Malcolm X_ A Life Of Reinvention Part 2

A new sound developed in dark Manhattan, in smoky late-night sessions. Musicians no longer attempted to present themselves as entertainers. They limited the time of songs by stripping down the melodic form, emphasizing improvisation as well as complex chord changes and complicated beats. When this music, which came to be called bebop, was reproduced on records after the strike, the sound seemed bizarre, almost alien to some jazz enthusiasts. But the new movement's key artists, such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk, were constructing an experimental form in a radically different environment from the Depression-era thirties that had fostered swing. Bebop reflected the anger of the zoot-suiters and the enterprise of black artists who opposed mainstream white culture. These musicians sought to create a protest sound that could not be so easily exploited and commodified.

Many who favored the radical new jazz coming from Harlem nightclubs described the 1943 insurrection as another "zoot suit riot." The term had become a common metaphor for black activities that seemed subversive to white order. One zoot-suiter who had taken part in the Harlem riot linked black resistance to the U.S. war effort with urban unrest: "I'm not a spy or a saboteur, but I don't like goin' over there fightin' for the white man-so be it." Even African-American social psychologist Kenneth Clarke characterized the new militancy he had observed in Harlem as "the Zoot Effect." As the critic Frank Kofsky observed of the bebop movement, "Jazz inevitably functioned not solely as music, but also as a vehicle for the expression of outraged protest."

Malcolm was thoroughly immersed in this world, and well aware of the new sound and its implications-the frisson of outsiders shaking up mainstream culture. Like the zoot-suiters, beboppers implicitly rejected a.s.similation into standards established by whites and were contemptuous of the police and the power of the U.S. government over black people's lives. Both sought to carve out ident.i.ties that blacks could claim for themselves. Jazz artists recognized the parallels and, not surprisingly, later became Malcolm's avid supporters in the 1960s. His version of militant black nationalism appealed to their spirit of rebellion and artistic nonconformity.

One major lesson Malcolm absorbed from the jazz artists' performances in the forties was the power of black art to convey celebrity status. Young Malcolm wistfully dreamt about the adoration of the crowd. In Harlem, he would escort Reginald backstage to join the artists and the musicians at the Roxy or the Paramount, intimating that they knew who he was. "After selling reefers with the bands as they traveled, I was known to almost every popular Negro musician around New York in 1944-45," he would boast. In July 1944, he even found work at the Lobster Pond nightclub on Fortysecond Street. The proprietor, Abe Goldstein, is identified as "Hymie" in the Autobiography Autobiography: "Red, I'm a Jew and you're black," he would say. "These Gentiles don't like either one of us."Hymie paid me good money while I was with him, sometimes two hundred and three hundred a week. I would have done anything for Hymie. I did do all kinds of things. But my main job was transporting bootleg that Hymie supplied, usually to those spruced-up bars which he had sold to someone.

What the Autobiography Autobiography fails to reveal is that Detroit Red, under the stage name Jack Carlton, was allowed to perform as a bar entertainer. At last, on a lighted nightclub stage, Malcolm could display his dancing ability; he even sometimes played the drums. The stage name was his way of honoring his late half brother, Earl, Jr., who had performed as Jimmy Carlton. It isn't clear whether Goldstein paid Malcolm primarily to entertain or to transport illegal alcohol (if his account is true). But in October 1944, Malcolm was fired. A few years later, on the occasion of another arrest, Goldstein described his former employee as "a bit unstable and neurotic but under proper guidance, a good boy." fails to reveal is that Detroit Red, under the stage name Jack Carlton, was allowed to perform as a bar entertainer. At last, on a lighted nightclub stage, Malcolm could display his dancing ability; he even sometimes played the drums. The stage name was his way of honoring his late half brother, Earl, Jr., who had performed as Jimmy Carlton. It isn't clear whether Goldstein paid Malcolm primarily to entertain or to transport illegal alcohol (if his account is true). But in October 1944, Malcolm was fired. A few years later, on the occasion of another arrest, Goldstein described his former employee as "a bit unstable and neurotic but under proper guidance, a good boy."

Unemployed and desperate, and probably nursing a drug habit, Malcolm soon drifted back to Boston, and to Ella. He may have reasoned that, given her own continuing illegal activities, she could hardly turn her back on him, and he tried to convince her that he would turn over a new leaf and return to the upright upwardly mobile life she still thought to be her own destiny. To demonstrate his sobriety, in late October he obtained a menial job at a Sears Roebuck warehouse. The wages were a paltry twenty dollars a week, and the work strenuous. Malcolm had never been physically strong; years of alcohol addiction and cocaine use could not have helped. Over a six-week period, he failed to get to work six times. By Thanksgiving, he had had enough, and quit. In desperation, he stole a fur coat from Ella's home, p.a.w.ning it for five dollars. The coat belonged to Ella's sister, Grace; Ella was so outraged that she summoned the police. Malcolm was duly arrested and taken to jail. The Roxbury court gave him a three-month suspended sentence, with probation to last one full year. This was Detroit Red's first offense to result in arrest and conviction. He was nineteen years old.

The Christmas season was only weeks away, and Goldstein consented to let Red work for him in New York City for a few weeks. In January 1945, with several hundred dollars in his pocket, Malcolm set off for Lansing. He had sent home small sums of money since 1941 and figured that his family owed him. Through Ella or Reginald, the Little siblings undoubtedly knew about their brothers downward slide, and his drug dependency. He antic.i.p.ated resistance, especially from Wilfred, Hilda, and Philbert, so he arrived wearing a conservative-looking suit. His days of crime, he claimed, were long gone. For several weeks, seemingly true to his word, he worked at East Lansing's Coral Gables bar, then as a busboy at the city's Mayfair Ballroom. But he used these jobs as opportunities for petty theft. Traveling into Detroit, he brazenly robbed an acquaintance, a black man named Douglas Haynes, at gunpoint. Haynes filed a complaint with the Detroit police, who contacted the Lansing police. On March 17, 1945, Malcolm was arrested and turned over to the Detroit Police Department, charged with grand larceny. Wilfred posted a bond of a thousand dollars, and for a short time Malcolm found menial jobs at a Lansing mattress maker and then a truck factory. When his trial was postponed, he decided that his best move was to get out of town. Sometime in August 1945, he fled the jurisdiction; a warrant was issued for his arrest.

The Autobiography Autobiography is completely silent about these events. Undoubtedly, Malcolm was profoundly ashamed about this phase of his past. He likely felt that the deepest violation he had committed was the humiliation he inflicted on his family through his career as a petty criminal. But he may have also dropped these incidents from his history as part of the attempt to shape his legend. His amateurish efforts at gangsterism in Boston and Lansing-the clumsy theft of his aunt's coat, the ridiculous armed robbery of an acquaintance-undermined the credibility of his supposed criminal exploits in New York, and even he must have realized that the Michigan arrest warrant, combined with his parole violation from Ma.s.sachusetts, would follow him across the country. If he was ever arrested again for even a minor crime, these other violations would be brought against him. is completely silent about these events. Undoubtedly, Malcolm was profoundly ashamed about this phase of his past. He likely felt that the deepest violation he had committed was the humiliation he inflicted on his family through his career as a petty criminal. But he may have also dropped these incidents from his history as part of the attempt to shape his legend. His amateurish efforts at gangsterism in Boston and Lansing-the clumsy theft of his aunt's coat, the ridiculous armed robbery of an acquaintance-undermined the credibility of his supposed criminal exploits in New York, and even he must have realized that the Michigan arrest warrant, combined with his parole violation from Ma.s.sachusetts, would follow him across the country. If he was ever arrested again for even a minor crime, these other violations would be brought against him.

He first returned to New York City and subsequently to Boston, desperately trying to survive through a variety of hustles. It was during this time that Malcolm encountered a man named William Paul Lennon, and the uncertain particulars of their intimate relationship would generate much controversy and speculation in the years following Malcolm's death.

Lennon was born on March 25, 1888, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, to Bernard and Nellie F. Lennon. His father was a successful merchant and newspaper publisher and active in local Democratic Party politics. The eldest son of eight children, Lennon enrolled in Brown University in 1906 as a "special student," described in the school's catalog as a category for "mature persons of good character who desire to pursue some special subject and who have had the requisite preliminary training." After attending Brown for several years, Lennon drifted, seeking to establish himself in some suitable profession. During World War I, he served as chief petty officer in the navy, stationed out of Newport, Rhode Island, and upon his discharge he lived briefly with his parents before getting hired as a hotel manager in Pawtucket. Within five years he had become manager of Manhattan's Dorset Hotel, just off Fifth Avenue in midtown. Apparently he embarked on a successful career in hotel management, but-contrary to Malcolm's later a.s.sertions that his patron was a multimillionaire-there is no record indicating that Lennon ever became truly wealthy. Sometime during the 1930s or early 1940s, Lennon had relocated to Boston, where he began to employ male secretaries in his home.

Malcolm's initial contact with Lennon may have come through cla.s.sified advertis.e.m.e.nts placed in New York newspapers. What is certain is that sometime in 1944 Malcolm had begun working for Lennon as a "butler and occasional house worker" at Lennon's Boston home, on an affluent stretch of Arlington Street overlooking the Public Garden. Soon something deeper than an employeremployee relationship developed. (After Malcolm's later arrest, in 1946, he would give the police Lennon's name and address as a previous employer, convinced that Lennon would use his financial resources and other contacts to help him during his time in prison.) The Autobiography Autobiography describes s.e.xual contacts with Lennon, except that Malcolm falsely attributed them to a character named Rudy: describes s.e.xual contacts with Lennon, except that Malcolm falsely attributed them to a character named Rudy: [Rudy] had a side deal going, a hustle that took me right back to the old steering days in Harlem. Once a week, Rudy went to the home of this old, rich Boston blueblood, pillar-of-society aristocrat. He paid Rudy to undress them both, then pick up the old man like a baby, lay him on his bed, then stand over him and sprinkle him all over with talc.u.m powder talc.u.m powder. Rudy said the old man would actually reach his climax from that.

Based on circ.u.mstantial but strong evidence, Malcolm was probably describing his own h.o.m.os.e.xual encounters with Paul Lennon. The revelation of his involvement with Lennon produced much speculation about Malcolm's s.e.xual orientation, but the experience appears to have been limited. There is no evidence from his prison record in Ma.s.sachusetts or from his personal life after 1952 that he was actively h.o.m.os.e.xual. More credible, perhaps, is Rodnell Collins's insight about his uncle: "Malcolm basically lived two lives." When he was around Ella, "he enthusiastically partic.i.p.ated in family picnics and family dinners. . . . He saved some of his money to send to his brothers and sisters in Lansing." But in his Detroit Red life, he partic.i.p.ated in prost.i.tution, marijuana sales, cocaine sessions, numbers running, the occasional robbery, and, apparently, paid h.o.m.os.e.xual encounters. Keeping the two lives separate from each other was never easy, due to his unstable material circ.u.mstances. But Malcolm had the intelligence and ingenuity to mask his most illegal and potentially upsetting activities from his family and friends.

Well-to-do white men were one thing, white women another. During the war, his old paramour Bea Caragulian had married a white man, Mehan Bazarian, but he was serving in the military and was largely away. Malcolm's s.e.xual relationship with Bea had continued after her marriage, although it eventually grew chaotic and frequently abusive. By early December 1945, he was back in Boston, with no place to go except Ella's. Once again, his disgusted half sister had no choice but to allow him to stay; after all, blood was blood. Malcolm quickly ran down Shorty Jarvis, who complained to him about his wife and their money problems. Within several days, Malcolm organized a gang, with the intention of robbing homes in Boston's affluent neighborhoods. His motley crew consisted of another African American, Francis E. "Sonny" Brown; Bea; her younger sister, Joyce Caragulian; a third Armenian woman, Kora Marderosian; and Shorty. Early in the evening of December 14, 1945, Malcolm and Brown robbed a Brookline home, absconding with $2,400 worth of fur coats, silverware, jewelry, and other items. The next night, they struck a second Brookline house, stealing several rugs and silverware valued at nearly $400, in addition to liquor, jewelry, and linen. For these break-ins, the gang followed a general pattern. Sonny would jimmy the home's rear door, then open the front door for Malcolm and Shorty. The premises was quickly looted, with a focus on items that could easily be sold on the black market. The women stayed in the automobile, acting as lookouts. On December 16 they drove to New York City to sell part of their merchandise. Some items that failed to find a buyer were dumped, but most of the loot was distributed among gang members, a mistake no veteran burglar would ever have made.

One of the gang's most lucrative hauls took place the day after their trip to New York. Entering a home in Newton, Ma.s.sachusetts, the young criminals managed to grab jewelry, a watch, a vacuum cleaner, bed linen, silver candlesticks, earrings, a gold pendant and chain, and additional merchandise, with a total value estimated by police at $6,275. Over a period of one month, they robbed about eight homes. When they were finally caught, Malcolm was primarily responsible for tipping their hand. He gave a watch to a relative as a Christmas gift; the relative sold it on to a Boston jeweler, who, suspecting it had been stolen, contacted the police. The authorities bided their time. In early January 1946, Malcolm took another stolen watch to a repair shop. When he returned for it, local police were on hand to arrest him. Malcolm was carrying a loaded .32 caliber pistol at the time. During his interrogation, detectives disingenuously promised not to prosecute him on the gun charge if he agreed to give up his accomplices. He readily complied, naming his whole crew. With the exception of Sonny Brown, who managed to elude authorities, everyone in the gang was promptly arrested.

Malcolm was charged with the illegal possession of a firearm in Roxbury court on January 15. The next day, at the Quincy court, charges of larceny and breaking and entering were added. The court set a bail of ten thousand dollars. Because the burglaries had taken place in two Ma.s.sachusetts counties, Norfolk and Middles.e.x, two trials were held. Shorty Jarvis's account provides a vivid description of his and Malcolm's ordeal: "We were urged by the district attorney and our white lawyers to plead guilty as charged; we were also told that if we did, things would go real easy and well in our favor (meaning the sentence)." Both men had been "d.a.m.n fools" not to have antic.i.p.ated a legal double cross. Bea was subpoenaed and turned the state's evidence against Malcolm, largely reading the script the prosecutors wrote for her. Jarvis claimed that the district attorney had even attempted unsuccessfully "to get the girls to testify that we had raped them; this was so he could ask the judge for a fifteen-to-twenty-year sentence or life in prison." To Malcolm and Shorty, as well as to Ella, it seemed that the prime motivation for their prosecution was racial. "As long as I live," Shorty reflected, "I will never forget how the judge told me I had had no business a.s.sociating with white women." Ella's son, Rodnell, observed: "In court [Ella] said, the men were described by one lawyer as 'schvartze b.a.s.t.a.r.ds' and by another as 'minor Al Capones.' The arresting officer meanwhile referred to [the women] as 'poor, unfortunate, friendless, scared lost girls.'"

Both Malcolm Little and Shorty Jarvis pled guilty and were sentenced in a Middles.e.x County court to four concurrent eight-to-ten-year sentences, to be served in prison. While this was read out, they were confined behind bars in a steel cage in the courtroom. Shorty snapped, shaking the bars and screaming at the presiding judge, "Why don't you kill me? Why don't you kill me? I would rather be dead than do ten years." In Norfolk County Superior Court eight weeks later, Malcolm received three concurrent six-to-eight-year sentences. The court could hardly have imposed more. When Malcolm remarked to a defense attorney that "we seem to be getting sentenced because of those girls," the lawyer replied angrily, "You had no business with white girls!" Bea pleaded to the courts that she and the other white women were innocent victims of Malcolm's vicious criminal enterprise. He had coerced them. "We lived in constant fear," she told the court with emotion. She ultimately served only seven months of a five-year sentence.

Bea's self-serving actions left a profound impression on Malcolm. "All women, by their nature, are fragile and weak," he observed. "They are attracted to the male in whom they see strength." His misogyny had been reinforced during his time as a steerer for Harlem prost.i.tutes. Reflecting on his experiences, Malcolm wrote, "I got my first schooling about the cesspool morals of the white man from the best possible source, from his own women." Bea's actions underlined what he perceived as women's deceptive, opportunistic tendencies. Malcolm rarely examined his own behavior-his broken relationship with Gloria Strother, his physical abuse of Bea Caragulian-let alone his betrayal of his partners.

CHAPTER 3.

Becoming "X"

January 1946August 1952

On March 8, 1946, a Ma.s.sachusetts state psychiatrist interviewed prisoner number 22843. "He got called every filthy name I could think of," Malcolm remembered. He described himself as being "physically miserable and as evil-tempered as a snake." The "Psychometric Report," written nearly two months later, however, described him as attentive and apparently cooperative. Malcolm blithely informed his interviewer that his parents had been missionaries and his mother a "white Scot" whose marriage to a black man had led to Malcolm's being taunted by racial abuse throughout his childhood. Other misinformation followed. The psychiatrist, apparently troubled by all he had heard, observed that the prisoner "has fatalistic views, is moody, cynical, and has a sardonic smile which seems to be affected because of his sensitiveness to color."

His defense lawyer had prevented his speaking on his own behalf during the trials, and Malcolm was convinced that his lengthy sentence was due solely to his involvement with Bea and the other white women. He also dreaded, being not yet twenty-one years old, the challenges of prison life, a dangerous world about which he knew only horror stories. During the weeks he was held in county jails prior to his transfer to the state penitentiary, Malcolm decided he had to exaggerate his criminal experiences, making himself appear tougher and more violent than he really was. He would also present a made-up history of his own family, making it almost impossible for the authorities to know his true background. He already felt outraged by how corrections officers recognized only a convict's number, rather than his name. In prison, "you never heard your name, only your number," he would recall years later. "On all of your clothing, every item was your number, stenciled. It grew stenciled on your brain."

Two months later, another caseworker filed a report on Malcolm. "Subject is a tall light-complexioned negro," it ran in part, "unmarried, a child of a broken home, who has grown up indifferently into a pattern of life he liked, colorful, cynical, a-moral, fatalistic." The report indicated that the prison authorities viewed him as the ringleader of the burglary ring. Perhaps Malcolm once again launched into a string of profanities, for the caseworker judged his prognosis as "poor. His present 'hard' att.i.tude will no doubt increase in bitterness. . . . Subject may prove an intermediate security risk as he will find it hard to adjust from the accelerated tempo of night spots to the slow pace of inst.i.tution life at Charlestown [prison]."

Both Malcolm and Shorty Jarvis had been a.s.signed to Charlestown State Prison, at that time the oldest penal facility in continuous use in the world. It had been constructed in 18045 on the west banks of the Charlestown peninsula along the Boston Harbor, and its physical conditions were wretched: its mice-infested cells were tiny-seven feet by eight-and devoid of plumbing and running water. Prisoners relieved themselves in buckets that were emptied only once in twenty-four hours. There was no common dining room, so prisoners were forced to eat in their cells. The atmosphere was hardly improved by the prison's grotesque history of executions, the most notorious being the 1927 electrocution of anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who had previously been unfairly convicted for a 1920 robbery and double homicide. The place was so beastly that in May 1952, shortly before Malcolm's release, state governor Paul A. Dever described it as "a Bastille that eclipses in infamy any current prison in the United States."

At first Malcolm had great difficulty accepting his sentence, and especially what he perceived as Bea's betrayal in the trial. His fits of outrage and alienation were plain. Shorty, still upset with Malcolm for turning him in, began calling him the "Green-Eyed Monster." During his first months, Malcolm routinely insulted guards and prisoners alike. He had never been particularly religious, but he now concentrated his profanities against G.o.d and religion in general. Other prisoners, listening to Malcolm's tirades, came up with a further nickname for him: "Satan." In the Middles.e.x jail during his trial, Malcolm had been forced to get clean, but once in Charlestown he soon resumed his old drug habit, first getting high on ground nutmeg. In small amounts-roughly four to eight teaspoons-nutmeg is a mild hallucinogen, creating euphoria and visual distortions; when taken in large amounts, as Malcolm may have done, it has similar effects to those of ecstasy. Nutmeg users can achieve highs lasting as long as seventy-two hours, but can also suffer mental breakdown. Some of the symptoms Malcolm described during his early months at Charlestown sound like the effects of nutmeg poisoning, especially the episodes of depression and paranoia. When Ella started sending small amounts of money, he used it to purchase drugs from corrupt guards who were happy to conduct business. Prisoners could obtain almost any drugs they wanted, from hash to heroin.

Malcolm had lived for years in a close web of family and stayed in relatively constant touch through mail and visits wherever he moved, but now, in his anger and shame about what had happened to him, he was reluctant to contact his siblings, especially Ella. During his first year in prison, he wrote only a few letters, including one or more to William Paul Lennon. The first one he received was from Philbert, to say that he had become a member of an evangelical church in Detroit. Philbert's a.s.surance that the entire congregation was praying for the soul of his younger brother enraged Malcolm. "I scrawled him a reply I'm ashamed to think of today," he later admitted. Things went no better when Ella visited. On one occasion, about fifty prisoners and visitors were crowded into the small visitation center, all of them surrounded by armed guards. Ella attempted to exchange pleasantries, but was so upset that it was almost impossible for her to talk. Malcolm became so defensive that he "wished she hadn't come at all."

His att.i.tude soon left him isolated, but he was not without visitors entirely. Malcolm's most regular, and perhaps most sympathetic, visitor was a teenager, Evelyn Lorene Williams. Evelyn's foster mother, Dorothy Young, was a close friend of Ella's. Indeed, the two women were such good friends that Ella's son, Rodnell, referred to Young as Aunt Dot. Malcolm had occasionally dated Evelyn during his years in Boston, and Ella had strongly encouraged the relationship. Malcolm had little s.e.xual interest in Evelyn-compared, say, with the chemistry he had with Bea. Evelyn, however, seems to have fallen deeply in love with Malcolm.

Another frequent visitor was Jackie Mason, a Boston woman who had been s.e.xually involved with Malcolm before his incarceration. Ella sharply disapproved of Mason, describing her as a "common street woman" unfit for her brother. Her att.i.tude, according to Rodnell Collins, was that she "was well aware of how much havoc [an] older, experienced predatory woman could wreak on a teenaged, adventurous, highly impressionable" boy.

When Ella did go to see him, she was not happy with what she found- that he was not reflecting in any serious way on why he had wound up in prison or what its consequences might be for him. She was upset about his continuing contact with Paul Lennon, and was scandalized by his resumption of drug use. After several disappointing visits, Ella decided not to see her brother again. When Malcolm learned about this, he appeared contrite. In a plaintive letter dated September 10, he thanked Ella for mailing photos of family members, and for small amounts of cash. But then he incensed her again by trying to get her to contact Paul Lennon on his behalf. "The person that you said called me is a very good friend of mine," Malcolm explained. "He's only worth some fourteen million dollars. If you read the society pages you'd know who he is. He knows where I am now because I've written and told him, but I didn't say what for." Without mentioning Lennon's name, he appealed to Ella to be cordial. "He may call and ask you. Whatever answer you give him will have to do with my entire future but I still depend on you." Apparently Malcolm was convinced that Lennon could use his wealth and political contacts to reduce his prison term. According to Collins, Lennon never contacted Ella. In her words, though, she was "outraged" that her half brother had given her phone number to Lennon and that he had asked her to act as a go-between. Lennon, she thought, was obviously "one of those decadent whites whom he had been hustling."

In the end Malcolm was forced to confront the challenges of prison life by himself. And it didn't help matters that his att.i.tude toward prison work detail was noncooperative. During his first seven months at Charlestown, he was a.s.signed to the prison auto shop; then, that October, to work as a laborer in the yard. The month following, he was moved again, this time to sew in the underwear shop. Here he immediately ran into problems, being charged with shirking his duties; for this he was given three days' detention. His work performance improved somewhat when he was rea.s.signed to the foundry, where he was considered "cooperative, poor in skill, and average to poor in effort." It was also here that he met a tall, light-complexioned former burglar named John Elton Bembry: the man who would change his life.

Bembry, who was about twenty years older than Malcolm, dazzled the young man with his mind. He was the first black man Malcolm would meet in prison (and possibly outside of prison as well) who seemed knowledgeable about virtually every subject and had the verbal skills to command nearly every conversation. Intellectually, Bembry had an astonishing range of interests, able to address the works of Th.o.r.eau at one moment, and then the inst.i.tutional history of Ma.s.sachusetts's Concord prison at another. Malcolm was especially attracted to Bembry's ability to "put the atheist philosophy in a framework."

Malcolm's brain came alive under Bembry's tutelage. Here, finally, was an older man with both intellectual curiosity and a sense of discipline to impart to his young follower. Both men were a.s.signed to the license plate shop, where after work inmates and even a few guards would cl.u.s.ter around to listen to Bembry's wide-ranging discourses on any number of topics. For weeks, Bembry carefully noted the wild behavior of his young workmate. Finally, taking Malcolm aside, he challenged him to employ his intellect to improve his situation. Bembry urged him to enroll in correspondence courses and to use the library, Malcolm recalled. Hilda had already offered similar advice, imploring her brother to "study English and penmanship." Malcolm consented: "So, feeling I had time on my hands, I did."

It is possible that the details Bembry ("Bimbi" in the Autobiography Autobiography) related to other convicts about his successful history of thefts found their way into Malcolm's tales about his own burglary exploits, but above all Malcolm envied Bembry's reputation as an intellectual. There was also a strong motive of self-interest: his own newfound enthusiasm for study and self-improvement might get him recommended for a transfer to the system's most lenient facility, Ma.s.sachusetts's Norfolk Prison Colony. The bait of increased freedom was enough to instill discipline within Malcolm, such that he finally chose to pursue a self-directed course of formal study. During 194647, he devoted himself to a rigorous program, fulfilling the requirements for university extension courses that included English and elementary Latin and German. He devoured books from Charlestown's small library, particularly those on linguistics and etymology. Following Bembry's advice, he began studying a dictionary, memorizing the definitions of both commonly used and obscure words. Education now had a clear, practical goal: it offered a way out, to a prison with better conditions, and maybe even a reduction in prison time. Ironically, it also had the side benefit of making him a more persuasive con man. Refining his oratorical skills, he found new success in hustles of various kinds, including betting on baseball.

Malcolm was duly transferred in January 1947-but to the Ma.s.sachusetts Reformatory at Concord, only a slight improvement over Charlestown. Concord maintained a so-called mark system of discipline, which set a confusing schedule of penalties and the loss of prisoners' freedoms for acts of misconduct. No inmate council existed to negotiate the conditions of work and supervision. The new regulations and the lack of prisoners' rights probably contributed to Malcolm's continued acts of noncompliance.

During his incarceration at Concord he received a total of thirty-four visits. Among them were five from Ella, three from Reginald, and nineteen from "friends" (according to the redacted files)-undoubtedly Jackie Mason and Evelyn Williams, and possibly William Paul Lennon.

His hard work and professions about wanting to become a better man seem to have convinced Ella that he was finally committed to transforming his life, and she launched a letter-writing campaign to officials urging that he be relocated to the Norfolk Prison Colony. She encouraged Malcolm to write directly to the administrator in charge of transfers there. On July 28, in just such a letter, Malcolm employed his enhanced language skills to good effect: "Since my confinement I've already received a diploma in Elementary English through the State Correspondence Courses. I'm very much dissatisfied, though. There are many things that I would like to learn that would be of use to me when I regain my freedom." Still, he undermined his efforts by continuing to cause trouble. Throughout 1947, he was a.s.signed to the prison's furniture shop, where he was evaluated as a "poor and uncooperative worker." In April, he had been suspected of possessing "contraband"-in this case, a knife. In September he would be charged with disruptive behavior, and on two more occasions penalized for poor work. But Malcolm was as adept as Ella in skirting penalties. After each infraction he improved his job performance sufficiently so as to avoid severe discipline.

In early 1948, a curious letter arrived from his brother Philbert, one that would have enormous consequences. Philbert explained that he and other family members had all converted to Islam. Malcolm was not surprised by the sudden enthusiasm, and did not take this particular turn very seriously. Philbert "was forever joining something," he recalled. Philbert now asked his brother to "pray to Allah for deliverance." Malcolm was not impressed. His reply, written in proper English, was completely dismissive.

Philbert's letter was in fact the opening salvo in a family campaign to convert Malcolm to a nascent movement called the Nation of Islam. As Wilfred later explained, "It was a program designed to help black people. And they had the best program going." They were determined to get Malcolm on board. After Philbert's letter had no effect, the family decided that an overture from Reginald might be more effective. Reginald wrote a "newsy" missive that contained no overt references to the Nation of Islam, but concluded with a cryptic promise: "Don't eat any more pork, and don't smoke any more cigarettes. I'll show you how to get out of prison." For days, Malcolm was puzzled. Was this some new way to hustle? He still had many doubts, but decided to follow the advice and stopped smoking. His new refusal to eat pork provoked surprise among inmates at the dining hall.

Meanwhile, Ella's appeals and letter writing finally won out: in late March 1948, Malcolm was transferred to the Norfolk Prison Colony. Established in 1927 as a model of correctional reform, the facility was located twenty-three miles from Boston, near Walpole, on a thirty-five-acre, ovalshaped property that looked more like a college campus than a traditional prison. However, it did possess strong escape deterrents, most prominently a five-thousand-foot-long, nineteen-foot-high wall surrounding the entire grounds, topped by three inches of electrified barbed wire. The philosophy behind the prison was rehabilitation and reentry into society. Prisoners lived in compounds of twenty-four houses, with individual and group rooms, all with windows and doors.

Compared to Charlestown, Malcolm had a life as eased of restrictions as one might find in a state penitentiary. First and foremost, he was treated like a human being. He was not locked into a room at night. He had two lockers, one in his room for personal clothes and toiletries, the other in his housing unit's bas.e.m.e.nt, for his work uniform. Two inmates in each house were responsible for serving meals, cleaning the dining and common rooms, and minor repairs. There were meetings every Sat.u.r.day night, at which inmates' concerns were addressed. Prisoners could elect their own representatives to house committees, and an inmate chairman was responsible for running them. Norfolk encouraged the prisoners to partic.i.p.ate in all sorts of educational activities, such as the debating club and the prison newspaper, the Colony Colony. Entertainment, which consisted of both outside groups and inmate-initiated shows, was organized on Sunday evenings. Religious services were held weekly for Roman Catholics, Protestants, Christian Scientists, and Theosophists, while monthly group meetings and religious holiday observances were permitted for "Hebrews."

This new life suited the newly disciplined Malcolm well, and he continued his plan to educate himself broadly. He eagerly partic.i.p.ated in the facility's activities, and extended his reading agenda to include works on Buddhism. Unfortunately, his new commitment to self-improvement did not extend to improved work habits. In the prison laundry and on kitchen duty, his work performance was once again rated as substandard, his supervisors describing him as "lazy, detested work in any form, and accepted and performed given work seemingly in silent disgust." He was careful, however, to work just enough to avoid any major infraction, which would have jeopardized his place at Norfolk. He also stopped cursing the guards and fellow prisoners.

Reginald was the first relative to visit Malcolm in the new place. First he filled him in on family gossip and told him about a recent visit to Harlem he'd made, but eventually he turned the conversation to a new subject: Islam, or the "no pork and cigarettes riddle," as described in the Autobiography Autobiography.

"If a man knew every imaginable thing that there is to know, who would he be?" Reginald asked.

"Some kind of a G.o.d," replied Malcolm.

Reginald explained that such a man did exist-"his real name is Allah"-and had made himself known years before to an African American named Elijah-"a black man, just like us." Allah had identified all whites, without exception, as devils. At first, Malcolm found this extremely difficult to accept. Not even Garveyism had prepared him for such an extreme antiwhite message. But afterward, when he had carefully cataloged each significant relationship he had ever developed with a white person, he concluded that every white he had ever known had held a deep animus toward blacks.

The seed was sown. Not long after this conversation, Hilda paid a visit and filled in the backdrop to the family's conversion. It had begun quietly and casually. Sometime in 1947, while waiting at a bus stop, Wilfred had struck up a conversation with a young, well-dressed black man, who began discussing religion and black nationalism and invited him to visit the Nation of Islam's Temple No. 1 in Detroit. When Wilfred went, he found a modest storefront church. It was a rental property with a hall that could probably accommodate about two hundred people, though there seemed to be fewer than a hundred actual members. What Wilfred heard there sounded comfortingly familiar: a message of black separatism, selfreliance, and a black deity that reminded him instantly of Earl Little's Garveyite sermons.

It took only a few months for Hilda, Philbert, Wesley, and Reginald to also become members. Wilfred would later explain, "We already had been indoctrinated with Marcus Garvey's philosophy, so that was just a good place for us. They didn't have to convince us we were black and should be proud or anything like that." There were personal connections to the NOIs first family, Clara and Elijah Poole, that made the family's attraction to the Nation of Islam natural. When Earl had been living in Georgia, he had occasionally preached in the town of Perry, the home of Clara Poole's parents. Ella had grown to adulthood in Georgia before moving to the North, and she had met both Clara and Elijah Poole years before they were linked to the Nation.

During her visit, Hilda also explained to Malcolm the central tenet of Nation of Islam theology, Yacub's History, which told how an evil black scientist named Yacub had genetically engineered the creation of the entire white race. Allah, in the person of an Asiatic black man, had come into the world to reveal this extraordinary story, and to explain the legacies of the white race's monstrous crimes against blacks. Only through complete racial separation, Hilda explained, could blacks survive. She urged Malcolm to write directly to the Nation of Islam's supreme leader, Elijah Muhammad-as Elijah Poole had renamed himself-who was based in Chicago. He would satisfy any doubts Malcolm might have. Malcolm was amazed by his sisters obvious devotion, and afterward wrote, "I don't know if I was able to open my mouth and say goodbye."

Over the next few weeks, he grappled with what he had been told. The black nationalist message of racial pride, a rejection of integration, and self-sufficiency rekindled strong connections with the driving faith of his parents. The NOIs condemnation of all-white inst.i.tutions, especially Christianity, also fitted with his experiences. Yet the bitter young nonbeliever had never shown the least interest in organized religion or the spiritual life. For Malcolm, the lure was more secular: Nation of Islam held out the possibility of finding self-respect and even dignity as a black man. This was a faith that said blacks had nothing for which to be ashamed or apologetic.

But above any spiritual or political goals was one important personal one: conversion was a way to keep the Little family together. As all the Little children had reached adulthood, the possibility of the family's disintegration had again become a problem. By 1948, both Wilfred and Philbert had been married for several years. In 1949, Yvonne Little married Robert Jones, and the couple relocated to Grand Rapids. As the family grew and spread across new communities, the Nation of Islam would provide a common ground. Malcolm was the last to join, but his commitment was complete, and he embraced this opportunity to enact a wholesale change in his future life. Malcolm-Detroit Red, Satan, hustler, onetime pimp, drug addict and drug dealer, h.o.m.os.e.xual lover, ladies' man, numbers racketeer, burglar Jack Carlton, and convicted thief-had convinced himself that a total revolution in his ident.i.ty and beliefs was called for. After redrafting a one-page letter to Elijah Muhammad "at least twenty-five times," he mailed it off. It wasn't long before he received Muhammad's reply, together with a five-dollar bill. He had taken his first decisive step toward Allah.

Although Malcolm did not realize it, by becoming members of the Nation of Islam, his brothers and sisters had entered into the richly heterodox community of global Islam. Extremely sectarian by the standards of orthodox Islam, the Nation of Islam nevertheless became the starting point for a spiritual journey that would consume Malcolm's life.

Islam was established in what is today Saudi Arabia in the early seventh century CE by a man known as the Prophet Muhammad. Over the course of more than two decades, from roughly 610 CE to 632 CE, hundreds of beautiful verses were revealed to Muhammad and pa.s.sed on by poetic recitations, just like Homers stories or the love songs of the troubadours. These verses became known as the Qur'an Qur'an, and Islam's enduring power as a religion rests, in part, on its elegance and simplicity. At its core is the metaphor of the five pillars. The first pillar is the profession of faith, or shahada shahada : "There is no G.o.d but G.o.d, and Muhammad is G.o.d's Messenger." The other four are acts a devout Muslim must perform: daily prayers ( : "There is no G.o.d but G.o.d, and Muhammad is G.o.d's Messenger." The other four are acts a devout Muslim must perform: daily prayers (salat); t.i.thing, or alms to those less fortunate (zakat); fasting during the month of Ramadan; and making a pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj). Many Muslims characterize jihad jihad, meaning "striving" or "struggle," as a sixth pillar, separating it into two types: the "greater jihad" that refers to a believer's internal struggle to adhere to Islam's creed, and the "lesser jihad," the struggle against those who oppose Muhammad's message.

In the Prophet's day, Islam was an embracing, not excluding, religion that drew on the practices of other contemporaries. Muhammad had taught that both Jews and Christians were ahl al-Kitab ahl al-Kitab (People of the Book), and that the Torah, the Gospels, and the Holy Quran were all a single divine scripture. Early Islamic rituals drew directly upon Jewish traditions. At first, Muslims prayed in the direction of Jerusalem, not Mecca. The Prophet's mandatory fast was initiated each year on the tenth day ( (People of the Book), and that the Torah, the Gospels, and the Holy Quran were all a single divine scripture. Early Islamic rituals drew directly upon Jewish traditions. At first, Muslims prayed in the direction of Jerusalem, not Mecca. The Prophet's mandatory fast was initiated each year on the tenth day (Ashura) of the first month of the Jewish calendar, the day more commonly known as Yom Kippur. Muhammad also adopted many Jewish dietary laws and purity requirements, and encouraged his followers to marry Jews, as he himself did. Second only to the Quran, and also central to Islam, is the Sunna Sunna, the collective traditions a.s.sociated with Muhammad, which include thousands of stories, or hadith hadith, all roughly based on the actions or words of the Prophet or those of his closest disciples.

What was truly revolutionary about the Islamic concept was its transethnic, nonracial character. Islam is primarily defined by a series of actions and obligations that all believers follow. In theory, differences in native language, race, ethnicity, geography, and social cla.s.s become irrelevant. Indeed, from the beginning, individuals of African descent have become Muslims (literally, "those who submit" to G.o.d). Muhammad had encouraged the emanc.i.p.ation of African slaves held by Arabs; his first muezzin muezzin (the individual who calls believers to prayer) was an Ethiopian former slave named Bilal. (the individual who calls believers to prayer) was an Ethiopian former slave named Bilal.

Over time, the religious pluralism of the ummah ummah-the transnational Islamic community-gave way to an exclusive monotheism. After the Prophet's death, Jews and Christians were perceived to be excluded from the community; centuries later, Islamic legal scholars would divide the entire world into two, the dar al-Islam dar al-Islam (House of Islam) and the (House of Islam) and the dar al-Harb dar al-Harb (House of War), or those who oppose the believers. (House of War), or those who oppose the believers.

By the eighth century, Islam dominated northern Africa, soon penetrating the Sudan and, in West Africa, the sub-Saharan regions. The Arab elite within this growing Muslim world had a long tradition of slavery, and over the centuries millions of black Africans were subjugated and transported to what today is the Middle East, northern Africa, and the Iberian peninsula. There were, however, many prominent examples of black converts to Islam who came into power in the Muslim world-such as Yaqub al-Mansur, the twelfth-century black ruler of Morocco and parts of what are today Portugal and Spain. Several great Islamic empires dominated West Africa from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries. As European states colonized the Americas and the Caribbean in the sixteenth century, they ultimately transported about fifteen million chattel slaves into their respective colonies. A significant minority were Muslims: of the approximately 650,000 involuntarily taken to what would become the United States, Muslims made up about 7 or 8 percent.

During the nineteenth century, a series of black intellectuals from the Caribbean and the United States were attracted to Islam. This was an era of evangelical Christianity, and social Darwinism, which promoted religious and scientific justifications for white supremacy. People of African descent increasingly became attracted to Islam as an alternative to Christianity. By far the most influential black intellectual of the period was Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912), who came to the United States from the Danish West Indies as a candidate for the Presbyterian ministry. After the pa.s.sage of the Fugitive Slave Act, which permitted blacks to be arrested and deported to the slave South, Blyden left for Liberia in 1851. During the next sixty years he had an extraordinary career as a scholar, traveler, and diplomat.

Blyden's contributions to Malcolm Little's spiritual and political journey were threefold. First, long before W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Blyden argued that the black race possessed certain spiritual and cultural strengths, a collective personality, uniting black humanity throughout the world. During the 1960s, this insight would form the basis for what would be called "black cultural nationalism"-a deep pride in African antiquity, history, and culture, together with the celebration of rituals and aesthetics drawing upon Africa and the black diaspora. (1903), Blyden argued that the black race possessed certain spiritual and cultural strengths, a collective personality, uniting black humanity throughout the world. During the 1960s, this insight would form the basis for what would be called "black cultural nationalism"-a deep pride in African antiquity, history, and culture, together with the celebration of rituals and aesthetics drawing upon Africa and the black diaspora.

Second, long before Garvey, Blyden had envisioned a program of "Pan-Africanism"-the political and social unity of black people worldwide-leading to a strategy of group migration back to Africa. Blyden was convinced that conditions for American blacks would eventually become so oppressive that millions would return to the land of their ancestors. His writings on Pan-Africanism paved the way for the back-to-Africa movement among Southern blacks in the 1890s, and provided the intellectual arguments for Garveyites a generation later.

His most original contribution, however, was to link Pan-Africanism with West African Islam. In his cla.s.sic 1888 treatise, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race, he argued that Christianity, despite its Middle Eastern origins, had evolved into a distinctly European religion that was discriminatory and oppressive. He insisted that among the world's great religions, only Islam permitted Africans to retain their traditions with integrity.

By the early twentieth century, the first significant religious organization in the United States that identified itself as Islamic was the Moorish Science Temple of America. The group's founder, a North Carolinaborn African American named Timothy Drew, established the cult in Newark, New Jersey, in 1913, as the Canaanite Temple. Proclaiming himself n.o.ble Drew Ali, he told followers that he was the second prophet of Islam, Mahdi, or redeemer. In orthodox Islam, Muhammad is widely described as the Seal of the Prophets, the last of a line of Quranic prophets beginning with Adam. Any such claim to the status of prophet is inherently blasphemous, but Ali's deviation from Islam's five pillars didn't stop there. The sacred text of his cult was the Holy Koran Holy Koran, also known as the Circle Seven Koran Circle Seven Koran, a sixty-four-page synthesis that drew on four sources: the Quran, the Bible, the Aquarian Gospels of Jesus Christ Aquarian Gospels of Jesus Christ (an occult version of the New Testament), and (an occult version of the New Testament), and Unto Thee I Grant Unto Thee I Grant (a publication of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood, a Masonic order influenced by the Egyptian mystery schools). (a publication of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood, a Masonic order influenced by the Egyptian mystery schools).

n.o.ble Drew Ali's major appeal to black Americans paralleled Blyden's arguments. He claimed that Islam was the spiritual home for all Asiatics, a term that embraced Arabs, Egyptians, Chinese, j.a.panese, black Americans, as well as several other ethnicities and nationalities. African Americans were not Negroes at all, Ali insisted, but "an olive-skinned Asiatic people who were the descendants of Moroccans." Members consequently acquired "Islamic" names, as well as new ident.i.ties as "Asiatic" blacks, or Moroccans. The Moorish Science Temple preached that blacks' authentic religion was Islam; their national ident.i.ty was not American, but Moorish; and their genealogy extended back to Christ. Ali's strange quasi-Masonic creed attracted hundreds of followers in Newark, chiefly drawn from illiterate sharecroppers and landless workers who had trekked from the rural South during the initial wave of the Great Migration. By the late 1920s, the Moorish Science Temple claimed thirty thousand members, with temples in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, Petersburg (Virginia), Cleveland, Youngstown (Ohio), Lansing, Chicago, and Milwaukee, among others.

Ali's awareness of orthodox Islam's core tenets was sketchy at best. He demanded that followers adhere to many of Islam's dietary laws; the eating of pork was forbidden. There was some overlap between the Temple people and Garveyism, but the two movements differed in fundamental ways. The Moorish Science Temple was essentially a cult, while the Universal Negro Improvement a.s.sociation was a popular movement with many different local leaders. However, as the UNIA fragmented, some of its former members joined the Temple, or began to influence it. In March 1929, Ali was arrested on suspicion of murdering an opposition leader, Sheikh Claude Greene. Released on bail, he died mysteriously several months later. His movement almost immediately split into feuding factions. The two major groups were led, respectively, by Ali's former chauffeur, John Givens-El, who announced he was the reincarnation of Ali, and by Kirkman Bey, "Grand Sheikh" and president of the Moorish Science Temple Corporation. By the 1940s, Kirkman's followers came under intense scrutiny by the FBI, and a significant number of their temples were investigated for sedition. The Moorish Science Temple largely disintegrated after World War II, with fewer than ten thousand members remaining nationwide, but it had prepared the path for more orthodox expressions of Islam within black America.

From a theological standpoint, the most successful sect in America was the Ahmadiyya movement, which had been founded by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (c. 1835-1908) in the Punjab. At first, it adhered to the core tenets of Islam, but in 1891 Ahmad declared himself Islam's Mahdi, as well as an avatar of Krishna to the Hindus and Messiah to the Christians. Several years later, he further a.s.serted that Christ did not die on the cross, but survived and made his way to India, where he did finally die and physically ascended into heaven. Such claims outraged Muslims, who declared the sect blasphemous and heretical. Following Ahmad's own death in 1908, the Ahmadiyya cause fractured into the Qadianis, the more conservative faction connected with landowners and the merchant cla.s.ses, who supported strict adherence to Ghulam Ahmad's version of Islam, and a more liberal group, the Lahoris, who supported rapprochement with orthodox Islam.

Between 1921 and 1925, Ahmadiyya made its first great inroads in America when the first Qadiani Ahmadi missionary, Mufti Muhammad Sadiq, persuaded more than one thousand Americans to convert, both white and black. Many African-American Ahmadi Muslims joined the faith in Chicago and Detroit, cities where the UNIA was also strong. In July 1921, Sadiq initiated the first Muslim publication in the United States, the Moslem Sunrise Moslem Sunrise, through which he reached out to Garveyites, encouraging them to link Islam with their advocacy of black nationalism and Pan-Africanism. In a January 1923 issue, he declared: My Dear American Negro . . . the Christian profiteers brought you out of your native lands of Africa and in Christianizing you made you forsake the religion and language of your forefathers-which were Islam and Arabic. You have experienced Christianity for so many years and it has proved to be no good. It is a failure. Christianity cannot bring real brotherhood to the nations. Now leave it alone. And join Islam, the real faith of Universal Brotherhood, which at once does away with all distinctions of race, color and creed.

For all his proselytizing, however, Sadiq was not a natural leader. By the late 1920s, the movement languished; but it did not die away completely. Under the guidance of a new leader, Sufi Bengalee, the Ahmadi movement surged again. In 1929-30 Bengalee delivered over seventy public lectures throughout the United States, reaching thousands. Many of these events were designed to attract black and interracial groups. For example, in November 1931 the Ahmadi-sponsored program "How Can We Overcome Color and Race Prejudice?" attracted more than two thousand attendees at one Chicago venue. By 1940, through its extensive missionary work, the Ahmadis claimed between five and ten thousand American converts, half of them African Americans. The Ahmadis' primary missionary centers were based in Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, and Kansas City (Missouri). The movement was largely responsible for introducing the Quran and Islamic literature to a large African-American audience. Because many of the proselytizers Sadiq selected were African Americans, some Garveyites were attracted to the movement, although the multiracial character of the Ahmadiyya made it difficult for most black Garveyites to convert. By the Great Depression their numbers were still significantly smaller than those of the Moorish Science Temple.

It was within this rapidly changing social context that an olive-skinned peddler calling himself Wallace D. Fard made his appearance in Detroit's black ghetto. He regaled his poor audiences with exotic tales of the Orient, which he mixed with the militant, antiwhite views of the staunch Garveyite. Little is known of his origins. Years later, when he commanded a large number of followers, a story circulated that he had been born in Mecca, the son of wealthy parents of the tribe of the Koreish, which connected in ancestry to Muhammad. Others believed that Fard had been a Moorish Science Temple local leader on the West Coast.

Fard (p.r.o.nounced FA-rod FA-rod) preached in the emotional style of a Pentecostal minister, exhorting audiences to avoid alcohol and tobacco, and praising the virtues of marital fidelity and family life. Blacks should work hard, save their meager resources, and if possible own their homes and businesses. Within months, after he had attracted a sympathetic following, his message took an apocalyptic turn when he "revealed" that he was actually a prophet, sent by G.o.d to preach a message of salvation. African Americans were not Negroes at all, he announced, "but members of the lost tribe of Shabazz, stolen by traders from the Holy City of Mecca 379 years ago. . . . The original people must regain their religion, which is Islam, their language, which is Arabic, and their culture, which is astronomy and higher mathematics, especially calculus."

Fard employed elementary physics to challenge his audience's unquestioned belief in the Bible. As one follower later explained: The very first time I went to a meeting I heard him say: "The Bible tells you that the Sun rises and sets. That is not so. The Sun stands still. All your lives you have been thinking that the Earth never moved. Stand and look toward the Sun and know that it is the Earth that you are standing on which is moving." Up to that day I always went to the Baptist church. After I heard that sermon from the prophet, I was turned around completely.

Fard did not claim to be divine: he presented himself as a prophet, like Muhammad, and added Muhammad to his name. By 1931, news of his controversial addresses attracted hundreds of blacks, many desperately seeking a message of hope as the country sank into depression. Fard wrote two basic texts: "The Secret Ritual of the Nation of Islam," a pamphlet which was generally presented orally and which adherents were to memorize, and the manual "Teaching for the Lost-Found Nation of Islam in a Mathematical Way." Formal membership in the "Lost-Found Nation" required converts "to return to the holy original Nation." Members were required to surrender their surnames, which Fard ridiculed as being identified with slavery. In turn, he promised to bestow upon each new member "an Original name," printed on a national identification card that showed its bearer to be a righteous Muslim. Members were given sets of questions and answers to be memorized perfectly: Q: "Why does [Fard] Muhammad and any Moslem murder the devil? What is the duty of each Moslem in regard to four devils? What reward does a Moslem receive by presenting the four devils at one time?"A: "Because he is one percent wicked and will not keep and obey the laws of Islam. His ways and actions are like a snake of the grafted type. So Mohammed learned that he could not reform the devils, so they had to be murdered. All Moslem will murder the devil because they know he is a snake and also if he be allowed to live, he would sting someone else. Each Moslem is required to bring four devils, and by bringing and presenting four at one time, his reward is a b.u.t.ton to wear on the lapel of his coat, also a free transportation to the Holy City of Mecca."

The most controversial dimension of Fard's preaching concerned Euro-Americans. Since black Americans were both Asiatics and Earth's Original People, what were whites? The reason that both Marcus Garvey and n.o.ble Drew Ali had failed, Fard taught, was that neither had fully grasped the true nature of whites: as Malcolm Little was to learn, they were "devils." To explain this, Fard presented his parable, Yacub's History, centered on the genetic plot of an evil "Big Head" scientist named Yacub, who lived thousands of years ago. A member of the exalted tribe of Shabazz, Yacub nevertheless used his scientific skills to produce genetic mutations that culminated in the creation of the white race. Although the naturally crafty and violent whites were banished to the caves of Caucasus, they ultimately achieved control over the entire earth. The Original People, Fard taught, subsequently "went to sleep" mentally and spiritually. The task of the Nation of Islam was to bring into consciousness the "lost-found" Asiatic black man from his centuries-long slumber.

The demonizing of the white race, the glorification of blacks, and the bombastic blend of orthodox Islam, Moorish science, and numerology were a seductive message to unemployed and disillusioned African Americans casting about for a new rallying cause after the disintegration of Garveyism and the inadequacies of the Moorish Science Temple. One evening in August 1931, Fard gave a lecture to an audience of hundreds at the former UNIA hall on West Lake Street in Detroit. One young man in particular, a thirty-three-year-old migrant from Georgia named Elijah Poole, found the address mesmerizing. Recalling it later, he approached Fard and said softly, "I know who you are, you're G.o.d himself."

"That's right," Fard quietly replied, "but don't tell it now. It is not yet time for me to be known."

Born in Sandersville, Georgia, in 1897, Poole had been a skilled laborer for years, working in his home state as a foreman at a brick-making company. Thin, wirily built, and of below average height, at the age of twenty-two he moved to Detroit along with his wife, Clara, where he quickly became an active member of the UNIA. After Garvey's imprisonment and exile in 1927, Poole had been searching for a new movement dedicated to black racial pride. In Fard, he felt the presence of a messianic leader who could realize the shattered dreams of Garveyites.

The large number of converts to the Lost-Found Nation of Islam required Fard to inst.i.tute rudimentary administrative units, a level of lieutenants and captains, and a small number of a.s.sistant ministers. He set about promoting his most dedicated followers. In 1932, the sect established a small parochial school in Detroit, followed by another in Chicago two years later. For the male members, he