Why Muhammad Ali betrayed Malcolm X Part 1

[Toney616]

"They think everyone's out to kill them because they know they deserved to be killed for what they did."-Muhammad Ali

Ironic though: Clay had rushed toward the ******s like an orphan, while the sect saw no utility in him, no gain, despite Malcolm X's interest. Clay was a ****** in his own mind, that's all. Elijah Muhammad had forbade Malcolm to talk to Clay, though he had been cultivated by ****** underlings working on their own long before Malcolm's arrival. The ****** hierarchy barely knew who Clay was, while the troops in Miami filled his head with dogma and privately laughed at the idea of Clay beating Liston. His name was also a minor point of derision at the Chicago headquarters. The focus there remained on Malcolm's disobedience; he was meddling again and would bring ridicule to Elijah with his "association with a fool fighter" Muhammad speaks did not even send a reporter to cover the Liston fight. Besides, old Elijah hated boxing, fighters were "****** run by fat men with cigars who stole their money." No black man should perform in any capacity for a white man; had Clay lost he would have been dropped, or drifted away, without a single ****** hand reaching for him.

Malcolm X was gone, too, assassinated by the ******s who feared his worldly direction and his steady inquisition of Elijah's financial practices and his diddling of young ****** women. Malcolm saw Ali as a new kind of ******, wanted to protect him. They passed each other in Ghana airport, with Malcolm in a white robe and carrying a prophet's staff. Ali turned to Herbert, laughing:" He's so far out he's out completely. Elijah is the most powerful. Nobody listens to Malcolm anymore." It was Elijah, the prophet's teachings that had turned Malcolm from a drug pusher and a thief into a leader; that's what Ali saw. Malcolm's power belonged to the old man. His murder would jolt Ali, drive home a point he had given no thought; the ******s play for keeps

Malcolm had told Clay long before:" Nobody leaves the ******s without trouble." Hardly a comment easily forgotten. Now that Malcolm was pointing at the ******s as a criminal organisation, with extensive ties to the American **** Party and the Klu Klux Klan, his every move was being tracked. The ******s who owned his house in Queens evicted him- with a firebomb. Betty Shabazz, Malcolm's wife, went to Clay for him, saying;" You see it. You know. Stop it if you have any feeling at all." Clay shrugged;" I aint doin nothin to him." After Malcolm's killing, if the name came up and a remark was made about what a loss it was to black people, Ali would mumble "What people? Malcolm was a leader of one. Himself" Sunni Khalid a print and broadcast journalist and a student of Ali and the Nation of Islam, says "Ali threw Malcolm away like a pork
chop. Even today those who really know can never forgive him.".

But Clay had no import in ******-decision making; he was merely a follower, a useful idiot with a name to them. Yet his lack of empathy stung followers of Malcolm. Clay had been far more than just nurtured by Malcolm. He had listened to his every word and wanted to be desperately like him, even to the point of taking on his mannerisms. Clay, like Malcolm would turn away from the camera when a question was posed, then look back directly and challengely into it while answering; like Malcolm he would point with the index finger of his right hand into his cheek while listening. When Malcolm was on the ropes with the ******s, Clay asked him if he should stay in the movement. Fearing for his own life, Malcolm would tell him to stay in line-for the moment.

At the time the police were wary of a black civil war. Only hours after Malcolm was killed, a fire broke out in Clay's second floor apartment at seventy-first and Cregir on the Chicago South side. Conveniently, Clay was having dinner with his wife, Sonji, at the Arabian Sands Hotel in Chicago when John Ali, the ******s executive secretary, called him with the news. Fireman later called the blast an accident, but it looked su****ious; the neighbouring apartments were hardly damaged. Insiders believed the fire was an attempt by the ******s to remind Clay to stay in line. Much more worldly and observant than Clay, Sonji suspected that her husband was being watched and tracked closely by the ******s, and hinted to him that the ******s had set the fire. "Nobody knew where we were having dinner," she said. "The night of the day Malcolm X was murdered! It was too coincidental." Retaliation by followers of the fallen Malcolm would come later, not against Ali but Elijah.

Excerpts taken from:
Ghosts of Manila: The Fateful Blood Feud Between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier

[Toney616]

Audubon Ballroom

Turning my back on Malcolm, "says Muhammad Ali forty years after the fact,"was one of the mistakes that I regret most in my life." To his credit, Ali has come to grips with this tragic misstep, at least partially. His faithful, however, have not. To maintain both Ali and Malcolm X in the same unstable pantheon-an astonishing bi of myth juggling -they have had to gloss over an all but unforgivable act of treachery.

Malcolm X died on February the 21st, 1965, just four days short of the first anniversary of Ali's surprise conquest of Sonny Liston. Ali's victory in 1964, in fact greased the wheels then already set in motion that would lead to Malcolm's death. Had Ali been wiser, more mature,he-and perhaps he alone-could have thrown a wrench into the whole ugly mechanism.
When Sonny Liston failed to answer the bell at the beginning of the seventh round, the honorable Elijah Muhammad had something of a revelation. In a heartbeat , he decided that perhaps boxing wasn't such an unworthy enterprise after all. Immediately after the fight, he called Ali and courted him hard.

At a press conference the day after the Liston fight, Ali announced his allegiance to the Nation of Islam and shared with the world his new name. That name makes for a good trivia question. Despite Howard Cosell's claim to the contrary, it was not originally Muhammad Ali. It was Cassius X. The rejection of "Clay" horrified his parents, especially his father, whose name had been devalued in every sense of the word.

A day later, speaking to five thousand followers at the annual Nation of Islam convention, Elijah Muhammad joyously announced that "Clay whipped a much tougher man and came through the bout unscarred because he has accepted Muhammad as the messenger of Alllah." This turnabout dismayed Malcolm an his wife, Betty Shabazz. Shabazz remembers all too well the denunciations of Ali before the fight, the hysteria about how he would "bring disgrace to the Nation of Islam," and on and on. "All of a sudden," she recalls,"they were breaking their necks trying to get close to the heavyweight champion of the world."

In the nation of Islam one would receive an original name-i.e an Arabic name-only after the mythic founder Master Wallace Fard returned from wherever it was he had gone. Thus, even after his years of dedicated service, Malcolm remained merely Malcolm X. But the Nation Of Islam, "bendable" as it was, made an exception for an uneducated twenty two year old in a "******" profession. On a March 6 radio broadcast from Chicago, Elijah Muhammad gave the young fighter his new name, Muhammad Ali. In fact, Elijah Muhammad used the name a bait to lure Cassius X away from his mentor, the rebellious Malcolm.

As Cosell and others retell the story, it was only the brave and tolerent souls like themselves who accepted Ali's turn toward Islam. In 1964, however, Ali did not embrace Islam. He embraced the Nation of Islam, a cult that preached segregation, fantasized about genocide, and horrified the serious civil rights ******** of the era, black and white. "When Cassius Clay joined the Black ******s," said Martin Luther King,"he became a champion of the racial segregation and that is what we are fighting against."

The year 1964 proved even more troubling for Malcolm X than it did for us. In the first month or so after the Liston fight, word got back to Elijah Muhammad that Malcolm was still mentoring Ali. his had to stop. Muhammad let Ali know that if he hoped to become a minister, he had to sever his relationship with Malcolm immediately. This he did. "I don't know much about what Malcolm is doing," Ali said when pressed, "but I do know that Muhammad is the wisest."

In the spring of 1964, Malcolm headed for Mecca and Africa. He had hoped Ali could join him, but that was now impossible. Instead, Ali went on his own tour. Elijah's son, Herbert Muhammad, joined him, as did several other ******s, including Ali's brother, now Rudy X. In one of the more cinematic moments of his altogether dramatic life, Ali crossed paths with Malcolm in a Ghana hotel lobby. Ghana's "life president"Kwame Nkrumah, who had recently designated Ghana a one party state, was the first in a long line of tyrants to embrace Ali.
Future Pulitzer Prize-winner Maya Angelou was there with Malcolm and recalled the extraordinary moment. After catching his attention, Malcolm called out to Ali,"Brother, I still love you, and you are still the greatest." Malcolm waited for a response, smiling "a sad little smile." Ali looked hard at Malcolm and shook his head. "You left the honorable Elijah Muhammad. That was the wrong thing to do, Brother Malcolm." Ali abruptly turned and walked away.

"Did you get a look at Malcolm," Ali told the reporter in his entourage, "dressed in that funny white robe and wearing a beard and walking with that cane that looked like a prophet's stick. Man, he's gone." Malcolm had just returned from Mecca. At the time, that did not impress Ali. "Nobody ;listens to Malcolm anymore," he scoffed.

That was not quite true. Elijah Muhammad was listening with a thousand ears and what he heard was troubling. The trip to Mecca did not make Malcolm X a civil right ******* by any means, but it did soften his heart. In embracing "true Islam, he could no longer"make sweeping indictments of all white people" as Elijah Muhammad had taught him. "I was a zombie then-like all ******s," Malcolm tells Alex Haley about his life in the nation. "I was hypnotized, pointed in a certain direction and told to march. Well, , I guess a man's entitled to make a fool of himself if he's ready to pay the cost. it has cost me twelve years."
Malcolm s honesty was making him no friends in the Nation of Islam hierarchy. Soviet style, Muhammad dismissed Malcolm's criticism as "mental illness." As the year progressed, the messenger continued to ratchet up the threat level. "The white man has offered rewards for people to lie on the messenger of Alllah," Muhammad observed prophetically in June of 1964. "This hypocrite is going to get blasted clear of the face of the Earth." In November of the year, an FBI informant inside a Washington mosque told the FBI that a fatwa had gone out on Malcolm's head. A week later in Muhammad Speaks, the house organ of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, then Louis X, invited Malcolm to imagine that head rolling down the sidewalk.

To be continued

Excerpts taken from:
Sucker Punch: The Hard Left Hook That Dazed Ali and Killed King's Dream

part 2:

http://www.boxingscene.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=426929

[IMDAZED]

Where is the rest? This is a fascinating, disheartening read. Maybe because I love Malcolm so much - so sad.

[RubenSonny]

Very sad read, Malcolm is my hero, Inna Lilahi Wa Inna Ilahi Raji'un.

[Toney616]

Where is the rest? This is a fascinating, disheartening read. Maybe because I love Malcolm so much - so sad.

I'm not a very fast typer, lol
The rest should be up tomorrow, if I find the time

[Toney616]

Very sad read, Malcolm is my hero, Inna Lilahi Wa Inna Ilahi Raji'un.

Unfortunately the tale gets even sadder

[sleazyfellow]

If Ali would of took Malcoms side he'd more than likely be dead too a long, long time ago.

[Toney616]

If Ali would of took Malcolm's side he'd more than likely be dead too a long, long time ago.

Very true, the ******s would also kill Ali's press secretary, Leon 4XAmeer, more on that in part 2

[IMDAZED]

Very true, the ******s would also kill Ali's press secretary, Leon 4XAmeer, more on that in part 2

I'll be waiting...

[JAB5239]

Great stuff and thanks for all the info. There is always something new I can learn here.....thank you.