WHEN THE WORD IS GIVEN ...
By Louis E. Lomax
THE RELUCTANT AFRICAN
THE NEGRO REVOLT
WHEN THE WORD IS GIVEN ...
LOUIS E. LOMAX
_When the Word is Given_ ...
A REPORT ON
ELIJAH MUHAMMAD,
MALCOLM X,
AND THE
BLACK MUSLIM
WORLD
[Illustration]
THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK
Published by The World Publishing Company
2231 West 110th Street, Cleveland 2, Ohio
Published simultaneously in Canada by
Nelson, Foster & Scott Ltd.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-21624
FIRST EDITION
WP963
Copyright © 1963 by Louis E. Lomax.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form without written permission from the publisher, except for
brief passages included in a review appearing in a newspaper
or magazine. Printed in the United States of America.
Design by Larry Kamp
To James Leonidas Lomax, consecrated preacher, dedicated teacher, and
devoted parent. What little love there is among men today is due to
men like Uncle James.
CONTENTS
Introduction 11
=PART ONE=: _The Coming of the Prophet_
1. MAKE IT PLAIN, MR. MINISTER! 17
2. FROM MOSES TO MALCOLM X 35
3. THE NATION OF ISLAM 59
4. THE BLACK MUSLIMS AND THE NEGRO REVOLT 85
=PART TWO=: _The Prophet’s Voice_
1. MUHAMMAD AT ATLANTA 109
2. MALCOLM X AT HARVARD 130
3. MALCOLM X ON “UNITY” 149
4. MALCOLM X’S “UNIVERSITY SPEECH” 159
5. MALCOLM X AT QUEENS COLLEGE 172
6. MALCOLM X AT YALE 179
=A SUMMING UP=:
_Louis Lomax Interviews Malcolm X_ 197
Suggested Additional Reading 213
Index 215
INTRODUCTION
This book comes at a time when the American race issue seems at a
climax. Disturbing though it may be, it is encouraging that such a
book as this can be written, that a group like the Black Muslims not
only lives among us but that it can be investigated and studied. This
means that at long last we are about to become honest about the race
question. Negroes are saying what they think; white people are pausing
to listen. These are the prerequisites of dialogue in a free society,
and I predict that on the whole the Black Muslims will have a healthy
influence on our social structure.
I know white people are frightened by Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad;
maybe now they will understand how I have felt all my life, for there
has never been a day when I was unafraid; we Negroes live our lives on
the edge of fear, not knowing when or how the serpent of discrimination
will strike and deprive us of something dear--a job here, a house
there, an evening out over there, or a life itself. But things are
better now than they once were; I am convinced they will soon be
better than they are now. I am optimistic because I feel Negroes are
now determined to better their lot; I believe we will win because there
is every evidence that white people are beginning to yield some of
their power, and that--power--is what the argument is really about.
I have drawn on a spate of newspaper articles for this manuscript.
I must give particular thanks to my friends Alex Haley and C. Eric
Lincoln, Professor of Social Relations, Clark College, Atlanta. Haley’s
article on the Muslims and his unpublished notes were of immense help;
Lincoln’s book, _The Black Muslims in America_, is the definitive work
on the followers of Elijah Muhammad and it was my bible as I tried
first to understand and then to portray the Black Muslims. Dr. Lincoln
and I shared research when he was preparing his fine work, and he has
most graciously given me his consent to draw freely from his material,
particularly that related to the origins and early history of the
movement.
Thanks to Ann Westbay and Frances Hannah for their work as typists.
Both of them also served as valuable critics as the manuscript took
shape; for this additional service I owe them much appreciation.
Most of all I am indebted to the Black Muslims themselves. For
more than four years, now, they have tolerated my questions and
presence, knowing that I differ with them on many issues. Without
their permission, over the years, this kind of book would have been
impossible.
The summer of 1963 saw the Negro Revolt move into full view; it also
saw the Black Muslims reach an almost incredible peak of public concern
and notice. The intent of this work is to provide information and
insight as companions to that concern. For correct information is the
ultimate weapon of freedom. Even so, there are unpleasant and chilling
things in this book. The Black Muslims--for some--are an unpleasant
and chilling people, but freedom includes the right to be chilling, and
the Black Muslims have no monopoly on unpleasantness.
In reality, Western man is on trial in this book. Without the failings
of Western society, the Black Muslims could not have come into being;
without the continued failings of our society, the Black Muslims cannot
endure. Here, then, Western white man, is a bitter pill. Do with it as
you see fit.
LOUIS E. LOMAX
_St. Albans, New York_
_July, 1963_
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...._