Meanwhile the Black Muslims are bombarding Negroes all over the nation with their message to the “lost-found, so-called Negro in the wilderness of North America.” For a number of years Mr. Muhammad had a weekly column in some of the nation’s best Negro newspapers. Now the Muslims publish their own weekly, Mr. Muhammad Speaks, a thirty-six-page tabloid that has the largest circulation of any Negro newspaper being published. The Muslims also conduct a weekly radio program on stations in some forty cities throughout the nation. All this is augmented by the appearances of Malcolm X on radio and TV programs each week. All in all, the Black Muslims have covered the nation; their basic teachings are known and debated by Negroes everywhere.
On the whole, then, the state of the Nation of Islam is good; its population is growing, its economy is well into the black, and its foreign relations—though strained—are better than they have ever been before.
4. THE BLACK MUSLIMS AND
THE NEGRO REVOLT
The Separate State
On the day every television network carried scenes of Birmingham police dogs attacking Negro children, Malcolm X submitted to an interview. Asked what he thought of the events at Birmingham, Malcolm said: “Martin Luther King is a chump, not a champ. Any man who puts his women and children on the front lines is a chump, not a champ.”
This was Malcolm’s most inglorious hour. It will take him months of hard work to regain the ground he lost among non-Muslim Negroes with that single statement. Even the Negro moderates, those who disapprove of the direct-action technique, were silenced by the dogs, fire hoses, and club-swinging policemen. Since Birmingham I have been on a lecture tour that carried me to eight major cities in as many states; I found that Negroes were melted into one by the fire of that battle; I saw a unity I have never seen in rank-and-file Negroes before; I felt a mutual love that is all but unknown among Negroes; I sensed a dislike for white people that borders on the disgraceful. Martin King—and we know his strengths as well as his weaknesses—triggered Birmingham. This nation’s Negroes were with him. If he was a “chump,” so were we all.
Malcolm’s statement had the effect of making every Negro who wept when he saw dogs attacking Negro children feel like a moral idiot; Malcolm’s analysis—if proper—means that every Negro woman who shouted resentment when she saw her black sisters knocked to the ground is spiritually illiterate and intellectually stupid. Malcolm—in a contorted way, to be sure—allowed himself to become one with Bull Conner. Malcolm X, the brilliant student of mass psychology, blundered badly.
The Black Muslims had a multiple choice at Birmingham: They could have joined us in the demonstrations; they could have kept quiet; they could have denounced us. I was there and watched the Black Muslim position take shape. Minister James X of the Birmingham temple wanted Malcolm to come and make a major speech during the turmoil; Minister Jeremiah X, minister to the Atlanta temple and roving southern bishop for the movement, was of much the same mind. Knowing the Black Muslim line of authority as I do, I am certain that James and Jeremiah reflected not only Malcolm’s desire to come but Elijah Muhammad’s decision to let the Big X fly to Birmingham if the proper stage were set. The matter was debated by Negro non-Muslims who could have set just such a stage. Some felt it would be a good thing to have Malcolm speak in Birmingham, since the Klan held a rally there at the peak of the crisis. Others felt the Black Muslims should stay out of the picture. There was a standoff on the question, and silence prevailed. Non-Muslim Negroes knew Malcolm X could not speak in favor of integration. And they prayed—both to Jehovah and Allah—that Big Red would take advantage of that excellent opportunity to keep quiet.