PART ONE

_The Coming of the Prophet_

1. MAKE IT PLAIN, MR. MINISTER!

The ultimate comment upon racialism in this republic is that the all-black Nation of Islam--a Chicago-based theocracy whose citizens are known as the Black Muslims--is one of the few religions ever produced by the American experience. Incensed liberals, Negro and white, will deny my assertion that the Black Muslims are a religious body, but the issue, both legally and theologically, has been settled: Courts in several states have ruled that the followers of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad are, indeed, adherents to a religious faith--as such, Black Muslim prison inmates have the right to hold services of worship as do other convicts. And no one who understands theologian Paul Tillich’s argument that religion is nothing more than one’s ultimate concern can doubt that the teachings of number-two Black Muslim leader, Malcolm X, constitute a religion.

Malcolm X is the St. Paul of the Black Muslim movement. Not only was he knocked to the ground by the bright light of truth while on an evil journey, but he also rose from the dust stunned, with a new name and a burning zeal to travel in the opposite direction and carry America’s twenty million Negroes with him.

“This is the day of warning,” Malcolm shouts to the Negro, “the hour during which prophecy is being fulfilled before your very eyes. The white man is doomed! Don’t integrate _with_ him, separate _from_ him! Come ye out from among the white devils and be ye separate.”

Nobody knows just how many Negroes have said “yes” to Malcolm X’s call. Estimates of the Black Muslim membership vary from a quarter of a million down to fifty thousand. Available evidence indicates that about one hundred thousand Negroes have joined the movement at one time or another, but few objective observers believe that the Black Muslims can muster more than twenty or twenty-five thousand active temple people.

The Black Muslims are feverish proselytizers, however, and they get amazing results from Negro prison inmates and the abandoned black masses who live in a world of despair and futility. Early commentators on the movement pointed to their work among prison inmates as further evidence that the Black Muslims were a dissolute lot. The opposite has proved to be true--the Muslims have been able to change the lives of these men once they emerge from prison. While the percentage of repeaters among ordinary Negro criminals runs very high, the Black Muslim converts seldom, if ever, return to a life of crime.

“Many of my followers--and ministers--were once criminals,” Elijah Muhammad boasted in Washington, D.C., “but I changed all that by giving them knowledge of _self_. Once they discovered who the devil was and who God was, their lives were changed.”

“All praise due to Allah,” the crowd of some five thousand shouted as they leaped to their feet and applauded with rejoicing.

Non-Muslim Negroes used to scoff when Elijah wrote and talked about “knowledge of self.” They are less apt to scoff now that a new wave of race pride has engulfed the Negro and a coterie of clean-cut, well-dressed, polite, and chillingly moral Black Muslim ex-convicts parade through the Negro community each day.

The same general approach, teaching race pride as knowledge of “self,” accounts for the success the Black Muslims have among low-income Negroes. For these people are in something of a prison, too; they see themselves as failures and need some accounting for why they are what they are, why they are not what they are not. These needs are met when the wayward and the downtrodden sit at the feet of Malcolm X and hear him proclaim the divinity of the black man, hear him blame the white man for sin and lawlessness and then go on to herald the impending destruction of the “blue-eyed white devil.”

_Bean Pie and Beatitudes_

The life of the Black Muslim centers around his temple--sometimes called a mosque--and the temple restaurant. They are usually located close together, in the heart of the Negro ghetto, and are the nerve centers of work and worship. Temple services are held two or three times a week and are generally preceded by family and group meals at the restaurant. Families--most of them former Methodists and Baptists--come in groups, the men dressed in black, the women in flowing white, and the children wearing pins or buttons to let the world know of their commitment to The Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

The restaurants--like the Black Muslim homes--strictly adhere to Moslem dietary laws. Muslim sisters glory in their ability to prepare dishes that satisfy the traditional eating habits of the American Negro without violating these laws. The best example of imaginative Black Muslim cooking is their famous bean pie, something of a gourmet’s delight in the Negro community. Negroes in New York have been known to come to Harlem from miles around just to buy a bean pie for the family table. The restaurants also serve as business headquarters for the movement; they are the distribution centers for Black Muslim newspapers and other periodicals, the place where one is invited to have a talk with a Black Muslim leader. Temple Number Seven Restaurant at 116th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem is where Minister Malcolm X holds forth: he can be seen there almost any time conducting the financial affairs of the movement and holding press conferences. Then, on a sign from one of his assistants, Malcolm bounds out of the restaurant to conduct temple service at Temple Number Seven, half a block away.

Throughout the nation the Muslims generally meet in rented halls--a Masonic Temple in one town, over a pool room in another. Men and women enter the temple together, but once in the vestibule the families are separated. Everybody is searched thoroughly and all sharp objects, to say nothing of weapons, are taken away. The search is carried out by well-trained sisters and brothers who work with the efficiency of jail guards. They assign a small paper bag to each worshiper, and such objects as nail files, pocket-knives, scissors--any sharp objects that might conceivably be used as weapons--are put into the bag for safe keeping until the parishioner leaves the temple. Even the ordeal of being searched is made palatable by a pleasant brother or sister who explains that the visitor must be relieved of all weapons because once the truth about the white man is explained, the visitor might run out and start his private Armageddon before the “word” comes.

The men and women are ushered into the temple through separate doors and are ordered to sit on opposite sides. The auditorium is generally a drab room, one used by many groups in the course of a week. In Birmingham, Alabama, for example, the Black Muslims use the Masonic Hall auditorium. The Sunday I visited the services there one could see posters, fans, and other materials left by groups who had used the same hall earlier in the week. The chairs of the auditorium are arranged in rows, a wide gulf between the “brothers” side and that of the “sisters.” Dark-suited young men, members of The Fruit of Islam, patrol the floor incessantly. They dart about, nudging children to silence, awakening a slumbering brother or sister, and performing whatever duties might come to hand, all the while keeping up a rapid-fire “That’s right,” “You tell it like it is,” in response to what the minister is saying.

The visitor finds himself inside a strange new world at a Black Muslim service. Many religions separate men and women during their services, but few Negroes are members of such faiths and so they are intrigued from the outset. Their sense of being in on something exotic, thus meaningful, is increased when one of the lesser ministers takes the platform and says a few words in Arabic. The Negro is told that this was his language before the white man kidnaped his father and truncated his culture.

“_As-Salaam-Alaikum!_” the minister says--Peace be unto you.

“_Wa-Alaikum-Salaam_,” the visitor is taught to reply--“Peace also be unto you.”

The Black Muslims have little or no liturgy. They do not sing in the temple, for they have not yet developed hymns that enunciate their faith. The nearest thing I have heard to a Black Muslim hymn is a plaintive and moving song written by Minister Louis X of Boston, “The White Man’s Heaven Is the Black Man’s Hell.” It is often sung in the temples, but only as a solo by some gifted member of the congregation.

Many of the Black Muslims are excellent musicians; indeed, they are sidemen for some of the best-known jazz groups in the nation. I have been in temple meetings where a group of brothers set the stage for the service by playing a protracted jazz riff. The music was as complex and as far out as anything you would hear at New York’s Five Spot Café or any other den of progressive jazz. As these accomplished jazz men play out their frustrations, the audience sits in cold silence. Sometimes the musicians come on a beat or a shading that strikes some common chord, and the Muslims smile slightly and nod at one another. When the music is done--it goes on and on until it runs down, just as it does in the jazz clubs--the congregation applauds, and somewhere a male voice can be heard to say, “All praise due to Allah!”

Then the stage is set for the “teaching.” In lieu of the cross, the focus of the Black Muslims’ religious service is a huge blackboard divided into two sections. On one side is a drawing of the American flag with the Christian cross superimposed on it. Under this flag is written, “Slavery, Suffering and Death.” On the other side of the blackboard is the half-crescent symbol of Islam, and under it is written, “Freedom, Justice and Equality.” Under both flags, running the full length of the blackboard, is the somber warning: “Which one will survive the War of Armageddon?”

And it is against this backdrop that the minister gets up to “teach.” Each temple has its own minister, who is extremely well trained in what he is to say and do. And he does it well.

The Black Muslims have but one message: The white man is by nature evil, a snake who is incapable of doing right, a devil who is soon to be destroyed. Therefore, the black man, who is by nature divine and good, must separate from the white man as soon as possible, lest he share the white man’s hour of total destruction.

This sermon, or “teaching,” is the high point of the service, what everybody has come to hear. An air of expectancy runs through the crowd as the moment to begin the teaching approaches. This is stock drama for the Black Muslims whether the meeting be a national affair where Elijah himself is to speak or a local meeting where the temple minister is to teach.

This air of expectancy is set stirring by the second-in-command, who keeps up a running promise that something good is about to happen. As warm-up man for Elijah’s Washington, D.C., speech, Malcolm X electrified a crowd of some five thousand in Uline Arena with this:

“You are here to get some good news.”

“Make it plain.”

“But you must remember that what is good news for some is bound to be bad news for others.”

“All praise due to Allah,” the people shouted back.

“What is good news for the sheep,” Malcolm continued, “is bad news for the wolf!”

“Make it plain, Mr. Minister. Make it plain.”

The good news, as everybody knew, was that Elijah would be there soon with a message of freedom for the “sheep” (the black man) and a message of destruction for the “wolf” (the white man).

The setting for local meetings is much the same. In New York Minister Henry X gets the crowd ready for Malcolm by saying, “We are here to receive a blessing. The truth is going to be told here this afternoon.”

“All praises due to Allah.”

“The Messenger’s Minister will be here shortly with word from the man who saw God.”

“Make it plain.”

“The Minister is going to tell you who and what you are!”

“Say the word.”

“Then he is going to tell you who and what the devil is!”

“Make it plain.”

“Then he is going to show you why you had better hurry up and get out from among the devil before you get destroyed with him.”

This brings the crowd to their feet, cheering. The side door to the upstairs temple swings open and Malcolm X, a tall, rawboned, Ichabod-Crane-looking man, strolls in flanked by an Honor Guard. As he walks to the platform his light-skinned, granite face is stern. He looks and acts like a military officer who may give a fatal order any minute. His clothes, always a size or so too large, literally drape from his body, making him look more gaunt than he actually is.

“Big Red,” as Malcolm was called when he was peddling prostitutes and dope on the streets of Harlem, is a dashing and handsome man. Women of all races and creeds are drawn to him. He speaks with an authority that is all but hypnotic.

“When I say the white man is a devil,” Minister Malcolm shouts, “I speak with the authority of history.”

“That’s right,” the people shout back.

“The record of history shows that the white men, as a people, have never done good.”

“Say on, brother, say on.”

“He stole our fathers and mothers from their culture of silk and satins and brought them to this land in the belly of a ship--am I right or wrong?”

“You are right; God knows you are right.”

“He brought us here in chains--right?”

“Right.”

“He has kept us in chains ever since we have been here.”

“Preach on, Brother Minister, preach on.”

“Now this blue-eyed devil’s time has about run out!”

The people leap to their feet, rejoicing.

“Now the fiery hell he has heaped upon others is about to come down on the white man!”

“All praise due to Allah,” the people shout.

“God--we call him Allah--is going to get this white, filthy, hog-loving beast off our backs,” Malcolm promises.

“Say on--yes, yes, yes....”

“God is going to hitch him to the plow and make him do his own dirty work.”

“Yes, yes. Say on!”

“God is going to take over the garment district and make those white dogs push their own trucks.”

Men in the audience jump up and down and shout their approval: “All praises due to Allah. Praise His holy name!”

“Now, now,” Malcolm says, “calm down, because I want you to hear me. Now I want to tell you who God is. I want you to understand who Allah is so you will know who is going to get this white, dope-peddling beast off your back.”

Malcolm smiles. A ripple of laughter runs through the audience--you see, they know who Allah is; they know who God is; they know just who is going to get the white man off their backs. But they have come to hear Malcolm “make it plain” again.

“The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that God--Allah--is not a spook; we don’t worship any ghost for a God. We don’t believe in any dead God.”

“That’s right.”

“Our God is a live God.”

“Yes.”

“He is walking around here with you, among you, in you.”

“Yes,” the people shout back.

“God is black, like you; God is oppressed, like you; He looks like you; He acts like you; He walks like you; He talks like you....”

By this time, the people are back on their feet cheering. But Malcolm has gone as far toward describing God as he will go for a while.

“Now,” he says, “you have to listen with understanding to know what I am talking about.”

“We with you.”

“We don’t let white devils in our meetings.”

“No, no, no!”

“But we have to worry about some of you because the white man has messed up your mind so bad that some of you will run back and tell everything. That’s why we can’t tell you everything; that’s why you have to listen carefully and with understanding if you are going to find out just who God is. But if He walks like you, and looks like you, and talks like you, and suffers like you; and if He is with you, in you, and all around you ... then ... well, you figure it out!”

The people, particularly the men, lift their voices in a long shout, for they have again been told that the black man, taken collectively, is God--Allah--that Allah will soon, now, destroy the devil, the white man.

Malcolm X, as he does three or four times each week, has “made it plain.” He has told black men that they--as God--must deliver themselves from the evils and hurts of the white man. And that, of course, is what they came to temple to hear.

On another Sunday afternoon the message will take a different form. Malcolm this time elects to make his famous “deaf, dumb, and blind” speech. I, for one, believe Malcolm is at his best when he deals with this issue.

The speech begins as Malcolm X literally heaps abuse on his audience.

“You are deaf, dumb, and blind,” he tells them. “You are lost in the wilderness of North America, and the black man’s new day has been delayed because of you. Now I am here to get you ready.”

“Make it plain,” the people shout back.

“Now the first thing you must do is clean yourself up.”

“Yes, that’s right, that’s right!”

“You must clean yourself up both physically and morally.”

“That’s right! That’s right!”

“You must learn that certain foods are unclean. The hog is a filthy beast, and it is against God’s will for you to eat it.”

“That’s right.”

“You can never clean yourself up as long as you have hog in your body.”

“Make it plain; make it plain.”

“Then you must clean yourself up morally.”

“That’s right, Brother Minister, that’s right.”

“This white devil is responsible for all the dope and prostitution you see here among us.”

“That’s right.”

“He has filled us with his immorality.”

“All praise due to Allah.”

“He has so confused us that our community is filled with addicts, thieves, and prostitutes.”

“That’s right.”

“And you will notice,” Malcolm continues, “that these are Christians who are dealing in dope and prostitution.

“And you and I know this is true because when we were Christians we used dope.”

“Yes.”

“We lied.”

“Yes.”

“We stole.”

“Yes.”

“We were unfaithful to our wives.”

“Yes.”

“We did everything antisocial and immoral.”

“That’s right.”

“But now that we know who God is, now that we have found Allah--our original true God--now that we have learned love and respect for self, now that all this has happened, we have cleaned ourselves up.”

“All praises due to Allah.”

“We love our own black women.”

“Yes.”

“We protect our women and children from the devil and his works.”

“Yes.”

“And we have stopped turning the other cheek!”

“Yes.”

“We respect authority, but we are ready to fight and die in defense of our lives.”

“All praises due to Allah!”

Broadsides at Christianity delivered by Malcolm X and other ministers seem to make the strongest impression on the audience. The minister explains that the Negro was introduced to Christianity while a slave, a bondsman to the man who taught him about Jesus. Employing any history text, he reads at length, using “the white man’s own writings to show that Christianity is a white man’s religion.” This strikes home, because the average Negro has read enough to know that there is a good deal of historical soundness in what the minister says. Then the minister goes on to point out that the Christian church (and they quote Adam Clayton Powell on this) “is the most segregated institution in America.” And the Negro does not need a history book to know that this statement has total validity.

Then the minister goes on to attack Christianity on the grounds that its practitioners are immoral. He calls the roll of criminals and public failures, making much of the fact that they are “all Christians.” The minister uses clippings from the newspapers showing white clergymen and church-goers either sanctioning segregation or being neutral about it. During the Birmingham crisis I attended the Black Muslim service and saw Minister James X deliver a devastating indictment of Christianity simply by showing pictures of Birmingham Negroes being turned away from white churches. One picture showed the rebuffed Negroes praying on the church steps while white bullies, their fists balled up, stood near-by.

Black Christians are also indicted for immorality; the minister points out that “All of us were once in the church and we did everything evil.” I have watched this argument at work and come away amazed at the way the Black Muslims take the Christian ethic as a measuring stick; they then arouse the guilt complex of the wayward Christians in the audience and then go on to blame Christianity for the individual’s moral failure. This, to be sure, is a contorted argument. But it works. Christians sit in the temple audience and confess their Christian failing, then they repent themselves right out of the Christian church.

After the sermon the visitors are asked to raise any questions that may trouble them. The ministers deal with each question in detail, but the Black Muslim ushers (The Fruit of Islam) make certain the questioner is not an “agitator,” someone who has come into the temple just to start a philosophical or theological argument.

“You are in here to be taught, Brother,” I heard one Black Muslim say to a visitor, “not to argue.” And when the visitor frankly says he does not understand what the Black Muslims are up to, or that, after honestly trying, he is unable to agree, the minister explains that this is not to be held against the visitor. “You are among the deaf, dumb, and blind,” the minister explains kindly. Then he assures the visitor that further study and estrangement from “the teaching of the devil” will open his eyes and ears.

The climax of each temple service comes when visitors are invited to join the movement. There is great rejoicing when converts come forth. Eric Lincoln, who has attended more of these services than I have, says that the larger temples average a dozen or so converts at each meeting.

Once the visitor decides to join the temple, he is given a letter he must copy by hand:

Address City and State Date

Mr. W. F. Muhammad 4807 South Woodlawn Avenue Chicago 15, Illinois

Dear Savior Allah, Our Deliverer:

I have been attending the teachings of Islam by one of your Ministers, two or three times. I believe in it, and I bear witness that there is no God but Thee, and that Muhammad is Thy Servant and Apostle. I desire to reclaim my Own. Please give me my Original name. My slave name is as follows:

Name Address City and State

This letter of application is dispatched to Chicago, and if the copy contains no errors, the visitor is sent a detailed questionnaire that inquires into his family and employment status. This completed, the applicant is given a thorough investigation by local members of The Fruit. If the applicant stands muster, he is admitted to membership in the Black Muslim movement.

Then, and only then, is the convert allowed to drop his “slave” name. If his name is, say, John King, he becomes John X; if there are other Johns in the local temple, his “X” will denote that he is the third, fourth, or whatever number John to join that particular temple. Thus it is very common to find John 2X or John 7X. Lincoln discovered a midwestern Muslim whose name was John 17X. The “X” is the Black Muslim’s way of saying that his own origins--before the white man--and name are a mystery; it is also the Muslim’s shout that he is an “ex,” and “no longer what I was when the white man had me deaf, blind, and dumb.”

I have sat with Black Muslims during temple meetings and have seen the people, particularly the young children, come alive with a new sense of identity; they seem to have a new reason to go out and do battle with the rats and roaches in the slums that are their homes. A feeling of unity and love for one another grips the entire room as they silently stand to be dismissed.

They stretch forth their hands, palms upward, and in the name of Allah, the most powerful and all-merciful God, they vow to go in peace. But every Black Muslim temple meeting is saturated with expectation. It reaches its peak when the minister makes the promise that the War of Armageddon is drawing closer and closer. No one ever really says it, but there is an intense feeling that one day soon, at just such a meeting, the “word”--probably from Elijah Muhammad but through Malcolm X--will be given. Just what the word is nobody says; just what will happen when the word is given nobody seems to know. Yet everybody--man, woman, and child--is determined to be on hand when the “word” comes.

Such meetings as these have been going on all over the nation for several years. Most of us heard talk about the “temple people,” as the Black Muslims were called, but there was very little real information about them. Nobody seemed to know just how many temple people there were, how they were organized, what they were really about. The consensus was that they were just another offbeat sect, one of the scores of “Islamic” movements that have sought to convert American Negroes during the past century. We had no idea of the power of the Black Muslims as a religious and political organization capable of rallying mass support. But early in 1959 we got the message.

_The Alert Is Given_

Shortly after dark on the night of April 14, 1958, police at Harlem’s 28th Precinct received what had all the appearances of a routine call--a fight between two Negroes at the corner of 125th Street and Seventh Avenue. The dispatch officer barked into his microphone, and his orders squawked out in a dozen radio cars patrolling the area. The cars, their revolving red lights glaring, sped to the scene of the incident. Police poured out of the cars, their clubs at the ready, and began to batter their way through the mob that had gathered.

One Johnson Hinton, a man nobody knew and who had nothing to do with the fight, was one of the spectators who had stopped to watch the melee. The police shoved and knocked aside several Negroes and finally came upon Hinton. What happened then is still a matter of argument, but one fact is agreed upon by all concerned: Hinton and the police entered into a verbal exchange and a policeman knocked Hinton to the ground, his head split open. A police ambulance was called and police took the position that another Negro agitator had been subdued. But they were in for a major surprise, and the city was on the brink of a race riot. Hinton, it turned out, was a Black Muslim, Johnson X, a member of Malcolm’s Temple Number Seven in Harlem.

Within minutes after Hinton hit the ground the word spread that a Black Muslim had been assaulted by the police. An hour later some five hundred sullen, angry Black Muslim men put a cordon around the 28th Precinct Station house where Hinton was being held. This meant trouble, and plenty of it. Precinct Captain McGowan realized he had the makings of a riot on his hands and sent out an urgent call for responsible Negroes to rush to the scene and intervene. One of the first to arrive was James Hicks, editor of _The Amsterdam News_, a Harlem newspaper. Hicks accurately sized up the situation and told Captain McGowan that only one man, Minister Malcolm X, could manage the crowd and get them to disperse.

The police captain asked, in essence, “Who he?”

Shortly afterward Captain McGowan found out just who Malcolm X was. Flanked by several strapping, angry Muslim brothers, Malcolm walked into the station house. As he entered the door, he gave a sign, and the hundreds of Muslim brothers surrounding the area knew their stand was affirmed. The call went out for still more Muslim brothers to converge upon the area.

Once inside the station, Malcolm X sat down for hard bargaining. First, there was the matter of Brother Johnson Hinton lying on the floor of a jail cell with his head split open. Malcolm demanded that Hinton be given immediate hospital treatment. This was agreed to. Then Malcolm went on to place on record the facts of the affair. Johnson was standing on the street, he was not involved in the fight, he at no time disobeyed a police order, and the police struck him out of sheer flailing frustration.

As Johnson Hinton was carried out of the station to an ambulance, Malcolm walked out the door and paused at the top of the steps. The dimly lit night was filled with Black Muslims and onlookers. Malcolm made a slight gesture, and, according to both police and editor Hicks, in exactly three minutes the streets were empty. The hundreds of Muslims simply vanished--at least the police thought they had vanished. In actuality they shifted their cordon to the hospital where Hinton was being treated. And it was only after Malcolm emerged from the hospital and gave another sign that the Black Muslims finally dispersed to their various homes.

“No man,” Police Captain McGowan said to James Hicks, “should have that much power over that many people. We cannot control this town if one man can wield that kind of power.”

Johnson Hinton now walks around with a silver plate in his head. An all-white jury awarded him seventy-five thousand dollars in damages against the City of New York. Those knowledgeable about the case and the Black Muslims feel that seventy-five thousand dollars is a small fee to pay for the service Malcolm X rendered the city that night. As the jury found, the police were absolutely wrong, and as Negroes know, Hinton’s was only one of the Negro heads that are cracked open without reason by the New York police each year.

But there was a difference between Johnson Hinton and all the other Negroes who get their heads split open in Harlem: Hinton had black brothers and sisters who cared about him; he was a member of a tightly knit congregation of believers whose basic tenet is “fight in defense of your life” and whose main social ethic is “be ready to exact justice when one of your brothers is abused.” The Muslims will deny it, but they have a “crisis system” that moves into action whenever a Muslim is abused. It involves a telephone pyramid--one man calls ten people and each of them calls ten--that in one hour can produce upward of a thousand Muslims at any given point in New York.

And the night Johnson Hinton’s head was split open was the night New York police officials went into a huddle and named the Black Muslims, particularly Malcolm X, as people to watch.

2. FROM MOSES TO MALCOLM X

The black Muslims have been in the national spotlight for only four years now, although the movement itself was born more than a quarter of a century ago. It attracted some attention in Chicago and Detroit but did not emerge as a national concern until Minister Malcolm X, then serving as leader of the New York Muslims and as a sort of roving bishop for the entire movement, burst upon the scene.

As is all too often the case with white people, the Establishment took one look at the Black Muslims and lurched from apathy to frenzy. No one paused long enough to study just what the Muslims believe, what makes them a religion, how they function as a religion. One of the reasons why this has not been done is that the Establishment, both Negro and white, was afraid that open acceptance of the Black Muslims as a religion would legitimize them. Meanwhile, as I mentioned earlier, courts in several states have issued findings that the Muslims are, indeed, a religion, and as such enjoy the same freedom as, say, Roman Catholics.

But this is to get ahead of the story. In truth, the scheme of events, both economic and moral, that led to the formation of the Black Muslims first began to unravel on the west coast of Africa some five hundred years ago. And we must begin _there_ and _then_ if we are to understand clearly the _here_ and _now_. Prior, and basic, to a full comprehension of the meaning of the Negro’s African experience, we must pause and understand the role of religion in the life of a people.

_The Negro as African and Tribesman_

American Negro slaves were captured from the west coast of Africa. They were by no means products of a monolithic culture. They represented many tribes and sub-tribes. They spoke a myriad of languages. Indeed, one of the incredible ironies of the “Middle Passage” was that the African slaves chained together in the hold of a boat as it crossed the Atlantic were unable to talk to one another because they did not have a common language. Yet these were not uncivilized people. West Africans had developed a complex society, as Lerone Bennett, Jr., suggests, long before European penetration. Their political institutions, rooted in family groupings, spiraled outward into village states and empires. They had their armies and courts and, if this is of any comfort to modern Americans, their own internal-revenue departments. Speaking of Africa before the European penetration, anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits wrote, “Of the areas inhabited by non-literate peoples Africa exhibits the greatest incidence of complex governmental structure.” Not even the kingdoms of Peru and Mexico could mobilize resources and concentrate power more effectively than could some of these African monarchies, which are more to be compared with European states of the Middle Ages than referred to in the common conception, “primitive state.”

Agriculture, herding, and artistry were important to the West African, but the concept of private property was not widely accepted. The land belonged to the community. The core of West African society was the family. Interestingly enough, most of the African tribes constructed their families along matrilineal lines--the family tree was traced through the mother. On the whole, the West Africans were a mixture of various stocks by the time of the slave invasions. Centuries of interbreeding had produced Africans of varying shapes, colors, and features. Although they spoke many languages, they approached a semblance of linguistic unity in that only four of the African languages had been reduced to writing before the coming of the white man.

Whatever their tongue or color the West Africans were a deeply religious people. No greater injustice has been done to a people than that committed by spurious American historical and anthropological writings which suggest that African religion should be written off as infantile animism. On the contrary, the West Africans had developed complex answers to such major tribal inquiries as “What is man?” “Who is God?” “What is life?” and “How final is death’s sting?” At rock bottom, the religion of West Africa embraced a concept of “Life Forces.” The “Life Force” of the Creator was present in all things animate and inanimate and was viewed as a particularized but microcosmic fragment of the Supreme Being, God, Who created the earth. As Lerone Bennett, Jr., suggests, this African concept of God as a vital force in everything bears a striking resemblance to Henri Bergson’s “élan vital.” Religion formed the center of West African life. Every event took on religious meaning. And there is no telling what towering civilization might have blossomed and survived there had the white man not made his intrusion.

_Africans as Moslems_

The character of this work demands that we examine the impact of Islam on the black Africans, particularly on those of the West Coast, if we are to understand and evaluate the current preachings of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X.

Dr. John Hope Franklin feels that influences of the religion of Mohammed on the African way of life have been exaggerated. It seems certain that Mohammedanism had little influence upon black Africans prior to the fourteenth century. As early as the seventh century the Moslems swept from Arabia over into Egypt. Subsequently, they moved into North Africa with great success. But when they attempted to penetrate the land of the black African below the Sahara, they encountered complex resistance from the kingdoms of Ghana, Melle, and Songhay, where thriving cultures were already in operation. Some Negro monarchs accepted Mohammedanism for economic or political reasons, but their subjects clung to their tribal religions. The Moslems were never able to win over the peoples of Melle, Hausa, Yoruba, and Susu despite the fact that Negroes were accepted as their equals. And when invited to enjoy both the economic and cultural advantages the religion offered, the masses of West African Negroes rejected Islam in favor of their own tribal way of life.

It is of singular significance that Christianity was already entrenched in North Africa when Mohammedanism made its appearance there in the seventh century. The two faiths became locked in a life-and-death struggle for the control of North Africa. But in West Africa, the region from which the bulk of the Negro slaves were taken, Christianity was all but unknown until the Portuguese and Spanish set up their missions in the sixteenth century. Almost from the onset Christianity was beset by moral ambivalence; on the one hand the Spanish and Portuguese missionaries espoused a doctrine of equality and brotherhood while on the other hand Spanish and Portuguese slave traders were seizing thousands of Africans and shipping them off to the New World to become slaves. It was thus aboard “The Good Ship Jesus” that the first slaves arrived in America. As John Hope Franklin comments, “If the natives of West Africa were slow to accept Christianity, it was not only because they were attached to their own particular form of tribal worship, but because it was beyond the capacity of the unsophisticated West African mind to reconcile the teaching of brotherhood and the practice of slavery by the white interlopers.” The European Christians, however, found no conflict between Christ and slavery and by 1860 the twenty Negroes who landed at Jamestown in 1619 had become four million.

_The Lord’s Song in a Strange Land_

The literature of the American Negro rumbles with the controversy over the transplantation, or lack of it, of African culture. Some Africanisms have survived in the New World, particularly in the West Indies and in Haiti. But the impact of the New World culture upon the Africans--who were already culturally diffused--was decisive.

What happened to the African is exemplified by the pious captain who held prayer service twice a day on his slave ship. After the prayer services were over, he retired to his cabin and wrote the now-famous hymn which begins “How sweet the Name of Jesus sounds in a believer’s ear, it quells the sorrow, drowns his fears, and drives away his tears.” Further evidence of the complete Americanization of the African lies in the fact that descendants of the first Negro slaves--Negro Christians born in Spain and Portugal--settled in the New World long before the _Mayflower_ came. These Negroes were explorers, not slaves. Some of them accompanied the French into the Mississippi Valley, and others went with the Portuguese into South America. Thirty Negroes were with Balboa when he discovered the Pacific Ocean, and several were with Menéndez as he marched into Florida.

The bulk of the Negroes in America are descendants, at least partially, of Africans who arrived in this country first as indentured servants and who were then lowered into slavery. It was under the aegis of slavery that the black American accepted Jehovah as his God. It is this ignominious first meeting between Jesus and the black American that Malcolm X probes so accurately and exploits so effectively.

_Christ and His Cotton Curtain_

When the Black Muslims call upon American Negroes to forsake Christianity and return to Islam, they not only flirt with historical inaccuracy, but they declare open war against the Negro church, which has been properly described by E. Franklin Frazier as the most important institution the American Negro has built. That the Black Muslims have had remarkable success in leading thousands of Negroes out of the Christian church and into the temples of Islam is clear evidence that somewhere in the history of American Christendom faith failed the Negro. And when it is realized that the Black Muslims are able to attract three times as many fellow travelers as they do members, the failure of Christianity becomes even more pronounced. How and why that failure came about lies deep in the swamps and plantations of the South, and we must return there and examine the record of that failure if we are to grasp fully the meaning of Malcolm X when he says, “Christianity is a white man’s religion.”

Every people has a sense of the past, the handed-down record of what has gone before, the Ark of the Covenant, as the collective experience of a people. For the American Negro this sense of the past begins in America, not Africa, for it was in America that the American Negro was forged into a people. Under the tutelage of white plantation masters the first slaves discovered a common language that made it possible for them to communicate with each other and thus make a collective expression of their resentment of the peculiar institution known as slavery. The white slave owner was Christian, and despite some efforts to prohibit Negro exposure to the Bible, most slave masters or, more particularly, their wives--saw to it that the slaves heard the gospel. One of the moving scenes of American history is that of slave and slave master gathered together in church on the plantation to hear the gospel of a Christ of brotherhood. Most plantation masters saw to it that the minister kept his sermon confined to such texts as “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters” (Ephesians 6:5). There was a deeper meaning for the slave in the religious life of the plantation. Strangely enough, it was the Old Testament with its rich history of the Jews and their bouts with famines, pestilence, idolatry, and slavery that attracted the imagination of the religious slave. Working in the field by day, having his wife sold away from him down the river to another plantation, seeing his son stripped naked to the waist and given a hundred lashes for being “uppity,” the Negro slave found a cruel parallel between his life and that of those who begged favor to let them return to their homeland and who finally were delivered by God, who visited a series of disasters upon the slave master. Here in the Negro plantation church--called by scholars “The Invisible Institution”--the Negro began to translate the history of the Jews into words of deliverance and hope. It was thus that slaves began to translate the social history of the Jews into Negro spirituals:

_Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel?_

_Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land, tell Old Pharaoh let my people go...._

_We are climbing Jacob’s ladder, every round goes higher and higher.... Soldiers of the Cross_

_Jordan’s river is chilly and cold, none can cross but the true and bold...._

_Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home...._

_Soon I will be done with the troubles of the world, going home to live with God...._

At first it appeared that the American church would embrace integration of the Negro and lead the attack against the institution of slavery. In 1784, for example, the Methodist Church declared slavery “contrary to the golden laws of God” and went on to order its members to set all slaves free within twelve months. But Southern states led by Virginia forced a suspension of the resolution. Five years later the Baptist Church passed pretty much the same resolution. But it, too, recanted under pressure from the Deep South. Even so, many churches accepted Negroes as parishioners, though many whites feared that they could be flirting with disaster if they adopted a truly liberal policy with respect to Negro membership. By the same token, they were leery of all Negro churches on the plantation. They feared that Negro ministers and church officials would exercise considerable authority over their slave communicants and thus the church could become a center of rebellion. The American church was having other problems at the time, and its concern with the Negro question was not prime. The Anglican clergy, flouting their Toryism, were causing many American parishioners to seek complete disassociation from the Church of England. In fact, every religious denomination, with the exception of the Roman Catholic, was busy establishing an American wing of its church in the hope that it would be completely separate from its European sponsor. The Catholic Church itself finally acquiesced and became separate under the control of a special Prefect Apostolic. This intercontinental war between the churches of the New World and the Old eclipsed the problem of the Negro as far as white churchmen were concerned and set the scene for the establishment of separate churches for Negroes.

Negro Baptist churches began to sprout while the war for independence was still being waged. George Liele, a Negro leader, founded a Baptist church in Savannah, Georgia, in 1779 that became the nucleus of the Negro Baptists in that state. Virginia Negroes organized a Baptist church in Petersburg in 1776, in Richmond in 1780, and in Williamsburg in 1785. According to Dr. John Hope Franklin, many of the white clergy in Virginia assisted Negroes in setting up and organizing their separate churches.

It was in the North that the Negro church really burgeoned. Foremost among the Northern Negro churchmen was Richard Allen, an ex-slave who had purchased his freedom from his Delaware master in 1777, the year he also accepted Christ as his saviour. In 1786 Allen moved to Philadelphia and began to hold prayer meetings for Negroes. His efforts to establish a Negro church were opposed by whites and some Negroes. But when the officials of St. George’s Church, where Allen frequently preached, began to segregate a large number of Negroes who came to hear him, it became clear to Allen’s Negro detractors that the time was right for a Negro church. The final break came when white church officials pulled Allen, Absalom Jones, and William White from their knees while they were praying in what had been set aside as the white section of the church. An innately dramatic man, Allen led the Negroes out of St. George’s Church and organized Mother Bethel, now the central church of Negro Methodism. Allen and his followers organized what became the African Methodist Episcopal Church and by 1820 they had four thousand followers in Philadelphia alone. The organization spread as far west as Pittsburgh and as far south as Charleston.

In New York City, because of discrimination and segregation Negroes withdrew from the John Street Methodist Episcopal Church and established what is now the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, one of whose leading bishops is Dr. Stephen Gill Spottswood, the current chairman of the board of the NAACP. The same trend was developing among Negro Baptists of the North. In 1809 thirteen Negro members of a white Baptist church in Philadelphia were dismissed to form a church of their own. The Negro Baptists of Boston set up their own church in the same year under the leadership of Reverend Thomas Paul. At the same time he was shepherding the Boston congregation, Rev. Paul also organized a Negro Baptist church in New York City. The church was later named Abyssinian and is now pastored by the controversial minister-politician, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

Both white and Negro clergymen agree that the development of separate churches was inconsistent with the teachings of religion, but the Negro clergymen were adamant, feeling that a separate church would give them an opportunity to develop leadership. More, there were theological points that Negro churchmen found difficult to accept. One was the notion, widely held among white Christians particularly in the South, that the Negro was the descendant of Ham, the son of Noah, who laughed at his father’s nakedness and thus doomed himself and his descendants to be hewers of wood and drawers of water--that is to say, servants--to the descendants of Noah’s other sons. This theological justification for the concept of Negro inferiority reached its peak during the early part of the nineteenth century, when a spurious body of anthropological and biological scholarship offered “scientific proof” of the Negro’s innate inferiority both as a spiritual being and as a person. It was the “Linnaean Web” that did it: scientists at that time completely embraced the notions of Linnaeus that the classification of peoples in terms of skull sizes and shapes as well as in terms of color was the first step toward knowledge. The American scene of the early 1800s was peopled with a variety of racial stocks, and the majority of the white Protestant group fell victims of the all-too-easy temptation to judge the worth of an individual merely by looking at the color of his skin or the shape of his nose. Thus, the image of the hook-nosed Jewish peddler; the drunken, shiftless Irishman; the stupid, soggy German; the hot-tempered Italian; and the ragged, lazy Negro.

Only in the Negro church, then, did the Negro find a sense of dignity and meaning. Only there was he made to feel a true and equal child of God. The Negro church developed a peculiar theology that spoke to the frustration of the American Negro, and it was there that the Negro translated Christianity into the hope of Negro deliverance.

But two factors, hardly noticed at the time, were to keep the Negro church from becoming a completely closed institution: first, the Negro church was a part of the Negro community, which was an affront to every sensitive Negro citizen; the Negro community was an enclave of terror and police brutality, and the growing ambition of every Negro was somehow to escape this troubled land and live out his days in a less menacing atmosphere. The other factor that operated against the Negro church was its consuming concern with the salvation of souls, the readying of men for full and total adjustment in the world beyond the grave. Like its white counterpart, the Negro church neglected the social ethic, was unconcerned about where men would live, what they would eat, and how they would clothe themselves on this side of the Jordan.

Meanwhile, the nation lunged from slavery through Reconstruction into the race riots of the early 1900s. White attitudes hardened, segregation signs sprouted over every bathroom and drinking fountain, in every railroad train and bus, and the white segregationist invoked the name of God to justify his lynchings, police brutality, injustice before the law, as well as the denial of every right the Constitution had given to the Negro.

Negro churchmen realized the situation was getting grave. A young theologian, Benjamin E. Mays, now President of Morehouse College, and one of the three American official mourners at the funeral of Pope John XXIII, wrote his doctoral thesis on the Negroes’ God. That was almost forty years ago, and even then Dr. Mays suspected that the Negroes’ religion had better take on more militancy and that this militancy should be rooted in some kind of God concept.

At the end of World War II American Negro soldiers--so movingly described in John Oliver Killens’ novel _And Then We Heard the Thunder_--came home determined to do something about their own society. The children of these soldiers are now marching the streets of Birmingham, Jackson, and New York City. They were spawned by the same era that produced Malcolm X and comedian Dick Gregory, both of whom are part and parcel of the same movement. It is not coincidental that the freedom riders and Malcolm X came upon the scene at the same time. They both emerged from a growing Negro consensus that old paths have led nowhere, that they lead the wandering Negro around and around the foot of the mountain but never lead him on toward his goal.

_The Peddler of Silks and Scripture_

Nineteen-thirty was the year after the big crash on Wall Street. For the Negro in Detroit the crash had a double meaning. It not only meant that he would be unemployed, that there would be no money, but that the subtle discrimination of the North--the very thing that had caused him to leave the South--would become bold and overt. Into the Negro ghetto of Detroit, late in the summer of 1930, there came a peddler, a man of unknown origin and lineage, who sold silks and satins from door to door. He was a strange-looking man. Because of his pale yellow coloring, some thought he was an Arab, others thought he was a Palestinian, and others felt that he had come from India. He called himself W. D. Fard on most occasions. Other times he was variously known as Mr. Farrad Mohammad, Mr. F. M. Ali, Professor Ford, and Mr. Wali Farrad. One of his Detroit followers quotes him as having said, “My name is W. D. Fard, and I come from the Holy City of Mecca. More about myself I will not tell you yet, for the time is not yet come. I am your brother. You have not yet seen me in my royal robes.”

There are no documented facts as to just who Fard was or where he came from. However, he found easy entry into the homes of lower-class Detroit Negroes, who were eager to purchase the silks he claimed were like those worn by black men in Africa.

Dr. Eric Lincoln has gathered information showing that Fard also used his presence in Negro homes to spread a curious doctrine which, in Lincoln’s words, found anxious ears “among culture-hungry Negroes.” The evidence suggests that Fard mixed the peddling of silks with lectures on the black man’s past. He became known as “The Prophet” and concentrated his teachings on his experience in the Near and Far East.

Fard often warned his listeners against certain foods and drinks. “... he would eat whatever we had on the table,” one of his followers said, “but after the meal he began to talk. ‘Now don’t eat this food, it is poison for you. The people in your own country do not eat it. Since they eat the right kind of food they have the best health always. If you would just live like the people in your home country, you would not be sick any more.’ So we all wanted him to tell us about ourselves and about our home country and about how we could be free from rheumatism, aches, and pains.”

Fard was also well versed in the Bible and he used it as a textbook while, at the same time, advising Negroes to renounce Christianity. Realizing that the Bible was the only religious literature known to the Negro, Fard skillfully used it to support his version of the black man’s history and the white man’s destiny. In the beginning Fard peddled his wares by day and held house meetings at night. But as the Depression deepened and his attack upon the white man grew more bitter, the crowds overflowed the small living rooms and dining rooms of the Detroit slum area. The followers of Fard hired a hall, which they named The Temple of Islam. And that was the birth of the phenomenon known today as the Black Muslims. Fard seems to have been a very friendly, relaxed man with an intuitive mastery of mass psychology. His attacks on members of the white race and on the Bible shocked his listeners into ecstasy and many became converts to his amazing brand of Islam.

“Up to that day I always went to the Baptist Church,” one convert said. “After I heard the sermon from the prophet, I was turned around completely. When I went home and heard that dinner was ready, I said, ‘I don’t want to eat, I just want to go back to the meeting.’”

It was inevitable that legends would pop up about a man like W. D. Fard. Eric Lincoln has gathered and reported them as follows:

One such legend is that Fard was a Jamaican Negro whose father was a Syrian Moslem. Another describes him as a Palestinian Arab who had participated in various racial agitations in India, South Africa and London before moving on to Detroit. Some of his followers believed him to be the son of wealthy parents of the tribe of Koreish--the tribe of Mohammed, founder of classical Islam. Others say that he was educated at London University in preparation for a diplomatic career in the service of the Kingdom of Hejaz, but that he sacrificed his personal future “to bring ‘freedom, justice, and equality’ to the ‘black men in the wilderness of North America, surrounded and robbed completely by the Cave Man.’” Fard announced himself to the Detroit police as “the Supreme Ruler of the Universe,” and at least some of his followers seem to have considered him divine. At the other extreme, a Chicago newspaper investigating the Black Muslim Movement refers to Fard as “a Turkish-born Nazi agent [who] worked for Hitler in World War II.”

As for Fard himself, he said that he had been sent to alert the black people of America to the unlimited possibilities of the universal black man in a world now usurped, but temporarily so, by white “blue-eyed devils.” This teaching was a sweet shock to illiterate Negroes whose lives had been spent in fear of the white man. They were irresistibly attracted to a black man who would stand tall, call the white man a snake, a devil--a blue-eyed devil, at that--and predict that his reign over the world would soon come to an ignominious end. And when Fard taught that the white man was full of tricks, always to be suspected, never to be trusted, the Southern Negroes who had come to Detroit in search of freedom only to find futility could not resist the temptation to shout “Amen.” As Eric Lincoln says, “The North was no promised land: It was the South all over again with the worst features of racial prejudice thinly camouflaged by sweet talk about equality.”

The black Detroiters who heard Fard were starving, living in overcrowded slums. They were the victims of police brutality, the continuing symbol of the power of the white establishment. They were bitter toward the white workers who took over “Negro jobs” as work became more scarce. Even the white welfare workers in Detroit, according to Eric Lincoln, deliberately abused Negroes by making them wait long hours in line before passing out pitiful supplies of flour and lard. All this fear resulted in deep resentment and despair. The words of Fard began to make more sense than ever.

Once Fard had secured a temple, the frequency of his meetings was stepped up and the movement became more formalized. Prospective members were put through rigid examinations and were called upon to make commitments and pledges. The sermons at Fard’s meetings were always based on the same subject: the untrustworthiness of the white man and the need for the Negro to understand and return to his glorious history in Africa and Asia.

Eric Lincoln says that Fard, with no literature or material to espouse his cause, used the writings of Joseph F. “Judge” Rutherford, then leader of Jehovah’s Witnesses; Van Loon’s _Story of Mankind_; Breasted’s _The Conquest of Civilization_; the Quran; the Bible; and certain literature of Freemasonry, to bring his people to “knowledge of self.” The followers of Fard were encouraged to buy radios so that they could hear the expressions of Rutherford and Frank Norris, the Baptist fundamentalist preacher.

Once temple meetings began, however, Fard told his members that the words of any white man could not be trusted, for the white man was incapable of telling the truth. He insisted that the white man’s writings were filled with a symbolism that must be interpreted. Fard went on to establish himself as the interpreter and brought the throng to its feet cheering when he said that the stupid white man was actually a tool in the hands of Allah, that the white man was a dumb idiot who unknowingly told the “truth” and thus predicted his own doom. Fard himself gave the movement its two basic theological pieces: _The Sacred Ritual of the Nation of Islam_, still the key document for the Black Muslims, and _Teachings for the Lost Found Nation of Islam in a Mathematical Way_, a religious cryptogram distributed among Muslims but which only Fard could interpret.

Within four years after he had set up the first temple, Fard, who turned out to be an extremely able executive, not only had a burgeoning membership of followers, but had founded a University of Islam, a combination of elementary and high-school education devoted to higher mathematics, astronomy, and the “ending of the spook civilization.” To augment all this, Fard established “The Muslim Girls Training Class” to drill Muslim women in the art of being good housewives and mothers. And to put down any trouble with unbelievers and police, he organized “The Fruit of Islam,” a quasi-military organization in which men were divided into squads headed by captains and taught the tactics of judo and the use of firearms. Completing the temple structure, a minister was appointed by Fard to run the entire organization.

_The Man from Sandersville_

One of Fard’s Detroit converts was Elijah Poole, a Negro from Sandersville, Georgia, and the son of a Baptist minister. Poole was born on October 7, 1897, one of the thirteen children of Wali and Marie Poole, both of whom had been slaves. After completing the fourth grade--he was then sixteen years old--Poole left home. In 1923 he and his wife, Clara Evans, along with their two children moved to Detroit. Of all the disenchanted Detroit Negroes, Elijah Poole was probably the bitterest. The lure of Detroit had proved a nightmare; he worked in factories at several different jobs until the Depression hit in 1929. In 1930 Poole attended one of the house meetings and heard Fard; in Poole’s words, Fard took him “out of the gutters in the streets of Detroit and taught me knowledge of Islam.”

Almost from the onset Fard and Poole seemed to become fast friends. Early members of the sect have stated that Elijah Poole became something of an errand boy for Fard and also helped him publish a newspaper. The key fact in the relationship between Elijah Poole and Fard was _time_. Poole came into the movement at the moment police in Detroit were breathing down Fard’s neck. Indeed it was fear of trouble from the police--and nonbelievers--that caused Fard to organize The Fruit of Islam. The same concern caused Fard to organize his temple in such a manner that he would seldom risk public exposure. Once Fard had fashioned his tightly knit organization he appointed a Chief Minister of Islam to preside over the entire movement.

Elijah Poole was tapped by Fard as the first Chief Minister of Islam and given the coveted “original name” _Muhammad_. Earlier in 1932, three years after he joined the movement, Elijah Muhammad went to Chicago and established what has since become known as Temple Number Two, which is now the headquarters of the Black Muslim movement. Trouble in Detroit, however, seems to have cut short Muhammad’s sojourn in Chicago. The history of this period is clouded by controversy, but the following is the best sequence of events observers have been able to piece together:

Shortly after (perhaps before) Elijah Muhammad left Detroit for Chicago one of the Muslim brothers got into trouble with the Detroit police because of his alleged part in the sacrificial killing of a fellow Muslim. It is a matter of record that the Muslims did teach sacrificial killing at that time and that Fard was arrested in connection with the charge. Muhammad has written of the incident in these words:

He was persecuted, sent to jail in 1932, and ordered out of Detroit, Michigan, May 26, 1933. He came to Chicago in the same year, was arrested almost immediately, and placed behind prison bars. He submitted himself with all humility to his persecutors. Each time he was arrested he sent for me that I may see and learn the price of truth for us (the so-called Negroes).

Muhammad gave Fard refuge in Chicago. Shortly thereafter Elijah was named Fard’s first Minister of Islam and returned to Detroit, where he took over the movement despite opposition from several of Fard’s followers. Shaken by his encounter with police, Fard withdrew from public view, leaving Elijah Muhammad to stand as the public presence for the movement. During 1933 Fard was seen less and less; then, in 1934, he simply vanished. To this writing, state and federal authorities have been unable to solve the riddle of Fard’s disappearance. As Eric Lincoln says, “All reports about the whereabouts of Fard wind up at a dead end.” The report that he was seen aboard a ship bound for Europe was never substantiated. The report that he met foul play at the hands of Detroit police or some of his dissident friends was never confirmed. And the dark hint that Elijah Muhammad himself was in some way connected with Fard’s disappearance has not been supported by any evidence.

Although rumors persist to this day that Muhammad induced Fard to offer himself up as a human sacrifice, there is no evidence to support them. Yet as Eric Lincoln comments, “It is interesting to note that Fard is honored by [Black] Muslims everywhere as the ‘Saviour’ and is celebrated as such every year on his birthday, February 26.”

Once Fard fell from view, Muhammad became leader of the movement. He was able to bring many dissidents back into the temple, but soon broke with the Detroit faction and returned to Chicago to set up his headquarters. Muhammad had learned church administration from his clergyman father and was able to organize several new temples of Islam. Fard was apotheosized and referred to as the Prophet of Allah; Muhammad proclaimed himself the Messenger of the Prophet of Allah. To this day, the wellspring of Muhammad’s power flows from the fact that he was with Fard in life and possibly in death. On one occasion he said, “I have it from the mouth of God that the enemy had better try to protect my life and see that I continue to live. Because if anything happens to me, I will be the last one that they murder. And if any of my followers are harmed, ten of the enemy’s best ones will be killed.”

Fard and Muhammad shared an affinity for getting into trouble with the law. In 1934 Muhammad refused to transfer his children from the University of Islam to another, accredited school, and he was convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and placed on six months’ probation. Eight years later the Messenger was arrested by federal authorities, convicted of refusing to register for the draft, and sentenced to four years in the federal prison at Milan, Michigan. The indictment, however, alleged that Muhammad taught Negroes that their interests were in a Japanese victory in World War II, since Negroes were ethnic brothers of the Japanese. Muhammad’s pro-Japanese sentiments were probably influenced by Japanese efforts, principally through a skilled operative named Major Takahashi who was in Chicago around 1938, to proselytize among the Muslims and other Negro groups. Rank-and-file Muslims, however, showed little interest in Takahashi’s propaganda, just as they had shown little interest in Communist overtures in 1932.

Like other men with a messianic complex, Muhammad seemed to grow both in stature and spirit behind bars. First of all, he was clearly able to direct the movement even while he was in prison, and once he was released, he began uttering statements that made Fard and, indeed, the early Elijah Muhammad sound conservative. In bold staccato phrases, punctuated by clearing of the throat so endemic to Southern Negro preachers, Muhammad shouted to the throng that the white man is a snake, a devil by nature, evil, incapable of doing right. Despite the fact that he was still garbed in his “release suit,” Muhammad told the Chicago crowd that it made no sense for Negroes in this country to have fought against the Japanese, who were victimized by the same blue-eyed devil who had victimized the American Negro. But Muhammad did not stop there; he said that the American Negro had had no stake in World War II. “Rather,” Muhammad said, “the American Negro should be saving his energy and ammunition for ‘The Battle of Armageddon,’ which will be waged in the wilderness of North America. This battle--and this is one of the central teachings of the Nation of Islam--will be for freedom, justice, and equality. It will be waged to success or under death.” Muhammad always titillates his followers by telling them that he cannot at this moment let them know just when the battle will take place and who the protagonists will be. But one has only to sit in the audience and hear his followers applaud and laugh to know that they fully believe that the time of the bloodletting is nigh and that the struggle will be between black and white.

Despite his boldness, the movement stagnated under Muhammad’s leadership. In the mid-forties “The Big X” came on the scene. And with the arrival of Malcolm Little--christened into Islam Malcolm X and elevated by Elijah Muhammad to be Malcolm Shabazz, but known to the pimps, prostitutes, and dope addicts as “Big Red”--the Black Muslim movement really began to move.

_Big Red_

Malcolm Little was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925, and like Elijah Muhammad he was the son of a Baptist minister. The family soon moved from Omaha to Lansing, Michigan. Malcolm’s father was a follower of the Black Nationalist, Marcus Garvey, who felt that all Negroes should return to Africa and escape the oppression of the white man. The Ku Klux Klan burned down the family home when Malcolm was only six years old. “The firemen came,” Malcolm says, “and just sat there without making any effort to put one drop of water on the fire. The same fire that burned my father’s home still burns in my soul.”

Following Garvey’s teaching that the Negroes should go into business, Mr. Little then set out to build his own store. Soon after this, according to Malcolm, “my father was found with his head bashed and his body mangled under a streetcar.” Malcolm Shabazz to this day remains convinced that his father was lynched by white people who resented even the prospect of a Negro gaining some economic independence. With his father’s death, Malcolm’s family was forced to separate. In moving terms, clenching his fists, and at times breaking into tears, Malcolm has described to me how his mother boiled dandelion greens from day to day trying to keep her eleven children from starving to death. “We stayed dizzy and sick because we stayed hungry.” At night Malcolm and his brothers would go out and steal what food they could to fill their stomachs. The Littles were a clannish bunch. They struggled to stay together, but the pangs of hunger were too great, and they were ripped apart. Malcolm was sent to an institution for boys.

This turned out to be the second molding factor in the life of Malcolm X. He was one of the few Negroes--if not the only one--in the institution and he developed a warm love for the white matron who defended him when other kids were “kicking him around.” In the only complimentary statement I have heard him make about a white person, Malcolm says of the matron, “She was good to me. I followed her around like a little puppy. I was a kind of mascot.” She arranged for him to attend a near-by school where, although he was the only Negro pupil, his keen mind put him at the head of the class, which only gained him the resentment of both the teacher and the pupils.

“When I was in the eighth grade,” Malcolm says, “they asked me what I wanted to become. I told them I wanted to study law. But they told me that law was not a suitable profession for a Negro. They suggested that I think of a trade such as carpentry.”

That ripped it! Malcolm soon left school and came east to New York, and in a matter of weeks penetrated the underworld where he became a trusted lieutenant. Malcolm’s early days in the underworld are described in unpublished notes by writer Alex Haley in the following words:

Admitted to the underworld’s fringes, sixteen-year-old Malcolm absorbed all he heard and saw. He swiftly built up a reputation for honesty by turning over every dollar due his boss (“I have always been intensely loyal”). By the age of 18, Malcolm was versatile “Big Red.” He hired from four to six men variously plying dope, numbers, bootleg whiskey and diverse forms of hustling. Malcolm personally squired well-heeled white thrill-seekers to Harlem sin dens, and Negroes to white sin downtown. “My best customers were preachers and social leaders, police and all kinds of big shots in the business of controlling other people’s lives.”

His income often reached as high as two thousand dollars a month. And I have heard Malcolm talk of paying off the cops from a thousand-dollar bankroll which he pulled from the pocket of his two-hundred-dollar suit. But not even “Big Red” had enough money to pay all of the policemen and eventually Malcolm X went to prison for burglary.

It was in 1947, in the maximum security prison at Concord, Massachusetts, that Malcolm was converted to the teachings of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad by one of his fellow prisoners who was a member of the Detroit temple. From that moment Malcolm has neither smoked, cursed, drunk, nor run after women. He is the most puritanical man I have ever met. I have interviewed him scores of times but he will not meet me for an interview at any place where liquor is sold. He does not object to my smoking, but in polite terms he makes it understood that he would rather I didn’t smoke around him. I have entertained him in my home along with other guests, and he has sat relaxed on the floor as we drink. He has never taken anything but coffee, although he knows full well that none of us would ever betray him.

Indeed, it is around the widely known and deeply admired morality of Malcolm X that one of the few pieces of humor about the Muslim movement came into being.

The story is that Malcolm was attempting to convert a Negro Baptist to the teaching of Islam.

“What are the rules of your organization?” the Negro asked.

“Well,” Malcolm said, “my brother, you have to stop drinking, stop swearing, stop gambling, stop using dope, and stop cheating on your wife!”

“Hell,” the convert replied, “I think I had better remain a Christian.”

3. THE NATION OF ISLAM

Any objective evaluation of the Black Muslims as a religious body must begin with a fresh look at religion itself, its origin and meaning. The current, widespread antipathy toward the Black Muslims makes such a basic review of the roots of religion all the more necessary. Above all we must shut out the voices of those who insist that the Black Muslims are not a religion because they--the critics--don’t like what the Muslims preach and do. After all, the Mormon Church holds, among other things, that the Negro is inferior because he is the descendant of Ham, the accursed son of Noah. As a result Negroes are allowed to join the Mormon Church, but are barred from high church office. But none of us will take the position that the Mormons are not a religion.

To understand the Black Muslims--and the Mormons, for that matter--we must retrace that contorted and tribal path man and God have walked together en route to the here and now.

_Religion as a Group Experience_

The world has always been a mystery to man. It excites his imagination, challenges his courage, and piques his intellect. But the individual never meets the world alone. He is of his group; the group is part of the world he inherited on the day he discovered himself and the other members of his group--like the thunder and the lightning and the sun and the trees and the rivers and the canyons and the hurricanes and the manna trees that are part of that which confounds him. Collectively confounded, then, the group members react as one. They create a god almost always in their own image and attribute to him all of the omnipotence and omnipresence required to account for a plot of matter spinning dizzily through space into nowhere. And if he is in their image, then he is their father and they are his children. He watches over them and protects them from the pestilences that come by day and the evils that crawl by night. They are his chosen people and he walks with the warriors of the tribe as they go forth to battle temporal evil, which is to say, anything and anybody that differs from their tribe.

In return, the tribesmen insist that god make demands upon them. And god grants their request: He commands them to bow down and worship him, and to put no other god before him. He commands them to love one another even as they love him and he loves them. His commandments on social ethics always parallel the social history of the tribe involved. If one day some members of the tribe feel sick from having eaten the meat from a given animal, then god decrees that such meat is unclean and that it is sinful to eat of it. If the social history of the people discloses that the affinity between the man and his woman is so intense that the intrusion of any other man or woman upon that relationship brings on community disorder, then god decrees that a man shall have one wife and a woman one husband, and then commands that the neighbors covet not the man’s wife or the woman’s husband. And when the tribe matures to the point of having old men, elders, steeped in the history of the tradition of the people, god orders that the aged be respected and all be venerated as his leaders on earth.

Thus it is that the god of a tribe becomes “their” god. History is replete with battle scars left when the gods of an opposing people fought it out on the plains and in the valleys. When tribe meets tribe in war, at least one of the tribes is bound to lose. But even in defeat the god of the tribe becomes more powerful than ever before as the tribe is convinced that, though it has lost a battle, it will eventually win the war. Thus, in the words of one of the great tribal leaders, “Our god is able to deliver. But if not, we will not bow down and serve your god.”

Although tribal life revolves around the god concept, few tribal states have actually become theocracies. Religious leaders have taken their place beside temporal leaders, and they function in concord, under the umbrella of their god to make the state a practical institution.

With the dawn of modern history, gods began to fuse and merge as people began to widen the circle of their experience and accept the reality of tribal pluralism, and civilizations that have survived to matter in the context of the current world are those that fly the banner of the world’s four or five major religions.

Modern man knows little of all this because he inherited already thought-out religions. Thus he has no idea how primitive and crude his gods once were. And it is precisely because of modern man’s religious sophistication that the Black Muslims rasp: At stage center, and before an audience that is weary of racism and religious bigotry, the all-black Nation of Islam gleefully re-enacts the shoddy scenes of our cultural beginnings.

“We are in the image of God,” Malcolm says.

“Make it plain, Brother Minister. Make it plain.”

“That means that God--we call him Allah--must be black like me!”

“All praise due to Allah.”

“God was here in the beginning.”

“Yes sir, that’s right.”

“So we were here from the beginning”--and Malcolm X smiles.

The people come roaring to their feet with shouts of thanks and deliverance.

“And that which was here from the beginning must be the daddy of everything else. Am I right or wrong?”

“You right. That’s right.”

“This blue-eyed devil talking about he is superior. It’s about time he found out that we are his pappy!”

“Make it plain, Brother. Make it plain.”

“Now listen to this,” Malcolm told a rally of three thousand on a Harlem street corner, “and you will know why black is superior.”

“Come on. Come, let’s hear it!”

“Black is _the_ prime color. It is the strong color.”

“Yes!”

“You can get any other color you want by mixing colors, but you cannot find colors that you can mix and produce black. Only black can produce black.”

“Make it plain.”

“And if black is prime, that means it is God, that means it is good.”

“That’s right!”

“Therefore the less black you are the less good you are.”

“All praise due to Allah.” And now the people sense the great truth that is about to come, and they begin to break with laughter.

“Therefore when you are white, you are as nonblack as you can be.”

“Make it plain, Malcolm. Make it plain.”

“Therefore when you are white you are absolutely nongood; am I right or wrong?”

“You right!”

“In other words,” Malcolm shouts, “the white man is therefore absolutely evil, a snake and a devil, and his time of destruction draws nigh!”

With this the crowd breaks with joy. The applause lasts for several minutes; white policemen standing guard at the meeting nudge white onlookers, telling them to “move on.”

This argument, that God is black and the white man a devil, presents the Black Muslims with the identical philosophical dilemma that has plagued most religions: How could a good (black) God create a bad (white) thing?

The doctrine concerning Yakub is the Black Muslims’ attempt to answer that riddle. In biological terms of reference, accepting the Muslim notion that the black man is the original man, they must explain how the black race produced white people. Elijah Muhammad states the argument in these terms: The Caucasian race was created out of the weak of the black race; they are the handiwork of Yakub, a black scientist who rebelled against Allah. Dr. Eric Lincoln is correct when he says that the doctrine of Yakub is the central myth of the Black Muslim movement. But it is also the tenet the Black Muslims seem to know least about.

Writing in the _Pittsburgh Courier_, Elijah Muhammad detailed in these words the mechanics by which the black scientist Yakub made the white man:

Who are the white race? I have repeatedly answered that question in this [column] for nearly the past three years. “Why are they white-skinned?” Answer: Allah (God) said this is due to being grafted from the Original Black Nation, as the Black Man has two germs (two people) in him. One is black and the other brown. The brown germ is weaker than the black germ. The brown germ can be grafted into its last stage, and the last stage is white. A scientist by the name of Yakub discovered this knowledge ... 6,645 years ago, and was successful in doing this job of grafting after 600 years of following a strict and rigid birth control law.

According to Elijah Muhammad the experiment was a success, but it also resulted in the “blue-eyed devils” who now people the world and have low physical and moral stamina. Muhammad then goes on to show the physical superiority of the black man by underlining the victories of Negro ballplayers and prize fighters. He then points up what he calls the low morality of the white man by citing the gas chambers of Germany, the atomic bomb of Hiroshima, and all the abuses white Southerners (and Northerners) have heaped upon the Negro.

Summing up the results of Yakub’s experiment, Elijah Muhammad issues this finding:

The human beast--the serpent, the dragon, the devil, and Satan--all mean one and the same: the people or race known as the white or Caucasian race, sometimes called the European race.

Since by nature they were created liars and murderers, they are the enemies of truth and righteousness, and the enemies of those who seek the truth....

But their certification of the white man as a devil, one incapable of doing good, rests on more than metaphysical grounds. It involves history. To make their historical point the Black Muslims part company with the established world historians. They begin their argument by establishing--with some accuracy--that the black man in Africa had a developed civilization at the time that, in Malcolm’s words, “the white savages of Europe were living in caves and crawling around on their all-fours.” It was the intrusion of the white man into Africa that spoiled things and brought slavery to the New World.

The decline of the black man in Africa is only temporary. The white devil was given about six thousand years to flaunt his evil and then he was to be destroyed as the black man returned to power. The white man’s time ran out just as World War I was raging; the Black Muslims overcame the fact that this was an excellent time for the prophecy to come true--after all, white people were out to destroy each other--with the argument that sets the American stage for the followers of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

The only reason the destruction of the white man didn’t come off on schedule, according to the Muslims, is that so many black men are all mixed up with the white, that it is impossible to destroy the evil men without destroying some “originals,” that is to say, Negroes. This, then, is what Muhammad and Malcolm are talking about when they speak to “the lost-found black man in the wilderness of North America.” They are really saying that the restoration of black men to world power is being delayed because of the American Negro; the white man has been given a new dispensation, actually, not because he deserves it but to give the Negro time to separate from those scheduled for destruction.

Herein lies the reasoning behind Muhammad’s talk about a separate state; this is why the Black Muslims with their tremendous power over people are unable to participate in any of the current civil-rights actions; they can’t help fight for better jobs, better schools, or better housing. They are committed to getting out from among the white man as soon as possible, lest they share his doom of the fire, which is sure not only to come next time, but to come soon.

To plug up the logical and emotional leaks in such an argument as this, the Black Muslims must propagate a continuously expanding “line.” They must maintain the “Islamic” tinge but at the same time keep their teaching within American terms of reference that Negroes can understand; they must take Negroes who have a struggle with English and teach them Arabic; they must convince the most Western of men that they are Arabs.

This cultural island-hopping can backfire, sometimes with amusing results. I attended a Black Muslim bazaar with writer Alex Haley. Elijah Muhammad was scheduled to appear but sent his son, Akbar, instead. Akbar, a slender, dark-brown twenty-five-year-old, came before the crowd of some two thousand garbed in a flowing white sheet. In Middle Eastern Arabic circles Akbar would have been considered in his Sunday best, but to Harlem Negroes Akbar’s dress smacked of the Ku Klux Klan, hardly an image one wishes to raise in a man he hopes to convert. Yet this is the cross-cultural problem the Black Muslims must continually deal with.

I have seen Malcolm X do this with tremendous effectiveness. I once debated with him on TV in Los Angeles. He took the stand of a Muslim, saying that the Moslem faith was the black man’s original culture. Malcolm must make this basic thrust or all else he says rests on historical sand. As we were leaving the studio, we were greeted by several white students, Moslems from Persia, who complained to Malcolm that they had attempted to visit Muhammad’s temples and were refused entry because they were white blue-eyed devils. Malcolm glossed the matter over, and they all parted wishing Allah’s blessing each upon the other. In reality, Malcolm is not interested in any white people, Moslem or not. These Persians could no more get in a Black Muslim temple than Governor Faubus could. “Let’s look at it this way,” Malcolm told the Persians. “If a lion is in a cage, his roar will be different from the roar of the lion who is in the forest. That,” he concluded, “is why you couldn’t get in our temple. But both the lion in the forest and the lion in the cage are lions. That is what matters. Lions love lions; they hate leopards.”

Translated, Malcolm was saying that the American Negro, as a Moslem, must make different noises from the free Moslems of, say, Persia, because the American Negro is in a cage. The cage, of course, is white civilization; that is why the roar of the American Negro Moslem is so provincial; that is why Persians would do well to worship Allah in their own way in their own temples, while the Black Muslims and Allah have their rendezvous in a dinky auditorium over a pool hall in Los Angeles’ Negro ghetto.

It is in such meetings that Malcolm adds the historical ingredient to his theology. It takes two forms:

First, the Black Muslims excite Negroes to shouts by proving that the Negro is somebody, a man with a past and a history. I know from personal experience that Malcolm X is one of the best-versed people in America on African history. I have sat with him in private and general gatherings where he has recited startling facts about the nature of early African civilizations. When challenged, Malcolm is always able to produce a text--and a legitimate one at that--to support what he says. Malcolm’s teachings come as a surprise not because they are new, previously unknown facts about Africa, but because the entire system of education in the Western World, particularly in America, has carefully distorted the true history of Africa to support the notion of white, male supremacy. And so it is from Malcolm X, not from his sixth-grade history teacher--who is probably white--that the Negro child in the North learns the truth about Africa and what once really happened there.

The second historical aspect of the Muslim doctrine involves an intensive study of the role of the American Negro in American history. Here again Malcolm and his followers walk into a void left by the American education system. The black child in Harlem learns about the Revolutionary War but he does not learn that the man who set it off by leading the Americans in the Boston Massacre was a Negro, Crispus Attucks. The black child sees the clock work but he does not know that Benjamin Bannaker, a Negro, invented the pendulum. The black child visits the blood bank but he does not know that a Negro, Dr. Charles Drew, discovered how to preserve blood and thus made the bank possible. Nobody tells the Negro child these things in school. On the contrary, the child is taught that American civilization flowed, for the most part, from white brains. And when Malcolm, to use his words, “pulls the cover off the white devil and tells black men the truth about the work of their ancestors,” the Negro child shrieks with pride and joy--probably for the first time in his life.

Malcolm X brings his message of importance and dignity to a class of Negroes who have had little, if any, reason to feel proud of themselves as a race or as individuals. Their encounters with white people are always unpleasant situations in which Negroes find themselves embarrassed or emasculated. Think it out for yourself: What contact does the Negro in Harlem have with the white man?

The white man is the _man_ they must meet every morning when they go to work in the garment district; the _man_ they must meet when the rent is due; the _man_ they face when they go to the pawnshop; the _man_ who comes and sells things on credit; the _man_ who buys the installment paper and comes to collect the payments; the _man_ who gets work when they cannot; the _man_ whom they see on TV loosing dogs on Negro children; the _man_ they face as a schoolteacher who does not understand them and who is often contemptuous of them--the man, the man, the man, the white man, the goddam white man! And when Malcolm X says the white man is a devil, they roar “amen” because every experience they have with a white man is a devilish one.

Chilling though it may be, the Black Muslims have erected their teaching on a group experience common to all American Negroes. Few of us concur in their conviction and sentencing of the white race. But none of us can question the accuracy of the indictment on which that conviction rests.

_Elijah Goes to Mecca_

The _hajj_, the long, dusty pilgrimage to Mecca that every Moslem looks forward to, is the final criterion of whether one is or is not a Moslem. Only certified followers of Islam are allowed to enter Mecca during the holy period of the pilgrimage.

“Elijah Muhammad is not a Moslem,” said Imam Talib Ahmad Dawud in 1960. “He is just plain Elijah Poole of Sandersville, Georgia.” Dawud, an American Negro and leader of the Muslim Brotherhood USA, was then locked in a bitter struggle with the Black Muslims over the question of their religious authenticity. But the Imam’s remarks couldn’t have been more ill-timed. Even as Dawud was denouncing the Black Muslims, Elijah was packing his bags for a trip “back home where I can visit and pray with my own people.” Several days after he departed from New York, Elijah placed his credentials before the eagle-eyed _hajj_ committee, the final judge of who may march to Mecca and pray. Elijah Muhammad was admitted without delay, and Black Muslims--the word was cabled back and came over the wire services--held meetings of praise and thanks all over the nation.

That was that. Muhammad was admitted to the _hajj_, he made the holy walk to Mecca. Who, then, is to dispute his religious credentials?

Muhammad’s journey to Mecca brought an end to all the arguments about his true affiliation with traditional Islam. When Mike Wallace and I were preparing a TV documentary on the Black Muslims, the orthodox Moslems denounced the movement. “They teach race hate,” one Islamic spokesman told us, “and that means they couldn’t be Moslems.” The Federation of Islamic Associations of Chicago is the official Moslem organization in the United States and Canada. They have denounced Elijah; they have praised him for conducting the largest Arabic school in America and for accepting the Koran as law, but federation officials are “suspicious” of him. These Moslems, however, are largely of European descent, although their ranks are peppered with a few Negro converts. Their rejection of Elijah rests on his argument concerning racism, and they flinch when Muhammad calls himself “The Messenger of Allah.”

Rejection from such a group is grist for the Black Muslims’ mill. Malcolm X holds them up to high ridicule and scorn, saying they have been corrupted by Christianity and that they look very much like “the blue-eyed devil who enslaved us and took away our culture.” In his “University Speech” (see Part Two of this book) Malcolm rains fire upon these “European Moslems” who have “passed us by in an attempt to make our slave masters Moslems.”

There are several clear differences between Black Muslims and orthodox Moslems. Whether these differences read Elijah and his followers out of the Islamic brotherhood is a matter to be determined by Islamic officials. These are some of the differences between the two groups:

--The Black Muslims will not allow white persons in their temples; orthodox Moslems accept worshipers of all races.

--The Black Muslims maintain a separate movement; there seems to be little or no organizational link with the orthodox Moslems. The Black Muslims do not visit the orthodox Moslem temples, and the orthodox Moslems do not come to hear Malcolm X.

--Nowhere in the Koran or in any orthodox Moslem literature is there support for the Black Muslim’s teaching about the evil scientist Yakub. Nor is there any support in the teachings of orthodox Moslems to support Elijah’s account--see his “Atlanta Speech” in Part Two--that this world was once the moon and was blown up by an evil scientist who wanted to destroy true followers of Allah.

--Orthodox Moslems universally condemn the Black Muslim teaching that the white man is a devil by nature.

--Orthodox Moslems universally object to the Black Muslim preachment concerning a separate state.

But once Muhammad walked into Mecca these differences ceased to matter. To be sure, orthodox Moslems want no part of Elijah and, if pushed, will denounce him. But the _hajj_ committee has rendered what must be accepted as the final verdict.

Behind this trip to Mecca lies a typical Black Muslim story. Malcolm X had visited the Near and the Far East the year before. His mission was to make certain key contacts for Muhammad. I followed Malcolm by some several months into Cairo, Egypt, and talked with Moslem officials who had received him with open arms. Malcolm was in Cairo during the holy season, at the very time when thousands of chanting Arabs were wending their way toward Mecca. Malcolm himself was cleared to make the _hajj_; he could have gone to Mecca in 1959 and that would have settled the controversy once and for all. Malcolm elected not to go, not to upstage his teacher and leader. Instead he returned home with the word that all was well in Mecca, that Elijah and his family would be received there with open arms.

The following year, while Malcolm remained at home, Elijah went to Mecca.

Malcolm’s ambassadorial work in Cairo--and that is precisely what it was--stunned many of his American detractors. Others of us who had been close observers of the movement were not surprised. We knew that Malcolm has always maintained excellent relations with top Arabs at the United Nations. Few, if any, of these meetings were ever public. But they did occur and there is every indication that they are still going on. The road to Mecca was cleared long before Malcolm and Elijah left these shores; powerful pro-Nasser Arabs are quietly in Malcolm’s corner, and many Black Muslim bazaars open with the reading of cabled greetings from “Our Beloved Brother Gamal Abdel Nasser.”

The emphasis of orthodox Islam is universal love and brotherhood among men of all races. The central teaching of the Black Muslims is that all white men are devils and will soon be destroyed. It seems superfluous to point out the wide disparity between these two views. But both Muslim and Moslem worship Allah. And that--at least so the _hajj_ committee said--is all that matters.

The answer to this ambiguity, I suspect, lies in the gangling structure of the Moslem hierarchy. Unlike, say, the Catholic Church, the Moslem faith is not a tightly knit, fully administered organization. I have talked with Moslems about all this, and while they would rather that Elijah did not say much of what he says, they are still smarting over the Christian Crusades and readying for the moment of truth with the Jews. The Black Muslims carefully describe themselves as “anti-Zionist” rather than as against the Jews. But herein, I suspect, is the resolution of the entire matter of Elijah’s relationship to orthodox Islam.

A high Islamic official in Cairo explained it to me in these words: “Of course your Black Muslims are improperly informed. But they are turning men to Allah, away from Christianity, toward Mecca. This is what we want; this is what we must have. We need new blood in western Islam. If Muhammad can give that new blood we welcome him. As for his teachings,” the official continued, “we will see to it that the correct view is given to the black man in America. Now the thing is to get them facing toward Mecca.”

_Is This a True Religion?_

Although Elijah has made his holy pilgrimage to Mecca, the debate over the religious validity of the Black Muslims still rages, with the movement’s critics holding to their charge that Elijah Muhammad teaches hate whereas true religion teaches love. A case can be made that these critics are doubly in error, first in their assumption that their own faith teaches universal love, and secondly in their conclusion--aided by news accounts--that the Black Muslims actually preach hatred of others.

Every religion is a closed network of believers; it has its dogma, its ritual, its gods. The followers of that faith are taught to love one another and are urged to proselytize sinners (outsiders) wherever they can be found. Most religions draw creedal, not racial, lines. Persons of any race may embrace the tenets of the faith and become members. However, this is not always the case and racial overtones have crept into major world faiths.

The late, and loved, Pope John flirted with immortality by coming to grips with the issue of racism in religion. Not only did he infuse the Church with the fresh air of universalism, but he halted a service because a priest violated--forgot, actually--His Holiness’ order that a reference to the Jews as a “perfidious people” be stricken from the Catholic prayer service. The pending second session of the ecumenical council may see the introduction of a proposal that would call on the Church to speak out against anti-Semitism. The proposal was not brought up in the first session because the Church fathers feared what the Arabs might say!

The Jews and the Protestants face essentially the same problems as the Roman Catholics. St. Paul rose to glory because he translated being a Jew from a biological to a spiritual proposition. Many Jews have not accepted that translation and they snicker when Sammy Davis, Jr., walks into their temple. Racism is such a fact of American Protestant church life that most major denominations are divided along racial lines. Then there is the question of religion and geography. The world’s major faiths were spawned in certain areas and took root among people of a common ethnic stock. Thus the followers of Buddha are apt to be Orientals; but for slavery and colonization all of the followers of Christ would be European. But for the same kind of cultural intermingling, Allah’s followers would be the peoples of Asia Minor and North Africa, and the black peoples below the Sahara would still be practicing the varied tribal and family faiths mentioned earlier in this essay.

But time and trouble make saints of everybody ... and universalism occurs only when feuding faiths clash on the plains of practical reality. Thus American Protestants now have a commission that is given over entirely to eliminating all anti-Semitism from the gospel of Christ. The Episcopal Bishop of California, James Pike, has gone so far as to suggest that we take down the cross as a symbol of our faith lest this encourage the teaching that the Jews killed Our Lord. This teaching--that the Jews killed Christ--is no longer fashionable as it was when I was baptized. Now one is told that the Romans killed Christ. And since the once-heathen Romans are now Christians--even though they are Catholics--I suppose this makes things better.

* * * * *

Now let’s turn to the other side of the coin.

During a recent lecture before the Jewish Graduate Club at Columbia University I talked about the need for all orthodox religions to relax their dogmas and accept other peoples as equals. One fiercely intent man leaped to his feet and shouted to me, “You want to rob us of our culture because you people don’t have one of your own!” This was sheer nonsense and the host rabbi rose to say so. But I pressed the issue: Could I join their temple? The younger Jews shouted “Yes--we would love to have you.” The older fellows were not quite so sure.

“Are you as Jews chosen of God, thus the only ones who are really blessed?” I asked one of the fundamentalists.

“Yes,” he shot back.

“Are you chosen in a way that I can never be?” I continued.

“Yes.” He faltered. “You are not a Jew; you cannot be among the elect.”

By this time the younger Jews were on their feet screaming denunciations of him. But the issue of ethnic exclusiveness that splits today’s Jewish community had been laid bare.

Dogma and ritual are further evidences of the tribalism endemic to religion. I was born and raised a Baptist; long before I could read and write I knew that any person who had not been immersed in water was doomed to Hell. There was nothing to argue about, no need for polemics and reasoning; there would be no Methodists in Heaven!

The point of truth is this: Ethnic and dogmatic bigotry are imbedded in every religious faith plying its wares in the world market; we religious liberals are students of apologetics, sophisticated believers who prefer to forget our crude and tribalistic roots in favor of an enlightened social ethic. Alas, along came Elijah and made us see ourselves as we once were; along came Malcolm X and made us understand what we are now, and why.

The argument that the Black Muslims are not a valid religion because of the exclusivity of their fellowship, then, is clearly spurious. Every religion is a sort of sanctified country club, a coming together of peers in the name of their god. The second argument against the religiosity of the Black Muslims is equally spurious: Like all faiths, the Black Muslims never say hate the other fellow; they say love your own kind. Religious bigotry is Western civilization’s major moral blind spot, and Malcolm X has taken up squatters’ rights just there.

Thus it is that secularism must save the church--the layman must lead the clergyman to the mourner’s bench and make him confess brotherhood in the name of a democratic and pluralistic society. The nature of our social moment demands that we free God from racialism and dogmatics. Racialism, the malignant one of the two cancers, must be dealt with first since it is the prime moral issue of our time. And it must be dealt with by all peoples of all faiths working in concert. Should our social order change, should we somehow come to grips with the evils that have spawned the Black Muslims, the movement would be forced to refine itself or perish.

Malcolm X is the best authority for this. I have often pressed him on his categorical denunciation of the white man as a devil, and his reply is always the same: “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that the white man is a devil. We hold to that teaching because history proves the white man is a devil. If he is not a devil,” Malcolm X concludes, “then let him prove it. Let him give justice, freedom, and equality to our people.”

I have deliberately kept my analysis of the Black Muslims in personal terms of reference because this is precisely how most Negroes feel about the matter--after all, the attraction of the movement for Negroes is one of the major points of this essay.

“Of course I disagree with Malcolm,” the wife of a Negro newsman told me. “But I disagree with a lot of other religions, too. If he teaches hate, so do they; what’s the difference? I wonder why the white people are after him.” She smiled. “Could it be because he is colored?”

The Black Muslims have their God, their gospel, their ritual trappings, their approval from official heads of the Islamic faith. As a religion, then, there is little left to do but disagree with them and then leave them alone.

This, of course, pains liberals, Negro and white, who want to hear a ringing denunciation of the Black Muslims. Negro leaders are always quick to denounce Elijah, but the Negro masses are strangely silent. There is a reason for this silence, something both the Negro leadership and the white power structure would do well to examine: Deep down in their hearts, as James Baldwin so accurately states, the black masses don’t believe in white people any more. They don’t believe in Malcolm either, except when he articulates their disbelief in white people. In the end--and this is the thing white people will be a long time in grasping--the Negro masses neither join nor denounce the Black Muslims. They just sit at home in the ghetto amid the heat, the roaches, the rats, the vice, the disgrace, and rue the fact that come daylight they must meet the man--the white man--and work at a job that leads only to a dead end.

This brings me to the core of the matter, to the final measure of every religion: it is a thing called _compassion_, a concern and caring about the other fellow. It is rooted in the glaring awareness that we all have fallen short of the high mark set for us, and thus we need the honest sympathy and understanding of all men everywhere.

For though you may have your God, your holy book, your ritual, and your symbols; though you may give of your wages to build the temple; and though you may have been to Mecca, or Jerusalem, if you have not compassion you are but meanness couched in Scripture, you are but an ancient stink, a reason for men to hold their noses as they crawl on toward a land of human understanding and brotherhood.

_The Nation_

Once the convert becomes a Black Muslim he is baptized as a citizen in the Nation of Islam. They have a flag, a symbol, and a cause. From this day forward his life centers around activity at the Muslim restaurant and temple.

Who are these Black Muslims? Where do they live, and what do they do for a living?

These questions baffle all observers because any Negro you encounter could be a Black Muslim. Usually the men wear identifying pins, and the Muslim women can generally be spotted by their dress, particularly the long, flowing headpiece. But these identifying signs are not always present. I have encountered Black Muslims working in printing plants, in barbershops, as messenger boys, as night-club entertainers, and as cab drivers. I will never forget taking a stroll in Central Park where I came across a Muslim sister working as a nursemaid to three white children! Since most nurses and maids are Negroes, the rise of the Black Muslims has sent a quiet but very real chill through the employment agencies in several major cities. After all, there is no telling what these Muslim women will do when the “word” comes, when the Battle of Armageddon is declared. And there is no way for employment agencies to determine if Negro applicants are Black Muslims before sending them out as servants in white homes. Nor is there any way for heads of households to know just who their butlers and cooks are. To borrow from James Baldwin, nobody knows their name. It could be “X.”

The Black Muslims flatly refuse to discuss their organizational finances with anyone. However, observers of the movement are convinced that the tithes collected at temples and the income from temple restaurants form the basis of the Muslim economy. The local restaurant--and most of them are called “Shabazz” restaurants after Malcolm X whose “restored” Arab name is Shabazz--is under the supervision of the local minister. He seems to have fairly complete control, but all matters are subject to review by Malcolm X as Elijah’s roving ambassador. The local ministers are allowed a certain portion of what they raise, but only top insiders know just how Mr. Muhammad makes this determination. The major leaders of the movement all seem to have taken a vow of poverty and live on expenses furnished by the movement itself. I know this is true of Malcolm X and I suspect it to be true of others.

But it must be remembered that the Black Muslims are both thrifty and industrious; they are encouraged to open their own businesses and many of the top leaders are themselves businessmen. Elijah Muhammad, Jr., runs one of the largest bakeries in Chicago; Raymond Sharrieff is said to have ownership in a clothing store there. All evidence indicates that local Muslim leaders finance themselves through various enterprises and that the bulk of the funds raised in the temple itself flow on to the movement headquarters in Chicago.

Whoever and wherever these Black Muslims are they lead an exacting, regimented life. In their homes they practice strict dietary laws--precisely those of the kosher Jews--and avoid contact with white people as much as possible. The private role of both the man and the woman in the family is clearly defined, and the children are indoctrinated with the faith while they are still young. Muslim men are watched by The Fruit and must engage in some kind of gainful employment. They are encouraged to go into small business whenever possible; they are assured of patronage from their fellow Muslims. A number of Negro businessmen have been attracted to the Nation of Islam because it provides them with a ready source of customers. Other Muslim brothers can be seen on the streets every day selling Muslim newspapers. They are allowed to keep a goodly portion of what they earn and are thus independent. The temple restaurants employ scores of Muslim men and women, thus decreasing the ranks of their unemployed. Other Muslims are door-to-door salesmen and find easy entry in the Negro community, where the white door-to-door salesmen have become anathema.

But the average Black Muslim works for some white man somewhere in some capacity. He is urged to learn a trade and thus ready himself for the day when he will be called upon to be one of the heads of industry and commerce in the Muslims’ own, separate state.

The Black Muslim men are lectured constantly about family responsibility and are subject to trial before their peers if they violate the rules of the order. Punishment can vary from a small fine to temporary or permanent banishment from the temple. No Muslim will associate with an offender for the duration of his exile. It is said that Malcolm X’s brother was once banished and that Malcolm refused even to write the man until the period of punishment had been served.

Black Muslim women are schooled in the art and need for homemaking, and are taught to take a back seat in the presence of their husbands. Muslim women almost never talk to strangers--non-Muslims, that is--and maintain a general silence that is unnerving. They also eschew make-up and fancy dress. When I first encountered the Muslims some five years ago, this ban on feminine adornment was rigidly enforced. But there seems to have been a strong revolt among temple women and the ban has been relaxed to the point where employing make-up is now optional. Yet I have seen few Muslim women exercise this option. The wife of a major Muslim official, say Joseph X of New York, certainly wouldn’t exercise it.

The Black Muslims are a male-oriented organization. A man reaches real stature in the movement when he becomes a member of The Fruit of Islam, the functional and disciplinary arm of the movement. The Fruit hold separate temple services, where they are taught, among other things, every possible method of self-defense. Every local temple has a Captain of The Fruit--in New York it is Joseph X--and the entire network is headed by the son-in-law of Elijah Muhammad, Raymond Sharrieff. The Fruit enforce brotherhood among the men of the temple and form the honor guard whenever Malcolm X or Elijah Muhammad makes a public appearance. The Fruit work under the local minister, but there is a line of authority that runs down to the local captains directly from Sharrieff’s Chicago headquarters. The Muslim Girls Training Class (MGT), for young women, is headed by Sister Lottie X, also of Chicago.

The division of authority seems to be along these lines: The local Fruit and MGT work under the local minister on local matters. But unless the matter in question is one of clearly defined doctrine the local minister gets clearance from Chicago before issuing his orders. On national matters, those affecting the movement as a whole, The Fruit and the MGT take orders directly from headquarters. These orders are issued to members of the temple who obey without question.

One of the functions of The Fruit and the MGT is fund-raising. None of the rumors about Muslims receiving help from outside--Communist or segregationist--sources has proved true. The fact of the matter is that the Black Muslims are hard-working, frugal people; they never buy on installment, and they give a tenth--at least--of their earnings to the temple. This income is augmented by bazaars, plays, rallies, and the sale of their own newspapers and magazines. Then there is the matter of the various lawsuits the Muslims have carried on with astonishing success. The Black Muslims have collected upward of a quarter of a million dollars I know about in the past four years or so, mostly as a result of police brutality against their members. These suits are filed in the name of the individual Muslim but they are carried on by the temple, and I suspect the temple shares in the results.

Further regimentation of life within the Nation is achieved by demanding that members send their children to Black Muslim schools wherever possible. In two cities, Chicago and Detroit, the Muslims have “universities” where they train the children from kindergarten through high school. It will be recalled that Elijah Muhammad first got into trouble with the law when he decided to send his children to the Muslim school rather than the public schools. Now authorities in both cities have approved the Muslim schools as accredited centers of learning.

These schools are well disciplined and skillfully run. Early in 1962 there was considerable concern in Chicago over just what the Black Muslims were teaching in their schools. A biracial committee visited the University of Islam there and came away stunned. Said committee member Judge Edyth Sampson, a former U.S. delegate to the United Nations, “These people are doing a magnificent job with their young students. I am deeply impressed by what I saw.”

What Mrs. Sampson and her fellow committee members saw was essentially this: Black Muslim boys and girls stand muster for cleanliness and decorum each morning. The classes are separated, boys in one section, girls in the other, and the students’ day is divided between religious and secular education. They are taught both English and Arabic; they are drilled in the history of the black man in Africa and America. Then they are taught the history of the Black Muslim movement from Fard down to Minister Malcolm X.

In 1963 Sister Christine X, one of the directors of the school, authored a new first reader which is now being employed. The exercises in the book are something American educators would do well to study:

My name is Nora X. My father’s name is James X, and my mother is Frances X. We are Muslims. We have our own flag. Our flag is over there on the wall. The symbols on our flag are a star and a crescent.

Then the students are told to use the following words in sentences: Allah, black, Muhammad, God, Temple, nation, flag, Armageddon, Elijah.

Other exercises in the book call for the student to write short essays on Mr. Muhammad and other notables within the movement. Then as the students progress through school they are taught to link subject matter to the history of the black man. For example, when the students are being taught mathematics they are repeatedly reminded that much of modern math is based on work done by the Egyptians; they are not allowed to forget that English is not their native tongue, that their language is Arabic, that the white man robbed them of their tongue when he kidnaped their foreparents from Africa.

The thing that arrests me most about these schools is that they are now turning out the first generation of youth completely schooled in the Black Muslim doctrine. Unlike Malcolm X, John Ali, and other prominent Muslims of today who had to be “de-brainwashed” before they saw the light, the movement now has several score teen-agers who have been grounded in their faith just as a devout Catholic child is reared in his. As of now the movement suffers greatly from a lack of trained leaders. Only a handful of capable men and women are available to the organization and the nature of their doctrine is such that trained Negroes are hardly apt to join. But a few more years will see the emergence of well-trained Black Muslims who, I am certain, will give the organization more administrative order than it now has.

Meanwhile the Black Muslims are bombarding Negroes all over the nation with their message to the “lost-found, so-called Negro in the wilderness of North America.” For a number of years Mr. Muhammad had a weekly column in some of the nation’s best Negro newspapers. Now the Muslims publish their own weekly, _Mr. Muhammad Speaks_, a thirty-six-page tabloid that has the largest circulation of any Negro newspaper being published. The Muslims also conduct a weekly radio program on stations in some forty cities throughout the nation. All this is augmented by the appearances of Malcolm X on radio and TV programs each week. All in all, the Black Muslims have covered the nation; their basic teachings are known and debated by Negroes everywhere.

On the whole, then, the state of the Nation of Islam is good; its population is growing, its economy is well into the black, and its foreign relations--though strained--are better than they have ever been before.

4. THE BLACK MUSLIMS AND THE NEGRO REVOLT

_The Separate State_

On the day every television network carried scenes of Birmingham police dogs attacking Negro children, Malcolm X submitted to an interview. Asked what he thought of the events at Birmingham, Malcolm said: “Martin Luther King is a chump, not a champ. Any man who puts his women and children on the front lines is a chump, not a champ.”

This was Malcolm’s most inglorious hour. It will take him months of hard work to regain the ground he lost among non-Muslim Negroes with that single statement. Even the Negro moderates, those who disapprove of the direct-action technique, were silenced by the dogs, fire hoses, and club-swinging policemen. Since Birmingham I have been on a lecture tour that carried me to eight major cities in as many states; I found that Negroes were melted into one by the fire of that battle; I saw a unity I have never seen in rank-and-file Negroes before; I felt a mutual love that is all but unknown among Negroes; I sensed a dislike for white people that borders on the disgraceful. Martin King--and we know his strengths as well as his weaknesses--triggered Birmingham. This nation’s Negroes were with him. If he was a “chump,” so were we all.

Malcolm’s statement had the effect of making every Negro who wept when he saw dogs attacking Negro children feel like a moral idiot; Malcolm’s analysis--if proper--means that every Negro woman who shouted resentment when she saw her black sisters knocked to the ground is spiritually illiterate and intellectually stupid. Malcolm--in a contorted way, to be sure--allowed himself to become one with Bull Conner. Malcolm X, the brilliant student of mass psychology, blundered badly.

The Black Muslims had a multiple choice at Birmingham: They could have joined us in the demonstrations; they could have kept quiet; they could have denounced us. I was there and watched the Black Muslim position take shape. Minister James X of the Birmingham temple wanted Malcolm to come and make a major speech during the turmoil; Minister Jeremiah X, minister to the Atlanta temple and roving southern bishop for the movement, was of much the same mind. Knowing the Black Muslim line of authority as I do, I am certain that James and Jeremiah reflected not only Malcolm’s desire to come but Elijah Muhammad’s decision to let the Big X fly to Birmingham if the proper stage were set. The matter was debated by Negro non-Muslims who could have set just such a stage. Some felt it would be a good thing to have Malcolm speak in Birmingham, since the Klan held a rally there at the peak of the crisis. Others felt the Black Muslims should stay out of the picture. There was a standoff on the question, and silence prevailed. Non-Muslim Negroes knew Malcolm X could not speak in favor of integration. And they prayed--both to Jehovah and Allah--that Big Red would take advantage of that excellent opportunity to keep quiet.

Malcolm elected to speak against us. We were all pained by his outburst, but now--after several weeks of reflection--it is clear that Malcolm did precisely what he had to do. For the Negro revolt had caught up with the Black Muslims.

The Black Muslims came to power during a moral interregnum, at a time when it seemed certain that this nation would refuse to obey its own desegregation laws. But the sudden new militancy of the Negro has forced an unscheduled confrontation between the Muslims and this republic: America must prove that it is not a nation of white devils or perish. The Black Muslims, on the other hand, must face the reality of change in the American way of life. The Negro has always privately talked loud and bitterly about the American white man. The Black Muslims brought that talk into the open, on television and radio, and made it plain for all to see and hear. This was good for both the Negro and the white man: it shocked and frightened white people to hear what we have been thinking and saying about them for five hundred years; the Black Muslims were a catharsis for us, purging our innards of the bile brought on by slavery and segregation. Released from consuming anger we dropped the façade of puritan legalism and went racing into the streets screaming that defiance which is endemic to the tribe of restless natives we American Negroes most certainly are. Thus the inspired Negro students who took our fight into the streets, who shouted “now or never,” have challenged the Black Muslims by interposing the theology of desegregation. In _The Negro Revolt_ I described that theology in these words:

The sit-ins raged throughout the spring of 1960 and convinced even more people that direct mass action was the shorter, more effective route to their goal of desegregation. But, from an internal viewpoint, more significant than the stale coffee and soggy hamburgers was the brand of Negro that was emerging. They were no longer afraid; their boldness, at times, was nothing short of alarming. And although few people knew it, a new religion, peculiar to the Negro, was being born.

This faith, given incipient articulation by Martin Luther King, was the culmination of a hundred years of folk suffering. Like all faiths, it is peculiar to the people who fashioned it; it was a hodgepodge, as every faith is, of every ethical principle absorbed by my people from other cultures. And so the best of Confucius, Moses, Jesus, Gandhi, and Thoreau was extracted, then mixed with the peculiar experience of the Negro in America. The result was a faith that justified the bus boycott and inspired Negro college students to make a moral crusade out of their right to sit down in a restaurant owned by a white man and eat a hamburger.

As Pastor Kelly Miller Smith walked to the lectern to begin his Sunday sermon, on that first Sunday of March, 1960, in Nashville, Tennessee, he knew his parishioners wanted and needed more than just another spiritual message. The congregation--most of them middle-class Americans, many of them university students and faculty members--sat before him waiting, tense; for Nashville, like some thirty-odd other Southern college towns, was taut with racial tension in the wake of widespread student demonstrations against lunch counter discrimination in department stores.

Among the worshipers in Pastor Smith’s First Baptist Church were some of the eighty-five students from Fisk and from Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial University who had been arrested and charged with conspiracy to obstruct trade and commerce because they staged protests in several of Nashville’s segregated eating places. Just two days before, Nashville police had invaded Mr. Smith’s church--which also served as headquarters for the demonstrators--and arrested one of their number, James Lawson, Jr., a Negro senior theological student at predominantly white Vanderbilt University, on the same charge.

“Father, forgive them,” Mr. Smith began, “for they know not what they do.” And for the next half-hour, the crucifixion of Christ carried this meaning as he spoke:

“The students sat at the lunch counters alone to eat, and when refused service, to wait and pray. And as they sat there on that Southern Mount of Olives, the Roman soldiers, garbed in the uniforms of Nashville policemen and wielding night sticks, came and led the praying children away. As they walked down the streets, through a red light, and toward Golgotha, the segregationist mob shouted jeers, pushed and shoved them, and spat in their faces, but the suffering students never said a mumbling word. Once the martyr mounts the Cross, wears the crown of thorns, and feels the pierce of the sword in his side there is no turning back.

“And there is no turning back for those who follow in the martyr’s steps,” the minister continued. “All we can do is to hold fast to what we believe, suffer what we must suffer if we would forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

This new gospel of the American Negro is rooted in the theology of desegregation; its missionaries are several thousand Negro students who--like Paul, Silas, and Peter of the early Christian era--are braving great dangers and employing new techniques to spread the faith. It is not an easy faith, for it names the conservative Negro leadership class as sinners along with the segregationists. Yet this new gospel is being preached by clergymen and laymen alike wherever Negroes gather.

Here, then--in the American Negro’s mind and for his loyalty--is being waged one of the several battles gods have fought during the history of man. This particular encounter is between a home-grown Allah who is one with black men the world over, but who has a special yen for the American Negro, and a transmuted Jesus who was born in Judea, crucified on Golgotha’s heights, rose from the dead to ascend into heaven, but submitted to reincarnation as a student sit-in. And so it is that Allah and Jesus fight it out for the spiritual allegiance of the American Negro at a lunch counter in Woolworth’s.

This is indeed a long way from the mountains near Olympia and the flats of Greece where the gods once romped and fought for glory. But gods follow man; wherever man is, wherever the great issues of man are being determined, there also one will find the gods. Man and the issue are now centered around the rise and current crisis of Western civilization. The British historian-theologian Arnold Toynbee suggests that the black Westerner may well determine the fate of Atlantic civilization. The gods apparently agree, and they have come to our shores to ply their wares. But Western man, particularly the Negro, is demanding more of his gods than man once did.

Once upon a time all god had to do was promise man life after death, an eternal remission for the sins man committed on earth while trying to sing a hymn in a strange land. But the gods can no longer get away with such shoddy realism; men want to eat good food, sleep without being awakened by nibbling rats, work at jobs commensurate with their abilities, live where their earning power allows them, and use all facilities paid for out of public funds.

“We don’t want to eat a hot dog in this store,” Jeremiah X said to me as we watched scores of Birmingham youngsters stage sit-ins; “we want the store and the ground on which it sits.”

This is the dilemma the Black Muslims now face: They must eschew everything tinged by “integration,” yet they must seek acceptance among the black masses who are risking their all--particularly in the South--for the sake of fuller involvement in the American mainstream. The Muslims’ reply, of course, is the separate state, a place where all American black men will live, have their own government, readopt Arabic, reaccept Allah, and ready themselves for the hour when the “word” will be given and Armageddon will proceed.

The tragedy of this is that Black Muslim leaders, including Elijah Muhammad, have said they know such a state will never come into being. This admission by them relieves me of the need to discuss the impracticality of the proposal. Rather, I am engaged by the fact that the Black Muslims continue to urge Negroes to back the demands for such a state rather than act to better their plight in the nation as it now is.

Their promise of a separate state, like the chariot that was scheduled to swing low and take us home a century ago, is but another of the mirages that has kept the American Negro from digging water in the land that is his and under his feet. Black Muslims are forbidden to vote; thus they cannot help us overcome such men as Eastland and Talmadge. They are against all forms of integration; thus they cannot help us in the fight for better jobs, schools, and housing.

The Negro masses are beginning to indict the Black Muslims for impotence; they talk but cannot act; they criticize but cannot correct. Thus the Black Muslims are running the risk of becoming just another sect, an offbeat faith that expiates destiny by the shouting of voices, the stomping of feet, and the banging of tambourines. Their early promise of becoming a meaningful new faith has been made pallid by their lack of an activated social gospel. To put it bluntly, the Black Muslims are flirting with the same doom that overtook Christianity.

As the interview in Part Two shows, I have questioned Malcolm X in depth about this. He is adamant, his voice has the ring of finality. In substance, his position is this:

The Negro Revolt will fail because integration will not work; it will not work because the white man is wicked by nature and will not give Negroes full participation in American life. It is not that the white man refuses to integrate, but that his wicked nature makes it impossible for him to give justice, equality, and freedom to other peoples. Even the victories that have been won are tricks, token integration offered to a few Negroes to quiet the Negro masses. When Negroes realize they have been tricked, that the white man has no intentions of integrating, trouble will break out. And this is when the Black Muslims will inherit the earth, particularly America. This nation could avoid all this by granting Negroes states of their own. But they are too wicked to do even that. So let Armageddon rip.

Even so, I pressed Malcolm:

LOMAX: Minister Malcolm, will the Black Muslims join picket lines and demonstrations for better jobs, housing, and schools?

MALCOLM X: Only The Honorable Elijah Muhammad can answer that.

_The Friends and Followers of Malcolm X_

It pains Malcolm X that most people consider him _the_ spokesman for the Black Muslims. Malcolm prefaces all his public statements with the phrase, “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that ...”; he attributes his every thought and action to the teachings of Mr. Muhammad. “The Messenger is the Prophet of Allah,” Malcolm once explained to me, “and I am but Elijah’s servant.”

Following a Los Angeles TV debate between Malcolm X, two other Negroes, and me, my aunt invited some fifty people to meet the members of the panel at her home. Malcolm X appeared and of course became the center of attraction. The guests were upper-middle-class Negroes--doctors, lawyers, teachers, professionals all. Some ten white persons were also present. One woman asked Malcolm why he prefaced his remarks by saying, “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that....”

“Because,” Malcolm said cuttingly, “Mr. Muhammad is everything and I am nothing. When you hear Charlie McCarthy speak, you listen and marvel at what he says. What you forget is that Charlie is nothing but a dummy--he is a hunk of wood sitting on Edgar Bergen’s lap. If Bergen quits talking, McCarthy is struck dumb; if Bergen turns loose, McCarthy will fall to the floor, a plank of sawdust fit for nothing but the fire. This is the way it is with the Messenger and me. It is my mouth working, but the voice is his.”

Malcolm X may well be Elijah Muhammad’s Charlie McCarthy, but it was Charlie McCarthy who made Edgar Bergen rich and famous. By the same token, observers are convinced that whereas Elijah Muhammad is the maximum leader of the movement, Malcolm X is the man who will have to save the Black Muslims from becoming just another sect or cult. Malcolm’s role rests on more than his indisputable ability and public presence; it is augmented by the absence of other talented men in the movement. I have met and talked with every major figure in the Black Muslim hierarchy, and there is not one among them who can do the job that must be done if the organization is to make a continuing impression on non-Muslim Negroes. This is not to say that there are no able administrators within the movement; on the contrary, I, for one, am convinced that Malcolm is not a good administrator, that men like John X are better suited than he for this role. But John X cannot capture the mind and imagination of TV viewers as Malcolm X has done. Both of Muhammad’s sons are extremely able, but they cannot cause the nation’s press to beat a path to Muhammad’s door, as Malcolm has done.

Malcolm X now holds down three jobs: he is minister of Temple Number Seven, New York; minister of Temple Number Four, Washington, D.C.; and traveling bishop-trouble shooter for the entire movement. Malcolm roams the nation holding press conferences and being the _official presence_ wherever Muslims get into trouble with the police; he moves between temples, making sure that internal problems are handled correctly; he moves from town to town organizing new temples and addressing mass rallies; he has spoken at most major universities outside the South and fills the air waves with his beguiling jargon.

Then Malcolm commutes several times a month to Phoenix, Arizona, where the asthma-stricken Elijah Muhammad now lives, for further guidance and policy conferences. Hardly a day passes that Malcolm does not speak with the Messenger from wherever he is by telephone. I know from many personal experiences that even so trivial a request as one for Malcolm to sit for an interview is cleared with The Honorable Elijah Muhammad. I also know that Muhammad sometimes says “no” and that Malcolm obeys. Many commentators make much over what they call the “New York-Chicago” cleavage within the Black Muslim movement. I am inclined to doubt the reality of that cleavage, but I am also convinced that there are stresses and strains within the movement, the same kinds of stresses and strains that afflict any organization that involves human beings.

Elijah Muhammad officially lives in Chicago but actually spends almost all of his time in Arizona. This is for reasons of health alone and talk to the contrary is untrue. From Phoenix the Messenger runs everything. Chicago is the nerve center of the movement, and Elijah activates it by telephone calls and couriers. It is now clear that Elijah has delegated to Chicago the responsibility for turning out the movement’s publications and over-all policy statements. It is equally clear that the finances and other administrative chores of the movement are carried out in Chicago. Malcolm at one time carried some of these responsibilities, particularly the publishing of the Muslim newspaper, and many observers thought they saw an intraorganizational fight when these responsibilities were taken from him and given to Chicago. They are wrong; what they saw was a freeing of Malcolm X, a decision by Muhammad that Malcolm was needed as ambassador-at-large for the Black Muslims, that he should not be tied down to the responsibility of editing and publishing a weekly newspaper. This decision by Muhammad was made possible because John X, a former FBI agent and perhaps the best administrative brain in the movement, was shifted from New York to Chicago.

Raymond Sharrieff is without doubt the strong man of the movement. He is tall, big, and quiet, as a strong man should be. But his strength, too, flows down from that enigmatic man, Elijah Muhammad. Muhammad has been able to harness Malcolm X, John X, and Sharrieff to the same plow and make them pull in tandem. But once Muhammad dies--at least, so most observers feel--this triumvirate will fly apart and wreck the movement. I doubt it. The Black Muslims know the world is waiting for just this to happen, and I am positive they have already made certain that it will not happen.

_The New Policy_

Succession is not the major question facing the Black Muslims; the young, thinking men in the hierarchy know what the big issue is, know that they must issue a new policy statement if they are to capture the minds of the Negroes who are carrying out the current revolution. Calling the white man a devil and exhorting all Negroes to prepare for life in a separate state simply is not enough to win over the children who marched at Birmingham and all over this republic. No, if the Black Muslims are to get a hearing, they must have more than this to say.

This new policy statement is the prime concern of the Black Muslim movement. Several factors are involved:

First, the consensus among the Black Muslim hierarchy is that the current Negro demonstrations will end in bitter defeat and disappointment. These men, including Elijah Muhammad, are unalterably convinced that white America will not honor the promise of integration. Then, at least so the thinking goes, the Negro people will set off trouble; they will denounce and abandon Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, and James Farmer; they will turn for leadership to someone who foresaw the defeat clearly. In the meantime, however, good but misguided Negroes will take to the streets and demonstrate because they still have faith in integration, they still believe in the ability of white people to do the right thing.

I predict the Black Muslims will erect a policy of _active wait-and-see_; they will not join picket lines and participate in demonstrations, but they will take a more active part in general community life. This, I think, is the meaning behind the recent announcement that the Black Muslims are considering active participation in politics. The suggestion was made during the movement’s annual convention in Chicago early in the spring of 1963. It is still not clear just what the Muslims have in mind, but I see them first moving to register their people and then supporting Negro candidates who share some of the Muslims’ concerns.

These candidates will not be Black Muslims; they will be “race” men who are willing to “speak out,” an act that is so dear to the hearts of Muslims. These Negro candidates will not back such Muslim programs as the quest for an all-black state, but neither will they denounce the Black Muslims. Some Black Muslims may run for office, however. Malcolm X has often flirted with the idea of seeking a Congressional seat, and there are those, including me, who feel he would win if he selected the right area.

This would mean that the Black Muslims would work with political candidates who must also work with other groups, some of whom would support direct action. This would indirectly ally the Muslims with direct action and would improve their image, provided they accompanied such action with the cessation of attacks on men like Martin Luther King and Roy Wilkins. As I see it, this is the best possible position for the Black Muslims: it would ally them with the Negro push for better housing, jobs, and schools while at the same time allowing them to abstain from direct action; it would also free them to say that a separate state is still _the best_ answer. Most of all, such a move would lift the Black Muslims to the level of respectability they have so long wanted. Other Negro spokesmen would have to practice summitry with the Muslims, and they would become an accepted rather than feared force in the Negro community.

A second factor involved in the Black Muslim search for a new policy turns on Akbar Muhammad, the youngest son of Elijah, who has just returned to America after two years of study at Egypt’s famed Al-Azhar University. Al-Azhar is the cultural center of orthodox Islam, and its professors are the brains of that faith. It is beyond question that Elijah’s position has been enhanced by Akbar’s period of study there; it is just as certain that the Black Muslim movement will be affected by Akbar’s return.

At this writing Akbar has been home less than a month. He is in the company of Malcolm X and will make a nation-wide tour of Muhammad’s temples, where he will lecture on traditional Islam and the influence of Africa in current world affairs.

Already his influence is being felt.

“Akbar Comes to Harlem” was the billing for a major Black Muslim rally held shortly after his return. The New York press, Negro and white, was filled with ads and special announcements inviting people to come out and hear Akbar Muhammad, the youngest son of Elijah Muhammad, report on his sojourn and studies in Africa and Egypt. Much was made of the fact that Akbar had been a student at Al-Azhar University. Even more was made of the fact that he had attended the recent summit meeting of African heads of state as a correspondent for the Muslim newspaper, _Mr. Muhammad Speaks_.

Observers of the movement were certain that his speech would be heavily pro-African, that he would argue for a closer relationship between the Black Muslim movement and traditional Islam, and that he once again would remind American Negroes of their African heritage. But Akbar Muhammad’s two-hour talk before some four thousand Negroes on that Saturday afternoon in Harlem proved to be a complete surprise; further, it laid bare the only real schism there is within the Black Muslim movement.

After a highly charged introduction by Malcolm X the distinguished speaker rose. Twenty-five-year-old Akbar Muhammad is much like his father, medium brown, diminutive, slightly built. He stood at the lectern stroking his goatee during the three-minute ovation from the crowd. Then he spoke: “_As-Salaam-Alaikum_.” His Arabic was exquisite. His inflection alone was enough to let the black masses know they were hearing something different from the southern-accented “Peace be with you” they hear from the ordinary Black Muslims. All up and down the block Muslims leaped into the air with ecstasy, praising Allah for the “back home” diction one of their leaders had acquired.

Akbar had been speaking a scant five minutes when the crowd became strangely silent. Elijah’s son was clearly giving a new teaching, a gospel that contradicted much of what Malcolm X and others had been saying for the past few years.

“We must have unity among Negroes,” Akbar said.

It is time for all of us--CORE, the NAACP, Dr. Martin Luther King, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Black Muslims--to sit down together behind closed doors and unite. Negro leaders must now stop calling each other names. We must stop calling Dr. King names, and he must stop talking about us before the enemy. We may not be able to walk all the way to freedom together, but we can walk half the way together, so let’s unite and walk together as far as we can.

The audience began to warm to his strange message. The notion of unity among Negro leaders--including the Muslims--was not new. Malcolm X had launched the same theme three years ago but found no takers among established Negro leaders. Recently, however, the breach had widened; Malcolm called Martin Luther King “a chump, not a champ”; King took to a New York pulpit and denounced “those among us who would have us live in a separate state.” The night of that sermon King was pelted with eggs as he entered the church. Malcolm X denied that the Black Muslims were responsible for the incident but he also refused to say he was sorry that it had happened. All this was less than two weeks before the speech by Akbar.

I watched the setting as Akbar continued to speak. The stage obviously had been readied for him. This was no ordinary rally: Elijah Muhammad, Jr., had flown in from Chicago to be present, along with John X Ali, National Secretary for the movement. Ministers Jeremiah (Baltimore), Louis X (Boston), and Thomas J. (Hartford) were there. Minister Woodrow (Atlantic City) was on hand with his camera crew, and Joseph X, captain of the New York Fruit, turned his men out in full dress. This was clearly a major move, and the Muslims had worked hard to underscore its importance.

But what did it all mean?

“Now if we can unify,” Akbar continued, “we can get help. I have just come from Africa,” he said with a sly smile, “and I bring you a message from our African brothers. Now you newsmen get this correct. I am only bringing a message to the people, a message sent by their brothers in Africa. This is the message: Spokesmen from African states--I’ll even go so far as to tell you that they are on the west coast of Africa--told me to tell you that if you unite, they are ready to help us win our freedom. They are ready to help us with arms, men, and know-how!”

The crowds at such street rallies in Harlem are always infiltrated with black nationalists, and the mere thought of Africans sending arms, men, and know-how to aid the American Negro was enough to set off rejoicing.

To the dismay of newsmen, who hoped he would go into the who, what, when, where, and how of all this, Akbar let the matter drop. Instead he turned to a discussion of the white man.

“I don’t hate any man because of the color of his skin,” Akbar said. “I look at a man’s heart, I watch his actions, and I make my conclusions on the basis of what he does rather than how he looks.”

There are two ways of interpreting what Akbar said: He could have been saying that action, not skin color, was the determining factor in any moral judgment; or he could have been spouting the Muslim line that the white man can prove he is not evil by nature by acting correctly. Either way, what Akbar was saying is a long way from the strong line preached by both Malcolm X and Elijah. And when this is coupled with Akbar’s public denunciation of those Negro leaders who call other Negro leaders names, his speech takes on an even stranger character.

Akbar closed his talk with a call for unity among black men all over the world. “What we must have,” he said, “is unity among American Negroes; once we get that, Africans are willing to help us with men, guns, and know-how. Then we can proceed to unity of black men all over the world.”

As Akbar finished, the crowd applauded with vigor; they were all aware that they had witnessed a peculiar thing. First, Akbar had not mentioned the separate state a single time during his speech. This is indeed strange coming from the son of the Messenger, the man whose basic tenet is a call for “several states” where Negroes can form their own government. Second, Akbar did not once use the phrase, “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad.” He made only one reference to his father, and that came when he said, “The Teacher tells us that we should prepare ourselves for black unity.” Most of all, Akbar’s talk had none of the strident denunciations of white men that one expects to hear at a Black Muslim rally.

It was Malcolm X who pointed up the strangeness of the doctrine we had heard.

“I am guilty!” Malcolm told the crowd after Akbar finished. “I am guilty of calling other Negro leaders names. As you know, no one has done more of that recently than I have. But today we have heard a new teaching, and we are all going to abide by it.... Now brothers with the white buckets will pass among you. And you integrate those white buckets with some green dollar bills. Meanwhile I am going to talk to you.... If you help Mr. Muhammad, you are helping the man who has helped you. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the man who has told you the truth about yourself; The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the man who has told you the truth about the white man.... The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the man who has made it possible for Brother Akbar to go to school back home in Egypt; The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the man who tells you to stand up; The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the man who tells you to look up; The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the man who tells you to clean yourself up, provide for your wife and children, protect your family. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad will make you stop drinking; The Honorable Elijah Muhammad will make you stop stealing; The Honorable Elijah Muhammad will make you be true to your family; The Honorable Elijah Muhammad will get that monkey [dope addiction] off your back; The Honorable Elijah Muhammad will get this white, blue-eyed gorilla off your back!”

“Make it plain, Brother Minister, make it plain.”

Black men and their women all up and down the streets shouted and jumped for joy. This was what they had come to hear in the first place. Big Red had made their cups run over. Now they were ready to go home.

The Harlem rally was Akbar’s hour. Malcolm X had given the Messenger’s son, the bright kid away at school in Egypt, a major New York hearing with the press in full attendance. And Akbar had acted like an Arab; he had talked traditional Islam and preached black unity. It was abundantly clear that Akbar is much more committed to Africa than he is to a separate black state here in America. He reflects the Arabs’ involvement with black unity throughout the world. And here lies the schism, for it is clear that Malcolm X is closer to Elijah Muhammad, in terms of just what the American Negro should do, than is Elijah’s own son. This schism, however, is not as wide or as serious as the Muslims’ detractors would have it. Elijah’s big point is that the Negro should have a separate state; the Arabs simply shrug this off. But the imminent fall of white civilization is something upon which they all agree and for which they are all preparing.

One can expect, then, that the Black Muslims will become more “Islamic” and more “political” in the days just ahead. The new emphasis on traditional Islam will be primarily a matter of ritual and temple organization; the new “political” attitude will be an attempt at a social ethic that would place the Muslims in favor with the black masses without committing them to “integration” causes.

But this is a holding operation, something the Black Muslims, like God, suffer to be so. They are going to effect an accommodation with the Negro Revolt, but they are certain that the American white power structure will defraud us all. Then the Nation of Islam can say, “We told you so,” and sound the bugle for Armageddon.

How sound would such a new policy be?

From an organizational point of view I think it would make sense. Not only is it the most liberal position they can possibly accommodate, but it shows that some--perhaps quite a few people--inside the movement are thinking creatively. As a non-Muslim, I have much the same reservations about the new policy as I had about the old. I don’t share their total pessimism on how the Negro Revolt will end. I can foresee a situation in which the white power structure fails to yield and Negroes start trouble; that not only can happen, but it probably will happen in isolated pockets before the race issue is settled. I doubt that the trouble will be nation-wide, but even widespread rioting would not necessarily mean the triumph of the Black Muslims.

To state it bluntly, Negroes, as we have done in the past, can have a race riot without becoming Black Muslims!

Let there be no denying that such a tragedy will play into the hands of the Black Muslims; there are, indeed, grave risks involved, and the best way to avoid them is to see to it that the tragedy doesn’t occur.

_Peace Be Unto You_

The Black Muslim movement is undeniably a sect, if for no other reason than that it is dominated and run by charismatic leadership. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the mystical and powerful presence of the movement, the meaning around which everything else occurs and orbits. Elijah Muhammad has never claimed immortality; thus even the Black Muslims know he will eventually die. Critics of the movement predict that there will be a frenetic, perhaps bloody, scramble for leadership at Muhammad’s death. My prediction is that the Black Muslim hierarchy will gather in conclave and that they will come out with a new leader. That leader will not be Malcolm X. Rather, I suggest that Malcolm, John, and Sharrieff will be retained in the posts they now occupy and a younger man--almost certainly one of Muhammad’s sons--will be the new Messenger.

There are three reasons why I feel this will prove true:

1. The mystique of the movement is that Muhammad met and knew Allah--Fard. Thus it follows that the flesh and blood of Muhammad has inherited the magic of that encounter. Muhammad will be raised to sainthood, and the Muslim gospel will continue to be prefaced with the phrase, “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us....” Thus the new Messenger should be a physical reminder of Elijah.

2. John and Sharrieff are sensible, practical men. They know the impact Malcolm has made on the American scene, and they will keep him precisely where he is, for this is the only way they can stay where they are.

3. Finally, I am persuaded of the morality of these Black Muslim leaders. Think of their doctrine what one may, I am convinced that they would no more fight publicly over the question of leadership than would the cardinals of the Roman Church. Indeed, I feel the conclave will move just as the Catholic Church has often moved, that the question of a new leader will be overshadowed by a debate over policy. I see Malcolm, then, not as the maximum leader, but as prime minister and behind-the-scenes policy maker.

This is no cause for rejoicing. Akbar Muhammad, who I suspect will be the new Messenger, is steeped in traditional Islam. He will bring to the maximum-leadership post the zeal and determination one associates with the early Mohammedans. Followers of Allah have always been strong on internal brotherhood and notoriously short of patience and mercy toward outsiders. Those of us who have studied the movement have had to stand muster before Raymond Sharrieff, and to a man we are agreed that we would not enjoy tangling with him and The Fruit. Once Elijah is dead, I suspect the prospect of tangling with him will be even less inviting.

“I’ll be honest with you,” Malcolm X said to me. “Everybody is talking about differences between the Messenger and me. It is absolutely impossible for us to differ. What he says is law; that is what is done. But I’ll tell you this,” he added. “Mr. Muhammad was with Allah, and he has been granted divine patience; he is willing to wait on God to deal with the devil. Well, the rest of us have not seen Allah; we don’t have this divine patience, and we are not so willing to wait on God. The younger Black Muslims want to see some action!”

For the first and, to my knowledge, only time Malcolm deviated from the Messenger’s position when he said that. Malcolm X means it, he is not alone: Akbar means it, John X means it, Sharrieff means it, and Wallace, another son of Elijah’s, means it. These men are waiting for integration to fail. This republic would do well to take them seriously.

The Black Muslims will endure but they will not prevail. Rather, they will linger for years to come and be a constant reminder of what this republic did to thousands who sought its promise. They will integrate this nation’s body politic and make us continually aware of what can happen if white men don’t learn to love before black men learn to hate. And maybe one day before I die we can all join together--black and white and Malcolm X--and say, “_As-Salaam-Alaikum_.” That is to say, peace be unto you.