Martyrs to the Unspeakable - Pt. 1
By James W. Douglass
In 2008, James Douglass published JFK and the Unspeakable. That book became, more or less, an instant classic in the field. One reason being that Douglass did something quite unusual. Instead of having Kennedy’s presidency as a backdrop to his assassination, he made his assassination a backdrop to his presidency. But, beyond that, Douglass delved deeper into that presidency than virtually anyone in the field had done. He brought in things that had not been studied before, and he dug further into aspects that had been gone over previously. With those explorations, he made the case as to why President Kennedy was assassinated.
Douglass appropriately ended his fine book with the fact that both Bobby Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy knew what happened to JFK. And, through envoy William Walton, they communicated to Moscow that the John Kennedy/Nikita Khrushchev attempt at détente would now have to be placed on hold; but Bobby Kennedy would soon resign, run for office, and then run for the presidency. At that time, the quest could be resumed.
The Douglass book struck a chord with the public. After Oliver Stone endorsed it on television, sales zoomed upwards. It was then picked up by Touchstone, which was a division of Simon and Schuster. In all formats, it has sold well over 100,000 copies. It is the rarest of JFK books in that it was both a critical and commercial success. (Click here for my review https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/jfk-and-the-unspeakable-by-james-w-douglass)
At the time of that book’s publication, Douglass was supposed to pen a trilogy about the major assassinations of the sixties. The second book was going to be about the Malcolm X and Martin Luther King assassinations. The third was going to focus on the Robert Kennedy murder. Since the road to completion took 17 years—interrupted by his book on the life and death of Gandhi--the decision was made to collapse them into one volume. So we now have Martyrs to the Unspeakable.
II
Douglass begins the book with a pungent quote from Malcolm X:
It’s a time for martyrs now. And if I’m to be one, it will be in the cause of brotherhood. That’s the only thing that can save this country. I’ve learned it the hard way. But I’ve learned it. And that’s the significant thing. (p. xvii, p. 459)
This is one of the sub-themes of the book. One lurking not far below the surface and infrequently but explicitly mentioned: Namely, that all four men understood that they were in danger, they were gambling with their lives in advocating the paths they were taking. Malcolm, with his UN resolution condemning America for human rights violations against African-Americans; King, in his organizing of the Poor People’s March on Washington; JFK, in his quest for détente with Cuba and Moscow; and Bobby Kennedy, with his impending victory in the Democratic primary and his pledge to end the Vietnam War. (Douglass points out the little-known fact that the Poor People’s March was Bobby Kennedy’s idea. p. 90)
Explicitly, Bobby Kennedy told Walter Fauntroy that “…there were guns between me and the White House.” (p. 97). He said about his brother that if the Russians did not meet his attempts at détente halfway, “…his enemies may go to any length, including killing him….” (p. 502)
JFK said the same thing about himself. He was once asked why he did not move faster for a rapprochement with Moscow. He replied: “You don’t understand this country. If I move too fast on US/Soviet relations, I’ll either be thrown into an insane asylum or be killed.” (p. 503)
I do not have to tell the reader about King predicting his own death the night before he was assassinated. Why was there this impending doom? Douglass underscores that what these four men were striving for was simply too radical for the national security complex to tolerate. Therefore, they had to be done away with before they could succeed. It is important to note that it was only during John Kennedy’s presidency that all four men were alive and operating at their peaks. As I have noted elsewhere, there was more done on civil rights in those three years than had been achieved in the prior three decades. (Click here and scroll down https://www.kennedysandking.com/reviews/the-kennedys-and-civil-rights-how-the-msm-continues-to-distort-history-part-3) For that reason 1.) There could be no Kennedy dynasty, and 2.) There could be no confederation, which was impending, between Malcolm and King.
III
The book is structured into three major headings. Part One is called The Witness. Part Two is called The Way. Part Three is titled The Why.
In the first part, we see certain policies being advocated by the four major players. For instance, Malcolm going international with a meeting with Achmed Sukarno in 1957 (p. 113); hearing Patrice Lumumba speak at Howard University in July of 1960 (p. 123); his arrangement to have Castro take a room at the Hotel Theresa, and his meeting there with him after midnight on September 19, 1960. (p. 125) This last caused quite an uproar in Harlem since the Cuban leader was going to be charged a $20,000 deposit at the Shelburne Hotel. By the time Malcolm made the arrangements to switch hotels, there were 2,000 people waiting in the rain, fully understanding why the Cuban leader was being forced out of downtown:
To Harlem’s oppressed ghetto dwellers, Castro was that bearded revolutionary who had thrown the nation’s rascals out and who had told white America to go to hell. (p. 125)
What these instances did was to broaden both the appeal of Malcolm, and also his intellectual horizons. Malcolm was now not just a regional figure in the USA, but he was seen as associating with figures on the world stage. And these men happened to be striking figures in the rising Third World. But then this was all topped. Because Nikita Khrushchev happened to be in New York, and he decided to join Castro at the Hotel Theresa:
By going to a Negro hotel, in a Negro district, we would be making a double demonstration: against the discriminatory policies of the United States of America toward Negroes, as well as toward Cuba. (p. 126)
Malcolm had helped arrange a slap across the face to the Establishment. And make no mistake, they did not like it.
The Cuban leader’s diplomatic triumph over the US government in Harlem was a dramatic counterpoint to his UN speech. It was facilitated by Malcolm X. When US intelligence agencies focused their attention on Fidel Castro in New York, they discovered Malcolm X standing right beside him, welcoming Fidel and the Cuban revolution to Harlem. By joining forces with Fidel, Malcolm, too, had become a target. (p. 129)
As Douglass notes, the CIA/Mafia plots to kill Castro began around this time. (p. 128) But as someone close to Malcolm also noted, this meeting with Castro began to divert Malcolm’s thinking away from the narrow restrictions of his loyal service to the Nation of Islam and its leader, Elijah Muhammad, e.g., black power, black nationalism, and racial separation. He began to see that there were other oppressed groups like American Indians, Chicanos and Hispanics, and theirs could be a common struggle. (ibid)
There were two other elements that began the notorious split between Malcolm and the Nation of Islam (NOI). There was the matter of Malcolm’s inquiries about Elijah Muhammad’s numerous infidelities. (p. 254) Which Malcolm felt were unbecoming for a Holy Man. And there was his Hajj, which ended up lasting much longer than planned, and with Malcolm visiting countries outside the Middle East, including France and Egypt. He then visited Africa again. All told, he went to Africa three times. He became a member of the Organization of African Unity, and adapted it in the USA as the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Which he saw as a Pan African group extending to the USA. (p. 242) Further, he could use their leaders to facilitate his aim at bringing about a UN resolution condemning American treatment of blacks. As he said:
You must realize that what I am trying to do is very dangerous, because it is a direct threat to the entire international system of racist exploitation. It is a threat to discrimination in all its international forms. (p. 244)
IV
One last element that had caused Malcolm’s split from NOI was his suspension after his perceived inappropriate remarks upon the murder of President Kennedy, which he called the chickens coming home to roost. This suspension was originally for 90 days. But it lasted longer, and Malcolm tended to look at it as personal since he was getting more attention as a NOI representative than Elijah was.
When Malcolm went on his Hajj, he now began to see that there were all kinds of people visiting Mecca, many of them Caucasian with blonde hair and blue eyes. Which also began to make him question the fundamental tenets of NOI and whether it really was Muslim at all. So he decided not just to split from NOI but to convert to Sunni Islam and form the Muslim Mosque. All these elements did not endear him to Elijah or his followers, like Louis Farrakhan.
In fact, he wrote a letter to a NY Times reporter where he noted that he now regretted the 12 years he had spent in NOI, and called it a “pseudo-religious philosophy”. He then capped that with this:
I shall never rest until I have undone the harm I did to so many well-meaning, innocent Negroes, who through my own evangelistic zeal, now believe him more fanatically and more blindly than I did. (pp. 245-46)
It is appropriate to note that years before he became Vice President, Lyndon Johnson had a talk with J Edgar Hoover of the FBI. Hoover said they would not have a problem if they could get these black leaders fighting among themselves to the point they would kill each other off. (p. 241) Although they were likely speaking of King and Malcolm, there is no doubt that Hoover later adapted this divide-and-conquer philosophy to other African American groups, most successfully with the Black Panthers. In fact, there is plentiful evidence that Hoover used this technique in exacerbating and inflaming the split between the NOI and Malcolm. This was done through placing informants in both camps and a clear agent provocateur against Malcolm in the NOI camp. The latter was John Ali. (pp. 249-250)
Ali began with Malcolm in New York in 1958. The next year, Malcolm recommended him to the NOI headquarters in Chicago. That was a recommendation that he came to strongly regret. When Elijah Muhammad moved to Phoenix for health reasons, Ali essentially took over the Chicago HQ. He even got Malcolm’s brother to read a prepared statement denouncing Malcolm and accusing him of being mentally unbalanced. (p. 272) Elijah essentially called for his elimination with this: “Elijah Muhammad said they had better close his eyes.” In early 1964, the message went out that Malcolm had to be liquidated. (p. 256)
But this could not have succeeded without help from the CIA, the FBI and the NYPD. The last was through their undercover intelligence group called BOSSI. Douglass does a nice job outlining all of this. There was a previous attempt to murder Malcolm by poison in Cairo. Malcolm was rushed to the hospital and had his stomach pumped. Malcolm had retroactively recognized his waiter, who afterwards had disappeared. Malcolm concluded, “I know that our Muslims don’t have the resources to finance a worldwide spy network.” (p. 427). But further, after an engagement in London on February 9th, he flew to Paris to make another speech. At Orly Airport, the French police intercepted him and said he was not allowed to enter France. Why? Because French intelligence had been told, “That the CIA planned Malcolm’s murder, and France feared he might be liquidated on its soil”, and they did not want that to occur on their watch. (p. 437)
On February 14, 1965, Malcolm’s home in Queens, which was in dispute between him and the NOI, was firebombed. A day later, BOSSI undercover agent Gene Roberts witnessed a dress rehearsal for Malcolm’s murder. Roberts then predicted to his superiors that the real assassination would take place the following Sunday. Hoover had Malcolm monitored for the last 17 days of his life and had an agent at BOSSI each and every day during that time. He had to know this. (pp. 440-41, p. 450)
V
As Douglass notes, one of the most tragic aspects about the murder of Malcolm is that not only was he breaking from NOI, he was trying to forge a relationship with King. One complaint Malcolm had with Elijah Muhammad was that the Nation of Islam would not do anything in public unless it impacted one of their own. They basically sat out the whole civil rights movement. So once he split with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm journeyed to the epochal Selma demonstration in early February of 1965. The talk that he was coming had barely started when he arrived at a meeting of the SCLC and SNCC workers. Coretta King was in attendance while her husband was in jail. He told her, “I have not come to Selma to cause difficulty for Dr. King. I only want to show support.” (p. 435)
When Malcolm spoke at the Brown Chapel that afternoon, he leaned over the podium and said to the media in front, “You had better listen to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., or you will have to listen to me. Dr. King wants the same thing I want—Freedom!” (p. 436) Unfortunately, this was not to be. For Malcom would be dead in a little more than two weeks.
On the morning of February 21st, Malcolm was on the phone with his sister. He said, “Ask Allah to guide me, because I feel they may have me doomed for this day.” She said, “Not this day.” Malcolm replied, “Yes, this day.” (p. 451) Making this even more prophetic, Malcolm refused to allow his guards to search people coming into his talks. One of his escorts resigned over this policy after telling him he was going to be killed.
Once the warning came in from Roberts about the dress rehearsal and the day it would occur, the NYPD should have been in the Audubon ballroom and ready to detect and stop the attempt. They were not and did not. They placed their men in rooms away from the ballroom. And they were not allowed to move in that direction unless given radio permission to do so. But when the shots rang out, the walkie-talkies went dead. Therefore, the police ended up entering the scene fifteen minutes after the murder. (pp. 449-450)
In other words, egged on by the FBI and allowed to proceed by the NYPD, Malcolm was killed by a NOI plan that the authorities specifically knew about in advance. In other words, it was allowed to happen. Douglass has done a fine job on the relatively ignored case of the assassination of Malcolm.
Next: The Murder of Martin Luther King
