Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [67]
Although Malcolm’s initial activities focused on Boston, he traveled up and down the East Coast and as far west as Chicago. Sometime that first January back east, he went to several meetings at New York City’s tiny Temple No. 7 in Harlem. In February he served as a guide for pilgrims coming to Chicago to attend the Nation of Islam’s major annual event, the Saviour’s Day convention, celebrating the birth and divinity of its founder, Wallace D. Fard. This marked the first time that the young apprentice took the stage as a featured speaker before a national audience. FBI surveillance indicated that he “spoke against the ‘white devils’” and encouraged “greater hatred on the part of the cult towards the white race.”
By late February, Malcolm’s recruitment efforts had been so successful that there were sufficient converts to create a new temple in Boston, No. 11. At one of his larger public gatherings, he was delighted to see Ella, but she remained a stubborn holdout against the Nation’s call. With its focus on recruiting prisoners and the poor, the Nation didn’t fit with her notions of black middle-class respectability, and she was skeptical of Muhammad’s claim to be Allah’s Messenger. Knowing Ella’s stubborn temperament, Malcolm doubted that his words would ever change her negative view of the Nation. “I wouldn’t have expected anyone short of Allah Himself to have been able to convert Ella.” During this time, it’s possible that Malcolm also reconnected with his former girlfriend Evelyn Williams, who continued to harbor deep feelings for him. She subsequently joined the NOI, and when Malcolm moved to New York later that year, she followed him there.
His next assignment, as minister of Philadelphia’s temple, required both diplomacy and a firm administrative hand. The temple was run by Willie Sharrieff (no relation to Raymond). Malcolm spoke at one of its meetings, informing his stunned audience that he had been authorized to “shake things up.” Along with Isaiah X Edwards, the minister of Baltimore’s temple, he had conducted a preliminary investigation of the temple’s affairs. The day before the meeting, March 5, Sharrieff had been removed from his position. Eugene X Bee, who had been appointed Fruit of Islam temple captain as well as assistant minister by Sharrieff, was also dismissed. Malcolm assumed the titles “teacher” and “acting minister.” To consolidate his position, he led or participated in a series of eight temple meetings throughout the last three weeks of March.
Malcolm’s progress was carefully monitored by the FOI’s supreme captain, Raymond Sharrieff. In 1949, Sharrieff had married Muhammad’s second oldest child, Ethel, and before long exercised administrative authority that went well beyond the Fruit of Islam, overseeing the Nation’s growing real estate and commercial ventures in Chicago. For years, the Nation of Islam had lacked a substantial institutional presence in many key cities, but its failure to grow was now shown not to have been due to a lack of interest in its message but to poor local leadership. In Detroit, Malcolm had exposed Lemuel Hassan as, at best, a mediocre minister. By 1957 Hassan would be reassigned to the less prestigious temple in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Malcolm’s brother Wilfred elevated to become minister of Detroit’s Temple No. 1, second in status only to Chicago. Malcolm’s rise and Hassan’s demotion infuriated