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By Root 1790 0

a new mosque. Sympathetic whites could donate funds to assist his new movement, but they would never be permitted to join because “when whites join an organization they usually take control of it.” Although he had pledged to cooperate with civil rights groups, much of his language at the conference seemed to revel in apocalyptic violence. “Negroes on the mass level,” he predicted, were now ready to start “self-defense” efforts, rejecting nonviolence as a strategy. “There will be more violence than ever this year. . . . White people will be shocked when they discover that the passive little Negro they had known turns out to be a roaring lion. The whites had better understand this while there is still time.”

The press conference was a disaster at nearly every level. Somehow Malcolm had raised the money to rent the posh Tapestry Suite at the Sheraton, but it left MMI without financial resources. Handlerʹs follow-up article in the Times mentioned that despite Malcolm’s earlier statement “that he would not seek to take members away from Elijah Muhammad’s movement,” there was every indication that he intended to launch a rival organization. And to civil rights leaders still committed to racial integration and nonviolence, Malcolm’s predictions of blood in the streets reconfirmed his reputation for nihilism and violence. Instead of broadening his potential base, his immediate actions following his break from Muhammad only isolated him further.

It is highly unlikely that Malcolm consulted Betty about his decision to leave the Nation; he still saw her largely as a passive observer. “I never had a moment’s question that Betty, after initial amazement, would change her thinking to join mine,” Malcolm would later explain. As he made grand pronouncements of his intentions, his wife worried about practical problems. A fourth child was well on the way. How would their household survive financially? Betty feared, correctly, that they would soon be evicted from their home. She also detected her husband’s ambivalence about Elijah Muhammad and the Nation—throughout most of March he continued to praise the Nation of Islam’s program. “The final cord,” Betty would later observe, “had yet to be broken.”

CHAPTER 11

An Epiphany in the Hajj

March 12-May 21, 1964

Malcolm’s departure from the Nation of Islam coincided with one of the most intense periods of the civil rights struggle, a time at which the fragile unity that had made possible the great efforts in Montgomery and Birmingham was showing signs of strain. The arguments between radicals like John Lewis and more mainstream black leaders like King and Ralph Abernathy had not abated, and as long-desired goals finally came within sight, they had the peculiar effect of further splintering the movement. The success of the March on Washington in 1963 should have consolidated King’s power, yet almost immediately afterward many black leaders sought to move away from marches and public protests toward working to directly influence Democratic Party politics. The legislation for the long-awaited Civil Rights Act had reached the Senate by the end of 1963, yet two months later the deadlock forced by recalcitrant Southern senators gave no hint of breaking. As the weeks, and then months, wore on, frustration mounted, exacerbated by the backlash to the increasing American military action in Vietnam.

Out of the Nation yet hardly liberated, Malcolm found himself forced to grapple with the past and the future at once. His decision to cut ties made him a kind of free agent, and some groups and leaders realized the potential advantage in bringing him into the civil rights fold. Yet Malcolm was still working to consolidate his own ideas, on both Islam and politics, and the wounds left by his break with the Nation of Islam were still too fresh to give him a truly clean start. In these early weeks, he alternated between reaffirming his loyalty to Elijah Muhammad’s ideas and decrying his flawed morality, sometimes in speeches only days apart. At the same time, he struggled to stake out ground for