Breslin began his recap by stating that the Audubon Ballroom audience of over 300 people was “the best crowd that Malcolm has had in a long time.” The pugnacious journalist’s tone turned even crankier when he followed the shooting victim to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.
“The white hands that Malcolm X had preached so much hatred about clawed at his blood-soaked clothes and touched his body,” Breslin wrote regarding the medical staff. The next three sentences also refer to “white hands.” The efforts to save X, Breslin continued, were ultimately “meaningless” because the “bullets had done the job.”
The reporter’s callousness towards a man shot to death in front of his wife and children led him to a jarring set of conclusions. “Malcolm X was a leader without a following of any numbers,” insisted Breslin. “He was a 30-year-old ex-pimp, narcotics pusher and ex-convict who preached violence against the white man but had not raised a hand in violence in years and his reputation came from white newspapermen who built him into an illusion.”
In reality, Malcolm was a 39-year-old renowned world leader, and he had not engaged in underworld activity since leaving prison over a dozen years before his murder. Both FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and CIA Deputy Director Richard Helms closely monitored X’s activities in February 1965, suggesting that Malcolm’s power was much more than an “illusion.”
Alas, Breslin was not finished writing off X’s importance. The columnist declared that Malcolm was a “shallow, uneducated guy” who succeeded by “frightening people” and making white people “nervous.” That Malcolm scared the establishment, white and Black, is not in doubt. But Breslin’s absurd dismissal of X’s rhetorical brilliance is a stain on the former’s legacy.
Although only 64, Langston Hughes was in the twilight of his multi-faceted career. Amid World War II, his popular column in the Chicago Defender began recording events of the day as seen from the Harlem barstool of Jess B. Simple, a fictional character who conveyed the views of working-class African Americans.
Five days after Malcolm’s murder, Simple showed up in Hughes’ column in the then-liberal New York Post. At the outset of an entry called “Scars,” Hughes’ character offered two somewhat cryptic observations about X.
Simple tells the narrator (Hughes) that the two should discuss “important” issues, such as “Why Malcolm X changed his name to Malik El-Shabazz before he died. Or how come, if you are a Black Muslim, a man can change his name any time he wants to.”