Malcolm X

A lot happened in Rochester before I was to say my last good-bye. The riots shifted the dynamic there. Blacks savored a newfound power to force the white leadership to address long-standing grievances. Whites were scared. Would future rioting be confined to the ghetto, or would it spread downtown to white areas of the city?

Anxieties mounted when a coalition of religious groups brought in Saul Alinsky, already a legend as a white organizer who taught confrontational politics to ghetto activists. From this emerged FIGHT, a militant direct-action group that was soon marching into executive boardrooms demanding jobs and investments in the black neighborhoods.

Rochester was getting a reputation. This got its ultimate confirmation when Malcolm X accepted an invitation to address a black church in Rochester in February 1965.

Malcolm was then involved in a dispute with Elijah Muhammad's black Muslim organization. Four days before his scheduled appearance in Rochester, his home in Queens, New York, was firebombed. In The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Alex Haley told of how Malcolm, "barking commands and snatching up screaming frightened children, got the family safely out of the back door into the yard." Malcolm held his enemies in Elijah Muhammad's group responsible for the attack. That feud seemed to be turning lethal.

In Rochester, there was speculation that the speech would be canceled. But Malcolm arrived at Corn Hill Methodist Church on February 16 as scheduled.

I was stunned when my editors assigned another reporter to cover Malcolm's speech. They pulled me aside. "There might be trouble," I was told. "We need you to handle the street action," they said. Although devastated, I accepted the assignment.

On the night of the speech, a huge crowd was at the church. One of my sources whispered to me that Malcolm X wanted to meet with some local people later. "We'd like you to be there," I was told.

Malcolm delivered a powerful speech, which I watched from the back of the church. As soon as he stood up, he was saying, "My reason for being here is to discuss the black revolution that is going on, that's taking place on this earth. ... "

Everyone jammed into the church hung on his every word. "And the problems of the black man here in this country today have ceased to be a problem of just the American Negro or an American problem." Like a professor, he delivered his analysis in lecture style. Then, about halfway through, he zeroed in on his target of the night: the press.

"So we're not against people because they're white. But we're against those who practice racism. ... And because we're against it, the press says we're violent. We're not for violence. We're for peace. But the people that we're up against are for violence."

His voice, at first professorial, began to rise. "This is what the racists have always done ... And then they use the press to make (it) look like the victim is the criminal, and the criminal is the victim. ... They take the press, and through the press they beat the system ... They use the press to get public opinion on their side. ... They take statistics, and through the press they feed them to the public. They make it appear that the role of crime in the black community is higher than it is anywhere else. ... And the whites go along with it. Because they think that everybody over there's a criminal anyway. This is what the press does."

Through most of an hour, Malcolm X cited example after example of how the press was used against black people. As he made his case, many in the crowd stood and shouted their approval. I began to feel relieved that I was not covering his speech. I also realized that I could not go to his hotel later with the others. He was so damning in his indictment that I became convinced the meeting would be a "get the press" session. As a representative of the local paper, I did not feel that I should be there. As much as I wanted to meet Malcolm, I did not go.

Five days later, on February 21, a cold and snowy Sunday, I was at work at the newspaper. Sundays were always slow and I was loitering in the wire room, watching the various stories come in over the teletype machines. I was there when the teletype bell began to ring, alerting editors that a very important story was about to move. And that day, when the bell began to ring, I hovered over the machine and watched in horror as the bulletin came in that Malcolm X had been shot and killed just as he was starting to deliver a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem.

For me, the lesson driven home was that a reporter's job required toughness and that journalism was not the place for one easily embarrassed or intimidated. I had missed my chance to meet and talk with Malcolm X. I vowed never to make a similar mistake again.