Chapter IV: Part ONE: The Coming of the Prophet (3)

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.

(_Photo by Robert L. Haggins_)]

(_Richard Saunders from Pictorial_)]

(_Photo by Robert L. Haggins_)]

(_Richard Saunders from Pictorial_)]

(_Richard Saunders from Pictorial_)]

(_Photo by Eve Arnold, Magnum_)]

(_Photo by Eve Arnold, Magnum_)]

(_Photo by Eve Arnold, Magnum_)]

(_Photo by Eve Arnold, Magnum_)]

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_