For New York Citys millions of readers of the downtown papers, it was, at that time, another one of the periodic Racial Unrest in Harlem stories. It was not played up, because of what had happened. But the police department, to be sure, pulled out and carefully studied the files on the Nation of Islam, and appraised us with new eyes. Most important, in Harlem, the worlds most heavily populated black ghetto, the Amsterdam News made the whole story headline news, and for the first time the black man, woman, and child in the streets was discussing those Muslims. CHAPTER 14

BLACK MUSLIMS In the spring of nineteen fifty-ninesome months before Brother Johnson Hintons case had awakened the Harlem black ghetto to usa Negro journalist, Louis Lomax, then living in New York, asked me one morning whether our Nation of Islam would cooperate in being filmed as a television documentary program for the Mike Wallace Show, which featured controversial subjects. I told Lomax that, naturally, anything like that would have to be referred to The Honorable Elijah Muhammad. And Lomax did fly to Chicago to consult Mr. Muhammad. After questioning Lomax, then cautioning him against some things he did not desire, Mr. Muhammad gave his consent. Cameramen began filming Nation of Islam scenes around our mosques in New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. Sound recordings were made of Mr. Muhammad and some ministers, including me, teaching black audiences the truths about the brainwashed black man and the devil white man.

At Boston University around the same time, C. Eric Lincoln, a Negro scholar then working for his doctorate, had selected for his thesis subject the Nation of Islam. Lincolns interest had been aroused the previous year when, teaching at Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia, he received from one of his Religion students a term paper whose introduction I can now quote from Lincolns book. It was the plainspoken convictions of one of Atlantas numerous young black collegians who often visited our local Temple Fifteen. The Christian religion is incompatible with the Negros aspirations for dignity and equality in America, the student had written. It has hindered where it might have helped; it has been evasive when it was morally bound to be forthright; it has separated believers on the basis of color, although it

Christian love is the white mans love for himself and for his race. For the man who is not white, Islam is the hope for justice and equality in the world we must build tomorrow. After some preliminary research showed Professor Lincoln what a subject he had hold of, he had been able to obtain several grants, and a publishers encouragement to expand his thesis into a book. On the wire of our relatively small Nation, these two big developments a television show, and a book about usnaturally were big news. Every Muslim happily anticipated that now, through the white mans powerful communications media, our brainwashed black brothers and sisters across the United States, and devils, too, were going to see, hear, and read Mr. Muhammads teachings which cut back and forth like a two-edged sword.