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By Root 1966 0

opportunity to recraft his image, perhaps realizing finally the need to start presenting himself independent of the Nation. In a notebook he kept of the trip, he drafted several paragraphs about his family’s visit to Clay’s training camp that were designed to be the basis for a feature news story, “Malcolm X, the Family Man.” Most of his notes were captions designed to accompany photographs he had taken. One note indicated that he and Betty were celebrating their sixth wedding anniversary on the trip, that they were the parents of three daughters and were expecting their fourth child that June. This attempt to moderate his public image proved successful. The Chicago Defender published a beautiful portrait of the family, with Clay at the right, holding the couple’s youngest daughter, Ilyasah. A similar photograph was published in the Amsterdam News, and together they would mark the first time Malcolm presented his family to the public. They represented the beginning of what would prove to be Malcolm’s final reinvention, one that would culminate a few months later during his trip to Mecca for the hajj.

Betty and the children returned home on January 19, but Malcolm lingered to spend more time alone with Cassius Clay. A few days later, when Malcolm flew back to New York, Clay went with him. He did not bother to ask his trainer, Angelo Dundee, for permission to leave, and though it is unheard of for a boxer to break camp one month before a championship fight, Dundee did not try to stop him. Arriving in New York on January 21, Clay finally discovered a city big enough to hold his outsized personality. He and Malcolm set about touring Harlem and other sights of the city, and Clay attended an NOI rally held at the Rockland Palace, though Malcolm stayed away, observing his suspension. Afterward Clay returned to Miami and resumed training.

It was not long before news of Clay’s and Malcolm’s relationship made its way into the press. On January 25, the Amsterdam News noted Malcolm’s vacation in Florida with his family “as the guests of heavyweight boxer Cassius Clay.” The publicity caused great difficulties in Clay’s fight camp in Miami. As his fame had grown in the boxing world, the question of his involvement with the Nation had dogged him. With the sect identified primarily with antagonistic feelings toward whites, his affiliation threatened to damage him professionally, and so he had come to dance around the issue when questioned about it by the press. But now, in the days leading up to the Liston fight, Malcolm’s influence pushed him closer to open support. The Amsterdam News reported Clay’s twenty-minute-long remarks at the Rockland Palace: “I’m a race man, and every time I go to a Muslim meeting I get inspired.” On February 3, the Louisville Courier-Journal published an interview with Clay in which he all but admitted membership in the Nation. “Sure I talked to the Muslims and I’m going back again,” he declared. “Integration is wrong. The white people don’t want integration, I don’t want integration. I don’t believe in forcing it, and the Muslims don’t believe in it. So what’s wrong with the Muslims?”

Throughout most of February Malcolm continued to appeal to Muhammad for reinstatement, but to no avail. He was now forced to consider emergency household issues. The Nation paid out a household stipend to its ministers to provide food, clothing, and household items. For Malcolm this amounted to about $150 per month. He was still considered a minister and technically could claim the stipend, but if fully stripped of his title he would have no monthly income and no claim on his family’s East Elmhurst home. According to an estimate by James 67X, from 1960 to 1963 Malcolm also received an expense account from the Nation of about $3,000 per month, covering his travel, hotel accommodations, meals, and incidental expenses. For Malcolm to exert the impact on the national media that he had in the early 1960s, a considerable investment by the Nation was required. For example, whenever he traveled to a city with a Nation of Islam mosque,