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By Root 1730 0

with Malcolm, he admitted, “Malcolm would mesmerize me. He was further developed” politically and intellectually than nearly all his followers. Consequently, when Malcolm became “a mass spokesman who’s world-acclaimed,” there was no one after the assassination prepared to assume his leadership mantle. At first, James 67X thought he might be up to the task. Several days after the assassination, he met with Revolutionary Action Movement members Max Stanford and Larry Neal. According to Stanford, James said that “Malcolm had formed a RAM cell somewhere in Muslim Mosque, Inc. and had said that if anything happened to him, I would know what to do.” RAM’s representatives agreed to work with James and other MMI activists. “The agreement was for [James] to continue to go internationally and around the country like Malcolm,” Stanford recalled, “because he could sound like Malcolm.” Yet James soon had his hands full simply trying to keep both groups alive. Because of the long-troublesome divisions between the MMI and the OAAU, there was no one in either group who could inspire the trust and confidence of members in the other group. The secular-oriented activists, moreover, had little interest in the MMI’s Islamic spiritual agenda. Given the absence of administrative resources or even a permanent office, neither organization could be sustained.

As the core of Malcolm’s supporters disappeared or fell away, James alone was left to deal with Betty Shabazz. Even within hours of Malcolm’s murder, her relationship with the MMI and the OAAU had become confrontational. She blamed Malcolm’s supporters for his death; in her bitterness and anger, she instructed several OAAU members to dump into the garbage many of her husband’s important papers, all of which had been moved for safety to the Wallaces’ home. She demanded that James forward to her all MMI correspondence unopened, including letters addressed to Malcolm, allowing her to review everything first. James refused. “She was a grieving widow, a hero’s widow,” he explained, but one who had at best a limited comprehension of the MMI and OAAU’s work.

The care and security of Betty and the children were largely assumed by Ruby Dee, Juanita Poitier, and other female friends, most of them celebrities. These women established the Committee of Concerned Mothers to provide support. Percy Sutton, James Baldwin, and John Oliver Killens also became actively involved. Within several weeks, over six thousand dollars was raised, including a five-hundred-dollar contribution from Shirley Graham Du Bois. In August, the committee organized a benefit concert that attracted a thousand people and generated another five thousand dollars for the purchase of a home. Malcolm’s core constituency, the black poor and working class, never abandoned Betty. She received many envelopes with small amounts of cash, sent either to the Hotel Theresa or to the MMI’s post office box. James 67X wrote to many of Malcolm’s international contacts requesting funds. Advertisements were placed on New York radio stations. Several aggressive MMI brothers even visited Harlem merchants and demanded cash and merchandise “contributions” for Betty and the children. Yet some Malcolm loyalists found Betty’s behavior at this time disturbing. To them, she seemed to be rejecting her husband’s poor and working-class black constituency, favoring instead overtures to the black bourgeoisie. Ferguson put Betty’s elitist politics in the context of Malcolm’s “Message to the Grassroots” speech: “She moved from the field slaves to the house slaves.”

As James 67X’s most trusted allies dissipated, and the difficulties of working with Betty grew more apparent, he recalled his promise to Malcolm to work for him for twelve months. Mid-March 1965 marked the end of that obligation, and he now began considering other options. He was exhausted, and Charles Kenyatta’s scurrilous rumors also had a poisonous effect; some MMI members wondered why James had left the Audubon for nearly an hour following the shooting, and questioned his cordial relations with the Marxists