As for Fard himself, he said that he had been sent to alert the black people of America to the unlimited possibilities of the universal black man in a world now usurped, but temporarily so, by white “blue-eyed devils.” This teaching was a sweet shock to illiterate Negroes whose lives had been spent in fear of the white man. They were irresistibly attracted to a black man who would stand tall, call the white man a snake, a devil—a blue-eyed devil, at that—and predict that his reign over the world would soon come to an ignominious end. And when Fard taught that the white man was full of tricks, always to be suspected, never to be trusted, the Southern Negroes who had come to Detroit in search of freedom only to find futility could not resist the temptation to shout “Amen.” As Eric Lincoln says, “The North was no promised land: It was the South all over again with the worst features of racial prejudice thinly camouflaged by sweet talk about equality.”
The black Detroiters who heard Fard were starving, living in overcrowded slums. They were the victims of police brutality, the continuing symbol of the power of the white establishment. They were bitter toward the white workers who took over “Negro jobs” as work became more scarce. Even the white welfare workers in Detroit, according to Eric Lincoln, deliberately abused Negroes by making them wait long hours in line before passing out pitiful supplies of flour and lard. All this fear resulted in deep resentment and despair. The words of Fard began to make more sense than ever.
Once Fard had secured a temple, the frequency of his meetings was stepped up and the movement became more formalized. Prospective members were put through rigid examinations and were called upon to make commitments and pledges. The sermons at Fard’s meetings were always based on the same subject: the untrustworthiness of the white man and the need for the Negro to understand and return to his glorious history in Africa and Asia.
Eric Lincoln says that Fard, with no literature or material to espouse his cause, used the writings of Joseph F. “Judge” Rutherford, then leader of Jehovah’s Witnesses; Van Loon’s Story of Mankind; Breasted’s The Conquest of Civilization; the Quran; the Bible; and certain literature of Freemasonry, to bring his people to “knowledge of self.” The followers of Fard were encouraged to buy radios so that they could hear the expressions of Rutherford and Frank Norris, the Baptist fundamentalist preacher.
Once temple meetings began, however, Fard told his members that the words of any white man could not be trusted, for the white man was incapable of telling the truth. He insisted that the white man’s writings were filled with a symbolism that must be interpreted. Fard went on to establish himself as the interpreter and brought the throng to its feet cheering when he said that the stupid white man was actually a tool in the hands of Allah, that the white man was a dumb idiot who unknowingly told the “truth” and thus predicted his own doom. Fard himself gave the movement its two basic theological pieces: The Sacred Ritual of the Nation of Islam, still the key document for the Black Muslims, and Teachings for the Lost Found Nation of Islam in a Mathematical Way, a religious cryptogram distributed among Muslims but which only Fard could interpret.
Within four years after he had set up the first temple, Fard, who turned out to be an extremely able executive, not only had a burgeoning membership of followers, but had founded a University of Islam, a combination of elementary and high-school education devoted to higher mathematics, astronomy, and the “ending of the spook civilization.” To augment all this, Fard established “The Muslim Girls Training Class” to drill Muslim women in the art of being good housewives and mothers. And to put down any trouble with unbelievers and police, he organized “The Fruit of Islam,” a quasi-military organization in which men were divided into squads headed by captains and taught the tactics of judo and the use of firearms. Completing the temple structure, a minister was appointed by Fard to run the entire organization.
The Man from Sandersville
One of Fard’s Detroit converts was Elijah Poole, a Negro from Sandersville, Georgia, and the son of a Baptist minister. Poole was born on October 7, 1897, one of the thirteen children of Wali and Marie Poole, both of whom had been slaves. After completing the fourth grade—he was then sixteen years old—Poole left home. In 1923 he and his wife, Clara Evans, along with their two children moved to Detroit. Of all the disenchanted Detroit Negroes, Elijah Poole was probably the bitterest. The lure of Detroit had proved a nightmare; he worked in factories at several different jobs until the Depression hit in 1929. In 1930 Poole attended one of the house meetings and heard Fard; in Poole’s words, Fard took him “out of the gutters in the streets of Detroit and taught me knowledge of Islam.”
Almost from the onset Fard and Poole seemed to become fast friends. Early members of the sect have stated that Elijah Poole became something of an errand boy for Fard and also helped him publish a newspaper. The key fact in the relationship between Elijah Poole and Fard was time. Poole came into the movement at the moment police in Detroit were breathing down Fard’s neck. Indeed it was fear of trouble from the police—and nonbelievers—that caused Fard to organize The Fruit of Islam. The same concern caused Fard to organize his temple in such a manner that he would seldom risk public exposure. Once Fard had fashioned his tightly knit organization he appointed a Chief Minister of Islam to preside over the entire movement.
Elijah Poole was tapped by Fard as the first Chief Minister of Islam and given the coveted “original name” Muhammad. Earlier in 1932, three years after he joined the movement, Elijah Muhammad went to Chicago and established what has since become known as Temple Number Two, which is now the headquarters of the Black Muslim movement. Trouble in Detroit, however, seems to have cut short Muhammad’s sojourn in Chicago. The history of this period is clouded by controversy, but the following is the best sequence of events observers have been able to piece together: