Gus Newport: The Berkeley Mayor Who was Mentored by Malcolm X

I had the honor of interviewing Gus Newport, shortly before his recent and unexpected passing. Although he was 88 years old, Gus was full of energy, and his death took everyone by surprise. I had fully expected to be able to circle back to Gus for additional details, questions, and clarifications. However, at the time of our interview, I was juggling a number of obligations. I regret that I didn’t focus on getting this interview published sooner, while Gus was still with us.

The interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness. In order to let Gus tell his story, for the most part I’ve taken myself out as the interviewer, especially when I was simply asking for additional details and clarifications. I have incorporated his responses into the natural flow of the story he tells here.

Gus Newport, may you rest in Peace, and in Power. Thank you for all the good you brought to this world.

Lynn Burnett: You consider Malcolm X to be one of your mentors. You were part of the organization he founded after he left the Nation of Islam: The Organization of Afro-American Unity. You traveled with him just days before his assassination. How did you come to know Malcolm?

Gus Newport: Well, I grew up in Rochester, New York. We had two race riots around the time when I first came to know Malcolm. During those times, Malcolm would often visit Rochester. There was a lot of police brutality — which as an organizer I had been deeply involved in fighting — and the police had gone to the Black Muslim mosque, claiming there was a fire and they were there to extinguish the fire. The Muslims knew it was a setup. They formed a ring around the mosque, forbidding the police to come inside. The police arrested many of those Muslims.

Now, when that happened Malcolm called Daisy Bates, who history remembers for integrating the schools in Little Rock. At this time, Daisy was organizing for the NAACP in Rochester. So Malcolm called Daisy, and said “Daisy, I need to come to Rochester. Who should I connect with?” And Daisy said, “Gus Newport,” and gave Malcolm my phone number.

Being a young man in my twenties… I was floored when Malcolm X called me. He was all over the television screens in those days. We talked for two hours… he wanted to really get to know the lay of the land, what was going on in Rochester with housing, employment, education, etc. I didn’t realize at the time, but he was also getting the feel of who I was. He called every night after that, for two weeks, before flying into Rochester.

Malcolm flew in on a cold February day. Rochester is cold. It’s right on Lake Ontario, across from Canada. In those days, planes landed on the tarmac. They let the stairs down, and you walked across the pavement right into the airport.

So I’m standing in the airport, waiting on Malcolm and surrounded by all these White men in white shirts and ties and, you know, overcoats and felt hats. And Malcolm walks through the door and says, “Who is Eugene Newport?” My first name is Eugene, but Gus is a nickname that I’m well known by. I said, “I am, sir.” He said, “Youngblood, you got the best tapped telephone in America. This is all FBI here.”

There were a couple of Muslim brothers there, waiting to take us to the jail, to see if we could get these brothers released. We went to visit the sheriff. Malcolm had quite a deep conversation with him, and then the sheriff called down to the jail and said, “Bring the young men up to the courtroom. Let’s see if we can get them released.”

So we went to the courtroom and the sheriff was sitting on one side of the room and Malcolm and I on the other side. I looked over at the sheriff before the trial started… he had his eyes closed and his head down. I said, “Brother Malcolm, look at the sheriff!” And Malcolm in his comical way said, “Ah, the power of Allah took his life!” And then when the sheriff woke up, Malcolm laughed and said, “Looks like Allah let him off.”

But the prisoners were freed, and Malcolm took them to a Muslim friend’s house to feed them. While they were in jail, they would only drink warm milk, ’cause they suspected the police might be mixing pork in with their food. And after that we went to the Baden Street Settlement House, which is a big nonprofit organization where some 500 people, mainly Black, were having a meeting about the problems of the day.

So as Malcolm walks in, people started chanting “Malcolm! Malcolm! We want Malcolm!” But some of the Christian ministers said, “No! He’s not one of us. He doesn’t speak for the same things we do.” But the crowd overrode them, and Malcolm spoke. He said, “Look, we’re all Black. We all got the same problems. There’s no sense in us being divided.” And he gave a great speech. Malcolm stayed for a couple days, and then continued to come back and forth to Rochester.

I remember sitting in a meeting in Rochester one day with the first Black elected official, and a couple of ministers. Black police and other people were having a discussion, and I didn’t like some of the things that these — what I called Uncle Tom — Blacks were saying. And I shouted something. Malcolm said, “Brother Eugene, you got a sharp voice. You’re intelligent. But rather than react the way you did, I want you to process what’s going on now, in this present moment, and use that to think about what we’re going to do next to make real changes.” I never forgot that even when I became the mayor of Berkeley.

Later I moved to New York. I was in New York when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and when Malcolm made the statement about chickens coming home to roost. Elijah Muhammad set Malcolm down for 90 days, saying that he would be reinstated afterwards. 90 days went by, and Elijah Muhammad didn’t reinstate him.

So Malcolm then created Muslim Mosque Incorporated, as well as the Organization of Afro-American Unity, to focus on human rights. Not just the civil rights that were “guaranteed” by the Constitution, but all the human rights that weren’t… the right to education, housing, etc. And he invited me to be a part of that. It was an organization that had people from all ethnic groups. Asians, Latinos… even some Whites were involved. Malcolm was also very invested in building female leadership there. And he had female mentors… he was really a model for us men. Unfortunately, after leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm had very limited resources for his new organizations.

We met every Sunday in the Audubon Ballroom. The place was always packed. The discussions were great. And, you know, we always had brothers at the door to make sure nobody got in with weapons and things like that… during this time, there had already been several attempts on Malcolm’s life.

When Malcolm was killed in the Audubon Ballroom… that was just four days after he and I returned from traveling to Rochester together. He had been invited to speak at Colgate Divinity School. The faculty wanted him to speak about what he had learned about Islam during his travels, and his current understanding of Islam, versus the teachings of the Nation of Islam. He gave a dynamite speech! And he also spoke at Cornhill Methodist Church in Rochester. A film was made of that speech at Cornhill, but for some reason people can’t find it now, which is really sad. A minister named Franklin Florence, who died very recently, organized that.

That night — four nights before he was assassinated — Malcolm asked me to invite a group of my friends in Rochester to have a discussion with him. We sat up all night, talking in his hotel room. In the morning, we packed what little we had… and a say “little,” because Malcolm’s house had been firebombed just before our trip to Rochester. We had to buy him new clothes, because his clothes had been all burned up.

When we arrived back in New York, the chief of police and the fire marshal were there to meet us at the airport. They accused Malcolm of firebombing his own home. Malcolm had really cleaned up his language, you know, after doing time in prison, becoming a Muslim and all that. But he called them fellas some names I’d never heard in my life. “You think I would firebomb my home with my wife and family in it?!” The way their heads fell down… I thought their necks were broke!

Malcolm’s wife was there — who was eight months pregnant, carrying twins — to pick him up and take him downtown to the hotel where Alex Haley was staying, who was writing his autobiography. And that was the last time I saw Malcolm.

The next Sunday, the regular talk at the Audubon Ballroom… I was home up in Westchester, and my cousin called me. She said, “Where are you?” I said I was at home, that I was too tired to catch a train from Westchester down to Harlem that day, you know? She said, well, the… the news just came out that Malcolm X was assassinated. “Oh my God,” I said. “Oh my God.”

The very next morning, the landlord knocked on my door and said, “Uh, Gus, there’s two men here to see you…” It was the FBI. They said, “We know you were close to Malcolm X. And we just want to see if you have any guns and weapons.” They did the same thing to friends of mine back in Rochester. They knocked on everybody’s door at the same time. So that was COINTELPRO, but we were so young, we didn’t know about that.

Betty Shabazz was eight months pregnant when Malcolm was killed. I took her to the hospital when she delivered the twins that she was carrying.

Lynn Burnett: How did it come about that it was you who did that?

Gus Newport: Well, Betty thought of me as one of Malcolm’s close friends. Sidney Poitier had a large mansion up in Westchester, and we did a fundraiser up there for Betty… Malcolm, you know, had died broke. Some of the greatest jazz musicians of the time were there… Max Roach, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie. That fundraiser was to raise money to buy Betty Shabazz a house. Betty was up on the second floor of a balcony that overlooked the yard. I was walking by and she said, “Brother Eugene. May I talk to you?” She said, “You were one of the few people that Malcolm absolutely respected in his final time here. And the truth is, I could use some help from someone I can really trust.” I told her I would do whatever I could do.

So, we raised enough money at this fundraiser to buy Betty a house up in Westchester, and she asked me to help her move from Queens. She drove the car to move some things, and had me riding in the front seat, carrying a shotgun… because she wasn’t sure if people in the Nation of Islam might be out to assassinate her, too. So we moved Betty into the house. We cut down all the bushes for safety reasons, so that no one could hide as they approached the house. It was an old house that had wallpaper with velvet in it, and Betty hated that. So we steam cleaned all that wallpaper off. Hardest job I ever had.

When it came time for her to give birth, I drove her to the hospital, and then I helped her with whatever she needed after that. When she got back on her feet, she applied to graduate school. Went to UMass Amherst, to get her doctorate. I used to drive her from Westchester up to Amherst. So that’s how I became a friend of the family.

One person Betty had always wanted to meet was Nina Simone. I took Betty to see her at Count Basie’s club in Harlem. It turns out Nina Simone really admired Malcolm too… and that they lived only two blocks from one another! So they became real close friends. And then years later, the second daughter, Qubilah — who came by to visit me recently — dropped out of Princeton… she was involved in the South African anti-apartheid movement. Princeton wouldn’t divest from South Africa, and the White students were apathetic. And so she left Princeton and moved to Paris, where Nina Simone was living. And so Qubilah became very close to Nina Simone’s daughter.

Lynn Burnett: So you’ve remained in touch with Malcolm’s family ever since?

Gus Newport: With two of the girls, Qubilah and Gamilah. The others, I don’t know that well. Qubilah visits a couple times a year. A number of years ago, they were naming a street corner for Malcolm X in Harlem. I was walking to the event, and Gamilah saw me, and said “That’s him, that’s him! I can tell by his big feet and his smile!” Now, I don’t know how she recognized me, because I don’t think she had seen me since I gave her a doll when she was four. But it is true that I have big feet! So I’ve stayed, you know, fairly close with her too since then. Whenever they’re wanting to talk about something, or hear about their dad, they would call.

Malcolm was such a warm person. And you know, he and Martin Luther King were getting much closer. People say they only met in person once or twice. But they talked on the phone. We were at this meeting, at Juanita Poitier’s house. She was Sidney Poitier’s first wife, and she was very close to Malcolm. Ossie Davis was there. Ruby Dee, A. Philip Randolph. A couple of Muslims. Clarence Jones, who was Martin Luther King’s lawyer.

At this meeting, Martin Luther King was on the phone. During his travels, Malcolm had met with some of the heads of African and Asian states. One of the things that Malcolm was really trying to do was to get African representation at the United Nations to call for an investigation into human rights violations in the U.S., not only against Black Americans, but Asian Americans, Native Americans, imperialism abroad… the whole thing. Malcolm was really wanting to test the United Nations and what it was created for. He was testing, but he was also hoping. He used to go down to the United Nations all the time, and have meetings with some of the people from other countries, many recently independent from colonialism, who were all aspiring to the same thing.

Now, African and Asian leaders declined to press the United States on human rights abuses, through the UN. And so it was agreed on in that phone call that Malcolm would go before the United Nations himself, make a speech, and file a suit. We thought Malcolm was the right one to do it, because of all the relationships he had built during his travels. And on that call, Martin Luther King said, “I’ll be there to second that, brother.” Now, those phones were tapped. And J Edgar Hoover considered Martin and Malcolm to be the two most dangerous Black men in the world. Shortly after that… Malcolm was killed. He was never able to make that speech.

Once when Malcolm and I were travelling… I was sitting by the window in the airplane and Malcolm was in the aisle seat. And he turned to me and said, “Brother Eugene, I’m a dead man.” I said, “Malcolm, what the hell are you talking about?” And he said, “My intelligence tells me that there’s a hit out on my life.”

I mean, when someone tells you that they think they’re gonna be killed… it grabs your heart. But it was amazing to see how powerful he was. He said, “I’m not going to change who I am.” It was just like Martin Luther King saying, “I’ve been to the mountaintop.” To see that kind of brilliance and bravery… it was something like I had never witnessed before. And never witnessed again. Not to that degree.

Lynn Burnett: You refer to Malcolm X as a mentor. Can you tell us more about that?

Gus Newport: Well, a lot of it was just being around Malcolm, in small meetings, hearing his directions, seeing how he organized people for the movement. He used to teach young activists at the Theresa Hotel in Harlem. Every Saturday we’d have a class. He would emphasize the importance of staying focused, not getting distracted, and being strategic. He wanted us to be thinkers. When he made a statement, he would ask, “Is there anything you don’t understand?” And if we didn’t, he would always clarify. And he would invite us to critique him: “Do you have some problems with what I’m saying?” He encouraged us to develop our own ideas.

That was an important part of his leadership. Malcolm believed that we needed a movement that wasn’t focused on he the individual, but that was made up of people with a common capacity to think, to vision, and to aspire to… I say the Beloved Community, which is Martin Luther King’s thing. But in a sense that’s also what Malcolm was doing, in building a community where we could all grow. That takes real vision.

Malcolm would also teach us street-corner speaking. He taught us how to get our point across, fast. To be clear, concise. Malcolm used to have like a boxing ring put up on the corner of 125th St. for speaking, and people from all over the neighborhood would crowd around. Adam Clayton Powell — the congressman representing Harlem — used to ride in every Friday. They were very close friends. The talks they gave engaged the whole community. In fact, there were attempts being made to undermine Adam Clayton Powell and expel him from Congress… and some of us in the OAAU were laying the groundwork for Malcolm to run for Congress and replace him if that happened. We had even polled the people: Malcolm representing Harlem? It would have been a slam dunk. But I’ve never seen history record that.

Malcolm was constantly growing. Even at the level of respect he had, both nationally and internationally… you rarely see that. And to be able to be somewhat close to him, to follow him… Keep in mind I was a youngster. A lot of what Malcolm was doing was at a pretty high level. A lot went over my head. To this very day, I think about some of my times with Malcolm, what he said, and continue to get more clarity about what he meant and who he was.

Explore resources about Malcolm X here.