correspondent said Algerians showed "signs" of raising Malcolm X to martyrdom. The U.S.
Consulate in Georgetown, British Guiana, was marched on by pickets accusing "American
imperialists." Another Peking, China paper, Jenmin Jihpao, said that the death showed that "in
dealing with imperialist oppressors, violence must be met with violence." Pravda in Moscow
carried only brief stories and no editorial comment, the New York Times Moscow
correspondent said, and another in Poland said there was no noticeable reaction of any kind, and
that "few Poles had heard of Malcolm or were interested in the racial issue." Reportedly, the
murder was only routinely reported with little special interest by the press in Cairo, Beirut, New
Delhi, and Saigon. In Paris and Western Europe, the story was "essentially a one-day sensation,"
with the West German press handling it "as if it were in the Chicago gangster tradition." The
New York Times said: ' The London newspapers have probably played the story harder and
longer than most, giving continuing emphasis to the police work on the murder. The London
Times and the London Daily Telegraph both carried editorial comments, but neither treated
Malcolm X as a major figure." Also reported by the New York Times London correspondent was
that "a London group calling itself the Council of African Organizations had violently attacked the
United States over the murder. This group is made up of students and other unofficial African
representatives here. A press release described Malcolm as a 'leader in the struggle against
American imperialism, oppression and racialism.' It said, 'the butchers ofPatrice Lumumba are the
very same monsters who have murdered Malcolm X in cold blood.'"
Friday morning New York City press headlines concerning Malcolm X's slaying were devoted to
the police department's apprehension of a second slaying suspect. He was a stocky, round-faced,
twenty-six-year-old karate expert named Norman 3X Butler, allegedly a Black Muslim, and a week
later, this was followed by the arrest of Thomas 15X Johnson, also allegedly a Black Muslim. Both
men had been earlier indicted in the January, 1965, shooting of Benjamin Brown, a New York City
Correction Officer and a Black Muslim defector. Both men were indicted, along with Haver, for the
murder of Malcolm X on March 10.
With the news announcement of Butler's arrest, and his at least tentative identification as a
member of Elijah Muhammad's organization, tension reached a new high among all who had any
role in the feud. The Black Muslim National Convention was scheduled to begin that Friday in
Chicago, to last for three days. Early Friday morning in New York at the Kennedy Airport dozens
of policemen spent forty minutes searching a plane belonging to Capital Airlines, which back in
December 1964 had accepted a Mosque Number 7 charter flight to Chicago and return, at a fee
of $5,175.54 which the mosque had subsequently paid in increments.
Altogether, about three thousand Black Muslims from their mosques in most sizable cities were in
Chicago for their annual "Saviour's Day" convention, regarded by them as similar to the holiday of
Christmas. In the order of arrival, each group from the different mosques and cities assembled
outside the big sports coliseum south of Chicago's business district, the brothers of all ages
dressed in neat, dark suits and white shirts and the sisters garbed in flowing silk gowns and
headdresses-and every individual was filtered through anintense security check that Chicago
police sources said was unprecedented in Chicago except for a visiting President.
Searched even more closely were the relatively few non-Muslim Negroes who came to be
spectators, and the press representatives both white and black. "Take off your hat, show some
respect!" snapped a Black Muslim guard at a white reporter. As each person was "cleared" a Fruit
of Islam man ushered him or her to a specific seat in the drafty interior of the 7500-seat coliseum.
(Later, Muslim sources would blame the half-full house upon "the white man's dividing of
Negroes," but observers who recalled the packed coliseum in 1964 said that bombing fears kept
away many non-Muslim Negroes.) The audience sat lightly murmuring under the two huge
hanging banners proclaiming "Welcome Elijah Muhammad-We Are Glad To Have You With Us"
and "We Must Have Some Of This Land" (referring to Elijah Muhammad's demand that "one or
more states" be turned over to the "23 million so-called Negroes" in America as partial reparation
for "over a century of our free blood and sweat as slaves which helped to develop this wealthy
nation where still today you show us you do not wish or intend to accept us as equals"). In front of
the wide, raised speaker's platform were two nearly life-sized photographic blowups of Elijah
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