Shortly after (perhaps before) Elijah Muhammad left Detroit for Chicago one of the Muslim brothers got into trouble with the Detroit police because of his alleged part in the sacrificial killing of a fellow Muslim. It is a matter of record that the Muslims did teach sacrificial killing at that time and that Fard was arrested in connection with the charge. Muhammad has written of the incident in these words:

He was persecuted, sent to jail in 1932, and ordered out of Detroit, Michigan, May 26, 1933. He came to Chicago in the same year, was arrested almost immediately, and placed behind prison bars. He submitted himself with all humility to his persecutors. Each time he was arrested he sent for me that I may see and learn the price of truth for us (the so-called Negroes).

Muhammad gave Fard refuge in Chicago. Shortly thereafter Elijah was named Fard’s first Minister of Islam and returned to Detroit, where he took over the movement despite opposition from several of Fard’s followers. Shaken by his encounter with police, Fard withdrew from public view, leaving Elijah Muhammad to stand as the public presence for the movement. During 1933 Fard was seen less and less; then, in 1934, he simply vanished. To this writing, state and federal authorities have been unable to solve the riddle of Fard’s disappearance. As Eric Lincoln says, “All reports about the whereabouts of Fard wind up at a dead end.” The report that he was seen aboard a ship bound for Europe was never substantiated. The report that he met foul play at the hands of Detroit police or some of his dissident friends was never confirmed. And the dark hint that Elijah Muhammad himself was in some way connected with Fard’s disappearance has not been supported by any evidence.

Although rumors persist to this day that Muhammad induced Fard to offer himself up as a human sacrifice, there is no evidence to support them. Yet as Eric Lincoln comments, “It is interesting to note that Fard is honored by [Black] Muslims everywhere as the ‘Saviour’ and is celebrated as such every year on his birthday, February 26.”

Once Fard fell from view, Muhammad became leader of the movement. He was able to bring many dissidents back into the temple, but soon broke with the Detroit faction and returned to Chicago to set up his headquarters. Muhammad had learned church administration from his clergyman father and was able to organize several new temples of Islam. Fard was apotheosized and referred to as the Prophet of Allah; Muhammad proclaimed himself the Messenger of the Prophet of Allah. To this day, the wellspring of Muhammad’s power flows from the fact that he was with Fard in life and possibly in death. On one occasion he said, “I have it from the mouth of God that the enemy had better try to protect my life and see that I continue to live. Because if anything happens to me, I will be the last one that they murder. And if any of my followers are harmed, ten of the enemy’s best ones will be killed.”

Fard and Muhammad shared an affinity for getting into trouble with the law. In 1934 Muhammad refused to transfer his children from the University of Islam to another, accredited school, and he was convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and placed on six months’ probation. Eight years later the Messenger was arrested by federal authorities, convicted of refusing to register for the draft, and sentenced to four years in the federal prison at Milan, Michigan. The indictment, however, alleged that Muhammad taught Negroes that their interests were in a Japanese victory in World War II, since Negroes were ethnic brothers of the Japanese. Muhammad’s pro-Japanese sentiments were probably influenced by Japanese efforts, principally through a skilled operative named Major Takahashi who was in Chicago around 1938, to proselytize among the Muslims and other Negro groups. Rank-and-file Muslims, however, showed little interest in Takahashi’s propaganda, just as they had shown little interest in Communist overtures in 1932.

Like other men with a messianic complex, Muhammad seemed to grow both in stature and spirit behind bars. First of all, he was clearly able to direct the movement even while he was in prison, and once he was released, he began uttering statements that made Fard and, indeed, the early Elijah Muhammad sound conservative. In bold staccato phrases, punctuated by clearing of the throat so endemic to Southern Negro preachers, Muhammad shouted to the throng that the white man is a snake, a devil by nature, evil, incapable of doing right. Despite the fact that he was still garbed in his “release suit,” Muhammad told the Chicago crowd that it made no sense for Negroes in this country to have fought against the Japanese, who were victimized by the same blue-eyed devil who had victimized the American Negro. But Muhammad did not stop there; he said that the American Negro had had no stake in World War II. “Rather,” Muhammad said, “the American Negro should be saving his energy and ammunition for ‘The Battle of Armageddon,’ which will be waged in the wilderness of North America. This battle—and this is one of the central teachings of the Nation of Islam—will be for freedom, justice, and equality. It will be waged to success or under death.” Muhammad always titillates his followers by telling them that he cannot at this moment let them know just when the battle will take place and who the protagonists will be. But one has only to sit in the audience and hear his followers applaud and laugh to know that they fully believe that the time of the bloodletting is nigh and that the struggle will be between black and white.

Despite his boldness, the movement stagnated under Muhammad’s leadership. In the mid-forties “The Big X” came on the scene. And with the arrival of Malcolm Little—christened into Islam Malcolm X and elevated by Elijah Muhammad to be Malcolm Shabazz, but known to the pimps, prostitutes, and dope addicts as “Big Red”—the Black Muslim movement really began to move.

Big Red

Malcolm Little was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925, and like Elijah Muhammad he was the son of a Baptist minister. The family soon moved from Omaha to Lansing, Michigan. Malcolm’s father was a follower of the Black Nationalist, Marcus Garvey, who felt that all Negroes should return to Africa and escape the oppression of the white man. The Ku Klux Klan burned down the family home when Malcolm was only six years old. “The firemen came,” Malcolm says, “and just sat there without making any effort to put one drop of water on the fire. The same fire that burned my father’s home still burns in my soul.”