Life has many quirks," Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan is fond of saying. One of the strangest for Farrakhan was sharing a stage last week in Baltimore with a number of African Americans who usually steer clear of him, including Jesse Jackson and Malcolm X's widow Betty Shabazz, who has declared her belief that Farrakhan played a role in her husband's assassination three decades ago. But the person who stirred the most controversy by sitting at Farrakhan's elbow was the man who invited him: Benjamin Chavis, the chief executive of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Farrakhan's...