knocking me like I do him?"
"Look, tell me the truth," Malcolm X said to me one evening, "you travel around. Have you heard
anything?"
Truthfully, I told him I didn't know what he had reference to. He dropped it and talked of something
else.
From Malcolm X himself, I had seen, or heard, a few unusual things which had caused me some
little private wonder and speculation, and then, with nothing to hang them onto, I had dismissed
them. One day in his car, we had stopped for the red light at an intersection; another car with a
white man driving hadstopped alongside, and when this white man saw Malcolm X, he instantly
called across to him, "I don't blame your people for turning to you. If I were a Negro I'd follow you,
too. Keep up the fight!" Malcolm X said to the man very sincerely, "I wish I could have a white
chapter of the people I meet like you." The light changed, and as both cars drove on, Malcolm X
quickly said to me, firmly, "Not only don't write that, never repeat it. Mr. Muhammad would have a
fit." The significant thing about the incident, I later reflected, was that it was the first time I had
ever heard him speak of Elijah Muhammad with anything less than reverence.
About the same time, one of the scribblings of Malcolm X's that I had retrieved had read,
enigmatically, "My life has always been one of changes." Another time, this was in September,
1963, Malcolm X had been highly upset about something during an entire session, and when I
read the Amsterdam News for that week, I guessed that he had been upset about an item in
Jimmy Booker's column that Booker had heard that Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X were
feuding. (Booker was later to reveal that after his column was written, he had gone on vacation,
and on his return he learned that Malcolm X "stormed into the Amsterdam News with three
followers... 'I want to see Jimmy Booker. I don't like what he wrote. There is no fight between
me and Elijah Muhammad. I believe in Mr. Muhammad and will lay down my life for him.' ")
Also, now and then, when I chanced to meet a few other key Muslims, mainly when I was with
Malcolm X, but when he was not immediately present, I thought I detected either in subtle
phrasing, or in manner, something less than total admiration of their famous colleague-and then I
would tell myself I had misinterpreted. And during these days, Dr. C. Eric Lincoln and I would talk
on the phone fairly often. We rarely would fail to mention how it seemed almost certain that seeds
of trouble lay in the fact that however much Malcolm Xpraised Elijah Muhammad, it was upon
dramatic, articulate Malcolm X that the communications media and hence the general public
focused the great bulk of their attention. I never dreamed, though, what Malcolm X was actually
going through. He never breathed a word, at least not to me, until the actual rift became public.
When Malcolm X left me at around two A.M. on that occasion, he asked me to call him at nine
A.M. The telephone in the home in East Elmhurst rang considerably longer than usual, and Sister
Betty, when she answered, sounded strained, choked up. When Malcolm X came on, he, too,
sounded different. He asked me, "Have you heard the radio or seen the newspapers?" I said I
hadn't. He said, "Well, do!" and that he would call me later.
I went and got the papers. I read with astonishment that Malcolm X had been suspended by
Elijah Muhammad-the stated reason being the "chickens coming home to roost" remark that
Malcolm X recently had made as a comment upon the assassination of President Kennedy.
Malcolm X did telephone, after about an hour, and I met him at the Black Muslims' newspaper
office in Harlem, a couple of blocks further up Lenox Avenue from their mosque and restaurant.
He was seated behind his light-brown metal desk and his brown hat lay before him on the green
blotter. He wore a dark suit with a vest, a white shirt, the inevitable leaping-sailfish clip held his
narrow tie, and the big feet in the shined black shoes pushed the swivel chair pendulously back
and forth as he talked into the telephone.
"I'm always hurt over any act of disobedience on my part concerning Mr. Muhammad.... Yes, siranything
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad does is all right with me. I believe absolutely in his
wisdom and authority." The telephone would ring again instantly every time he put it down. "Mr.
Peter Goldman! I haven't heard your voice in a good while! Well, sir, I just should havekept my big
mouth shut." To the New York Times: "Sir? Yes-he suspended me from making public