Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [268]
CHAPTER 15
Death Comes on Time
February 14-February 21, 1965
When a bleary-eyed Malcolm disembarked at Detroit airport at nine thirty a.m. and checked in at the Statler Hilton hotel, his friends were worried for his safety and his sanity. His home had just been firebombed, and his wife and children were in hiding. His coat jacket stank of smoke; he had grabbed the clothing from the half-burned residence. Since being shaken from sleep by the firebombs, he had not slept. One Detroit friend gave him a sedative; Malcolm napped briefly, yet he had a schedule to keep, and soon he was awakened to be interviewed by WXYZ-TV at four p.m. He was then taken to the Ford Auditorium, where he delivered the keynote address at the first annual Dignity Projection and Scholarship Award, where Sidney Poitier and the opera star Marian Anderson also received honors. The program was sponsored by the Afro-American Broadcasting Company, and chaired by a good friend of Malcolm’s, attorney Milton Henry, who was also a leader of the Freedom Now Party in Michigan.
The Reverend Albert Cleage remembered Malcolm’s troubled condition backstage before the event, tired and irritable from the effects of smoke inhalation, and when he took the podium his usual sharpness had abandoned him. At first he rambled through stories of his African and Middle Eastern travels, but eventually found surer footing on the theme of cultural identity that had recently traced its way through his speeches. He characterized the decade 1955-65 as “the era in which we witnessed the emerging of Africa. The spirit of Bandung created a working unity that made it possible for the Asians, who were oppressed, and the Africans, who were oppressed . . . to work together toward gaining independence.” In the United States, the civil rights movement and the Black Muslims emerged. The Nation of Islam “frightened the white man so much he began to say, ‘Thank God for old Uncle Roy [Wilkins] and Uncle Whitney and Uncle A. Philip.’” The audience laughed; Malcolm not only ridiculed the moderates, he tried to paint the Nation of Islam’s role in the most favorable light. Black Muslims, he said, “made the whole civil rights movement become more militant, and more acceptable to the white power structure. . . . We forced many of the civil rights leaders to be even more militant than they intended.” But in 1965, the situation calls for “new methods. . . . It takes power to talk to power. It takes madness almost to deal with a power structure that’s so corrupt.”
Back in New York, a media circus had gathered outside the charred wreckage of his home. The Molotov cocktails had totally destroyed two of the rooms and left three others severely damaged. In a bold move, Captain Joseph drove to the house and met with reporters standing outside. “We own this place, man,” he protested. “We have money tied up here. . . . He didn’t even give us the courtesy of a phone call.” Allegations swirled suggesting the Nation’s involvement, but Newark minister James Shabazz told reporters that the Nation “was unlikely to bomb a house which it was about to repossess. Of course, we would rather have had our property than a burned-out building. . . . We sure didn’t bomb it.” Speculation was also rife that Malcolm had been responsible after detectives found a small bottle containing gasoline on a child’s dresser, and the Nation amplified these rumors in the press. For his part, Malcolm threw the blame back at them. “I have no compassion or mercy or forgiveness for anyone who attacks sleeping babies,” he told the press. “The only thing I regret is that two black groups have to fight and kill each other off.” Yet to confidants, he broached more conspiratorial possibilities. “The Nation of Islam does not attack women and children,” Herman Ferguson recalled him saying. “The Nation would not have burned my house with my wife and children in that house. That was the government.” He could not have known what Thomas