to Elijah Muhammad through family members while in prison in Massachusetts. In
the early 1950s he converted and took his “X.” (41) Upon his release he joined
the organization in Detroit and subsequently rose to a position of leadership,
eventually moving to New York City, where he was assigned Temple #7. But in
1965 factional rivalry and FBI activities reaped their harvest: Malcolm X was
assassinated.
After his death Malcolm X became the martyr of the Black nationalist movement.
But for the next ten years, the various factions were just treading water, and
no one made any waves until the death of Elijah Muhammad in 1975.
Allah Comes To Harlem
In the meantime, however, the doctrine of Black incarnation had not died, and
while W.D. Fard was still invoked in prayer in the temples of the NOI, another
cycle in the series of resurrections and reincarnations came about. The former
FOI Clarence 13X became the founder of the “Five Percenters” in New York City
around 1964.
Born Clarence Edward Smith in Danville, Virginia, in 1928, while still in his
teens he came with his family to New York City. Married and the father of
several children, he served with the U.S. Army during the Korean Conflict.
Honorably discharged in 1954, he remained a reservist until 1960, at which time
he joined the NOI. He remained in the NOI until he was expelled by Malcolm X
under orders from the Chicago headquarters in 1963.
The leading rumor of the cause of Clarence’s expulsion was his admitted love
for playing craps. Dice playing, it was claimed, was a way of demonstrating
the probabilities inherent in the nature of the universe. By contrast to
Einstien’s famous dictum, “God doesn’t play dice,” the former Clarence 13X
Smith, who took on the attribute (or name) Allah, did claim, “I am going to
shoot dice until I die.” (42) And he did.
“Allah,” as he became known, took Fard’s “Lost-Found Muslim Lessons” out of the
temple and put them into the hands of the youth in the streets. Fard’s
initiation ritual related a mathematical formula for the human society, which
was broken down into percentages. The Five Percent were those who taught
righteousness, freedom, justice, and equality to all the human family. They
taught that the god of righteousness was not a spirit or a spook, but the Black
man of Asia. (Asia was viewed as the primary continent, all the others as
subcontinents; continental drift was a facet of this teaching.)
The Eighty-Five Percent, the masses, believed in a “Mystery God” and worshipped
“that which did not exist.” they believed in a spirit deity rather than a
material man as god. They functioned on a “mentally dead” (i.e. unconscious)
level and were easy to lead in the wrong direction but hard to lead in the
right.
The Ten Percent were the bloodsuckers of the poor who taught the Eighty-Five
Percent that a Mystery God existed. They kept the masses asleep with myths
and lies, catering to their superstitious nature and living in luxury from the
earnings of the poor.
The Five Percent were destined to be poor righteous teachers and to struggle
successfully against the Ten Percent. Their job was to lead the Eighty-Five
Percent to freedom, justice, and equality. At first a loose confederation of
the lumpen proletariat, Allah’s followers numbered in the hundreds, but that
soon changed.
The Rise of the Five Percent
Allah attracted the attention of both the police and the politicians – a lethal
combination. Mayor Lindsay’s administration in New York City saw in him a
means of keeping the Harlem streets cool through the long, hot summers of the
riot-strewn Sixties. So Allah was put on the city payroll. Meanwhile the
New York City Police Department’s Bureau of Special Services (BOSS), who kept
their eyes on radicals and dissidents, put him at the top of their list of
“Black Militants.” (43)
For his part Allah wanted something for his youngsters. In the short time he
was associated with the mayor’s office, he was able to open an academy with
city funds. He expanded his recruitment of youth with picnic outings and
airplane rides. The youth in turn sensed his love for them, and it is no
wonder that in the contempary Five Percent he is referred to as “The Father.”
Allah was assassinated Friday the 13th of June, 1969 by “three male negroes.”
His Death was reported on the front of the New York Times. (44) His murder
remains unsolved. It has been rumored within the FOI circles that his death
was the result of his “taking the lessons out of the temple.” There is
evidence, however, that BOSS instigated the assassination to create a war
between the NOI and the Five Percent. (45) With Allah’s martyrdom, legends
again began to proliferate, and “The Father, Allah” joined the pantheon of the
Black gods of the inner city along with Nobel Drew Ali and W.D. Fard.
But Allah’s story doesn’t end there. Like Jesus, he taught “You are gods,”
(John 10:34), testifying to the inherent divinity of man; nonetheless his
followers elevated him above themselves. His biographies became tinged with
myth, and a supernatural element was added to his teaching; the “Father” has
been magnified in his absence, and he has become a cult personality. His
photos adorn walls where previous generations had kept a picture of a blond-
haired, blue eyed Jesus.
A New Era
With the death of Elijah Muhammad in 1975, a new power struggle ensued in the
house that Fard built. Wallace Delaney Muhammad, son of Elijah, was born in
Detroit in 1933. He recieved his elementary and high-school education at the
NOI’s University of Islam in Chicago, and spent four more years studying Islam
and Arabic at orthodox Muslim schools. He was long regarded as the logical
successor to his father. Born and groomed for the part, he was introduced by
Malcolm X as “the seventh son of our dear beloved leader and Teacher who is
following in the footsteps of his father.” (46)
But not everything was to run so smoothly or so simply. Wallace D. Muhammad
had in fact been expelled by his father for his refusal to recognize the
divinity of Master Fard Muhammad. In addition, Minister Louis Farrakhan, the
national spokesman for the organization, was waiting in the wings. Farrakhan,
while probably more popular among hard-core militants, failed to muster the
votes required from the family dominated inner circle in Chicago. So, despite
Wallace’s departures from NOI orthodoxy, nepotism prevailed.
Wallace was careful, however. He did not challenge the sanctity of his
namesake’s coattails, to which he owed his own legitimacy. A year after his
accension to power, Wallace claimed ni speeches to believers that he was in
communication with the founder, saying, “Master Fard Muhammad is not dead,
brothers and sisters, he is physically alive and I talk with him whenever I get
ready. I don’t talk to him in any spooky way, I go to the telephone and dial
his number.” (47)
Within a few years, though, Wallace was moving in the direction of orthodox
Islam. Taking the organization through a number of name changes, he changed
his own name to Warith (meaning “heir” in Arabic). Ultimately he sold off the
businesses that had been accumulated over the previous thirty years and joined
the fold of orthodox Islam.
The Farrakhan Facet
For a while after Elijah Muhammad’s death, Louis Farrakhan toed the line.
Approximately three years later, however, the old-line NOI traditionalists
regrouped. With a certain amount of encouragement from them, Farrakhan left
the employ of Warith.
Known in an earlier period as Minister Louis X of Boston’s Temple No. 11,
Farrakhan had joined the NOI in the mid-1950s a former calypso singer, he
became a speaker of some note. He recieved the name Farrakhan from Elijah
Muhammad, but neither he nor anyone else seems to know just what it means.
Groomed in the shadow of Malcolm X, and sometimes hosting him in his visits to
Boston, Farrakhan was later to fiercely denounce him in the pages of Muhammad
Speaks, the paper that, ironically, Malcolm himself had started in New York in
1960:
Only those who wish to be led to hell, or to their doom, will follow
Malcolm. The die is set and Malcolm shall not escape, especially after
such foolish talk about his benefactor in trying to rob him of the
divine glory which Allah has bestowed upon him. Such a man as Malcolm
is worthy of death. (48)
Farrakhan later admitted his deviation from the NOI path in following Wallace.
Others had refused to recognize the legitimacy of Wallace’s succesion and had
left earlier. In time the NOI traditionalists regrouped around Farrakhan.
One, the former Bernard Cushmeer (now Jabril Muhammad), joined up claimed that
Elijah was not really dead. He wrote a book to prove it. Farrakhan, after
some hesitation, concurred; in September 1985 he claimed to have had a vision
in which he was taken up to the Mothership and saw Elijah. (49)
But there was one certainty in the air: that a era had passed and a new cycle
had been initiated in the history of the unique form of Islam practiced in the
wilderness of North America, complete with its own prophets, gods, saviors, and
messengers.
Another Cycle
After centuries of slavery, lynchings, discriminations, miseducation, police
brutality, and poverty, it was not difficult for semiliterate Black migrants
in the Depression era to believe that the White man was a devil. What was
difficult, after generations of being taught in schools, textbooks, and the
media that Black people were inferior and had no history of achievement before
enslavement, was for them to see the divine nature in themselves. It was not
for Black people to rehabilitate their view of Whites, but to raise their own
self-esteem. The doctrine of Black godhood responds to this need, and the
Black gods of the inner city are symptomatic ot this effort.
In recent years the Five Percent has grown in numbers, despite the departure of
Allah. The doctrine of Black godhood is enjoying a renewal among inner-city
youth of the 1990s. They are attracted by its esoteric tradition, its Black
identity, and the symbolism of the Five Percent’s Universal Flag. Its
influence in the rap music field is evidenced by the artists who identify
themselves with it in their lyrics: Big Daddy Kane (King Asiatic God Allah),
Poor Righteous Teachers, King Sun, Rakim, Brand Nubian, Movement Ex, and Lakim
Shabazz (who has done a video in Egypt with pyramids in the background). (50)
What can you possibly think when you watch MTV and hear an attractive young
Black woman, “cultured-down” (dressed in long skirts with here hair covered),
announce: “Peace, this is the goddess Isis”? There’s definitely a connection
among godhood, Blackness, and Egypt.
However you may view the above, the next time you hear a twenty-year-old
youngster like Lakim Shabazz on MTV rapping about “knowledge, wisdom, and
understanding,” or saying “The original man is the Asiatic Black man,” or ”
I’m God, my number is seven,” you will recognize that he is reciting portions
of a once-secret ritual that is known to be more that sixty years old and that
traces itself back to ancient Egypt. With that knowledge, you can be assured
that the Black gods and goddesses of the inner cities are alive and well.
[ Prince-A-Cuba, born in Havana in 1962, can be reached as W. Don Fajardo
c/o T.U.T., P.O. Box 3243, East Orange, NJ 07017. His forthcoming book is
entitled Our Mecca is Harlem: Clarence 13X (Allah) and the Five Percent. ]
______________________________________________________________________________
Footnotes
1. The term was coined in 1956 by C. Eric Lincoln. Cf. his Black Muslims in
America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961, 1973),p. xii.
2. Lincoln, pp. 53, 57.
3. E.U. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search for Idendity (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1971), p. 35.
4. E.D. Beynon, “The Voodoo Cult among Negro Migrants in Detroit,” in American
Journal of Sociology 43 (May 1938), Republished as Master Fard Muhammad:
Detroit History, Prince-A-Cuba. ed. (Newport News, Va.: UB & USCS, 1990).
Page references are to the latter.
5. Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America (Newport News,: UB &
USCS, 1965), pp. 16-17.
6. Beynon, p. 6.
7. Ibid., p.5; cf. Pittsburgh Courier, July 20, 1957; and interview with
Elijah Muhammad by R.Simmons of the California Eagle, July 28, 1963.
8. Temples were founded in Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and
Washington, D.C. The Detroit temple had a membership of 8000, according to
NOI officials, and 5000, according to the Detroit police. Cf. Beymon, p. 7.
9. The expressions “knowledge of self” and “know thyself” are found throughout
the NOI teachings. Cf. George G.M. James, Stolen Lagacy (Newport News, Va.:
UB &USCS, 1954), pp. 3, 88, 92 and Anonymous, Egyptian Mysteries: An Account
of an Initiation (York Beach, Me.: Samueal Weiser, 1991), p. 43.
10. Muhammad, Message, pp. 110-21.
11. Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived (Newport News, Va.: UB & USCS,
1974), p. 13.
12. Lincoln, p. 75.
13. India’s ambassador to Mongolia, conside