When the Word is Given... / A Report on Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and the Black Muslim World

by Louis E. Lomax

The division of authority seems to be along these lines: The local Fruit and MGT work under the local minister on local matters. But unless the matter in question is one of clearly defined doctrine the local minister gets clearance from Chicago before issuing his orders. On national matters, those affecting the movement as a whole, The Fruit and the MGT take orders directly from headquarters. These orders are issued to members of the temple who obey without question.

One of the functions of The Fruit and the MGT is fund-raising. None of the rumors about Muslims receiving help from outside—Communist or segregationist—sources has proved true. The fact of the matter is that the Black Muslims are hard-working, frugal people; they never buy on installment, and they give a tenth—at least—of their earnings to the temple. This income is augmented by bazaars, plays, rallies, and the sale of their own newspapers and magazines. Then there is the matter of the various lawsuits the Muslims have carried on with astonishing success. The Black Muslims have collected upward of a quarter of a million dollars I know about in the past four years or so, mostly as a result of police brutality against their members. These suits are filed in the name of the individual Muslim but they are carried on by the temple, and I suspect the temple shares in the results.

Further regimentation of life within the Nation is achieved by demanding that members send their children to Black Muslim schools wherever possible. In two cities, Chicago and Detroit, the Muslims have “universities” where they train the children from kindergarten through high school. It will be recalled that Elijah Muhammad first got into trouble with the law when he decided to send his children to the Muslim school rather than the public schools. Now authorities in both cities have approved the Muslim schools as accredited centers of learning.

These schools are well disciplined and skillfully run. Early in 1962 there was considerable concern in Chicago over just what the Black Muslims were teaching in their schools. A biracial committee visited the University of Islam there and came away stunned. Said committee member Judge Edyth Sampson, a former U.S. delegate to the United Nations, “These people are doing a magnificent job with their young students. I am deeply impressed by what I saw.”

What Mrs. Sampson and her fellow committee members saw was essentially this: Black Muslim boys and girls stand muster for cleanliness and decorum each morning. The classes are separated, boys in one section, girls in the other, and the students’ day is divided between religious and secular education. They are taught both English and Arabic; they are drilled in the history of the black man in Africa and America. Then they are taught the history of the Black Muslim movement from Fard down to Minister Malcolm X.

In 1963 Sister Christine X, one of the directors of the school, authored a new first reader which is now being employed. The exercises in the book are something American educators would do well to study:

My name is Nora X. My father’s name is James X, and my mother is Frances X. We are Muslims. We have our own flag. Our flag is over there on the wall. The symbols on our flag are a star and a crescent.

Then the students are told to use the following words in sentences: Allah, black, Muhammad, God, Temple, nation, flag, Armageddon, Elijah.

Other exercises in the book call for the student to write short essays on Mr. Muhammad and other notables within the movement. Then as the students progress through school they are taught to link subject matter to the history of the black man. For example, when the students are being taught mathematics they are repeatedly reminded that much of modern math is based on work done by the Egyptians; they are not allowed to forget that English is not their native tongue, that their language is Arabic, that the white man robbed them of their tongue when he kidnaped their foreparents from Africa.

The thing that arrests me most about these schools is that they are now turning out the first generation of youth completely schooled in the Black Muslim doctrine. Unlike Malcolm X, John Ali, and other prominent Muslims of today who had to be “de-brainwashed” before they saw the light, the movement now has several score teen-agers who have been grounded in their faith just as a devout Catholic child is reared in his. As of now the movement suffers greatly from a lack of trained leaders. Only a handful of capable men and women are available to the organization and the nature of their doctrine is such that trained Negroes are hardly apt to join. But a few more years will see the emergence of well-trained Black Muslims who, I am certain, will give the organization more administrative order than it now has.