Malcolm X_ A Life Of Reinvention Part 13

The most detailed eyewitness account by a journalist was that of freelance writer Welton Smith, whose story appeared in the New York Herald Tribune New York Herald Tribune . Smith first observed a man wearing "a black overcoat in the middle of the hall" rise to his feet and "[yell] at the man next to him, 'Get your hand out of my pockets!' " Gunshots then erupted from the front stage as Smith found himself violently pushed to the ballroom floor by others. All the shots took place "within fifteen seconds." By the time Smith rose to his feet, he saw two men chase the man in the black overcoat, who turned and fired at his pursuers as he ran toward the main entrance. Smith located the smoke bomb at the back of the ballroom, smothered the fuse, and looked for water to douse it. Several minutes later, he could see that about eight people were bending over Malcolm. As several MMI security personnel attempted to keep others from crowding onto the stage, Smith saw Yuri Kochiyama, an OAAU member, bend over Malcolm and heard her shout, "He's still alive! His heart's still beating!" . Smith first observed a man wearing "a black overcoat in the middle of the hall" rise to his feet and "[yell] at the man next to him, 'Get your hand out of my pockets!' " Gunshots then erupted from the front stage as Smith found himself violently pushed to the ballroom floor by others. All the shots took place "within fifteen seconds." By the time Smith rose to his feet, he saw two men chase the man in the black overcoat, who turned and fired at his pursuers as he ran toward the main entrance. Smith located the smoke bomb at the back of the ballroom, smothered the fuse, and looked for water to douse it. Several minutes later, he could see that about eight people were bending over Malcolm. As several MMI security personnel attempted to keep others from crowding onto the stage, Smith saw Yuri Kochiyama, an OAAU member, bend over Malcolm and heard her shout, "He's still alive! His heart's still beating!"

Mercifully, Betty had witnessed only the first terrible seconds of her husband's murder. When she first heard the boom of the shotgun blast, she instinctively turned her body toward the stage. "There was no one else in there they'd be shooting at," she recalled later. Two more killers with handguns stepped forward, firing into Malcolm. Betty would later claim that she had seen her husband collapse onstage under this withering fire. Observers, however, saw her quickly gathering her terrified children, pus.h.i.+ng them to the floor, s.h.i.+elded partially by a wooden bench and her own body. As the shooting continued, Betty screamed out, "They're killing my husband!" While the a.s.sa.s.sins fled the scene, the Shabazz children began to cry and to speak up. "Are they going to kill everyone?" one daughter asked. Betty could see people running up to the stage, overwhelmed by the terrible damage that Malcolm had sustained. Finally rising to her feet, she began to run toward the body, sobbing and screaming; friends tried to hold her back because she was clearly hysterical. After Gene Roberts checked on the safety of his wife, Joan, who had been seated in the front near several reporters, he rushed to the stage. Immediately he sensed that Malcolm was dead, yet he desperately attempted to revive him with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Joan Roberts was deeply traumatized by Malcolm's a.s.sa.s.sination and her husband's near death. She wept uncontrollably in the taxi as she went home with her husband. Forty years later, Gene Roberts observed that "the horror of the incident stayed with her for years."

As the smoke still wafted overhead, MMI and OAAU members stumbled around the ballroom aimlessly, in stunned disbelief at what they had just witnessed. The journalist and OAAU member Earl Grant had been using the pay telephone near the front entrance, making a follow-up call to solicit funds at Malcolm's request, when the first shot rang out. He tried to reenter the ballroom but was pushed aside by the stampede of people fleeing the building. When he finally reached the stage, Malcolm's s.h.i.+rt had been opened and blood covered his torso. Grant retrieved his reporter's camera and began taking photographs. His photos would become the main images of the death of Malcolm X.

When Herman Ferguson finally managed to reach the Audubon's main entrance, he saw to his immediate right "a big commotion going on in the street. . . . A crowd of people had a man up in the air and they were pulling and tugging on him." Wandering in shock, Ferguson found himself on the corner of Broadway and West 166th Street brooding over "what I had just seen-Malcolm's death." A few minutes later he recognized several MMI and OAAU brothers rus.h.i.+ng by with a hospital gurney, which they wheeled into the building. Soon a group of policemen and the brothers returned with the gurney bearing a familiar figure: "I looked down at Malcolm. I could already see the pallor, the grayish pallor of his face. . . . His s.h.i.+rt was opened and his collar and tie were pulled down. You could see his chest . . . [and] a pattern of about seven bullet holes, holes large enough to fit your little finger. And I [thought] to myself that he was gone."

Ferguson stood disoriented at the corner for several minutes, trying to decide what to do next. Just then a police car, traveling north up Broadway, turned sharply and stopped only a few feet from him. The squad car held two policemen, one of whom he judged to be "police bra.s.s," due to "the scrambled eggs on his hat." The officer left the car and entered the Audubon, returning moments later with a man with an olive complexion who was "obviously in great pain." As the man was a.s.sisted into the backseat, Ferguson walked to the car. "He was slumped over, holding his midsection, and I had to bend down and look into his face." Ferguson figured the man had been shot; thinking that the wounded man was "one of our guys," he asked what was happening. The squad car sped away-only instead of making a right turn across Broadway toward Columbia Presbyterian, the nearest hospital, "they kept going down towards the [Hudson] river, across the street, down that incline, and disappeared out of sight."

When the frantic MMI and OAAU members and police carrying Malcolm's body reached Columbia Presbyterian's emergency room, one physician immediately performed a stab tracheotomy in an effort to revive him. Malcolm was then taken to the hospital's third floor, where other physicians set to work. The doctors knew Malcolm was almost certainly dead by the time he was brought into the emergency room, but they continued to try to revive him for fifteen minutes before giving up. At three thirty p.m., in a small office overflowing with Malcolm's supporters and a growing cl.u.s.ter of journalists, a doctor announced in an oddly detached manner: "The gentleman you knew as Malcolm X is dead."

Malcolm's princ.i.p.al lieutenants did not personally witness the shooting. Mitch.e.l.l, Benjamin 2X, and James 67X were all together backstage. "I heard a sound like firecrackers," Benjamin recalled. "I heard blasts of gunfire. . . . The perspiration broke out of every pore of my body. I knew that he was gone." He had tried to get up but physically couldn't. "I just sat there, stunned, staring through the open doorway at the body on the stage. . . . Then, all at once, it left me, the weight on my shoulders, and I felt a great relief come over me, Malcolm's relief from all his suffering. Death ends a thing on time. Whatever may be the instruments to bring it about, when it comes, it comes on time."

Sara Mitch.e.l.l was struck by the actions of Malcolm's disciples, who cl.u.s.tered around his body: "'Maybe he can still make it,' they told each other and his wife, Betty. And together, they tried to beg him, pray him, will him back to life." Mitch.e.l.l later complained, "After the gunfire ceased, terrible minutes pa.s.sed and still there were no policemen on the scene." Although one of the city's major medical centers was only several blocks away, no ambulance arrived at the Audubon, which is why Malcolm's own men had to run to the emergency room to pick up a gurney. Several women "steered [Malcolm's] dazed wife outside and gathered his four little girls to be taken home. Only then did policemen come inside." MMI and OAAU members were outraged when the police finally showed up. "Their appearance was so ridiculously late," Mitch.e.l.l recalled, "that one tearful woman yelled and waved them aside, saying, 'Don't hurry; come tomorrow!' "

"When the shots rang out," James 67X recalled, "Benjamin . . . dived down to the floor. I then walked out. . . . People were up on the stage, Malcolm was laying down, and I saw the life go out of his body." A film taken of the a.s.sa.s.sination's aftermath shows James kneeling over Malcolm and apparently removing something from the body. Then, inexplicably, without giving orders to subordinates or a.s.suming command, he promptly walked through what remained of the disoriented crowd, pa.s.sed by several police officers who were just arriving, and left the building. James 67X would claim years later that his immediate intention was "to shoot [Captain] Joseph" in retaliation.

Patrolmen Gilbert Henry and John Carroll had been a.s.signed to the smaller Rose Ballroom, the farthest distance from the shooting site. When the sounds of gunfire erupted, Henry frantically attempted to call for police backup, but "couldn't get an answer" on his walkie-talkie. Both officers scrambled toward the Audubon's entrance, the only direct route into the main ballroom, but they were blocked by hundreds of screaming, jostling people fleeing down the main stairwell into the street. In the chaos and confusion, it was impossible for the two officers to identify a fleeing a.s.sailant.

At approximately 3:05 p.m., less than two minutes after the shooting, Lieutenant Bernard Mulligan of BOSS learned that Malcolm had been shot. NYPD detectives Henry Suarez and Kenneth Egan were immediately dispatched to the crime scene.

Several minutes later, the two men arrived at the Audubon, where they were met by several other officers desperately attempting to restore order. Informed that Malcolm had been taken to Columbia Presbyterian, Suarez and Egan promptly went over to the hospital, where they consulted with NYPD detectives Ferdinand "Rocky" Cavallaro and Thomas Cusmano of the 34th Precinct. The officers jotted down the names of all those who had gone to the hospital from the ballroom; they also learned that although the a.s.sa.s.sination had occurred only ten minutes earlier, a wounded suspect, "Tommy Hagan," was already being interrogated at the 34th Precinct. At 3:14 p.m., doctors told them that Malcolm had been "dead on arrival" upon reaching the emergency room.

At the hospital, Egan and Suarez secured the personal items found in Malcolm's clothing. They carefully cataloged them: "One 1965 Red Diary which had been in his breast pocket, had 3 bullet holes; one tear gas pen devise [sic] 'Penguin' with two TG-4 cartridges for same, one of which was in the pen for immediate use."

By 3:35 p.m., Cavallaro and Cusmano had returned to the Audubon, where they learned that one of the probable murder weapons, a sawed-off J.C. Higgins shotgun "wrapped in a man's suit jacket," had been found lying on a table in the left rear of the stage. Together with other officers they proceeded to comb the vacant ballrooms for additional physical evidence related to the crime. Locations of bullet holes and other ballistics debris were duly marked off, and the NYPD's photo unit was called up. Investigators also learned that several others had been wounded during the a.s.sa.s.sination, all of whom were relocated to the hospital, and proceeded to interrogate them. The fifty-one-year-old OAAU member Willie Harris had been sitting three rows from the back of the ballroom when the trouble started. After the barrage of gunshots, he had tried to flee through the ballroom's main entrance. As he explained to detective James Rus.h.i.+n, "I was. .h.i.t by a bullet. I then left the hall and went to a patrolman . . . and told him I had been hit."

NYPD detective James O'Connell took the statement of another man receiving medical attention, thirty-six-year-old William Parker, a building superintendent in Astoria, Queens. Parker had taken his six-year-old son Nathaniel to the rally just "to see what the meeting was all about." Sitting three rows back from the stage near the middle aisle, he had grabbed his son and dropped to the floor when the first shot was fired. As the fusillade continued, Parker felt a sharp pain in his left foot. It was only after he and the boy walked down the crowded stairwell that he realized that he had been shot. Given the number of bullets fired in an enclosed s.p.a.ce, it was remarkable that, apart from minor wounds such as this, Malcolm's was the sole fatality.

As the remaining MMI and OAAU members still inside the Audubon surveyed the initial stages of the NYPD's investigation, most officers at the crime scene appeared apathetic about the shooting. Earl Grant recalled that the first police officers who entered the Audubon were "strolling at about the pace one would expect of them if they were patrolling a quiet park. . . . Not one of them had his gun out!" A few cops "even had their hands in their pockets." As many as 150 members of the audience who had initially fled into the street by now had returned to the Grand Ballroom. One frustrated black man cried out, "There ain't no G.o.dd.a.m.n hope for our people in this lousy country. You got to fight them lousy whites and fight the stupid n.i.g.g.ahs too." An elderly West Indian woman confronted reporter Welton Smith: "Don't you menfolk let them get away with it. They done hurt Malcolm and don't you let them get away with it. They can't stop us. And the white man can't stop us. We know the white man put them up to it." Another man angrily declared to Smith, "I know the cops had a hand in it. . . . [L]ook how long it took the cops to get up to the hall after this happened. It must have been ten minutes, and it took the ambulance almost half an hour to come from the hospital right across the street. Now you tell me that this wasn't nothing but coincidence."

The deep skepticism about the NYPD's unprofessional behavior was not without merit. Most street cops were contemptuous of Malcolm, whom they considered a dangerous racist demagogue. Many believed that Malcolm had firebombed his own house in some kind of publicity stunt. Besides, they thought, given Malcolm's incendiary rhetoric, it was inevitable that the black leader would be struck down by the very violence he had promoted. Most police officers generally treated his murder case not as a significant political a.s.sa.s.sination, but as a neighborhood shooting in the dark ghetto, a casualty from two rival black gangs feuding against each other.

Shortly before four p.m., James 67X returned to the Audubon, where police officers demanded to know where he had been. He replied, "I was going up . . ." Then James asked himself, "How do they know that I left? . . . They must have photographed this whole thing." Days later the police showed him "a seating plan . . . where everybody was seated in the Audubon Ballroom." The police demanded that both James and Reuben X accompany them to the 34th Precinct, where they were driven by a detective named Kitchman. Apparently, either Reuben or James left some ammunition in the rear seat of Kitchman's car, for the following day the detective found five .32 caliber bullets there. Reuben was charged with felonious a.s.sault and possession of a deadly weapon in the shooting of Hayer. At 8:20 p.m., New York County a.s.sistant district attorney Herbert Stern and police detective William Confrey began James's interview, which yielded little. At 8:32 p.m., the police report noted, "Mr. Warden stopped talking." James was released, going immediately to the Hotel Theresa, where he met with some MMI and OAAU members.

Two hours later, Stern interrogated Reuben X; police detectives John J. Keeley and William Confrey witnessed this interview. Reuben's story was only slightly less obscure than James's. He a.s.serted that he had "arrived at the ballroom before Malcolm, and stood in the rear of the hall." After the gunfire had stopped, he said, he "saw two men running back towards the exit." He "ran after them and saw that one had been captured by the police." Reuben claimed that he then had just "returned to the ballroom" and that "he could offer nothing of any further value." Several days later, Reuben was released on bail. "Brother Reuben" was immediately hailed as a "hero" by MMI and OAAU members and other black activists as the sole bodyguard who had displayed the courage to return fire at Malcolm's killers.

Meanwhile, back at the Audubon, the NYPD photo unit was well into its forensic work. The detectives caucused informally to evaluate the evidence they had obtained so far, concluding that the open hostilities between two "black hate groups" could spark a riot throughout Harlem-and the possibility of having to quell such a major uprising was something they feared far more than the public slaying of a single black man. To forestall any act of vengeance by Malcolm's followers, officers promptly ordered the Nation's Harlem restaurant to close.

For the detectives working the case, too many facts didn't make sense. The request from Malcolm's team that the usual police detail be pulled back several blocks from the Audubon seemed strange, as did the police's agreement to do so in light of the recent firebombing. The detectives were also suspicious when they learned that nearly all of the MMI and OAAU security personnel had been unarmed and that none of the audience had been checked for weapons. Yet time would not be on the side of justice. As the forensic team continued its work, the Audubon's management asked that the police vacate the building as quickly as possible. A dance sponsored by a local black church had been scheduled for later that evening. Remarkably, the police never completed a full forensic a.n.a.lysis of the crime scene: the back wall of the stage was literally pockmarked with bullet holes of different calibers; Malcolm's blood still covered part of the shattered stage-yet the officers agreed to leave. By six p.m. three women workers were mopping up Malcolm's blood, moving chairs, and cleaning the ballroom floor. The festive George Was.h.i.+ngton Birthday Party dance was held at the Audubon Ballroom, as advertised, at seven p.m., only four hours after the a.s.sa.s.sination.

Meanwhile, the FBI was trying to piece together its own interpretation of what had happened. At least five undercover informants had been in the ballroom at the time of the shooting. One of them reported that the first a.s.sailant had been a man standing near or at the front row. He "put his left hand in his left pocket of his jacket and removed something. He then extended his arm toward Malcolm X." According to this informant, Malcolm "said, excitedly, Dont do it,' and stepped further to his left." This first gunman then fired four or five shots.

Another informant, Jasper Davis, placed the initial disturbance in the seventh or eighth row back from the stage. Others seated around the two quarreling men also stood up "and added to the confusion." Only then, reported Davis, did he hear "a shot coming from the front of the room." A third informant estimated that four to five individuals had been involved in the shooting. Two of the gunmen ran "past him," and two others ran "out [through] the ballroom." An FBI memo dated February 22 describes Reuben X Francis as having "shot one of the quote decoys unquote," which suggests that the FBI believed Hayer was one of the two men involved in the initial altercation, just before the first shot. The same memorandum reports that four other individuals had also been hit. Several hours after the shootings, one informant reported, "trusted members of the MMI met at the Hotel Theresa," where James 67X "stated that he had never headed an organization but would do all he could to preserve the idea and keep the program alive. He stated that a lesson had been learned by the group in that now they must tighten up the security of both members and leaders, and stated, 'We are at war.' "

Other important FBI evidence was connected with OAAU member and FBI informant Ronald Timberlake. Several hours after the shooting, Timberlake telephoned the Bureau's New York office to report that he had picked up one of the murder weapons. He specified that he would turn over the gun only to the FBI, not to the NYPD. The next day, however, February 22, he gave an account of the murder to the NYPD, specifying that he had arrived at the Audubon at approximately 2:10 the previous afternoon, where he had "hung out at the rear of the hall." When the audience disruption began, Malcolm had instructed the audience to "keep your seats." Shots were fired at Malcolm from four or five a.s.sailants, who then attempted to flee. Timberlake claimed that he had thrown a "body block" at the gunman closest to him. His general description of the man he had attempted to block was detailed: black, six feet in height, wearing a dark gray tweed coat and blue pants. Timberlake had tripped him and both of them had tumbled to the floor. A second a.s.sailant, whom Timberlake described as also black, approximately twenty years old and five feet, seven inches tall, wearing a dark brown three-quarter-length jacket, jumped over them and fled down the central stairway and out the main door. Seconds later, as the stairway was clogged with people, Timberlake pulled out his gun but found it impossible to locate the other shooters, or even to exit the front door. He put his handgun back in his pocket and returned to the ballroom to look for his coat. After waiting a few minutes, he simply returned home. Timberlake subsequently identified "Tommy Hagen [Hayer]" as one of the two shooters he had seen.

The news of Malcolm's murder was broadcast by the media within minutes, nationally and internationally. At the Nation of Islam Chicago headquarters, Elijah Muhammad was stunned, according to an account provided by a grandson. "Oh my G.o.d! . . . Um, um, um!" Muhammad reportedly murmured. The emotional split with his "lost-found" disciple had finally come to a tragic end. "You know, I really want to go home now," Muhammad told his grandson and other NOI subordinates. It was a wise decision. Undoubtedly, Muhammad's dedicated security force, the Fruit of Islam, realized that Malcolm's murder would almost certainly trigger an act of retaliatory violence against their leader. The Chicago office, while protected by a corps of highly trained men, could still be difficult to defend from a frontal a.s.sault, but Muhammad's Hyde Park mansion had been carefully constructed to be virtually impregnable. Several family members and other devoted followers owned residences adjacent to Muhammad's mansion, and NOI security men routinely prowled the sidewalks surrounding the property. Muhammad and his advisers retreated to his fortress and waited.

The terrible news of Malcolm's murder quickly reached Alex Haley at his home in upstate New York. Less than two hours later, his grief was pushed aside by practical concerns. Haley typed a letter to Paul Reynolds, fearing their lucrative deal might now be in jeopardy. "None of us would have had it be this way," Haley wrote, "but since this book represent's [sic] Malcolm's sole financial legacy to his widow and four little daughters . . . I'm just glad that it's ready for the press now at a peak of interest for what will be international large sales, and paperback, and all." He also advised Reynolds that Doubleday should be alerted to a potential financial problem: I am almost certain that within the next two or three days Malcolm's widow, Sister Betty, will contact me asking for some advance money from Doubleday or some other would be possible for her, to tide her through the immediate weeks. She hasn't a home since last week they moved in the middle of the night, just ahead of the next day's legal eviction to return the home to the Muslims. And Malcolm, talking with me yesterday, said that he had "two or three hundred dollars " which would be the total extent of Sister Betty's funds.

A few days later, Haley had another thought. Again writing to Reynolds, he suggested, "Maybe some magazine might wish to pay well enough for a probing interview of Elijah Muhammad. I could accomplish this." Haley proposed something along the lines of his earlier personal interviews with Malcolm and Martin Luther King, Jr., featured in Playboy Playboy. Haley a.s.sured Reynolds that he would not be at any personal risk from such an a.s.signment. "I know there would be no danger from the Muhammad faction side of the fence; they would want me to do it. They a.s.sociate me with major publicity done with dignity, which they desperately want." Some of Malcolm's friends might "feel nettled that I was in Chicago with Muhammad," but they could be handled. Get the contract first, Haley advised; he would then "contact Sister Betty and also a couple of Malcolm's close lieutenants and tell them that I had the order, which is a professional job." Another benefit for Haley would be to maintain his line of communications with the Nation's leaders.h.i.+p. "It would give me a chance to say to Muhammad some things I'd like to regarding the book-that he isn't attacked as he might think, that he actually is praised by Malcolm." Haley insisted that "some other writers might presently have bigger 'names' (Baldwin, Lomax, Lincoln) . . . [but] actually I have the very best inside track to the Muslims' confidence." Nothing came of these overtures, and Haley and Reynolds's fears were fully justified. Within two weeks, in a terribly shortsighted move, Doubleday's owner, Nelson Doubleday, abruptly canceled the contract.

On the day of the a.s.sa.s.sination, NOI enforcer Norman Butler was still out on bail for the Benjamin Brown killing. That morning he'd visited a doctor to obtain treatment for leg injuries, which had come from his violent beating by the police during his recent arrest. Butler had spent most of Sunday watching television at home. When he saw the news reports about Malcolm's murder, he phoned Mosque No. 7 and finally reached Captain Joseph, who strongly advised him to get himself seen by others as soon as possible-to walk to the corner store and "buy a quart of milk," to speak to several neighbors in his building, and so on. Butler decided not to follow Joseph's advice; after all, he had not attended the event at the Audubon. He slumped back in his chair and continued watching television. That decision would cost him two decades of his life.

Thomas 15X Johnson, like Butler, had not known that Malcolm "was going to get hit that Sunday." At the time, he lived in a top-floor apartment across from the Bronx Zoo. A neighbor called up to Johnson and yelled, "Turn your TV on . . . Big Red just got hit!" Since the Benjamin Brown shooting and Johnson's arrest, Captain Joseph had forbidden Johnson from attending Mosque No. 7 functions. For weeks Joseph had met with him privately, giving him orders. Johnson was not at all surprised by Malcolm's murder: "I already knew-John Ali made it known." He found himself pleased that Malcolm was finally dead.

In Detroit, at Nation of Islam Mosque No. 1, Malcolm's oldest brother, Wilfred X Little, was conducting a service that Sunday afternoon when he received word of the murder. The news shook him terribly, but he went on with the service. At its conclusion, he solemnly announced to the congregation that Malcolm had been a.s.sa.s.sinated. Some in the audience had known his brother many years earlier, when he was their energetic a.s.sistant minister. "No sense in getting emotional," Minister Wilfred cautioned his flock. "This is the kind of times we are living in. Once you are dead your troubles are over. It's those living that're in trouble."

And in northern California that Sunday afternoon, Maya Angelou was chatting on the telephone with her girlfriend Ivonne. Angelou recalled that there "was no cheer in [Ivonne's] voice" when she said, "These Negroes are crazy here. I mean, really crazy. Otherwise why would they have just killed that man in New York?" In disbelief, Angelou managed to place the phone receiver down on a table. She walked into a bedroom and locked the door behind her. "I didn't have to ask," she remembered. "I knew 'that man in New York' was Malcolm X and that someone had just killed him." The next morning in bed, her first thought was that she "had returned from Africa to give my energies and wit to the OAAU, and Malcolm was dead."

CHAPTER 16.

Life After Death The shattered remains of Malcolm Little were in the hands of Dr. Milton Helpern on the morning of Monday, February 22, 1965. A veteran medical examiner, Helpern had previously directed more than twelve thousand autopsies and had partic.i.p.ated in fifty thousand others. As stenographer Frank Smith transcribed Helpern's forensic remarks, the autopsy examination proceeded: "The body is that of an adult colored male, six foot three inches tall, scale weight 178 lbs. There is slight frontal baldness. There is a wide mustache brown in color, also a goatee of brown hair with a few gray hairs." Physically, Malcolm had been in good condition: slender, but muscular. "The hands are well developed. The fingernails are neatly trimmed." Examining the head, Helpern determined that there were no hemorrhages to the scalp. Malcolm's brain was "heavy, weighs 1700 grams." A brain section was taken, which revealed "no abnormalities."

Helpern surveyed the evidence provided from the multiple gunshot wounds. Much of the damage had been caused by the initial shotgun blast, including two wounds on the right forearm, two more in the right hand. The full force of the blast perforated the chest, cutting into "the thoracic cavity, the left lung, pericardium, heart, aorta, right lung." Handgun bullet wounds pockmarked the rest of the body: several in the left leg, a slug shattering the left index and middle fingers, a slug fragment embedded into the right side of his chin, a "bullet wound of [the] left thigh" that extended "through the innominate bone into the peritoneal cavity, penetrating the intestines and the mesentery and aorta." Helpern methodically counted twenty-one separate wounds, ten of which had been from the initial blast. The forensic evidence indicated that three different guns had been used-a sawed-off shotgun, a 9mm automatic, and a .45 caliber handgun, probably a Luger. Helpern set aside a number of slugs and bullets for further testing by the NYPD's ballistics bureau.

The NYPD's narrative about Malcolm's murder was simple. The slaying was the culmination of an almost yearlong feud between two black hate groups. The NYPD had two priorities in conducting its investigation: first, to protect the ident.i.ties of its undercover police officers and informants, like Gene Roberts; and second, to make successful cases against NOI members with histories of violence. Its hasty and haphazard treatment of forensic evidence at the crime scene suggested that it had little interest in solving the actual homicide.

From the outset, the NYPD focused its attention on Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson, the two NOI lieutenants they believed had partic.i.p.ated in the shooting of Benjamin Brown in the Bronx. The department's hypothesis in the Malcolm killing was that Butler was the second gunman along with Hayer. Johnson was supposedly the shotgun shooter, despite that he was about four inches taller and fairer complexioned than the very dark, stocky Willie Bradley. Still, the police's suspicions were not entirely without merit. Several OAAU and MMI members placed either Butler or Johnson in the Audubon on the day of the shooting. George Matthews, a member of both groups, informed an NYPD detective that "Butler looks like one of the men who had been engaged in the argument but that he would not swear to this." An "unspecified number" of other eyewitnesses viewed Butler in lineups, and two claimed that he had been inside the Grand Ballroom on the day of the shooting.

Yet the most intriguing piece of evidence against Butler came from Sharon 6X Poole, the eighteen-year-old OAAU secretary with whom Malcolm had been secretly involved in the previous weeks. Only minutes after the shooting, she told a news interviewer that one of the a.s.sa.s.sins was definitely a member of Harlem Mosque No. 7. Sharon had been sitting in the first row when the shooting began, and had fallen to the floor like nearly everyone else. She was still able to identify one of the a.s.sa.s.sins, she claimed, as a man wearing a brown suit who was an NOI member from Harlem.

On February 26 police arrested Butler at his home and drove him to a station house to be questioned, prompting the Times Times and newspapers across the country to a.s.sert that the NYPD was solving the case. The next day, without being contacted by the police first, Sharon 6X phoned the NYPD and presented what appeared to be a convincing story. Again, she explained that she had been seated in the front row when the shooting started. She "observed Malcolm get shot, place his hands across his chest, and then fall backwards." One of the shooters who sprinted past her with a gun in his hand looked like "the pictures of Norman Butler" she had seen in newspapers. She described Butler as "thirty-five years, five foot eleven inches, or six foot, medium build, 170 pounds, brown skin. . . . [The] subject was firing his gun in all directions in an attempt to get out of the premises." Sharon 6X also told the police that MMI "guards were all ordered not to have any guns, that is all except Reuben Francis." and newspapers across the country to a.s.sert that the NYPD was solving the case. The next day, without being contacted by the police first, Sharon 6X phoned the NYPD and presented what appeared to be a convincing story. Again, she explained that she had been seated in the front row when the shooting started. She "observed Malcolm get shot, place his hands across his chest, and then fall backwards." One of the shooters who sprinted past her with a gun in his hand looked like "the pictures of Norman Butler" she had seen in newspapers. She described Butler as "thirty-five years, five foot eleven inches, or six foot, medium build, 170 pounds, brown skin. . . . [The] subject was firing his gun in all directions in an attempt to get out of the premises." Sharon 6X also told the police that MMI "guards were all ordered not to have any guns, that is all except Reuben Francis."

Her statements focused attention on Harlem Mosque No. 7, yet police never examined Sharon's possible connections with Newark mosque members. After entering the Grand Ballroom on the afternoon of the a.s.sa.s.sination, Sharon 6X had sat in the front row next to Linwood X Cathcart, an NOI member from New Jersey whose presence perturbed the MMI members who recognized him. The seating arrangement may have been a coincidence, but subsequent evidence concerning Sharon and Cathcart makes this hard to believe. More than forty years after the a.s.sa.s.sination, Cathcart and Sharon 6X Poole Shabazz live together in the same New Jersey residence, and Shabazz has maintained absolute silence about her relations.h.i.+ps with both Malcolm X and Cathcart.

A grand jury was impaneled on March 1, and the New York district attorney's office vigorously presented its theory that only three men-Hayer, Johnson, and Butler-had committed the murder. Johnson was arrested on March 3. He, too, was placed in the Audubon by eyewitnesses. Photojournalist Earl Grant divulged important details to the NYPD about the murder that had been confided in him by a fellow MMI member, Charles X Blackwell, one of the rostrum guards during the a.s.sa.s.sination. On March 8, Grant told police that Blackwell observed one a.s.sa.s.sin "fleeing from the chair area to the ladies room located on the east side of the ballroom." Blackwell "feels that this person [Thomas Johnson] was arrested for this crime-he knows Johnson from previous meetings." Blackwell also identified "another person who he knows as Benjamin from Paterson or Newark seated about the third row on the left side." Although the police were pleased that Johnson was placed at the crime scene, the fact that Blackwell had identified Ben X Thomas of the Newark mosque, one of the actual a.s.sa.s.sins, was not further investigated. On March 10 the grand jury ruled that Hayer, Butler, and Johnson had "willfully, feloniously and of malice aforethought" killed Malcolm X.

The police were well aware that New Jersey Muslims might have been involved in the murder. MMI guards had mentioned the presence of Linwood Cathcart in the Grand Ballroom, and he was interviewed by the NYPD on March 25, 1965; Robert 16X Gray, a member of the Newark mosque, had already been interviewed three days earlier. However, the police did not systematically investigate Hayer's ties to the Newark mosque, or endeavor to explain how he might have hooked up with Butler and Johnson, two Harlem-based NOI officers more senior than himself. They apparently did not consider that NOI protocol would never have allowed enforcers from the Harlem mosque to murder Malcolm in broad daylight, because such men almost certainly would have been recognized by many in the crowd. The NYPD file for Joseph Gravitt is empty, indicating perhaps that any evidence obtained from the Mosque No. 7 captain had been destroyed years ago.

Within Malcolm's organizations, suspicion quickly rose over the truth of the NYPD's a.s.sertion, and murmurs could be heard about the possibility of an inside job. Since the day of the murder, some inside the MMI had started to revise their estimation of Reuben X Francis as the day's hero, for shooting Talmadge Hayer. If the NYPD had been asked to relocate their detail outside the Audubon to a location several blocks away, there were only two individuals, other than Malcolm, who had the authority to negotiate a pullback: James 67X and Reuben. In addition, many began to wonder why Charles X Blackwell and Robert 35X Smith had been a.s.signed to guard Malcolm that day when neither man had much experience in a forward defensive position, and when a usual rostrum guard, William 64X George, was present but a.s.signed to guard the door. Reuben's position as Malcolm's head of security, responsible for both communicating with the police and arranging Malcolm's guard detail, had some brothers believing that he might have been involved in the killing.

Gerry Fulcher was convinced that Reuben Francis "was the the guy. He organized it. And he wanted to get out of Dodge when he knew things were going to get hot. It would come back to him." The key question for Fulcher was whether Francis was an informant for either the FBI or the NYPD. If Francis had been involved, Fulcher believes, "he had to have contacts within the agency [FBI], or with our office." But Francis's role remains uncertain; even the police records are unclear because BOSS and the FBI rarely shared important information about undercover operatives. "The last thing the FBI would ever tell BOSS," Fulcher said, "is that Francis was an informant." guy. He organized it. And he wanted to get out of Dodge when he knew things were going to get hot. It would come back to him." The key question for Fulcher was whether Francis was an informant for either the FBI or the NYPD. If Francis had been involved, Fulcher believes, "he had to have contacts within the agency [FBI], or with our office." But Francis's role remains uncertain; even the police records are unclear because BOSS and the FBI rarely shared important information about undercover operatives. "The last thing the FBI would ever tell BOSS," Fulcher said, "is that Francis was an informant."

Francis began telling others that things were too hot to stay in New York. Released for bail of $10,000, he began expressing fears that New York district attorneys intended to prosecute him for the Hayer shooting, so he decided to flee the country. Anas Luqman, who had also been dragged in by police and then released, thought this made sense, and the two men hatched a plot to drive to the Mexican border and hide out in the desert. Francis recruited three other men with NOI connections who, for different reasons, also wanted to leave the United States. Luqman insisted that one of them, a seventeen-year-old boy, be left behind. "So we started driving," Luqman recalled more than forty years later, and after several days on the road the group crossed the border.

Whether or not Malcolm's own men played a role in his death, nearly all Malcolmites were convinced that law enforcement and the U.S. government were extensively involved in the murder. Peter Bailey, for example, charged in a 1968 interview that the NYPD and the FBI "knew that brother Malcolm's destiny was a.s.signed for a.s.sa.s.sination." Bailey believed that both Thomas Johnson and Norman Butler were innocent. Although he himself did not witness the shooting-he was waiting downstairs for the arrival of Reverend Galamison-he developed a strong theory on how the a.s.sa.s.sination had occurred. "I think that brother Malcolm was killed by trained killers," he said, not "amateurs." Bailey doubted that "the Muslims were capable of doing it." Consequently, most OAAU and MMI members decided not to be cooperative with the police. What they failed to understand was that there was intense compet.i.tion and mistrust between the NYPD and the FBI. Even within the NYPD itself, BOSS operated largely above the law, s.h.i.+elding its own operatives and paid informants from the rest of the police force. Consequently there was no unified law enforcement strategy in place to suppress the investigation of Malcolm's death. In the end, cooperation with police detectives might have increased the likelihood that Malcolm's real killers would have been brought to justice.

Ultimately, the police's version of events gained credibility from the media's sensationalizing of Malcolm's antiwhite image. A New York Times New York Times news article, for example, was headlined "Malcolm X Lived in Two Worlds, White and Black, Both Bitter." In its editorial, the news article, for example, was headlined "Malcolm X Lived in Two Worlds, White and Black, Both Bitter." In its editorial, the Times Times described Malcolm as "an extraordinary and twisted man, turning many true gifts to evil purpose. . . . Malcolm X had the ingredients for leaders.h.i.+p, but his ruthless and fanatical belief in violence not only set him apart from the responsible leaders of the civil rights movement and the overwhelming majority of Negroes. It also marked him for notoriety, and for a violent end." The editorial implied that Malcolm's break from the NOI was due to jealousy rather than political or ethical differences. It also suggested that black nationalist extremists, whether in the Nation or in some other group, had been responsible for the murder. "The world he saw through those horn-rimmed gla.s.ses of his was distorted and dark," the editorial concluded. "But he made it darker still with his exaltation of fanaticism. Yesterday someone came out of that darkness that he sp.a.w.ned, and killed him." described Malcolm as "an extraordinary and twisted man, turning many true gifts to evil purpose. . . . Malcolm X had the ingredients for leaders.h.i.+p, but his ruthless and fanatical belief in violence not only set him apart from the responsible leaders of the civil rights movement and the overwhelming majority of Negroes. It also marked him for notoriety, and for a violent end." The editorial implied that Malcolm's break from the NOI was due to jealousy rather than political or ethical differences. It also suggested that black nationalist extremists, whether in the Nation or in some other group, had been responsible for the murder. "The world he saw through those horn-rimmed gla.s.ses of his was distorted and dark," the editorial concluded. "But he made it darker still with his exaltation of fanaticism. Yesterday someone came out of that darkness that he sp.a.w.ned, and killed him."

Several days later, Time Time magazine left no doubt regarding its interpretation : "Malcolm X had been a pimp, a cocaine addict and a thief. He was an unashamed demagogue. His gospel was hatred." The magazine also concurred with the NYPD's theory of the a.s.sa.s.sination. "Malcolm's murder [was] almost certainly at the hands of the Black Muslims from whom he had defected." But it was not enough just to condemn Malcolm on ideological grounds; magazine left no doubt regarding its interpretation : "Malcolm X had been a pimp, a cocaine addict and a thief. He was an unashamed demagogue. His gospel was hatred." The magazine also concurred with the NYPD's theory of the a.s.sa.s.sination. "Malcolm's murder [was] almost certainly at the hands of the Black Muslims from whom he had defected." But it was not enough just to condemn Malcolm on ideological grounds; Time Time went on to invent a story to ridicule his character. The Sunday afternoon program at the Audubon had started late, the magazine declared, because "characteristically [Malcolm] had kept his followers waiting for nearly an hour while he lingered over tea and a banana split at a nearby Harlem restaurant." went on to invent a story to ridicule his character. The Sunday afternoon program at the Audubon had started late, the magazine declared, because "characteristically [Malcolm] had kept his followers waiting for nearly an hour while he lingered over tea and a banana split at a nearby Harlem restaurant."

Other publications expressed similar sentiments. The Sat.u.r.day Evening Post' Sat.u.r.day Evening Post's obituary was more sensitive than most, but expressed frustration and confusion over the murdered black leader. "The ugly killing of Malcolm X prompted many people to attempt an a.s.sessment of this violent and baffling young demagogue. Was his death an inevitable part of the struggle for Negro equality?" the obituary asked. "His death resembled a martyrdom less than a gangland execution. But Americans have had too much of a.s.sa.s.sination, too much of the settlement of conflict by violence."

The New York Herald Tribune' New York Herald Tribune's initial headline story on Malcolm, printed that Sunday evening but dated as the first edition of February 22, read "Malcolm X Slain by Gunmen as 400 in Ballroom Watch: Police Rescue Two Suspects." An accompanying article stated that Hayer had been "taken to the Bellevue Prison Ward and was sealed off by a dozen policemen. The other suspect was taken to the Wadsworth Avenue precinct, where the city's top policemen immediately converged." Several hours later, in the Herald Tribune' Herald Tribune's late edition, the subhead of the article was changed: "Police Rescue One Suspect." References to a second suspect being taken to the Wadsworth Avenue police precinct were deleted. Black nationalists and Trotskyists would subsequently charge that the NYPD "covered up" its own involvement in the a.s.sa.s.sination by suppressing evidence and witnesses, including the capture of one a.s.sailant who may have been a BOSS operative. The NYPD and mainstream journalists such as Peter Goldman ridiculed such speculations. Goldman attributed the confusion to the fact that reporters debriefed Officer Thomas Hoy "at the scene and Aronoff at the station house," not realizing they "were talking about the same man. . . . [T]he confusion lasted long enough to create a whole folklore around the 'arrest' of a mysterious second suspect-a mythology that endures to this day." However, Herman Ferguson's 2004 account of a second man who had been shot being taken away by the police lends some credence to the "second suspect" theory. If an informant or undercover operative of the FBI or BOSS had been shot, or was part of the a.s.sa.s.sination team, the police almost certainly never would have permitted his role to become public. Another possibility was the presence of more than one a.s.sa.s.sination team in the Grand Ballroom that Sunday. Although Ferguson and many eyewitnesses saw three shooters, some observers, including FBI informants, claimed that there were four or even five.

Within twenty-four hours of the a.s.sa.s.sination, nearly every national civil rights organization had distanced itself from both Malcolm and the b.l.o.o.d.y events at the Audubon. To Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, Malcolm's a.s.sa.s.sination "revealed that our society is still sick enough to express dissent through murder. We have not learned to disagree without being violently disagreeable." The NAACP leader Roy Wilkins deplored Malcolm's "gunning down" as a "shocking and ghastly demonstration of the futility of resorting to violence as a means of settling differences." Speaking on behalf of SNCC, the young desegregation activist Julian Bond informed the New York Times New York Times, "I don't think Malcolm's death or any man's death could influence our deep-seated belief in nonviolence."

From London, James Baldwin responded by linking the crime to the involvement of the U.S. government. "Whoever did it," he speculated, "was formed in the crucible of the Western world, of the American Republic." Much more explicit was CORE's James Farmer, who was well aware of Malcolm's metamorphosis and had expressed doubts that the leader's murder was the product of a feud with the Nation of Islam. "I believe that his killing was a political killing," he declared. It was hardly "accidental that his death came at a time when his views were changing [toward] the mainstream of the civil rights movement." Farmer's demand for a "federal inquiry into the murder," however, found virtually no support. To the public, the Nation of Islam was evidently responsible for the shooting.

Malcolm's death set off a chain reaction of violence and intimidation that kept his supporters in fear and left his organizations crumbling. On the night of the murder, a fire ignited in Muhammad Ali's Chicago apartment, but the fire was later determined to have been accidental. Ali informed the press that Malcolm had been his friend "as long as he was a member of [the Nation of] Islam. Now I don't want to talk about him." Perhaps still suspicious about his apartment fire, Ali protested, "All of us were shocked at the way [Malcolm] was killed." Ali denied that Elijah Muhammad, or others in the NOI, had any involvement in the murder.

Two days later, early in the morning on February 23, unknown parties ascended to the roof of a building next door to Mosque No. 7 and tossed Molotov c.o.c.ktails into the mosque's fourth floor, igniting a fire that soon raged out of control, with flames soaring as high as thirty feet. The fire quickly spread next door to the Gethsemane Church of G.o.d in Christ, and soon seventy-five firemen were working frantically to put it out. As a section of the mosque's wall collapsed, five firefighters and a civilian were injured. Within an hour the entire building was gutted. The Fruit of Islam was mustered, and soon about three hundred people were watching the fire blaze away. As the crowd grew and emotions surged, the police became worried and called in reinforcements. In the frigid night air, Larry 4X Prescott huddled next to Captain Joseph, who had begun to weep. Larry was shocked to see the almost stoic, deeply private Joseph now overwhelmed with grief.

The destruction of the mosque greatly increased public perceptions that an open gang war was imminent. The NYPD policed the Nation's Brooklyn mosque and the ten businesses it owned in the surrounding neighborhood; the mosque in Queens was similarly protected. In Chicago, squads stood an around-the-clock vigil to protect the life of Muhammad, still cloistered in his Hyde Park mansion. Captain Joseph characterized the Harlem firebombing as "a vicious sneak attack. . . . The worst thing a man can do is tamper with your religious sanctuary."

The Nation would exact its revenge not in Harlem's streets, but in Chicago at the Saviour's Day convention. In preparation, administrators worked closely with the Chicago police to carry out extraordinary security measures around the convention hall. A police bomb squad thoroughly checked the facility; attendees were processed through police barricades before entering. Elijah Muhammad himself "will not make a move unless accompanied by at least six members of his security force, the Fruit of Islam brigade," reported the Chicago Tribune Chicago Tribune. Twenty-five hundred members were present as the convention began on February 26. The event was orchestrated as a triumph of the victors. "Malcolm was a hypocrite who got what he was preaching," Elijah Muhammad proclaimed. "Just weeks ago he came to this city to blast away with his hate and mudslinging. He didn't stop here, either, but then went around the country trying to slander me."

The audience was treated to the spectacle of Wallace Muhammad and Malcolm's brothers, Wilfred X and Philbert X, walking out onstage to ask forgiveness and to pledge fidelity to the Messenger. Wallace claimed that he had been confused, that it had been wrong to leave the Nation and his father. In tears, he announced that "only G.o.d was in a position to judge a figure so exalted" as Elijah Muhammad. Reading texts that had been prepared for them, both Wilfred and Philbert denounced their dead brother for "his mistakes" and made it clear they would not attend his funeral. Wilfred declared to the convention, "We must not let our natural enemy, the white man, come between us [to] get us to kill each other. I was shocked to hear the news of my brother's death but from my heart I ask Allah to strengthen me as a follower of Elijah Muhammad."

Back in New York, there were by now serious questions about how Malcolm was to be buried. By Islamic standards, the autopsy itself had represented a desecration of his body. Muslim tradition also requires the prompt burial of the deceased, and on the opening day of the Saviour's Day convention Malcolm's corpse was lying in state for the fourth day at Harlem's Unity Funeral Home, dressed in a Western-style business suit. Since Tuesday, about thirty thousand people had come to pay their respects. During the week Betty and others close to her had contacted more than a dozen Harlem churches, including Adam Clayton Powell's Abyssinian Baptist, to host Malcolm's last rites; all declined, fearing Nation of Islam retaliation. Finally, the Faith Temple Church of G.o.d in Christ, on Amsterdam Avenue in West Harlem, agreed to make its auditorium available. Within hours, the church received a series of bomb threats, but the ceremony went forward without incident. Just before the funeral, Sheikh Ahmed Ha.s.soun prepared and wrapped Malcolm's body in a kafan kafan, a traditional Muslim burial sheet.

More than a thousand people packed the Faith Temple Church on Sat.u.r.day, February 27, to bear witness to Malcolm's funeral. There were a small number of movement leaders-Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, d.i.c.k Gregory, and SNCC's John Lewis and James Forman-but the majority stayed away, probably fearing violence. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., was not present, nor were most of Harlem's civic leaders. Betty had asked Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee to preside over the program, and the two read out dozens of notes of condolence from a range of dignitaries, including King, Whitney Young, and Kwame Nkrumah. But it was Davis's soliloquy on the meaning of Malcolm's life to the black people of Harlem that captured the public's imagination, and in subsequent decades would dwarf everything else that occurred that day. Using notes scribbled at his kitchen table, Davis spoke these words: Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy, controversial, and bold young captain-and we will smile. . . . And we will answer and say unto them: Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever touch him, or have him smile at you? . . . And if you knew him you would know why we must honor him: Malcolm was our manhood, our living black manhood! . . . And we will know him then for what he was and is-a prince-our own black s.h.i.+ning prince-who didn't hesitate to die, because he loved us so.

Following Davis's eulogy, Betty walked to the coffin to view her husband a final time. Accompanied by two plainclothes police officers, she bent down and kissed the gla.s.s cover that had been placed over his body. She then collapsed in tears. The funeral cortege, which included three family cars, twelve police vehicles, and eighteen mourners' cars, headed north to Westchester County. About twenty-five thousand people braved the freezing weather along the route to the cemetery. Only two hundred people, including media representatives, were allowed at the gravesite. After the last prayers, the coffin was lowered into the grave. There was still time for a final moment of controversy, one that in many respects ill.u.s.trates the dilemma Malcolm faced at the end of his life. Several MMI and OAAU brothers noticed that the cemetery workers waiting to bury the coffin were all white. No white men, they complained, should be allowed to throw dirt on Malcolm's body. The workers were persuaded to surrender their shovels, and under a drizzling rain the brothers proceeded to bury Malcolm themselves.

During the weeks after the mosque firebombing and the funeral, Malcolm loyalists feared for their lives. The Nation was convinced that die-hard Malcolmites were responsible for the fire, and that their actions merited fierce retribution. On March 12, Leon 4X Ameer, mostly recovered from the savage beating he had suffered at the hands of Clarence Gill and his men back in December, spoke to a meeting of Boston Trotskyists, claiming he had evidence that the U.S. government was involved in Malcolm's death. The next day his body was found in his room at the Sherry Biltmore hotel. A medical examiner ruled that Ameer's death was caused by a coma from a sleeping pill overdose. Another victim was Robert 35X Smith, one of Malcolm's rostrum guards at the a.s.sa.s.sination. "Karate Bob," as he was called, died when he either jumped or was pushed in front of a speeding subway car. When questioned years later about the death, Larry 4X Prescott curtly explained, "He got killed in the subway. They claimed that we pushed him off the subway [platform] or something, which I don't believe."

Neither the OAAU nor MMI had cultivated procedures of collective decision making, and without Malcolm, the weak bonds that had held the groups together came apart. Leaders worked on a volunteer basis out of personal devotion to Malcolm, and his death did more than deny them his physical presence: it froze their universe. He had become the cutting edge for rethinking black nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and their own homegrown version of Islam, and often his devotees stumbled behind him-even at times suppressing his letters because his s.h.i.+fts in ideology were too disturbing. Without the architecture of his expanding social vision, they found it almost impossible to build upon his legacy. Trust soon evaporated between most members, as people renounced their ties.

In retrospect, Max Stanford said, "the OAAU was trying to put [itself] together too fast." Collective leaders.h.i.+p was the desired goal, but in reality "most people were mesmerized by Malcolm." Even when Stanford expressed disagreements with Malcolm, he admitted, "Malcolm would mesmerize me. He was further developed" politically and intellectually than nearly all his followers. Consequently, when Malcolm became "a ma.s.s spokesman who's world-acclaimed," there was no one after the a.s.sa.s.sination prepared to a.s.sume his leaders.h.i.+p mantle. At first, James 67X thought he might be up to the task. Several days after the a.s.sa.s.sination, he met with Revolutionary Action Movement members Max Stanford and Larry Neal. According to Stanford, James said that "Malcolm had formed a RAM cell somewhere in Muslim Mosque, Inc. and had said that if anything happened to him, I would know what to do." RAM's representatives agreed to work with James and other MMI activists. "The agreement was for [James] to continue to go internationally and around the country like Malcolm," Stanford recalled, "because he could sound like Malcolm." Yet James soon had his hands full simply trying to keep both groups alive. Because of the long-troublesome divisions between the MMI and the OAAU, there was no one in either group who could inspire the trust and confidence of members in the other group. The secular-oriented activists, moreover, had little interest in the MMI's Islamic spiritual agenda. Given the absence of administrative resources or even a permanent office, neither organization could be sustained.

As the core of Malcolm's supporters disappeared or fell away, James alone was left to deal with Betty Shabazz. Even within hours of Malcolm's murder, her relations.h.i.+p with the MMI and the OAAU had become confrontational. She blamed Malcolm's supporters for his death; in her bitterness and anger, she instructed several OAAU members to dump into the garbage many of her husband's important papers, all of which had been moved for safety to the Wallaces' home. She demanded that James forward to her all MMI correspondence unopened, including letters addressed to Malcolm, allowing her to review everything first. James refused. "She was a grieving widow, a hero's widow," he explained, but one who had at best a limited comprehension of the MMI and OAAU's work.

The care and security of Betty and the children were largely a.s.sumed by Ruby Dee, Juanita Poitier, and other female friends, most of them celebrities. These women established the Committee of Concerned Mothers to provide support. Percy Sutton, James Baldwin, and John Oliver Killens also became actively involved. Within several weeks, over six thousand dollars was raised, including a five-hundred-dollar contribution from s.h.i.+rley Graham Du Bois. In August, the committee organized a benefit concert that attracted a thousand people and generated another five thousand dollars for the purchase of a home. Malcolm's core const.i.tuency, the black poor and working cla.s.s, never abandoned Betty. She received many envelopes with small amounts of cash, sent either to the Hotel Theresa or to the MMI's post office box. James 67X wrote to many of Malcolm's international contacts requesting funds. Advertis.e.m.e.nts were placed on New York radio stations. Several aggressive MMI brothers even visited Harlem merchants and demanded cash and merchandise "contributions" for Betty and the children. Yet some Malcolm loyalists found Betty's behavior at this time disturbing. To them, she seemed to be rejecting her husband's poor and working-cla.s.s black const.i.tuency, favoring instead overtures to the black bourgeoisie. Ferguson put Betty's elitist politics in the context of Malcolm's "Message to the Gra.s.sroots" speech: "She moved from the field slaves to the house slaves."

As James 67X's most trusted allies dissipated, and the difficulties of working with Betty grew more apparent, he recalled his promise to Malcolm to work for him for twelve months. Mid-March 1965 marked the end of that obligation, and he now began considering other options. He was exhausted, and Charles Kenyatta's scurrilous rumors also had a poisonous effect; some MMI members wondered why James had left the Audubon for nearly an hour following the shooting, and questioned his cordial relations with the Marxists in RAM. So when Ella Collins contacted James, demanding the right to take over the MMI and OAAU based on her blood tie with Malcolm, he at first resisted, but soon agreed to resign his post. Ella was also given the incorporation papers for Muslim Mosque, Inc., becoming the effective leader of both groups.

On March 15, Ella held a press conference at OAAU and MMI headquarters. Described in the New York Times New York Times as "an ample figure in black skirt and large-b.u.t.toned blouse," Collins was "terse and cryptic in speech," a far cry from her charismatic brother. Collins's claim to leaders.h.i.+p was based on her questionable a.s.sertion that she had been executive director of Boston's OAAU chapter since June 1964. She also a.s.serted that Malcolm himself had appointed her as "his successor" on February 20, 1965. Collins generally expressed conservative views. She said that she had "no desire to fight against" Muhammad or the Nation of Islam; she attributed the firebombing of Malcolm's Queens home to forces "much bigger than the Black Muslims"; and when asked whether the OAAU would reject "leftist or communist" support, Collins responded, "I believe so." Within days, Collins's reactionary politics-when compared to Malcolm's-and her belligerent behavior drove out the few remaining veteran activists. Soon after, James 67X informed RAM that he planned to abandon all future