Already his influence is being felt.
“Akbar Comes to Harlem” was the billing for a major Black Muslim rally held shortly after his return. The New York press, Negro and white, was filled with ads and special announcements inviting people to come out and hear Akbar Muhammad, the youngest son of Elijah Muhammad, report on his sojourn and studies in Africa and Egypt. Much was made of the fact that Akbar had been a student at Al-Azhar University. Even more was made of the fact that he had attended the recent summit meeting of African heads of state as a correspondent for the Muslim newspaper, Mr. Muhammad Speaks.
Observers of the movement were certain that his speech would be heavily pro-African, that he would argue for a closer relationship between the Black Muslim movement and traditional Islam, and that he once again would remind American Negroes of their African heritage. But Akbar Muhammad’s two-hour talk before some four thousand Negroes on that Saturday afternoon in Harlem proved to be a complete surprise; further, it laid bare the only real schism there is within the Black Muslim movement.
After a highly charged introduction by Malcolm X the distinguished speaker rose. Twenty-five-year-old Akbar Muhammad is much like his father, medium brown, diminutive, slightly built. He stood at the lectern stroking his goatee during the three-minute ovation from the crowd. Then he spoke: “As-Salaam-Alaikum.” His Arabic was exquisite. His inflection alone was enough to let the black masses know they were hearing something different from the southern-accented “Peace be with you” they hear from the ordinary Black Muslims. All up and down the block Muslims leaped into the air with ecstasy, praising Allah for the “back home” diction one of their leaders had acquired.
Akbar had been speaking a scant five minutes when the crowd became strangely silent. Elijah’s son was clearly giving a new teaching, a gospel that contradicted much of what Malcolm X and others had been saying for the past few years.
“We must have unity among Negroes,” Akbar said.
It is time for all of us—CORE, the NAACP, Dr. Martin Luther King, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Black Muslims—to sit down together behind closed doors and unite. Negro leaders must now stop calling each other names. We must stop calling Dr. King names, and he must stop talking about us before the enemy. We may not be able to walk all the way to freedom together, but we can walk half the way together, so let’s unite and walk together as far as we can.
The audience began to warm to his strange message. The notion of unity among Negro leaders—including the Muslims—was not new. Malcolm X had launched the same theme three years ago but found no takers among established Negro leaders. Recently, however, the breach had widened; Malcolm called Martin Luther King “a chump, not a champ”; King took to a New York pulpit and denounced “those among us who would have us live in a separate state.” The night of that sermon King was pelted with eggs as he entered the church. Malcolm X denied that the Black Muslims were responsible for the incident but he also refused to say he was sorry that it had happened. All this was less than two weeks before the speech by Akbar.
I watched the setting as Akbar continued to speak. The stage obviously had been readied for him. This was no ordinary rally: Elijah Muhammad, Jr., had flown in from Chicago to be present, along with John X Ali, National Secretary for the movement. Ministers Jeremiah (Baltimore), Louis X (Boston), and Thomas J. (Hartford) were there. Minister Woodrow (Atlantic City) was on hand with his camera crew, and Joseph X, captain of the New York Fruit, turned his men out in full dress. This was clearly a major move, and the Muslims had worked hard to underscore its importance.
But what did it all mean?