Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [294]
Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy, controversial, and bold young captain—and we will smile. . . . And we will answer and say unto them: Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever touch him, or have him smile at you? . . . And if you knew him you would know why we must honor him: Malcolm was our manhood, our living black manhood! . . . And we will know him then for what he was and is—a prince—our own black shining prince—who didn’t hesitate to die, because he loved us so.
Following Davis’s eulogy, Betty walked to the coffin to view her husband a final time. Accompanied by two plainclothes police officers, she bent down and kissed the glass cover that had been placed over his body. She then collapsed in tears. The funeral cortege, which included three family cars, twelve police vehicles, and eighteen mourners’ cars, headed north to Westchester County. About twenty-five thousand people braved the freezing weather along the route to the cemetery. Only two hundred people, including media representatives, were allowed at the gravesite. After the last prayers, the coffin was lowered into the grave. There was still time for a final moment of controversy, one that in many respects illustrates the dilemma Malcolm faced at the end of his life. Several MMI and OAAU brothers noticed that the cemetery workers waiting to bury the coffin were all white. No white men, they complained, should be allowed to throw dirt on Malcolm’s body. The workers were persuaded to surrender their shovels, and under a drizzling rain the brothers proceeded to bury Malcolm themselves.
During the weeks after the mosque firebombing and the funeral, Malcolm loyalists feared for their lives. The Nation was convinced that die-hard Malcolmites were responsible for the fire, and that their actions merited fierce retribution. On March 12, Leon 4X Ameer, mostly recovered from the savage beating he had suffered at the hands of Clarence Gill and his men back in December, spoke to a meeting of Boston Trotskyists, claiming he had evidence that the U.S. government was involved in Malcolm’s death. The next day his body was found in his room at the Sherry Biltmore hotel. A medical examiner ruled that Ameer’s death was caused by a coma from a sleeping pill overdose. Another victim was Robert 35X Smith, one of Malcolm’s rostrum guards at the assassination. “Karate Bob,” as he was called, died when he either jumped or was pushed in front of a speeding subway car. When questioned years later about the death, Larry 4X Prescott curtly explained, “He got killed in the subway. They claimed that we pushed him off the subway [platform] or something, which I don’t believe.”
Neither the OAAU nor MMI had cultivated procedures of collective decision making, and without Malcolm, the weak bonds that had held the groups together came apart. Leaders worked on a volunteer basis out of personal devotion to Malcolm, and his death did more than deny them his physical presence: it froze their universe. He had become the cutting edge for rethinking black nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and their own homegrown version of Islam, and often his devotees stumbled behind him—even at times suppressing his letters because his shifts in ideology were too disturbing. Without the architecture of his expanding social vision, they found it almost impossible to build upon his legacy. Trust soon evaporated between most members, as people renounced their ties.
In retrospect, Max Stanford said, “the OAAU was trying to put [itself] together too fast.” Collective leadership was the desired goal, but in reality “most people were mesmerized by Malcolm.” Even when Stanford expressed disagreements