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/ "men were unique indeed. But he con- founded me again. Instead of any remotely generous sentiment, he ex- plaled coniemptuously. “We're not white person when 22,000,000 Ameri- can Negroes are being tortured,” he cried. Then suddenly he shouted “All right! Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!” but immediately proceeded to catalogue the list of crimes suffered by Negroes at the hands of white America. And ‘when, a few moments later, a solt- spoken, gray-haired (white) citizen arose and implored Malcolm to let the audience observe one moment of silence in memory of Mr, Klunder, the answer was another trade; he would never “use any energy applaud- ing the sacrifice of a white man” in a world in which Negroes were sys- tematically victimized. It is many weeks since this oc- curred, but the image of the episode remains with me. One clings to the view that there can be certain com- munication in the world, and that both instinct and intelligence would have led Malcolm X to respond with a measure of common humanity— even if only to underline the sadness of the human condition—at that moment. One had the feeling instead that he believed his cause might somehow be undermined by such a display of “bourgeois sentimentality.” fl | 1 have described these episodes in detail not because they were peculiar- ly historic but because they may help to illuminate the internal crisis con- fronting the Freedom Movement. In The Progressive in March of this year I wrote of the moral crisis of the white liberals. It is no less serious now than it was then. Noth- ing written here is designed to sug- gest any diminution in my sense of the priority of that problem. There are innumerable half-truths in the thrusts of Malcolm X. But that is no excuse for silence about the real nature of his role, and the dead-end toward which he is lead- ing many frustrated, alienated Ne- groes and some white camp-followers. Perhans even more important is the prospect that imitators will spring up—as they already have in some places—and that the civil rights bat- tle will be poisoned by their presence. Too many “militants"—white and going to stand up and applaud one Negro—have rationalized his per- formance with the claim that the threat he poses provides a certain weapon for those civil rights leaders still operating in the real world. There was a time when I found some validity in that view. But that time is past. His is an adventure in diver- sionary discord. Jt rests on accept- ance of the segregationist premise that the cause of equal rights in Amer- ica is essentially doomed; that Martin Luther King's dream was a delusion; that, to achieve self-respect, the Ne- gro can do little more than take up arms to defend himself and await his deliverance to an African promised land. But the premise is false and the promise is demagogy. I am not pleading for patience and fortitude. I am saying only that the man who sneeringly refers to Eleanor Roosevelt as “supposedly a liberal,” and who recklessly talks of substitut- ing bullets for ballots, is inviting not liberation but disaster, and playing capriciously with human beings to whom he offers nothing but the pros- pect of futile violence and turmoil. The answer to such criticism, of- fered by Malcolm and his more sophisticated apologists, is that the non-violence movement has proved a failure and a fraud; that the degra- dation of the Negro ghettos in the North grows worse rather than bet- ter; that the Southern landscape is still an unrelieved nightmare, bright- ened in no serious degree by scattered breakthroughs in schools and at lunch counters. The indictment has much validity, but his alernative makes no serious sense. On that night in Manhattan, I heard Malcolm describe his vision of Harlem—a firmly-ruled black com- munity in which “no white man will be able to set foot without a ‘guide’.” In his tortured dream, the black populace—during this period of transition before che ultimate return to Africa—will build Algerian-type walls around iw own sectors, and thus achieve at least temporary es- cape from white persecution. One can only sadly observe that Georgia's Senator Richard Russell would prob- ably find this a satisfactory formula for settlement of the racial problem. Its grotesque absurdity seems ap- parent; yet it would be self-deception to deny chat, amid the stagnation and slow-motion that beset the qués¢ for equal rights, such madness has achieved a growing appeal. It is re- flected not merely in the formation of small terrorist gangs that draw spiritual inspiration, if not formal direction, from Malcolm and his agents, and who have embarked on sporadic forays of aimless violence against the “white enemy” (without regard to any specific offense alleged- ly commited by the victim). One al- so hears echoes of the same credo in conversations and correspondence with some intellectuals, Negro and white, who have joined in the revolt against non-violence. SS —— —a A column that I wrote describing Malcolm's meeting, with particular reference to his scornful remarks about the Reverend Mr. Klunder, elicited a long, well-phrased letter from a Negro woman in which she said, in part: “I know ... I'm expected to... flatly denounce Malcolm X's callous reaction to the young minister's death. And I'm almost crying inside because I can’t. My first thought was ‘How tragic,” but before that thought was cold I was thinking ‘But they started it.’ Years ago after an explosion in the Gary steel mills one of my girl friends told me how her shock upon hearing of the accident changed to relieved laughter because only white men were killed. I was shocked at the coldness of it. But when that plane from Atlanta crashed in Paris it was sensitive little me who said, aloud, ‘Good! Ic serves shem right! Isn't it still a matter of allowing color to gov- erm your feelings for people—a men- ta] process we learn mainly through dealing with you? - “You aré a compassionate man. This leaves you unequipped to sec people as they are. I assure you that ‘most other people, including many of mine, are not like you. You think that beneath the acquired hatred THE PROGRESSIVE