Trinity Essay, Research Paper
“Black Gods of the Inner City”
by Prince-A-Cuba
Fall 1992 / Gnosis Magazine
pp. 56-63.
Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam is a figure as current as
today’s headlines, but the movement of which he is a nominal spokesman has a
continuous history of over sixty years in this country. The Nation of Islam
(NOI), as it is officially known, came to the attention of the general public
in the 1960s as the “Black Muslims.” (1) It is well-known for its doctrine
that the White Man is a devil. but what is probably less well known is another
part of its teaching – that the Black man is god.
Outsiders have done little in-depth research to trace the NOI’s doctrinal
predecessors. The NOI itself has denied its connections with previous
movements, specifically the Moorish Science Temple of Noble Drew Ali. Ali,
who was born as Timothy Drew in North Carolina in 1886, taught, among other
things, that Blacks are descended from the ancient Canaanites. Legend has it
that he was the reincarnation of Muhammad, the Prophet of orthodox Islam.
Eventually relocating to Chicago, Ali built an organization that numbered
perhaps 30,000 adherents at its peak. (2)
On March 15, 1929, Ali was arrested after factional violence resulted in the
death of a rival, Sheik Claude Greene. Arrested and held in the county jail,
Ali was eventually released on bail, but died July 20, 1929, under mysterious
circumstances. (3)
Master Fard Muhammad
The story of the NOI itself starts with a man variously known as Wali Farrad,
W.D. Fard, Wallace Fard Muhammad, and Farrad Muhammad, but who is best known
as Msater Fard Muhammad. (4) According to his sucessor, Elijah Muhammad,
He came alone. He began teaching us the knowledge of ourselves, of
God and the devil, of the measurements of the earth, of other planets,
and the civilizations of some of the planets other than the earth.
He measured and weighed the earth and the water; [he gave] the
history of the moon; the history of the two nations that dominated the
earth. He gave the exact birth of the white race; the name of their
God who made them and how; and the end of their time, the judgement,
how it will begin and end. (5)
According to the same source, Fard had said, “My name is Mahdi; I am God.”
And according to another source, Fard, when asked who he was by the Detroit
police, responded: “I am the Supreme Ruler of the Universe.” (6)
Master Fard Muhammad is officially noted by the NOI as having arrived in
Detroit on July 4, 1930, and departed on June 30, 1934. (There is an older
tradition of an earlier arrival twenty years previous as well as attendance
at the University of Southern California.) (7) In the interim, Fard
established temples in several cities and created a hierarchical organization
composed of a men’s military training unit called the Fruit of Islam (FOI), a
ministers’ corps, and a women’s auxiliary called the Muslim Girls Training and
General Civilization Class (MGT-GCC). (8) This infrastructure was built upon
Fard’s ideological foundation known as the “Secret Ritual,” which, arranged in
a question-and-answer format, became better known as the “Lost-Found Muslim
Lessons” or simply as “the lessons.”
Within these lessons were the basic elements of an ancient mystery school. It
involved secrecy from outsiders; an esoteric ritual containing keys for
recognition between fellow members; a cohesive world view; and a tradition that
could be explained only to initiates. Central to these teachings were the
knowledge of self and the Black man’s godhood. (9) According to these
teachings, the Black man was by nature divine, and in fact was the original
man, ancestor of the human race (antedating Louis and Mary Leakey’s discoveries
of early human remains in Africa by nearly thirty years.)
White people, on the other hand, were produced out of Black people by a
scientist named Yacub approximately six thousand years ago. (10) Discovering
a recessive gene in the Black man, Yacub used a system of eugenics on a
group of sixty thousand people on an island and, after six hundred years, was
able to create a biological mutation: the White man. Of course Yacub did not
live to see his creation, but he left behind an infrastructure to propogate
his system, as well as the ideological basis for White supremacy. Bleached
of the essence of humanity, Whites were “without soul.” Nonetheless the race
was destined to rule for an allotted period extending to 1914 A.D, though, as
Fard’s messenger Elijah Muhammad put it, “a few years of grace have been given
to complete the resurrection of the Black man, and especially the so-called
Negroes whom Allah has chosen for this change (of a new nation and world).
They (so-called Negroes) have been made so completely mentally dead … that
extra time is allowed.” (11) It was also taught that the supreme god amongst
this mighty nation of Black gods commanded the name of Allah. (12) This title
was claimed by Master Fard Muhammad himself.
Fard’s deification of man can hardly be considered an aberration in light of
historical precedents. The ancient pharaohs of Egypt, the Aztec emperors, and
the Peruvian Incas who traced their ancestry to the Sun God are well-known
examples. More recently, there are claims of divinity for emperors Hirohito
and Haile Selassie, the Dalai Lama, and Kushok Bakula. (13) And even these
should hardly turn any heads in the light of the tradition of Jesus of Nazareth
as God incarnate. The Hindu avatar tradition would also be right at home in
such company.
The teaching of the divinity of the Black man specifically (a doctrine known as
“incarnation”) is said to go back to ancient Egyptian mystery schools; in fact
Khem (and its variants Cham, Ham), an ancient name of Egypt, means “land of the
Blacks.” Nor did the doctrine of incarnation start with Master Fard Muhammad
and the NOI; according to Fard’s messenger and succesor, Elijah Muhammad, the
knowledge of man as god had been long known but “was kept a secret from the
public.” (14)
“The Lost-Found People of Islam”
Prior to Fard’s appearance in 1930, Noble Drew Ali’s Moorish Science Temples
of America were in decline. After the loss of its founder in 1929, the movement
had fallen into three separate schisms. Sheik John Givens El claimed that
Noble Drew Ali had become reincarnated into him, Givens El, on August 7, 1929.
in Chicago. This was publicly announced in Chicago’s Pythian Hall on August
19 of that year. (15)
But, according to scholar Ravanna Bey, W.D. Fard, known at the time as Abdul
Wali Farrad Muhammad, and two other Moorish Scientists, Mealy El and Charles
Kirkman Bey, contested the authority of Givens El. The latter two went on to
establish their own independent Moorish Science Temples, while Fard converted
a Detroit Moorish Science Temple and renamed it the Temple of the Lost-Found
People of Islam (a story that has been hotly contested by NOI leadership). (16)
A wartime memo claimed W.D. Fard was one Sheik Davis El from Kansas. (17)
According to yet another source, Fard had declared himself the reincarnation
of Noble Drew Ali. (18) With so many stories in circulation, confusion has
been the norm.
On November 21, 1932, Robert Karriem, a member of Fard’s Detroit temple, was
arrested for the murder of J.J. Smith, another temple member. The police
arrested thirty seven members in what they characterized as a case of “human
sacrifice” with religious overtones. They labeled the incident as the “Voodoo
Murder,” and the media followed suit. (19) The organization was referred to as
the “Voodoo Cult,” and Fard as “Chief of the Voodoos” by the detractors.
Karriem, also known as Robert Harris, was found insane and ordered to be
confined to the State Insane Asylum at Ionia, Michigan, on December 6, 1932.
Meanwhile Detroit was being turned upside down in pursuit of Fard, who was
proving to be elusive. After seven months, the police finally arrested him at
Detroit’s Hotel Fraymore on May 25, 1933. Held overnight for “investigation,”
he was photographed and fingerprinted. On the following day he was ordered out
of the city. Traveling to Chicago, he was again arrested. According to Elijah
Muhammad, Fard “came to Chicago in the same year [1933] and was arrested almost
immediately on his arrival and placed behind prison bars.” (20) According to
FBI sources, Fard was thought to have been arrested in Chicago on September 26,
1933, without disposition, photo, or fingerprints taken, for “disorderly
conduct,” a police euphemism for the harassment of undesirables. This is the
last official record of Fard. Unsubstantiated rumors lay his disappearance at
the door of the Chicago police department; but according to NOI tradition, Fard
continued to visit Detroit surreptitiously into 1934.
Fard The Man
Who was Fard? Official NOI teachings state that he was born in Mecca, Arabia,
February 26, 1877. The offspring of a Black father and a White mother, he was
“able to go among both black and white without being discovered or recognized.”
(21) His mission was to teach freedom, justice, and equality to the members of
the “lost tribe of Shabazz in the wilderness of North America.” He had
recieved the finest education in preparation for his mission; “he could speak
16 languages and write 10 of them. He could recite the histories of the world
as far back as 150,000 years and knew the beginning and end of all things.”(22)
However, different sources contribute their conflicting versions of the man.
Fard was also described as a “Palestinian Arab who had participated in various
racial agitations in India, South Africa, and London before moving on to
Detroit.” He was also thought to be the son of an African Jamaican mother and
a Syrian Muslim father. (23) Another report claimed that he was born of a
Maori mother and a British sailor father in New Zealand. (24) Still another
states that he was a Turkish-born agent for Hitler. (25) A recent account
somewhat incoherently describes Fard as a “Jewish Nazi Communist,” and says he
was an agent of the CIA in 1930 (seventeen years before that agency came into
existence). (26) One more recent writer has constructed the tenuous
hypothesis that Fard came to Sufi mysticism by way of Theosophy. (27) There is
even an account (complete with transcript) of a supposed ecncounter between
Fard and Albert Einstien at a Detroit radio station in 1932.
While the oral histories of Moorish Science adherents claim Fard as one of
their own gone astrary, NOI initiates say that Fard, arriving in the
“wilderness of North America” as early as 1910, taught Noble Drew Ali, Father
Divine, Daddy Grace and Sufi Abdul-Hamid (28) the concept of Black godhood,
though all of these later went on their own way. There is also a tradition
that in Egypt Fard taught Duse Muhammad Ali, the mentor of Marcus Garvey
(founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association), as well as Garvey
himself, whom he met in London.
Fard was described as having an “oriental cast of countenance,” (29) a
description which a 1933 police photo seems to bear out. Police sources
describe him as five feet six inches in height and weighing 133 pounds. His
eye color is given as “maroon,” his hair as black, and his complexion is
described as “dark” or “swarthy.” One entry described him as looking like a
“dark complected Mexican.” Only two photographs remain from Fard’s three and
a half years in Detroit: the police photo and a “glamourized” (i.e. touched-up)
portrait of a sort popular in the late 1920s, taken at a forty-five-degree
angle by a professional photographer. The latter became the official portrait
of Fard, and was later reproduced in a painted portrait at the Muhammad family
mansion in Chicago.
The Departure of Fard
Other accounts circulated after Fard’s disappearance. According to Elijah
Muhammad, Fard was “ordered out of the country” and caught a flight to Mecca.
(30) It was also reported that he sailed to Austrailia and New Zealand, and
that he was last seen “aboard a ship bound for Europe.” (31) A suspect source
claimed that Fard was interviewed in Germany but denied ever being in the
United States. (32) A recent report in an orthodox Muslim newspaper claimed
that Fard is alive and living in California and is now himself an orthodox
Muslim. (33)
In addition, there were rumors to the effect that Fard “met with foul play at
the hands of either the Detroit police or some of his dissident followers,” or
that he was the victim of “human sacrifice” himself, thereby accounting for
both his disappearance and his title of “Saviour.” (34) Another
unsubstantiated story said that, afflicted with an incurable illness, he died
and was buried under another name, and “no man knows of his grave to this day.”
Rumors aside, there has been no reliable report of his death. The FBI, which
initiated an investigation of Fard in 1942 that was to last more than thirty
years, could not substantiate or verify his name at birth, birth date, place
of birth, port of entry, exit, or present whereabouts, despite exhaustive
inquiries. There are even indications that bodies were exhumed in the search
for Fard.
The Messenger of Allah
It was Elijah Muhammad who was almost single-handedly responsible for the
deification of Fard as “Allah.” (35) Elijah Muhammad was born Paul Robert
Poole in 1897 on a tenant farm in Sandersville, Georgia, the seventh of
twelve children; he was given the name Elijah by his grandfather. Later on,
Fard would give him the name Muhammad. (36) Elijah married the former Clara
Evans and migrated to Detroit in 1923. Working at a variety of jobs until the
Depression hit in 1929, he went on relief until 1931. It was in that year that
he first met Fard, but says that “it was not until 1933 that he [Fard] began
revealing his true self to us.” (37)
After Fard’s disappearance, the struggle for succesion commenced. Elijah’s own
brother fell in the bloody internecine warfare that developed. (38) Rivals in
the Detroit temple made necessary Elijah’s hegira to Chicago, which was
destined to become the headquarters and power base; but from 1935 to 1942, he
was on the run. In 1942 he was arrested in Washington, D.C., by the FBI on
charges of sedition. At roughly the same time, more than eighty members of the
Chicago temple were taken in under the same charge by FBI agents working with
local police. One of the arrested temple members said the officers “tore the
place apart trying to find weapons hidden, since they believed we were
connected with the Japanese.” (39)
The sedition charge was based on the temple’s anti-draft stance and was applied
for blatantly political reasons. The arrest of Elijah and his followers, and
their subsequent incarceration until the end of the war, greatly enhanced their
status as martyrs for the cause.
Like other leaders jailed for their activities, Elijah brought forth innovations
for his movement when he was released. Prior to his imprisonment, the movement
was based entirely on its theological teachings and traditions. In 1946 it
numbered in the hundreds, just possibly the thousands. But that was to change.
Upon his release, Elijah stated, “We have to show the people something – we
cannot progress by talk.” And so, as his son Wallace later explained, Elijah
“changed from preaching his mysterious doctrine to doing something practical.
He said, ‘We have to have businesses.’ So he began to promote the opening of
businesses. He said, ‘You have to produce jobs for yourself’.” (40)
Quietly growing through the 1940s and ’50s, the NOI came to enjoy phenomenal
growth in the 1960s owing to media exposure and the charismatic gifts of its
national spokesman, Malcolm X. As Elijah’s chief minister, Malcolm was known
in Black inner cities for his dynamic presence and speaking ability. He gained
national exposure through Mike Wallace’s 1959 television documentary, “The
Hate that Hate Produced.” The program shocked Middle America, while at the
same time grim-faced FOI members met with admiration from inner-city audiences.
Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and the NOI had arrived on prime time. Recruitment
skyrocketed.
Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925, Malcolm X had been introduced