2. FROM MOSES TO
MALCOLM X
The black muslims have been in the national spotlight for only four years now, although the movement itself was born more than a quarter of a century ago. It attracted some attention in Chicago and Detroit but did not emerge as a national concern until Minister Malcolm X, then serving as leader of the New York Muslims and as a sort of roving bishop for the entire movement, burst upon the scene.
As is all too often the case with white people, the Establishment took one look at the Black Muslims and lurched from apathy to frenzy. No one paused long enough to study just what the Muslims believe, what makes them a religion, how they function as a religion. One of the reasons why this has not been done is that the Establishment, both Negro and white, was afraid that open acceptance of the Black Muslims as a religion would legitimize them. Meanwhile, as I mentioned earlier, courts in several states have issued findings that the Muslims are, indeed, a religion, and as such enjoy the same freedom as, say, Roman Catholics.
But this is to get ahead of the story. In truth, the scheme of events, both economic and moral, that led to the formation of the Black Muslims first began to unravel on the west coast of Africa some five hundred years ago. And we must begin there and then if we are to understand clearly the here and now. Prior, and basic, to a full comprehension of the meaning of the Negro’s African experience, we must pause and understand the role of religion in the life of a people.
The Negro as African and Tribesman
American Negro slaves were captured from the west coast of Africa. They were by no means products of a monolithic culture. They represented many tribes and sub-tribes. They spoke a myriad of languages. Indeed, one of the incredible ironies of the “Middle Passage” was that the African slaves chained together in the hold of a boat as it crossed the Atlantic were unable to talk to one another because they did not have a common language. Yet these were not uncivilized people. West Africans had developed a complex society, as Lerone Bennett, Jr., suggests, long before European penetration. Their political institutions, rooted in family groupings, spiraled outward into village states and empires. They had their armies and courts and, if this is of any comfort to modern Americans, their own internal-revenue departments. Speaking of Africa before the European penetration, anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits wrote, “Of the areas inhabited by non-literate peoples Africa exhibits the greatest incidence of complex governmental structure.” Not even the kingdoms of Peru and Mexico could mobilize resources and concentrate power more effectively than could some of these African monarchies, which are more to be compared with European states of the Middle Ages than referred to in the common conception, “primitive state.”
Agriculture, herding, and artistry were important to the West African, but the concept of private property was not widely accepted. The land belonged to the community. The core of West African society was the family. Interestingly enough, most of the African tribes constructed their families along matrilineal lines—the family tree was traced through the mother. On the whole, the West Africans were a mixture of various stocks by the time of the slave invasions. Centuries of interbreeding had produced Africans of varying shapes, colors, and features. Although they spoke many languages, they approached a semblance of linguistic unity in that only four of the African languages had been reduced to writing before the coming of the white man.
Whatever their tongue or color the West Africans were a deeply religious people. No greater injustice has been done to a people than that committed by spurious American historical and anthropological writings which suggest that African religion should be written off as infantile animism. On the contrary, the West Africans had developed complex answers to such major tribal inquiries as “What is man?” “Who is God?” “What is life?” and “How final is death’s sting?” At rock bottom, the religion of West Africa embraced a concept of “Life Forces.” The “Life Force” of the Creator was present in all things animate and inanimate and was viewed as a particularized but microcosmic fragment of the Supreme Being, God, Who created the earth. As Lerone Bennett, Jr., suggests, this African concept of God as a vital force in everything bears a striking resemblance to Henri Bergson’s “élan vital.” Religion formed the center of West African life. Every event took on religious meaning. And there is no telling what towering civilization might have blossomed and survived there had the white man not made his intrusion.