‘Well, What Do You Mean, We Can’t Join the Klan?’
‘Well, What Do You Mean, We Can’t Join the Klan?’ - Inside the bizarre, secret meeting between Malcolm X and the Ku Klux Klan..
On the afternoon of January 28, 1961, at the home of Minister Jeremiah X, the Atlanta minister of the Nation of Islam (NOI), Malcolm X sprang to the living room window and peered through the Venetian blinds. Some three dozen white men in civilian clothes sat bolt upright in a 10-car motorcade parking out front of Jeremiah’s house. Each car held three or four men. Neighbors on adjacent porches and other Black people strolling along the paved street scampered out of sight, some glancing back over their shoulders at the long column of four-door sedans. The Harlem firebrand, then the national spokesman for the NOI, and his Atlanta host kept unusually close to each other at the window.
A middle-aged passenger in the lead car got out abruptly, strode to the front door, and knocked determinedly. The short and scrawny stranger wore a black fedora with an unusually high crown, “like a witch’s hat,” Jeremiah later said. “Jeremiaaaah?” he called out.
“Yes, sir,” answered the minister at the screen door. Canting his head to look around Jeremiah’s shoulder, the Witch Hat inquired, “Are you that Malcolm X?” The reply rang just as determinedly, “Yes, sir.” “You’d lahk ta come in, sir?” asked Jeremiah, mouthing as much of a drawl as the native Philadelphian could muster. The cautious Witch Hat seemed not
altogether reassured.
The name of the man at the door was W.S. Fellows, and he was a local Klansman. But this was not an ambush. This was a planned meeting between the Nation of Islam and the Ku Klux Klan, and it had an agenda. “I’m gonna tell you n-----s something,” said the diminutive white stranger as he gazed up at the lanky Muslim ministers, “If I’m not outta here in 15 minutes, we’re gonna burn this house down.”
The meeting began with a telegram that was delivered from the Klan at the end of 1960.
The details of the Klan telegram, and the events that resulted, have never been fully disclosed. Each group determined that its involvement in this cross-racial affair must be kept secret. Records indicate that the FBI monitored the proceedings and kept its notes classified for decades. It also kept secret whatever covert follow-up action the bureau may have taken against the Klan and the Black Muslims, as well as against civil rights leaders. The original telegram was thrown out, according to Jeremiah X (later known as Jeremiah Shabazz). This account of the matter was pieced together from scattered government records, interviews with participants, group communiqués and notes, personal diaries, and knowledgeable sources. The meeting was the beginning of an uneasy alliance between the NOI and the
Ku Klux Klan on shared goals of racial separation. It was also the beginning of Malcolm’s disillusionment with the Black Muslim organization and his embrace of the more mainstream civil rights movement.
This is the story: https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...meeting-431657
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