Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [205]
Malcolm celebrated what would be his final birthday, turning thirty-nine on May 19, 1964. Part of that day was spent flying from Casablanca to Algiers, where he arrived in the afternoon, before surveying the city by foot and eating a late dinner. This city, his last on the African journey, however, did not yield much. Malcolm was disappointed to find few people who could speak English; plus his calls to the Ghanaian embassy were fruitless and his contact in the Algerian foreign ministry wasn’t at his office when Malcolm stopped by. On the twentieth, Malcolm toured the city by taxi, leaning out the car window to take photographs. Meanwhile, that same day back in the United States, he would later learn, a warrant was issued for his arrest for failing to appear at a trial to respond to the speeding ticket he had been given in the hectic days surrounding Cassius Clay’s visit to New York.
On departure day, May 21, Malcolm was briefly detained by police at the Algiers airport, who believed that the photos he’d taken were a security risk. It was only by providing evidence of his status as a Muslim that he was released, with apologies. Malcolm arrived home to JFK airport in the late afternoon to a crowd of about sixty, mostly family and friends. A press conference was arranged for that evening at the Hotel Theresa, where, as he would in the days that immediately followed, Malcolm emphasized his desire to create a new “organization which will be open for the participation of all Negroes, and we will be willing to accept the support of people of other races.” Malcolm candidly admitted that his “racial philosophy” had been altered after all he had seen—“thousands of people of different races and colors who treated me as a human being.”
Malcolm was ready to enter the international political stage, leaving the parochialism and backwardness of Yacub and the Nation far behind him. Yet in returning to the world he had left a month before, he would find that the profound transformation he’d experienced in the Middle East and Africa had not similarly taken root in his MMI brothers. At the airport greeting, despite their break from the sect, they were still wearing the standard Nation of Islam uniform, the “dark blue suits, white shirts and distinctive red or grey bow ties.” Malcolm may have traveled to a different world, spiritually and politically, but his followers would not be so easily transported.
CHAPTER 12
“Do Something About Malcolm X”
May 21-July 11, 1964
Malcolm’s growing fame in the wake of his split from the Nation of Islam attracted interest from people of many stripes, and throughout March and April secular activists, writers, and even celebrities tried to make personal contact with him. Hundreds of people craved his time and attention at a moment when he desperately needed to find peace. The hajj to Mecca was not unlike a journey to some undiscovered country to learn what a spiritual commitment to Islam would mean in his life. Yet thousands of miles distant from the site of this spiritual pilgrimage, a whirlwind of political activity continued to spiral around Malcolm X.
Within several weeks after Malcolm’s break, Muslim Mosque, Inc., had established a regular routine at its Hotel Theresa headquarters. In these early, often chaotic days, stability came at a premium. MMI business meetings were held on Monday nights. On Wednesday evenings, an Islamic religious service was held. On Thursday nights, the MMI office was turned over to MMI women, who were still referred to as MGT. On Sunday nights, if Malcolm was in the city, a public rally or event was scheduled at the Audubon. An FBI informant reported that at the March 26, 1964, MMI gathering about seventy-five people attended the “open meeting,” which was followed by a closed session restricted to about forty-five “registered Muslims.” James 67X ran the private meeting, focusing on security matters and warning the sisters and brothers “to be careful of the NOI.”
As Malcolm traveled and gave speeches