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“Why should we allow the Dutch, the Boers and others to go down into Kimberly and possess the diamond fields. . . . Why should we allow the Belgians to go down into the Congo and reap the profits of rubber? . . . We shall stand by the slogan: Africa for the Africans.”
Earl and Louise Little steadfastly worked to instill in their children a key Garvey credo: “Liberate the minds of men and ultimately you will liberate the bodies of men.”
Wright wrote in his autobiographical Black Boy, recalling his thoughts upon first reading A Book of Prefaces. “I pictured [Mencken] as a raging demon, slashing with his pen. . . . He was using words as weapons, could words be used as weapons? Well, yes, for here they were. Then, maybe, perhaps, I could use them as weapons.” 12 Thus began the lifework of one of America’s greatest twentieth-century novelists. And as young Richard Wright sought to master the employment of the written word in fighting demons plaguing him in the racist South, young Malcolm was inspired now to weaponize the spoken
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Alabama law, for example, categorically excluded white female nurses from assignments on wards or rooms in hospitals, either private or public, in which male Negro patients were present. Georgia did not allow merchants to dispense beer and wine to blacks and whites “within the same room at any time.”
White and black amateur softball players in Georgia were barred from playing on any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of one used by the other race. Louisiana had a thing about circuses, requiring that before the two races took their separate places under the Big Top, each had to be processed through a separate ticket booth, “with individual sellers” and that booths, “shall not be less than twenty-five (25) feet apart.”
As late as 1963, thirty-three states still outlawed marriage between the races.
Word of the looming power struggle within the NOI hierarchy did not quickly reach the membership beyond Chicago or the media. The FBI, however, had sources inside the headquarters, and listened in via telephone tapping as well. Increasingly, the Bureau covertly moved to stir dissension in an attempt to weaken the group from within.16 Hoover’s goals were to divide the Muslim leadership, limit Malcolm’s influence, and ensure that the Muslims remained at war with King and the civil rights movement.
During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug)—while praying to the same God—with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. . . . We were truly all the same (brothers)—because their belief in one God had removed the “white” from their minds, the “white” from their behavior, and the “white” from their attitude.
“We had some [good white] people, we had John Brown, who had the guts to take up a gun. We also had some Quakers when we were going through this Underground Railroad. They were exceptions. I found on my trip to Mecca that there were more people outside of the United States who could identify with us without the badge of skin color or racism. And so I think I’m going to give them a chance, but they have to prove something to me.”
Instead, Malcolm had begun to talk about capitalism as the enemy. “The last bulwark of capitalism today is America,” he told a New York audience in May, when he was just back from his hajj. “It’s impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism. You can’t have capitalism without racism.” If you meet a non-racist white, he added, “usually they’re socialists.”
I noticed the country is as ‘advanced’ as its women are, or as backward as its women,” he would write the following year, a week before his assassination. “Thus, in my opinion, the Muslim religious leaders of today must re-evaluate and spell out with clarity the Muslim position on education in general and education for women in particular. And then a vast program must be launched to elevate the standard of education in the Muslim World. An old African proverb states: ‘Educate a man and you educate an individual; educate a woman and you educate an entire family.’”
FBI officials viewed Malcolm as posing a much greater threat since he had left the Nation. His recent travels abroad and his plan to file human rights charges against the United States before the United Nations had drawn the active attention of the State Department. The CIA, meanwhile, had sharply intensified its surveillance of the black leader’s international contacts, his specific plans, and his movement.
A week before his murder, and just two hours before his home was firebombed, he had been responding to Question 7, about why he focused on black people when Islam spans all races. He wrote: As a Black American I do feel that my first responsibility is to my 22 million fellow Black Americans who suffer the same indignities because of their colour as I do. I don’t believe my own personal problem is ever solved until the problem is solved for all 22 million of us.
