© January 2012 as part of author's extended work: "The Diplomat and the Demagogue: When Richard Holbrooke Met Malcolm X"

*****

Malcolm X stood inside his room at the Providence Biltmore hotel, staring out the window through his horned-rimmed glasses. Several stories below, Cold War decadence was streaming through the lobby. A glistening chandelier hung above the central marble staircase, giving off regal illumination to the entranceway, mixing with early-summer sunlight from outdoors. The lobby had golden, high-domed ceilings, and was pillared like a Romanesque cathedral. Two tiers of balconies looked down upon porters, bellhops, and hostesses catering to local kingmakers and serving cocktails to foreign dignitaries. The Biltmore was the premium house for first-class amenities in Providence, what seemed exclusive extravagance to the so-called Negro upstairs.

Malcolm was probably taking in the grisly urban sprawl from his window, in search of private solitude above high society. Though he was a potent public orator, and spoke at a tenacious clip, as a traveler he preferred silent, cerebral observance. In vivid view lay a shell heap of miscellaneous storefronts, a desolate mix of barbershops and board-ups that belied Providence's paucity of jobs. Textile factories either fled or went under after World War II in Rhode Island, and in 1961, the unemployment rate ran above 10 percent, nearly double the nation's average. Wealthy white families left for the suburbs during the '50s in chrome-colored Chevy Impalas, decreasing the population by 40,000. Yet African Americans doubled in number over this span, increasing by 4,000 people, and staking a shift in the social fabric that bolstered racial hostilities. Fears about the rising Negro crime rate featured prevalently in the Providence Journal: "...the result of vast numbers of rural Negroes moving into urban areas, crowding into ghettoes. Faced with prejudice and their own industrial incapacity, living under impoverished conditions, they constitute a constantly replenished reservoir of crime."[i] According to the Journal[ii], blacks accounted for one-fourth of arrests in the city despite tallying just one-twentieth of the population. So while Providence was originally a pioneer of religious and civil freedoms in America, it had succumbed to a reservoir of racial discord.

Off in the distance, less than a mile away from the Biltmore, Malcolm could have seen a speck of granite protruding from the New England cityscape. A statue of Roger Williams was sheltered upon a hillcrest, gazing his flinty eyes in Malcolm's direction. Perhaps the Black Muslim minister saw Williams's outstretched hands from his vantage, and took them to be a token blessing for his arrival in the beleaguered colony. The 35-year-old Black Muslim Minister was jetlagged from a California flight, and halfway spent with a yearlong speaking tour. After stops at Harvard, Yale, and a vetoed appearance at UC Berkeley, he was surveying Rhode Island's capitol for the first and only time of his career.

It was May 11, 1961 when Malcolm X, the national spokesman for The Nation of Islam, was set to speak on Brown University's campus at eight o'clock in front of eight hundred people within Sayles Auditorium. For a man endowed with the nickname of "Satan," Sayles could only have seemed ethereal and unseemly. Its cacophonous atrium was a quarter-football field in size, and had a 3,000-pipe organ bellowing from the balcony. Dotting the walls were ghastly portraits of former deans and presidents underneath stained-glass windows. There were inscriptions honoring fallen serviceman, like a 1946 plaque that read: "Brave Men of All Races Fighting the Wars of One Nation in One World."[iii] When Malcolm reached the podium later that evening, he'd resonate a message steeped in twos-two races, one divisible country, preaching the separatist rhetoric of the Nation of Islam.

At the hotel, a dozen Fruit of Islam bodyguards, trained in judo and freshly shaven, escorted Malcolm. They were dressed in all-black attire, like steely emblems of the Nation of Islam creed. Another half-dozen of his brain trust lounged about his room, some wearing bow ties and others topped with bowler hats. One group was already at Sayles making a security sweep, although there must have been moderate concern. Convocation was just two weeks away and proud families were bustled about campus in a majestic mood. His speech would mark a rare occurrence at Brown, forcing an almost entirely white community to confront the oddity of a black phalanx marching across the main green. And Malcolm would be greeted by 200 Nation of Islam members from Boston and Roxbury who took the train down, coalescing with hundreds of skeptical Brown students, professors, and white city dwellers venturing up the hill. If not for Malcolm, they all would never have mixed in Providence, a post-industrial city cut into separate spheres-a world of higher education set apart from a lackluster, low-lying metropolis.

A month before he arrived on campus, the Brown Daily Herald pitched the event like a carnival affair. For a price of 50 cents a ticket, the paper promised to showcase a "tall," "well-built Negro" representing "The Black Muslims [who] Preach The Divine Destruction of The White Race...Come Hear Malcolm X Speak." The advertisements encouraged laymen ivy-leaguers to scrutinize Malcolm like an exotic animal on exhibit-to note his black blazer and skinny black tie; his handsome chestnut skin and his ginger hair. A wealth of early intrigue forced the Herald to change its original venue-Alumnae Hall, a brick building on the women's campus-to the larger Sayles. Yet despite the student fanfare, no mention was made in the day's Providence Journal. Instead the Y Twirlers were featured on the calendar, a local square dance troupe performing at the YMCA.

Perhaps Malcolm relished his frequent collegiate expeditions, not just as tests of his speaking prowess-trying to persuade Caucasian audiences, referred to as "white devils" in Nation of Islam circles, to accept the group's radical solution to America's racial unrest. The Nation of Islam had a motto of "separation, not segregation"-demanding equality through the formation of an independent, self-sufficient black nation within mainland America, which would occupy a region of the Midwest or South. Beyond the challenge of convincing white college audiences that this path was logical, and not lunacy, maybe Malcolm also harbored natural curiosities to see how Uncle Sam's other-half lived. Had he been given the chance, perhaps he too could have been a charming pupil in college, instead of following his unorthodox, circuitous education. After dropping out of school as a teenager, he scraped by in Harlem as a petty criminal, and only began his re-education while serving an 8-10 year sentence at the Norfolk Prison Colony. There, Malcolm made meticulous use of its library and joined the prison debate team, tine during which he converted to the Nation of Islam. Prison fermented his stunning intellect and skills at oratory. like a hardscrabble substitute for an Ivy League curriculum.

*****

Little had changed in the first hundred years of the Herald. As in the days of Gutenberg or Franklin, publishing four-page issues relied on hot lead, printing templates, and spewed ink. But when Richard Holbrooke ascended to the top of the masthead in 1961, he showed a gregarious appetite for elevating the paper beyond its Brown-centric beat. Keen on national politics even at this budding age, he began to challenge the university's conservative, Christian culture with the Herald's expanded coverage. An Op-Ed during Holbrooke's first week as Editor-in-Chief in February, perhaps written by himself, read like a manifesto for the paper's regime change: "The enduring domestic crisis of the sixties remains, as it was in the late fifties, the racial conflict...it can not be ignored. We should make an extra effort to try to understand the powerful and complex forces at work on the various groups seeking a solution. The white supremacist, the trapped moderate, the apathetic Negro, the student movements, the liberal; the hopes, the fears, the promises of all these must come under constant scrutiny."[iv]

As head editor, Holbrooke encouraged the endeavors of two staff writers-Robert Lambert and Walter G Gordon-who wrote a series of articles while barnstorming through the South duringthe spring semester of 1961. They reported from the University of Georgia, when the college nearly cancelled its school year due to picketing against integration. Lambert and Gordon also investigated a KKK meeting in Atlanta, and wrote several articles lambasting white supremacy groups. Under Holbrooke, the Herald's content nudged the school toward the cusp of the Civil Rights movement.

But from Malcolm's vantage, Brown must have appeared in illicit pursuit of racial reforms. Seven years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Brown's non-white enrollment was less than two-percent. Not until later in the decade would the unofficial quota-accepting 5 or 6 African-Americans students per class-subside.[1] Despite skirting radical change, the administration had allowed The Herald to sponsor Martin Luther King Jr for a talk in support of integration in April of 1960. Now a year later, Holbrooke believed there was a campus prerogative to hear out the black separatist perspective as well. Despite his deep personal support for the integration policies of the moment-having been raised by Dean Rusk, then the acting Secretary of State for President Kennedy-Holbrooke spent March and April of 1961 working as a liaison to bring Malcolm X to campus, who was the primary rival to King and non-violent organizations like NAACP, SNCC, and CORE. In an article titled "America's Black Supremacists," published in The Nation on May 6, 1961, Robert Krosney called the Nation of Islam, "the most powerful of about twelve nationalist groups and with the greatest mass appeal since the days of Marcus Garvey." Krosney believed its membership exceeded 100,000 and was growing, especially amongst "...low-income urbanites, particularly in the North."

Holbrooke's project began with the decision to publish a controversial essay in the Herald on February 21. The story titled "The Amazing Story of The Black Muslims," was written by a classmate-Katharine Pierce-who had researched the Nation of Islam for a religious studies course on Modern Islam.[v] Holbrooke's girlfriend, Lorraine Sullivan, informed him about the essay a week prior, after the Nation of Islam caught national headlines for demonstrating outside the UN Security Council Chamber following Patrice Lumumba's death. Holbrooke convinced Katharine to re-shape her academic work into an interrogative article that included a sensational subhead-"...a full examination of this racist sect pledged to annihilate all whites"-along with a searing conclusion-"The Black Muslims are not a group to admire...They are a group which has misdirected its energy, and they badly need to be shown the value of constructive work which is being done to better their position," Katharine wrote.[vi]

Weeks after the essay ran, a Nation of Islam member called the Herald, demanding Malcolm X be allowed to speak at Brown and rebut the article in defense of the group's agenda. Holbrooke then approached the administration coyly, proposing Malcolm X as the next installment of the Herald's ongoing lecture series. But when it relented having such a radical speaker, Holbrooke made a two-part ultimatum to President Barnaby Keeney in April. He threatened to take the entire operation of the Herald, located at Faunce House on the main green, and transplant it to an off-campus location unless Keeney consent to Malcolm coming. And he threatened to publish a spat of negative headlines about the administration's refusal. After half-a-dozen meetings, Keeney consented with stipulations. The Herald was given a campus venue, but had to find an opposing speaker in conjunction with Malcolm, to offer an integrationist point of view. Furthermore, the administration exempted itself from all degree of planning and publicity, reflected in Keeney's notes from 1961, where Malcolm X's name never appears, nor is listed on the university calendar.

*****

The phone rang. Malcolm picked up the receiver. It was a student organizer from Brown.

"Mr. Minister, I'm calling to inform you that Herbert Wright, the NAACP National Youth Commissioner will not be debating you after all."

Wright was the Herald's choice to speak opposite Malcolm. The two rivals had shown a symbiotic rapport when they debated at the Yale Law School the previous October. They were compliments of polar contrast, accentuating each other's strongest points by presenting a duel between integration and separation. Malcolm had expected a similar interplay at Brown, relying on muscle memory more than originality to advocate his position.

"And why is that?"

"At recent meeting at the national board of the NAACP, a policy was stated that members of the NAACP would not be permitted to debate against Malcolm X or any other member of the Black Muslim movement. The conclusion reached was that the main effect of joining a member of the Black Muslims on the podium was to dignify them."[vii]

"So you're telling me I'll be appearing by myself?"

"No. Mr. Ralph Allen of the Rhode Island Commission Against Discrimination, who was original scheduled to serve as moderator, will present the integrationist viewpoint. There will be no formal debate. Each of you will be given 50 minutes. And we're in the process of finding a replacement moderator."

"I've never heard of this so-called Negro Allen before-"

Malcolm was probably fuming. Days prior, UC Berkeley's Administration cancelled his appearance at the last-minute, and now Brown was disrupting his prophetic plans. While he would still share the stage, Allen lacked the formative voice to push hard against, and thus, Malcolm shifted his tone to prepare for a sermon rather than a showdown.

"Fine, the local brother will do. Are we still beginning at 8 o'clock?"

"Correct, 8 o'clock."

"Then I will see you shortly."

Perhaps as Malcolm made renovations to his speech upon learning of Wright's withdrawal, he turned again toward those two stone pillars on the hill, where Roger Williams rested. Williams, like Malcolm, defied death warrants and religious persecution in his lifetime. So perhaps Malcolm drew upon a parochial predecessor for inspiration, as he wrote some of the conciliatory remarks he would deliver at Sayles:

"I am thankful to Allah for those of you here this evening, because to me it shows you have an open mind. And I don't think you came here for me to convert you into being a Muslim, nor do I think that you think you've come here to convert me back into being a Christian. When Eisenhower and Khrushev sat down to talk to each other, Ike wasn't trying to make Khrushev a capitalist nor was Khrushev trying to make Ike a communist. They weren't trying to convert each other...

This is the era, an era of change. Doors that were once closed to some of us are now opening. And doors once open to others are now closing. In times past, when the opening and closing of doors was entirely in the hands of the white man, the colonial powers of Europe or their rich brother Uncle Sam in America."

There was a knock at Malcolm's door. One of his confidants twisted the knob and greeted a gang of ten young white men. Their leader looked like a cutout from a pomade advertisement, with a pasty tuff of curly brown hair. He wore thick glasses and was twenty years old, but had a baby-face that could pass for junior high. He was considerably tall, weighty, and forthright. He removed his right hand from his tweed jacket pocket, and extended it towards his counterpart.

"Good afternoon," the young man jousted. "On behalf of the Brown Daily Herald, I would like to welcome Minister Malcolm X and thank you all for coming to Providence, Rhode Island. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Richard Holbrooke."

An hour of pro-forma chit-chat[2] ensued between Malcolm and the senior staff of the Herald. They peppered him with questions like puppies around a pitbull, then left the Biltmore for the Herald offices, before finally making a fifty-pace saunter into Sayles just as an early-summer dawn set down. Holbrooke, fifteen years Malcolm's junior, would introduce him at the podium that evening. Although they were strangers to each other, Malcolm X and Richard Holbrooke were bound together blissfully for a moment, neither knowing how iconic they'd become.

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