy. He informed all NOI ministers to say nothing in public, going so far as to have one of his sons call Malcolm so he could dictate over the phone what he wanted his national minister to say if questioned about the assassination. With the stakes high and Malcolm already bridling at Chicago’s attempts to control him, Muhammad would leave nothing to chance.

Yet fate interceded when the Messenger was forced to cancel a long-planned speaking engagement at the Manhattan Center in midtown New York City on December 1. The Nation could not get out of its rental agreement, so Malcolm was selected as a substitute speaker for what would be the first major speech delivered by an NOI leader since the assassination. To make certain that the public program was handled properly, John Ali flew from Chicago to help out, and the decision was made to allow all reporters, including whites, to cover the speech. Malcolm’s advertised title, “God’s Judgment of White America,” was deliberately provocative, but he, Ali, and all the other NOI officials involved knew of Muhammad’s instruction to avoid any references to Kennedy.

The talk was an important one for Malcolm, and he prepared carefully, first drafting a detailed outline of the key issues he wanted to cover, then typing out the actual lecture he planned to deliver. The lecture reflected the two divergent realms of black consciousness that Malcolm occupied: the spiritual domain of the Nation of Islam and the political worlds of black nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and Third World revolution. He was sufficiently astute to express the obligatory remarks of homage to Elijah Muhammad, but also clearly visible was the militant political language of “Message to the Grassroots,” along with calls for a black global revolution and the destruction of white power. He knew that John Ali would be in the audience and would immediately report back to Muhammad with a negative