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By Root 1821 0

within all levels of government. “Once the black man becomes the political master of his own community, it means the politicians will also be black, which means that he will be sending black representatives even at the federal level.” Malcolm’s strategy was hardly a Leninist recipe for social revolution, but Warren, a guilty white liberal, could not understand his objectives. He gave far too much weight to Malcolm’s incendiary rhetoric and insufficient commentary on the social program he was advancing. At one tense moment Warren inquired if Malcolm believed in political assassination, “and [he] turns the hard, impassive face and veiled eyes upon me, and says, ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’ ”

At the other end of the political spectrum was a series of meetings between Malcolm and the political activist Max Stanford (later known as Muhammad Ahmed). The two had first met in 1962, when Stanford, then twenty-one, had sought out Malcolm to ask if he should join the Nation of Islam. Malcolm had shocked him by replying, “You can do more for the Honorable Elijah Muhammad by working on the outside.” The young man had taken Malcolm’s words to heart, and that same year he and Cleveland activist Donald Freeman created a small, militant nationalist group, the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM). Based originally at Central State University in Ohio, the network developed a presence in Philadelphia in the 1960s and soon had relationships with CORE chapters in Brooklyn and Cleveland. Ideologically, they were influenced by black militants like the exiled Robert Williams and the independent Marxists Grace Lee and James Boggs. The Revolutionary Action Movement perceived itself as an underground organization, “a third force,” Stanford later explained, “between the Nation of Islam and SNCC.ʺ In late May 1964, Stanford arrived in Harlem asking to see Malcolm. The two met at the Harlem restaurant 22 West, Malcolm’s favorite, where Stanford made an outrageously bold request: Would Malcolm consent to be RAMʹs international spokesman? Robert Williams had already agreed to be their international chairman.

At that time, the proposal likely appealed to Malcolm. For some time he had felt that the absence of clear objectives and a united front within the Black Freedom Movement was attributable, in part, to organizational deficiencies. The NAACP, CORE, SCLC, and other groups were like feuding factions at the national level; worse, the parochialism and personal jealousies of their leaders frequently disrupted cooperation at the grassroots level. Stanford argued that what was required was a more clandestine, cadrelike structure that could operate beyond the gaze of the media. ʺRAM would be the underground cadre organization,” Stanford explained, while “the OAAU would be the public front, united front.” At 22 West, Malcolm looked over RAMʹs organizational chart and said, “I see that you have studied the Nation of Islam’s structure.ʺ He was correct: the model did draw from the Nation of Islam, as well as from the Communist Party.

Stanford remained in New York City for several months, and at OAAU meetings he was struck by Malcolm’s finely honed ethnographic skills and powers of observation. He recalled:

It would be at times twenty to thirty people in our apartment, and Malcolm and John Henrik [Clarke] would be there. Malcolm would not chair the meeting. It would be somebody else chairing. And the discussion on the issue would go around the room. And people would be arguing different points of view. Malcolm would be the last person to say anything. He’d let people air out what they had to say. And then he’d say, “Can I say something?” You could hear a pin drop. And he said, “Sister so-and-so has a good point, and she thinks she’s in opposition to Brother so-and-so. And Brother so-and-so has a good argument. But—” And he would synthesize the whole argument. He would show everybody their strong points and everybody their weak points and how everything interrelated. . . . It was amazing. Here’s a man with an international reputation. [Yet he also] could