Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [70]
Far from being a community overwhelmed and silenced by the weight of racial oppression, Harlem continued to be a lively political environment. The level of participation was high and in full evidence: public rallies, boycotts, and fund-raisers were common. Street philosophers and orators would climb up ladders placed along major thoroughfares, primarily 125th Street, and declaim their ideas to passersby. The Nation found it difficult to make headway, largely because its appeal was apolitical; Elijah Muhammad’s resistance to involvement in political issues affecting blacks, and his opposition to NOI members registering to vote and becoming civically engaged, would have struck most Harlemites as self-defeating.
Many in the neighborhood had already been introduced to a more orthodox Islam through the extensive missionary activities of the Ahmadiyya Muslims. The sect had won the respect of many blacks through its vigorous opposition to legal segregation and its criticism of Christian denominations for accepting Jim Crow. In 1943, for example, the Ahmadis’ Moslem Sunrise had characterized Detroit’s race riot as a “dark blot on this country’s good name.” The colored world would recognize “that black-skinned people are killing and being killed by white-skinned people in free America.” Five years later, the magazine published a survey of nearly 13,600 Presbyterian, Unitarian, Lutheran, and Congregational churches documenting that only 1,331 of them had any nonwhite members. Racism within Christian churches led many African-American artists, writers, and intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s to consider converting to some version of Islam. Recruiting was particularly effective in the bebop world. A key figure was Antigua-born Alfonso Nelson Rainey (Talib Dawud), onetime member of Dizzy Gillespie’s band. Dawud’s own conversion persuaded tenor saxophonist Bill Evans to become a Muslim, acquiring the name Yusef Lateef; his conversion was followed by Lynn Hope’s (Hajj Rashid) and drummer Kenny Clarke’s (Liaqat Ali Salaam). Based in Philadelphia, Dawud developed a working relationship with Harlem’s International Muslim Brotherhood, throughout which a supportive network was established linking largely black masjids in Providence, Washington, D.C., and Boston. Dozens of other popular jazz artists became associated with Ahmadi Islam, including Art Blakey, Ahmad Jamal, McCoy Tyner, Sahib Shihab, and Talib Dawud’s wife, the vocalist Dakota Staton (who changed her name to Aliyah Rabia after conversion). Even those who did not formally convert, like John Coltrane, were heavily influenced by the Ahmadiyya.
In Cleveland, an Ahmadiyya mosque had been established during the Great Depression; by the 1950s it had more than one hundred African-American congregants. Indeed, the Cleveland mosque’s Ahmadi leader, Wali Akram, became perhaps the first black American awarded a visa for a pilgrimage to Mecca, in 1957. All of these activities created among many African Americans a general awareness of different types of Islam, beyond that represented by the Nation of Islam. This was particularly true in Harlem, which made winning converts difficult.
Not until September 1954 did Malcolm secure permanent living quarters in the New York area: at 25-35 Humphrey Street, in the quiet neighborhood of East Elmhurst, Queens. The property was owned and shared by a black couple, Curtis and Susie Kenner. Although Malcolm’s principal responsibility was now Temple No. 7, he was informally promoted to be Elijah Muhammad’s chief troubleshooter along the East Coast, and even in the Midwest. He continued to lecture regularly at the Philadelphia temple throughout the fall and winter months of 1954-55, and also made trips by automobile to Springfield, Massachusetts, and Cincinnati, Ohio, to support local initiatives.
Even more than in the Philadelphia temple, he came to rely on Captain Joseph, routinely dictating instructions to his lieutenant, who in turn barked out orders to subordinates. One Sunday when Malcolm was away, a guest sermon was delivered by the