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By Root 1985 0

Oldsmobile. When he reached West 146th Street and Broadway in West Harlem, he pulled over and parked. He had made it a habit not to park his car at speaking venues, where he might be vulnerable to attack. As he waited for the uptown bus, an automobile with New Jersey plates slowed and stopped where he was standing. Malcolm did not recognize the driver, a young African American named Fred Williams, but he did know MMI member Charles X Blackwell in the backseat. Thus reassured, Malcolm slipped into the rear to join him. The car quickly covered the twenty blocks north to the Audubon Ballroom. It was by now just after two in the afternoon, but people were still standing about, indicating that no formal program had started on the main ballroom’s stage.

As Malcolm walked into the Audubon, he might have noticed the absence of the usual police presence stationed in front of the building. According to Peter Goldman, one of Malcolm’s “senior people had talked with the duty captain, requesting that the police leave the building and station themselves in a less public place.” Given the firebombing and the restrictions Malcolm had placed on the MMIʹs security—the lack of weapons, and no frisking at the main door—it is difficult to imagine the rationale for such an odd request, or why the police would grant it. In any event, about eighteen officers were relocated several blocks away, up Broadway, at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.

When Malcolm entered the Grand Ballroom on the second floor, he was immediately encountered by Peter Bailey, holding a bundle of copies of Blacklash. There was something in the OAAUʹs publication that wasn’t quite right, and Malcolm ordered him not to distribute copies of the issue. “For the first time,” remembered Bailey, Malcolm appeared “harried, not fearful . . . but just [like] somebody who had a lot on their mind.” Malcolm asked Bailey if he recognized the Reverend Galamison, and Bailey said that he could. Malcolm further asked him to wait near the main entrance downstairs for Galamison; when he arrived, the civil rights leader should be escorted to the rear room behind the Grand Ballroom’s main stage.

From its entrance to the far end of its plywood stage, the ballroom stretched 180 feet. Behind the stage, waiting in the small room for Malcolm to arrive, was his core MMI and OAAU staff: Sara Mitchell, James 67X, and Benjamin 2X. They immediately sensed that their leader was in a terrible mood. He flopped down on a metal folding chair, but a few minutes later was up, nervously pacing the floor. Benjamin recalled, “He was more tense than I’d ever seen him. . . . He just lost control of himself completely.” When James explained that Galamison’s secretary had contacted him hours before, saying that the ministerʹs schedule was so crowded that afternoon that it would be impossible for him to drive uptown to address the Audubon audience, Malcolm demanded to know why he had not been informed earlier. James cautiously reminded Malcolm that he had neglected to notify him the previous day where he would be spending the night, so he had no idea where to contact him. Several hours ago, he explained, he had phoned Betty with this information and asked her to pass it on. Malcolm exploded: “You gave that message to a woman! ... You should know better than that!” He continued to lash out at anyone near him. When Sheikh Hassoun tried to embrace him, he yelled, “Get out of here!” Both Benjamin and Hassoun left the rear room together, and Benjamin walked up to the podium to start the program.

Within a few minutes Malcolm quietly apologized to those still left in the room. “Something felt wrong out there,” he told them. He added that he felt almost at his “wit’s end.” The OAAU program that was to have been announced at the rally, already postponed once because of the firebombing, was still not ready; Galamison and several other invited speakers would not be present. A successful event now all depended on his giving a suitably spirited speech. “When he came backstage, Malcolm was trying to brush aside his own problems,