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By Root 1901 0

reinvent his public image—and urgently. The appearance of celebrating violence—whether through allusions to the likelihood of black unrest or through his urging blacks to arm themselves—alienated blacks and whites alike and undermined his efforts with the civil rights establishment. It was equally important to claim the support of leaders from the Middle East and Africa for his new cause. Newly energized, he resumed speaking and traveling at a breakneck pace. Accompanied by James 67X, on May 22 he flew to Chicago and held a press conference covering a broad range of topics, from Africa’s resources to U.S. police brutality. The next night, before an audience of fifteen hundred at Chicago’s Civic Opera House, he unveiled his new views in a debate with Louis Lomax. “Separation is not the goal of the Afro-American,” he told the crowd—an announcement that must have created a stir among his black nationalist followers—“nor is integration his goal. They are merely methods toward his real end—respect as a human being.”

Lomax and others there that night recognized that they were hearing something new. But what were the political implications, especially as related to the Black Freedom Movement? Sounding remarkably like Martin Luther King, Malcolm appealed for a politics that explicitly rejected racial hatred. There was a “universal law of justice,” he declared, that was “sufficient to bring judgment upon those whites who are guilty of racism.” He insisted that “it is not necessary for the victims—the Afro-American—to be vengeful. . . . [We] will do better to spend our time removing the scars from our people.” Yet he also wanted to communicate the spirit of revolution he believed he had witnessed, especially in Cairo and Accra. According to the Los Angeles Times, the “greatest applause came when he said that ‘unless the race issue is quickly settled, the 22 million American Negroes could easily adopt the guerrilla tactics of other deprived revolutionaries.’”

Malcolm’s dilemma was that virtually all his enemies—and friends—perceived him as the high priest of black social revolution, and despite his letters from Mecca and abroad, and his dramatic address in Chicago, he continued to be perceived as an antiwhite demagogue. While the exhaustion of the civil rights movement had brought many activists around to his old way of thinking, his new ideas made for if not quite a reversal, then a major shift that caught them off guard. As Malcolm made his race-neutral views clear in Chicago, comedian and social critic Dick Gregory characterized him in a newspaper interview as a “necessary evil.” Gregory’s own position reflected the leftward shift away from the tactics of King. “I’m committed to nonviolence, but I’m sort of embarrassed by it,” he said. Black militancy was growing, and if the struggle for civil rights “lasts six months longer, Malcolm X is the man you’re all going to have to deal with.” Gregory further warned Los Angeles Times columnist Drew Pearson, “This is a revolution and a good many Negroes have guns. . . . Out of 22 million Negroes, only one million are with Malcolm X. But a lot of them are saying, ‘I’m tired of King.’ ” In Gregory’s mind, “Malcolm X is getting to be about the only man who can stop a race riot.” Yet most striking about these remarks was that Gregory and Malcolm were already largely in agreement. They had worked together on civil rights issues, and both men, despite real or imaginary differences on nonviolence, were members of ACT, the civil rights network established earlier that year that also included leaders as diverse as Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and SNCC chairman John Lewis. If Malcolm’s allies still perceived him as Gregory did, it was not surprising that others doubted the sincerity of his new views.

Malcolm’s struggle to establish where he stood also had internal consequences. By late May, Muslim Mosque, Inc.’s core membership was about 125 strong; to James’s dismay, however, the majority were not fresh from Mosque No. 7 but an eclectic bunch, most of whom had cut their ties to the Nation