Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [84]
In August, Malcolm took great strides toward bringing an older generation of Harlemites into the NOI fold. That month, a festival in honor of Marcus Garvey was organized in Harlem by a committee of local activists, including James Lawson’s African Nationalist Movement and the United African Nationalist Movement. A huge outdoor stand was erected to accommodate the performers, and an impressive lineup of speakers was present. Without question, however, Malcolm stole the show. “Moslem Speaker Electrifies Garvey Crowd,” reported the local Harlem paper, noting that “the fiery Mr. X . . . attacked the white race for being ‘responsible for the plight of the so-called Negroes in America’ and condemned the Negroes’ political and religious leaders as being nothing but ‘puppets for the white man.’” His bravura performance in front of the police station had captured respect, but it was his speech at this festival that converted hundreds of old-line Garveyites to his cause.
Malcolm and the Nation’s rising profile helped boost membership significantly, but it also put them more prominently in the sights of local and federal authorities. In the aftermath of the Hinton beating, the NYPD’s secret operations unit, the Bureau of Special Services and Investigation (BOSS or BOSSI) began to take a special interest. BOSS was an elite unit staffed with detectives and charged with providing security to dignitaries and public leaders visiting the city. It also engaged in covert activities, such as the wiretapping of telephones and the infiltration of organizations deemed politically subversive. On May 15, 1957, NYPD chief inspector Thomas A. Nielson sent a series of urgent telegrams and letters to various law enforcement agencies around the country requesting information about Malcolm. He wrote the Detroit Police Department; the Michigan parole commission; the police chiefs of Dedham and Milton, Massachusetts, and of Lansing, Michigan; and the superintendent of the Massachusetts Reformatory at Concord. From each, Nielson asked for “complete background [of] criminal information with photo showing full description.” The NYPD also began (or stepped up) tracking Malcolm at NOI public gatherings.
Late that summer, Elijah Muhammad gave Malcolm permission to deliver a four-week series of lectures at Temple No. 1 in Detroit, by now relocated to significantly larger quarters at 5401 John C. Lodge Street. Interest in the series was so extensive that the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the country’s most prominent black newspapers, ran an interview with Malcolm in which he denounced the Eisenhower administration, particularly its failure to support the desegregation of public schools across the South. “The root of the trouble and center of the arena is in Washington, D.C.,” he declared, “where the modern-day ‘Pharaoh’s Magicians’ are putting on a great show, fooling most of the so-called Negroes by pretending to be divided against each other.” The worst offender was Eisenhower himself, “the ‘Master Magician’” who was “too busy playing golf to speak out—and with the expert timing of a master general, when he does speak out, he is always too late.” Unlike Elijah Muhammad, who after his spell in prison rarely criticized the government and almost never cited individual officials, Malcolm was both outspoken and named names.
The Detroit public lectures were both a long-awaited homecoming and an announcement of what the future had in store for black militancy. Through family and friends, Malcolm’s remarkable story from criminality to public leadership was well known in black Detroit. The reporter for the Los Angeles Dispatch covering Malcolm’s talk on August 10, 1957, noted, “More than 4,000 Moslems and non-Moslems filled Muhammad’s Detroit Temple of Islam to capacity to hear young Malcolm X.” The paper quoted Malcolm describing the position of black Americans