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
DateMr. W. F. Muhammad
4807 South Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago 15, IllinoisDear 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.