Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [41]
Many who favored the radical new jazz coming from Harlem nightclubs described the 1943 insurrection as another “zoot suit riot.” The term had become a common metaphor for black activities that seemed subversive to white order. One zoot-suiter who had taken part in the Harlem riot linked black resistance to the U.S. war effort with urban unrest: “I’m not a spy or a saboteur, but I don’t like goin’ over there fightin’ for the white man—so be it.” Even African-American social psychologist Kenneth Clarke characterized the new militancy he had observed in Harlem as “the Zoot Effect.” As the critic Frank Kofsky observed of the bebop movement, “Jazz inevitably functioned not solely as music, but also as a vehicle for the expression of outraged protest.”
Malcolm was thoroughly immersed in this world, and well aware of the new sound and its implications—the frisson of outsiders shaking up mainstream culture. Like the zoot-suiters, beboppers implicitly rejected assimilation into standards established by whites and were contemptuous of the police and the power of the U.S. government over black people’s lives. Both sought to carve out identities that blacks could claim for themselves. Jazz artists recognized the parallels and, not surprisingly, later became Malcolm’s avid supporters in the 1960s. His version of militant black nationalism appealed to their spirit of rebellion and artistic nonconformity.
One major lesson Malcolm absorbed from the jazz artists’ performances in the forties was the power of black art to convey celebrity status. Young Malcolm wistfully dreamt about the adoration of the crowd. In Harlem, he would escort Reginald backstage to join the artists and the musicians at the Roxy or the Paramount, intimating that they knew who he was. “After selling reefers with the bands as they traveled, I was known to almost every popular Negro musician around New York in 1944-45,” he would boast. In July 1944, he even found work at the Lobster Pond nightclub on Fortysecond Street. The proprietor, Abe Goldstein, is identified as “Hymie” in the Autobiography:
“Red, I’m a Jew and you’re black,” he would say. “These Gentiles don’t like either one of us.”
Hymie paid me good money while I was with him, sometimes two hundred and three hundred a week. I would have done anything for Hymie. I did do all kinds of things. But my main job was transporting bootleg that Hymie supplied, usually to those spruced-up bars which he had sold to someone.
What the Autobiography fails to reveal is that Detroit Red, under the stage name Jack Carlton, was allowed to perform as a bar entertainer. At last, on a lighted nightclub stage, Malcolm could display his dancing ability; he even sometimes played the drums. The stage name was his way of honoring his late half brother, Earl, Jr., who had performed as Jimmy Carlton. It isn’t clear whether Goldstein paid Malcolm primarily to entertain or to transport illegal alcohol (if his account is true). But in October 1944, Malcolm was fired. A few years later, on the occasion of another arrest, Goldstein described his former employee as “a bit unstable and neurotic but under proper guidance, a good boy.”
Unemployed and desperate, and probably nursing a drug habit, Malcolm soon drifted back to Boston, and to Ella. He may have reasoned that, given her own continuing illegal activities, she could hardly turn her back on him, and he tried to convince her that he would turn over a new leaf and return to