Malcolm X.

A Life of Reinvention.

by Manning Marable.

PROLOGUE.

Life Beyond the Legend.

In the early years of the last century, the neighborhood just north of Harlem, later to be named Washington Heights, was a spa.r.s.ely settled suburb. Only the vision of a businessman, William Fox, led to the construction of an opulent entertainment center on Broadway between West 165th and 166th streets. Fox's instruction to the architect, Thomas W. Lamb, was to design a building more splendid than any theater on Broadway. By the time all was finished, in 1912, an expensive terra-cotta facade adorned the front walls, marble columns stood guard at the entrance, while carvings of exotic birds graced the foyer: it was these colorful motifs, inspired by the great nineteenth-century artist John James Audubon, that prompted Fox to name his pleasure palace the Audubon. On the building's first floor, Lamb designed a ma.s.sive cinema, large enough to seat twenty-three hundred people. In subsequent years, the second floor was reserved for two s.p.a.cious ballrooms: the Rose Ballroom, which could accommodate eight hundred patrons, and the larger Grand Ballroom, holding up to fifteen hundred.

Within a few decades, the neighborhood around the Audubon began to change, becoming increasingly black and working cla.s.s. The Audubons management catered to this new clientele by booking the most celebrated swing bands of the era, including Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Chick Webb. The Audubon also became the home for many of the city's militant trade unionists, and from 1934 to 1937 the newly formed Transport Workers Union held its meetings there-accompanied by the occasional violent confrontation. One night in September 1929, for example, a four-hundredstrong party sponsored by the Lantern Athletic Club was disrupted by four gunshots. Two people were badly wounded.

During World War II, the Audubon was rented out for weddings, bar mitzvahs, political meetings, and graduation parties. After 1945, however, the neighborhood changed yet again, as many white middle-cla.s.s residents sold their properties and fled to the suburbs. Columbia University's decision to expand its hospital at West 168th Street and Broadway into a major health sciences campus generated hundreds of new jobs for the black influx, while the Audubon adapted to economic realities by shutting down its cinema and subdividing the s.p.a.ce it had occupied into rentals. However, both the Rose and Grand ballrooms remained.

By the mid-1960s, the building had surrendered most of its original grandeur. The main entrance for the ballrooms was small and drab. Customers had to climb a steep flight of stairs to the second-floor foyer, then maneuver past the manager's office and on into either the Rose, at the building's left (east) side, or the Grand, which faced Broadway. The larger room was about 180 feet by 60 feet, its north, east, and west walls housing about sixty-five separate booths, each of which could hold up to twelve people. Farthest from the building's main entrance, along the south wall, was a modest wooden stage, behind which was a cramped, poorly lit antechamber where musicians and speakers would muster before walking out to perform.

On the winter afternoon of Sunday, February 21, 1965, the Grand Ballroom had been reserved by the controversial Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), a Harlem-based political group. For nearly a year, the Audubons management had been renting the ballroom to the group, but it remained concerned about its leader, Malcolm X. About ten years before, he had arrived as the minister of Temple No. 7, the local headquarters for a militant Islamic sect, the Lost-Found Nation of Islam (NOI). Later commonly described in the press as Black Muslims, its members preached that whites were devils and that black Americans were the lost Asiatic tribe of Shabazz, forced into slavery in America's racial wilderness. The road to salvation required converts to reject their slave surnames, replacing them with the letter X X, the symbol that represented the unknown. Members were told that, after years of personal dedication and spiritual growth, they would be given "original" surnames, in harmony with their true Asiatic ident.i.ties. As the Nation's most public spokesman, Malcolm X gained notoriety for his provocative criticisms of both civil rights leaders and white politicians.

The previous March, Malcolm X had announced his independence from the Nation of Islam. He quickly established his own spiritual group, Muslim Mosque, Inc. (MMI), largely for those NOI members who had left the Nation in sympathy with him. Despite his break, he continued to make highly controversial statements. "There will be more violence than ever this year," he predicted to a New York Times New York Times reporter in March 1964, for instance. "The whites had better understand this while there is still time. The Negroes at the ma.s.s level are ready to act." The New York City police commissioner responded to this prediction by labeling Malcolm "another self-proclaimed 'leader' [who] openly advocates bloodshed and armed revolt and sneers at the sincere efforts of reasonable men to resolve the problem of equal rights by proper, peaceful and legitimate means." Malcolm was not intimidated by the attack. "The greatest compliment anyone can pay me," he responded, "is to say I'm irresponsible, because by responsible they mean Negroes who are responsible to white authorities-Negro Uncle Toms." reporter in March 1964, for instance. "The whites had better understand this while there is still time. The Negroes at the ma.s.s level are ready to act." The New York City police commissioner responded to this prediction by labeling Malcolm "another self-proclaimed 'leader' [who] openly advocates bloodshed and armed revolt and sneers at the sincere efforts of reasonable men to resolve the problem of equal rights by proper, peaceful and legitimate means." Malcolm was not intimidated by the attack. "The greatest compliment anyone can pay me," he responded, "is to say I'm irresponsible, because by responsible they mean Negroes who are responsible to white authorities-Negro Uncle Toms."

Several weeks later, Malcolm X appeared to experience a spiritual epiphany. In April, he visited the holy city of Mecca on a spiritual hajj, and on returning to the United States declared that he had converted to orthodox Sunni Islam. Repudiating his links to both the Nation of Islam and its leader, Elijah Muhammad, he announced his opposition to all forms of bigotry. He was now eager to cooperate with civil rights groups, he said, and to work with any white who genuinely supported black Americans. But despite these avowals, he continued to make controversial statements-for example, urging blacks to start gun clubs to protect their families against racists, and condemning the presidential candidates of the major parties, Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater, as providing no real choice for blacks.

Most OAAU programs were ch.o.r.eographed as educational forums for the local community, encouraging audience partic.i.p.ation. For the February 21 meeting, the featured speaker was Milton Galamison, a prominent Presbyterian minister who had organized protests against substandard schools in New York City's black and Latino neighborhoods. The OAAU had not directly partic.i.p.ated, but Malcolm had publicly praised the minister's efforts, and his lieutenants may have desired an informal alliance.

Although the afternoon's program had been advertised to begin at two, by the starting time barely forty people had pa.s.sed through the main entrance. The spa.r.s.e early turnout may have been a reaction to fears of possible violence. For months, the Nation had been engaged in a well-publicized feud with its former national spokesman, and Malcolm's followers in Harlem and other cities had been physically a.s.saulted. Only a week earlier, his own home, located in the quiet neighborhood of Elmhurst, Queens, had been firebombed in the middle of the night. To guard against a public confrontation, the NYPD had a.s.signed a detachment of up to two dozen officers at OAAU rallies whenever held at the Audubon. One or more policemen, usually including the day's detail commander, would be stationed on the second floor in the business office, where they would have an uninterrupted view of everyone entering the main ballroom. Many of the others were prominently stationed at the main entrance, or located outside, directly across the street in a small playground area residents called Pigeon Park. On this particular afternoon, however, not a single officer was at the Audubon entrance, and only one, briefly, was stationed in the park. No one was seen inside the business office. In fact, just two uniformed patrolmen were placed inside the building, both having been ordered to remain in the smaller-and but for them unoccupied-Rose Ballroom, at a considerable distance from the featured event.

The absence of a substantial police presence would prove critical, because earlier that morning five men who had been planning for months to a.s.sa.s.sinate Malcolm X met together one final time. Although the venue of that meeting was in Paterson, New Jersey, all five were members of the Newark mosque of the Nation of Islam. Only one conspirator was an official of the mosque; the others were NOI laborers and a.s.sumed that their actions had been approved by the Nation's leadership. After meeting at the home of one of the conspirators, where they went over each man's a.s.signment one final time, the five men then got into a Cadillac and headed for the George Washington Bridge. They exited in upper Manhattan and found a parking spot close to the Audubon that would also provide quick access back to the bridge, and an easy escape to New Jersey.

The sole security force inside the Grand Ballroom and at the main entrance was about twenty of Malcolm's followers. The head of Malcolm's security team was his personal bodyguard, Reuben X Francis, who earlier that afternoon had told William 64X George that the day's team would be undermanned, and that he would need his help. Usually, the dependable William would stand next to the speaker's podium (placed directly in the front center of the stage), where he could view the entire audience. On this particular day, however, Reuben instructed him to stand at the front entrance-about as far as he could have been from the stage.

Reuben also delegated some decisions to the event's security coordinator, John D. X, whose job was to supervise guards around the Grand Ballroom's perimeter. The normal protocol was for security teams to stand for up to thirty minutes-a demanding a.s.signment, especially for those with no prior experience in policing crowds. Usually the most important positions went to former NOI members, all of whom had both security experience and martial arts training. If a known NOI sympathizer attempted to enter an event, he was to be questioned, quietly but firmly. Nation of Islam members who had personal histories of violence or were known for hostility toward Malcolm would be escorted from the building.

One such man was Linwood X Cathcart, a former member of Malcolm's Mosque No. 7 who had recently joined the Jersey City mosque. He had entered the Audubon at 1:45 and seated himself in the front row of wooden folding chairs that had been placed across the dance floor. Malcolm's team spotted him at once, reckoning that his presence could mean trouble. Cathcart now brazenly wore an NOI pin on his suit lapel. Reuben persuaded him to go with him to the rear of the ballroom, where, after exchanging words, he insisted that he remove the offending b.u.t.ton if he wished to remain. Cathcart complied and returned to his seat. Malcolm's security people would later insist that he was the sole NOI loyalist they had spotted.

Handling the necessary custodial duties that afternoon was Anas M. Luqman (Langston Hughes Savage), another NOI member who had severed ties with the Nation out of loyalty to Malcolm. In his subsequent grand jury testimony, Luqman placed his arrival time at around 1:20. He briefly talked with a few people and, as he had done many times before, arranged the chairs onstage, positioned the speaker's podium, and removed some surplus equipment. He then "went out into the audience and just stood around until the meeting start[ed]." Sometime after two, he decided to recheck the doors, located at stage right, closest to the speakers platform. For whatever reason, they were unlocked, which troubled him, but instead of notifying Malcolm's security people, he returned to his seat.

Despite the recent firebombing and the escalating threats of violence, Malcolm had insisted that none of his security team, with the sole exception of Reuben, should carry arms that Sunday. At an OAAU meeting some evenings before, his orders had been vigorously challenged. Malcolm's chief of staff, James 67X Warden, was convinced that the failure to tighten security that afternoon almost certainly would invite trouble. As he later explained his actions: "We wanted to check [for weapons]. But this was an OAAU [public] meeting. Malcolm said, 'These people are not accustomed to having anybody search them.' We're dealing with an entirely different group." IT As a result, as people entered the Audubon, many wearing bulky winter coats, no one was stopped. If Reuben was worried by this, he didn't appear so, and even left the ballroom to pay the manager that afternoons $150 fee.

By this time, all the would-be a.s.sa.s.sins had entered the building. As they antic.i.p.ated, no one searched them for weapons. The group then split up. The three designated shooters found chairs in the front row, either in front of or to the left of the speaker's podium. One shooter, a heavy-set, dark-complexioned man in his mid-twenties, was to deliver the initial hit. Two others were carrying handguns. Their task was to finish off Malcolm after the initial shots. The final two conspirators sat next to each other on the wooden chairs about seven rows back from the stage. Their a.s.signment was to create a diversion. If possible, one of them was going to ignite a smoke bomb.

By two thirty p.m. the audience had grown to over two hundred, and they were becoming impatient. Benjamin 2X Goodman, Malcolm's a.s.sistant minister of Muslim Mosque, Inc., came onstage and began a thirty-minute warm-up. Because Benjamin was not among the featured speakers, most people continued talking or wandered about seeing friends. After about ten minutes, Benjamin's remarks began to attract attention, as he recalled recent themes in Malcolm's rally speeches, such as opposition to the Vietnam War. Everyone knew that Malcolm almost always came to the podium immediately following Benjamin's introductions.

Several minutes before three p.m., Benjamin was still exhorting the audience when, without warning, a tall, sandy-haired man walked briskly out and sat on a chair a few feet from the podium. Caught off guard by his leader's entrance, Benjamin hastily finished up his remarks, then turned to sit down on one of the folding chairs onstage. As a rule, for safety reasons, Malcolm was not permitted to be there alone. On this occasion, however, he stopped his colleague from sitting, whispering instructions into his ear. Looking puzzled, Benjamin stepped down and returned to the backstage room.

"As-salaam alaik.u.m," Malcolm proclaimed, extending the traditional Arabic greeting. "Walaik.u.m salaam," hundreds chanted back. But before he could say anything further, there was an unexpected disturbance about six or seven rows back from center stage. "Get your hands out of my pockets!" a man shouted to the person next to him. Both men stood up and began to tussle, diverting everyone's attention. From the stage, Malcolm yelled out, "Hold it! Hold it!"

The two princ.i.p.al rostrum guards, Charles X Blackwell and Robert 35X Smith, scrambled to break up the men. Most of their colleagues also moved from their positions to quell the disruption, leaving Malcolm completely alone onstage. It was then that the conspirator in the first row stood up and walked briskly toward the rostrum. Beneath his winter coat, he cradled a sawed-off shotgun. About fifteen feet from the stage, he stopped, pulled back his coat, and lifted his weapon.

For many African Americans, February 21, 1965, is engraved in their memory as profoundly as the a.s.sa.s.sinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., are for other Americans. In the turbulent aftermath of his death, Malcolm Xs disciples embraced the slogan "Black Power" and elevated him to secular sainthood. By the late 1960s, he had come to embody the very ideal of blackness for an entire generation. Like W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin, he had denounced the psychological and social costs that racism had imposed upon his people; he was also widely admired as a man of uncompromising action, the polar opposite of the nonviolent, middle-cla.s.s-oriented Negro leadership that had dominated the civil rights movement before him.

The leader most closely linked to Malcolm in life and death was, of course, King. However, despite having spent much of his early life in urban Atlanta, King was rarely identified as a representative of ghetto blacks. In the decades following his a.s.sa.s.sination, he became a.s.sociated with images of the largely rural and small-town South. Malcolm, conversely, was a product of the modern ghetto. The emotional rage he expressed was a reaction to racism in its urban context: segregated urban schools, substandard housing, high infant mortality rates, drugs, and crime. Since by the 1960s the overwhelming majority of African Americans lived in large cities, the conditions that defined their existence were more closely linked to what Malcolm spoke about than what King represented. Consequently, he was able to establish a strong audience among urban blacks, who perceived pa.s.sive resistance as an insufficient tool for dismantling inst.i.tutional racism.

Malcolm's later-day metamorphosis from angry black militant into a multicultural American icon was the product of the extraordinary success of The Autobiography of Malcolm X The Autobiography of Malcolm X, coauth.o.r.ed by the writer Alex Haley and released nine months after the a.s.sa.s.sination. A best seller in its initial years of publication, the book soon established itself as a standard text in hundreds of college and university curricula. By the late 1960s, an entire generation of African-American poets and writers were producing a seemingly endless body of work paying homage to their fallen idol. In their imagination, Malcolm's image became permanently frozen: always displaying a broad, somewhat mischievous smile, spotlessly well attired, and devoted to advancing the interests and aspirations of his people.

From the moment of his murder, widely different groups, including Trotskyists, black cultural nationalists, and Sunni Muslims, claimed him. Hundreds of inst.i.tutions and neighborhood clubs were renamed to honor the man whom actor Ossie Davis had eulogized as "our manhood, our living, black manhood." A Malcolm X a.s.sociation was initiated by African Americans in the military. In Harlem, activists formed a Malcolm X Democrat Club. In 1968, the independent film producer Marvin Worth hired James Baldwin to write a screenplay based on the Autobiography Autobiography, a project the novelist described as "my confession . . . it's the story of any black cat in this curious place and time." By the early 1970s, Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X's wife, was invited as an honored guest to a Washington, D.C., fund-raising gala promoting the reelection of Richard Nixon.

The renaissance of Malcolm's popularity in the early 1990s was largely due to the rise of the "hip-hop nation." In the group Public Enemy's video "Shut 'Em Down," for example, the image of Malcolm is imposed over the face of George Washington on the U.S. dollar bill; another hip-hop group, Gang Starr, placed a portrait of Malcolm on the cover of one of its CDs. Political conservatives also continued their attempts to a.s.similate him into their pantheon. In the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles race riots, for instance, vice president Dan Quayle declared that he had acquired important insights into the reasons for such unrest by reading Malcolm's autobiography-an epiphany most African Americans viewed as absurd, with filmmaker Spike Lee quipping, "Every time Malcolm X talked about 'blue-eyed devils' Quayle should think he's talking about him."

With the release of Lee's three-hour biographical film X X that same year, Malcolm reached a new generation. In a 1992 poll, 84 percent of African Americans between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four described him as "a hero for black Americans today." After years of relegating him to the periphery of modern black history, historians now began to see him as a central figure. He had become "an integral part of the scaffolding that supports a contemporary African-American ident.i.ty," historian Gerald Horne wrote. "His fascination with music and dance and night clubs undergirded his bond with blacks." For many whites, however, his appeal was located in his conversion from militant black separatism to what might be described as multicultural universalism. His a.s.similation into the American mainstream occurred-ironically-at Harlem's Apollo Theater on January 20, 1999, when the United States Postal Service celebrated the release of a Malcolm X stamp there. In a press statement accompanying the stamp's issuance, the U.S. Postal Service claimed that, in the year prior to his a.s.sa.s.sination, Malcolm X had become an advocate of "a more integrationist solution to racial problems." that same year, Malcolm reached a new generation. In a 1992 poll, 84 percent of African Americans between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four described him as "a hero for black Americans today." After years of relegating him to the periphery of modern black history, historians now began to see him as a central figure. He had become "an integral part of the scaffolding that supports a contemporary African-American ident.i.ty," historian Gerald Horne wrote. "His fascination with music and dance and night clubs undergirded his bond with blacks." For many whites, however, his appeal was located in his conversion from militant black separatism to what might be described as multicultural universalism. His a.s.similation into the American mainstream occurred-ironically-at Harlem's Apollo Theater on January 20, 1999, when the United States Postal Service celebrated the release of a Malcolm X stamp there. In a press statement accompanying the stamp's issuance, the U.S. Postal Service claimed that, in the year prior to his a.s.sa.s.sination, Malcolm X had become an advocate of "a more integrationist solution to racial problems."

A closer reading of the Autobiography Autobiography as well as the actual details of Malcolm's life reveals a more complicated history. Few of the book's reviewers appreciated that it was actually a joint endeavor-and particularly that Alex Haley, a retired twenty-year veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard, had an agenda of his own. A liberal Republican, Haley held the Nation of Islam's racial separatism and religious extremism in contempt, but he was fascinated by the tortured tale of Malcolm's personal life. In 1963, the beginning of the collaboration of these two very different men, Malcolm had labored to present a tale of moral uplift, to praise the power of the Nation's leader, Elijah Muhammad. After Malcolm's departure from the sect, he used his autobiography to explain his break from black separatism. Haley's purpose was quite different; for him, the autobiography was a cautionary tale about human waste and the tragedies produced by racial segregation. In many ways, the published book is more Haley's than its authors: because Malcolm died in February 1965, he had no opportunity to revise major elements of what would become known as his political testament. as well as the actual details of Malcolm's life reveals a more complicated history. Few of the book's reviewers appreciated that it was actually a joint endeavor-and particularly that Alex Haley, a retired twenty-year veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard, had an agenda of his own. A liberal Republican, Haley held the Nation of Islam's racial separatism and religious extremism in contempt, but he was fascinated by the tortured tale of Malcolm's personal life. In 1963, the beginning of the collaboration of these two very different men, Malcolm had labored to present a tale of moral uplift, to praise the power of the Nation's leader, Elijah Muhammad. After Malcolm's departure from the sect, he used his autobiography to explain his break from black separatism. Haley's purpose was quite different; for him, the autobiography was a cautionary tale about human waste and the tragedies produced by racial segregation. In many ways, the published book is more Haley's than its authors: because Malcolm died in February 1965, he had no opportunity to revise major elements of what would become known as his political testament.

My own curiosity about the Autobiography Autobiography began more than two decades ago, when I was teaching it as part of a seminar on African-American political thought at Ohio State University. Among African-American leaders throughout history, Malcolm was unquestionably the most consummately "political" activist, a man who emphasized gra.s.sroots and partic.i.p.atory politics led by working-cla.s.s and poor blacks. Yet the autobiography is virtually silent about his primary organization, the OAAU. Nowhere in the text does its agenda or its objectives appear. After years of research, I discovered that several chapters had been deleted prior to publication-chapters that envisioned the construction of a united front of Negroes, from a wide variety of political and social groups, led by the Black Muslims. According to Haley, the deletion had been at the authors request, after his return from Mecca. That probably is true; but Malcolm had absolutely no input on Haley's decision to preface the began more than two decades ago, when I was teaching it as part of a seminar on African-American political thought at Ohio State University. Among African-American leaders throughout history, Malcolm was unquestionably the most consummately "political" activist, a man who emphasized gra.s.sroots and partic.i.p.atory politics led by working-cla.s.s and poor blacks. Yet the autobiography is virtually silent about his primary organization, the OAAU. Nowhere in the text does its agenda or its objectives appear. After years of research, I discovered that several chapters had been deleted prior to publication-chapters that envisioned the construction of a united front of Negroes, from a wide variety of political and social groups, led by the Black Muslims. According to Haley, the deletion had been at the authors request, after his return from Mecca. That probably is true; but Malcolm had absolutely no input on Haley's decision to preface the Autobiography Autobiography with an introductory essay by with an introductory essay by New York Times New York Times journalist M. S. Handler, who had covered Malcolm extensively during previous years, nor on Haley's own rambling conclusion, which frames his subject firmly within mainstream civil rights respectability at the end of his life. journalist M. S. Handler, who had covered Malcolm extensively during previous years, nor on Haley's own rambling conclusion, which frames his subject firmly within mainstream civil rights respectability at the end of his life.

A deeper reading of the text also reveals numerous inconsistencies in names, dates, and facts. As both a historian and an African American, I was fascinated. How much isn't true, and how much hasn't been told?

The search for historical evidence and factual truth was made even more complicated by the complex and varied layers of the subject's life. A master of public rhetoric, he could artfully recount tales about his life that were partially fiction, yet the stories resonated as true to most blacks who had encountered racism. From an early age Malcolm Little (as he was born) had constructed multiple masks that distanced his inner self from the outside world. Years later, whether in a Ma.s.sachusetts prison cell or traveling alone across the African continent during anticolonial revolutions, he maintained the dual ability to antic.i.p.ate the actions of others and to package himself to maximum effect. He acquired the subtle tools of an ethnographer, crafting his language to fit the cultural contexts of his diverse audiences. As a result, different groups perceived his personality and his evolving message through their own particular lens. No matter the context, Malcolm exuded charm and a healthy sense of humor, placing ideological opponents off guard and allowing him to advance provocative and even outrageous arguments.

Malcolm always a.s.sumed an approachable and intimate outward style, yet also held something in reserve. These layers of personality were even expressed as a series of different names, some of which he created, while others were bestowed upon him: Malcolm Little, Homeboy, Jack Carlton, Detroit Red, Big Red, Satan, Malachi Shabazz, Malik Shabazz, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. No single personality ever captured him fully. In this sense, his narrative is a brilliant series of reinventions, "Malcolm X" being just the best known.

Like a great method actor, Malcolm drew generously from his background, so that over time the distance between actual events and the public telling of them widened. After his death, other distortions-embellishments by devoted followers, friends, family members, and opponents-turned his life into a legend. Malcolm was fascinating to many whites in a sensual, animalistic way, and journalists who regularly covered his speeches picked up a subdued yet unmistakable s.e.xual subtext. M. S. Handler, whose home Malcolm visited for an interview in early March of 1964, attributed his aura of physical prowess to his politics: "No man in our time aroused fear and hatred in the white man as did Malcolm, because in him the white man sensed an implacable foe who could not be had for any price-a man unreservedly committed to the cause of liberating the black man." Even Malcolm during his early years routinely employed evocative metaphors to describe his personality. For example, portraying his time in a Ma.s.sachusetts prison in 1946, he likened his confinement to that of a trapped animal: "I would pace for hours like a caged leopard, viciously cursing aloud. . . . Eventually, the men in the cellblock had a name for me: 'Satan.'" Handlers wife, who had been present when Malcolm had visited her home, admitted to her husband, "You know, it was like having tea with a black panther."

To black Americans, however, Malcolm's appeal was rooted in entirely different cultural imagery. What made him truly original was that he presented himself as the embodiment of the two central figures of African-American folk culture, simultaneously the hustler/trickster and the preacher/minister. Ja.n.u.s-faced, the trickster is unpredictable, capable of outrageous transgressions; the minister saves souls, redeems shattered lives, and promises a new world. Malcolm was a committed student of black folk culture, and to make a political point he would constantly mix animal stories, rural metaphors, and trickster tales-for example, refashioning the fox vs. the wolf as Johnson vs. Goldwater. His speeches mesmerized audiences because he could orchestrate his themes into a narrative that promised ultimate salvation. He presented himself as an uncompromising man wholly dedicated to the empowerment of black people, without regard to his own personal safety. Even those who rejected his politics recognized his sincerity.

Obviously, the a.n.a.logy between the actor as performer and the political leader as performer goes only so far, but the art of reinvention in politics does demand the selective rearrangement of a public figure's past lives (and the elimination of embarra.s.sing episodes, as Bill Clinton has taught us). In Malcolm's case, the memoirs written by friends and relatives have ill.u.s.trated that the notorious outlaw Detroit Red character Malcolm presented in his autobiography is highly exaggerated. The actual criminal record of Malcolm Little for the years 194146 supports the contention that he deliberately built up his criminal history, weaving elements of his past into an allegory doc.u.menting the destructive consequences of racism within the U.S. criminal justice and penal system. Self-invention was an effective way for him to reach the most marginalized sectors of the black community, giving justification to their hopes.

My primary purpose in this book is to go beyond the legend: to recount what actually occurred in Malcolm's life. I also present the facts that Malcolm himself could not know, such as the extent of illegal FBI and New York Police Department surveillance and acts of disruption against him, the truth about those among his supporters who betrayed him politically and personally, and the identification of those responsible for Malcolm's a.s.sa.s.sination.

One of the greatest challenges I encountered in reconstructing his life was the attempt to examine his activities inside the Nation of Islam. Most popular treatments focus heavily on his public career during his final two years. Part of the problem in unearthing his earlier speeches and letters from the 1950s was that the current NOI leadership, headed by the former Louis X Walcott, known today as Louis Farrakhan, had never permitted scholars to examine the sect's archives. After years of effort, I was able to initiate a dialogue with the Nation of Islam; in May 2005 I sat with Farrakhan for an extraordinary nine-hour meeting. The Nation subsequently made available to me fifty-year-old audiotapes of Malcolm's sermons and lectures delivered while he was still Mosque No. 7's leader, providing significant insights into his spiritual and political evolution. Veteran members also came forward to be interviewed, the most important of whom was Larry 4X Prescott, later known as Akbar Muhammad, a former a.s.sistant minister of Malcolm's who had sided with Elijah Muhammad during the sect's split in March 1964. These sources presented a perspective that had not been adequately represented before: the views of the Nation of Islam and its adherents.

Malcolm's journey of reinvention was in many ways centered on his lifelong quest to discern the meaning and substance of faith. As a prisoner, he embraced an antiwhite, quasi-Islamic sect that nevertheless validated his fragmented sense of humanity and ethnic ident.i.ty. But as he traveled across the world, Malcolm learned that orthodox Islam was in many ways at odds with the racial stigmatization and intolerance at the center of the Nation of Islam's creed. Malcolm came to adopt true Islam's universalism, and its belief that all could find Allah's grace regardless of race. Islam was also the spiritual platform from which he constructed a politics of Third World revolution, with striking parallels to the Argentinean guerrilla and coleader of the 1959 Cuban revolution, Che Guevara. It was also the political bridge that brought Malcolm into contact with the Islamic Brotherhood in Lebanon, as well as in Egypt and Gaza, with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Soliciting the support of the government of Gamal Abdel Na.s.ser for his activities on behalf of orthodox Islam in the United States may have made it necessary to adopt Na.s.sers political positions, such as fierce opposition to Israel.

There also remain many unresolved questions about Malcolm's death, and what parties were responsible for the order to kill him. History is not a cold-case investigation; I have had to weigh forensic probabilities, not certainties. Although in 1966 three NOI members were convicted of the murder, extensive evidence suggests that two of those men were completely innocent of the crime, that both the FBI and the NYPD had advance knowledge of it, and that the New York County District Attorney's office may have cared more about protecting the ident.i.ties of undercover police officers and informants than arresting the real killers. That the case has remained unsolved after more than forty years helps place it in a special category in the annals of African-American and U.S. history. Unlike the murders of Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King, Jr., gunned down by lone white supremacists, or the killing of George Jackson, carried out by California prison guards, Malcolm was killed before a large audience in the heart of urban black America. In the rush to judgment, his death was attributed solely to the Nation of Islam. The media-constructed image of Malcolm X as a dangerous demagogue made it impossible to conduct a thorough investigation of his death, and it was only within black American communities that he was seen as a political martyr. It would take most of white America almost three decades to alter its perceptions.

The great temptation for the biographer of an iconic figure is to portray him or her as a virtual saint, without the normal contradictions and blemishes that all human beings have. I have devoted so many years in the effort to understand the interior personality and mind of Malcolm that this temptation disappeared long ago. He was a truly historical figure in the sense that, more than any of his contemporaries, he embodied the spirit, vitality, and political mood of an entire population-black urban mid-twentieth-century America. He spoke with clarity, humor, and urgency, and black audiences both in the United States and throughout Africa responded enthusiastically. Even when he made controversial statements with which the majority of African Americans strongly disagreed, few questioned his sincerity and commitment. On the other hand, any comprehensive review of his public record reveals major mistakes of judgment, including negotiations with the Ku Klux Klan. But unlike many other leaders, Malcolm had the courage to admit his mistakes, and to seek out and apologize to those he had offended. Even when I have disagreed with him, I deeply admire the strength and integrity of his character, and the love he obviously felt toward the African-American people and their culture.

To appreciate how Malcolm's resurrection occurred, first among African Americans and later throughout America, we need to reconstruct the full contours of his remarkable life-a story that begins in a small black community on the north side of Omaha, Nebraska.

CHAPTER 1.

"Up, You Mighty Race!"

1925-1941.

Malcolm X's father, Earl Little, Sr., was born in Reynolds, Georgia, on July 29, 1890. A farmers son who was frequently called Early, he had barely three years of formal schooling, although as a teenager he learned carpentry, which provided him with a livelihood. In 1909, he married a local African-American woman, Daisy Mason, and in quick succession had three children: Ella, Mary, and Earl, Jr.

Reynolds, a small town in Georgia's southwest corner, had a population of only twelve hundred people around 1910, but it was an impressive manufacturing hub with a large cotton milling factory, producing seven to eight thousand bales each year. Like most of the South in the decades after Reconstruction, it was also a dangerous and violent place for African Americans. Between 1882 and 1927, Georgia's white racists lynched more than five hundred blacks, putting the state second only to Mississippi in lynching deaths. The depression of the 1890s had hit Georgia particularly hard, unleashing a wave of business failures twice the rate of that in the rest of the United States. As jobs grew increasingly scarce, skilled white laborers faced increasing compet.i.tion from blacks, especially in masonry, carpentry, and the mechanical trades. Earl's status as a skilled carpenter probably provoked tensions with local whites, and his parents and friends feared for his safety.

Well over six feet tall, muscular and dark skinned, Little frequently got into heated arguments with whites who resented his air of independence. Reynolds and surrounding towns had seen several lynchings and countless acts of violence against blacks. His home life was only slightly less tumultuous: Daisy's extended family liked neither his brawling nor the way he treated his wife. By 1917, tired both of fighting his in-laws and of white threats of violence, Earl abandoned his young wife and children as part of the great northern migration of Southern blacks that began with World War I. Following the path of the Seaboard Air Line railroad, a common route for blacks headed north from Georgia and the Carolinas, he stopped first in Philadelphia, then New York City, before finally settling in Montreal. He did not bother to get a legal divorce.

It was within Montreal's small, mostly Caribbean black community that Earl fell in love with a beautiful Grenadian, Louisa Langdon Norton. Born in St. Andrew, Grenada, in 1897, she had been raised by her maternal grandmother, Mary Jane Langdon. Louise, as she was known, had a fair complexion and dark, flowing hair; in everyday encounters she was often mistaken for white. Local blacks gossiped that she was the product of her mothers rape by a Scotsman. Unlike Earl, she had received an excellent Anglican elementary-level education, becoming a capable writer as well as fluent in French. Thoughtful and ambitious, she had emigrated to Canada at nineteen, seeking greater opportunities than her small island homeland could provide.

Perhaps it was the attraction of opposites that brought Louise and Earl together-although a more likely explanation is that they shared an interest in social justice, the well-being of their race, and, with it, politics. In 1917, black Montrealers started an informal chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement a.s.sociation and African Communities League (UNIA), founded by a charismatic Jamaican activist, Marcus Garvey. Although not officially established as a branch organization until June 1919, the Montreal UNIA exerted tremendous influence on blacks throughout the city. It sponsored educational forums, recreational activities, and social events for blacks, even sending delegations to international conventions. The two militant Garveyites fell in love, and were married in Montreal on May 10, 1919. They decided to dedicate their lives and futures to the building of the Garvey movement in the United States. Garvey was to play a pivotal part in their lives and, a generation later, in that of their son Malcolm.

On the eve of America's entry into World War I, black American political culture was largely divided into two ideological camps: accommodationists and liberal reformers. Divisions in tactics, theory, and ultimate goals concerning race relations would persist through the century. Led by the conservative educator Booker T. Washington, the accommodationists accepted the reality of Jim Crow segregation and did not openly challenge black disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt, instead promoting the development of black-owned businesses, technical and agricultural schools, and land ownership. The reformers, chief among them the scholar W. E. B. Du Bois and the militant journalist William Monroe Trotter, called for full political and legal rights for black Americans, and ultimately the end of racial segregation itself. Like the nineteenth-century abolitionist Frederick Dougla.s.s, they believed in dismantling the barriers separating blacks and whites in society. The establishment of the liberal National a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910, led by Du Bois, and the death of Washington in 1915 advanced the national leadership of the reformers over their conservative rivals.

It was at this moment of intense political debates among blacks that the charismatic Marcus Garvey arrived in New York City, on March 24, 1916. Born in Jamaica in 1887, Garvey had been a printer and journalist in the Caribbean, Central America, and England. He had come to the United States at the urging of Booker T. Washington to garner support for a college in Jamaica, a project which came to naught but which launched the flamboyant young man on a different mission, a new and ambitious political and social movement for blacks. Inspired by Washington's conservative ideas, Garvey did not object to racial segregation laws or separate schools, but astutely he paired these ideas with a fiery polemical attack on white racism and white colonial rule. Unlike the NAACP, which appealed to a rising middle cla.s.s, Garvey recruited the black poor, the working cla.s.s, and rural workers. After establishing a small base of supporters in Harlem, he embarked on a yearlong national tour in which he appealed to blacks to see themselves as "a mighty race," linking their efforts not only with people of African descent from the Caribbean but with Africa itself. In uncompromising language, he preached self-respect, the necessity for blacks to establish their own educational organizations, and the cultivation of the religious and cultural inst.i.tutions that nurtured black families. In January 1918, the New York UNIA branch was formally established, and later that year Garvey started his own newspaper, Negro World Negro World; the following year the UNIA set up its international headquarters in Harlem, naming their building Liberty Hall.

Central to Garvey's appeal were his enthusiastic embrace of capitalism and his gospel of success; self-mastery, willpower, and hard work would provide the steps to lift black Americans. "Be not deceived," he told his followers, "wealth is strength, wealth is power, wealth is influence, wealth is justice, is liberty, is real human rights." The purpose of the African Communities League was to set up, in his words, "commercial houses, distributing houses, and also to engage in business of all kinds, wholesale and retail." Starting in Harlem, the league opened grocery stores and restaurants, and even financed the purchase of a steam laundry. In 1920, Garvey incorporated the Negro Factories Corporation to supervise the movement's growing list of businesses. His best-known and most controversial start-up, however, was the Black Star Line, a steamship company backed by tens of thousands of blacks who bought five- and ten-dollar shares. Ironically, all this activity depended on the existence of de facto de facto racial segregation, which limited compet.i.tion from white businesses, all of which refused to invest in urban ghettos. racial segregation, which limited compet.i.tion from white businesses, all of which refused to invest in urban ghettos.

Racial separation, Garvey preached, was essential for his people's progress, not only in the States but worldwide. His program was an informal melange of ideas extracted from such disparate sources as Frederick Dougla.s.s, Andrew Carnegie, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horatio Alger, and Benjamin Franklin, set now in a framework of achievement occupying a separate sphere from whites. Blacks would never respect themselves as a people so long as they were dependent upon others for their employment, business, and financial affairs. Like Booker T. Washington, Garvey sensed that Jim Crow segregation would not disappear quickly. It was logical, therefore, to turn an inescapable evil into a cornerstone of group advancement. Blacks had to reject the divisive distinctions of cla.s.s, religion, nationality, and ethnicity that had traditionally divided their communities. People of African descent were all part of a transnational "nation," a global race with a common destiny. The UNIAs initial manifesto of 1914 called for people of Negro or African parentage "to establish a Universal confraternity among the race; to promote the spirit of race, pride and love . . . [and] to a.s.sist in civilizing the backward tribes of Africa." Later, many middle-cla.s.s blacks dismissed Garveyism as a hopelessly utopian back-to-Africa movement, which underplayed its radical global vision. What Garvey recognized was that the Old World and the New were inextricably linked: blacks throughout the Caribbean and the United States could never be fully free unless Africa itself was liberated. Pan-Africanism-the belief in Africa's ultimate political independence, and that of all colonial states in which blacks lived-was the essential goal.

Garvey also recognized that creating a ma.s.s movement required a cultural revolution. Generations of blacks had endured slavery, segregation, and colonialism, producing a widespread sense of submission to white authority. Black power depended on activities that could restore both self-respect and a sense of community-essentially the development of a united black culture. For these reasons, "cultural nationalism" occupied a central role in his project. Garveyites sponsored literary events and published the writings of their followers; they organized debates, held concerts, and paraded beneath gaudy banners of black, red, and green. They were encouraged to write nationalist anthems, most popular among these being the "Universal Ethiopian Anthem," which featured the powerful if ungainly chorus: Advance, advance to victory, Let Africa be free; Advance to meet the foe With the might Of the red, the black and the green.

Garvey used pageantry to great effect in building the culture of his movement. Exalted t.i.tles and colorful uniforms created a sense of historical import and seriousness, and gave poor African Americans a sense of pride and excitement. At a 1921 Harlem gathering, six thousand Garveyites launched the "inauguration of the Empire of Africa." Garvey himself was crowned president general of the UNIA and provisional president of Africa, who with one potentate and one supreme deputy potentate const.i.tuted the royalty of the empire. Garveyite leaders were bestowed t.i.tles as "Knights of the Nile, Knights of the Distinguished Service Order of Ethiopia and Dukes of Niger and of Uganda." The fact that Garvey's movement controlled no territory in colonial Africa or the Caribbean did not matter. Blacks were identifying themselves as a n.o.bility in exile, working toward the day when Europeans would be expelled from the Motherland and they would claim inheritance.

The UNIA a.s.similated themes from various African-American religious rituals. Although a nominal Catholic, Garvey held that people of African descent had to embrace a black G.o.d and a black theology of liberation. This was not an open rejection of Christianity, although he did declare at one rally, "We have been worshipping a false G.o.d. . . . We just create a G.o.d of our own and give this new religion to the Negroes of the world." In 1929, Garvey went so far as to say that "the Universal Negro Improvement a.s.sociation is fundamentally a religious inst.i.tution."

Garveyism created a positive social environment for strengthening black households and families that confronted racial prejudice in their everyday lives. As in any all-encompa.s.sing social movement, enthusiastic members often find the best companionship within the group. Whatever initially brought Earl Little and Louise Norton together, they shared a commitment to Garvey's ideals that would sustain them in the future. They made their first home among Philadelphia's black community, where they would reside for nearly two years. By 1918, Philadelphia had become the hub of extensive UNIA activities, and soon the chapter's growth exploded; between 1919 and 1920, more than ten thousand people, mostly working cla.s.s and poor, joined the local organization, putting Philadelphia behind only New York City in total membership. Here, the religious side of Garveyism drove its popularity, thanks largely to the commanding presence of the chapter's charismatic leader, Reverend James Walker Hood Eason. In 1918, Eason and his spiritual followers had formed the People's Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Disillusioned with the lack of militancy within the NAACP, Eason joined forces with Garvey, and his rise was immediate. In 1919, without consulting his congregation, the pastor sold the church building to Garvey's Black Star Line for twenty-five thousand dollars, and the next year Garvey appointed him "Leader of American Negroes" at UNIAs first International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World. Known as "silver-tongued Eason," he was selected by the Harlem-based Liberty Party as its presidential candidate in the 1920 elections.

At the party's convention that year, before a crowd of twenty-one thousand in Madison Square Garden, Eason emphasized the international dimensions of the UNIA's mission. "We are talking from a world standpoint now," he proclaimed. "We do not represent the English Negro or the French Negro . . . we represent all Negroes." By 1920, there were at least a hundred thousand UNIA members worldwide in more than eight hundred branch organizations or chapters. Garveyites enthusiastically told the world their followers numbered in the millions. A more objective a.s.sessment would still place the total number of new members in the 1920s and 1930s at one million or more, making it one of the largest ma.s.s movements in black history.

The UNIA never acquired a formal affiliation with any religious denomination, but given Earl Little's lifelong background in the black Baptist Church, religious Garveyism had a special appeal, and no one in the country better personified it than Eason. With Louise at his side, Earl attended many of UNIA's conferences and lectures in Philadelphia and Harlem, where Eason was frequently the star attraction, and from whom Earl would learn practical lessons in public speaking. As he grew within the movement, so did his family; on February 12, 1920, Louise gave birth to the couple's first child, Wilfred, but they were not much longer for Philadelphia. The UNIA routinely selected capable young activists as field organizers, and in mid-1921 the Littles agreed to move halfway across the continent to start a fledgling outpost in Omaha, Nebraska.

Their appointment coincided with the explosive rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in America's heartland. Created in the aftermath of the Civil War, the first Klan had been a white supremacist vigilante organization, employing violence and terror chiefly against newly freed African Americans. The second KKK, prompted by the waves of xenophobia among millions of white Americans following World War I, expanded its targets to include Jews, Catholics, Asians, and non-European "foreigners." Nebraska's local branch, called Klavern Number One, was set up in early 1921. Before that year's end, another twenty-four such groups had been born, initially recording an average of eight hundred new members statewide every week. Their forums were well advertised, and by 1923 membership totaled forty-five thousand. Within the year, Klan demonstrations, parades, and cross-burnings had become common throughout the state. According to Michael W. Schuyler, a leading local historian, the KKK's 1924 state convention in downtown Lincoln "featured 1,100 Klansmen in white robes. Klan dignitaries rode in open cars; hooded knights marched on foot, frequently carrying American flags; others rode horses." It was hardly the clandestine group it would be forced to become in later decades.

Omaha's small black community felt under siege. A few militants had already joined the NAACP, and they used their newspaper, the Monitor Monitor, to appeal to sympathetic local whites to join them against the KKK. In September 1921, the Monitor Monitor declared that with "the combined efforts of the Jews, the Catholics and the foreign-born, the Klan may expect the battle of its life. If actual bloodshed is desired, then the allies are prepared to do battle. If the war is a social and industrial one, then the allies are ready to meet that kind of warfare. The common enemy will drive the common allies together." Still, they found it difficult to match their rhetoric with action in the rigged political machinery of middle America. In January 1923, the anti-KKK coalition pet.i.tioned Nebraska's state legislature to outlaw citizens from holding public meetings while "in disguise to conceal their ident.i.ties" and to require local police to protect individuals accused of crimes while in their custody. The bill easily pa.s.sed the state house, sixty-five votes to thirty-four, but failed to garner the necessary two-thirds majority in the state senate, where Klan supporters ensured its failure. declared that with "the combined efforts of the Jews, the Catholics and the foreign-born, the Klan may expect the battle of its life. If actual bloodshed is desired, then the allies are prepared to do battle. If the war is a social and industrial one, then the allies are ready to meet that kind of warfare. The common enemy will drive the common allies together." Still, they found it difficult to match their rhetoric with action in the rigged political machinery of middle America. In January 1923, the anti-KKK coalition pet.i.tioned Nebraska's state legislature to outlaw citizens from holding public meetings while "in disguise to conceal their ident.i.ties" and to require local police to protect individuals accused of crimes while in their custody. The bill easily pa.s.sed the state house, sixty-five votes to thirty-four, but failed to garner the necessary two-thirds majority in the state senate, where Klan supporters ensured its failure.

By 1923, two to three million white Americans-including such rising politicians as Hugo Black of Alabama, and later Robert Byrd of West Virginia-had joined the Klan, and it had become a force in national politics. The secret organization ran its members in both the Democratic and Republican parties, holding the balance of power in many state legislatures and hundreds of city councils. Their significant presence led Garvey to extrapolate that the KKK was both the face and soul of white America. "The Ku Klux Klan is the invisible government of the United States," he told his followers at Liberty Hall in 1922, and it "represents to a great extent the feelings of every real white American." Given this, he reasoned, it was only common sense to negotiate with them, and so he did, taking an infamous meeting with Klan leader Edward Young Clarke. From a practical standpoint, the groups shared considerable common ground, with both the KKK and the UNIA opposing interracial marriage and social intercourse between the races. However, many prominent Garveyites directly challenged Garvey's initiative, or simply broke from the UNIA in disgust. Even more members criticized their organization's chaotic business practices such as the Black Star Line, condemning the authoritarian way it was run. Many former UNIA members rallied around the leadership of Reverend Eason, who now created his own group, the Universal Negro Alliance, and whose popularity in some quarters exceeded Garvey's. Loyal Garveyites responded by isolating or, in some cases, eliminating their critics. In late 1922, Eason traveled to New Orleans to mobilize his supporters. After delivering an address at the city's St. John's Baptist Church, surrounded by hundreds of admirers, he was attacked by three gun-wielding a.s.sailants, shot in the back and through the forehead. He clung to life for several days, finally dying on January 4, 1923. There is no evidence directly linking Garvey to the murder; several key loyalists, including Amy Jacques Garvey, his articulate and ambitious second wife, were far more ruthless than their leader and may have been involved in Eason's a.s.sa.s.sination.

Neither dissension within the UNIAs national leadership nor their leaders erratic ideological shifts discouraged Louise and Earl. The young couple's life was hard; they had few resources, and Louise had given birth to two more children-Hilda in 1922 and Philbert in 1923. Earl supplemented the family's needs by hiring himself out for carpentry work; he shot game fowl with his rifle, and raised rabbits and chickens in their backyard. But his constant agitation on behalf of Garvey's cause led local blacks to fear KKK reprisals against their community. Earl's UNIA responsibilities occasionally required him to travel hundreds of miles; during one such trip, in the winter of 1925, hooded Klansmen rode out to the Little home in the middle of the night. Louise, pregnant again, bravely stepped onto her front porch to confront them. They demanded that Earl come out of the house immediately. Louise told them that she was alone with her three small children and that her husband was away, preaching, in Milwaukee. Frustrated in their objective, the Klan vigilantes warned Louise that she and her whole family should leave town, that Earl's "spreading trouble" within Omaha's black community would not be tolerated. To underline their message, the vigilantes proceeded to shatter every window. "Then they rode off," Malcolm wrote, recalling what he had been told about the event, "their torches flaring, as suddenly as they had come."

The apex of Klan activity in Nebraska came in the mid-1920s. By then the Klan numbered tens of thousands, drawn from nearly every social cla.s.s. In 1925, a women's branch was established, and soon they were singing, listening to lectures by national spokeswomen, and joining their menfolk marching in parades. Thousands of white children were mobilized, boys joining the Junior Klan, girls the Tri-K clubs. Their influence in both Omaha and Nebraska was pervasive, some white churches even acquiescing when the Klan disrupted their services. That same year, 1925, the KKKs annual state convention was staged to coincide with the Nebraska State Fair, both held in Lincoln. Crosses were burned while a KKK parade with floats mustered fifteen hundred marchers and a public picnic drew twenty-five thousand followers.

It was during this terrible time that, on May 19, 1925, at Omaha's University Hospital, Louise gave birth to her fourth child. The boy, Earl's seventh child, was christened Malcolm.

Despite continuing threats, the Littles struggled to build a UNIA organization. On Sunday, May 8, 1926, the local branch held a meeting that featured "Mr. E. Little" as its princ.i.p.al speaker. In her role as secretary, Louise wrote, "This division is small but much alive to its part in carrying on the great work." By the fall of 1926, however, they concluded that their community, beleaguered by Klan depredations, could not sustain a militant organization. The UNIA's troubles nationally compounded their difficulties. The Justice Department had for years aggressively hounded UNIA leaders, and in 1923 Garvey had been convicted of mail fraud in connection with the financial dealings of his Black Star Line and given a five-year sentence. He spent the next two years exhausting his appeals before finally entering federal prison in Atlanta in February 1925. In many urban areas, especially in the Northeast, his imprisonment created major schisms and defections, but across the rural South and in the Midwest thousands continued to join the movement. Loyal Garveyites sent funds and letters of encouragement to local chapters and national offices, and made appeals to reverse Garvey's conviction.

Louise and Earl and their four children soon moved on to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, an urban center with an expanding African-American community. Between 1923 and 1928, industries in the city were hiring hundreds of new workers, and blacks migrated there in droves. In 1923, the black residential population was estimated at five thousand; by the end of the decade, it had grown by 50 percent. Common laborers' jobs paid up to seven dollars a day, higher than in many other cities. What also attracted the Littles was black Milwaukee's robust entrepreneurship and racial solidarity. There were a good number of black-owned restaurants, funeral parlors, boardinghouses, and hotels; many proprietors saw their entrepreneurial efforts as realizing "the dream of a black city within the city."

Though relations between Garvey and the national NAACP leadership were cold, if not frequently antagonistic, on the local level chapters of both groups often found themselves on the same side of issues and were open to collaboration. Despite their differing visions for the future of race relations, both could agree on the immediate need for less racial violence and more black jobs. In 1922, for instance, the local Milwaukee UNIA had drafted a resolution, endorsed by the NAACP, opposing the employment of blacks as strikebreakers on local railroads, aimed at preventing racial strife between striking workers. That year, the UNIA chapter claimed one hundred members; by the early 1930s more than four hundred had joined. This success was due largely to the efforts o