At the end of World War II American Negro soldiers—so movingly described in John Oliver Killens’ novel And Then We Heard the Thunder—came home determined to do something about their own society. The children of these soldiers are now marching the streets of Birmingham, Jackson, and New York City. They were spawned by the same era that produced Malcolm X and comedian Dick Gregory, both of whom are part and parcel of the same movement. It is not coincidental that the freedom riders and Malcolm X came upon the scene at the same time. They both emerged from a growing Negro consensus that old paths have led nowhere, that they lead the wandering Negro around and around the foot of the mountain but never lead him on toward his goal.
The Peddler of Silks and Scripture
Nineteen-thirty was the year after the big crash on Wall Street. For the Negro in Detroit the crash had a double meaning. It not only meant that he would be unemployed, that there would be no money, but that the subtle discrimination of the North—the very thing that had caused him to leave the South—would become bold and overt. Into the Negro ghetto of Detroit, late in the summer of 1930, there came a peddler, a man of unknown origin and lineage, who sold silks and satins from door to door. He was a strange-looking man. Because of his pale yellow coloring, some thought he was an Arab, others thought he was a Palestinian, and others felt that he had come from India. He called himself W. D. Fard on most occasions. Other times he was variously known as Mr. Farrad Mohammad, Mr. F. M. Ali, Professor Ford, and Mr. Wali Farrad. One of his Detroit followers quotes him as having said, “My name is W. D. Fard, and I come from the Holy City of Mecca. More about myself I will not tell you yet, for the time is not yet come. I am your brother. You have not yet seen me in my royal robes.”
There are no documented facts as to just who Fard was or where he came from. However, he found easy entry into the homes of lower-class Detroit Negroes, who were eager to purchase the silks he claimed were like those worn by black men in Africa.
Dr. Eric Lincoln has gathered information showing that Fard also used his presence in Negro homes to spread a curious doctrine which, in Lincoln’s words, found anxious ears “among culture-hungry Negroes.” The evidence suggests that Fard mixed the peddling of silks with lectures on the black man’s past. He became known as “The Prophet” and concentrated his teachings on his experience in the Near and Far East.
Fard often warned his listeners against certain foods and drinks. “... he would eat whatever we had on the table,” one of his followers said, “but after the meal he began to talk. ‘Now don’t eat this food, it is poison for you. The people in your own country do not eat it. Since they eat the right kind of food they have the best health always. If you would just live like the people in your home country, you would not be sick any more.’ So we all wanted him to tell us about ourselves and about our home country and about how we could be free from rheumatism, aches, and pains.”
Fard was also well versed in the Bible and he used it as a textbook while, at the same time, advising Negroes to renounce Christianity. Realizing that the Bible was the only religious literature known to the Negro, Fard skillfully used it to support his version of the black man’s history and the white man’s destiny. In the beginning Fard peddled his wares by day and held house meetings at night. But as the Depression deepened and his attack upon the white man grew more bitter, the crowds overflowed the small living rooms and dining rooms of the Detroit slum area. The followers of Fard hired a hall, which they named The Temple of Islam. And that was the birth of the phenomenon known today as the Black Muslims. Fard seems to have been a very friendly, relaxed man with an intuitive mastery of mass psychology. His attacks on members of the white race and on the Bible shocked his listeners into ecstasy and many became converts to his amazing brand of Islam.
“Up to that day I always went to the Baptist Church,” one convert said. “After I heard the sermon from the prophet, I was turned around completely. When I went home and heard that dinner was ready, I said, ‘I don’t want to eat, I just want to go back to the meeting.’”
It was inevitable that legends would pop up about a man like W. D. Fard. Eric Lincoln has gathered and reported them as follows:
One such legend is that Fard was a Jamaican Negro whose father was a Syrian Moslem. Another describes him as a Palestinian Arab who had participated in various racial agitations in India, South Africa and London before moving on to Detroit. Some of his followers believed him to be the son of wealthy parents of the tribe of Koreish—the tribe of Mohammed, founder of classical Islam. Others say that he was educated at London University in preparation for a diplomatic career in the service of the Kingdom of Hejaz, but that he sacrificed his personal future “to bring ‘freedom, justice, and equality’ to the ‘black men in the wilderness of North America, surrounded and robbed completely by the Cave Man.’” Fard announced himself to the Detroit police as “the Supreme Ruler of the Universe,” and at least some of his followers seem to have considered him divine. At the other extreme, a Chicago newspaper investigating the Black Muslim Movement refers to Fard as “a Turkish-born Nazi agent [who] worked for Hitler in World War II.”