Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [81]
Joseph was asked if he had anything to say in his own defense; he declined to speak, and was told to leave the room. Malcolm informed temple members that the original charge of spousal abuse had been filed eight months before—implying that the case had been considered by the Messenger himself, so delaying the final decision. Then he launched into a vigorous defense of Joseph’s character. “Many of you may not like him. Many of you may have grievances against him . . . But also, many of you won’t make the sacrifice that he would make.” Without question, Joseph was a “good brother,” but for the next three months he was to be treated as an outcast. “And all of those Muslims that follow him are outcasts.”
The FBI watched these internal conflicts with interest. On October 23 its New York office reported to the director that Gravitt had been removed as Temple No. 7’s FOI captain, but that he had been allowed to hold a job as a night cook at the temple’s restaurant. A second report, dated December 12, indicated that Gravitt still remained under suspension; if accurate, this was beyond the ninety-day period that Malcolm had mandated. By the celebration of Saviourʹs Day in Chicago in late February 1957, Joseph had been fully restored to his rank. Yet the experience of becoming a temple “outcast” likely left him feeling a profound sense of humiliation and a loss of status. He was no longer, at least within the confines of the temple, Malcolm’s partner and equal; he was his subordinate, a hardworking but flawed lieutenant who had proven incapable of adhering to Malcolm’s high moral standards.
While Joseph grew angrier, Malcolm continued to be unhappy with the slow growth of Harlem’s Temple No. 7. He had begun making overtures to the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and also recruited several members from Powell’s powerful Baptist church. The most productive fishing grounds by far had been the tiny Pentecostal churches, whose members were working-class blacks. But Malcolm must have seen that the most well-attended institutions in Harlem were those involved in civil rights advocacy, electoral politics, and social reform. The NOI’s culture was designed to look inward, to reject the “devil” and all his works. However, if neither heaven nor hell existed, as Elijah Muhammad taught, and the Negro’s “hell” was here, in the United States, did not Muslims have an obligation to wage jihad?
Despite the absence of legal Jim Crow, New York City in the mid-1950s remained highly segregated. As the New York Times observed, “There is gross discrimination against Negroes here, and in many respects they are the oppressed class of the city.” Blacks as a rule were barred from most private housing, and were shepherded into ghettos like Harlem. The zoning of public schools confined most of their children to a substandard education, and there were frequent examples of police brutality toward blacks. For the NOI to break through to a mass audience, Malcolm would have to speak directly to these issues. Like Powell and other political ministers, he would have to leave his sanctuary and shift his focus beyond simply recruiting congregants for the Nation. He would have to address the real-world conditions of African Americans.
Though he did not realize it at the time, Malcolm’s career as a national civil rights leader began late on the afternoon of April 26, 1957, near the corner of Lenox Avenue and 125th Street, in the heart of Harlem. Two police officers were attempting to arrest a black man, Reese V. Poe, of 120 West 126th Street, following a street altercation. They were working over Poe with their nightsticks when three black men attempted to intervene: Frankie