Malcolm X, "Red" to Many “Uptown”

He seemed to have shrunk; his body lying there in the glass-covered casket. In life Malcolm X was probably six foot four or better, but now he seemed less tall. For five days myself, and a dozen other reporters, keep vigil in the Harlem funeral home where he lay prior to the burial ceremony. There were bomb threats every night and I found myself staring at his lifeless face and wanting to ask him questions. I couldn't believe this was the same man I had invited "to step outside," at a rash moment in my TV reportorial career, but then I was full of righteous indignation and stood for great and small things and this outrageous man threatened to tear apart the Black community and stop the progress toward integration.

His remarks were always incendiary in those early sixties, designed to aggravate and threaten. Though I was white I believed that we had, all of us, to get closer together or we, as a people, would be wasting an enormous resource, African Americans.

I really believed in everybody getting a fair shake, that all men were part of the island, that we were all the lesser if a bit of that island broke off, but that was another man's credo. Maybe I still feel that way but the journey has wearied me and hundreds of thousands of others like me.

After our encounter in the hallway of the old CBS building, he continued to utter shrill cries of warning, of menace, as he tried to attract and hold Black America. His former mentor Elisah Muhammad, now began to carefully watch this young firebrand with his flaming, stirring rhetoric. Malcolm was mesmerizing and attracted followers to his view of Islam.

There was conflict uptown among adherents and all sorts of rumors about impending violence. Malcolm had never made the Haj, the sacred joinery to Mecca, and decided to do so. Whatever happened on that journey changed him radically and afterwards, while he still spoke of White inhumanity to Blacks, he started to preach another gospel, one of self-help, self-reliance and above all, pride in being Black.

I remember once I tried to get close to him for an interview after his religious journey but his bodyguard, "The Flower of Islam," karate trained and dangerous, wouldn't let this “offay” reporter within a hundred feet, and threw an elbow into my guts to prove it. Malcolm saw the incident and called a quick halt before there was any further violence.

He called to me and I did the interview which almost convinced me that he had changed, that perhaps he had found a Via Media, that perhaps his rhetoric was less concerned with inflaming his legions, than in finding a true, peaceful, Islamic path.

Off camera I said, “You’re doing good, Malcolm, I mean it," and he smiled a rare smile and said, “Take care of yourself."

A while later he was assassinated in Harlem, the city tensed, and I spent my nights in a Harlem funeral home well protected by White and Black police. I knew something powerful and terrible had happened, that perhaps a potentially great man had been ripped from the fabric of the American tapestry.

One day, not long ago, one of my Key Largo neighbors, a retired New York City cop, was talking about the incredible sixties and there was almost a longing in his voice. He had been a veteran of many years of "Fort Apache," in the Bronx, not an assignment for the faint-hearted.

He mentioned Malcolm X and I told him I had known, and come to admire the man. My cop friend nodded and said, "If you ever got screwed up in the Bronx, you prayed that it happened near a mosque, you knew your ass was covered. You know, there was a lot of bullshit in those days, but I started to get the feeling that this guy Malcolm maybe had something on the ball after all. "