Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [257]
Malcolm explained that James’s presence was necessary because “there are a lot of people after me . . . they’re bound to get me.” During the visit, Farmer retrieved two postcards he had received from Malcolm when he was in Mecca, and he asked if Malcolm’s inscriptions on the cards reflected a new racial outlook. Malcolm confirmed that his thinking had profoundly changed and that the distance between the two leaders, while still considerable, had been narrowed.
Yet Malcolm’s progress on so many fronts was increasingly impeded by the Nation of Islam, which had begun to draw tight the net around him. By yearʹs end, he was not safe in any city with an NOI presence, and when he traveled he was subjected to direct physical intimidation and threats. On December 23, when he appeared on the Joe Rainey program in Philadelphia, the station received a message that an attempt on his life would be made; Philadelphia police were called to protect Malcolm as he left the station. Two days later, on Christmas, the Nation sent Malcolm a clear message, brutal in its particulars, when four Boston Fruit led by mosque captain Clarence Gill ambushed Malcolm associate Leon 4X Ameer in the lobby of Boston’s Sherry Biltmore hotel. Ameer, a former NOI officer who had been assigned to be a press representative of Muhammad Ali, had fallen from Ali’s favor after Malcolm’s split with the Nation, and took to laying low at the Biltmore. He suffered mightily at the hands of Gill and his men until the beating was broken up at gunpoint by a police officer. Yet this was not the worst of it. Later that night, after Gill had retreated to his hotel room to recover, a second Nation pipe squad broke into his room to finish what their brothers had started. Ameer was so severely injured that he was hospitalized for more than two weeks, yet Gill and his men, arrested after the first incident, were fined a mere hundred dollars each.
The day after Ameerʹs beatings, Malcolm returned to Philadelphia to be a guest on WPENʹs Red Benson show. The program was broadcast from an auditorium open to the general public, and it soon became clear that without the presence of MMI security personnel and on a public stage or podium, Malcolm would be completely vulnerable. At least four NOI members were in the audience throughout the program. Returning to Philadelphia four days later, at two p.m. on December 30, Malcolm held a press conference at the Sheraton hotel, criticizing both black and white newspapers on their distorted coverage of the Congo crisis, and of Africa generally. Five hours later he attended the International Muslim Brotherhood dinner, where he delivered a talk of thirty to forty minutes. A significant number, perhaps more than thirty of those in attendance, were anti-Malcolm NOI members from Philadelphia. By nine p.m. Malcolm and a cordon of MMI security and MMI and OAAU supporters had returned to the Sheraton. An hour and a half later, approximately fifteen NOI members entered the hotel and began a frontal assault of MMI members. The brawling stopped when a police officer appeared. Malcolm immediately phoned Betty, instructing her not to let anyone into their house. One of his final acts of 1964 was to write to Akbar Muhammad, warning him that NOI leaders were trying “to destroy your image in the sight of the Black Muslims in the same way they did mine.” He urged him to hold a press conference denouncing “these vicious people.” Recent events had made him understand that international religious bodies of the Islamic world did not consider the Nation of Islam “as authentical [sic] . . . it is time [for them] to speak out and verify what I am saying. I am going to send letters to religious officials there in the Muslim