Messenger from Violet Drive

I would not say the white man is a descendant of Satan because that would be wrong. We didn't have a Satan before white man. So the white man is Satan himself. I'm a spirit. We're all wide blue. I'm a spirit. I'm a spirit. I'm a spirit. We cannot have freedom as long as the white man is ruling. What kind of freedom can we have if the white man is the president of this country and the Senate is the white and the governors of all states is white and the court is ruled by white? What can we say of us in the weight of freedom in a country like America's? My friend, it's easier to tell, white man heaven is a black man. The address is 2118 Violet Drive Phoenix, Arizona.

Primarily because he suffers from bronchial asthma, it's from this house rather than the official headquarters in Chicago that the honorable Elijah Muhammad, messenger of Allah to the so-called American Negroes, directs by telephone and courier the cult popularly known as the black Muslims, a movement which seeks to be totally separate from white America. I'm Buzz Anderson of KQED and I can assure you that when approaching Elijah Muhammad's house for the first time, one has a sense of being watched. Our purpose was to talk with the rarely interviewed Muslim leader about what the Muslims believe and to determine if possible why these beliefs have caused from 50 to 100,000 Negroes to join the Muslim organization. Apart from the star and crescent on the portrait of W.D. Farad, the Muslim Messiah, we could

have been in any prosperous middle-class living room in America. Elijah Muhammad's house is situated in a newly developed predominantly Negro neighborhood in Phoenix, New, clean and exceedingly neat. The neighborhood symbolizes many of the values so strongly emphasized by messenger Muhammad. At the same time, this is obviously not a Muslim neighborhood. Nearby are all the symbols of the white man, his schools, the white man's Christianity, forbidden food, the Muslims have a strict prohibition against eating pork, and the symbols of that vanity and love of pleasure which are frowned upon by the puritanically-oriented Muslims. In this rather typical suburban neighborhood dominated by Elijah Muhammad's seven bedroom house, I suddenly remembered the words of the Muslim song, The White Man's Heaven is the black man's hill. But on the hard streets of the Negro ghettos in America, far from the soft carpets of Elijah's

mansion, the words of Elijah the messenger are heard through the Muslim newspaper, through an increasing number of mosques, there are at least 37, and on more than 30 radio stations from New York to San Francisco. It is truth that makes us to know the white man as he is. It is not other than the truth, it's just the real truth. We never did know the real truth. So now we know the white man as he is. And if the white man said that I am teaching hatred, it is just to say I didn't want you to tell them who I was.

The story of Elijah Muhammad is one of the strangest chapters on that great American tragedy, which is the story of the black man in this country. However, as writer lecturer Lewis Lomax, author of the Negro Revolt, and a book on the black Muslims in America titled, When the Word is Given, points out. The black Muslims are something that had to happen in America. After all, when we the American Negro are the residual of 500 years of first slavery and then segregation. It was inevitable, I suppose, that, in fact, I know that one day the Negro would produce a man who would come along and say, my God is bigger than your God, and he can slay your God. And even if he can't slay your God, we will not bow down and serve your God. The same God didn't make the white man that made us. The white man made just 6,000 years ago and we was made unlimited. We don't know nothing about any birth record to us.

You can't find no history that will give you the birth of the black man. He has always been. Well, then since we have no beginning or no end for the black man, what is your doctrine on the origin of the Caucasian race? Caucasian is named given to the quality of the man. It means originally weak bone and stale face. The person have a stale color and his bones are weak and the color of Caucasian. But actually, he was made white. This was brought about 6,000 years ago. And a black man, he is the father of the Caucasian race. His name was Yaku.

He discovered in the join of the black man that there were two people. And instead in the join, he learned to divide the join. It took him 600 years to keep marrying this lighter one on to the lighter one until he produced. We say they pick up the whole thing. That is pale white. He did it by using the birth control law. Therefore, we have, to date, now, brown race, yellow race and red race and white race. And the black is the original, he is the father of them all. So Elijah argues that black is the basic color. And that from black, you can get all the others, but from none of the others combined, can you get black? Therefore, black is prime, therefore black is first.

And if it was first, it is good. And if it is good, it is God. And therefore, if it is God, the antithesis of God is evil, and the antithesis of black is white, therefore, the white man is a snake and a devil, and the black man is chosen in God's image. It is time for divine intervention, because we cannot deal with the American white man's army and his science of modern warfare, we can't compete with him. So therefore, if we are dissatisfied, we have to take our dissatisfaction to one who can deal with him effectively. And that's God. Elijah Muhammad has really come up with nothing new. If you take the first five books of the Old Testament and everywhere it says, Jew, you write Negro, you get Elijah Muhammad. My mission to my people here is life to them.

And what I bring them out of into this is death. And my mission is the last of the scientists are the truth that is to come to the world therefore the world is destroyed. You will not have no other messenger. I am the last one. And behind me come God himself. When you speak of the world being destroyed by fire, you mean the white man's world? That's right. That's right. It will burn. This is the only place though, not Europe, nowhere but right here in America. This place will be the one that the Bible refers to as a lake of fire, America. Not even South America.

It will be affected but it won't be burned. This place here will be set afire divinely by the exploding of atoms and it will cause all what we have here now as atmosphere we call it. It all will be fire, no atmosphere, no water, no where in there. All fire and it will reach to the height of twelve miles and that it will burn for three hundred and ninety years. And after three hundred and ninety years it will take a six hundred and ten years to cool off and start growing vegetation here again. And in all it will be a thousand years before ever that human life can live here where

you and I are now living. Then only those who have accepted Allah and Allah has accepted them will be saved. Now when does this fire come? That's like asked to me when is the day of judgment. That's the end brother or not, please, that's known only to Allah. This principle of highly selective destruction is nothing new in theology. Remember Sodom and Gomorrah, mindful of impending destruction, the young elite of the Muslim movement known as the food of Islam, carry the message of separation, a pride and of self help to the American Negro. This work of attempted conversion is known as fishing. When a man say he don't believe in Islam that's a man that don't believe in God.

And a man say I will not be a Muslim, it's a man that is telling the world I will not submit to the will of God but they don't know that. They don't even know, take time to ask you what they name me, they don't know and don't ask for the meaning. So we have here 98% of our people, they even have not even never heard of Islam. O Allah, guide me among those who tarthest God in the world, and preserve me among those

who tarthest preserve me, and defend me among those who tarthest be friendly, bless me with forgiveness. describe every man and everyone who's apparition. You do not forgive like this, it's for a man. Let them deserve to be so precise, and I bear witness that more honor is that I shall have a cross. The Negro Revolt, I make the comment that whenever you find the Negro was not schizoa, he's crazy. You have to kind of be buggy, to be black and be sane in America.

And I think the great thing about Elijah, about eating at Elijah's table is that there's a sort of bug in it. This is what America has done to us, this is what America has made us. The James Baldwin soul, poignantly and correctly and eloquently points out. When you sit at Elijah's table, you are sitting at America's table. Elijah is what America made him. You know, we only eat once a day, and we can really go some because we have 24 hours between the meals. Are there five required prayers or seven? Well, they are five actually required. As Elijah Muhammad has come along and he's taken the traditional Islamic faith as a sort of springboard.

And he used the theological trappings of traditional Islam. But around these trappings, he, or to use better syntax, upon these trappings, he superimposed the experience of the American Negro. Do you urge your followers to vote? I can't urge my followers to vote for a change of the white man's way of life. And the way of his government, that's his. And there is no need for me to tell you to vote for Mr. Jones or Mr. Johnson. I can't tell you that either one will give to you what you want. You want to be equal with Mr. Johnson or Mr. Jones. And that can't be done.

And why should I tell you to vote that he will give you this because he can't do it? There is no white man in America today can go to Washington and give the so-called American Negro equal rights. He can't do it. He can promise it, but he has his own people to contend with. Equal rights will mean giving some money, too. You can't be equal by living on the white man's side. This is his country. Why should you be deceived by a president or a candidate for a president? Saying he will give you equal rights when you can't get no equal rights. No full of equal rights is here for you unless they are going to do this.

I give to you some portion of the country and give to you the rights to set up your own government for yourself and your own people since the nature you are different. Well, violence or force be a necessary means to say gain this land and these civil rights. No politician or no leader of our people speaking of arming our people with guns to get justice from the white man in America would be successful. And he is ignorant to do such thing and he is only causing the murder of his own unarmed and ignorant people. If you are going to depend on arms, you have to get arms superior to your enemies arms equal.

And then you have to be equally trained or better trained how to use that arm and how to take advantage of the enemy own land seeing it now. And therefore you don't have that. So why should I say to you as a leader, get your shot fun, get your rifle and go out there and kill white man? I would be telling you to commit suicide. This is the December 20th 1963 issue of Muhammad Speaks published every two weeks in Chicago. On page three this item appeared. It's a report that Elijah Muhammad from his home in Phoenix telephone the newspaper ordering that a statement be placed on page one. The report goes on to say that the paper had already gone to press and that the statement could not be published until two weeks later in the next edition. The statement reads, we with the world are very shocked at the assassination of our president.

Meanwhile a widely publicized statement about the assassination had been made by Malcolm X then chief public spokesman for the Muslim. The honorable Elijah Muhammad responded by suspending Malcolm and publishing this statement. When minister Malcolm addressed the public and mentioned the president's death he did not speak for Muslims. He was speaking for himself and not for Muslims in general. He has been suspended from public speaking for the time being. The nation still mourns the loss of our president. Malcolm's statement was that the assassination was a case of the chickens coming home to ruse. Malcolm has since left the Muslim organization and has established his own organization in Harlem. Malcolm actually was discovered long before he was suspended. I only suspended for a time. I only tried him because I knew that he was not going to accept it and I said just keep quiet for 90 days. And he would not do it and I knew he would not do it because he felt that he would be losing his prestige.

Malcolm has claimed that many of your followers have left and chosen to follow him and his organization. That's no truth at all. Malcolm has left his own organization and teachings. And in fact about it we don't see where that we have missed any of our followers by Malcolm's deviation. In fact about it has increased our followers. We have more followers today than we had when Malcolm was with us. And we have more unity than when Malcolm was with us. I think dissension took place within the Muslim movement and I think Malcolm was being forced out. Malcolm had become the most articulate spokesman. After all the Muslims have been around since 1930, nobody heard about him until of course Malcolm X got out of jail. And then of course the Muslims broke. So the Muslims and Malcolm X became one and the same thing.

At the deviation of Malcolm, I'm not surprised, but that they cannot yet say that I'm not the messenger of Allah. They can't take that away from me. Although the ultimate appeal may be to Allah, there is a great deal of very practical capitalistic energy being directed toward the solution of everyday economic problems. For example, Elijah Muhammad has always encouraged the development of Muslim business enterprises and in the August 28th edition of Muhammad Speaks, he announced a three year economic program and plans for the development of a black national bank. We should try to save if it's nothing but a nickel a day in something like a national saving to help fight poverty and want among us. And in so dying, we would ease a lot of suffering that we are now undergoing if we just had a little of our earnings put up for that pipe.

We have no rights to go around and fight the white man to move inside neighbors. We should go to wait and take that money and buy areas for our son, where he is not taking over for his own resident, buy it from him if he will sell it to us. And if he don't sell it to us then it is time to take that money and try to buy your area somewhere else. On the back of each issue of Muhammad Speaks, you will find this statement. We want our people in America whose parents or grandparents were descendants from slaves to be allowed to establish a separate state or territory of their own, either on this continent or elsewhere. We believe that our former slave masters are obligated to provide such land and that the area must be fertile and men really rich.

We believe that our former slave masters are obligated to maintain and supply our needs in this separate territory for the next 20 to 25 years until we are able to produce and supply our own needs. Is this an idea that will attract more and more American Negroes or is it another cultist pie in the sky notion? At a press conference, I had occasion to talk with Congressman Adam Clayton Powell about the Muslim. I don't agree with him. Never have. But I don't consider him to be dangerous. In my district, for instance, in Harlem, we have got more than 1,000 Muslims. Well, then the comparative strength in Harlem is very little in. Oh, very little. Very little. And there they had most brilliant and most fluent leader, Malcolm X. Well, no, since Malcolm split with Elijah Muhammad, what is his acceptance in Harlem? How do people feel about America? They're waiting for him to come back. For what reason?

Well, a lot of people want to talk to him. They want to know why after all these years of proclaiming one philosophy, he has suddenly shifted now into a different philosophy. And a lot of his young men, the fruit of Islam group, they had become disillusioned with him and with the other movement, the Black Muslim movement, because they only went into the Black Muslim movement many of them because of Malcolm X. And things are rather chaotic. It is my own prediction that now that Malcolm is out of the movement, that they will return soon to the oblivion from which they came. I attended a Muslim rally in New York City at the Orban Borough. And they had about some 5,000 Negroes jam-packed into this place. And Elijah, of course, was to speak. But before Elijah spoke, they brought on his son, Ahba Muhammad, who is, of course, studying at Al Azaz University in Cairo. And Ahba walked on to the stage of the Orban in the formal dress of an upper-class Muslim, which meant he was draped in a white sheet with the white turban around his head.

And an old Negro woman from Mississippi sitting behind me said, my God, he looks just like the two-clucks cland in me. The point is, no white man or a black man for that matter draped in a white sheet will ever sell the American Negro anything. The real power of the Muslims does not lie in their numerical strength, but in the fact that they are able to tap a number of deep and powerful currents, which are a consequence of the Negro's experience of segregation in America. One, the Muslims exploit the idea of separation, which to some Negroes seems to be the only way out. And two, the Muslims are not only able to give voice to the anger and hatred felt by some Negroes, they promise retribution against the white man as well. The white man is the by nature, not the black man, and the black man by nature is not the white man, and you can't make no brotherhood there. There's nothing really new about the black Muslims.

The only new thing is that at long last the American Negro has produced somebody, let's face it, a theological guest thought, which allows them to say the same things about white people, which white people have been saying about Negroes and non-white people, all of their lives. So called Negro, open up your eyes, black man everywhere is on the rise, yes, kick the white man out of Asia, and he's going fast out of Africa with every ounce of strength and breath. His cry is give us liberty, or give us death, the whole black world has the rise on you to see what the so-called Negro is going on.