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By Root 1933 0

” Rustin, like Alex Haley, discounted the effectiveness of black nationalism as a potential force in challenging racial inequality. Both men misinterpreted Malcolm’s last frenetic year as an effort to gain respectability as an integrationist and liberal reformer, which was not an accurate or complete reading of him. Rustin’s characterization of Malcolm was designed to deny the militancy and radical potential of “field Negroes,” the black ghetto masses. Rustin wanted to make the point that Malcolm would have inevitably turned his back to the ghetto. “Malcolm’s life was tragic on a heroic scale. He had choices, but never took the easy or comfortable ones,” Rustin observed. Malcolm could have been “a successful lawyer, sipping cocktails with other members of the black bourgeoisie.” Rustin’s image of a transformed Malcolm was that of a pragmatic liberal, not a revolutionary. It was a vision that Haley shared, which is why the Autobiography does not read like a manifesto for black insurrection, but much more in the tradition of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. This may help to explain the enormous popularity of the Autobiography and its adoption into the curricula in hundreds of colleges and thousands of high schools. Between 1965 and 1977, the number of copies of the Autobiography sold worldwide exceeded six million.

During the next few years, the FBI would continue its surveillance of Charles Kenyatta, believing him to be a security risk. BOSS and the NYPD, however, considered him a reliable informant and developed a close working relationship with him. By late April 1965, Kenyatta was observed giving rambling speeches along 125th Street. And by early 1966 he had rejoined the Nation of Islam, probably to provide inside information about the sect to the police. In the late 1960s he started his own organization in Harlem, which proclaimed identification with Kenya’s Mau Mau revolt and the necessity to bring that level of black revolution to the United States. Simultaneously, Kenyatta continued to work closely and cordially as a BOSS informant. In fact, Kenyatta was so highly prized by the police that the NYPD urged the FBI to back off from its continuing surveillance of him. Kenyatta’s strength was in manipulating his own image as Malcolm’s right-hand man while collecting damaging information about other black groups. His true role as a disrupter became evident only with the availability of his FBI file in 2007. Financially, he also cashed in on his political kinship with Malcolm X for decades.

Benjamin 2X Goodman’s response to the assassination was, oddly, to blame the largely secular black audience for panicking, so allowing the killers to escape. “A Muslim audience,” he believed, “would not have panicked. It would have responded to the situation with military discipline, not like a herd of cattle in a thunderstorm.” He was convinced that, without the “stampede,” the “Muslim brothers . . . [would] probably have taken all five assassins.” He decided to retreat from political life, getting work with children’s educational programs through HARYOU, the Harlem-based federally funded advocacy program. Agreeing to meet with FBI agents on April 22, 1966, Goodman indicated that “on many occasions individuals [in NOI Mosque No. 7] have invited [him] to return to the faith as a teacher.” Benjamin admitted that he “truthfully has given it much consideration.” Rewriting history, he denied that Muslim Mosque, Inc., had ever opposed “the basic aims and objectives” of the Nation of Islam. During the interview, he promised naively that he would always be “a brother” to one FBI agent, but that he would not exchange information for money. New York’s FBI special agent in charge, reporting to Hoover, observed, “This indicates that Goodman, if properly and delicately handled, can be influenced to return to the NOI, assuming his Assistant Ministership and possibly move up to the minister capacity and be of extremely valuable assistance to the Bureau.” Unfortunately for the FBI, Benjamin never rejoined the Nation, and he eventually, like Malcolm,