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a egas. “ty Oehee . sate. abt at Newel utes f ie al % Lan C biend of nobility and courage. The other exchange I recall most clearly occurred when Malcolm kept insisting that, as far as Negroes were concerned, there was literally no dif- ference between New York and Mis- sissippi; the terror and servitude were the same in bowh siates. I argued chat no good purpose was served by such Misstatement; that one need not min- imive the wrongs and injustices of New York to recognize that there was a difference of some consequence be- tween a state in which a white tyran- ny used all the police power to main- tain its rule and one in which the machinery of government, however fumbiing and inadequate, accepted the moral premise of equality. More- over, I contended, Malcolm’s words would surely be used by the South- ern racists to justify their system and to stifle criticism. If a Negro leader really believed New York and Mis- sissippi were fundamentally the same, how dare the North condemn Missis- sippi's police state? It was a futile, exasperating col- loquy; I could not believe that Mal- coim really believed what he was say- ing, but neither could I wrest from him—on the air—the admission that there were any real variations be- tween the two states. When the program had ended we conversed cordially for a few mo- ments and Malcolm, with a mischiev- ously amiable smile, said: “Look, you'll never get me to admit there's a difference between New York and Mississippi until we've won our revo- lution.” What he was saying, of course, was that he fully got the point but that it did not suit his rhetorical purposes; he would continue to main- tain that it was a distinction without a difference. I had a feeling that I had detected a cold cynicism in the firebrand, but his answer no doubt would have been that I could not understand. - It was about two months ago when 1 encountered Malcolm again. Many things had happened in the interim. The high hopes and spirits of last summer's Freedom March had been diminished by a series of anti-cli- maxes. There was growing talk of the white “backlash” in the North stirred by the rising militancy of Northern Negroes; the battic of Birmingham had a seemingly <lifferent dimension to too many white citizens when it became the baile of Brooklyn. The Stnate was bogged down in a fili- buster. Factional conflict was searing the civil rights groups. Things had changed for Malcolm, too. He was no longer part of Elijah Muhammad's Black Muslim move- ment; he was operating his own black nacionalist sect. The estrangement was apparently triggered by Maicolm’s callous comments on the assassina- tion of President Kennedy (he later claimed that he had not meant ex- actly what he said, or not said what he meant to say). Whatever the full cause of the rift, he was now more than ever committed to a hell-raising role in the civil rights battle. Since he remained a passionate advocate of separatism, there were obvious am- biguities and anomalies about his chal- lenge to the civil rights leadership. It was partly because I was curious about how he was reconciling these views that I found myself attending an April rally at a midtown Man- hattan meeting hall at which Mal- colm was to speak under the sponsor- ship of The Militant Labor Forum, a unit of the Socialist Workers Party (the continuing modern manifesta- tion of what old radicals define as “Troukyism”). There was an intriguing aspect about the auspices of the meeting. It was hard to believe that Leon Trotsky had ever anticipated such an alliance would be welded in his mem- ory; but those who wish to explore the detailed dialectics will find them elucidated at length, if not with pre- cision, in the Trotskyist journal. There was another, more dramatic circumstance which evoked my curi- osity. Just twenty-four hours earlier, a Cleveland minister—the Reverend Bruce Klunder—had dicd under the wheels of a bulldozer during a CORE demonstration at a school construc- tion site. 1 wondered whether Mal- colm's meeting would offer some rec- nt JAMES A. WECHSLER is editor of the editorial page of The New York Post. his books are “The of Suspicion” and “Reflections hs i Middle-Aged Editor.” ognition io this “white liberal.” There were about 800 people in the hall. They ranged from elderly Trotskyists, veterans of the old fac- tional left-wing wars, to young re- cruits, nearly all of them white; a small band of Malcolm's personal ad- herents was also on hand, but this was primarily an SWP show. With mingled awe and pain, 1 watched Malcolm perform before this assemblage. It must be said for him that he made no visible altcration in his attitudes toward the white com- munity. Alter offering a token trib- ute to those whites who had the wisdom to associate themselves with = ee ths weer inter! his ati organization chia appectiiaiow shied message, he proceeded to deliver the same separatist speech that he has so olten recited to Harlem rallies. Each time he baited those who had made the mistake of choosing white par- ents, there was general laughter, with- out regard to race; when he ven- tured a few poorly-veiled anti-Semitic thrusts (he was particularly sharp about Justice Arthur Goldberg's con- cern over the fate of Jews in the Soviet Union), he received equally non-sectarian approval. At times one had the feeling that he was playing his cosmic joke—that he knew much of the audience was so entrapped by doctrinaire shibboleth that it felt a specia] obligation to welcome his ridi- cule. (At umes the spectacle evoked the revulsion one would experience if one watched a predominantly Ne- gro audience respond warmly to a segregationist speech by a White Citi- zens Council spokesman). In any case, he completed his re- marks, and the dead Mr, Klunder re- “mained unmentioned. As a journal- ist who suffers from a periodic in- ability, to remain aloof from the event he is covering, I finally found myself taking the floor in the ques- tion period. My question was wheth- er, in view of his assertion that he had met one “true white liberal,” Malcolm would care to say anything about Cleveland's dead minister. 1 think I really assumed that he would offer some words of regret and tribute, even if he had to accom- pany them with a reminder that such ee —_