Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960-1975

Introduction

introduction Introduction I give my life to this great man, The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad; For in the principles by which he stands, I envision a code of honor. He gave me a God whose name is Allah; One Who really answers prayer— In place of a spook, who, in times of great need, Was never, ever there. I revere this man who filled me with pride Such as I’ve never known before; A road to success and true happiness, Elijah has opened the door. Each time I pray, some five times a day, I beseech that Allah keep him strong; For I know down life’s way there’ll be many like me For Muhammad to teach right from wrong. —Edward 6X Ricketts, “A Muslim’s Allegiance,” Muhammad Speaks, 29 December 1967 T his book shows what it meant, during the 1960s and 1970s, for thousands of Americans like Brother Edward 6X Ricketts to practice a religion that they understood to be Islam. These Muslims, like Brother Edward, were members of an African American Islamic group called the Nation of Islam (). They pledged their allegiance to Elijah Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, a prophet who taught them “right from wrong” and a “code of honor.” They believed that, in following Elijah Muhammad’s prophetic pronouncements , they would achieve “success and true happiness.” This volume offers a systematic and comprehensive analysis of their rituals, ethics, doctrines, and religious narratives, revealing the unambiguously religious nature of a movement that was founded, according to  members, by God Himself. It all began in 1930, when W. D. Fard, or Farad Muhammad, a mysterious peddler and purported ex-convict, established the Lost-Found Nation of Islam in the Wilderness of North America. Working from house to house in Detroit, Michigan, Fard reportedly told others that he was from the Holy City of Mecca, although scholars still dispute whether he was indeed a foreigner and whether he was Arab, Turkish, or African American.1 No matter who he was, he delivered an important message to African Americans in the midst of the Great Depression . He told his black customers and associates that their true religion was Islam and that their original language was Arabic, stolen from them when they came over in slave ships from the Old World. Fard stayed in Detroit only a little while, and he had few followers, but his movement would have an impact on the entire country.2 According to the traditions of the , Elijah Poole (1897–1975), a smallish man from Sandersville, Georgia, became Fard’s chief assistant and eventually recognized Fard as God in the flesh. By 1934, Fard disappeared from Detroit, and Poole emerged as leader of the nascent movement. Poole, who became known as Elijah Muhammad, used several aliases throughout the 1930s and 1940s in order to confuse the state and federal authorities who thought him to be a black troublemaker and a dangerous sympathizer with anti-American forces, perhaps the Japanese Empire. In fact, he was apprehended by federal authorities in 1942 and convicted of draft evasion.3 Once released from jail in 1946, Elijah Muhammad began building an Islamic movement that would cement itself in American historical memory as a black nationalist organization committed to racial separatism and ethnic pride.4 introduction : 3 It started as a small group of people at two temples in Chicago and Detroit but spread across the United States and even to Jamaica and Bermuda. By 1973, the  claimed to have over seventy temples or mosques—they used both words by that point—and thousands of members from coast to coast.5 The growth of the movement during the period after the Second World War can be attributed to a number of factors, although none was more important, at least for a time, than the emergence of the fiery, articulate, and charismatic Malcolm X (1925–1965). Malcolm X, whose life story was famously enshrined in the Autobiography of Malcolm X, became Elijah Muhammad’s chief missionary and a national symbol of black resistance and black anger.6 Giving voice to Elijah Muhammad’s teachings during the 1950s and early 1960s, Malcolm X emphasized the need for self-determination and openly advocated separation from whites. He spread Elijah Muhammad’s message to the rest of America and the black world. In the midst of the campaign for civil rights, this black Muslim portrayed Martin Luther King...