Shorty didn't know what the word "concurrently" meant.
Somehow, Lansing-to-Boston bus fare had been scraped up by Shorty's old mother. "Son, read meBook of Revelations and pray to God!" she had kept telling Shorty, visiting him, and once me, whilewe awaited our sentencing. Shorty had read the Bible's Revelation pages; he had actually gotten downon his knees, praying like some Negro Baptist deacon.
Then we were looking up at the judge in Middlesex County Court. (Our, I think, fourteen counts ofcrime were committed in that county. ) Shorty's mother was sitting, sobbing with her head bowing upand down to her Jesus, over near Ella and Reginald. Shorty was the first of us called to stand up.
"Count one, eight to ten years "Count two, eight to ten years"Count three. . ."And, finally, "The sentences to run concurrently."Shorty, sweating so hard that his black face looked as though it had been greased, and notunderstanding the word "concurrently," had counted in his head to probably over a hundred years; hecried out, he began slumping. The bailiffs had to catch and support him.
In eight to ten seconds, Shorty had turned as atheist as I had been to start with.
I got ten years.
The girls got one to five years, in the Women's Reformatory at Framingham, Massachusetts.
This was in February, 1946. I wasn't quite twenty-one. I had not even started shaving.
They took Shorty and me, handcuffed together, to the Charlestown State Prison.
I can't remember any of my prison numbers. That seems surprising, even after the dozen years since Ihave been out of prison. Because your number in prison became part of you. You never heard yourname, only your number. On all of your clothing, every item, was your number, stenciled. It grewstenciled on your brain.
Any person who claims to have deep feeling for other human beings should think a long, long timebefore he votes to have other men kept behind bars-caged. I am not saying there shouldn't be prisons,but there shouldn't be bars. Behind bars, a man never reforms. He will never forget. He never will getcompletely over the memory of the bars.
After he gets out, his mind tries to erase the experience, but he can't. I've talked with numerous formerconvicts. It has been very interesting to me to find that all of our minds had blotted away many detailsof years in prison. But in every case, he will tell you that he can't forget those bars.
As a "fish" (prison slang for a new inmate) at Charlestown, I was physically miserable and as evil-tempered as a snake, being suddenly without drugs. The cells didn't have running water. The prisonhad been built in 1805-in Napoleon's day-and was even styled after the Bastille. In the dirty, crampedcell, I could lie on my cot and touch both walls. The toilet was a covered pail; I don't care how strongyou are, you can't stand having to smell a whole cell row of defecation.
The prison psychologist interviewed me and he got called every filthy name I could think of, and theprison chaplain got called worse. My first letter, I remember, was from my religious brother Philbert in Detroit, telling me his "holiness" church was going to pray for me. I scrawled him a reply I'mashamed to think of today.
Ella was my first visitor. I remember seeing her catch herself, then try to smile at me, now in the fadeddungarees stenciled with my number. Neither of us could find much to say, until I wished she hadn'tcome at all. The guards with guns watched about fifty convicts and visitors. I have heard scores ofnew prisoners swearing back in their cells that when free their first act would be to waylay thosevisiting-room guards. Hatred often focused on them.
I first got high in Charlestown on nutmeg. My cellmate was among at least a hundred nutmeg menwho, for money or cigarettes, bought from kitchen-worker inmates penny matchboxes full of stolennutmeg. I grabbed a box as though it were a pound of heavy drugs. Stirred into a glass of cold water, apenny matchbox full of nutmeg had the kick of three or four reefers.
With some money sent by Ella, I was finally able to buy stuff for better highs from guards in theprison. I got reefers, Nembutal, and benzedrine. Smuggling to prisoners was the guards' sideline;every prison's inmates know that's how guards make most of their living.
I served a total of seven years in prison. Now, when I try to separate that first year-plus that I spent atCharlestown, it runs all together in a memory of nutmeg and the other semi-drugs, of cursing guards,throwing things out of my cell, balking in the lines, dropping my tray in the dining hall, refusing toanswer my number-claiming I forgot it-and things like that.
I preferred the solitary that this behavior brought me. I would pace for hours like a caged leopard,viciously cursing aloud to myself. And my favorite targets were the Bible and God. But there was alegal limit to how much time one could be kept in solitary. Eventually, the men in the cellblock had aname for me: "Satan." Because of my antireligious attitude.
The first man I met in prison who made any positive impression on me whatever was a fellow inmate,"Bimbi." I met him in 1947, at Charlestown. He was a light, kind of red-complexioned Negro, as I was;about my height, and he had freckles. Bimbi, an old-time burglar, had been in many prisons. In thelicense plate shop where our gang worked, he operated the machine that stamped out the numbers. Iwas along the conveyor belt where the numbers were painted.
Bimbi was the first Negro convict I'd known who didn't respond to "What'cha know, Daddy?" Often,after we had done our day's license plate quota, we would sit around, perhaps fifteen of us, and listento Bimbi. Normally, white prisoners wouldn't think of listening to Negro prisoners' opinions onanything, but guards, even, would wander over close to hear Bimbi on any subject.
He would have a cluster of people riveted, often on odd subjects you never would think of. He wouldprove to us, dipping into the science of human behavior, that the only difference between us andoutside people was that we had been caught. He liked to talk about historical events and figures.
When he talked about the history of Concord, where I was to be transferred later, you would have thought he was hired by the Chamber of Commerce, and I wasn't the first inmate who had neverheard of Thoreau until Bimbi expounded upon him. Bimbi was known as the library's best customer.
What fascinated me with him most of all was that he was the first man I had ever seen command totalrespect. . . with his words.
Bimbi seldom said much to me; he was gruff to individuals, but I sensed he liked me. What made meseek his friendship was when I heard him discuss religion. I considered myself beyond atheism-I wasSatan. But Bimbi put the atheist philosophy in a framework, so to speak. That ended my viciouscursing attacks. My approach sounded so weak alongside his, and he never used a foul word.
Out of the blue one day, Bimbi told me flatly, as was his way, that I had some brains, if I'd use them. Ihad wanted his friendship, not that kind of advice. I might have cursed another convict, but nobodycursed Bimbi. He told me I should take advantage of the prison correspondence courses and thelibrary.
When I had finished the eighth grade back in Mason, Michigan, that was the last time I'd thought ofstudying anything that didn't have some hustle purpose. And the streets had erased everything I'dever learned in school; I didn't know a verb from a house. My sister Hilda had written a suggestionthat, if possible in prison, I should study English and penmanship; she had barely been able to read acouple of picture postcards I had sent her when I was selling reefers on the road.
So, feeling I had time on my hands, I did begin a correspondence course in English. When themimeographed listings of available books passed from cell to cell, I would put my number next totitles that appealed to me which weren't already taken.
Through the correspondence exercises and lessons, some of the mechanics of grammar graduallybegan to come back to me.
After about a year, I guess, I could write a decent and legible letter. About then, too, influenced byhaving heard Bimbi often explain word derivations, I quietly started another correspondence course-in Latin.
Under Bimbi's tutelage, too, I had gotten myself some little cellblock swindles going. For packs ofcigarettes, I beat just about anyone at dominoes. I always had several cartons of cigarettes in my cell;they were, in prison, nearly as valuable a medium of exchange as money. I booked cigarette andmoney bets on fights and ball games. I'll never forget the prison sensation created that day in April,1947, when Jackie Robinson was brought up to play with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Jackie Robinson had,then, his most fanatic fan in me. When he played, my ear was glued to the radio, and no game endedwithout my refiguring his average up through his last turn at bat.
One day in 1948, after I had been transferred to Concord Prison, my brother Philbert, who was forever joining something, wrote me this time that he had discovered the "natural religion for the black man."He belonged now, he said, to something called "the Nation of Islam." He said I should "pray to Allahfor deliverance." I wrote Philbert a letter which, although in improved English, was worse than myearlier reply to his news that I was being prayed for by his "holiness" church.
When a letter from Reginald arrived, I never dreamed of associating the two letters, although I knewthat Reginald had been spending a lot of time with Wilfred, Hilda, and Philbert in Detroit. Reginald'sletter was newsy, and also it contained this instruction: "Malcolm, don't eat any more pork, and don'tsmoke any more cigarettes. I'll show you how to get out of prison."My automatic response was to think he had come upon some way I could work a hype on the penalauthorities. I went to sleep-and woke up-trying to figure what kind of a hype it could be. Somethingpsychological, such as my act with the New York draft board? Could I, after going without pork andsmoking no cigarettes for a while, claim some physical trouble that could bring about my release?
"Get out of prison." The words hung in the air around me, I wanted out so badly.
I wanted, in the worst way, to consult with Bimbi about it. But something big, instinct said, you spilledto nobody.
Quitting cigarettes wasn't going to be too difficult. I had been conditioned by days in solitary withoutcigarettes. Whatever this chance was, I wasn't going to fluff it. After I read that letter, I finished thepack I then had open. I haven't smoked another cigarette to this day, since 1948.
It was about three or four days later when pork was served for the noon meal.
I wasn't even thinking about pork when I took my seat at the long table. Sit-grab-gobble-stand-file out;that was the Emily Post in prison eating. When the meat platter was passed to me, I didn't even knowwhat the meat was; usually, you couldn't tell, anyway-but it was suddenly as though _don't eat anymore pork_ flashed on a screen before me.
I hesitated, with the platter in mid-air; then I passed it along to the inmate waiting next to me. Hebegan serving himself; abruptly, he stopped. I remember him turning, looking surprised at me.
I said to him, "I don't eat pork."The platter then kept on down the table.
It was the funniest thing, the reaction, and the way that it spread. In prison, where so little breaks themonotonous routine, the smallest thing causes a commotion of talk. It was being mentioned all overthe cell block by night that Satan didn't eat pork.
It made me very proud, in some odd way. One of the universal images of the Negro, in prison and out, was that he couldn't do without pork. It made me feel good to see that my not eating it hadespecially startled the white convicts.
Later I would learn, when I had read and studied Islam a good deal, that, unconsciously, my first pre-Islamic submission had been manifested. I had experienced, for the first time, the Muslim teaching, "Ifyou will take one step toward Allah-Allah will take two steps toward you."My brothers and sisters in Detroit and Chicago had all become converted to what they were beingtaught was the "natural religion for the black man" of which Philbert had written to me. They allprayed for me to become converted while I was in prison. But after Philbert reported my vicious reply,they discussed what was the best thing to do. They had decided that Reginald, the latest convert, theone to whom I felt closest, would best know how to approach me, since he knew me so well in thestreet life.
Independently of all this, my sister Ella had been steadily working to get me transferred to theNorfolk, Massachusetts, Prison Colony, which was an experimental rehabilitation jail. In other prisons,convicts often said that if you had the right money, or connections, you could get transferred to thisColony whose penal policies sounded almost too good to be true. Somehow, Ella's efforts in my behalfwere successful in late 1948, and I was transferred to Norfolk.
The Colony was, comparatively, a heaven, in many respects. It had flushing toilets; there were no bars,only walls-and within the walls, you had far more freedom. There was plenty of fresh air to breathe; itwas not in a city.
There were twenty-four "house" units, fifty men living in each unit, if memory serves me correctly.
This would mean that the Colony had a total of around 1200 inmates. Each "house" had three floorsand, greatest blessing of all, each inmate had his own room.
About fifteen per cent of the inmates were Negroes, distributed about five to nine Negroes in eachhouse.
Norfolk Prison Colony represented the most enlightened form of prison that I have ever heard of. Inplace of the atmosphere of malicious gossip, perversion, grafting, hateful guards, there was morerelative "culture," as "culture" is interpreted in prisons. A high percentage of the Norfolk PrisonColony inmates went in for "intellectual" things, group discussions, debates, and such. Instructors forthe educational rehabilitation programs came from Harvard, Boston University, and other educationalinstitutions in the area. The visiting rules, far more lenient than other prisons', permitted visitorsalmost every day, and allowed them to stay two hours. You had your choice of sitting alongside yourvisitor, or facing each other.
Norfolk Prison Colony's library was one of its outstanding features. A millionaire named Parkhursthad willed his library there; he had probably been interested in the rehabilitation program. Historyand religions were his special interests. Thousands of his books were on the shelves, and in the back were boxes and crates full, for which there wasn't space on the shelves. At Norfolk, we could actuallygo into the library, with permission-walk up and down the shelves, pick books. There were hundredsof old volumes, some of them probably quite rare. I read aimlessly, until I learned to read selectively,with a purpose.
I hadn't heard from Reginald in a good while after I got to Norfolk Prison Colony. But I had come inthere not smoking cigarettes, or eating pork when it was served. That caused a bit of eyebrow-raising.
Then a letter from Reginald telling me when he was coming to see me. By the time he came, I wasreally keyed up to hear the hype he was going to explain.
Reginald knew how my street-hustler mind operated. That's why his approach was so effective.
He had always dressed well, and now, when he came to visit, was carefully groomed. I was achingwith wanting the "no pork and cigarettes" riddle answered. But he talked about the family, what washappening in Detroit, Harlem the last time he was there. I have never pushed anyone to tell meanything before he is ready. The offhand way Reginald talked and acted made me know thatsomething big was coming.
He said, finally, as though it had just happened to come into his mind, "Malcolm, if a man knew everyimaginable thing that there is to know, who would he be?"Back in Harlem, he had often liked to get at something through this kind of indirection. It had oftenirritated me, because my way had always been direct. I looked at him. "Well, he would have to besome kind of a god-"Reginald said, "There's a _man_ who knows everything."I asked, "Who is that?""God is a man," Reginald said. "His real name is Allah."_Allah_. That word came back to me from Philbert's letter; it was my first hint of any connection. ButReginald went on. He said that God had 360 degrees of knowledge. He said that 360 degreesrepresented "the sum total of knowledge."To say I was confused is an understatement. I don't have to remind you of the background againstwhich I sat hearing my brother Reginald talk like this. I just listened, knowing he was taking his timein putting me onto something. And if somebody is trying to put you onto something, you need tolisten.
"The devil has only thirty-three degrees of knowledge-known as Masonry," Reginald said. I can sospecifically remember the exact phrases since, later, I was going to teach them so many times to others.
"The devil uses his Masonry to rule other people." He told me that this God had come to America, and that he had made himself known to a man namedElijah-"a black man, just like us." This God had let Elijah know, Reginald said, that the devil's "timewas up."I didn't know what to think. I just listened.
"The devil is also a man," Reginald said.
"What do you mean?"With a slight movement of his head, Reginald indicated some white inmates and their visitors talking,as we were, across the room.
"Them," he said. "The white man is the devil."He told me that all whites knew they were devils-"especially Masons."I never will forget: my mind was involuntarily flashing across the entire spectrum of white people Ihad ever known; and for some reason it stopped upon Hymie, the Jew, who had been so good to me.
Reginald, a couple of times, had gone out with me to that Long Island bootlegging operation to buyand bottle up the bootleg liquor for Hymie.
I said, "Without any exception?""Without any exception.""What about Hymie?""What is it if I let you make five hundred dollars to let me make ten thousand?"After Reginald left, I thought. I thought. Thought.
I couldn't make of it head, or tail, or middle.
The white people I had known marched before my mind's eye. From the start of my life. The statewhite people always in our house after the other whites I didn't know had killed my father. . . thewhite people who kept calling my mother "crazy" to her face and before me and my brothers andsisters, until she finally was taken off by white people to the Kalamazoo asylum . . . the white judgeand others who had split up the children . . . the Swerlins, the other whites around Mason. . . whiteyoungsters I was in school there with, and the teachers-the one who told me in the eighth grade to "bea carpenter" because thinking of being a lawyer was foolish for a Negro. . . .
My head swam with the parading faces of white people. The ones in Boston, in the white-only dancesat the Roseland Ballroom where I shined their shoes. . . at the Parker House where I took their dirtyplates back to the kitchen. . . the railroad crewmen and passengers . . . Sophia . . . .
The whites in New York City-the cops, the white criminals I'd dealt with. . . the whites who piled intothe Negro speakeasies for a taste of Negro _soul_ . . . the white women who wanted Negro men. . . themen I'd steered to the black "specialty sex" they wanted . . . .
The fence back in Boston, and his ex-con representative. . . Boston cops . . . Sophia's husband's friend,and her husband, whom I'd never seen, but knew so much about . . . Sophia's sister . . . the Jew jewelerwho'd helped trap me . . . the social workers . . . the Middlesex County Court people . . . the judge whogave me ten years . . . the prisoners I'd known, the guards and the officials . . . .
A celebrity among the Norfolk Prison Colony inmates was a rich, older fellow, a paralytic, called John.
He had killed his baby, one of those "mercy" killings. He was a proud, big-shot type, alwaysreminding everyone that he was a 33rd-degree Mason, and what powers Masons had-that onlyMasons ever had been U. S. Presidents, that Masons in distress could secretly signal to judges andother Masons in powerful positions.
I kept thinking about what Reginald had said. I wanted to test it with John. He worked in a soft job inthe prison's school. I went over there.
"John," I said, "how many degrees in a circle?"He said, "Three hundred and sixty."I drew a square. "How many degrees in that?" He said three hundred and sixty.
I asked him was three hundred and sixty degrees, then, the maximum of degrees in anything?
He said "Yes."I said, "Well, why is it that Masons go only to thirty-three degrees?"He had no satisfactory answer. But for me, the answer was that Masonry, actually, is only thirty-threedegrees of the religion of Islam, which is the full projection, forever denied to Masons, although theyknow it exists.
Reginald, when he came to visit me again in a few days, could gauge from my attitude the effect thathis talking had had upon me. He seemed very pleased. Then, very seriously, he talked for two solidhours about "the devil white man" and "the brainwashed black man." When Reginald left, he left me rocking with some of the first serious thoughts I had ever had in mylife: that the white man was fast losing his power to oppress and exploit the dark world; that the darkworld was starting to rise to rule the world again, as it had before; that the white man's world was onthe way down, it was on the way out.
"You don't even know who you are," Reginald had said. "You don't even know, the white devil hashidden it from you, that you are of a race of people of ancient civilizations, and riches in gold andkings. You don't even know your true family name, you wouldn't recognize your true language if youheard it. You have been cut off by the devil white man from all true knowledge of your own kind. Youhave been a victim of the evil of the devil white man ever since he murdered and raped and stole youfrom your native land in the seeds of your forefathers. . . ."I began to receive at least two letters every day from my brothers and sisters in Detroit. My oldestbrother, Wilfred, wrote, and his first wife, Bertha, the mother of his two children (since her death,Wilfred has met and married his present wife, Ruth). Philbert wrote, and my sister Hilda. AndReginald visited, staying in Boston awhile before he went back to Detroit, where he had been the mostrecent of them to be converted. They were all Muslims, followers of a man they described to me as"The Honorable Elijah Muhammad," a small, gentle man, whom they sometimes referred to as "TheMessenger of Allah." He was, they said, "a black man, like us." He had been born in America on a farmin Georgia. He had moved with his family to Detroit, and there had met a Mr. Wallace D. Fard who heclaimed was "God in person." Mr. Wallace D. Fard had given to Elijah Muhammad Allah's message forthe black people who were "the Lost-Found Nation of Islam here in this wilderness of North America."All of them urged me to "accept the teachings of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad." Reginaldexplained that pork was not eaten by those who worshiped in the religion of Islam, and not smokingcigarettes was a rule of the followers of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, because they did not takeinjurious things such as narcotics, tobacco, or liquor into their bodies. Over and over, I read, andheard, "The key to a Muslim is submission, the attunement of one toward Allah."And what they termed "the true knowledge of the black man" that was possessed by the followers ofThe Honorable Elijah Muhammad was given shape for me in their lengthy letters, sometimescontaining printed literature.
"The true knowledge," reconstructed much more briefly than I received it, was that history had been"whitened" in the white man's history books, and that the black man had been "brainwashed forhundreds of years." Original Man was black, in the continent called Africa where the human race hademerged on the planet Earth.
The black man, original man, built great empires and civilizations and cultures while the white manwas still living on all fours in caves. "The devil white man," down through history, out of his devilishnature, had pillaged, murdered, raped, and exploited every race of man not white.
Human history's greatest crime was the traffic in black flesh when the devil white man went intoAfrica and murdered and kidnapped to bring to the West in chains, in slave ships, millions of blackmen, women, and children, who were worked and beaten and tortured as slaves.
The devil white man cut these black people off from all knowledge of their own kind, and cut them offfrom any knowledge of their own language, religion, and past culture, until the black man in Americawas the earth's only race of people who had absolutely no knowledge of his true identity.
In one generation, the black slave women in America had been raped by the slavemaster white manuntil there had begun to emerge a homemade, handmade, brainwashed race that was no longer evenof its true color, that no longer even knew its true family names. The slavemaster forced his familyname upon this rape-mixed race, which the slavemaster began to call "the Negro."This "Negro" was taught of his native Africa that it was peopled by heathen, black savages, swinginglike monkeys from trees. This "Negro" accepted this along with every other teaching of theslavemaster that was designed to make him accept and obey and worship the white man.
And where the religion of every other people on earth taught its believers of a God with whom theycould identify, a God who at least looked like one of their own kind, the slavemaster injected hisChristian religion into this "Negro." This "Negro" was taught to worship an alien God having the sameblond hair, pale skin, and blue eyes as the slavemaster.
This religion taught the "Negro" that black was a curse. It taught him to hate everything black,including himself. It taught him that everything white was good, to be admired, respected, and loved.
It brainwashed this "Negro" to think he was superior if his complexion showed more of the whitepollution of the slavemaster. This white man's Christian religion further deceived and brainwashedthis "Negro" to always turn the other cheek, and grin, and scrape, and bow, and be humble, and tosing, and to pray, and to take whatever was dished out by the devilish white man; and to look for hispie in the sky, and for his heaven in the hereafter, while right here on earth the slave-master whiteman enjoyed _his_ heaven.
Many a time, I have looked back, trying to assess, just for myself, my first reactions to all this. Everyinstinct of the ghetto jungle streets, every hustling fox and criminal wolf instinct in me, which wouldhave scoffed at and rejected anything else, was struck numb. It was as though all of that life merelywas back there, without any remaining effect, or influence. I remember how, some time later, readingthe Bible in the Norfolk Prison Colony library, I came upon, then I read, over and over, how Paul onthe road to Damascus, upon hearing the voice of Christ, was so smitten that he was knocked off hishorse, in a daze. I do not now, and I did not then, liken myself to Paul. But I do understand hisexperience.
I have since learned-helping me to understand what then began to happen within me-that the truthcan be quickly received, or received at all, only by the sinner who knows and admits that he is guilty of having sinned much. Stated another way: only guilt admitted accepts truth. The Bible again: the onepeople whom Jesus could not help were the Pharisees; they didn't feel they needed any help.
The very enormity of my previous life's guilt prepared me to accept the truth.
Not for weeks yet would I deal with the direct, personal application to myself, as a black man, of thetruth. It still was like a blinding light.
Reginald left Boston and went back to Detroit. I would sit in my room and stare. At the dining-roomtable, I would hardly eat, only drink the water. I nearly starved. Fellow inmates, concerned, andguards, apprehensive, asked what was wrong with me. It was suggested that I visit the doctor, and Ididn't. The doctor, advised, visited me. I don't know what his diagnosis was, probably that I wasworking on some act.
I was going through the hardest thing, also the greatest thing, for any human being to do; to acceptthat which is already within you, and around you.
I learned later that my brothers and sisters in Detroit put together the money for my sister Hilda tocome and visit me. She told me that when The Honorable Elijah Muhammad was in Detroit, he wouldstay as a guest at my brother Wilfred's home, which was on McKay Street. Hilda kept urging me towrite to Mr. Muhammad. He understood what it was to be in the white man's prison, she said,because he, himself, had not long before gotten out of the federal prison at Milan, Michigan, where hehad served five years for evading the draft.
Hilda said that The Honorable Elijah Muhammad came to Detroit to reorganize his Temple NumberOne, which had become disorganized during his prison time; but he lived in Chicago, where he wasorganizing and building his Temple Number Two.
It was Hilda who said to me, "Would you like to hear how the white man came to this planet Earth?"And she told me that key lesson of Mr. Elijah Muhammad's teachings, which I later learned was thedemonology that every religion has, called "Yacub's History." Elijah Muhammad teaches his followersthat, first, the moon separated from the earth. Then, the first humans, Original Man, were a blackpeople. They founded the Holy City Mecca.
Among this black race were twenty-four wise scientists. One of the scientists, at odds with the rest,created the especially strong black tribe of Shabazz, from which America's Negroes, so-called,descend.
About sixty-six hundred years ago, when seventy per cent of the people were satisfied, and thirty percent were dissatisfied, among the dissatisfied was born a "Mr. Yacub." He was born to create trouble,to break the peace, and to kill. His head was unusually large. When he was four years old, he beganschool. At the age of eighteen, Yacub had finished all of his nation's colleges and universities. He was known as "the big-head scientist." Among many other things, he had learned how to breed racesscientifically.
This big-head scientist, Mr. Yacub, began preaching in the streets of Mecca, making such hosts ofconverts that the authorities, increasingly concerned, finally exiled him with 59, 999 followers to theisland of Patmos-described in the Bible as the island where John received the message contained inRevelations in the New Testament.
Though he was a black man, Mr. Yacub, embittered toward Allah now, decided, as revenge, to createupon the earth a devil race-a bleached-out, white race of people.
From his studies, the big-head scientist knew that black men contained two germs, black and brown.
He knew that the brown germ stayed dormant as, being the lighter of the two germs, it was theweaker. Mr. Yacub, to upset the law of nature, conceived the idea of employing what we today knowas the recessive genes structure, to separate from each other the two germs, black and brown, and thengrafting the brown germ to progressively lighter, weaker stages. The humans resulting, he knew,would be, as they became lighter, and weaker, progressively also more susceptible to wickedness andevil. And in this way finally he would achieve the intended bleached-out white race of devils.
He knew that it would take him several total color-change stages to get from black to white. Mr. Yacubbegan his work by setting up a eugenics law on the island of Patmos.
Among Mr. Yacub's 59, 999 all-black followers, every third or so child that was born would showsome trace of brown. As these became adult, only brown and brown, or black and brown, werepermitted to marry. As their children were born, Mr. Yacub's law dictated that, if a black child, theattending nurse, or midwife, should stick a needle into its brain and give the body to cremators. Themothers were told it had been an "angel baby," which had gone to heaven, to prepare a place for her.
But a brown child's mother was told to take very good care of it.
Others, assistants, were trained by Mr. Yacub to continue his objective. Mr. Yacub, when he died onthe island at the age of one hundred and fifty-two, had left laws, and rules, for them to follow.
According to the teachings of Mr. Elijah Muhammad, Mr. Yacub, except in his mind, never saw thebleached-out devil race that his procedures and laws and rules created.
A two-hundred-year span was needed to eliminate on the island of Patmos all of the black people-until only brown people remained.
The next two hundred years were needed to create from the brown race the red race-with no morebrowns left on the island.
In another two hundred years, from the red race was created the yellow race.
Two hundred years later-the white race had at last been created.
On the island of Patmos was nothing but these blond, pale-skinned, cold-blue-eyed devils-savages,nude and shameless; hairy, like animals, they walked on all fours and they lived in trees.
Six hundred more years passed before this race of people returned to the mainland, among the naturalblack people.
Mr. Elijah Muhammad teaches his followers that within six months' time, through telling lies that setthe black men fighting among each other, this devil race had turned what had been a peaceful heavenon earth into a hell torn by quarreling and fighting.
But finally the original black people recognized that their sudden troubles stemmed from this devilwhite race that Mr. Yacub had made. They rounded them up, put them in chains. With little aprons tocover their nakedness, this devil race was marched off across the Arabian desert to the caves ofEurope.
The lambskin and the cable-tow used in Masonry today are symbolic of how the nakedness of thewhite man was covered when he was chained and driven across the hot sand.
Mr. Elijah Muhammad further teaches that the white devil race in Europe's caves was savage. Theanimals tried to kill him. He climbed trees outside his cave, made clubs, trying to protect his familyfrom the wild beasts outside trying to get in.
When this devil race had spent two thousand years in the caves, Allah raised up Moses to civilizethem, and bring them out of the caves. It was written that this devil white race would rule the worldfor six thousand years.
The Books of Moses are missing. That's why it is not known that he was in the caves.
When Moses arrived, the first of these devils to accept his teachings, the first he led out, were those wecall today the Jews.
According to the teachings of this "Yacub's History," when the Bible says "Moses lifted up the serpentin the wilderness," that serpent is symbolic of the devil white race Moses lifted up out of the caves ofEurope, teaching them civilization.
It was written that after Yacub's bleached white race had ruled the world for six thousand years-downto our time-the black original race would give birth to one whose wisdom, knowledge, and powerwould be infinite.
It was written that some of the original black people should be brought as slaves to North America-to learn to better understand, at first hand, the white devil's true nature, in modem times.
Elijah Muhammad teaches that the greatest and mightiest God who appeared on the earth was MasterW. D. Fard. He came from the East to the West, appearing in North America at a time when thehistory and the prophecy that is written was coming to realization, as the non-white people all overthe world began to rise, and as the devil white civilization, condemned by Allah, was, through itsdevilish nature, destroying itself.
Master W. D. Fard was half black and half white. He was made in this way to enable him to beaccepted by the black people in America, and to lead them, while at the same time he was enabled tomove undiscovered among the white people, so that he could understand and judge the enemy of theblacks.
Master W. D. Fard, in 1931, posing as a seller of silks, met, in Detroit, Michigan, Elijah Muhammad.
Master W. D. Fard gave to Elijah Muhammad Allah's message, and Allah's divine guidance, to savethe Lost-Found Nation of Islam, the so-called Negroes, here in "this wilderness of North America."When my sister, Hilda, had finished telling me this "Yacub's History," she left. I don't know if I wasable to open my mouth and say good-bye.
I was to learn later that Elijah Muhammad's tales, like this one of "Yacub," infuriated the Muslims ofthe East. While at Mecca, I reminded them that it was their fault, since they themselves hadn't doneenough to make real Islam known in the West. Their silence left a vacuum into which any religiousfaker could step and mislead our people.
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