ALL iDENTITARIANISMS ARE THE SAME:

The meeting began with a telegram that was delivered from the Klan at the end of 1960.

At a Nation of Islam gathering in Atlanta, 33-year-old Jeremiah X rushed up and handed over over the message, as if passing along a burning ember. The communiqué caught Malcolm totally by surprise. It proposed a meeting between the two groups and implied that they had a lot in common. The two Muslim ministers read the cable several times, probing the missive for motive. Who exactly was this W. S. Fellows, who had signed the telegram? The inclusion of his phone number, with an exchange that indicated he lived in the Grant Park section of the city, suggested that he awaited an answer. Was this a veiled threat? A setup? The Klan did not normally send its messages to Black people by day or post them in writing.

Unbeknown to Malcolm and Jeremiah, this initiative from the most violent, self-declared "white racist" group in America was being monitored by the FBI. Director J. Edgar Hoover had long targeted both the Klan and the NOI for surveillance, infiltration, and disruption. The more recent surge of the civil rights movement had also attracted the Bureau leader's attention in the South. As many as 2,000 paid FBI informant were operating inside the Klan, it later would be revealed.

This penetration allowed the Bureau to control or influence one of every 10 members, or 10 percent of the Ku Klux Klan. This vast government network may well have instigated the Klan's outreach to the Black Muslims for Hoover's own ulterior motive, such as the desire to influence or get inside information about the NOI's plans.

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.

At the time of the meeting, race relations in America had been rocked by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which had outlawed school segregation. Despite the Supreme Court's caveat prescribing "all deliberate speed," the decision inspired civil rights groups to accelerate the pace of desegregation--against stiff white opposition from parents, school boards, governors and congressmen, sheriffs and the terror tactics of the KKK. Spearheading the drive to enforce the ruling were such well-established organizations as the NAACP, the National Urban League, and the Congress of Racial Equality, as well as the newly formed Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), headed by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

In the wake of the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott that the SCLC had launched in December 1955, the Klan had stepped up its campaign against desegregation with night-riding attacks, lynching of Blacks and bombings of homes and churches. Cross-burning Klan rallies were staged in open fields--mostly on Friday or Saturday nights, to attract the largest working-class crowds, some bringing along their small children for the fireworks. The racist terror was intended to derail the civil rights movement led by King and other nonviolent leaders.

During these tumultuous days of racial confrontation, the Nation of Islam operated on a third rail, opposing integration from the black side of the race divide.

The Klan invitation led to a meeting in Chicago between Jeremiah, Malcolm and NOI leader Elijah Muhammad, also called the Messenger by adherents, where they mulled over what such a meeting might look like.

Malcolm envisioned himself grabbing the Georgia Klan by the ear--and riding the wolf in its very own den, all at the behest of Elijah Muhammad. Once and for all, a squaring-off with the Klan leader could clarify the Muslim stances on integration, Christianity, mixed marriage, the Jews, miscegenation and even violence. The unbridgeable racial chasm could be explained, and the need for the Messenger's "separate state" highlighted, all in a highly publicized, Atlanta extravaganza with the white knights--featuring Minister Malcolm X. As Malcolm maneuvered for the key role at the Messenger's table, Jeremiah X listened quietly.

Elijah Muhammad appeared to have other ideas entirely. He struck a note nowhere near as assertive toward the Klan as Malcolm had hoped.

Dispassionate as usual when asserting NOI doctrine, Muhammad stated that his battle was not against whites but for the lost hearts and minds of Black people. Both the Klan and the NOI, Muhammad summarized, opposed integration and race mixing. Each group was on record as opposing the goals of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., although for separate and unequal reasons. The Muslims viewed King as a chief rival. The Klan saw him as a dangerous threat to white hegemony. Moreover, Muhammad allowed for no "hierarchy" among Caucasians on the issue of white supremacy; from the sitting U.S. president to the imperial wizard, all were slammed as "white devils." Accordingly, the Messenger told his two ministers in Chicago that day that the Muslims and the Klan indeed had similar goals but with different shading. Finally, playing his fingers across his lips, Elijah Muhammad calmly instructed a restrained Malcolm and a resigned Jeremiah X: "You can meet with them devils."

"We want what they want," Jeremiah remembered the Messenger stating plainly. However, "let them know that you don't want segregation; you want separation. We want to be totally separated from you. Give us ours and you have yours. We want ours more or less free and clear. Give us something we can call our own. You just tell them devils that."

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