Os Cinco Porcento - Michael Muhammad Knight - Planejamento Estratégico (2024)

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THE FIVE PERCENTERSprelims.qxd 2/27/2007 10:59 AM Page iprelims.qxd 2/27/2007 10:59 AM Page iiTHE FIVE PERCENTERSMichael Muhammad Knightprelims.qxd 2/27/2007 10:59 AM Page iiiTHE FIVE PERCENTERSA Oneworld BookPublished by Oneworld Publications 2007Copyright © Michael Muhammad Knight 2007All rights reservedCopyright under Berne ConventionACIP record for this title is availableFrom the British LibraryISBN-13: 978–1–85168–513–4Typeset by Jayvee, Trivandrum, IndiaCover design by TransmissionPrinted and bound by XXXOneworld Publications185 Banbury RoadOxford OX2 7AREnglandwww.oneworld-publications.comLearn more about Oneworld. Join our mailing list to find out about our latest titles and special offers at:www.oneworld-publications.comprelims.qxd 2/27/2007 10:59 AM Page ivContentsAcknowledgements viList of Plates viiiIntroduction xi1 Mecca 12 Desert Fathers 93 Clarence and Malcolm 324 The Blood Brothers 425 Allah 496 The Burning Mosque 657 Matteawan 748 Allah and the Mayor 929 Swarms of Devils 11710 The Lives of Nations 13011 Warrior Stripes 14212 Belly of the Beast 16013 Song of the Gods 17714 The Builders Build 18715 Mothers of Civilization 20816 The Azreal Question 22617 The Road to Cream City 23718 Show and Prove 258Appendix of Names 271Notes 274Index 297prelims.qxd 2/27/2007 10:59 AM Page vAcknowledgementsThis work would not have been possible without the trust and cooperationof the Nation of Gods and Earths. At every parliament I encountered FivePercenters that helped my understanding; though I did not catch every per-son’s name, and there would be too many to list here, I value the kindness,respect and hospitality shown to me by this community as a whole. In particu-lar I must extend peace to Allah B, Born Justice Allah, Um Allah, Abu Shahid,First Born ABG, Gykee Mathematics Allah, Beloved Allah, Ja’mella God Allah,Infinite Al’Jaa’Maar-U-Allah, I Majestic Allah, C’BS ALife Allah, Sha-KingCehum Allah, Jura Shaheed Allah, Supreme Understanding Allah, Prince ACuba, the ciphers of New York, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Milwaukee, and Godsin the Injustice (New York State Department of Corrections). After the completion of this book, I was saddened to learn of the passing ofFirst Born Al-Jamel. A beloved elder of the community, Al-Jamel, was kind,thoughtful and generous with his knowledge. Rest in peace.Peace to Azreal for his teaching, friendship and name; to Intelligent TarrefAllah, for providing my introduction to the Nation; to Allah Supreme God forhis extensive time and correspondence. Deep gratitude is also extended to theNGE’s video archivist, Rasheen Universal Allah, and Cee Allah at the AllahSchool in Mecca for their help and generosity. Peace to Akbar Muhammad,international representative for the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, forhis assistance.Peace to the RZA, Raekwon and Sadat X for taking the time to share theirperspectives. It was my pleasure and honor to see excerpts from this workincluded with Lord Jamar’s 5% Album; peace and appreciation to Jamar,Chuck Wilson and Jesse Stone at Babygrande Records.I am deeply grateful to Barry Gottehrer, who not only shared his memoriesbut also provided his personal archive relating to the Gods and Earths. TedSwedenburg also supplied his collection of NGE materials and court docu-ments. For their time, assistance, advice and encouragement I thank WillieenJowers, Sid Davidoff, Omar Abdul-Malik, Muhammed Al-Ahari El, PaulGreenhouse, Thomas Cowles, Omid Safi, Yusuf Nuruddin, Anne Campbell,Karl Evanzz, Asra Nomani and Mary Burke at New York.Much appreciation for Novin Doostdar, Michael Harpley, Kate Smith,viprelims.qxd 2/27/2007 10:59 AM Page viMichael Phillips and everyone at Oneworld Publications. Peace to BasimUsmani for the title “Burning Mosque.” Salams and thanks to AminahMcCloud, who reviewed this manuscript.There is not space here to allow a proper display of gratitude for Laury Sil-vers, who shared her expertise, read the manuscript at various stages of itsdevelopment and offered tireless friendship when I could talk about nothingbut Five Percenters.Finally, love and appreciation to my mother, who has put up with too muchto not have every book dedicated to her.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS viiprelims.qxd 2/27/2007 10:59 AM Page viiList of PlatesPlate 1. Allah “building” at first Universal Parliament. Mount Morris Park,April 30, 1967. From left to right: far left, holding folded jacket under leftarm: Ar-Rahiem, who was nicknamed “Ezekiel” for his interest in Ezekiel3:18. In all black, with black hat: Karriem/Black Messiah. To his left, in jacketwith hands folded in front of him: Ebeka. Left of Ebeka: Sha Sha. In whitejacket and white shirt, hand on hip: Gykee’s younger brother Sincere. BehindSincere in distance, wearing black hat, buttoned black sweater and collaredshirt: Universal Shaamgaudd.Plate 2. Allah with Five Percenters on Seventh Avenue. The youths in match-ing “crowns” are Barkim, one of the earliest white Five Percenters, and ShaSha. In front of Barkim are his sister Mecca and younger brother Dihoo.Behind Barkim is Kiheem. Between Sha Sha and Allah, with his back to thecamera stands Ra’jab, Allah’s “Supreme Investigator.”Plate 3. Front row: Al-Jabbar/Prince, Justice, Uhura, Obey. Back row: Bahar,Yamuse.Plate 4. Justice, Allah and “Young Akbar” at Mount Morris Park.Plate 5. Allah in front row at parliament. To his left sit Mecca and Guvasiafrom the First Born Earths. The child in the center is Harmeen, son ofHasheem. Standing with their backs to the camera are Uhura and Karriem/Black Messiah.Plate 6. Allah and Barry Gottehrer outside the Glamour Inn.Plate 7. Allah, Makeba, Barry Gottehrer with Abu Shahid’s son “LittleShahid,” Omala, unknown.Plate 8. Allah in NOI: young Muslim with Muhammad Speaks newspaper,Harlem, early 1960s. Behind him stands Clarence 13X.Plate 9. Medina Gods at the street academy: Gykee, Hasheem, Akim andWaleak/Knowledge God, 1967.Plate 10. Uhura, Allah and Karriem/Black Messiah.viiiprelims.qxd 2/27/2007 10:59 AM Page viiiPlate 11. Mayor John V. Lindsay and Allah on the cover of New York, April22, 1968.Plate 12. Earths in the 1960s.Plate 13. Justice and Allah with a young Earth at the street academy.Plate 14. Allah, “the Father.”Plate 15. Five Percenter folk art, ca. 1980, incorporating Allah’s 1965mugshot, the 1st degree from the Supreme Wisdom Lessons’ Student Enroll-ment (1–10) and traditional Islamic art.Plate 16. Children performing at the first Show and Prove, 1971.Plate 17. Allah School in Mecca, 1980s.Plate 18. Young God, 1980s. Photo by Jamel Shabazz.Plate 19. The Universal Flag.LIST OF PLATES ixprelims.qxd 2/27/2007 10:59 AM Page ixprelims.qxd 2/27/2007 10:59 AM Page xIntroductionThe first time I heard of the Five Percenters was during a trip to Pakistan,where I studied Islam at Faisal Mosque in Islamabad. I was joined there bya dear friend, a Jamaican-American convert who had volunteered back homein Rochester, New York as a Muslim chaplain in juvenile detention centers.One evening, while walking through the F-10 Markaz, he told me of hisencounters with black teenagers who believed that they were gods.According to my friend, they based their beliefs on the memorization andapplication of astronomical data, such as the circumference of the earth andthe earth’s distance from the sun. These young men even considered them-selves to be suns, and referred to their girlfriends as earths. My friend told methat this group—known alternately as the Five Percent Nation, or Nation ofGods and Earths—had originated as a subsect of the Nation of Islam.I already knew about the Nation; like many American Muslim converts, myintroduction to Islam was Malcolm X, who joined the Nation while in prisonin the 1940s and later rose to fame as its nationalminister. But that night inIslamabad, I was not ready to look seriously at the Nation of Islam or any groupthat sprang from it, less for my whiteness than my Sunni orthodoxy. As a Mus-lim it was hard for me to look at the Nation as a tradition that stood on its own;at first glance, it appeared to be only a corrupt deviation of my faith.The Nation of Islam was founded by a man known by over fifty names, mostcommonly W. D. Fard, who arrived in Detroit on July 4, 1930. He walkedthrough the most impoverished black ghettos of post-depression Detroit,claiming that he had come from Mecca to rescue his “uncle,” the black man,from the devil’s rule. He did as good a job as any of explaining the presence ofevil and injustice in Detroit, or Chicago, or New York or the deep south: thedevil was the white man.Fard taught that there was no creator god in the heavens; the god of Abra-hamic tradition was only an unseen “mystery god” used by the devil to oppressand manipulate the masses. Rather than search for something that did notexist, preached Fard, the black man should recognize himself as the only trueand living God. After a series of run-ins with the police, in 1934 Fard disap-peared. A resulting power struggle within the Nation of Islam was won by hischief minister, Elijah Muhammad, who announced that Fard had revealedxiprelims.qxd 2/27/2007 10:59 AM Page xihimself to be Allah. Within the Nation’s theology, the word took on a newmeaning. As all black men were gods and there was no phantom “mystery god”in the clouds, Muhammad used the title “Allah” to designate Fard as the bestknower among his people. The Nation would believe in a succession of Allahs,all of them mortal men. Fard was the last and greatest Allah, having arrived onthe brink of Armageddon to destroy the devil. Though Fard had denouncedthe worship of mystery gods, in his absence he would become one, while ElijahMuhammad’s own status was elevated as the Messenger of Allah.The Nation maintained its teachings through a series of transcribed dia-logues between Fard and Elijah Muhammad, in which Fard, the teacher, askedquestions of doctrine and his student provided the answers. These exam-styleconversations, known as the Supreme Wisdom Lessons, became the Nation’sessential scripture. As access was limited only to registered members of theNation, mastery of these guarded lessons functioned as a process of initiationwithin the mosque.By the summer of 1964, the Supreme Wisdom had escaped Elijah Muham-mad’s mosques, as exiled or attritioned Nation members began sharing themon the streets. The reasons for members’ departures were varied; some couldnot handle the Nation’s strict behavioral guidelines, while others grew wearyof the intense social and financial pressures that came with membership. InChicago, many left the Nation due to allegations of Muhammad’s infidelity. InNew York, Muslims at Mosque No.7 were torn between their belief in thelessons and their respect for Malcolm X, who left the Nation amid bitter political conflicts and later converted to Sunni Islam.Many former members of the Nation continued their religious lives outsidethe mosque, maintaining study of the Supreme Wisdom Lessons and eventeaching them to non-Muslims, often teenagers and adolescents. Access to thetext was no longer reliant on adherence to the Nation’s dress codes, puritani-cal rules of conduct, Muhammad Speaks sales quotas and hierarchical chains ofcommand. The truths of the lessons—that the black man was God, the whiteman Satan—were now provided a more direct line to frustrated black youth inAmerica’s major cities.In Harlem, this amorphous underground gave rise to two notable move-ments: the Blood Brothers and the Five Percenters. The Blood Brothersachieved notoriety as outcasted Nation Muslims that trained local teenagers asfoot soldiers in an anti-white street army. One rumor connected the BloodBrothers to Malcolm X, who was asked about the group while in Africa. Therewas little proof, however, that the Blood Brothers even existed as an actualorganization, and many view them as at least semi-fictitious; others see theBlood Brothers as a precursor to the Five Percenters.xii THE FIVE PERCENTERSprelims.qxd 2/27/2007 10:59 AM Page xiiThe Five Percenter movement began with Clarence 13X Smith, who left theNation of Islam in 1963 and began teaching the Supreme Wisdom Lessons toHarlem youth. Outside of the mosque, he declared himself to be Allah, an opensubversion against W. D. Fard and Elijah Muhammad. Newspaper reportersand city judges, unfamiliar with the word as Smith understood it, would mis-take his claim for a psychotic delusion of grandeur.Early in his career, Allah was often portrayed as a gang leader threateningracial violence. After an incarceration of nearly two years, during which hisname was added to J. Edgar Hoover’s Security Index, he reemerged as a legiti-mate community leader whose work with Mayor John Lindsay won him pop-ular acclaim. In the aftermath of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, Allahwas widely credited with helping to curb riots in New York while other citiesburned to the ground. In another radical departure from the Nation of Islam,Allah stated that he was “neither pro-black, nor anti-white” and even allowedwhites to become Five Percenters.Allah tried to make peace but still had enemies among Harlem’s Muslims,militants and hustlers. Knowing that bad things were on the way, he tried toprepare the youth that adored him for a time when he would not be there. Hetold his Five Percenters that if they ever wanted to see him, all they had to dowas come together, for they were all Allah. He also said that he did not wantanyone crying over his death; if he could, he promised, he would slap them forit. On June 13, 1969 Allah was gunned down while on the way to see hisestranged wife Dora. The assassination, which remains unsolved, devastatedthe Five Percenters. Clarence had been their Allah, but he was also somethingeven greater, a father for fatherless young gods. Without him, some fell hard.Others walked away from the movement.The ones that held on continued to teach, and remnants of the communitycould be found in housing projects throughout New York. Before long, a newgeneration of teens was spreading the “knowledge of self,” teaching theirfriends the true nature of the black man. The lessons also spread in city jails andupstate prisons; a state commission would mention Five Percenters as possiblekey players during the 1971 inmate uprising at Attica. Five Percenters that leftNew York State took the message with them, and the movement began todevelop branches throughout the country, growing to a level that perhapsAllah himself had never dreamed.Harlem remained the heart of the culture, the Five Percenters’ Mecca. In the1970s and ’80s, Allah’s movement became a major influence in another NewYork phenomenon: hip-hop. The Five Percenters’ unique terminology andlanguage, having already entered into street slang, impacted an art form thatwould in turn be consumed by millions. Artists such as Nas, Busta Rhymes,INTRODUCTION xiiiprelims.qxd 2/27/2007 10:59 AM Page xiiiand the Wu-Tang Clan brought the culture to mainstream America, and FivePercenters have now entered popular consciousness. References can even befound in cartoons: in one episode of the nationally syndicated comic stripBoondocks, Caesar salutes Huey with the Five Percenter greeting of “Peace,God!”Though Five Percenters reject association with the religion of Islam, I cameto see them as a critically underdocumented chapter in the story of Islam inAmerica. To me, W. D. Fard represented the essence of that story; as an immi-grant who brought Islam to African-Americans, he bridged the country’s twoprimary Islamic experiences. Hoping to better comprehend Fard’s life andlegacy, I sought the perspective of every group influenced by his teachings. Ibegancorresponding with a Five Percenter named Intelligent Tarref Allah,who suggested that I attend the community’s upcoming convention, the“Show and Prove” in Harlem. Given the media’s common depiction of FivePercenters as a gang of violent racists, at first I was cautious to approach them;but it did not take long to realize that my fears had been misguided. At theShow and Prove, I was embraced warmly and invited to study further, evenreceiving the same “kindness and sincere hospitality” that Malcolm X haddescribed during his pilgrimage to Mecca. Through the Five Percenters, Ibecame able to engage Fard on a personal level that was previously unavailable,perhaps even finding a place for myself within lessons that were not meant for me.Not surprisingly, the proper place for a white Five Percenter was importantto my understanding; however, my main interest in continuing to study thisculture was its rich history. Most of us are used to engaging only belief systemsthat are already centuries old; we don’t expect to have anything close to directcontact with historically significant figures. However, I first came to the FivePercenters just months prior to their fortieth anniversary, and it was still possible to walk with those that walked with Allah. Comparing this commu-nity to my own Islamic background, I can say that I spoke with the Five Percenter equivalents of Abu Bakr, Khadija and the honored sahaba. As Iabsorbed stories from elders, the Five Percenter tradition became real to me,no less real or valid than the Islam that I had practiced, and its own sacred history proved just as compelling.I write this just ten days from attending my third Show and Prove. As theFive Percenters have spread out geographically, the Show and Prove has takenthe role of an annual family reunion, but stays true to its original purpose.Scheduled every June on or near the date of Allah’s assassination, the Gods andEarths come together to “show and prove” as the lessons say, that “Allah isGod. Always has been, always will be.” xiv THE FIVE PERCENTERSprelims.qxd 2/27/2007 10:59 AM Page xivFor a time in New York, there might have been a man or group of men thatcould boast that he/they killed Allah, unaware that when Allah rolled the diceon his truth against a gun, his truth would win. Whoever pulled the trigger onClarence Smith is unknown and possibly dead himself; but Allah is alive andcannot die.INTRODUCTION xvprelims.qxd 2/27/2007 10:59 AM Page xvprelims.qxd 2/27/2007 10:59 AM Page xvi1MeccaHarlem! The Mecca of the New Negro! My God!Carl Van VechtenThere is gold in New York.Elijah MuhammadThe holy places were quiet as I rolled into Harlem early Sunday morning, thesidewalks empty and pull-down iron gates still covering the storefronts.My Brand Nubian tape offered the soundtrack, a clip of a Louis Farrakhanspeech set to a looped groove from Marvin Gaye’s “T is for Trouble:”the poor have been made into slavesby those who teach liesthey don’t teach the lawof cause and effectthey make the people believe when they see it rainthat a spook is producing itbut the rain is realhow then can the cause be unreal?Elijah said that the ingredients needed to change the weather could be found atany five-and-dime store. Malcolm used to pester him to reveal the ingredients,but the Messenger always refused.“The ingredients Malcolm sought in the five-and-dime store,” writes AmirFatir, “were within him.”the bloodsuckers of the poor make you thinkthat God is some “Mystery God”well,the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said to usthat there is five percentwho are the Poor Righteous Teacherswho don’t believe the teaching of lies1ch1.qxd 2/24/2007 2:16 PM Page 1of the ten percentbut this five percent are all-wise and knowwho the true and living God isand they teach that the true and living God is the son of manthe supreme beingthe black man of AsiaThe Honorable Minister Farrakhan went on to explain how the Ten Percent—the rich, the bloodsuckers of the poor, the slavemakers of the poor—have controlover the masses, the Eighty-Five Percent, and turn them against the PoorRighteous Teachers. This is how they’ve been able to kill the prophets, kill theircommunities ... I parked and walked up Lenox Avenue, Malcolm X Boulevard. On my jacketI wore a pin of a man’s face with the word “ALLAH” underneath. The man onthe pin did not look deliberately holy in any way, no turban or jewel-encrustedfez or even a beard, just a regular middle-aged black man that you could findanywhere with a regular jacket and a shirt with a collar. The pin was my pass-port, showing that I had traveled among the circles that understood. Some-times it brought me into conversations that normally wouldn’t find me. Thismorning I was stopped by a black man who wore a big gold ring bearing a starand crescent—excuse me, I just noticed that you had that pin on, do you knowwho that is?“This is the Father,” I told him. “This is Allah.”“I know about him,” he said. “I built through all of that. It was just interest-ing, you know, to see a Caucasian with that on. So you’ve spent time with theGods?”“I go to parliaments.”“And they’re okay with you?”“They’ve been good to me.”“Who’d you build with over there?”“I’ve built with Abu Shahid, First Born ABG, Gykee, Allah B, Um Allah and Ja’mella, and I got my Supreme Alphabets and Mathematics from Azreal—”“You ever read Sacred Drift?”“By Peter Lamborn Wilson?”“Yes, but his name wasn’t really Peter Lamborn Wilson. That was his penname. His real name was Hakim Bey.”“Yeah, I’ve read it.”“I’m a Moor,” he explained, a Muslim in the line of Noble Drew Ali. Heasked about my ethnic heritage. Irish, I told him. Then he asked if I knew the2 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch1.qxd 2/24/2007 2:16 PM Page 2real story of St. Patrick. “The serpents were really Moors,” he said. “I don’t celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, but I commemorate it.”I exchanged peace with the Moor and kept walking. Approaching the cornerof 116th Street, I spotted the red-brick mosque with bright yellow trim and agiant green bulb of a dome on top. White curtains in the windows veiled theinside but the strenght of this place, its heroes and history seeped through thebrick and into the street. Malcolm X was once minister here, succeeded byLouis Farrakhan, and some stories have the Father teaching judo in the base-ment, back when his name was Clarence 13X.In those days there was no green dome, which now sits where there was oncea fourth floor. After Malcolm’s assassination the place was bombed out from thetop down, with falling chunks of wall crushing fire engines. The dome came aspart of a new beginning. During Farrakhan’s time it was covered with gold andtopped with a crescent, and then Elijah’s son took over and threw Farrakhan outand changed everything. Elijah’s son took off the crescent and turned the domegreen. Now this old Temple No.7 is a Sunni mosque, Masjid Malcolm Shabazz.Memorial Day, 1965, the Father stood on this corner with a cluster ofHarlem youths and tried to grasp all that had gone wrong. Malcolm was deadand the temple lay in ruins. The Father still had a slug lodged in his own chest.He also had these kids, these “Five Percenters” and a creed that Tamar Jacobysays “combined a bit of Islam with a ganglike esprit de corps.”1 A police officertold them to move on. Forty years later, I followed in Allah’s footsteps to Sev-enth Avenue and made my way up the 120 series of streets, arriving at the leanwhite tower of the Hotel Theresa.When Harlem was the black Mecca, this might have been its Kaaba, holdingin its years the likes of Dizzy Gillepsie, Louis Armstrong, Joe Louis, Nat KingCole, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and Ray Charles. This was where Malcolm X, Cassius Clay and Sam Cooke became friends. Malcolm and Cassius tried to make a Muslim out of Sam; when he died out in California,Nation of Islam literature wasfound in his hotel room. In 1960, the same yearthat John F. Kennedy addressed a campaign rally in front of the Theresa, FidelCastro took a room here. When Kruschev came to visit, Elijah’s Muslimsmarched outside with signs reading, “there is no god but Allah” so he could goback to Russia and tell his people how America treated the black man.It was on this sidewalk that pedestrians heard orations from Malcolm,Charles Kenyatta and James “Pork Chop” Davis-Foreman, who’d preach onhis stepladder from the 1940s, when he followed Marcus Garvey, all the way tohis death in 1987. And on Memorial Day, 1965, this was where the policeshowed up again and took the Father away, so I wondered why there wasn’t aplaque or anything to commemorate it—Adam Clayton Powell had his ownMECCA 3ch1.qxd 2/24/2007 2:16 PM Page 3building across the street and even a statue in upward stride with his coat flowing behind him like a cape. The Theresa isn’t a hotel anymore, the famousmarquee is gone and down in front there’s a White Castle. All I could do wasstand there for a solemn moment and move along.I passed the Masonic lodge to the next block and spotted the hand-paintedemblem of a star-and-crescent and large 7 within an eight-pointed sun, mark-ing the one-story Allah School in Mecca—headquarters of the Five Percenters,Nation of Gods and Earths. They used to call it Allah’s Street Academy, but theplace has been through more than name changes: legal wars with the city,repeated arson and Gods with good hearts who couldn’t shake the demons. Thesurrounding sidewalk bears witness to its history, with old wet-cement signa-tures of Gods who have since gone warra al-shams, behind the sun. Prince, readone square. In the window sat an old framed photograph of the Father with hisbest friend, Old Man Justice. As I went in I saw a velvet oil painting of Allah inhis collared shirt and jacket, and I remembered an old God telling me that theFather was darker than in those portraits—he was what they called a “knowl-edge seed” of deep black complexion; when he got a lot of sun his skin wouldalmost turn purple and his features seemed to disappear. After the MemorialDay arrest, he’d go nearly two years without sun. Next to his portrait hung aproclamation from the City of New York, dated June 13, 2004, honoring theFive Percenters for their emphasis on strong families and education, along withcontributions to the “tremendously rich history in the Harlem community.”On the other wall hung a black and white photo of Malcolm X addressing astreet rally with his trademark damning finger-point, and it almost looks likehe’s pointing at the bar across the street, the Wellworth where the Father wouldstare down a gunman who hoped to shoot his friend West Indian. I took theback door and sat in a chair outside with my tall can of sweet tea. I could see thatwhere I sat used to be part of the building, destroyed during one of the arsons.It looked like the Five Percenters had started renovations—measuring dimen-sions, raking debris out of the dirt, getting ready to add on again. An old God, thin and wiry and wearing a tassled skullcap with the wordALLAH across the front, stepped out and looked at me.“Is that beer?” “No, no, it’s sweet tea.” Relieved that I wasn’t disrespecting the School, theGod introduced himself as Wise Jamel and told me about his history—he camefrom the First Resurrection back in 1964, he was with the Blood Brothers andthen the Suns of Almighty God Allah, who then became the Five Percenters.He received his knowledge from none other than the famous Black Messiah. I still had some time before the parliament, so I walked up to the corner of127th and Malcolm X Boulevard and bought a bean pie from the Muslims.4 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch1.qxd 2/24/2007 2:16 PM Page 4Walked past the current Masjid Muhammad #7 with its bowtie-wearing Fruitof Islam out in front. One of them noticed my pin of the Father, so I greetedhim with “peace” and received the same in reply. I crossed over to Seventh andate my bean pie on a playground at the St. Nicholas projects.On the corner of 127th and Eighth I stopped and listened to a gray-beardedblack streetcorner-preacher in suit and tie and cowboy hat, shouting at the topof his voice in the tradition of Pork Chop:“I COULDN’T SAVE MY MOTHER, I COULDN’T SAVE NOBODY! GODPUT ME ON THIS CORNER—”I headed back down toward the Harriet Tubman School, where the Five Percenters had been holding parliaments since Mayor John Lindsay gave themauthorization nearly forty years before. With my blue eyes I stick out like a sore thumb at parliaments, which is usu-ally a good thing because Gods love to share knowledge and speak for theirNation. Some Gods are naturally suspicious, less for my being white than beinga writer; they have been screwed enough times in arenas of public opinion.I keep waiting for some justification of what I’ve heard and read: securitythreat, hate group, racists, dope dealers, cop killers, snipers, militant rappers, rad-ical black terrorists—but it never comes. Gods introduce themselves and buildwith me a little, just to see what I know and make sure I’m coming from a goodplace. They’re quick to get the important issues out of the way. You know we’renot a gang, right? And you know that we’re not Muslims? And we’re neitherpro-black, nor anti-white?One such exchange turned into a minor event, with a circle of Gods sur-rounding us on the sidewalk in front of the Harriet Tubman. The God withwhom I had been building reached into his bag, pulled out a xeroxed zine andflipped through the pages to find a photograph of the Father standing next to awhite man. “You see this man?” he asked. “This was Barry Gottehrer, heworked for the mayor, he was the mayor’s man. Look at his face, he doesn’thate the Father! He’s not looking at the Father like the Father is anti-white!” Hewas right. Forty years later, Mr. Gottehrer was still firmly supporting the Five Percenters and had come to their defense on more than one occasion. “Webelieve in teaching all human families of the planet earth,” said the God. “That’s peace,” I told him.“Did you tell him that we’re not anti-white?” asked a middle-aged God in aKangol hat.“That was the first thing I told him.” By the end of the dialogue, we wereexchanging phone numbers. The Five Percenters have always been respectfulMECCA 5ch1.qxd 2/24/2007 2:16 PM Page 5to me, and the ones that I found most gracious were usually older Gods thatactually knew the Father, which should say something. After going through the security God at the door I walked past the varioustables peddling Five Percenter newspapers, bootleg movies, books and shirtsand spotted familiar faces among the regulars. I had been to enough parlia-ments for many Gods to know who I was, and I could receive warm greetingsof peace from members of what the FBI had labeled a racist hate-gang in the 1960s. I went into the auditorium, where children rehearsed an Africandance routine with their teacher on stage. There were only a few of us in theaudience but as soon as the Wisdom hour came, an MTA driver still in his work jacket came up and started the parliament. The kids quieted down andgot off the stage. The God addressed the phrase “word is bond” being thrownaround too much. “If you’re true and just,” he announced, “your word is bondwhether you say it or not!” He spoke on the devil putting himself deep in theholy land, Iraq, and said that we had a holy land too. “I’m not just talking about Mecca, I’m talking about your Mecca: you.” He explained that he didn’tlike Gods using the N-word or trying to change its meaning, “like making S-H-I-T smell good—why try to graft the devil back into the Original Man?”Gods and Earths began to filter in and take their seats. The God describedMemorial Day as honoring “those that died for you to not be ruled by some-one else.” There’s nothing wrong with joining the military,he said, though hewouldn’t advise his own sons to do so in this day and time. And the Father him-self was in the army, decorated with a Combat Infantryman’s Badge, KoreanService Medal with one Bronze Service Star, Presidential Unit Citation(Republic of Korea), United Nations Service Medal and National Defense Service Medal.When the Father stood by himself, said the God, people hated him and said,“if he stands too long, we’re going to plot on his death.” Same with Malcolm,same with Martin. The God quoted Marcus Garvey—“up you mighty nation,you can accomplish what you will.”After the God relinquished the floor, Ja’mella came and spoke. Ja’mella’stime with the Five Percenters goes back to 1967 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn,which had been renamed Kusa Heights after the first God to teach there. TodayJa’mella stands tall as a respected leader in the Five Percent, and when he refersto Allah not as the but my Father, you get a sense of what the man meant to kidsin his time and why they taught their own babies—who had never seen himbeyond the Allah School’s portrait and maybe wouldn’t understand the worldand years in which he lived—to love and revere him so.Wise Jamel from the First Resurrection came to the front and took his turn,telling Gods not to wear their Universal Flags if they used drugs or disrespected6 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch1.qxd 2/24/2007 2:16 PM Page 6women. It didn’t take the God long to get his momentum going and then noone in the world could slow him down—he started getting mad and his handswere going fast, jewelry jingling as he punched at the air like he had threespeed-bags in front of him, the tassle flying around his skullcap crown as hebuilt all the way back to 1964—“I REMEMBER THE PAIN! DO YOUREMEMBER THE PAIN, GODS AND EARTHS?”“Peace, God!” shouted a man from the audience.“Slow down,” said another.After Wise Jamel, a God named Father Divine took the floor to preach aboutthe hazards of eating beef and the healing powers of marijuana. With no priestsor imams, parliaments are loosely structured; anyone can come up and offerhis interpretations. One God can endorse cannabis and the next can condemnit, with little in the way of party lines to which everyone must conform. Thetruth behind this egalitarianism is the Five Percenters’ understanding that theblack man is God—all black men, without any sort of religiously ordered hier-archy, only a loving respect for elders.I met up with I Majestic Allah from Pittsburgh and we went to the schoolcafeteria. I enjoyed building with him partly because he had been raised Muslim; he could not only see where I was coming from, but discuss the Fatherwith Islamic terms like hadith and sunna. And rather than answer questionswith memorized catechism, I Majestic stands among the Gods that build likephilosophers. Explaining his beliefs to an outsider, he focuses not on whichdoctrine is objectively true, but what positive effects an idea or value systemcan have on its adherent and his community. I noticed the same approach withABG, one of only two survivors of a unique designation in history: Allah’s FirstBorn, said to be the first nine Harlem teenagers to call themselves Five Percenters. ABG was also the first to bring the Father’s teachings from Harlemto Brooklyn. “We teach that the Original Man was black,” he had told me atanother parliament, “and the black woman is the mother of civilization.” Hereminded me that this was pure science. “Today you can hear it all on the Discovery Channel, but back then, forty years ago, people couldn’t say that.”I met the other remaining First Born, Al-Jamel, that day; and he was the lastliving witness of the Father’s arrest.Al-Jamel’s life has been hard. His bones are weakening and his posture’sbad; he has to lean back as he walks and requires a cane. It’s difficult for him tohold his head up and his chin often rests on his collarbone. He’s missing fourfingers on his right hand. As he built with me, young Five Percenters wouldcome by and lovingly ask their elder if he needed anything.Al-Jamel told me about that Memorial Day when he arrived at the HotelTheresa to find Five Percenters fighting off four precincts—the 25th, 26th,MECCA 7ch1.qxd 2/24/2007 2:16 PM Page 728th and 32nd. “That means four captains,” he told me, “four cars pulling upfrom different directions, and six officers in each car, with riot gear.” Al-Jamelspent a full year trying to comprehend the scene of cops making the Fatherfight for his life while others hung out and watched. Then he learned that onthe evening of May 31, 1965, Eighth and Lenox Avenues had been closed off forthe whole 120 series of streets. Al-Jamel took my notebook and marker anddrew a map showing the directions from which the various precincts wouldhave come. On Seventh Avenue he wrote, “KILL ZONE.” From there he built for me on J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO and thefederal government’s record of crushing movements like the American Com-munist Party and the Black Panthers. They tried to destroy the Five Percenters,said Al-Jamel, “but they attacked us from the wrong perspective. They thoughtwe were a political organization—they had a good record of destroying politicalorganizations. But they realized by the late ’70s, they failed—” That was whenFive Percenter references began appearing in the nascent culture of hip-hop.Al-Jamel told stories like my grandfather, easily wandering from one topicto another and bringing it all together by the end. He told me how he studiedMao Tse-Tung and read about oppressed peoples all over the world, workedwith the Black Panthers, Young Lords, Adam Clayton Powell, variouschurches and David Dinkins and talked with one of Malcolm’s sisters aboutreopening the OAAU. Then he built on how he used to work downtown for amessenger/courier service, and he was on his way out the door to go to work onSeptember 11th when the announcement came that a plane crashed into theWorld Trade Center.“I felt so bad for those people,” he said. “They were maintenance people, secu-rity, receptionists. That’s horrible! They weren’t in no war. That’s insanity.”He reminded me that the Father wasn’t anti-white. “You know your back-ground,” he explained. “We don’t know ours.” Then he said that back in hisMuslim years, the Father would go to Chicago for Savior’s Day conventions.He told me that Malcolm and the Father were both in Temple No.7 together,and encountered the same problem: “when you have corruption above, youhave problems below.” The assassinations of Malcolm X and the Father wentdown only miles apart.The Five Percenters describe their value system as a culture, not a religion. Itmakes sense if you spend time at parliaments, which often carry an atmospherecloser to family reunions than a Sunday mass or Friday jum’aa. Allah’s portraitjust gives you a loving Father without any of the cultish power of a Fard or Elijah. It’s not there to awe anyone, only to remind those present how they firstcame together.“I miss him,” said Al-Jamel. “I miss him a lot.”8 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch1.qxd 2/24/2007 2:16 PM Page 82Desert FathersIwalked to the Arab-owned store on the corner of 127th and Eighth, where amiddle-aged Five Percenter strolled in with his shirt bearing the 7 over thestar and crescent in an eight-pointed sun.“What’s that?” asked the Arab.“That’s the flag of my nation, the Nation of Gods and Earths.” The Arabshook his head like a disapproving parent and asked the Five Percenter aboutthe pin on his shirt. “This is Allah, the Father of my knowledge,” replied theGod, “who came to teach that man is the living manifestation of Allah and itsays that in the Qur’an.” The Arab started laughing and his brother joined infrom behind the other counter. The Five Percenter announced, “this is why I take my business elsewhere” and walked out. They called out for him as I walked back to the Harriet Tubman.It is often hard for Muslims to see theFive Percent as anything but a vandal-ism upon their property, and that a God wouldn’t automatically drop hisbeliefs if only he understood “true” Islam. They scoff at the Five Percenters’understandings of Allah and Islam to be anacronyms for “Arm, Leg, Leg, Arm,Head” and “I, Self Lord And Master,” since these are not English but Arabicwords. Sunni teenagers mock the Five Percenters on Internet message boards,peppering their discussions with emoticons of smiley-faces rolling their eyesor projectile-vomiting. “The 5% use only 5% of their crummy intellect,” writes“Abdullah_1417;” “these turkeys believe in some former heroin addict ... thisclown got executed in a elevator shaft in 1969, but he stated that he couldn’tdie? Hmmmmm that is silly in itself!” In the same thread, “AMuslimForLife,”claiming to have an in-depth knowledge of the community due to “years” ofstudy, posts that some Five Percenters “pray to a man.” He calls the Nation ofIslam and Nation of Gods and Earths “the same beast with a different name,”and slights them both as shirk (polytheism) and kufr (disbelief). In Why I am a Muslim, Asma Gull Hasan refers to the Five Percent as a“rogue, unrecognized branch of Islam.” The daughter of HMO warlord MalikHasan and “Muslims For Bush” founder Seeme Hasan, I’m not sure what sheknows about Poor Righteous Teachers. More open-minded Muslims try toreconcile the Nation of Gods and Earths enough to get them under their9ch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 9umbrella, sometimes only for the right to claim Five Percenter rap stars likeBusta Rhymes and the Wu-Tang Clan as part of an Islamic American legacy.The hard truth for arrogant online phantoms like Abdullah_1417 and powder-puff cheerleaders like Asma Gull Hasan is that Five Percenters make no claimon their religion—not as an “offshoot” of anything, not as a footnote in theNation of Islam’s history, not as the rappers’ Islam or convicts’ Islam. “Youthink some Arabs put together a scheme like that?” Father Divine asked theparliament, “to resurrect the black man in America? The black man’s no Mus-lim. Never has been, never will be.” I have never heard of a Five Percenternamed Muhammad; if the black man is God, why would he follow a prophet? The Father had declared a formal and emphatic break from Islam yearsbefore his death, but he also encouraged Five Percenters to explore all pathsand respect the good efforts of others. Some Gods read the Qur’an and speakof Islam as a “science,” but others study Eastern philosophy and practice meditation. One is not more “Five Percenter” than the other. As one God toldme, Clarence 13X only called himself Allah because he had come up in amosque. He could have just as easily found his truth in one of the NubianHebrew movements and renamed himself Yahweh. One Five Percenter texteven refers to Clarence as Christ. From what I could see, he was a kind of American Christ, and his cross was the gun.The meanings of Islamic terms have also changed, and have in fact becomeEnglish words. Five Percenters could give a rip about how to spell Allah in Arabic letters; Allah came to them speaking their own language, and Allahbroke down his name as Arm, Leg, Leg, Arm, Head. Though some reach forparallels with medieval Sufism, the Five Percent Nation remains a distinctlyAmerican story. Gods and Earths don’t bother with schisms between Abu Bakrand Ali bin Abu Talib; the war that moved them was Elijah vs. Malcolm. FivePercenters that undo American white supremacy by adopting names likeMajestic and Divine are taking part in an unwritten and largely unacknowl-edged American tradition. In the time of slavery, Africans and their descen-dents—having been stripped of their original names and branded with thoseof their masters—sometimes gave each other titles denoting pride and power.Names such as King, Prince and Queen, writes Allan D. Austin, were awardedfor the “proud but politic way” in which slaves carried themselves.1 The Godsand Earths stand as heirs to their own line of patriarchs and matriarchs whoendured the Bitter Passage, toiled through the Worst Part and made the landholy with their struggle.Islam’s place in the story begins with the transportation of captive blackMuslims to the New World, where any traces of African culture would beviewed as threats to white control. The slaveowner opposed rituals and ideas10 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 10that could unite or inspire, suppressed written communication in languageshe did not understand and imposed his religion upon his slaves. “I cannot helpthinking that the way I was baptized was not right,” recalled Nicholas Said,who was born Mohammed Ali ben Said in West Africa around 1833. “I thinkthat I ought to have known perfectly well the nature of the thing beforehand.”Some Muslims clung fiercely to their religion. Guinea-born Bilali Muhammadsupervised up to 1,000 slaves and led an African Muslim community on SapeloIsland, Georgia. Preparing against a speculated British raid on the island, Bilalitold his master, “I will answer for every Negro of the true faith but not for theseChristian dogs of yours.” Charles Ball’s slave narrative quotes a “man whoprayed five times a day” as commenting, “I had never seen white people before;and they appeared to me the ugliest creatures in the world.”2 Over time, syncretism and accomodation absorbed slaves’ Islam into their masters’Christianity. An 1860 report from South Carolina mentions a woman knownas “Old Lizzy Gray,” who believed that “Christ built the first church in Meccaand he grave was da.”3Remnants of Islam are recognizable in the Ben Ishmaels of eighteenth-century Kentucky, described by Hugo Prosper Leaming as a tri-racial commu-nity formed by “chattel slaves or ‘free blacks,’ remnants of destroyed NativeAmerican nations, and European indentured servants or their landless,despised children.”4 They were named for their first patriarch, Ben Ishmael,which could read as the Arabic bin Ismail, “son of Ishmael.” Abraham’s son Ish-mael is commonly regarded as the father of all Arabs, and in a certain sense Mus-lims (Leaming also speculates that the tribe’s name may have derived from BaniIsmail, “people of Ishmael”5). Ben Ishmael and his wife, the “first queen” Jenniemost likely passed away sometime between 1802 and 1810. Their son John thenled a mass exodus from the developing slavery state of Kentucky, crossing theOhio River into lands designated by the Native Americans for eastern tribes thathad been all but wiped out. Here the Ben Ishmaels were welcomed.The tribe practiced polygamy and abstained from alcohol. Around the border of Illinois and Indiana they lived as nomads, following annual migra-tory routes along a triangle that included towns named Mecca, Mahomet andMorocco. In 1870, family names in Mahomet and the surrounding areaincluded some with what Leaming calls an “oriental flavor:” Osman, Gamel,Pusha, Nebeker, Babb, Manser and Fardy.6 Little is known of the Ben Ishmaels’religion, but they rejected belief in an afterlife and most attempts from mis-sionaries to Christianize them. In the 1830s the tribe engaged in a brief rela-tionship with the Methodist church, attracted to a preacher’s declaration that“good things will come to Christians.” It took only a matter of weeks to seethrough the empty promise. When the preacher asked for testimonials afterDESERT FATHERS 11ch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 11one church meeting, an elderly Ben Ishmael woman stood and announced,“We all joined and we ben waitin’ for good things. We ain’t got none yit. Ih’ain’t had a speck of good butter in my house since that day.”7Wherever they wandered, the Ben Ishmaels dwelled on society’s fringe, living as unskilled laborers, scavengers, beggars and reputed petty criminals.The rising Eugenics movement, branding the Ben Ishmaels as biological aberrations, offered what Hakim Bey terms “salvation by extermination.”8Reverend Oscar C. M’Culloch, author of “The Tribe of Ishmael: a Study onSocial Degradation,” proposed to wipe out the community by cutting off pub-lic and private aid, removing Ben Ishmael children from their homes and plac-ing adults in asylums or new “correctional” institutions littering the region.Sterilization began at the Indiana State Reformatory, and in 1907 the state ofIndiana passed the world’s first compulsory sterilization law.9 The Ben Ish-maels found it best to disperse into nearby cities like Chicago and Detroit,where a nation of thousands might vanish within the larger society. Subsequentdecades would yield reports of descendents wandering between Detroit andPhiladelphia, living in their cars and still adhering to the tribe’s dietary laws.10Allah wasn’t the first Father in Harlem, and he wasn’t the first black man tocome to New York and say that he was God; nor was the Father Divine I heardat Five Percenter parliaments the first to use that name. The original FatherDivine was born George Baker, Jr. in “Monkey Run,” a black ghetto ofRockville, Maryland in 1879. His mother Nancy died while George was ateenager. At twenty he moved to Baltimore as one of hundreds of blackmigrants, most of them from rural areas and searching for new opportunities.While absorbing the worst of police brutality and overcrowded slums like“Pigtown,” he took refuge in the home of Harriette Snowden, a female evan-gelist, and attended various black churches and revivals. At one Baptist store-front church, he watched a man get thrown out for proclaiming, “I am theFather Eternal!”11 George went outside and helped him up. The man intro-duced himself as Samuel Morris and explained his outburst with a verse fromthe Bible: “know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you?”12 The two became friends and Morris eventually movedinto Harriette’s home. Before long, Morris had convinced both George and Harriette that he was God.Morris changed his name to Father Jehovia, God in the Fathership Degree,while George Baker, Jr. became the Messenger, God in the Sonship Degree.They held services in their home several nights a week and were soon joined byReverend Bishop Saint John the Vine, who wore a beard, turban and longrobes and professed that he had learned Hebrew from his Abyssinian mother.The Bishop’s claims drew from traditions of Ethiopianism, an indigenous12 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 12slave theology in which African-Americans were believed to have descendedfrom the original Jews, and as the true Chosen People would someday be res-cued by God and returned to their homeland.13 After embracing FatherJehovia’s divinity, the Bishop was accepted with his own Sonship Degree.14 Thetrio got along well until 1912, when the Bishop found a verse stating that “who-ever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he isGod” and decided that all men were equally divine.15 Father Jehovia, under-standably, was not willing to give up his exclusive position as Godhead. Afterinitially refusing to take part in their debate, the Messenger finally decided toreject them both and claim that he alone was the manifestation of God. Thethree men went their separate ways.The Messenger headed south and wandered the countryside, preaching forthe empowerment of women and acquiring a large female following. In Val-dosta, Georgia a group of black men had him arrested for lunacy. During hisbooking, when an officer asked for the Messenger’s real name, a womanshouted, “he ain’t named nothing but God!”16 While in police custody, his fol-lowing continued to grow and included white members. On February 27, 1914he stood trial for lunacy in Valdosta court. The prosecution’s star witnesses—Dr. Stafford, a medical doctor and pastor, and Reverend White, a blackMethodist minister—used the Messenger’s claim to be God to illustrate hislevel of mental illness. A jury found the Messenger “guilty” of insanity, but notsufficiently so to warrant his commitment to an institution. He was released oncondition that he’d leave Valdosta immediately.17Again roaming from town to town as a streetcorner preacher, he trackeddown the Bishop, who had established his own church in Harlem. The Mes-senger attended one of the Bishop’s Sunday services, finding him still in hisrobes and turban. Upon sighting the Messenger, the Bishop blasted his formerfriend: “He came up to me saying, ‘I am as much God as you are, I am as muchGod as you are.’ I said, ‘I did not say anything about your not being as muchGod as I.’ I hadn’t said a word about it.”18 The Messenger stood and beganpreaching his own message to the church, managing to win over some of theBishop’s followers. He then resumed his drifting, now with an entourage ofdisciples, to spread the word in every town. For preaching the equality of thesexes, he continued to win large numbers of female converts.19 He returned toNew York permanently in 1917, during a period of increased African-American migration to northern cities and the early years of the HarlemRenaissance. 1916 had seen the arrival of Marcus Garvey’s Universal NegroImprovement Association (UNIA), which held that black Americans couldonly find peace and prosperity by returning to Africa. “Ethiopia, thou land ofour fathers,” UNIA members sang at rallies, “thou land where the Gods usedDESERT FATHERS 13ch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 13to be.” Harlem was swelling with a new radical consciousness; between 1919and 1930, the borough was home to at least eight sects that claimed descentfrom Ethiopian Jews.The Messenger, now known as Father Divine, promoted his mission asoffering “prosperity, peace and pleasure” in this lifetime.20 With poverty leav-ing his followers malnourished, Father Divine encouraged large appetites andeven weighed members of his household twice weekly, scolding those who lostweight.21 Competing not only with casinos and jazz but countless men that hedeemed “false prophets,” he began making wild promises of the bliss thatawaited his followers. One of Father Divine’s bolder statements claimed that inthe year 2525, he would send ten million people into outer space to live onother planets: “don’t you want to go?”22In 1932 Father Divine packed up his believers and moved to Sayville,approximately seventy miles north of the city. As his following in New Yorkgrew on its own, he would later return and move into a believer’s home inHarlem. Information about his past became sketchy. He reluctantly identifiedhis age as fifty-two, but strictly by legal definition; as God, he had “spirituallyand mentally no record.”Believing in the subtle power of words to affect a person’s mindstate, FatherDivine altered the language of his followers to remove all negative references.The word hello was forbidden, since it reminded him of hell; followers wereinstructed to greet each other with “peace.”23 By this line of thought, sexismand racism could be destroyed by avoiding the words that represented them.Prohibiting his disciples from even using terms like man or woman, FatherDivine spoke of “so-called men” and “those who call themselves women.” Healso insisted that whites be spoken of as simply “people of light complexion.” Father Divine encouraged black followers to forsake their last names, dis-missing a surname like Smith as “your Daddy’s master’s name;”24 but despitehis struggles for equality, he was often guilty of the same attitudes about blackpeople found in white racism, and at times even blamed African-Americansfor the injustices they faced. According to Father Divine, African-Americans“had committed the sin in setting up color in the first place. They set it up intheir consciousness and they would find it everywhere they went and they andno one else would be responsible.”25 He went so far as to claim that affiliationwith the stigma of blackness doomed African-Americansto continuedpoverty: “I am not poor because I do not belong to a poor, downtrodden race.If I was attached to a poor downtrodden race like some of you think you are ...then I would be like some of you.”26Rather than overcome ingrained notions of black inferiority, Father Divinefed into them. His marriage to a white woman would even be used as proof of14 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 14his holy power, as only God himself could win such a victory over racial preju-dice. Though probably well-intentioned, he remained seriously out of touchwith growing movements that focused on black pride and cultural empower-ment. Another Father, George Hurley, who formed his Universal Hagar’sSpiritual Church in Georgia in 1923, insisted that black Americans call them-selves Ethiopians. Black people, he taught, were the original race, originalHebrews and creators of civilization while whites were descended from Cainand “cursed with a pale color because of leprosy.”Worshiped as the “black God of this Age,” Father Hurley taught that Godexisted within all of humankind and gave his followers the status of “minorgods and goddesses.” He stressed an improvement of conditions in this life-time, rather than dreaming of otherworldly solutions, as clearly stated in twoof his “10 Commandments:”2. Thou shall ignore a sky heaven for happiness and a downward hell forpunishment.3. Thou shall believe in heaven and hell here on earth.27The era’s most notable leader to disagree with Father Divine’s denial of racewas Marcus Garvey, who advocated a “real patriotism” centered around black-ness. “There must be a real recognition of the Negro Abyssinian,” he told his Uni-versal Negro Improvement Association. “He must not be ashamed to be amember of the Negro race. If he does, he will be left alone by all the Negroes of theworld, who feel proud of themselves.”28 Garvey arrived in Harlem on March 23,1916 and began preaching his racial patriotism on the sidewalks of Lenox Avenue:When Europe was inhabited by a race of cannibals, a race of savages, nakedmen, heathens and pagans, Africa was peopled with a race of cultured blackmen, who were masters in art, science and literature; men who were culturedand refined; men who, it was said, were like the gods.29“The Negro is crying for a Mohammed,” Garvey declared, “a Prophet to comeforth and to give him the Koran of economic and intellectual welfare.”30The official sources describe Noble Drew Ali as founder of the first blackIslamic sect in America. In truth he was less than this, for there were blackMoslems here before him; but he was more than this—he was an Americanprophet. He could have stepped from the pages of Melville or Ishmael Reed, “athought of allah clothed in flesh,” a fact, a poetic fact.Wilson, Peter Lamborn, Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam, p.15.Ali was born Timothy Drew in 1886, in North Carolina, a child of ex-slaves andallegedly raised among the Cherokee. As the stories go, at sixteen he beganDESERT FATHERS 15ch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 15traveling as a circus magician, later arriving in Egypt, where he was initiatedinto the Egyptian Shriners and the High Priesthood of the pyramid of Cheops.He would cross the Atlantic with a new scripture, the Circle 7 Koran, and a mis-sion to uplift humanity’s fallen towards its “Father Allah” and proper religionof “Islamism.”Ali distinguished between Islamism and “Arab-Islam,” since the latter camefrom a “slave master’s orientation” and “no Arabian seed sought to propagatethe faith among members of our race.”31 True Islamism included not onlySemitic prophets but figures such as Buddha and Confucius, and could not becontained within ritual or laws. Man and Allah were one, and all men werepriests unto themselves.He moved to Newark, New Jersey, renamed the city “New-ark” and in 1913founded a Canaanite Temple, named for his belief that African-Americanswere descended from the bibilical Moabites and Canaanites. In 1919 his lead-ership was allegedly subverted by one Abdul Wali Farrad Mohammed Ali, a“Russo-Syrian peddler of silks and raincoats”32 who swayed enough followersto stage a temple coup. Noble Drew Ali fled New-ark for New York, where hebelieved that his John the Baptist had appeared in one Marcus Garvey. Aliadmired Garvey’s aggressive racial pride, pageantry, enterprise, articles inNegro World on Moorish and Egyptian history and his call for a new religionwith a god who reflected “the physical beauty and characteristics of the Negrohimself.”“Marcus accused the Deity of being a Negro,” joked humorist George S.Schuyler; “no wonder luck went against him!”33 Kelly Miller wrote that Garvey’s plea to “paint God black” was “revolting even to the Negro,”34 but formany it was the most necessary truth offered by Garvey’s movement. “Godmade black skin and kinky hair,” read a letter from a UNIA women’s auxillary,“because He desired to express Himself in that type.” Garvey’s UNIA ChaplainGeneral and principal theologian, Bishop George Alexander McGuire,reported that an elderly African-American woman gave him five dollars after he preached of a black Christ. “No white man would ever die on the cross for me,” she told him.35 During Garvey’s 1924 convention, UNIA mem-bers paraded through Harlem under a giant portrait of a black Mary and babyJesus. “Let us start our Negro painters getting busy,” announced BishopMcGuire, “and supply a black Madonna and a black Christ for the training ofour children.” He would demand not only a reimagining of God, but also anew Satan. The American Negro was the only black man in the world, he cried,who would allow white men to tell him that the devil was black. The bishoppredicted that the future church of a black god would have its own whitedevil.3616 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 16For Noble Drew Ali, an important element in the coming black religion wasa redefining of terms. The black man was neither Colored nor Negro; “col-ored” meant “anything that had been painted, stained, varnished or dyed,”and “Negro” meant a “four-legged animal.” Ali believed that African-Americans were actually Moors, with a heritage that entitled them to a certainlegal and social privilege. As far back as 1682, citizens of Morocco were distin-guished from ordinary “Negroes” and could not be enslaved, and in 1786Morocco became the first country to recognize the United States as a sovereignnation. Booker T. Washington had written in Up From Slavery of a black manwho, after being refused service at a hotel, showed himself to be a citizen ofMorocco and received not only service but profuse apologies from the staff.37For Noble Drew Ali, what separated this man and the African-American was aknowledge of self, a proper consciousness of identity. What America’s Moorsneeded to do was reclaim their nationality.It was in 1924 that Ali, given a proper herald in Garvey, felt ready to berevealed as the prophet for his people. Sensing that the midwest was “closer toIslam,”38 in August 1925 he arrived at Chicago, which he dubbed a “newMecca.” But here he would start from scratch: preaching on street corners tostrangers, receiving derision for his fez and enduring stones thrown by chil-dren. For Chicagoans, he was only one of countless black migrants who gavetheir street hustles an exotic flair by posing as Arabs or Indians. The city hostednumerous self-described “Moslems” who sold lucky numbers for the lottery,39and the Chicago Defender told of “Abd El Mustaph Bey Mohammed AllahKismet,” a coffee vendor whose accent would slip between Turkish and south-ern, and whose real name was revealed to be George.40Noble Drew Ali preached to the migrants, finding early support among thosethat spoke of themselves as “Ishmaelites” and members of a “tribe of Ishmael”that had come from downstate.41 His very first disciple is considered to havebeen a morbidly obese womannamed Lily Sloane, who had one foot in thedoorway of the “number house,” planning to place two cents on the night’sdrawing, when she spotted Ali jumping up and down on a wooden crate, wav-ing his arms. The tassel on his fez flew around his head as he moved. Lily steppedaway from the number house and walked toward him, nearly tripping over adirty white dog asleep on the sidewalk. “Goddamn dog,” she cursed, “get out ofthe way.” She then heard the strange fez-headed man softly calling her name.“Lily Sloane: I, your Prophet, command you to come to me and learn thetruth and be free in your Father-God-Allah Holy Name!” Then the vision dis-appeared, leaving only the crate behind. Lily stood alone, believing that shehad gone crazy in the heat. She regained her composure and went into thenumber house with a good feeling about 5–7–4. DESERT FATHERS 17ch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 17“Forty cents on the first six,” she told “Jackpot,” the tobacco-chewing num-bers man, “ten cents straight.” Lily crossed the street and sat on the crate wherejust moments ago stood her tassled hallucination. “Damn hoodoo stuff,” shetold herself—only to again see the man in the red fez, his arms outstretched.For the next four hours she sat on the crate, mesmerized as he called out to her.The next time she saw the prophet was on State Street, surrounded by pedes-trians that apparently shared her hallucination. Before she was close enough tomake out his words, she heard the laughter of the crowd.“Laugh!” Drew yelled back at them, “but the day will come when you willweep! When the wrath of my Father God Allah is poured out upon the earth,you will regret that you did not heed His prophet! That is why you are so easyto trick; that is why the Europeans—who you call the white man—can keepyou in bondage. Oh, and you will listen to him! Anything he tells you is allright. He took you out of Asia and gave you slave names; he calls you blackfolks, colored folks, Ethiopians and you believe him! I tell you, brothers andsisters, there ain’t but one race on the earth, and that’s the human race. Thatrace has got two branches: the Europeans, the man you call the white man, andthe Asiatic—us. But you don’t know that ’cause the European don’t want youto know it. He wants to call you by your slave name and keep you working forhim. It’s your own fault, brothers!“Come all ye Asiatics of America, and learn the truth about your nationalityand birthright—because you are not colored, you are not black folks, you arenot Ethiopians. You must claim a free name; a Moorish name. Learn of yourForefather’s ancient divine creed that you will learn to love instead of hate.”He stopped and let them process what he had said. Some gave encourage-ment. Some still laughed. After a few moments they all walked away, leavingonly Lily Sloane. She watched the tired prophet take off his fez to wipe thesweat from his forehead. “Sister,” he called out to her, “your friends are gone.Why do you remain behind? Why don’t you go with the rest of the unbeliev-ers?” Lily stammered out that he must not have remembered her because shewas “crazy in the head.” Ali looked her, smiled and replied, “Why of course,sister, of course I remember you. Have you a lodging for me tonight, sister?”Lily Sloane took in the prophet and became the first disciple of his new sect,standing at his side when he preached in vacant lots. Her intuitive feeling aboutthe lottery numbers 5–7–4 had manifested the truth, via the time-honorednumerology of “digit summing:” 5 + 7 + 4 = 16; 1 + 6 resulted in the divinenumber 7. She shared the prophet’s teachings with her upstairs neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Mealy, who then became Mr. and Mrs. Mealy El. For Moors, thesuffixing of El or Bey to one’s “slave name” reclaimed his or her lost national-ity. As Noble Drew Ali’s following grew, Els and Beys became distinguished18 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 18from one another by the color of their fezzes: Els green, Beys red. They greetedeach other with “Islam,” right hands on their hearts; they bid farewell with“peace.”42Ali obtained a charter for the first “Temple of Islam” of his new movement,the Moorish Science Temple of America, drafted a Divine Constitution andbegan issuing “passports.” His Moors also embraced their natural religion,“Islamism,” which a member expressed by wearing a button of the star andcrescent on his coat. Ali taught his catechism through a simple question-and-answer format, similar to those used in Masonic lodges:57. Who were Adam and Eve? They are the ones who brought about a discordin the Holy City of MECCA and were driven out.58. Where did they go? They went into Europe.59. What is the modern name given to their children? Roman.60. What is the shade of their skin? Pale.61. Who is guarding the Holy City of MECCA to keep the unbelievers away?Angels.62. What is the modern name of these angels? Arabian.63. What is the shade of their skin? Olive.64. Are the Moorish Americans any relation to those Angels? Yes, we all havethe same Father and Mother.65. Give five names that are given to the descendents of Adam and Eve. Lucifer,Satan, Devil, Dragon and Beast.66. What is the Devil sometimes called? The lower self.67. How many selves are there? Two.68. Name them. Higher and lower self.69. What people represent the Higher self? The angels who protect the HolyCity of MECCA.70. What people represent the Lower self? Those who were cast out of the HolyCity, and those who accept their teachings.71. What is the Higher self? The Higher self is the mother of virtues and theharmonies of life, and breeds Justice, Mercy, Love and Right.72. Can the Higher self pass away? No.73. Why? Because it is ALLAH in man.43Like his herald Marcus Garvey, Ali’s rhetoric of black empowerment accom-panied a growing business enterprise. The prophet sold “Moorish HealingOil” and his Moors operated their own grocery stores, newspapers and evenschools. Ali’s rising power—and the habit among some Moors of flashing theirpassports at whites—may have frightened authorities. One official in Detroitremarked, “What a terrible gang! Thieves and cutthroats! Wouldn’t answeranything. Wouldn’t sit down when you told them. Wouldn’t stand up whenDESERT FATHERS 19ch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 19you told them.”44 Hoping to get the authorities off his back, Ali later forbadehis Moors from engaging in aggressive public behavior or flashing their pass-ports at whites. The Moors began working their way from the fringe. They pro-moted their temple as a fraternal order, leading colorful marches in regalia notfar removed from the faux-Arab aesthetics of Shriner parades.45 Sheik ClaudeGreene became butler to revered philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, who pur-chased the MST a building at 3640 Indiana Avenue. The new headquarters,named Unity Hall by Ali, hosted the first Moorish national convention fromOctober 15 to 20, 1928. Like UNIA conventions, the event opened with aparade. On the second day, Ali kissed a boy wrapped in the Moorish nationalflag and declared his Moors a sovereign people.Moorish Science was becoming politically entrenched, as local candidatesplayed up Ali to win his followers’ votes. Moors helped south side aldermanOscar S. DePriest into the House of Representatives, and Ali attended the Jan-uary 14 inauguration of Illinois Governor Louis L. Emerson. At the apparentheight of his power, Ali told the Moors that he wasn’t long for the world;according to Moorish sources, this was also when “every evil spirited pone wasmoving now against him.”46 Lomax Bey announced before 1,500 Moors thatNoble Drew Ali should be deposed as leader, and even attempted a courtroomcoup to wrest control of the movement. Then Ali learned that his wife Pearlwas sleeping with Claude Greene.47 On March 11, Greene emptied theprophet’s Unity Hall office and tossed his furniture into the street. Greene waslater shotand stabbed to death, causing the Chicago police to apprehend Ali.On May 20 he was indicted as an accessory to homicide.On July 27, less than a month after his release on bail, Noble Drew Alireturned to Allah. The Chicago Whip attributed his death to tuberculosis; theMoors believed that police abuse—such as forcing the prophet to sit on giantblocks of ice—had aggravated his health problems and brought on martyr-dom. Moorish history records the exact time of death as 10:10 p.m., and NobleDrew’s final words as “Carry on.” His body would lie in state for five days. Thefuneral service at the Pythian Temple included songs by the MST choir and aeulogy delivered by C. Kirkman Bey in English, Arabic and Spanish.The Moorish Science Temple began to fall apart before its prophet was evenin the ground. Ali’s attorney Aaron Payne tried to hold the movementtogether, but had none of the “spiritual charisma” required to capture Moors’imagination. Majority opinion held that Noble Drew Ali had chosen to rein-carnate himself into his chauffeur, John Givens El. Mealy El, Grand Sheik ofthe Chicago Temple, claimed to be Ali’s personally appointed successor, onlyto be voted out by the general membership. Complicating the issue was IraJohnson Bey, also known as the “Nazarene,” an enforcer who had been sent20 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 20from Pittsburgh to Chicago to squash the Claude Greene revolt. Bey stormedinto Mealy El’s office and demanded recognition as Grand Sheik. His men kid-napped Mealy El’s opponent C. Kirkman Bey, believing that Kirkman pos-sessed Noble Drew Ali’s last will and testament. Kirkman’s wife Peasie calledthe police; a resulting gun battle left two officers and one Moor dead, and sixty-three Moors arrested. Ira Johnson Bey managed to escape back to Pittsburgh,where “the spirit of Jesus reincarnated into his form.” Receiving permissionfrom his Father to come in His Name, he then declared himself “Allah El, sonof the most High God-Allah.” Despite being a vessel for Jesus, Allah El insistedthat he was but a mortal man with a simple role to play: “I am no Christ and Ihave no wings, I am an old man, I am Spirit. I am going to my father when Ireturn.” Allah El returned to Chicago, surrendered to police and was institu-tionalized at Illinois Security Hospital for the Criminally Insane in the town ofMenard.48A stranger then appeared in Detroit’s Paradise Valley, selling silks from doorto door in post-Depression ghettoes and regaling customers with tales of Mus-lim lands. His stories were so enthralling that he would often be invited to stayfor dinner. After the meal, he would exhort his hosts to give up pork and adoptthe diets of their brothers and sisters in the east. Soon the stranger was preach-ing to crowded basem*nt audiences on the superiority of Islam and the com-ing destruction of the white world.49Various far-flung theories name him as David Ford El, Grand Sheik from Chicago, or Abdul Wali Farrad Mohammed Ali, the Russo-Syrian ped-dler of raincoats who had taken over the Canaanite Temple in New Jersey, oreven Arnold Josiah Ford, the Barbados-born black rabbi and former UNIAchoirmaster. He has been identified as a Syrian Druze, Indian Ahmadiyya,Turkish Nazi, co*ckeyed Greek and New Zealand drug dealer, and he couldhave been one of the last Ben Ishmaels. He might appear in old photos withNoble Drew Ali and Moors standing outside the Unity Hall, everyone in turbans and headdresses and robes with sashes; in the upper left corner there’sa fair-skinned man wearing a bowtie. The Moors swear that it’s him, but whoknows—?His official biography would depict him as the son of a black man namedAlphonso and Baby Gee, white woman of the Caucus Mountains, who gavebirth to him in Mecca. After making himself known in Detroit on July 4, 1930he went by over fifty aliases, including Mohammed Ali, Wali Mohammed,Wali Farrad, Farrad Mohammed, Wallace Mohammed, W.F. Muhammad,Wallace Farrad, Wallace Don Ford and W. D. Fard. As the Moorish ScienceTemple’s Chicago nucleus was split by rival factions, he collected wayward fol-lowers in Detroit with tweaked Moorish doctrine.DESERT FATHERS 21ch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 21Noble Drew Ali had taught that Allah and the Devil existed within man as“higher” and “lower” selves, with the lower (devil) self represented by Adam’sdescendents, the Europeans. W. D. Fard took Ali’s religion and made it sci-ence. Within the black man existed two germs: a dominant black germ andrecessive brown germ. For trillions of years there were only pure black men,who lived in peace and enlightenment. As the brown germ lay dormant, blackmen fathered civilization. This natural order was challenged approximately6,000 years ago, when a “big-headed” youth named Yacub told his uncle, “I’mgoing to make a man that will rule you.” His uncle’s reply mimics the Qur’an,when angels question Allah on His decision to create Adam: “What will youmake other than something that will cause bloodshed and mischief in theland?” “That’s all right,” answered the youth. “I know what you do not know.” Inhis college years Yacub discovered the weak brown germ and endeavored tocreate a man from it. The new man would of course be weaker than the blackman from which he was grafted, but with Yacub’s instruction would come torule the world.At eighteen years old, Yacub had graduated from every college and univer-sity and took to preaching his ideas on the streets of Mecca, slowly gatheringconverts until he became a legitimate threat to the government. The Kingcalled for Yacub’s arrest, which only made him more popular among his fol-lowers. Eventually, the jails were overcrowded with Yacub’s party and he stillhad disciples teaching on the street. The King asked to be taken to Yacub’s cell.The two of them worked out an agreement: Yacub and his followers wouldgo into exile, and the King would financially support them for twenty years.They sailed to the island of Pelan (Patmos) in the Aegean Sea, where Yacub setup a social hierarchy topped by doctors, ministers, nurses and a cremator. Aftertwo hundred years of strictly enforced breeding laws, including regulated mar-riages and even infanticide of black babies, Yacub’s government had com-pletely weeded out the black germ to create a brown race. As many of the brownpeople migrated to other areas of the world, Yacub kept his remaining popula-tion under the eugenics laws and in another two hundred years had created theyellow race. After the third and final stage, he had made his devil: the whiteman.Yacub was Arabic for Jacob. The biblical story of Jacob stealing Esau’sbirthright had been read by the Moors as an allegory for the white man robbingthem of their nationality. The devils of Fard’s interpretation would come to theHoly City of Mecca; but like the pale people of Moorish Science narrative, theywould be chased out, driven across the desert and exiled to the caves of Europe.After “half-original” prophet Musa (Moses) came to civilize the devils and22 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 22teach them the forgotten science of “tricknology,” they would rise up to over-power the original people.Six hundred years it had taken to make the devil fit into a mathematicaltheme. Yacub was only six years old when he discovered magnetism; his fol-lowers numbered 59,999, himself making 60,000; his created devil had only sixounces of brain, compared to the original man’s seven. The devil, who used sixmillion square miles of land, would rule the earth for six thousand years. Jeho-vah’s Witnesses understand the number six, “being short of the biblically com-plete, or perfect” seven to signify imperfection, emphasized in the Beast’s markof 666.50 Fard encouraged his Muslims to listen to Jehovah’s Witness radioprograms, which contained hidden truths that could only be unlocked with hishelp. Charles Taze Russell, founder of theJehovah’s Witnesses, believed thatChrist had secretly arrived in the year 1874. Using the book of Daniel to calcu-late a period of 2,520 years, Russell deducted that Christ would emerge to leada “Battle of Armageddon” in 1914. After the year came and went, 1914 wasthen interpreted as the “beginning of the end.” Fard, who was likely born after1890 but would be portrayed with a birthdate of February 26, 1877, professedthat the reign of Yacub’s devil had expired in 1914. At that time, however, theoriginal people in the wilderness of North America were not prepared toreclaim their position. They still worshiped the hocus-pocus god that the devilhad taught them to fear, and ate the devil’s poison foods that made them sick.The devil was thus allowed a “grace period” during which Fard arrived to res-cue his people. If original people lived true to the laws of Islam, Fard promised,they would be rid of the devil by 1934.51Both Noble Drew Ali and W. D. Fard aspired to create an identity for African-Americans greater than that offered under the United States flag. Ali claimedthat black people could reclaim their true names, culture and religion byembracing Moorish heritage; Fard taught his followers that they were registeredin the “Nation of Islam”—which had no birth record, beginning or ending, andwas older than the sun, moon and stars.52 Rather than suffix his followers’ “slavenames” with Bey or El, Fard sold original “righteous names.” Joseph Shepardbased his new name on his old, becoming Jam Sharrieff. Some took the surnameAllah, such as Lindsey Garret (Hazziez Allah) and William Blunt (SharrieffAllah).53 New names marked the beginnings of new lives, a resurrection frommental death; sociologist Erdmann Doane Beynon, who studied the Nation ofIslam in 1936 and 1937, observed that Fard’s Muslims “became so ashamed oftheir old slave names that they considered that they could suffer no greater insultthan to be addressed by the old name.”54 “I wouldn’t give up my righteousname,” remarked Rosa McCoy, renamed Rosa Karriem; “that name is my life.”55The names were only part of Fard’s intricate use of words, numbers and symbolsDESERT FATHERS 23ch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 23to stimulate his followers and restructure their world. Europe was broken downinto Eu, meaning hillside, and rope, meaning to bind in, to illustrate how Cau-casians had been “roped in.” The white man’s continent was no longer the bea-con of civilization, but his prison. Fard’s unique terminologies and memorizedphrases were the work of, in the words of Warith Deen Mohammed, a “genius ofpowerful reform psychology, he created the kind of strange language environ-ment that would just shock dead brains, dead sentiments into living form.”56There might have been no telling where a shocked brain would lead itsowner. Henry James Moaning, known within Fard’s group as Ahmed Ullah,was arrested for writing threatening letters to the mayor of Detroit and judgedinsane by Probate Court.57 In November 1932 police arrested unskilled laborerRobert Harris for performing a bloody human sacrifice. Harris had convincedhis friend, a former Moor named James J. Smith, that in death he couldbecome “savior of the world.” Smith voluntarily placed himself on a makeshiftaltar in Harris’ apartment and allowed Harris to stab him in the chest. Harristhen took the rod from an automobile axle and brained Smith before stabbinghim four more times. In police custody Harris, who had been renamed RobertKarriem by Fard, called himself the “King of Islam” and freely admitted that hehad to kill four people to “gain his reward” from the “gods of Islam.” Robert’sbrother Edward Harris, also a follower of Fard, remarked that financial worrieshad caused Robert to “lose his mind.”58The gods of Islam were Fard and his lieutenant, Ugan Ali. After arresting Aliat the Allah Temple of Islam on Hastings Street, Detroit detectives read fromthe open book at Ali’s lecturn: “Every son of Islam must gain a victory from adevil. Four victories and the son will attain his reward.” Fard was later seizedoutside his room at the Fraymore Hotel.“They apparently misunderstood my teachings,” he told police. Fard andAli were subjected to a lengthy psychiatric examination and then joined Kar-riem on the Detroit Receiving Hospital’s psychopathic ward, restrained instraitjackets and padded rooms. Ali’s “mental processes,” read the examreports, “are radically deviated. His sanity is extremely doubtful,” while Fardwas seen to be “suffering from delusions that he is a divinity. He has a patternof religious precepts and patterns which, taken literally, are dangerous to thoseinfluenced by them.” Ali bargained his way out of jail time by promising tohelp “disband the Allah Temple of Islam” and Robert Karriem was shipped offto Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Fard was released after agree-ing to a permanent exile from Detroit.Ugan Ali was nowhere to be found; his role in Fard’s organization now filledby Elijah Poole, a factory worker who had migrated to the Motor City fromSandersville, Georgia and was renamed numerous times by Fard before finally24 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 24becoming Elijah Muhammad. Fard continued to teach in Chicago. He soonresurfaced in Detroit, was apprehended and given another order to leave the city.It was during Fard’s second Chicago exile that the Detroit Muslims beganwithdrawing their children from public schools for enrollment at various “Universities of Islam” throughout the city. In addition to normal curriculums,these storefront campuses offered such courses as “General Knowledge of theSpook Being Displayed for 6,000 Years,” “Prophecy” and “General Knowledgeof Spook Civilization.” Teachers and administrators were eventually arrested ina mass raid and charged with contributing to the delinquency of minors. Elijah was arrested while leading five hundred Muslims on a march to the policestation.“What are you taught at the University of Islam about white people?” prose-cutor George Schudlich asked fifteen-year-old witness Sally Ali. She answeredthat if she cut off the heads of four devils, she would “win a trip to Mecca and abutton with Allah’s picture on it.” Elijah was found guilty but received a sentenceof only six months’ probation on the condition that he close the schools.59Fard disappeared for good that June. One day he had Elijah drive him to theairport, provided his student a list of books to read, and then he was gone—back to Mecca, maybe, or New Zealand or Japan or Pakistan, having done allthat he could for his uncle in the wilderness. In August Elijah began publishinghis own newspaper, Final Call to Islam, which at first praised Fard as “the greatprophet.” Before long, however, Elijah had elevated himself to the role of messenger and raised Fard’s status to Allah. The innovation caused manyMuslims to reject Elijah as Fard’s successor. Fearing plots on his life, Elijahtook flight and in exile built temples in Milwaukee and Washington, D.C. Themessage later spread to Baltimore and Cincinnati, inevitably making its way toNew York, where Fard had predicted the rise of some “very wise men.”During his travels, Elijah made attempts to teach among the Beys and Els.He was barred entry from a Moorish temple in Baltimore and twice rejected inNewark. “They were so afraid and jealous of that which Noble Drew Ali gavethem,” he would later claim, “that they thought that my strong teachings ofGod and Islam may put some of them out of office.” One Newark Moorreportedly told him, “I just wish I were the Sheik, I would let you teach all nightbecause you were telling us things we never heard.”For registered Muslims, teachings were shared in Secret Ritual of the Nationof Islam, a series of transcribed dialogues between Master Fard and ElijahMuhammad, better known as the “Supreme Wisdom lessons.” In a formattaken from Noble Drew Ali’sQuestionary, the lessons outlined basic beliefsthrough a series of question-and-answer exchanges. The text’s “English LessonNo. C-1” gives a precis of Fard’s mission:DESERT FATHERS 25ch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 251. My name is W. F. Muhammad.2. I came to North America by myself.3. My uncle was brought over here by the Trader three hundred seventy-nine years ago.4. My uncle cannot talk his own language.5. He does not know that he is my uncle.6. He likes the Devil because the devil gives him nothing.7. Why does he like the devil?8. Because the devil planted fear in him when he was a little boy.9. Why does he fear the devil now that he is a big man?10. Because the devil taught him to eat the wrong food.11. Does that have anything to do with the above question, No.10?12. Yes, sir! That makes him other than his own self.13. What is his own self?14. His own self is a righteous Muslim.15. Are there any Muslims other than righteous?16. I beg your pardon? I have never heard of one.17. How many Muslim sons are there in North America?18. Approximately three million.19. How many original Muslims are there in North America?20. A little over seventeen million.21. Did I hear you say that some of the seventeen million do not know thatthey are Muslim?22. Yes, sir!23. I hardly believe that unless they are blind, deaf and dumb.24. Well, they were made blind, deaf and dumb by the devil when they were babies.25. Can the devil fool a Muslim?26. Not nowadays.27. Do you mean to say that the devil fooled them three hundred seventy-nineyears ago?28. Yes, the trader made an interpretation that they receive gold for their labor—more than they were earning in their own country.29. Then did they receive gold?30. No. The Trader disappeared and there was no one that could speak their language.31. Then what happened?32. Well, they wanted to go to their own country, but they could not swim ninethousand miles.33. Why didn’t their own people come and get them?34. Because their own people did not know that they were here.35. When did their own people find out that they were here?36. Approximately sixty years ago.6026 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 26“Actual Facts” consists of geographic distances and measurements, includingthe square mileage of oceans, islands, deserts and mountains. The Earth’s circumference is given as 24,896 miles, which becomes the basis for originalmen dividing the history of the universe into 25,000-year cycles known as“Korans:”The Nation of Islam is all-wise and does everything right and exact. The planetearth, which is the home of Islam, is approximately twenty-five thousand milesin circumference. So the wise man of the East (Black man) makes history orKoran equal his home circumference—a year to every mile. And, thus, everytime his history lasts twenty-five thousand years, he renews it for anothertwenty-five thousand years.61The number also has its roots in the work of Charles Taze Russell, who basedhis Armageddon year of 1914 on a 2,520-year period.Fard had avoided offering mere spiritual redemption, instead focusing onthe real world in front of him. Rather than “talking to us about holiness, right-eousness, divinity, God and the saints,”62 writes Warith Deen Mohammed,Fard instructed Elijah Muhammad to “hold out to them the bait that repre-sents to them the things that they need and want right now ... good homes,money, and friendship in all walks of life.”63 Fard, teaching that black peoplehad been deprived of such joys in part by otherworldy dogmas, advocated asort of pragmatic atheism. Prayers offered to an unseen, unknown entity wereuseless in uplifting the downtrodden; rather, this imagined “mystery” has beenused as a tool of oppression:10. Who is that mystery God?ANS. There is not a mystery God. The son of man has searched for that mys-tery God for trillions of years and was unable to find a mystery God. So theyhave agreed that the only God is the son of man. So they lose no time searchingfor that that does not exist.11. Will you sit at home and wait for that mystery God to bring you food?ANS. Emphatically No!12. Tell us why the Devil does not teach that?ANS. Because he desires to make slaves out of all he can so that he can rob themand live in luxury.64In the absence of creator gods, the NOI developed a cosmology going back tril-lions of years in which the universe and all that it contained stemmed from thedivine Black Intellect. The son of man had created himself.65DESERT FATHERS 27ch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 27The “son of man” was specifically the black man, but both W. D. Fard andNoble Drew Ali had broadened their scopes to unite all nonwhite peoples underthe “Asiatic” umbrella. This perspective was connected to growing pro-Japanesesentiments in the black community. As with Islam, the Empire of Japan offerednonwhiteness a prestige not available within the American experience. Followingits victory over Russia, Japan had become the center of near-messianic hopes as aliberator from white oppression; in 1918, Marcus Garvey had promised thatblack Americans would win a race war with Japan on their side.66 The federal gov-ernment initially targeted the NOI and MST as seditious pro-Japanese groups.Elijah Muhammad boasted of the “Mothership,” a giant spacecraft loaded withbombs, that had been designed in Mecca but built in Japan and would play a keyrole in the final battle of Armageddon. At the height of World War II, some MSTmembers claimed that when Japan eventually invaded the United States, onlythose with Moorish identity cards would be spared.67 Both movements had con-nections to Satokata Takahashi, a Japanese national who had settled in Detroit.Takahashi had taken over a political organization, The Development of OurOwn (of which Fard once claimed to be the founder68), and reportedly used it to“urge Negroes to join with all other colored people—yellow, brown, and black—against all white people.”69 Takahashi went on to form two new organizationswith similar aims, the Onward Movement of America and the Pacific Movementof the Eastern World, which in turn begat offshoots such as the Ethiopian PacificMovement. Elijah Muhammad is quoted as having said in 1933 that “the Japan-ese had sent a teacher to the black people.”70 Ten years later, an article in theDetroit News attributed rising black pride to “Moslem and Shinto cults.”71 InHarlem, Ethiopian Pacific Movement leader Robert Jordan was arrested forspreading pro-Japanese propaganda, and New York’s black weekly The People’sVoice reported of a Japanese “B.B. Plan” to convert African-Americans to Bud-dhism.72 Mentioned in the article was one Sufi Abdul Hamid (Eugene Brown)who had dabbled in quick-cure schemes and activism in Chicago before arrivingin Harlem. Abdul Hamid preached from stepladders on 125th Street, wearing apurple turban, gold-lined cape and large Van Dyke moustache, claiming birthfrom the Sudan and promoting a theology that mixed Buddhism with theQur’an. He founded the Buddhist Universal Holy Temple of Tranquility onHarlem’s Morningside Avenue and titled himself “His Holiness Bishop Amirual-Muminin.” The People’s Voice alleged that the temple had been funded byJapan; the story in part moved J. Edgar Hoover to authorize microphone surveillance of Brooklyn’s Moorish Science Temple.73Takahashi was eventually deported and the dream of a non-white super-power faded. Elijah Muhammad’s triumph in the NOI civil war would againunite the movement under one leader, but the Moors continued to fight28 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 28among themselves and create new splinter groups. In the second half of the1940s, the Kirkman Bey faction exiled Charles Mosely Bey from its Clevelandtemple for promoting astrology, after which he formed his own group. A self-proclaimed “Free Moorish-American and Master Mason, 3rd, 33rd and 360-degrees,Ph.D and LL.D,” he drafted a “Zodiac Constitution” and wrotevolumes on the Clock of Destiny, a wheel featuring the twelve astrologicalsigns with a sun—the “only Sun of God”—in the center. Despite the mysticalovertones, C. M. Bey spoke of Islam as a science, not a religion, and insistedthat his Clock of Destiny Moors composed not a faith-based sect but a Cultural-National Club. “I am not interested in religion,” he declared, “and the‘GOD’ no one has ever seen. I am interested only in the solving of my economicproblems and helping others to solve their problems in the most reasonableand intelligent manner.”74 Beyond an occasional reference to the “science ofIslam” and criticisms of orthodox Islam’s “mystery” teachings, Islamic mater-ial remained largely absent from Bey’s movement. When three Clock of Des-tiny Moors were tried for draft evasion during the Korean War, however, Beywas barred from the courtroom for refusing to take off his fez.Though apparently influenced by Fard, C. M. Bey differed in his assertionthat the true Creator was not the “son of man” but the black Asiatic woman,whom he described as “definitely not a secret nor mystery. She is a reality,—theliving God of humanity.”75 The Asiatic woman was the actual author of theQur’an, and “declared some thirteen hundred and sixty-seven years ago: ‘InniAnallahum La Illaha Illa Ana’—Truly I am God-Allah, Besides Me There is noOther.”76 Moorish Men found their own divinity as sons of God. “Do you knowof any being,” asked Bey, “that is superior to you and your mother?”77 Believ-ing that Muslim and Christian scholars held a “monopoly on mystic religioussuperstition, but not on mathematics,” Bey taught that women could harnesstheir true power through an understanding of numbers:If women on national scales possessed the applied knowledge of the secrets ofthe number 9, they would be supremely qualified to educate their children tothe practical side of life during its 9 months maturity from conception to birth.Then, there would be no need for the institutions of religious mystery worship,Idol or image God. Jail houses, prisons and insane institutions would not beneeded for there would be no racial hatred or crime.78In Bey’s 0–9 code, 0 represented the 360 degrees of a perfect circle and 9 symbolized the months a developing fetus spent in the womb. The number 333 took a special significance with each 3 representing a trimester of preg-nancy, and “3 into 9 goes 3 times, which equals the 3rd and 33rd degrees” ofMasonry. Bey also taught a “Moorish Color Code in electronics” in which DESERT FATHERS 29ch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 29each number from nought to nine corresponded with a specific color. 0, the“sun of life,” was black; 1 was brown. 9 was white.“Our Moorish forefathers’ code of alphabet and mathematics,” wrote Bey inClock of Destiny, “have proven that the ‘white people’ have no culture of theirown.”79 His numerology included interpretations of letters. Examining thebiblical transformation of Abram into Abraham, Bey found that Abram con-tained five letters while Abraham contained seven. Adding them resulted intwelve, representing the twelve signs of the Zodiac.Like Noble Drew Ali, C. M. Bey was influenced by the Rosicrucians, whobelieved that the manipulation of numbers would reveal new meanings;adding all of the numbers from 1 to 6 would equal 21, which digit summingthen turns into 3, representing the Trinity. In the Rosicrucian system, 5 sym-bolized Man; the union of Adam and Eve (5+5) thus produced 10, the numberrepresenting Completion. Bey worked with the central numbers of his “Moor-ish Mathematics”—three, nine and twelve—to reveal God: “The numbertwelve reduces to three as: (1) and (2) equals (3). Three into nine equals threetimes. And three into twelve equals four times ... The preceding division ofnine and 12 by the figure three represent the (Circle Seven) of the science ofISLAM. (3) and (4) equals (7).”80The placement of I as the ninth letter in the alphabet proved “the great I,”81affirming the divine nature of man. Bey broke down the word Islam as “I Am,”which “expressed the highest phrase of creation, namely: Ourselves whichsymbolizes the letter one (1) or (I).”82 He gleaned the phrase from the “I AM”movement founded by Guy Ballard in 1932. Ballard believed that God was pre-sent in the “higher being” of man, and if one tapped into this power of “theMighty I AM” he or she would make serious changes in the world. “We are theGreat I AM,” announced Bey, “cloaked in flesh and having the supreme powerto dominate everything in creation.” Including, as Master Fard said, rain, hail,snow and earthquakes.Bey traveled to promote his Clock of Destiny club from 1947 until 1957,when a stroke left him with speech impairments. He continued to teach fromhis home and spread the message through published works. Despite the apparent perfection of his mastery over numbers and the Zodiac, Bey under-stood that truth would be lost on the masses: “If you should attempt to estab-lish an argument against this absolute code of mathematical and alphabeticalfacts, then you might be considered as the living dead, that is mentally dead, orinsane. Well, due to religious mystery 95% of the population of the U.S.A. willattempt to establish an argument against the preceding absolute facts.”83C. M. Bey’s “Sons and Daughters” did manage to score considerable influ-ence in Cleveland and Detroit and are believed to have reached New York in30 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 30the 1960s.84 Meanwhile, Ira “Allah El” Johnson Bey upheld his own sect fromprison; over the years, hundreds of “fez wearing men and long skirted outfit-ted women” traveled from all over the country to see him at Menard, believing,according to a 1948 reporter, that “he is god.”85 His son founded a temple inNew York in the 1940s, blending with other factions into an ideological soupfor the “very wise men” that Fard had prophesied. The Five Percenters wouldemerge from Harlem’s chapter of the Nation of Islam, but may also revealMoorish Science influence in the 7 on their flag and the precedent of Allah El.Allah’s own science of numbers, as well as the urban legend that Malcolm Xhad asked Allah to teach him astrology, point to a Clock of Destiny connection.The claim has been made that before or after his NOI stint, Allah did in factjoin a branch of the Moorish Science Temple;86 however, official membershipwould not have been required for Allah to syncretize the lessons of variousmovements in New York.Five Percenters today, while respecting the Nation of Islam and MoorishScience, commonly view themselves as fulfilling these generations of resis-tance theology, and Allah saw himself as arriving at the perfect time in historyto end America’s illusion of white supremacy. Elijah Muhammad, maintain-ing suspense for the Battle of Armageddon, alternately promised the end ofbondage in 1955, the fall of America in 1965 or 1966 and the expiration of thedevil’s respite in 1974. The Five Percenters would teach that the devil hadreceived fifty years of respite, expiring in 1964.87 It was time to take him off the planet.DESERT FATHERS 31ch2.qxd 2/24/2007 2:19 PM Page 313Clarence and MalcolmMuslims in the Nation of Islam were forbidden from participating in the American military. Elijah Muhammad in the Nation of Islam evenwent to prison for draft evasion during World War II. Prior to becomingClarence 13X, Clarence Edward Smith was a light-weapons infantryman whohad nearly given his life defending freedom on foreign soil while it was deniedhim in his own land.The first-class private was born a second-class citizen in Danville, Virginiaon February 22, 1928. When he was two years old, Virginia state codes wereintroduced requiring segregation in every school, theater and other publicvenue that accomodated both whites and blacks. “Race classification” codesanda “Miscegenation” bill, designed to “preserve the integrity of the whiterace,” identified a Negro as anyone possessing Negro blood. “Whiteness,”meanwhile, was defined as having “no trace whatever” of non-white blood.1Given the choice between the “colored” movie theater or the balcony of thewhite theater, young Clarence and his six siblings (five brothers, one sister)would sometimes take the balcony and look down at the whites, laughing athow “silly and trivial” they seemed. Clarence once watched his father defendhis mother’s honor by beating a white man who had cursed at her, andClarence helped fight off the man’s son and daughter.2New York had only a handful of Muslims when eighteen-year-old Clarencecame to Harlem in 1946 to live with his mother. Eight years later, there stillweren’t enough Muslims in Harlem to fill a bus,3 but 1954—the year thatClarence returned from a two-year stint in Korea—also saw the arrival of Min-ister Malcolm X, who had led successful temples in Detroit and Boston. “Thewhite man has taught us to shout and sing,” Malcolm X would preach outsideblack churches, “and pray until we die, to wait until death, for some dreamyheaven-in-the-hereafter, when we’re dead, while this white man has his milkand honey ... right here on this earth!”4 Under Malcolm’s leadership, TempleNo.7 grew into the Nation’s flagship mosque.As with NOI mosques across the country, male members of Temple No.7engaged in “Fruit of Islam” training, which included self-defense and militarydrills. The head of Harlem’s Fruit of Islam (FOI), Captain Joseph X, was the32ch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 32son of Joseph Gravitt El, one of Elijah’s old friends from the Moorish ScienceTemple. Before encountering the Nation of Islam, the younger Joseph was analcoholic who couldn’t hold a job; in Detroit he was arrested for “involuntarymolestation of women” after exposing himself to urinate on a street corner.Fearing that Joseph would wind up dead in a gutter, his father (at the time lead-ing Detroit’s Moorish Science Temple) sought help from Elijah. The Messen-ger told Joseph that he’d be spending seven weeks with Malcolm X. After theseven weeks, Elijah promised, Joseph would be free to stay with the Muslims orgo on his way. Joseph did join the Nation of Islam, and Elijah kept him close toMalcolm by naming him the minister’s bodyguard. Joseph later followed Mal-colm to Harlem, where Malcolm became minister of Temple No.7 and Josephwas named captain of the Fruit.In 1956, Captain Joseph went to Elijah Muhammad with the unfoundedrumor that Malcolm had impregnated one of the Apostle’s teen secretaries.Malcolm demanded that Joseph be punished for spreading lies, but the captainhad a direct link to the Muslims’ roots in Moorish Science and could havecaused a scandal if pushed too hard. Elijah named Joseph head of the Fruit ofIslam for the entire East Coast, putting him under only Supreme Captain Ray-mond Sharrieff and Elijah Muhammad Jr.Despite internal tension between Joseph and Malcolm, the New York Mus-lims scored a major victory in 1957, after a Temple No.7 brother named John-son Hinton had his skull split open by members of the NYPD. The bloody,half-dead heap was then carted off in a squad car to the precinct. Police brutal-ity was nothing new in Harlem, and Temple No.7’s Fruit of Islam had beentrained for this situation. Malcolm put the Fruit in formation and sent themmarching single-file to the 28th precinct. While scared white policemenlooked out from their windows, a growing mob of up to five thousand non-Muslims swelled behind the FOI. Malcolm X went inside and demanded to seeHinton. At first the officers denied that he was there; then they admitted thathe was, but refused to let Malcolm see him. The minister informed them thatuntil he was assured that Hinton had received medical care, his FOI would stayin front of the precinct. Malcolm was finally taken to see the blood-soaked,semi-conscious Hinton and demanded that an ambulance take him to HarlemHospital. An ambulance was called and the Fruit of Islam, along with throngsof supporters, followed it up Lenox. When Malcolm learned that Hinton wasreceived at the hospital and properly treated, he gave the sign for his FOI to dis-perse. The crowd of spectators broke up on its own. Hinton had a steel plateinserted in his head, and with the NOI’s help sued the NYPD for $70,000. Atthe time, it was the largest amount that New York City had ever paid for policebrutality.CLARENCE AND MALCOLM 33ch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 33Accepted Five Percenter tradition holds that Clarence had returned fromoverseas duty in 1960 to discover that his wife Dora had joined the Nation ofIslam. She now wore long dresses and covered her hair with a headwrap, for-bade their children from eating pork and refused to drink alcohol, dance or lis-ten to music. Her husband, bewildered but intrigued, allowed her to take himdown to Mosque No.7 (on the corner of 116th and Lenox) for a meeting withMalcolm X.With most legendary history, details don’t always hold together. Clarenceactually served in Korea from 1952 to 1954. He would have been in Harlemduring the years that Malcolm built up Temple No.7, appeared on nationaltelevision specials and made the FBI nervous by meeting Fidel Castro at theHotel Theresa. It is not unthinkable that Clarence was one of the twenty thou-sand at a rally in Harlem’s garment district to protest the Emmett Till verdict,at which Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. announced that “no crisis facing America ismore serious than the crisis of racism.” Clarence remained in the ArmyReserve until September 30, 1960. It is possible that he was away from NewYork on a Reserve commitment during the time that Dora converted. The FBIdates his earliest appearance with the Nation of Islam as September 1, 1961.5 Inthe rapidly growing Muslim community, however, the first time that Clarencewas noticed by an informant would not necessarily have been his first time inthe temple.Upon registering as a Muslim with Temple No.7 (renamed Mosque No.7 in1961), Clarence dropped his “slave name” Smith in favor of 13X, signifyingthat he was the thirteenth member named Clarence. The life of a Muslimturned out to be harder than he imagined. In December 1960, Malcolmreturned from a lengthy stint on the road to learn that in Captain Joseph’shands, the temple was falling apart: a number of recent converts were sellingand smoking marijuana, dealing in cocaine and heroin and engaging in illicitsex. On December 23, Malcolm conducted a mass trial in which various Mus-lims stood for their crimes. Malcolm told the suspected drug dealer that he wasfortunate to have been caught by Muslims instead of police, as the policewould use it against the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. The guilty Muslimswere suspended for periods ranging from ninety days to five years. The newClarence 13X, a self-proclaimed “master gambler” who enjoyed marijuanaand women, had some adjustments to make.As a neophyte, Clarence embarked on the Nation’s process of induction:committing the entire Fard-Muhammad dialogue, the Supreme WisdomLessons, to memory. Amir Fatir recalls that converts were issued the text insections, mastering each lesson to receive the next:34 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 34the student did not receive Lost-Found Lesson No.2’s first question and answeruntil each question and answer of Lesson No.1 was recited exactly as written.Then the student could receive just the first question and answer of the 40which comprise Lost-Found Lesson No.2. When that first one was recited per-fectly, then he or she would be given the second question and answer to learnand memorize.6“Like all initiation systems,” Fatir adds, “the process Master Fard used on Elijah Muhammad is intended to bring about an inner change that lights aspark and, suddenly, renders understanding. The Messenger taught hisstu-dents to memorize the lessons. Through memorization and repeated recita-tion, the true power within the lessons begins to unveil itself.”7Clarence’s military background helped him attain the level of AFOI(Advanced Fruit of Islam), a sort of unofficial lieutenant. Highly disputed taleshave Captain Joseph assigning Clarence the role of judo instructor, Malcolmnaming him an assistant minister and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad con-gratulating him on his progress with the honorific title of Abdullah (“servantof Allah”).8 The FBI began monitoring his appearances in Mosque No.7 and atNOI events. On February 16, 1963, informants observed him at a Muslim rallyon 125th and Seventh, where Malcolm X preached that the so-called Negrohad helped the white man fight his wars, giving his life for the white man inKorea, Japan and Germany, and the time had come for so-called Negroes to diefor their own freedom.9Despite his apparent rise through the Muslim ranks, Clarence’s deep explo-rations of the Supreme Wisdom led him to an intellectual crisis. Initially heaccepted Elijah’s teachings that Allah had appeared in the person of Master W. D. Fard, the child of black Alphonso Shabazz and white Baby Gee. In theSupreme Wisdom Lessons, however, he learned that the True and Living “Godof the Universe” was the Black Man; so why were Muslims worshiping a half-black man?After a long day of selling Elijah’s newspapers in Queens, the Muslims waitedfor their train home on the L platform, where John 37X Brooks overheardClarence arguing with one of their comrades about W. D. Fard’s divinity.“I’m Master Fard’s uncle,” Clarence told him; “that means I’m his father,Alphonso Shabazz’s brother and Alphonso was Allah before Fard.” Clarencecould support his argument with Fard’s own lessons. “Who is the OriginalMan?” he asked his challenger, quoting the first question from the SupremeWisdom’s “Student Enrollment.”“The Original Man is the Asiatic Blackman,” replied the Muslim, recitinghis lessons by heart, “the Maker, the Owner, Cream of the Planet Earth, Fatherof Civilization, God of the Universe.”CLARENCE AND MALCOLM 35ch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 35“I am an Original Man,” Clarence shot back, “and the Original Man is Godand that makes me Allah.”10John 37X, who had joined the mosque in 1958, approached Clarence afterthe debate and the two would talk for the entire ride to Harlem. They becameinseparable friends and were nicknamed the “High Scientists” for the way thatthey constantly poured over the Supreme Wisdom Lessons.Clarence would later say that the Fruit of Islam “played with him.”11 FivePercenter tradition narrates that Captain Joseph X and the FOI once pulled him from the elevator and mockingly demanded, “brother Clarence,come up here and minister.”12 They pushed Clarence to the podium. From the back of the mosque, Malcolm X heard the commotion, raced to the frontand rang a small bell—a signal for silence. The Fruit immediately came toattention. Clarence stood before the crowded room and announced that what Fard had given to Elijah, Elijah had given to him. The shocked FOI began to approach the podium. Clarence then added, “and I am Allah.”13 Theepisode should be read with an understanding of Nation of Islam nuance, inwhich the Arabic Allah and English God did not always carry the same mean-ing. The distinction is illustrated in a 1959 exchange between Louis Lomax and Elijah Muhammad in the Mike Wallace documentary, The Hate that Hate Produced: “ ‘Now, if I’m to understand you correctly,’ said Lomax, ‘youteach that all members of the Nation of Islam are God, and that one of you is supreme and that one is Allah. Now, have I understood you correctly?’‘That’s right,’ answered the Messenger.”14 The statement of Clarence 13X in the mosque was indeed bold, heretical and an open challenge to the Nation’s power structure; but it was also dependent on Elijah Muhammad’stheology. The NOI believed in a succession of Allahs; Clarence may have been insinuating that Fard’s term had expired and he would now carry themantle.In addition to his thought-crimes, Clarence’s everyday behavior had fallenout of line. On one occasion he was barred entry from the mosque for wearingshorts, a violation of the NOI dress code.15 At increasing odds with the organi-zation, he drifted to the fringe of the fringe. He found a place for himself withinthe Supreme Wisdom Lessons, which broke down humanity into a system ofpercentages:14. Who is the 85%? ANS. The uncivilized people; poison animal eaters; slaves from mental deathand power, people who do not know the Living God or their origin in thisworld, and they worship that they know not what—who are easily led in thewrong direction, but hard to lead into the right direction. 36 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 3615. Who is the 10%? ANS. The rich; the slave-makers of the poor; who teach the poor lies—tobelieve that the Almighty, True and Living God is a spook and cannot be seenby the physical eye. Other wise known as: The Blood-Suckers Of The Poor. 16. Who is the 5% in the Poor Part of the Earth? ANS. They are the poor, righteous Teachers, who do not believe in the teach-ings of the 10%, and are all-wise; and know who the Living God is; and Teachthat the Living God is the Son of man, the supreme being, the (black man) ofAsia; and Teach Freedom, Justice and Equality to all the human family of theplanet Earth.16In its standard interpretation, the five percent would have been the Nation ofIslam, while the eighty-five percent was made up of black Christians that hadbeen exploited by the ten percent, the religious establishments. The ten per-cent, of course, kept the eighty-five percent pacified by teaching them tobelieve in a “mystery god” that could not be seen. But within the Nation ofIslam, Clarence could perhaps see eighty-five percent of the population labor-ing while an elite ten percent (Elijah, his family and the inner circle) lived inmansions and rode in luxury cars. And how did they do it? By selling W. D.Fard, a man who disappeared thirty years before and hadn’t been seen or heardsince, a man who had become, in every sense of the word, a mystery, as Allah. Itmay have dawned on Clarence that he wasn’t only in the Five Percent, but aspecial five percent within the Five Percent, the truest and poorest of PoorRighteous Teachers.Clarence traveled to Philadelphia for the September 29 “MuhammadSpeaks” rally at which Elijah Muhammad embraced Malcolm X and told theaudience, “this is my most faithful, hard-working minister. He will follow meuntil he dies.” But by the end of 1963, both Malcolm and Clarence would beeffectively out of the Nation of Islam.It is widely believed that Malcolm expelled Clarence for any of a variety ofreasons such as gambling and smoking. Clarence’s friend Les Matthews of theNew York Amsterdam News reported years later that Clarence was called a“rebel” by Malcolm, who had supposedly said, “he refuses to abide by the rulesand we gave him many chances. I think he would fare better out of themosque.”17Clarence may not have sat well with the Nation’s strict adherence tomonogamy. In 1949, the year that Willieen Jowers gave birth to their sonClarence Jowers, he was treated for syphilis. In 1950 he wed his sweetheartDora; one year into their marriage, he fathered another son (Otis Jowers) byWillieen. In 1953, serving in the army thousands of miles from both women,CLARENCE AND MALCOLM 37ch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 37he received treatment for chancroid and is alleged to have impregnated aKorean woman.18Around the same time that Clarence left the Nation, rumors of Elijah’s adul-tery provoked mass defections in Chicago. Beginning in 1960, the Apostle hadnot only fathered children with seven of his young secretaries, but punished atleast three of them with the standard NOI penalty for unwed mothers: com-plete isolationfrom the Muslim community. Malcolm began investigating thematter, even defying Nation protocol by visiting the three secretaries who hadbeen placed in isolation. He heard the allegations confirmed by Elijah’s ownson Wallace, who had come to doubt his father’s theology while studying theQur’an in prison. It became clear that the rules for a lowly laborer in Harlemwere not the same as those for the Messenger of Allah. If infidelity had causedClarence to fall out of grace with the mosque, the hypocrisy could not havebeen lost on Malcolm.Minister Akbar Muhammad, the NOI’s international representative, hasstated that Clarence was exiled not for adultery but domestic violence.Muhammad alleges that Clarence first received a thirty-day suspension, thenreturned and beat his wife again, after which he was suspended for ninetydays.19 The last time Clarence set foot in Mosque No.7, he was said to have beenescorted out by the Fruit. It made for a “tense situation,” claims a member ofthe Nation of Islam who spoke on condition of anonymity. Vincent Cham-bers, who at the time attended Mosque No.7 with his father, refutes the story.According to Chambers, Clarence simply stopped attending meetings, andany charges (possibly for stealing funds from the mosque20) were only broughtupon him later as rationale for his absence.21 For whatever reason, whenClarence permanently parted ways with the mosque, Dora chose to stay, andClarence moved into his mother’s apartment uptown.22While investigating the death of a Muslim, the Bureau of Special Serviceshad determined that Clarence 13X was employed by the Earth PaintersImprovement Company in Brooklyn, run by Muslims George X and Ben X.John 37X, also employed by Earth Painters, told me that meager wages werethe true impetus behind Clarence and his leaving the mosque: “we weren’tmaking enough money to take care of our families, so we went for ourselves ...doing things to get paid that weren’t a credit for the Nation, making moneyfrom the street.”23 Without providing too many details, he had given the sameexplanation in 2001, in a videotaped interview conducted by Five Percenters:“We decided to separate ourselves from the mosque so we could get paid ... werecognized that we was going to have to do some unscrupulous stuff to getmoney and that was not conducive to the image that the Nation presents, youknow, the Nation of Islam.”24 John 37X agrees that Clarence had been under38 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 38no disciplinary action. However, one week after Clarence left the mosque,John was suspended for continuing to associate with his friend. Rather thanwait out his suspension, John abandoned the Nation of Islam and hit thestreets with Clarence. “First he went,” said John, “and I came behind him.”25Following the November 22, 1963 assassination of President John F.Kennedy, Elijah Muhammad, worried that false accusations would be thrownat his Nation, placed a moratorium against his ministers issuing any state-ments on the matter. He cancelled his December 1 appearance in New York,perhaps to avoid the issue himself, and assigned Malcolm to speak in his place.The rally took place at the Manhattan Center and was open to the public; theaudience of seven hundred included members of the press, Muslims, non-Muslims, and Clarence 13X. Malcolm gave his speech, entitled “God’s Judg-ment on White America,” and then allowed a question-and-answer session.When a reporter inevitably asked about the forbidden topic of PresidentKennedy, Malcolm gave his most famous soundbite (with the exception of “byany means necessary” and possibly “the ballot or the bullet”): “It was a case ofthe chickens coming home to roost.” Elijah suspended Malcolm for ninety days and transferred temporary lead-ership of Mosque No.7 to Captain Joseph X and later James 3X, minister of theNewark mosque. Malcolm is said to have paid a visit to Clarence 13X, whor*spected the ousted minister too much to buy the brandings of “hypocrite”.While Elijah ruled from Chicago like a distant monarch, Malcolm had been thegeneral on Harlem’s front line. Malcolm was the man on the street corners,preaching to Harlemites in their own language and knowing their stories. In aprevious life he ran those very streets as a pimp and hustler; when he admon-ished Clarence for shooting dice, it came with the authority of having beenthere. During Malcolm’s visit, Clarence explained the unique roles that theywere meant to play: Malcolm’s job was to teach the old, while Clarence wouldteach the young.30Malcolm went to Miami and vacationed at the training camp of CassiusClay, who was preparing to challenge Sonny Liston for the heavyweight cham-pionship of the world. Fielding questions from the sports press, Malcolmclaimed that his suspension would end after the ninety-day period. “If youthink Clay was loud,” he told one reporter, “wait until I start talking on the firstof March!”Malcolm described Liston-Clay as the “Cross and the Crescent in a prizering” but Clay went in with such long odds (8–1) that Muhammad Speaksmade no mention of the fight or Clay’s interest in the NOI, lest the Crescentlose. Malcolm, however, was certain that Allah had provided three signs of aClay victory, starting with the date of the fight, February 25. Malcolm addedCLARENCE AND MALCOLM 39ch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 39two and five together to get seven, which Elijah had taught was a lucky number(along with twelve and its reverse, twenty-one, which equaled seven + seven +seven) for the black man. At the Convention Hall, Malcolm was happy to findthat his ticket placed him in the seat numbered seven. Allah’s third sign was thefight taking place just a day before 1964’s Savior Day—the thirty-fourthanniversary of W. D. Fard’s arrival in the wilderness of North America. Again,Malcolm added the digits together and got the lucky number: three plus fourequals seven. “Seven has always been my favorite number,” he would reveal inhis autobiography. “It has followed me throughout my life.”31 Clay pulled offthe upset when Liston, claiming shoulder injury, failed to come out of his cor-ner for the seventh round. The next morning Clay announced that he was infact a Muslim in the Nation of Islam.Malcolm’s usual role at the Savior’s Day Convention was filled by Louis X(Farrakhan), his pupil who had succeeded him at the Boston mosque. OnMarch 8, two days after Clay was renamed Muhammad Ali by the Messenger,Malcolm X announced his complete break with the Nation of Islam. He hadnot desired to leave, he told the press, but had been forced out by internal pol-itics. Malcolm stressed that he still considered himself Elijah’s follower, andthat Elijah still had the best solution to America’s racial problems. Rather thanblast the Messenger, Malcolm exhorted Muslims to “stay in the Nation ofIslam under the spiritual guidance of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad” andinsisted that he’d best spread Elijah’s message by staying out of the Nation andfocusing his work on non-Muslims. Four days later he announced the start ofhis own organization, “Muslim Mosque, Inc.,” which would provide a “reli-gious base” but focus on social and economic black nationalism. The Mosquewould encourage participation by all, regardless of their religious or non-religious leanings.On March 11, Malcolm sent a telegram to Elijah insisting that his decisionto leave had come under pressure from a conspiracy between the national offi-cials in Chicago and Captain Joseph X in New York. His intention was only topreserve Muslims’ faith in the Messenger and the Nation of Islam. “I willalways be a Muslim,” he wrote, “teaching what you have taught me, and givingyou full credit for what I know and what I am.” The telegram ended, “I am stillyour brother and servant.” The FBI suspected that Malcolm was leaving a dooropen for Elijah to take him back.Malcolm announced at an April 12 rally thathe would be leaving on a three-week tour of Africa and the Middle East. The next day he departed for Cairo asMalik Shabazz, which is commonly misunderstood to be Malcolm’s “post-NOI” name. Malcolm had been using the name for more than ten years, and there is at least one instance of Elijah publicly referring to him as40 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 40“Minister M. Shabazz” during his time in the Nation. As roughly forty Mus-lims were said to leave Mosque No.7 with Malcolm, including a lieutenant inthe FOI (James 67X), it meant a great deal that he still used Shabazz, the nameof Elijah’s Lost-Found Tribe. Fellow Muslim outcasts like Clarence 13X, whocontinued even in exile to revere Elijah and the Supreme Wisdom Lessons, sawno reason that they couldn’t follow Malcolm upon his arrival home. For thosetired of “talking tough, but never doing anything,”32 Malcolm would manifestElijah’s message with direct action. Harlem had a new militancy, born in theNation but free from its leader’s control.The life of Malik Shabazz, however, had been a series of sharp 180 degreeturns and was about to take another.CLARENCE AND MALCOLM 41ch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 414The Blood BrothersI tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannotsleep forever.Thomas Jefferson1964 threatens to be an explosive year.Malcolm XAt first the Harlem Six were seven, and they were teenagers when they heardMalcolm speak at a Nation of Islam meeting in 1963. Older non-Muslimshad already given them the truth about Satan, which had trickled from themosque into the streets; but hearing it delivered in Malcolm’s voice changedtheir lives. “The knowledge and wisdom that the white man is a devil was sothick in the atmosphere,” remembers Amin, “we left the meeting feeling com-pletely different about ourselves.”Rather than register as official Muslims, the teenagers took holy names ontheir own and taught Islam to the younger brothers at their schools and on129th Street between Seventh and Lenox, while learning karate from the olderbrothers. “We took up the art,” states Amin, “because the police had startedmessing with us.” With their new skills they could mess back. When patrolmenoffered a challenge with nightsticks and guns, the teenagers took a fightingstance and dared them with “Allah is God! C’mon suckers!” The group alsoacted as Harlem’s Robin Hoods, stealing entire bags of groceries from white-owned stores and leaving them on the doorsteps of needy black families.On April 17, 1964, just two days before Malcolm X arrived in Mecca, theseven were part of a crowd of roughly eighty—most of them students atCooper Junior High School—that Amin describes as “hot headed, and want-ing to destroy whitefolks.” Ranging in age from seventeen to nineteen, Aminand his friends stood as elder statesmen in the adolescent mob. On 125th andLenox a black youth jumped a white man who was getting a shoe-shine just asa mostly white school on 124th was letting out its students. While LenoxAvenue fell to a miniature race-war, Jahad, Walik, Amin, Rahim, Malik,Akbar, and Latif walked up to 129th, where they discovered a fruit stand and42ch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 42helped themselves to what they wanted. As the NYPD rushed to the scene,Walik tried to prevent three officers from beating a youth with a stick andreceived a beating of his own. Latik was apprehended after standing betweenyoung children and a gun-waving cop. Walik and Latik were handcuffedtogether and thrown into a squad car. “When they got us to the precinct sta-tion,” said Walik, “they beat us practically all that day.” According to Latik,there were as many as six to twelve officers beating them at a time, and “all thetime they were beating us they never took the handcuffs off.” When the copsgrew tired of beating, they began to spit on the boys.1 The events of that daycame to be known as the “Fruit Stand Riot.” On April 29, the seven reunited teenagers were hanging out with Amin’scousin Al-Jabbar (Leslie Stanley) in the night center of P.S. 144, where theyheld a karate class, played music and danced. Akbar (Robert Barnes) left, andlater his six comrades—Amin (William Criag, 19), Walik (Wallace Baker, 19),Malik (Robert Rice, 17), Al-Rahim (Ronald Felder, 18), Jahad (WalterThomas, 18), and Latik (Daniel Hamm, 18)—were picked up by NYPD for themurder of Margit Sugar, a Hungarian refugee. The six youths had allegedlywalked into Sugar’s Eve and Pete Clothing Store at 3 West 125th Street andasked to try on second-hand suits. “We don’t have your size,” replied Sugar,allegedly prompting one of the youths to stab her. Margit’s forty-seven-year-old husband Frank tried to get the knife and received some jabs himself. Famedcivil rights lawyer William Kunstler agreed to represent Latik, who alongWalik had also been accused concering the stabbing death of Eileen Johnston.Latik eventually confessed and named Malik as the other killer.The Harlem Six all came from around the high 120 streets and SeventhAvenue. While in custody, Amin remembers, the group was visited byClarence 13X, who provided “a whole new look at life, white folk and ourselves.”According to a series of New York Times articles by African-Americanreporter Junius Griffin, these six teenagers at the Brooklyn House of Detentionwere only the first glimpse at white America’s new nightmare: throngs ofyoung, angry black bodies coming together, getting trained and organized,building a force to counter police and take the heads off devils.The “Blood Brothers” ranged in age from twelve to their mid-twenties.“Making traditional street warfare in Harlem obsolete,” they had beenrecruited away from small-time gangs into something bigger, an army fightingnot for turf but race. The leaders of the Blood Brotherhood were supposedlyattritioned Muslims who had left Mosque No.7 with Malcolm X but would inturn abandon Malcolm when he wrote his famous post-hajj letter from Jedda,Saudi Arabia, dated April 20, 1964:THE BLOOD BROTHERS 43ch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 43Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the overwhelming spirit oftrue brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in thisancient holy land, the home of Abraham, Muhammad and all the otherprophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week I have been utterly speech-less and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by peopleof all colors ... There were tens of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world.They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans, butwere all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and broth-erhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe could never existbetween the white and non-white ... America needs to understand Islam,because this is the one religion that erases the race problem from its society ...The whites as well as the non-whites who accept true Islam become a changedpeople. I have eaten from the same plate with people whose eyes were the bluestof blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitestof white—all the way from Cairo to Jedda and even in the Holy City of Mecca itself—and I felt the same sincerity in the words and deeds of these“white” Muslims that I felt among the African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan andGhana. True Islam removes racism, because people of all colors and races whoaccept its religious principles and bow down to the one God, Allah, also auto-matically accept each other as brothers and sisters, regardless of differences incomplexion.2“Malcolm taught a lie,” John 37X would snap at me in February 2005; “Mal-colm told us that the devil could not enter the holy city. Then he came back andsaid, ‘I slept with the devil! I ate with the devil! I prayed with the devil!’ ”3A new Black Islam was forming on the streets,inspired by both Malcolmand Elijah but owned by neither. Blood Brothers shared their martial artstraining with youths on rooftops around the area of 135th and Lenox, butoperated mainly around 129th. Staple weapons of the group includedmakeshift wooden knives and three-inch razor blade holders in which theblade protruded half an inch. The Blood Brothers taught their disciples to greeteach other with as-salamu alaikum and never attack another black man. Theywere said to be divided into two camps, one advocating indiscriminate vio-lence against whites while the other taught its members to fight only ifattacked. Requiring each member to share his training with ten other youths,the Blood Brothers had the potential to grow exponentially through the city.The group had already spawned an offshoot, the “Black Mollyzuls,” distin-guished by their wearing of red, black and green.4The story snowballed. In his first piece, dated May 3, Griffin speculated thatabout sixty Blood Brothers roamed Harlem streets in search of white victims.On May 5, Griffin reported an unnamed researcher from HARYOU (HarlemYouth Opportunities Unlimited) announcing that the Blood Brothers 44 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 44numbered four hundred. On May 7, Griffin wrote of forty African-Americandetectives moving into Harlem to scope areas in which the group was believedto hang out after school hours. Morris Levy, lawyer for Al-Rahim, stated thathe had heard “reports and rumors” of an anti-white gang but Al-Rahimassured him that he was not a member. Blood Brothers were even said to besecretly working their way into the fabric of local leadership, through positionson committees at public schools and community centers. Eric M. Javits, can-didate for the Republican nomination for State Senator, demanded a grandjury investigation while the NAACP’s New York chapter demanded proof thatthe Blood Brothers existed. James Farmer, national director of the Congress ofRacial Equality (CORE), viewed the Blood Brothers—real or imagined—asemblematic of greater issues: “I think the Blood Brothers are merely anotherindication of the sickness of our society. They reflect the growing anger, frus-tration and sense of hopelessness in the Negro ghetto, especially among ouryouth, most of whom are unemployed.”5Minister James 3X denied any connection between Blood Brothers andMosque No.7. Malcolm X was still overseas as rumors blossomed of hisinvolvement. Police informants reported that Blood Brothers had attendedMalcolm’s nationalist meetings and members earned the right to replace theirsurnames with “X” after killing a white person. One alleged Blood Brother wasquoted as declaring that “chickens are coming home to roost.” Another mem-ber who had been taken into police custody asked his mother to send word toJames 67X, Malcolm’s secretary at the Hotel Theresa. 67X denied that Mal-colm had anything to do with the group, and addressed the issue at a meetingof the Militant Labor Forum. “I don’t know if there is such a neighborhoodMau Mau,” he said; “I wouldn’t be surprised if there were one.”6The Blood Brothers did display some political sophistication, referring tothe recently passed “no knock law” (allowing policemen to enter homes with-out knocking) as the “passbook law,” an allusion to apartheid. In South Africa,the passbook law required nonwhites to carry passes as a means of restrictingtheir movement.The Militant Labor Forum arranged a panel on the “Harlem Hate GangScare,” featuring Malcolm X, who had been asked about Blood Brothers whilein Nigeria, Quentin Hand from the Harlem Action Group, William Reed fromthe Harlem chapter of CORE, Socialist Party presidential candidate CliftonDeBerry, and Junius Griffin. On May 29, the date of the panel, Griffin can-celled his appearance by telegram: “Regret that cannot participate in yoursymposium. Professional ethics restrain me from such participation.”When asked whether the Blood Brothers existed, Malcolm replied that itwas possible and that it wouldn’t surprise him at all. Such a group had everyTHE BLOOD BROTHERS 45ch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 45right to exist, he said, given the treatment that African-Americans receivedfrom police. As long as police continued to function as “occupation forces” inHarlem, said Malcolm, “you will find that there is a growing tendency amongus, among our people, to do whatever is necessary to bring this to a halt ... I’mnot here to apologize for the existence of any Blood Brothers.”7The same day of the panel, Griffin’s “Harlem: the Tension Underneath”appeared on the front page of the Times, complete with fuzzy photos of blackyouths practicing karate kicks, tosses and blows to the Adam’s apple. Todaythe Blood Brothers are commonly viewed as Griffin’s invention, another coldblack phantom to scare whites into buying newspapers. Though you can findFive Percenters today who identify as former Blood Brothers, it’s questionablethat Harlem’s scattered pockets of renegade Muslims viewed themselves as anorganized movement before Griffin gave them a name. In the Five Percentercommunity, the title marks an elder as present during the group’s prehistory,that transitional period between Elijah’s lessons escaping the mosque and theirbirthing a whole new culture.The Harlem Six would ultimately receive guilty verdicts, thanks in part tothe prosecution’s star witness, Robert “Akbar” Barnes. After shouting anti-white slogans in the courtroom, Walik and Amin were sent to Bellevue for psy-chiatric examination. The remaining four each refused to comment whenasked if they would like to say a word before their sentencing, standing expres-sionless with arms folded across their chests. The years to come would bringverdict reversals, appeals and retrials. Akbar recanted his testimony, sayingthat the police had coerced him to implicate the Harlem Six; he later recantedhis recantation, claiming that Malik had threatened him. The trial judge, StateSupreme Court Justice Gerald P. Culkin, caused further controversy byremarking that “these boys wouldn’t know a good attorney from a good water-melon.”8 The youths became folk heroes, inspiring Truman Nelson’s book TheTorture of Mothers, supported with benefit rallies by the Charter Group for aPledge of Conscience and a petition written by James Baldwin, which carriedthe signatures of Ossie Davis, Bertrand Russell, Günter Grass and Allen Gins-berg. Baldwin explained why support of the youths was a crucial and naturalresponse from the black experience: “No one in Harlem will ever believe thatThe Harlem Six are guilty—God knows their guilt has certainly not beenproved. Harlem knows, though, that they have been abused and possiblydestroyed, and Harlem knows why—we have lived with it since our eyesopened on the world.”9Clarence 13X spent the summer of 1964 wandering across battle lines inHarlem’s Muslim civil war, unsure of where he belonged. A June 16 con-frontation with thirty-five Fruits led to the arrest of six armed men from 46 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 46Malcolm’s camp, forcing Malcolm into temporary hiding. Clarence was fre-quently seen in front of the Hotel Theresa; in the first week of June, the NYPDhad determined him to be a member of Muslim Mosque, Inc. But on June 28,while Malcolm held the founding meeting of his secular nationalist group, theOrganization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), Clarence went to the 369thRegimental Armory on 142nd Street and Fifth Avenue to hear Elijah Muham-mad address a rally.Outside the Armory, a squad of Fruit swooped down on a suspected Mal-colm supporter and beat him for a few minutes while policemen made haplessattempts to intervene. The Muslims, sporting armbands reading, “WE AREWITH MUHAMMAD,” then carried him across the street and left him for thecops. The New York Times described the beating as the only fight that day, butthe New YorkAmsterdam News reported that two other alleged members ofMalcolm’s camp had been beaten for trying to attend. One of them might havebeen Clarence, whose sister Bernice claimed that he was barred entry followinga scuffle.10Inside, a mass of FOI appeared onstage and separated to reveal the Messenger in a velvet fez. He took his seat in a rose armchair until it came timefor the “short, meek-looking” man of sixty-seven to address the crowd. Thepodium was covered with microphones and surrounded by Fruit. Elijahgreeted the crowd of nearly seven thousand, roughly half of whom were Muslims, with as-salamu alaikum. Though neglecting to mention Malcolm byname, Elijah alluded to “some person who wants to be what I am, but that person is not able to be what I am.” After an hour and fifteen minutes, heannounced the end of his speech. As members of the audience got up to leave,Louis X took the podium and scolded those who would walk out on the onlyman who had ever told them the truth. Next to speak was Muhammad Ali,recently returned from Africa, who presented the Messenger with a miniaturegold mosque on behalf of the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs in Cairo. Atanother time Clarence 13X would have been on that stage, standing in a phalanx between the masses and the Messenger with a cold Fruit stare burning through and beyond the crowd. At another time it would have beenMalcolm X, not Louis, who welcomed Elijah to the podium. Instead Clarence watched the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Minister Louis X and the Heavyweight Champion of the World from the Armory stands, while some twenty streets away Malcolm struggled to get his new group off the ground.The rumors that Clarence had joined Muslim Mosque, Inc. were laterrefuted; though he admired Malcolm, and the two occasionally met at a ChockFull of Nuts on 125th and Seventh,11 Clarence couldn’t identify with the newTHE BLOOD BROTHERS 47ch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 47message. There was no place in Malcolm’s al-Islam for Supreme WisdomLessons or the Yacub story, all essentials to Islam as Clarence understood it—but there was no room in that Islam, Elijah’s Nation of Islam, for Clarence. As the Holy Apostle squeezed tighter and Malcolm moved toward his ownimmolation, odd men out were stumbling on the margins.48 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 485AllahClarence 13X and John 37X smoked herb and studied their NOI lessons at“the Hole,” a hangout for hustlers, number-runners and riff-raff in thebasem*nt of Clarence’s tenement building at 200 West 127th Street. “It wasn’tuncommon in Harlem,” says Vincent Chambers, “for the gambling spots to bein basem*nts, and if you weren’t from around there, you’d walk by and have noidea.”1 Reciting the Lost-Found Lesson No.1, John would ask a question suchas, “why isn’t the devil settled on the best part of the planet earth?” andClarence provided the memorized answer: Because the Earth belongs to the original Black man. And knowing that theDevil was wicked and there would not be any peace among them, he put himout in the worst part of the Earth and kept the Best Part preserved for himselfsince he made it. The Best Part is in Arabia, at the Holy City (Mecca). The Colored man or Caucasian is the Devil. Arabia is in the Far East and is borderedby the Indian Ocean on the south.2Out of the Nation, they dropped their X’s and took new names. As the “bestknower,” Clarence 13X renamed himself Allah; bearing witness to Allah, John37X took the Arabic name Shahid (Witness), which turned into Abu Shahidafter the birth of his son, “Little Shahid.” During his stint as an AFOI, Abu Shahid had discovered a copy of Teachingfor the Lost Found Nation of Islam in a Mathematical Way (also known as the“Problem Book”) while shaking down Muslim officers’ quarters in the Bronx.“I had offered it to the Father,” says Shahid, “but he said that he didn’t have anyproblems.”3 The former John 37X became “caught up in its science”4 and wasdetermined to solve the book’s thirty-four riddles. He had been fasting forthree days when he reached the thirteenth problem:After learning Mathematics, which is Islam, and Islam is Mathematics, it standstrue. You can always prove it at no limit of time. Then you must learn to use itand secure some benefit while you are living, that is—luxury, money, goodhomes, friendship in all walks of life.Sit yourself in Heaven at once! This is the greatest Desire of your Brother andTeachers. Now you must speak the language so you can use your Mathematical49ch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 49Theology in the proper Term – otherwise you will not be successful unless youdo speak well, for she knows all about you.The Secretary of Islam offers a reward to the best and neatest worker of thisProblem. There are twenty-six letters in the Language and if a student learns one letter per day, then how long will it take him to learn the twenty-six letters? There are ten numbers in the Mathematical Language. Then how long will ittake a Student to learn the whole ten numbers (at the above rate)?The average man speaks four hundred words – considered well.5Abu Shahid sought to find the “alphabetical computation of the mathematicalevaluation.”6 Because there were twenty-six letters in the “Language of theAlphabets,” he began by attempting to break down the number twenty-six.Because ten numbers constituted the Language of Mathematics, and two plussix equals eight, Abu Shahid believed there to be something missing from theAlphabets that was not absent from the Math.7Shahid would find his truths in opposing sets of three. “Deaf, Dumb andBlind” were negative attributes countered by “Knowledge, Wisdom andUnderstanding.” Shahid understood Knowledge to be the foundation of allthings, and thus assigned it a mathematical value of one.8 Wisdom (two) wasthe application of Knowledge, and Wisdom added to Knowledge producedUnderstanding (three). The concepts occurred several times throughout theBible, but not always in the same order:For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you,and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdomand spiritual understanding.Colossians 1:9By wisdom the Lord laid the earth’s foundations, by understanding he set theheavens in place; by his knowledge the deeps were divided, and the clouds letdrop the dew.Proverbs 3:19–20For the Lord gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. Proverbs 2:6Abu Shahid denies the legend that he and Allah argued for three days over the proper placement of Knowledge and Wisdom, with Allah advocatingKnowledge-Wisdom and Abu Shahid favoring Wisdom-Knowledge. “How50 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 50can you have Wisdom,” Shahid asked me, “if you don’t know a goddamnedthing?”Describing this period, Shahid writes, “you must remember that I was freshout of the Mosque, and that information was foremost in my mind.”9 Searchingfor the next set, he remembered the chalkboard at the mosque. On one side ofthe board was the United States flag, under which was written “Suffering, Slav-ery and Death.” On the other side was the flag of the Nation of Islam, said to rep-resent “Freedom, Justice and Equality.” Shahid now had his four, five, and six.To the Rosicrucians, 7 symbolized divine influence in the physical realm,which became Noble Drew Ali’s “Circle Seven.” “Seven is God,” writes Shahid,“because 6 days shall you labor, but the 7th day is the Lord’s day or so it is writ-ten.” In the Rosicrucian view, 8 was seen to represent “Evolution.” Shahiddetermined 8 to be a “Transitory Period,” symbolized by the opposing forcesof “Build or Destroy.” He also related the numbers to a baby’s development inthe womb: a child born in the seventh month was “lucky” to have maturedearly, but now faced the urgent struggle to “Live or Die.” Then “followingtheanalogy of the ‘Child Birth Process,’ ” 9 was defined as “Born” or “Birth.”10All male babies are sons of nine—9 months from conception to birth.C. M. Bey11Shahid saw 10 as “Islam,” but believed that 6 could not represent “Equality” ina system of only ten numbers; he needed two more. 11 became “Supreme Wis-dom,” since one plus one equals two and the Supreme Wisdom Lessons taughtthat there were eleven Original men for every devil. To unlock the meaning oftwelve, Shahid looked once more to Elijah Muhammad, who wrote that Mes-sengers were selected by a panel of twelve divine scientists:When Messenger is chosen, these 12 confer to see if whether or not he can dothe job that he is now chosen for. The 12 Gods decide on all of this. We call themthe 12 Great Scientists. This is why your ruler was made with 12 inches; it’s after the number of the 12 Major Scientists, and without this, you cannot live.We call it a ruler when you have 12 square inches in it.12With Elijah’s foundation and an artful twisting of logic, Abu Shahid found 12to be “Supreme Ruler:”if you want to be God then you have to be a Righteous Ruler, because the Godof Righteousness is a Righteous Ruler. You must stand on your own “two feet,”there are twelve (12) inches in a foot, two feet is twenty-four (24) inches. Six ishalf of twelve (12), 24 = 2 + 4 = 6, six is half of twelve and half of that is Equal-ity. Now that is the way that I worked it out over a weekend of fasting.13ALLAH 51ch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 51He now had a completed 1–12 system, which he called the “Living Mathematics:”1. Knowledge2. Wisdom3. Understanding4. Freedom5. Justice6. Equality7. God8. Build or Destroy9. Born (or Birth)10. Islam11. Supreme Wisdom12. Supreme RulerThe search for Mathematical Language had spanned the entire tumultuousjourney of John 37X into Abu Shahid. “I started it in the mosque,” he told me,“and finished it in the street.”14While “sciencing out” the Living Mathematics and fasting, Shahid was alsodealing and using drugs15 and running a numbers business in the Bronx. Hecites his big mistake as turning numbers money into heroin, which led him toget “strung out like a research monkey.” He eventually got caught and did sixmonths for gun possession. By the time Shahid got out, his fellow “High Sci-entist” had become the center of a small cult of personality. Allah was teachingthe Supreme Wisdom to upwards of forty kids at a time,16 mostly fatherlessboys who had graduated from adolescence in the Hole’s league of hustlers andgamblers. Several of them, including Al-Jabbar, had already learned “basicIslam” (“white man is the devil, don’t eat no pig and be strong”17) and tech-niques to “smack police off horses”18 from members of the Harlem Six on theeighth floor of 275 Atlantic Avenue.19Allah also had a new running partner: James “Brother Jimmy” Howard,who “knew all of the street hustles and cons”20 and went by a variety of namesincluding Akbar, Arbar, Four Cipher Akbar, Free Cipher Akbar and JimmyJam. The two had met while shooting dice at Mount Morris Park. Howard’sbrother, “Karate Bob,” had been a bodyguard for Malcolm X, and his wife, anNOI Muslim, left him because he wouldn’t quit gambling and serve theNation. Abu Shahid recalls that Brother Jimmy had attended enough meetingsto become James 109X, but never stuck with it. To the former John 37X, Jimmyappeared to be little more than Allah’s gopher: “He copped for the Father.Whatever the Father wanted, he went and got it.”52 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 52“Like what?” I asked him.“C’mon, man. I know you’re not that naive.”Shahid soon learned that during his short prison stint, Allah and BrotherJimmy made changes in the Living Mathematics.21 4 was changed from Free-dom to “Culture” (later taught as “Culture or Freedom”). 5, formerly Justice,had become “Power” (later to become “Power or Refinement”). Allah andBrother Jimmy’s arrangement followed 9 with 0 (“Cipher”), which symbol-ized, as in C. M. Bey’s Moorish Mathematics, the “circle of 360 degrees.”22Faithful to the Problem Book, they had reduced the “mathematical language”back to ten numbers. There were no unique attributes for numbers after nine,instead combining values (12, for example, would be Knowledge Wisdom).Allah and Brother Jimmy had in fact turned Shahid’s Living Mathematics intoa whole new “Supreme Mathematics:”1 Knowledge2 Wisdom3 Understanding4 Culture or Freedom5 Power or Refinement6 Equality7 God8 Build or Destroy9 Born0 CipherWhile Allah and Brother Jimmy spread their version, Shahid was written out of the text’s intellectual history. According to Al-Jabbar, Allah claimed that he had based his Supreme Mathematics on a 1–7 system formulated byElijah Muhammad and taught within the confines of the mosque.23Enthralling uninitiated teenagers with his NOI arcanum, Allah taught that 7 inElijah’s mathematics represented “Islam” and took credit for changing it to“God.”24After completing the Math, Allah and Brother Jimmy set to work on uncov-ering the “twenty-six letters in the Language.” Their efforts birthed a secondsystem, the Supreme Alphabets, in which each letter carried its own meaning.A AllahB Be or BornC CeeD Divine or DestroyALLAH 53ch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 53E EqualityF FatherG GodH He or HerI Eye or IslamJ JusticeK KingL Love, Hell or RightM MasterN Now, Nation or EndO CipherP PowerQ QueenR Rule or RulerS Self or SaviorT Truth or SquareU You or UniverseV VictoryW WisdomX UnknownY WhyZ Zig Zag ZigThe Alphabets gave rise to a stylized slang and could even serve as code. Torefer to a police officer, Allah might have said “Cee Cipher Power,” represent-ing the letters C, O and P. While numbers had fixed meanings, letters were flex-ible and a word could be creatively broken down without each letter comingfrom the Supreme Alphabets. The word job could be broken down as “JusticeCipher Born” or “Just Over Broke.” Allah broke down his own name as“ALLAH Leave Hell—Allah He.”With a legion of street kids to back him up, Allah held growing power in thehustlers’ underground. Abu Shahid maintained his Living Mathematics andbeefed with Brother Jimmy, who had interloped on Shahid’s role as “brownseed” to Allah’s “black seed.” Jimmy had also seduced Sister Carmen, themother of Shahid’s son. “She deserved whatever she got from him,” Shahidtold me, “and she got her ass whipped by him.” Shahid once laughed inJimmy’s face and made a trigger-pulling hand gesture; Jimmy tried to send thekids after him. “He was a punk motherf*cker,” says Shahid,25 who remembersthat Allah stayed out of their feud; in other versions of the story, Allah took theview that “if he f*cked your girl, she wasn’t your girl.”2654 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 54Allah had attracted other apostate or exiled Muslims from Mosque No.7,such as Eugene 32X White, who adopted the African name Ebeka. As eldersand initiated Muslims, they were respected by the teenagers who kept comingto the Hole and bringing friends to receive the lessons. The youths’ daily livesgave proof enough to believe in savage, swine-eating devils who had crawledfrom the caves of Europe to rape the world. Many of them were no older thanJames Powell, only fifteen when shot and killed by the NYPD’s Lt. ThomasGilligan. Two nights after the shooting, a confrontation between demonstra-tors and police led to a storm of rocks and bottles hurled from rooftops, riot-ers smashing windows, sirens wailing, cops discharging firearms and blacksmoke choking the sky. The riot spread from Harlem to Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuysection, and with the help of media exposure reached cities like Philadelphiaand Rochester.It was in this Harlem that young men left the sidewalks for basem*nts andlistened while outlaw Muslims preached that those white cops were geneticallyengineered beasts withsmaller brains. For Allah, however, the most vital truthwas not the wicked nature of the white man, but the inherent holiness of beingblack—as Al-Jamel remembers those early lectures in the Hole: “We were ...ingesting the knowledge that we are of a noble ancestry, god-kings upon thisEarth. We were there learning that we were of the original people—a linkbetween Divinity and humanity—a noble legacy, with godly identity, honoredmemory, sacred destiny.”27Al-Jamel had first been brought to the Hole by a kid named Akbar. A Chris-tian at the time, Al-Jamel was originally not impressed. “God is dead,” he toldAkbar; “God died on the cross.”“You have a lot to learn,” Akbar replied.“If you can disprove what it is I say to you,” Allah challenged Al-Jamel, “thendisprove it, but I tell you: you are all of the Original inhabitants of the planet—you are a godly people; a people of the God of the Universe. You are of the first,with no known birth records short of millions of years.”28One tradition marks October 7, Elijah Muhammad’s birthday, as the officialstart of the Five Percenter movement. According to Leslie Stanley, who hadbecome Al-Jabbar during the summer of the Blood Brothers, Clarence 13Xfirst made “knowledge born” that he was Allah on October 10. Allah used thedate as a means of calling attention to the tenth degree of the Lost-Found Mus-lim Lesson No.2:10. Who is that mystery God?ANS. There is not a mystery God. The Son of man has searched for that mystery God for trillions of years and was unable to find a mystery God. So theyALLAH 55ch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 55have agreed that the only God is the Son of man. So they lose no time searchingfor that that does not exist.Allah demonstrated his ideas by transforming words. He broke down Allah tomean “Arm, Leg, Leg, Arm, Head,” thus representing man, and Islam as “I, Self(or Savior), Lord and Master.” He also taught with an airtight argument ofnumerology: in the Supreme Alphabets, G stood for God; in the SupremeMathematics, 7 stood for God; and G was the seventh letter in the alphabet.Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons writes that “slick, smooth-talking, craftynigg*s” embraced Allah’s message and in turn proselytized “with as much flairas possible. A true Five Percenter could sit on a stoop or stand out on a streetcorner and explain the tenets of the sect for hours on end—and be totallyentertaining!”29Matthew “Black Mack” Johnson, who was only fifteen years old when hewitnessed Clarence 13X being turned away at Mosque No.7, accepted him asAllah and was renamed Karriem, one of W. D. Fard’s early names for ElijahMuhammad. Allah explained to Karriem that he was the “Cream” that wouldinevitably rise to the top. He was said to have favored Karriem because theyouth was dark-complexioned (a “black seed”) and would thus have therespect of his peers. According to Five Percenter literature, the youth’s arrivalheld heavy symbolism, as “the Old Testament closes with God (ALLAH) visit-ing the Temple of Elijah in the book of Malachi and the New Testament beginswith the Gospel according to St. Matthew.”30All sources name Karriem as present during an early Five Percenter cata-clysm, Allah’s first trial by fire. Details have been lost and added on as the storyabandoned fact to become legend. As Karriem’s pamphlet biography has it, theevents of December 9, 1964 begin with him in a second-floor apartment on126th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenue, preparing to go outside. As hedressed for the cold, Karriem caught a sense of what evil the day could bring.On the street he grew cautious as Seventh Avenue was a “very busy avenue inthose days.”31 Bumping into someone as he turned the corner onto Seventh, heinstinctively assumed a martial-arts stance before realizing that it was Allahand Abu Shahid. They exchanged greetings of as-salamu alaikum. Allah toldKarriem that they were going to the Hole, and that he should go home. WhatKarriem didn’t know was that Allah had been summoned to the Hole by gun-wielding men that had trapped Brother Jimmy.Karriem followed Allah and Abu Shahid as far as the basem*nt entrance, atwhich point Allah told him again to go home. Karriem watched them descendthe steps, counted to ten and went after them just in time to witness a confronta-tion between Allah and two men armed with a shotgun and high-powered56 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 56rifle. Fearing that he’d have to defend Allah, Karriem tried breaking off a pipefrom the furnace.One of the gunmen asked Allah whether he knew the meaning of the LastSupper and Allah replied, “come on with it, lollipop.” So they gave it to him.The crowd of hustlers, pimps, pool-sharks and Muslims scrambled for cover.After six shots Karriem rose to his feet but Ebeka pulled him back down andwarned, “Karriem, they got more guns than you think, stay down.”32Forty years later in Harlem, I asked a Five Percenter named Ja’mella whythey shot Allah.“Because he was Allah,” he answered. In the climate of 1964, that could havepinned a motive on anyone—NYPD, FBI, NOI, Sunnis. This early attempt onAllah’s life then weaves itself into the greater sacred history; the failed assassi-nation forebodes a later success, and Allah’s character is reinforced as a Christwhose truth was so dangerous that it marked him for death.Not all tellings raise the event to a biblical matter. In the late 1960s, it wasbelieved that the attack had taken place during a crap game; Allah, a notori-ously sore loser, was known for having his followers intimidate winners to gethis money back. In another story, Abu Shahid and Allah were doing a deal witha hustler named Carlos, when Shahid spotted Carlos reaching into his jacket.Allah rushed Carlos, and Carlos pulled the trigger.33The most detailed account of the shooting appears in an August 16, 1991 let-ter from Al-Jabbar to Knowledge Born Azee. Al-Jabbar attributes the beef to aGlamour Inn barmaid who had loaned Allah twenty dollars. Angered thatAllah would keep coming into the bar and ordering drinks without offering topay her back, on December 9, 1964 she refused to serve him. Allah walked outand went to the Wellworth. Later a man known as “Lil’ Walter” ran in and toldAllah that three men in the Hole were holding guns on Shahid and BrotherJimmy. Allah rushed to the Hole and pushed his way through the crowd,shouting “Who got the f*ckin’ guns?” Shahid and Brother Jimmy were there,along with Ebeka and Karriem, but there were no gunmen. Allah then arrivedat Carlos, a “known stick-up kid” with a sawed-off shotgun under the rightside of his coat and a rifle under the left. Carlos drew his shotgun and blastedAllah in the chest, knocking him to the floor. As Allah began to get up, Carloswent for the rifle and shot him in the left collarbone. Carlos then turned andshot two Hole denizens known as Pop and Billy; Al-Jabbar would later theorizethat Carlos had intended to use Allah’s debt as an excuse to rob everyone in theplace. On his way out, Carlos aimed right at Jimmy’s face and pulled the trig-ger, but the gun jammed and the shell ejected.Allah was taken out of the Hole and back to Harlem’s surface with at leasttwo bullets in his chest and powder burns on his back. Karriem ran upstairs toALLAH 57ch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 57Allah’s apartment where Al-Jabbar, Al-Salaam and Niheem were studyingtheir lessons. All four sprinted to Harlem Hospital and met with Shahid andBrother Jimmy at the emergency room. Roughly twenty minutes later, a doc-tor informed the group that “the man who called himself Allah died on theoperating table.” Jimmy turned to Shahid and said, “it’s almost two o’clock,it’s time for us to pray.” After performing Muslim salat, they learned from thedoctor that a mistake had been made and Allah was not the one who hadpassed away.Al-Jabbar writes that the next day, Allah confirmed to Shahid that he had infact diedfor a time. Shahid ran down the hall to tell Pop, who, unable to speak,only pointed to himself and seemed to mumble, “me too!” Allah later relatedhis near-death experience to the youths: the doctors cutting through his fleshin search of the bullet had caused him so much pain that he briefly left his body,during which he watched as they pronounced him dead. One legend claimsthat Allah actually spent three hours in the hospital’s morgue and scared a jan-itor with his tears. Allah insisted that he was returned to his body by the prayerof Shahid and Brother Jimmy, after which he in turn brought Pop back to life.Carlos was unable to shoot Brother Jimmy, Allah claimed, because Jimmyhad a special role as his brown seed. Allah believed that Carlos had been sent bythe Glamour Inn barmaid to collect the twenty dollars, and Lil’ Walter’s luringhim to the Hole was part of the setup. His young followers were ready to getthem back but Allah refused all offers of revenge, breaking down “gun” as“God U Not.” According to Ja’mella, Allah said that he wouldn’t even pick upa gun if Malcolm did, and taught youths to never carry weapons, “not evenmatches.”34 Refusing both fight and flight, Allah’s only response was to standfirm on his square: “I don’t run from no Muslim and nobody else. ’Cus I know,if I’m telling you the truth and that don’t stop you, then nothing else will.”35Al-Jabbar took his friend Benjamin Gathers to Harlem Hospital to meetAllah, introducing Benjamin as Bilal.“How do you spell that?” asked Allah from his bed.“B-I-L-A-L,” Benjamin answered. He had been named for an Ethiopiancompanion of the Prophet Muhammad who rose to elevated status within theearly Muslim community. Allah would later break it down as Build-Al.“I am Allah,” he told Benjamin. The name kept ringing over and over inBilal’s head, causing him to miss most of the conversation between Allah andAl-Jabbar. Drawn back in after hearing Al-Jabbar say, “he has a better hand-writing,” Bilal was then chosen as scribe while Allah gave them the 34th ques-tion and answer from the Supreme Wisdom’s Lost-Found Muslim LessonNo.2.36 Bilal wrote the words as he heard them from Allah: “Can you reformdevil? Answer: No! All the prophets have tried to reform him (devil), but were58 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 58unable. So they have agreed that it cannot be done unless we graft him back tothe original man which takes six hundred years. So instead of losing time graft-ing him back, they have decided to take him off the planet—who numbers onlyone to every eleven original people.”Allah’s faction became known as the “Suns of Almighty God Allah.” FivePercenters today recognize nine early followers of Allah, at the time ranging inage from thirteen to twenty-one, as his “First Born:” Karriem, Al-Salaam, Al-Jabbar, Niheem, Uhura, Akbar, Bilal, Al-Jamel and Kiheem. One story hasAllah teaching the first four, then asking them to select five more. Standard his-tory today places Karriem as the first youth to officially accept Allah; the claimis also made that Al-Salaam preceded him. Al-Salaam, however, went crazy,breaking a seven-day fast with pork and then telling Allah, “I did somethingthat you can’t do,” so Allah exiled him and forbade fasts longer than threedays.37Bilal has speculated that each of the teenagers chosen as First Born reflectedone of Allah’s attributes.38 Uhura has been described as a thug, while Niheemwas considered “quiet but steady” and Kiheem was an especially skilledteacher.39 Allah broke down Al-Jabbar’s name as “I’ll Jab Her” because Al-Jabbar would always “jab his way out of things.” To Bilal, the First Born resem-bled characters from the 1963 science-fiction film Children of the Damned, as“when one of the children learned something, or was taught something, orinternalized knowledge, and wisdom the others automatically knew.”40Uhura’s chosen name, often spelled Uhuru, was the Swahili word for “free-dom” and had been popularized by the famous Mau Mau revolt against Britishrule in Kenya. That Five Percenters commonly adopted non-Islamic Africannames such as Uhura and Ebeka may reflect not only the growing Afrocen-trism of the time but also the presence of other alternative religions inHarlem’s black nationalist discourse. At 28 West 116th Street stood theYoruba Temple founded by Oba Ofuntola Oseijeman Adelabu Adefumni I in1960. Adefunmi had been born Walter Eugene King in 1928 in Detroit, hisfather a member of the Moorish Science Temple. Cuthrell Curry writes that “a number of Black Americans received their African names from Adefumniand some of those began to wear African dress whether they converted to theYoruba Religion or not.”41 In 1961 Adefunmi started the African NationalistIndependence Partition Party (with the aim to acheive an “African State inAmerica by 1972”) and the Harlem People’s Parliament. Adefunmi’s Ministerof Arts and Culture was Jomo Kenyatta, who in 1961 named his newborn sonUhuru and in 1964 became the first president of liberated Kenya.42Allah instructed his Suns to commit the entire Supreme Wisdom to memory and then destroy their printed copies. Abu Shahid often found UhuraALLAH 59ch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 59and Karriem in his Bronx apartment, studying and smoking. Brother Jimmydid not know the lessons well enough to quote degrees, but could listen to oth-ers’ recitations and correct them if they were wrong.43 Captain Joseph X soughtout Allah and Abu Shahid and pleaded with them to stop sharing NOI canonwith youths that had not been registered Muslims, as they were “making theNation look bad.”44 The Supreme Wisdom was a prized secret; as with a frater-nity’s pledge-book, to have knowledge of the document placed one within anexclusive brotherhood. Moreover, Allah had required each of his First Born togo forth and teach ten others (“First Fruit”) that were younger than them-selves, who in turn were each required to find ten younger seeds of their own.The NOI’s lessons were fast becoming public knowledge at playgrounds.Kiheem, then a student at Junior High School 120, would dare peers to try star-ing at the sun. When they failed he’d smirk, “that’s because of the pig in yoursystem”45 and proceed to enlighten them. Karriem taught youths who hadadopted righteous names such as Rajeem, Sahammad, Alhambra and Omar.His First Fruit also included Vincent Chambers, the twelve-year-old Muslimwho had known Allah as Clarence 13X in Mosque No.7. Vincent later endedup in a juvenile center in Otisville, where Al-Jabbar became his teacher andnamed him I-Jabar. Allah, careful to avoid doctrinal confusion, was said tohave allowed each new Sun only one teacher lest he receive contradictoryinterpretations. Suns were known for “bombing” each other with the lessons,on threat of verbal or even physical embarassment. “It wasn’t based on some-one not knowing his or her lessons,” clarified a Five Percenter in a 2005 inter-view for FEDS magazine. “It was based on deliberately lying and deceivingsomebody. If you know your lessons, then you will manifest them. If you don’tknow them, then you won’t be able to. If you tell lies, then you will receive aUniversal beatdown.”46“Universal beatdowns” were nearly administered to Clarence and Otis Jowers. Allah often visited his sons in Brooklyn, and Willieen sometimesbrought them to Harlem, where she’d see her ex-boyfriend on a street cornertelling kids to “hate white folk and don’t eat no pork.”47 “My father’s notAllah,” jeered young Clarence, almost leading to a fight between Allah’s sonsand his Suns. After they relented, Allah renamed Clarence “A-Allah” and Otis“B-Allah.”48Suns were often thrown out of their mothers’ homes for following Allah andrefusing to eat pork. A number of destitute youths around fourteen and fifteenyears old made their home at Akbar’s place on 125th and Amsterdam, whichbecame a sort of Five Percenter commune. “They’dgo out and do their hustleor whatever,” explained Jamar, “and then buy groceries.”49 Five Percenterssold weed and formed “boosting crews” to steal from department stores 60 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 60downtown. Infinite Al’Jaa’Maar-U-Allah writes that the Brooklyn House ofDetention, “the only holding pen in the City for adolescents,” played a majorrole in the First Born’s proselytizing:Allah’s chosen would do minor, yet intentional violations of the law, so thatthey may be detained. These slight violations consist of: disorderly conduct,harassment, loitering, unlawful assembly, etc., and the quoting of lessons infront of the Masonic temple, or in front of the police station ... they would betaken to the Brooklyn house of detention ... these, the Nine Born, wouldinstruct, teach and show the future members of the Five Percent Nation.50In jails and reform schools, the Supreme Wisdom Lessons were regarded ascontraband. Youthful offenders taught each other verbally with coded refer-ences to lessons as “degrees” and the complete text as “the 120 (one-twenty)”due to the document’s combined number of degrees. Released Five Percenterslater turned the prison code into street slang, with “degrees” and “120” findinggeneral use.Allah had not yet fully set himself apart in Harlem’s underground culture ofMuslims and Muslim apostates; some of his Suns even attended NOI rallies.After a visit to the mosque, Suns approached Allah and questioned him on the10th degree in the Lost-Found Lesson No.1:10. Why did Muhammad and any Muslim murder the Devil? What is the Dutyof each Muslim in regards to four devils? What Reward does a Muslim receiveby presenting four devils at one time?Answer: Because he is One Hundred Percent wicked and will not keep and obeythe Laws of Islam. His ways and actions are like a snake of the grafted type. SoMuhammad learned that he could not reform the devils, so they had to be mur-dered. All Muslims will murder the devil they know he is a snake and, also, if hebe allowed to live, he would sting someone else. Each Muslim is required tobring four devils. And by bringing and presenting four at one time, his Rewardis a button to wear on the lapel of his coat. Also, a free transportation to theHoly City Mecca to see Brother Muhammad. According to the Suns, the minister had given a literal reading to the degreeand alluded to the coming Battle of Armageddon. Without further comment,Allah told his Suns not to go to the mosque anymore.51While recovering from his wounds, Allah made a slight reform to distancehimself from both Sunni and NOI Muslims. Al-Jamel recalls greeting Allahwith Islam’s traditional as-salamu alaikum and receiving only “peace” in reply.The exchange was repeated two more times, after which Allah asked, “what doyou mean by that?”ALLAH 61ch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 61“Peace,” replied Al-Jamel.“Then why don’t you say it in a language you understand?”52Allah told Bilal that they walked the earth in humility, and should approachthe ignorant with “peace.”53 As I heard one Five Percenter explain it, “we’re notArabs, and we’re not in Arabia.” Like the seventh-century Muhammad whenhe changed his qiblah from Jerusalem to Mecca—or Elijah Muhammad, who,when angered by Arab Muslims, told his NOI to pray facing Chicago54—Allahwas breaking away from the parent religion; the Suns were being “debriefedfrom Islam.”55His body torn and scarred, Allah sensed that he wouldn’t last the decade. Inone of several cryptic statements about the future of the group, he said that theFirst Born would eventually go their separate ways. Drawing from theSupreme Wisdom, he told his Suns that each had to “swim his own nine thou-sand miles.” They would find numerous obstacles in life, but also people toguide them. When Bilal asked how they’d be able to identify these guides, Allahreplied simply: “you will know.”56Allah also told Bilal, “in order to keep what you have, you have to give itaway.”57 Bilal understood; on the 19th, he took a train to Brooklyn to give awayhis knowledge. His friends Gypsy and Geno, at the time members of the FortGreen Chaplains gang, noted that he looked and spoke differently and tried tomock him. Bilal stifled them both, and neither would eat pork again. Gypsybecame known as Gykee. Though today Five Percenters pronounce it ja-kee,Gykee writes that originally the G was silent and the first Y pronounced, but hedid not know why;58 ya-kee might have derived from y’akhi, the Arabic greet-ing “O brother.” Geno took the name Shaamgaudd, which appears to be anArabic-English mash of shams (sun) and God. Bilal spent six days and nightsteaching the lessons, resulting in what would come to be known as Brooklyn’sown First Born (which actually consisted of fourteen youths, not nine): Gykee,Shaamgaudd, Gamal, Bali, Ahmad, Lakee, Akim, Siheem, Ali, Raleak, Waleak,Sha Sha, Byheem and Hasheem. Bilal returned to Harlem on Christmas Dayand the Brooklyn First Born began a three-day fast, subsisting on coffee andwater. Their devotion may have been powered by apocalyptic fervor: accord-ing to Shaamgaudd, many Suns believed that because the devil’s time ran outin 1964, “they could go out and do wrong, rob and steal and go to jail, and onNew Year everything would be all right because the devil would be off theplanet.”59Sha Sha and Akbar began teaching on the basketball court at the Good Shep-herd Center on Sutler Avenue and Hopkinson, telling kids that if they didn’twant to learn, they’d have to leave after their games. The civilization classopened with “Peace, Allah is God!” followed by each Five Percenter stating his62 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 62name and how far he was in the Supreme Wisdom. Akbar taught on the historyof Yacub and the day’s math, after which Sha Sha would ask each student toexplain what Akbar had said. As a class ended, Akbar and Sha Sha announcedthe date, time and place of the next lesson and reminded their students to bringnotebooks and pencils.60 Born Justice recalls that good study habits were notonly encouraged, but enforced: “When we had our lessons, if you didn’t knowyour lessons, you got chastised. I never got physically jumped on and beatdown but I have seen brothers do that, because they were serious about theMathematics but other people were not serious about the Mathematics. And ifyou’re not serious about something that is of a serious nature, expect to getyour behind Mathematically checked.”61According to the Supreme Wisdom Lessons, Jerusalem had been foundedby Original men, who called it Jebus Salem or Oreil. “We took the city from thedevil 750 years ago,” says Lost-Found Muslim Lesson No.1. The text inspireda motif among Five Percenters; when the teachings are brought to a previouslyuntouched city, the area is “reclaimed from the devil” and given a new name.The practice also follows a historical root back to Noble Drew Ali, who dubbedNewark New-ark. As birthplace and emotional center of the new movement,Allah understandably designated Harlem his Mecca (Harlem had also beencalled an African-American “Mecca” since the Harlem Renaissance of the1920s). Across the bridge, Brooklyn became known as Medina, parallel to thesecond holy city of Islam. New York’s largest borough, Queens was renamedthe Desert after the 2,200 miles of hot sand that Yacub’s devils were drivenacross in exile from the Holy City. Application of the Supreme Alphabets led toStaten Island becoming Savior’s Island. Allah referred to the Bronx as Pelan,which in the lessons was another name for Patmos, where Yacub made thedevil. Two rationales for the name both revolve around Abu Shahid, who livedin the Bronx as a Muslim and during the early history of the Five Percenters.Shahid ascribes the name to a comparison with the New Testament: Patmoswas where St. John received the Book of Revelation, and it was in the BronxthatShahid (John 37X) first uncovered the Problem Book which led to his Liv-ing Mathematics.62 A more controversial story claims that Allah had deemedAbu Shahid a devil—perhaps during Shahid’s feud with Brother Jimmy—and“banished” him to the Bronx, much as Yacub and his followers were exiled tothe Greek island.63Allah quickly grew popular as an alternative to both the Nation of Islam andMuslim Mosque, Inc., scooping up unaffiliated teenagers and Muslims whocould take neither side in the schism. “Malcolm and Elijah were fighting,” AbuShahid told a Harlem audience in 2004; “we loved Malcolm, we loved Elijah,and we weren’t down with that.”64 The division of Harlem’s Muslims was notALLAH 63ch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 63only between the parties of two heroes, but a split of rival philosophies. Mal-colm was far more politically militant than Elijah, but his religion went soft onthe devil; Elijah put the white man in his place but avoided taking real action.Like the semi-mythical Blood Brothers, Allah in his early years most likely sawvalue in both camps. As his basem*nt sect grew in notoriety, it remainedunclear to some where Allah’s loyalties stood—even among his young Suns,some of whom believed that Malcolm X was the group’s leader.65Allah also provided the NOI’s validating message without Elijah’s uniformsand rules. Malcolm X acknowledged that harshly enforced moral puritanismhad turned away potential members from the Nation of Islam;66 however,Malcolm and Black Muslims who followed him to al-Islam shared Elijah’semphasis on self-discipline and rigid organizational roles. A saint only of thestreet, Allah lived like anyone else—he called wine “wisdom” and taught thatreefer “referred” the mind, while cocaine made one “see”67—and appealedmainly to adolescent boys who may have respected Elijah’s anti-white rhetoricbut held no interest in wearing bowties or quitting music and girls. While Mal-colm would have scolded youths for gambling, Allah assured them that shoot-ing dice revealed the mathematical properties of the universe. Rather thanimpose rules and regulations, he gave the powerless a means by which theywould command the unknown.64 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch3-5.qxd 2/24/2007 2:20 PM Page 646The Burning MosqueI feel sorry for Malcolm. The sheer weariness of the man during his year of trialwas overwhelming. On some level I think the poor man wanted to die, to gaina modicum of peace or, at least, a cessation of pressure and pain ... Malcolm,spiritually, was going through the kind of suffering, death and rebirth you readabout in scripture.Amir FatirAs Allah spent December 1964 healing from his wounds, Minister LouisFarrakhan declared Malcolm X “worthy of death” in Muhammad Speaks.Allah later took one of his First Borns, sixteen-year-old Al-Jamel, to the HotelTheresa for a meeting with Malcolm at his office. Al-Jamel recalls that the twoleaders shared a brief but friendly interaction before Malcolm excused himselfto accept a phone call.1Malcolm held meetings every Sunday at the Audubon Ballroom onHarlem’s Broadway and 166th, which in January also hosted a Nation affair,“A Night with the FOI” which was attended by top-tier Chicago officials suchas Elijah Muhammad, Jr., John Ali and Raymond Sharrieff, the FOI’s nationalSupreme Captain.The night of February 14, Malcolm’s house was bombed with Molotovco*cktails while Malcolm, his wife Betty, and their four young daughters slept inside. The family escaped unharmed. Captain Joseph later visited thescene, claiming that the attack was on “Elijah Muhammad’s property” andmost likely committed by Malcolm himself. Two days later Malcolm confided in friend James Shabazz that he had been marked for death within thenext five days, and knew the names of the five NOI Muslims assigned to killhim. He planned to reveal the names at his upcoming OAAU meeting on February 21.As Malcolm began a speech at the Audubon Ballroom, two men began fight-ing in the audience. “nigg*r,” yelled one of them, “get your hand out of mypocket!” One reached into the other’s coat, pulled out a German Luger andshot Malcolm in the chest. A third member of the team threw a smoke bomb.Malcolm was still upright as a fourth man came up from the third row and65ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 65blasted him, again in the chest, with a sawed-off shotgun. A fifth man then shothim in the left leg and hand before shooting his way out of the room.Growing throngs of people gathered outside the Hotel Theresa to hearupdates on Malcolm’s condition. When word came that he died, the crowdquietly dissipated. “A good brother is gone,” Allah told his Suns. Malcolm’sattorney, Percy Sutton, accompanied Betty Shabazz to Columbia PresbyterianHospital to identify the body.Four of the five assassins had escaped. At the scene police arrested TalmadgeHayer (also known as Thomas Hagan), who had been trapped by the crowd.Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson were picked up later. It wasimmediately assumed that the shooting had been ordered by the NOI’s upperechelon. Rumors abounded of pro-Malcolm squads heading to Chicago totake Elijah’s head, and shots would be fired at Elijah’s house in Phoenix, Ari-zona. At 2:15 a.m. on February 23, Mosque No.7 was destroyed by an explo-sion on the building’s roof, resulting in a five-alarm blaze that took over sevenhours to subdue. A collapsing wall of the building injured five firemen and apedestrian and ruined two fire engines. Firemen later found an empty gasolinecan and rags on an adjacent roof.During preparations for the February 26 celebration of Savior’s Day, Elijahsurrounded himself with Fruit of Islam and Chicago police. The festivitieswould have little to do with W. D. Fard; for Elijah, the three-day conventioncame at a perfect time to restore order in the flock. First he paraded out Mal-colm’s brother, Wilfred X Little, whose succinct address served to praise Elijahfor saving Malcolm in prison, blame Malcolm for his own assassination andplea for the Muslims to remain united behind the Messenger:It was through the guidance of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad that hebecame known all over the world ... but he chose to go off on a reckless path.And the recklessness of his choice is what has, no doubt, brought about his earlydeath. Let you and I not fall victim to becoming confused, now, and running indifferent directions. Let us stay in unity. Let not anything divide us and confuseus from our main purpose.2Next in Elijah’s pageant of conciliation was his own Prodigal Son, Wallace D.Muhammad, who had sided with Malcolm and embraced orthodox Islam:In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful, may His peace and blessingsbe upon His Messenger, my father, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Broth-ers and sisters, I am thankful to be present here today to, in truth, make a con-fession of guilt for having made public a dispute that I should have takenprivately with my father and perhaps I wouldn’t have assumed a position thatwas not mine to assume, and that was to judge my father, a man who has a title66 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 66and a history that makes it permissible for God Almighty to judge him and notme. I regret my mistake and I pray, Allah, that my father accept me and I pray,if it’s necessary, that you also accept me and permit me back in your midst as abrother. And I wish to say, at this moment, that I did use a hammer to knock,but in my ignorance I wasn’t knocking to destroy. In my ignorance, I wasknocking to repair, but I made a great mistake and I’m sorry for it. As-salamualaikum.3Wallace was welcomed back by his father and received warm applause fromthe crowd. “Brothers and sisters,” remarked the National Secretary, “how canyou express the joy?”4 In just two moves, Elijah had washed his hands of Malcolm’s blood and won a surrender from his own challenging seed. LouisFarrakhan then tookthe stage and lashed out at Benjamin Holman, a Chicagojournalist who had gone undercover as a Muslim—and sat in the audience thatday. “Put the light on him!” commanded Farrakhan. Muslims circled thereporter, shouting “Uncle Tom!” and “Kill him!” until Elijah Muhammad, Jr. ordered, “Go back, brothers!”5Finally, Farrakhan introduced the Messenger himself, who stood to addresshis faithful:For a long time, Malcolm stood here, where I’m standing. He was my intro-ducer. Every time a Mass Meeting was brought forth, he was the man to intro-duce me. In those days, Malcolm was great. In those days, Malcolm was loved.In those days, God Himself protected Malcolm. In those days he was a light. Hewas a star among his people, as long as he was with me. Now, here lay a man, hisbody now, on the way into the winds of the earth, that could have been herehelping us to give praise to his own God and salvation, but turning against thatGod, he criticized the God who brought to him salvation and liberation. Hecriticized it, he called His teachings a tuxedo religion.He criticized that God for even speaking of separating us from our own enemy,whom He has declared them to be. He went and gave the lie to what He hadsaid. He came back preaching that we should now not take the enemy for anenemy, as God have made them manifest—that they had as much right to thekingdom of heaven as we ...I have worked hard. These followers of mine, some of them has been followingme for the whole of the thirty-four years. They saw, lived and heard everything,and I am thankful to Almighty Allah for opening up my son’s heart and under-standing to return again to his father who has never did an atom’s worth ofharm against him, nor anyone else. And I am thankful to see him bold enoughto come before you and to ask your forgiveness for the foolish mistakes that he made. I could not accept him because of what he had done with talking. You know it. You heard it. And therefore, I told him I could not accept himTHE BURNING MOSQUE 67ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 67until you accept him because in the faith of Islam I have no choice among thebelievers ...I ran from hypocrites and enemies of mine for seven long years on these terms.They ran me out of this state in 1935. I did not go and buy a pocket-knife, nordid I go and buy a gun. I could have armed myself but Allah bids me not to armmyself, nor are my followers to arm themselves. Therefore, I had to fly for mylife. I stayed on the east coast from 1935 to 1942, slipping in to see my familyunder the cover of darkness ... on the eve to that flying from my hypocrites andenemies, I was arrested by the FBI and sent to the federal penitentiary for fiveyears. This gave me twelve long years away from my family in all. This I was suffering before Malcolm ever knew that I was on the scene.I suffered this, that I may be alive to help Malcolm when he returned fromprison. I corresponded with him in prison. His two brothers knew all about it.They stand here like men, like Muslims. They know me. They know theirbrother. They know I didn’t harm their brother. They know I loved theirbrother. He had been given the highest place. And when he made accusationsamong the public, he foolishly acted like Lucifer. He turned, then, to make waragainst me. I looked at him and laughed. I said to Malcolm, I said, “Go up onthe mountain top, anywhere you want. Yell out anything you want to againstme ... but Malcolm, I have the key.” Not that I mean that I had a key to kill Malcolm, I mean this: that Malcolm andnot one of the twenty-two million people of mine, here, can get out of herewithout a key from me ... I am the door of this people and they have this to learnthe hard way ...Now, here you are agitating. You’re always wanting to know why [don’t] weadmit white people in our Nation. The orthodox Muslims in Asia seem to bedissatisfied. And it’s not that white people cannot believe. It is true, we have lotsof white people in this country that is Muslim in just belief. We have people inEurope that believe. We have a whole country over there called Turkey, Mus-lim country. Now, here is what I’m teaching: Allah said to me, “by nature theyare not Muslims ...”Islam is as old as Allah Himself. It is not an organized religion. It is the verynature of God ... but this excludes the white race. The white race are not thepeople that was created in the nature of Islam ...I want you to listen to this, you that is grieving and worshiping Malcolm. What was he teaching that you think, that you would benefit from? He was teaching a bloodbath ... arming yourself to attack a well-armed people ofwhom you would have just committed suicide ... he was a man upset, had losthis mind and [was] running all over the country saying, “let’s kill him” when noone was around but himself. We didn’t want to kill Malcolm, and didn’t try 68 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 68to kill him. We knew that ignorant, foolish teaching would bring him to hisown end ...If God had wanted to save Malcolm, He would have saved him ... we did not tryto interfere with Malcolm, especially when he came right in my door. I didn’ttell my followers to go out there and kill Malcolm. I wanted him to be broughtto a naught by that which he preached. I let God take care of him. I know youdon’t have a chance against me if God is with me ... but I warn you in my con-clusion, leave us alone if you don’t like us. Leave us alone, lest you find yourselfplaying with fire. Leave us alone. We will leave you alone. On an instant that wefind that you don’t like us, we let you go. Be just, do the same by us. Let us go. Ifyou don’t like us, leave us alone.6Malcolm’s funeral was the next day. Al-Jabbar planned to see the casket aftergetting high. Not sure how Allah felt about attending the service, Al-Jabbaronly told him, “I’m going to go smoke a joint.” Allah could tell that somethingwas up.“Why did Musa have a hard time civilizing the devil?” Allah asked. Al-Jabbar gave the proper answer from Lost-Found Muslim Lesson No.1, thatMusa was savage and half-original. Then it hit him that Allah knew he wasbeing “half-original,” telling only half the truth. Al-Jabbar confessed that aftersmoking he would attend Malcolm’s funeral. Allah asked Al-Jabbar why hewould want to see a dead body.7One month after the assassination, the Nation of Islam held a rally in NewYork. It is likely that speakers addressed the subject of Malcolm, perhaps reit-erating the themes of the Savior’s Day convention for those that weren’t there.FBI informants noted the attendance of one Clarence 13X.8As the Harlem Muslims sank in disarray, Captain Joseph X relieved stresswith trips to Mount Morris Park—where he could chase Allah’s Suns around,yell nasty things at them, hit one if he got the chance, and drive them away. Itdid not take long for Allah to catch word and make an appearance at the park.“These are my Suns,” he told the captain; “never, ever bother my Suns again.”Joseph went back to the mosque.9On May 28, leadership of Mosque No.7 was handed to Louis Farrakhan, cat-apulting him to national prominence as it had for Malcolm before him. Giventhe minister’s comments regarding his former mentor, the move could havedone little to build bridges in Harlem’s devastated Muslim community; if any-thing, it might have been a final stamp on Elijah’s condemnation of MalikShabazz. Three days later, Allah walked with Brother Jimmy and a handful ofSuns to the corner of 116th Street and Lenox Avenue, site of the ravagedMosque No.7. They stood before the ruins of what had been a psychologicalTHE BURNING MOSQUE 69ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 69nexus for various currents of black nationalism, from the liberation theologyof Elijah to the political urgency of Malcolm. On that day in 1965, the bombed-out building served as a monument, a tombstone, the terrible conclusion. Ashe stood onthe corner, what ran through Allah’s mind? In the last five years,his story with that temple had changed him from Smith to 13X to God. Allahhad been there through all of it: the glory days and the growing tension, Malcolm’s suspension and exodus and finally his own. Despite everything,Allah loved both the mosque and Malcolm, even if the mosque had shut himout, even if Malcolm had prayed with the devil, even if the two had nowdestroyed each other.According to FBI files, Allah and his group caused a “disturbance” and weretold by a policeman to move on. They cursed at the officer but complied, turn-ing onto Seventh Avenue and heading north for the 120 series of streets.Roughly ninety minutes later, they were breaking windows in stores and bars.When an African-American named Wilbert Lee tried to pull his revolver, Allahdropped him with a stick. Black patrolman H. T. Webb would claim to haverescued Lee from the group.They stopped at the Hotel Theresa, whose front sidewalk was cluttered withthe usual stepladder preachers and impromptu rallies. From the NOI’s ruinson 116th and Lenox to the headquarters of the all-but-dead Muslim Mosque,Inc., Allah had led his Suns on a furious tour of the Elijah-Malcolm tragedy. At9:15 p.m., police were called with reports that the Suns were blocking trafficand harassing pedestrians in front of the Hotel. When three white patrolmenarrived, the Suns allegedly turned on them and shouted for bystanders to joinin. Allah shouted for Karriem to get away. Karriem refused and Allah repeatedhis command until the youth finally relented, sprinting around a corner to fleedown 124th Street. “Allah knew that I wasn’t going to leave him,” Karriemlater explained, “so he gave me an order to get away. Them Cee Cipher Powerswere no match for my arts.”10 Al-Jamel and other Suns arrived to find Allahwith his back against the wall, throwing wild punches. Enough backup arrivedthat some officers just stood around and watched as Allah was subdued.“Don’t murder my Suns,” he finally pleaded. “I’ll go with you.”11Allah, Brother Jimmy (at the time known as Akbar), Gumal, and three sixteen-year-old Suns—Leon (Uhura) McCray, Hasan Jamel and Ronald (Al-Raheem) Perry—were taken into police custody. Gumal and Hasan Jamelrefused to give their legal names. Brother Jimmy Howard gave his last name asHowell. Allah gave his residence as Harlem Hospital, his birthplace as Meccaand refused to further identify himself. He confessed to assaulting Wilbert Leebut asserted that Lee had first threatened him with a gun. The six were chargedwith felonious assault, conspiracy to commit felonious assault, resisting arrest,70 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 70assault with a deadly weapon and disorderly conduct. Allah was additionallycharged with malicious mischief and possession of marijuana.Barely twenty-four hours later, the FBI’s New York office sent a teletypemarked “urgent” to the Bureau’s national director, J. Edgar Hoover, relatingthat all six men had identified themselves as members of a new organization,the “Five Percenters,” which they claimed were the “five percent of Muslimswho smoke and drink.” They denied membership in the Nation of Islam orMuslim Mosque, Inc. and claimed no headquarters beyond various Harlemstreet corners.The next day roughly sixty black teeangers, some wearing “fezzes,” appearedat Allah’s arraignment. “Police fill court for Muslim case,” read a New YorkTimes headline, which described the arraignment as taking place “under thetightest security measures seen in the Criminal Courts Building for at least 10 years,” including fifty uniformed patrolmen and thirty detectives.12When the defendants arrived in the courtroom, Allah wearing a black furhat, gray windbreaker and tan pants, the sixty youths rose to their feet andshouted “Peace” with their palms upraised. Judge O’Brien cleared the court-room of spectators.The charges were read. “Lie, lie, lie,” mumbled Allah. “You’re wrong foraccusing righteous people,” he told Judge Francis X. O’Brien. “The city willblow up. We’re going to cause much trouble, you watch. We’re not chargedwith anything. You can’t charge Allah.”“He’s not a patrolman,” Allah remarked on Webb, “he’s a bum! You have noright to come to Harlem and ask us to move. We don’t come to your city. Wecould have killed many officers.” Concerning Wilbert Lee, Allah stated, “if hetells the lie we hit him he’ll never see the street no more.”Judge O’Brien asked Allah if he had a lawyer. “I’m the lawyer,” Allahsnapped. “We don’t want your people to do nothing for us. They called me tostop fighting. They attacked me.”13The case was adjourned at the prosecution’s request. The teenaged Sunswere held in lieu of $2,000 bail. Bail for Gumal was set at $3,000; BrotherJimmy, $9,000; Allah, $9,500. The arraignment was covered in both the NewYork Times and Daily News, which referred to the men as “Black Muslims.”Photographs of the six defendants were shown to police informants in theNOI, OAAU and Muslim Mosque, Inc. while a list of forty-eight known FivePercenters, all between the ages of twelve and nineteen, was circulated to vari-ous government agencies.At 10:00 a.m. on Friday, June 18, upwards of fifty Five Percenters arrived atManhattan Criminal Court, matched by a comparable police detail. AssistantDistrict Attorney Alan Broomer suggested to Judge Walter H. Gladwin thatTHE BURNING MOSQUE 71ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 71Allah’s case be held off until 12:15, hoping the crowd of teenagers would getbored and leave. Instead it doubled, prompting the police detail to call in thirty more officers. The Suns “milled around the courtroom and courthouse”without incident.14 Felony charges against the underage defendants were dis-missed, while the adults (Allah, Brother Jimmy and Gumal) were transferredto New York Supreme Court. Because they did not have attorneys, their hear-ing was postponed until June 24.Eight Five Percenters—five from Harlem (Karriem, Omar, Dubar, Lubarand Allah’s son Clarence “A-Allah” Jowers), three from Brooklyn (Gykee,Akim and Gamal)—left the courthouse and later followed Ebeka in Muslimprayer in the schoolyard of P.S. 168, between Seventh and Lenox Avenues on127th and 128th Streets.15 They then parted ways with Ebeka and climbed ontothe roof of 131 West 128th to fly their pigeons.16 At 7:10 p.m., police showed up,allegedly found the Suns with a gallon can of gas, a funnel, cloth, piece of hoseand four empty bottles and arrested them for unlawful possession of com-bustibles. The NYPD claimed that three molotov co*cktails had been thrown inthe same area of Harlem. The New York Times was fed reports of a “witness”observing one black youth point to the police station as he announced to hisfriend, “Tonight we’ll take care of them. Inside. We’ll give it to them with molo-tov co*cktails.”17 A-Allah and Lubar, both sixteen years old, were released, whilethe others were held on $500 bail. Because Gykee would not stop smiling, theyraised his bail to $1,000. Gykee, Akim, Gamal, Omar, and Dubar remained inpolice custody from June 18 to July 5. Karriem was held for an extra week. TheFBI noted that while one suspect (most likely Clarence Jowers) was a knownFive Percenter, the youths all gave “Muslim type names.”18A memo to J. Edgar Hoover observed that “Due to Smith’s actions, rantingsand ravings, particularly in front of the judge at his hearing, he appears to havea ‘psychological problem’, but the court has taken no action in this regard.”19The FBI might have nudged the court; on July 9, Allah was committed to Belle-vue Hospital for psychiatric examination. At Bellevue Allah found new disci-ples, including a “scientifically miraculous” latin man named Jesus andArmando X, a Muslim from Mosque No.7.On July 29, seventeen Five Percenters between the ages of fourteen and eigh-teen were arrested for throwing bricks, rocks, garbage cansand bottles at apolice officer. An article the next day in The New York World Telegram didn’tseem to take Allah or his Five Percenters seriously, quoting casual dismissals byHarlem residents. “That cat ain’t got nothing but the blues,” said one. “Thatain’t God,” said a barmaid, “that’s Puddin. That’s what we always called him—Puddin.” A man described as Smith’s friend of twenty years called him a “nicefriendly guy, who used to work pushing trucks down in the garment district.”2072 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 72Allah was still at Bellevue when eighty-six-year old Father Divine passedaway in September. Father Divine had started a gradual withdrawal from thepublic in the late 1950s, and stopped making appearances altogether in 1963.His angels declared that since Father Divine was God, he couldn’t die, and hadmerely decided to “lay his body down.” Over the years, numerous angels hadbeen locked behind the same walls that now caged Allah. In April 1932, twowomen were taken to Bellevue after police broke up a Peace Mission event inHarlem. One of them had been dancing and singing while dressed only in asheet, while the other told officers, “we’re older than Methuselah.”21Louis Farrakhan appears to have viewed Allah’s incarceration as a chance tobring the Five Percenters under his control. Supported by a Fruit of Islam“Doom Squad,” Captain Joseph X announced that anyone who knew theSupreme Wisdom Lessons should immediately register as Muslims withMosque No.7. Upon hearing the news, Karriem walked to Bellevue and calledto Allah from the sidewalk. Allah came to the second-floor window and Karriem shouted up the story. Allah told him to go to Mosque No.7, ask forCaptain Joseph by his “real” name—Captain Yusef—and tell him that he said,“I know who I am and he knows who I am. My Five Percenters are not Muslimsand they never will be Muslims, and he better leave my Five Percenters alone.”Karriem went back to the mosque restaurant and exchanged greetings of as-salamu alaikum with the Doom Squad. He asked to see Captain Yusef butthe Muslims weren’t sure who that was. One of them found Captain Joseph,who asked for Karriem to be sent to him. Karriem told the captain what Allahhad said. Joseph replied, “tell Clarence—”“You mean Allah?” interrupted Karriem.“Yes,” Joseph relented. “Allah. Tell Allah that I will pull back my people.”22At least for the moment, the Muslims and Five Percenters had agreed to apeaceful coexistence; but Allah had enemies much bigger than the DoomSquad.THE BURNING MOSQUE 73ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 737MatteawanThere does exist a group that refuses to accept grievous social injustices—andthey are prepared to rebel.Livingston WingateI know absolutely nothing about the Five Percenters. Maybe Mr. Wingate does.Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.Wingate was the director of HARYOU-ACT, a unification of the HarlemYouth Opportunities Unlimited and Associated Community Teamsprograms. At a National Urban League conference in Harlem, he told the lead-ers of approximately fifty poverty programs that unless conditions changed,an uprising would occur to “make Watts look like a tea party,” referring to thatsummer’s riots in South Central Los Angeles that left thirty-four dead, a thou-sand injured and four thousand arrested. Wingate warned that the next out-break of bloodshed would start in Harlem, move to the Bedford-Stuyvesantsection of Brooklyn and then spread upstate to Rochester and Syracuse. Mean-while, Wingate himself was under investigation by local and federal authoritiesfor charges of fiscal mismanagement. He defended his spending as essential topreventing a race war, but refused to identify a particular “armed group” forfear that it would come after him. “These kids don’t give a damn,” he said.“They are willing to die.”At least one already had. Fifteen-year-old Cedric Avery was bragging aboutthe Five Percenters on the St. Nicholas projects’ playground when Earl Green,a twenty-one-year-old veteran, laughed him down. Avery attacked Green andGreen stabbed Avery to death. Avery’s body was then decorated with “Muslimmedals” while his friends shouted, “Get up. You’re not dead. We can’t die.” Hedid live on through his Five Percenter name, Kaseim,1 which was given to a newmember.2A group of hecklers that caused Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. to end his walkingtour of Harlem with Democratic mayoral candidate Abraham D. Beame wereidentified as members of the Black Arts Repetory Theater, home to directorand playwright LeRoi Jones. Reporters immediately asked Jones if he had 74ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 74anything to do with the Five Percenters. “I’ve never met one,” he replied. “Itsounds like it might be an idea for another TV show.”3 Jones then remarkedthat if the Five Percenter mission was anything like he had heard, then he sup-ported them as he would “any idea to end white domination of the world.” Amonth later, FBI informants observed Jones “affiliating and hanging around”with Five Percenters at his theater.4Assemblyman Percy Sutton explained to journalists that he had first heardthe term “Five Percenter” from Malcolm X, in prophecy of a “Negro elite” thatwould act as freedom fighters.5 City papers reported the chaos that Five Per-centers wreaked at public schools: at Harlem’s Junior High School 120 therehad been at least two assaults and a telephone threat, while teens and preteensreceived five-day suspensions for insisting on using their “Muslim names” andterrorizing fellow students and teachers alike. Anticipating assaults from FivePercenters, “several pork-eaters brought weapons from their homes on theway to school,” wrote James W. Sullivan in the Herald-Tribune. “They checkedtheir weapons with the principal when they arrived.” One man was quoted asclaiming that he could identify Five Percenters by the way they looked at a storewindow: “they’re not looking in it, like other people do; they’re looking in it,like they want to break it.”6 Five members were arrested by the Transit Author-ity police after cursing at passengers. When warned by a patrolman, the groupallegedly turned to attack him. Taken to the 24th precinct, they gave only theirrighteous names—Omar, Krean, Dumal, Semik and Shariff—and namedtheir birthplace as “earth.”7 A front-page story in the New Pittsburgh Couriercalled Five Percenters a “mysterious gang of thugs” led by “subversive oldermen,” but writer John E. Moore at least gave them credit for being well-read:“they avidly devour anything written by the radical Negro and can quote muchof it verbatim.”8 “They’re a pure growth of the slums,” a city youth worker toldthe New York Times.9The New York Amsterdam News claimed that Allah had threatened to killwhite babies and black policemen, and start riots unless his Five Percentersreceived some “poverty money” to build their own mosque.10 “There’s no evi-dence that they are advocating violence,” insisted Rev. Eugene Callender,HARYOU-ACT’s chairman. “I hope we will be able to involve them in mean-ingful programs that would channel their energies into more constructive pur-suits.”11 Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, founder and former director of HARYOU,accused Wingate of “black McCarthyism” and referred to his warnings of FivePercenter revolt as “fantastic, dangerous and irresponsible.” “These kids don’tgo around armed,” said a youth worker, “and anyone who says that doesn’tknow what he’s talking about. The cops have been picking these kids up leftand right and not once have they been charged with a violation of the SullivanMATTEAWAN 75ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 75Law.”12 Though certain that the youths were robbing and extorting their ownmothers, Moore placed the blame on their unseen leaders: “these mentally pli-able children have no way of knowing that the older ‘Svengalis’ who are indoc-trinating them, are merely using them as the means to support their ownselfishgreed and unwillingness to work honestly for a living.”13Speculation continued to run wildly out of hand. Five Percenter member-ship was placed as high as a thousand, “organized into cells in every New YorkCity project with a substantial number of Negro residents,” while the numberof Five Percenters said to have shown up for Allah’s arraignment had ballooned to 150. A twenty-one-man police detail that had been createdspecifically to deal with the group was assigned to St. Patrick’s Cathedral during a visit of Pope Paul VI, due to fears of a Five Percenter assassinationattempt.The day after the Urban League conference, while provocative headlines ranin the New York Times (“Wingate Warns of Negro Revolt”), New York Amster-dam News (“Harlem Hit by Five Percenters”) and New York Herald-Tribune(“Harlem’s ‘5 Percenters’—Terror Group Revealed”), agents from the FBI’sNew York Office (NYO) met with the NYPD. The Special Agent in Charge(SAC) was informed that a “Special Unit” of the Youth Division had compiledinformation on the Five Percenters by “daily interrogation of gang membersand nightly surveillance of them.”14 These investigations were said to result innumerous arrests of Five Percenters on charges of “assaults, mugging and mar-ijuana smoking.”15 In contrast to the media panic, the Special Unit reported amore subdued estimate of two hundred members with ages ranging fromtwelve to twenty-one. Over half of the Five Percenters roamed Harlem’s 120streets, bordered by Seventh and Lenox Avenues, but there were also reportedconcentrations in Brooklyn’s Fort Green area and the region around St. Mary’sPark in the Bronx. One month prior to the meeting, NYPD’s Bureau of SpecialServices (BSS) reported that Clarence 13X Smith had sometimes gone by thename Clarence Smith Jowars, and was unsure whether Smith or Jowars wasAllah’s real name.City police requested that the information they provided be kept strictlywithin the Bureau, due to the ongoing “extensive” investigation and “recentpublicity given to the matter.” The NYPD had refused comment to “numerousincidents of newspaper speculation” and feared any public suggestion thatthey were actively pursuing the Five Percenters. In a communication to theSAC on October 23, 1965, however, J. Edgar Hoover ordered that all materialon the group be disseminated to officials in the military, Justice Department,and Secret Service. He told the SAC to remind the police of their responsibilityto share pertinent information, with assurances that the NYPD would be 76 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 76concealed as the source. Besides, Hoover noted, much of the info had alreadyappeared in newspapers—including suspicions that Five Percenters werelinked to Chinese or Cuban Communists and a group that had plotted todynamite the Statue of Liberty. While agreeing that Five Percenters posed a“local police problem” and dismissing Allah as a “Harlem rowdy,” Hooveradvised a continuing FBI effort to find possible links to foreign elements. TheNYO began an investigation of Ebeka, “the third leader of the gang,” to deter-mine whether he was involved with “any organization inimical to the internalsecurity.” Ebeka, who had assumed a leadership role during the incarcerationof Allah and Brother Jimmy, was himself arrested in August for selling a mari-juana cigarette. On October 19, Bronx County Supreme Court sentenced himto two years in prison.16According to the SAC, the District Attorney’s office and the court consis-tently pushed Allah’s hearing to later dates. The results of his psychiatric examwere also delayed: after “examining” Allah for four months, Bellevuerequested an additional ten days to complete its evaluation. The judge statedthat in all likelihood Allah would be placed in a mental institution, and an SACmemo to Hoover, dated November 16, 1965—the exact date of Allah’s finalhearing—predicted that Allah would be found insane. When Bellevue finallysubmitted its report, the judge indeed found Allah “unable to understand thecharges against him” and remanded him to the custody of the New York StateDepartment of Mental Hygiene for an “indefinite confinement.” It wasanother victory for a man who had given his whole life to squashing voices ofdissent. J. Edgar Hoover began his career in 1917 as a clerk at the Justice Depart-ment. With most of his potential competitors overseas fighting World War I,he enjoyed a meteoric rise through the ranks. Landing a major promotion ashead of the Enemy Alien Registration Section, Hoover observed and studiedDepartment battles with labor movements such as the IWW. When AttorneyGeneral A. Mitchell Palmer’s home was bombed by an anarchist, he assignedHoover the task of collecting and organizing information on all radical orga-nizations and their leaders. Palmer even gave him a new agency: the GeneralIntelligence Division (GID). From his new authority, Hoover saw a particularthreat in the rising Communist movement and declared open season. In whatbecame known as the “Palmer Raids,” over ten thousand suspected Commu-nists were detained; most enjoyed quick releases due to a lack of substantialevidence. Hoover continued obsessively collecting names. In 1921 he movedup to Assistant Chief of the Bureau of Investigation; three years later he rose tothe top of the Bureau and would retain his position through six presidents.Over time, Hoover became the Bureau, with such a paternal and domineeringMATTEAWAN 77ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 77presence that his own prejudices dictated agency culture. In 1956 the FBIestablished COINTELPRO (Counter-Intelligence Programs) with Hoover’sstated intention to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit and otherwise neu-tralize” radical organizations. Just as his WWII-era fears of Japan-sponsoredblack revolt led him to pursue the Moorish Science Temple and Nation ofIslam, his 1950s fear of Soviet-inspired black revolt inspired him to pursue thecivil rights movement. Hoover enlisted roughly eight thousand “ghetto infor-mants” to provide him with names and information on groups like the South-ern Christian Leadership Conference. He investigated Martin Luther King, Jr.,who had first been brought to his attention for having socialized with a Com-munist. Both Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X were well aware that the FBIhad infiltrated their organizations. An agent of the Bureau of Special Servicesactually landed a job as Malcolm’s bodyguard and even attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while Malcolm lay dying in the Audubon Ballroom.By 1965 Hoover had spent nearly half a century compiling his lists of suspected troublemakers, grouped into over one hundred indexes. Some weresimply photo albums of petty criminals, with almost-cute titles like KnownGambler Index and Con Man Index; others constituted a serious and secretiveeffort to keep track of political dissidents. The Communist Index includednearly twenty thousand known Party members, while the Reserve Index heldroughly half a million names of authors, journalists and others (such as MartinLuther King, Jr.) who could possibly wield a Communist influence on publicopinion. As Hoover’s passion turned from reds to blacks, he created a new Rabble Rouser Index (later known as the Agitator Index) that included Jesse Jackson. Taking precedence over all was the Security Index, which could nearlycreate martial law during times of crisis. In the event of a national emergency, per-sons on the Security Index could be apprehended and detained without warrant.Word reached the FBI of a major subversive act planned for January 15,1966, possibly involving Five Percenters and/or gangs such as the 129th StreetDeacons and the Dragons, which hung around 140th. The rumor went unful-filled, but two days later the NYO suggested that Clarence 13X Smith be addedto the Security Index.The FBI forwarded a thirty-page report and photograph of Allah to theSecret Service.On a form to indicate which classifications of security threats hefell under, Hoover put checks in the third box (“Because of background ispotentially dangerous; or has been identified as member or participant incommunist movement; or has been under active investigation or member ofother group or organization inimical to U.S”), and the fifth (“Subversives,ultrarightists, racists and facists”), which included its own sublist of criteria. Ofthe three subcategories, Hoover checked: “a) Evidence of emotional instability78 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 78(including unstable residence and employment record) or irrational or suici-dal behavior” and “c) Prior acts (including arrests or convictions) or conductor statements indicating a propensity for violence and antipathy toward goodorder and government.” With Allah a decorated veteran of the Korean War,Hoover left “b)” unchecked: “Expressions of strong or violent anti-U.S. sentiment.”17The indexed Allah was effectively a political prisoner. Had the United Statessuffered a major catastrophe or foreign attack, he would have been merelyshipped from a mental institution to a concentration camp. However, for atime the FBI had no idea where he was being held. There was also confusionamong the Five Percenters. Brother Jimmy had heard that Allah was in PilgrimState Hospital; however, in February the SAC issued a memo advising that theIndex list his residence as “Matteawan State Hospital for the CriminallyInsane.”In addition to people who were truly insane, people who were not in favor withsociety were also stored in Matteawan State Hospital.Ron Casanova, Each One Teach OneAnd Matteawan is a place, when you go there, they say you are criminally inwhat? Sane. That means that you cannot control your emotions. And I had justbeen ... I had been out there too long. The people have taken advantage of meever since I said I’m Allah. And I knew when I said I was Allah, the Mus—thewhole world was what? Against me. I don’t care.Allah18In 1892, the Asylum for Insane Convicts was moved from Auburn, New Yorkto the town of Beacon and renamed Matteawan State Hospital. A second insti-tution, Dannemora, was added to the grounds in 1899. The 1940s saw theintroduction of treatments such as group therapy, hypnosis, shock treatmentsand lobotomies. By the mid-1960s, both facilities emphasized “moral treat-ment” and “low-stress routines.” A “Rec Room” consisted of chairs, books,magazines and a television. More than one straitjacketed inmate committedsuicide by smashing his head through the Rec Room’s window and impalinghis throat on shards of broken glass.19Matteawan offered the worst conditions in both America’s criminal justicesystem and its treatment of the mentally ill. “Confinement in Matteawan isuniversally regarded as a disgrace,” wrote David N. Fields, general counsel forthe Association for Improvement of Mental Health, in a 1965 letter to theACLU; “medical care at Matteawan is below the standard of civil hospitals.”Ron Casanova, who was fifteen years old when he arrived at Matteawan inMATTEAWAN 79ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 791961, writes that “just walking in the door meant you got beat up.” AfterCasanova’s introductory beating, staff worked over his fresh bruises with ascalding hot shower.20 Years later he’d be offended by a photo in the Daily Newsshowing a Matteawan cell complete with bed, lamp and chairs; while he wasthere, he had only a torn mattress on the floor and a pot for his toilet.“Moral treatment” and “low-stress routines” included the rape and murderof patients. Casanova writes that sexual assaults occurred several times a night,and once watched as attendants wrapped towels around a patient’s neck anddragged him down the halls until he died. In October 1961, African-Americaninmate John Stevens died after a struggle with three attendants. After staff placedhim in a straitjacket, Stevens had both of his kidneys kicked in, his testicl*skicked completely off and ribs broken on both sides. Bleeding from the mouth,bruised from head to toe, screaming and shaking, he was then strapped into abed. In a letter to the ACLU on the incident, anonymous hospital employeesrefer to fellow staff as “sad*stic” and Matteawan as “the snakepit.”21 Beginning in1965, the hospital was used to train guards for prisons throughout the state.Jails disguised as hospitals, Matteawan and Dannemora played by their ownrules, treating criminals like they were mentally ill and the mentally ill like theywere criminals. Patients (and “certain visitors”) were fingerprinted. Patients’hospital records included their FBI/DOC files. Visitors’ belongings weresearched. Patients were forbidden use of telephones and restricted in their let-ter writing. There were no home visits, passes or convalescent status. All visit-ing was done indoors. “The conclusion is inescapable,” wrote Fields, “thatMatteawan is basically a prison.” By placing the mentally ill in jail, New YorkState was “imposing punishment without authority of law,” constituting alegal definition of cruelty.Victor J. Whitree was beaten by attendants, stripped and placed in the “BlueRoom” for eight days without a toilet, running water or mattress, receivingonly bread and water and a full meal every three days. During a six-year period,he was examined by doctors only seven times. After serving fourteen years foran assault charge (of which he was never found guilty) with a maximum sen-tence of three years, in 1968 the New York Court of Claims would award him$300,000 in damages. The judge in the case spoke of Matteawan as “no morethan a pen into which we are to sweep that which is offensive to ‘normal soci-ety.’ ”22 Daniel N. Fields charged in October 1964 that fifty-seven patients hadbeen committed to Matteawan in error.23Matteawan held mentally ill individuals who had not been convicted of anycrime, while Dannemora was established for convicts who had been foundinsane while in prison. State law granted the Commissioner of Mental Hygiene the power to transfer patients from civil to criminal hospitals for80 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 80demonstrating “criminal tendencies” or even having previous records. Matteawan and Dannemora could both hold inmates for as long as theinmates were deemed ill; in 1964, it was estimated that roughly half of the 1,800“patients” had been imprisoned longer than the maximum sentences for theiralleged crimes. Paul Shappet served fifteen years for a charge of vagrancy, whileJoseph H. Negro was committed for twenty years after his indictment for afive-dollar robbery. For the court to find Allah unable to understand hischarges came as great news for the FBI. Allah could theoretically spend the restof his life in prison without a fixed sentence or even a guilty verdict, and theFive Percenters were expected to wither away in his absence.Allah was admitted to Matteawan on November 26 and placed in Ward 8.The facility’s clothing register records that on November 29, a “ClarenceAllah” was issued one jacket (dark), one pair of pants (tan), one shirt (blackand white), one t-shirt and one pair of shoes.24He wasn’t the first Five Percenter in Ward 8; May had seen the admission ofan “Al Jabbar.”25 Dannemora had earlier received members of the Harlem Sixwho were deemed insane at Elmira Reformatory for saying that they wereGods. Allah’s own claim of divinity stuck him with a diagnosis of schizo-phrenic reaction, paranoid type, with delusions of religious grandeur and per-secution. He reportedly described himself to examiners as a “master gambler”who had “never worked productively.” One thickly accented Eastern Euro-pean doctor considered Allah quite funny, but also believed him to be mentallyill.26 One officer hit Allah for no reason, and Allah knew enough to let the inci-dent slide: “I was under the doctors ... if I wanted to protest, I couldn’tprotest,’cus they’d send me to the court in Beacon and boy, whatever the doctors say,that judge will not go against it.”27 Separated from his loving Suns and againstall odds, Allah was determined to stand his ground: “I didn’t ask for one thingin Matteawan ... I wanted to show them exactly who I said I was and I was goingto prove it. All I wanted them to do was to ask the question. And I knew I wasthe only one who could give it to them.”28With Allah, Brother Jimmy, Ebeka Shahid, and members of the First Bornlocked up at various times, the Five Percenters maintained a sense of structurethrough the appointment of ministers (First Borns Karriem, Uhura andNiheem were specially designated as divine ministers29) and holding of “houseparliaments.” During a house parliament, Five Percenters would assemble in acircle (cipher) and take turns “building” on the date using Supreme Mathe-matics or the date’s corresponding degree in the 120.A day to God is 1,000 years.The RZAMATTEAWAN 81ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 81Since man renewed his history at twenty-five thousand-year cycles, a houseparliament would take place on the twenty-fifth day of the month (the “parlia-ment period” extended to the end of the month). On the twenty-fifth, FivePercenters greeted each other with the Math: “through your Wisdom (2) I seeyour Power (5), and through your Power I see your Wisdom.”30Though Matteawan’s logs have no record of a single visitor for Allah,31Five Percenter traditions and literature contain numerous accounts of youthstraveling upstate to see him. Waleak is said to have visited Allah twenty-fourtimes during his twenty-two-month incarceration. Allah’s earliest visitorswould meet him in the hospital cafeteria, among the patient population; later visitors were relegated to a separate room. Allah attributed the change tohis Five Percenters acting “savage.”32 Hakeim would later claim that the sepa-rate room was considered “Allah’s office” and furnished as a gesture of respectby Matteawan officials. The room contained a number of antique woodenchairs arranged in a circle, while Allah sat in a throne-like antique chair behinda desk on which he kept his own personal phone.33 “Allah’s office” and itsdetails can be taken as religious hyperbole; the odds are slim that Allah enjoyedregal treatment from the authorities behind an environment such as Matteawan.Gykee made a trip to Matteawan with Waleak and Sha Sha, during whichSha Sha asked Allah, “which was right, what or why?” Allah told them thatthese things were not as important as understanding the nature of God. Thegroup then asked Allah why it had rained for their entire journey upstate. Itwas the nineteenth day of the month, equaling Knowledge Born. Allahexplained that when a baby is born, the water breaks. At the train station later,Waleak and Sha Sha were so fired up by the visit that they ventured to thenearby town of Newburgh to teach, while Gykee sat in the train station, “alonewith the thoughts that had just been given to us by the Father.”34As the movement continued to grow on the streets of New York, Allah—sometimes in regular clothes, sometimes in a striped hospital gown—beganreceiving visits from Five Percenters who had never met him before. Shameikwas a new convert in the summer of 1966 when Al-Jabbar, Dubar, Hakeim andAkbar Islam walked him to the Metro-North train line for his first trip upstate.Shameik and Akbar Islam got on while the others waved them off. They werejoined by four Five Percenters that Shameik didn’t know. During the train rideAkbar Islam started to build on the lessons, getting so worked up that Shameikwould claim to see smoke rising from his head. Akbar Islam began testing theFive Percenters on their degrees. Because Shameik was sixteen years old, Akbarasked him the sixteenth degree from the Lost-Found Muslim Lesson No.2:“Who is the 5% in the Poor Part of the Earth?”82 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 82“They are the poor, righteous Teachers,” Shameik answered, “who do notbelieve in the teachings of the 10%, and are all-wise, and know who the LivingGod is; and teach that the Living God is the Son of Man, the supreme being, theblack man of Asia; and teach Freedom, Justice and Equality to all the humanfamilies of the planet Earth, otherwise known as civilized people, Muslim andMuslim Sons.”At Matteawan, the devils allowed the Five Percenters to enter the visitingroom—except for Akbar Islam, because his pants were torn. Akbar shouted atthe hospital staff and then sat down directly across from one of the whiteguards. Shameik and the others left their friend in a staredown with the devil.After Shameik’s group waited fifteen minutes in the visitors’ room, a dooropened, and in came a guard with a “Blackman around 5’9,” about 150 lbs anddark in complexion, smiling ear to ear.”35 He had an overwhelming presencethat betrayed his modest physical stature, and an aura that filled the atmos-phere around him.“Peace, Suns,” said Allah as he took a seat. “Peace, Allah!” they replied.They sat with Allah for hours, during which he lectured about numerous top-ics, including the mastery of time. “Suns,” he said, “the people’s minds are onthe clock; they wake up at a certain time, they go to sleep at a certain time, theywork at a certain time.” He told them that without a clock, they could knowwhat time it was just by watching people.“Now I want to hear you speak,” he told his Suns. Shameik tried to make agood impression with his knowledge.Uhura joined them as Allah was beginning to lecture on the “magnetic.” Hetold the Suns that they were the “piece with the magnetic,” and must share thisknowledge with their brothers, then come back to get more. When a guardannounced that the visiting time was over, Allah told his Suns not to take a cab,but walk to the train station and teach the whole way. They again exchangedpeace and Allah returned to his cell.In the front lobby, Akbar Islam had won the staring contest—the devil hadfallen asleep—but Akbar still kept his eyes locked on him. As they walked backand the Five Percenters spoke about their visit, Akbar’s eyes filled with tears.Then Uhura shouted “peace!” at a group of children playing, and they yelled itback, having already received the knowledge. Shameik was amazed that therecould be Five Percenters so far from the city.36Ronald Robinson was sixteen years old in 1964 when he passed some youngmen on 128th street and heard a greeting of “as-salamu alaikum.” He wasunaware of the proper reply, but they asked if he wanted to be a Blood Brother.From then on he was learning martial arts and the Supreme Wisdom Lessons.MATTEAWAN 83ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 83He later hung out at the Afro Hut on 133rd and Eighth, which was frequentedby Karriem and various First Borns. Ronald had still not met Allah when heagreed to join Five Percenters on a visit to Matteawan on August 25, 1966.Ronald was far from awe-struck: “who’s this little guy saying peace, peace?” Bythe end of their session, however, he was enlightened. “Allah had a way to makeyou feel what he was saying,” he told me. That day Allah taught the Five Percenters how to treat each other, as well as women, discussing the issue of awoman in the Bronx who had been mistreated for having a hard time with herlessons. It was also during this visit that Allah corrected someone who referredto his group as Suns of Almighty God Allah: “no,” he told the young man;“you’re the Five Percent.”37The cover of Life’s June 10, 1966 issue proclaimed that “red-hot youngNegroes plan a ghetto war.” Inside, readers learned about the Five Percenters,a “super-gang” of adolescents with “evidence of adult leadership.” Writer Rus-sell Sackett described them as extremists “without all the intellectualizing” ofother black militants: “they have their own arsenal and their own creed, basedon a pseudo-religious mystiquethat they borrowed in part from the BlackMuslims, which leans on astrology, numerology and voodoo.”38 The piececlaimed that each Five Percenter paid a monthly due of $30, but Sackett couldnot discern where the money went. “Wild as it sounds,” said a youth coun-selor, “we’re pretty well convinced most of the money goes for the parties—well, you could call them orgies—after their weekly meetings. Pot-smoking isa big part of the group ritual.”39 One official described a child’s refusal to eatpork as an indicator that he had joined the Five Percent, and warned of whatcould come next:A kid who’s never taken any more interest in dietetics than wanting to knowwhat’s for dinner suddenly wants to know whether his mother cooks with oil orwith lard. If Mama’s hair isn’t gray already, that’s when it starts turning. Mostghetto adults know that, under the Five Percenters’ code, parents are expend-able—especially if they’re working for “The Beast.” These kids are so hot thatthey don’t just threaten to leave home or to hit the old man. They threaten tokill him—and some of ’em could do it.40“It’s the Superman thing all over again,” a school official told Sackett. “Some-how being Five Percenters pumps these kids full of their own strength andpower ... they’ll tear a school apart for no stronger reason than that it doesn’tprovide an adequate course in African history.”41 One junior-high teacheroffered a more humanizing view:It sounds strange to say it after some of the things they’ve pulled off, but most ofthese are not bad kids. This ghetto life is stacked awfully high against them, and84 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 84the wonder is that any of them make it at all. How do you reconcile the life of aboy who’s a pretty fair student in school and a Five Percenter on the outside? I’veasked kids this question, and I’ve seen them cry, really cry, trying to explain it.Sure, some of the Five Percenters are psychotics and have no business in school,but if they were all as bad as they’d like to have us think, I’m sure we’d all be dead.Something’s going to have to be done to help these kids or the place is just goingto blow up. It’s a failure our society can’t afford. I wish I had the answer.42It’s hard to fathom the panic afflicting Allah at this time, desperate to “save thebabies” but powerless behind Matteawan’s walls. The previous summer’schaos of molotov co*cktails, Fruit Stand Riots, Blood Brothers, Harlem Six,police assaults and the stabbing of Cedric Avery stayed fresh in his mind, butnothing would have devastated Allah more than the sights in front of him:scared black youths marched to their new cells, their own torn mattresses andpiss-pots, already broken by their first beatings and scaldings and hunchedover like invisible crosses weighed down on their backs. As Allah endured thehell of Matteawan, writes friend and journalist Les Matthews, “he changed thethinking of his group. He taught them not to hate, impressed upon them to goto school, learn a trade or profession. He sent them lessons from the hospitaland sent me word that he had a new look at life.”43Allah would state that during his incarceration, someone told him that “theNegroes and the Puerto Ricans are the hardest people to educate,” to which heagreed, because “a child don’t have no one to look after him or take care ofhim.”44 Years before, Allah had told Malcolm that he would teach the young.When Gykee made an upstate pilgrimage with Sihiem, Waleak, and Lubar,Allah counseled them to get jobs, pursue their education, and stay out of trou-ble. During another visit, Allah told Gykee and Hasheem to give up alcoholand drugs. They returned to the city and tried spreading the word to theirbrothers with limited success; Allah later withdrew the prohibition. Some FivePercenters began sniffing heroin with the justification that they had to be“Lords of all the Worlds.” Allah condemned the practice, commenting that“the only way to master it is to leave it alone.”45Allah also collected students from among the Matteawan inmates. Oneadherent, a Texas-accented teenager named Robert Walker, had already builtwith the Five Percent in Brooklyn’s Fort Green section, which by then wasknown as the “Head of Medina.” Some Five Percenters believe that Walker wasactually Armando X from Bellevue. Like Armando, Walker impressed Allah asa “very sharp understudy.”46 Allah honored his apprentice with the title IbnAllah (Son of God) and later named him Allah the Sun.Perhaps the best-kept secret about Allah is the fact that while at Matteawan,he even taught his lessons to a grafted seed. The kid’s name was John MichaelMATTEAWAN 85ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 85Kennedy and he came in as a seventeen-year-old transfer from Elmira onDecember 31, 1965. In his first twenty-four hours at Matteawan, John wit-nessed the staff’s murder of a six-foot-seven Black Muslim and learned first-hand how things worked:Their main therapy there, the corrections officers, is knuckle-therapy. Theydon’t tell you the rules, they give knuckle-therapy to anybody that tells you therules, and you learn as you go along. You gotta sit in your chair all day; you gotto go to the bathroom, you can’t verbally ask to go to the bathroom, you getknuckle-therapy. You can’t get up and go to the bathroom, and if you piss inyour chair, knuckle-therapy. You have to raise your hand, and wait till they callon you and ask you what you want. And if you speak to them, say “I gotta go,”knuckle-therapy.47According to John, the guards were all in the KKK or American Nazi party anddidn’t like his name. He tried to fight them off, in the process kicking througha honeycomb-glass window. After working the kid over, the guards gave otherinmates a chance on him, two at a time. Then they put him in a Thorazinecoma. When John first opened his eyes, he found Clarence Smith standingover him. Allah said simply, “you are a righteous man.” He then asked John ifhe knew who he was. “You must be God,” the teen exclaimed.48From that point on, John stayed at Allah’s side. Allah named him Azrealafter the angel of death, and said that he was in charge of the “inhabitants of thehellfire.” After memorizing the lessons, John destroyed his written copies tokeep them from falling into the guards’ hands. When Allah the Sun crafted hisown plus-lessons with Allah’s help, they chose Azreal for the role of scribe. Both Allah and Allah the Sun instructed Azreal in the martial arts. WhileAllah the Sun demonstrated various attacks, Allah (the Father) only taughtself-defense. Allah the Sun once approached Azreal in a bathroom and askedhim, “who are you to be Azreal? How do you get to be Azreal?” to which Azrealreplied, “why would you want to be Azreal when you’re a born God?” As Allahthe Sun continued writing plus-lessons with titles such as “General MonkMonk,” “Islam in 90 Degrees,” “Magnetic Analysis,” “The Magnetic Field,”and “Magnetic Flux,” Allah (the Father) suggested that his Sun separate andform his own nation.Allah and Azreal were later transferred from their individual cells to onelarge ward in which fifty beds were jammed head-to-head. Allah, who brokedown Matteawan as “for the Maddest Ones,” was confronted on every sidewith the shocked and tranquilized and straitjacketed, the screaming, moaning,crying, and babbling, the sounds of guards cursing and hitting patients or86 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 86strapping them in bed with restraint sheets, the choking smells of urine andfeces and industrial-strength cleaners. He took to sleeping with the sheetspulled over his face. Azreal would sing to make him feel better.In 1966, the Supreme Court ruled that persons committed to institutionsfor alleged crimes possessed the same rights as anyone considered mentally ill,including proper treatment and a fair trial. In compliance, New York Statebegan quietly transferring patientsfrom criminal hospitals to civil institutions,after which many would be completely discharged. Dannemora lost nearly halfits prisoners. Matteawan identified roughly 250 inmates for release and beganreviewing the cases of 200 more. Allah’s hospital records were reviewed by theNew York SAC, who placed a stop on his file ordering that the FBI be alerted ofany change in his confinement.Back on the streets of New York, police hailed the decline of old-time gangslike the Cobras, Enchanters, Corsair Lords and Social Crowns. The YouthInvestigation Unit, once assigned to monitor over two hundred fighting gangs,now spoke of only one: the Five Percenters, suspected of beating random whiteyouths that came around their base of the St. Nicholas projects. The group wasalso accused of intimidating “blood-sucking preachers and their churches.” Ata November 1966 meeting of the National Committee of Negro Churchmen,New York pastors claimed that the Five Percenters were so named for demand-ing at least five percent of ministers’ monthly salaries.49 The NYO alertedHoover that a park near Bed-Stuy’s Tompkins and Lafayette Avenues hostedgatherings of over eighty black teenagers at a time. During these meetings, saidthe memo, “no individual is considered the floor chairman ... anyone whodesires to discuss anything simply stands and can be heard,” including oneafro-wearing nineteen-year-old who called himself “Allah.” An informantreported this Allah as saying that “the devils (‘meaning the white man,’ theNYO clarified) will not allow young Negroes to have anything and that you aresupposed to beat them up when they come around.” He also told his audiencethat they were all brothers and sisters, “since Allah was their father.”50 TheAllah in Matteawan disapproved, as the Five Percenters “were not yet strongenough to carry his name,” and he reportedly told Gykee “what was to come atanyone who did.”51On New Year’s Eve, Gykee, Sincere and Shamdu were involved in a drunkenbrawl at a youth center on Myrtle Avenue. “We wrecked and caused havoc anddestruction,” remembers Gykee, “and that was before the other brothers evengot there.”52 The next day an urgent NYO teletype warned that several FivePercenters had promised “actions, disorders, riots” in the Jamaica section ofQueens, east Brooklyn and Harlem if Allah was not released. The Five Percenters were said to be awaiting Allah’s arrival at 116th and Lenox—inMATTEAWAN 87ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 87front of Mosque No.7. The FBI contacted officials at Matteawan, who advisedthat Allah be released no sooner than March.Azreal describes Allah’s March 6, 1967 departure as coming with no prioradvance: “one day he was just told to pack up and then he was gone.”53 A groupof state legislators would later visit the hospital and declare it worse than SingSing Prison. Learning that some patients were seen by doctors only once everysix months, Assemblyman Bertrand Podell remarked, “these people weren’tsent here for therapy at all; they were sent here to vegetate.” Matteawan’s entire1967 population of six hundred patients was in the care of fourteen foreigndoctors, many unlicensed and speaking limited English. Matteawan superin-tendent, Dr. William C. Johnston, told the legislators, “this has been our prob-lem down through the years—to get enough money to run this as a hospital,not as a jail.”From Matteawan Allah returned to the Manhattan House of Detention(famously known as “the Tombs”) and then the street. He viewed his release asan endorsem*nt of his teachings: “if they didn’t believe I was Allah, why didthey let me out? Would they let out a crazy person?”54 On one occasion heclaimed that Matteawan had given him proof that he was God; he thenrevealed the waistband of his underwear, on which had been inked Allah, hisname in the hospital.55Allah’s name was removed from the Security Index, but J. Edgar Hoover stillwanted tabs kept on him: “In view of the subject’s background and his currentmental condition, the Bureau feels that upon release from his incarceration atthe Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Beacon, New York,you should determine his whereabouts and ascertain whether he resumes hisparticipation in Black Nationalist activities.”56Agents observed that Allah had no job or permanent residence but “couldalmost always be found at 127th Street and Seventh Avenue.” He was watchedat the Hotel Theresa Coffee Shop and made his first public appearance at a barcalled the Glamour Inn, described by Barry Gottehrer in The Mayor’s Man as a“long, thin room with an air conditioner that didn’t work.”57 On April 5, Allahfinally stood trial for events that were nearly two years old. Pleading guilty tounlawful assembly, possession of marijuana and disorderly conduct, hereceived a three-month suspended sentence.His official welcome home came at Harlem’s Mount Morris Park, whichinterrupted Fifth Avenue from 120th Street to 124th, and according to Got-tehrer hosted a mess of winos with their broken brown-bag bottles and dis-carded drug paraphernalia. Greeted by hundreds of Five Percenters, Allahdelivered his equivalent of the Sermon on the Mount: “You are all pace setters of the world,” he told the young men and women, “you are guardian88 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 88angels. Keep teaching and you will take over the world.” He abolished the FirstBorn’s practice of holding house parliaments; the gathering that day was thefirst of a new practice, a “Universal Parliament” on the last Sunday of everymonth. He also declared an end to the ordaining of ministers and warned toavoid leaders whose teachings were not “right and exact.” Specific referencewas made to Robert “Allah the Sun” Walker, whose plus-lessons had foundtheir way to the city. Allah spoke of Walker’s false degrees as “pins and nee-dles,” instructing his Five Percenters to burn all copies and refrain from teach-ing or quoting them to others.Prevailing Five Percenter history reports that a group of Muslims fromMosque No.7 arrived on the scene, heckling the former Clarence 13X for hisclaim to be Allah. What is given as Allah’s response illustrates the ostensibleparadox of Five Percenter thought: that a rebellion against Elijah Muham-mad’s authority could be endorsed by Elijah himself as more true to his theol-ogy than his own words:The Muslims of the Nation of Islam have never seen W. D. Fard, and they wor-ship him as Allah. But they say that they don’t worship a mystery-god. So youare worshipping on blind faith. Elijah said we had to stand up on our own twofeet. You can bring Elijah and any of his ministers to Rockland Place and he willtell you that I am Allah. You or any Muslims can’t judge me or my Suns andyour lessons say that anything made weak and wicked from the Original Man isdevil, and you are running around worshipping a Half-Original Man and notthe Blackman.58While the Muslims departed, Five Percenters celebrated with “thunderouscries” of “all praise is due to Allah.”59 The Sermon on the Mount was followedby three other Five Percenters, each speaking on behalf of his borough: Kar-riem for Harlem, Waleak for Brooklyn, and Hakeim for the Bronx.The Muslims were not done. Farrakhan’s powerful New York territorycame second only to Eiljah’s base in Chicago; the destroyed Mosque No.7 inHarlem was actually “7A” of twenty NOI mosques in the city, including 7B onNorthern Boulevard in Queens, the particularly strong 7C on Brooklyn’sMadison Street, 7D on Prospect Avenue in the Bronx, and on up to 7T. Duringa meeting at one of the branch mosques, Farrakhan’s men complained to“Brother Clarence” that because Five Percenters in police custody gave “Mus-lim names” like Omar and Karriem and claimed to hail from the Tribe ofShabazz, the NYPD and the press considered them members of the NOI:Police are concerned by the fanaticism of the youngsters who the source said,believe thatif Allah tells them to kill they must obey, and that the policeman’sMATTEAWAN 89ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 89bullets either will not hit them, or will not penetrate their bodies. The BlackMuslims disclaim any connection with the Five Percenters, the source said, butpolice do not believe them ... Policemen believe that a man who calls himself“Allah” could not continue his organization in the Negro community withoutthe tacit approval of the Black Muslims.60To keep peace between his Suns and the Doom Squad, Allah told Five Percenters to invent new names for themselves. “The Father told us that wecould not have Muslim names,” writes Shaamgaudd, “so that they would nothave to take the weight for the unrighteous actions of our fruit ... it’s hardenough being righteous or a Muslim in Hell without a bunch of knuckleheadsrunning around on the warpath causing confusion.”61 The compromise had aparallel in the life of Elijah Muhammad, who in 1935 banned his Muslims fromwearing fezzes to avoid association with the Moorish Science Temple.Al-Jabbar became Prince. Allah rewarded Karriem for his struggles by personally naming him Black Messiah. Ronald Robinson considered the break-down of Islam as “I Self Lord and Master” and took the name UnderstandingIslam. Allah discouraged Ronald, arguing that Islam was “not a name, it’s a reli-gion” and renamed him Understanding Master.62 Some Five Percenters whowere previously named Islam became Tislam. Five Percenters named Omarbecame Amar. Lil’ Armin wrote to Abdul, who was incarcerated at New Hampton Training School for Boys, and told him to change his name. Abdulfound his new name, Kalim, by choosing attributes from the Supreme Alpha-bets, then adding vowels and putting them in order.63 Benjamin (Bilal) Gatherscaused an uproar when he called himself Allah Born God (later ABG), but Allahnow endorsed the taking of his name; all black men had to be the Allahs of theirown lives. Five Percenter literature quotes him as telling Hakeim (who adoptedthe name Born Allah), “Sun, know you are Allah, never deny yourself of beingAllah, even if the whole world denies you, never deny yourself, because it’s yourown doubt that can stop you from being Allah.”64Increasing numbers of Five Percenters, qualified by demonstrating masteryof at least 100 of the 120 degrees, called themselves Allah or God, usually for a surname.65 Gykee became Gykee Mathematics Allah. Shameik became U-Allah. G-Islam changed his name to Infinite Al’Jaa’Maar-U-Allah. Kalimbecame God Kalim, but is said to have refused the name Allah because he con-sidered himself unworthy of comparison to the Father. Gamal became GodDef. Waleak took the name Knowledge God. There was still occasional Islamicoverlap. Niheem became Bisme; though not a typical “Muslim name,” his newfull name, Bisme Allah, formed the Arabic bismillah (“in the Name of God”)from the opening line of the Qur’an.90 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 90Five Percenters had also been using a star and crescent for their emblem,bearing too close a resemblance to the NOI’s National—the “Holy Flag ofIslam” and the “greatest and only flag known.”66 They later adopted their ownflag, the “Universal:” a circle containing a black 7 over a yellow crescent andblack star, enclosed within an eight-pointed compass rose similar to those used on maps to indicate direction. For Five Percenters, their black and goldcompass rose would represent the rays of the sun.67The Universal was created during Allah’s imprisonment by ShaamgauddAllah, who had recalled a conversation with Allah on 126th Street in whichAllah spoke about suns, stars, planets and black holes. A talented artist whomade portraits of W. D. Fard, Elijah Muhammad and Allah and had paintedthe solar system on his ceiling, Shaamgaudd decided to make a birthday gift forAllah “to show him what I had seen and learned from the experience, as well asits relationship to us as a Nation.” According to Gykee, “many of the Medinaborn had seen the flag in the making, not knowing what Shaamgaudd had inmind.”68 Shaamgaudd recalls that “when some of my brothers saw me addingthe 7 and points, they thought I was flaking out.”69 The star-and-crescent and7 design appears to be an amalgamation of the NOI’s National with the Circle 7 of Moorish Science. Gykee considers that it might have been inspiredby the insignia of the Cross Park Chaplains gang, but assures that “our belovedbrother knew better than that.”70 Shaamgaudd showed an early version toJesus/Brother Jimmy, who remarked that it wasn’t an appropriate flag but still“enough to take the head off of the Messenger.” The young Sun went back tothe drawing board.In May 1966, Shaamgaudd, Gykee and God Def (then Gamal) reportedlybrought a finished painting on a trip to Matteawan, but hospital staff wouldnot allow them to bring it inside. When Allah finally saw Shaamgaudd’s designafter his release he remarked, “that’s our Univesal Flag!”71 Shaamgaudd thenproudly added Universal to his name, becoming Universal Shaamgaudd Allah.With new names and a new flag, the Five Percent Nation came into its own.Having taken the ideas of Moorish Science and the Nation of Islam as far asthey would go, Allah reached that road’s logical end. Marcus Garvey had calledfor a new religion with a black God, and both Noble Drew Ali and ElijahMuhammad tried to produce it; Allah made black men their own Gods and didaway with religion altogether. “Religious people fight against one another,” hesaid. “You can’t tell me they don’t, ’cus they do.”72 Disapproving of the “OurFather,” Allah taught only one prayer, in which each worshiper affirmed him-self as the only object of worship: “Allah is the God, and He cannot die.”73MATTEAWAN 91ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 918Allah and the MayorDuring the late sixties,” wrote David Dawley, “the energy that street gangsonce used in preparation for gang warfare increasingly was directedtoward creating viable community organizations.”1 Dawley was a member ofChicago’s Vice Lord Nation, which claimed at least twenty-six branches—including the Unknown Vice Lords, Spanish Vice Lords, Invisible Vice Lordsand Insane Vice Lords—and eight to ten thousand members.2 The Vice Lordsupergang was itself part of an even bigger confederation, the People, whichbattled another umbrella group called the Folks.Founded in 1959 in an Illinois reform school, by the late 1960s the ViceLords had reinvented themselves as a non-profit community developmentgroup. Funded by Alderman Collins and Sears Roebuck, they obtained a gut-ted storefront and turned it into “Teen Town,” an ice cream parlor. With agrant from the Field Foundation of Illinois they founded the African Lion, a“soul shop” for literature, clothing and accessories celebrating black historyand culture. They also started a venture with Sammy Davis, Jr. to distributecosmetics designed especially for black skin. Using the slogan, “Where therewas glass, there will be grass,” the Vice Lords obtained one hundred Neighbor-hood Youth Corps positions from the Catholic School Board and spent a sum-mer “sweeping streets, picking up trash, and planting grass.”3 They protestedwith Jesse Jackson against welfare cuts, set up a tenants’ rights action group,and through an arrangement with Malcolm X Community College opened aVice Lords Street Academy for high-school dropouts.Counted among Vice Lord-friendly “People” gangs were the BlackstoneRangers, who claimed a similar metamorphosis and attached themselves toRev. John Fry, a radical Presbyterian minister. Fry’s First Presbyterian Churchbecame the Rangers’ headquarters, hosting at least one hundred gang mem-bers at any given time of day or night. On August 1, 1966, the Rangers picketeda War on Poverty office, and two weeks later secured a package deal from theyouth welfare establishment. Fearing violence at the Bud Billiken’s Dayparade, a groupof youth agencies bused 900 Blackstone Rangers for a day tripto South Bend, Indiana, where they were treated to a picnic on the football fieldof Notre Dame University. The Blackstone Rangers and other South Side92“ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 92gangs later scored a piece of the federal antipoverty pie, sharing a $927,341education and job-training grant from the Office of Economic Opportunity(OEO). Through the grant, gang members were getting paid up to $58 a weekfor attending classes. The program would come under investigation when theBlackstone Rangers used their grant money to stockpile guns, grenades anddrugs in the basem*nt of First Presbyterian.Despite Mayor Richard Daley’s claim at an NAACP convention that“Chicago has no ghettoes,”4 others understood that the Windy City’s slums—like those in New York and Los Angeles—were, to paraphrase Malcolm X,powder kegs with numerous sparks around them. The growing political con-sciousness and revolutionary potential of street gangs was recognized by bothsides of the struggle. FBI agents would sometimes call the Vice Lords’ ice creamparlor, wanting to know the mood on the streets in times of potential riot.5Years later it was revealed that the FBI had also deliberately sparked hostilitybetween the Blackstone Rangers and Black Panthers in the hope that theRangers would then block the Panthers’ development in Chicago. In 1966 theRangers were contacted by Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Southern Christian Lead-ership Conference (SCLC); in 1967 they met with members of the Revolution-ary Action Movement (RAM), which had been joined by Malcolm X in 1963and Bobby Seale in 1964 (Seale had gone on with RAM-influenced Huey New-ton to form the Black Panther Party). Considering the cultural impact of theWatts riots, RAM developed a strategy to manipulate riots as political upris-ings. Reverend Fry had warned of the possibilities in a sermon:There are on Chicago’s South and West Sides four major constellations ofgangs: the Vicelords, Cobras, Devil’s Disciples, and Blackstone Rangers. Theyhave shifting alliances and historic animosities. But recently the big leaders ofthese four gang constellations have been meeting privately in order to talkthings over. And what do you think they talk about? A basketball league? No.You are wrong. What is the matter with the Bears? Wrong again. They are talk-ing about how they can create a series of incidents in such a way that the Mayorwould be forced to call in the National Guard, and then they would openlyinvite the colored boys in the Guard to join them!6When protests against police in Newark, New Jersey sent a wave of riots acrossthe nation, Daley gave a press conference to warn that as long as he was mayorin Chicago, “law and order will prevail.” Reminded by a reporter of MartinLuther King, Jr.’s warning that Chicago suffered from the same problems thatcaused riots in other cities, Daley replied, “We don’t need him to tell us what todo. He has been asked to join our constructive programs and he has refused.He only comes here for one purpose—or to any other city he has visited—andALLAH AND THE MAYOR 93ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 93that is to cause trouble.”7 Daley notified Chicago that the National Guardwould soon be on the streets with live ammunition.The old machine boss Daley stood in contrast to New York’s JFK-evokingmayor with Hollywood good looks and matching idealism, John Vliet Lindsay.To keep New York calm through the summer of 1967, Lindsay established pro-grams such as the Citizens Summer Committee and Summer Task Force. TheCitizens Summer Committee was charged with creating various programs forcity youth such as Operation Beat the Heat, which bused children to publicparks, and Operation Plane Ride, which provided them their first rides on air-planes. Meanwhile, the Summer Task Force aimed to “establish a continuingdialogue between the city administration and neighborhood leaders.” It wouldlater become the year-round Urban Action Task Force, headed by a formerHerald Tribune reporter named Barry Gottehrer.With the aim of building credibility in the African-American communitiesof Harlem and Brooklyn, Lindsay took to semi-spontaneous walking toursthrough impoverished neighborhoods. The walks were coordinated by political general Sid Davidoff, who remembers Lindsay often calling to ask,“where are we going today?” and Gottehrer, who developed relationships onLindsay’s behalf with neighborhood leaders. Rather than elected politicans,Lindsay wanted support from the real leaders, local heroes who often com-manded more respect than those with official positions. They included menlike legendary number-runner Bumpy Johnson, who would send his sister andother proxies to accompany Lindsay on his Harlem strolls, and Charles 37XKenyatta, a former bodyguard to Malcolm X who carried a machete and worea pith helmet. Lindsay viewed men like Kenyatta as necessary to maintain acity’s balance; he told Davidoff that “to maintain center, you have to haveextreme rights and extreme lefts” because when extremes move toward thecenter, the center itself moves.8 As Lindsay’s liason to those extremes, BarryGottehrer would come to be “alternately praised or condemned for buying offmilitants.”9The mayor’s office requested that the NYPD provide them with lists of the“thousand worst kids in the city” and the “handful of adults who could causereal problems,”10 with hopes of dissuading radical leaders from sparking riotsand other public disturbance. Topping the list as New York’s most feared subversive was Allah.11City Hall sent feelers to Allah through street informants but heard no reply.Davidoff suggests that Allah was playing hard-to-get, and believes that for aman found unable to understand a charge of felonious assault, Allah was quiteshrewd: “he knew what he was doing.”12 Then one Saturday morning, asDavidoff played basketball at a schoolyard in Queens, he was interrupted by an94 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 94NYPD patrol car with its lights on, tearing across the yard and up to the basketball court. The car stopped in front of him and an officer stepped out todeliver the message: “someone named Allah is looking for you.”13 Allah waswilling to talk. Davidoff facilitated a meeting between Allah and Gottehrer forMay 11 at the Hotel Roosevelt. After Allah no-showed, they rescheduled for3:00 p.m. the next day at the Glamour Inn. The bar was “drab enough,” writesGottehrer, “and empty enough, to discourage the few customers who mightshow up there.”14 Gottehrer ordered a rum and co*ke and noticed two menseated several barstools from him, one of them matching Allah’s description.Gottehrer came over with his drink and introduced himself. Allah’s compan-ion that night was Brother Jimmy, who introduced himself to Gottehrer by hisnew name, Jesus. The mayor’s man had arrived at the setup for a joke: Allahand Jesus are sitting in a bar ...Jimmy/Jesus offered to show Gottehrer a good time: “any kind of women youwant, all the women you want,” for one hundred dollars. Gottehrer declinedand ordered another drink. Allah broke down the percentages for him so that heknew what it meant to be a Five Percenter, and then they talked business. Allahwanted the city to provide buses to take his Five Percenters on picnics. WhenGottehrer said it sounded feasible, Allah moved to a second request: his ownschool.15 The Urban League ran numerous storefront “street academies” withvarious functions; one was designed specifically for young drug addicts, othersfocused on vocational training and roughly ten street academies were devoted toformal education.16 “Each academy has its own atmosphere,” writes JosephFeatherstone, who visited street academies as a journalist for the New Republic,“but what is taught is roughly the same: a mixture of basic, often remedial read-ing and math, and subjects like African and blackhistory, sometimes Arabic orSwahili, and sociology which usually means discussing life in Harlem.”17 Staplereading included Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and Malcolm X,18 whoseportrait adorned more than one street academy’s wall.19 Featherstone describeda conversation he had with an academy “streetworker” and student, in which both insisted there was a growing mood of racial pride and anger, and it wasimportant that courses be given that interpreted this mood to the kids. Thestreetworker said that a few intensely serious students needed—he didn’t wantto say a religion or an ideology—but something that gave them an idea of how tointerpret the world, some coherent body of ideals: “They can work out their ownlives, you know, but they need a start, especially the ones going on to white col-leges, because that’s a hard scene.” I wondered whether African history or eventhe personal example of a militant streetworker would lead to a coherent body ofblack ideals. He wasn’t sure; nor did he know if a school could offer what he wastalking about as well as, say, a Muslim organization.20ALLAH AND THE MAYOR 95ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 95What Allah was offering might have filled the gap. He had alreadyapproached the Urban League, which was unwilling to hand over a school tothe most feared gang in New York. Gottehrer said he’d look into it, stillshocked at what he was hearing from a man who had supposedly threatened anarmed revolt: “All the time we talked, my mind kept drifting back to the policereport on Allah. It didn’t go together. I began to wonder if I was talking to theright man.”21The meeting ended with Allah inviting Gottehrer to attend his upcomingparliament and speak to the youth. Allah gave the numbers of the GlamourInn’s pay phones as a means to reach him; Gottehrer wrote them on a match-book and promised to call him within the week. As they parted ways, Allahgreeted the mayor’s aide with a simple “peace.”Sunday, May 28, Gottehrer attended the second Universal Parliament atMount Morris Park. Flanked by two black police officers, one in uniform andone in street clothes, the City Hall deputy watched as Allah—with Jesus and aGlamour Inn regular, Al Murphy, at his side—lectured roughly two hundredFive Percenters, some as young as eight or nine, on the virtues of clean livingand taking care of their own community. After Allah’s speech, the youthsformed a circle and took turns addressing each other. Allah then introducedGottehrer and let him explain the city’s interest in working with the Five Per-centers, offering free trips to state parks and beaches. The mayor’s aide evenannounced that Allah could be getting an Urban League street academy. TheFive Percenters were silent. Gottehrer could tell that not a single one of them,including Allah, believed him.Plans were announced for a trip to Long Island State Park. The followingSunday, a scowling, skeptical Allah stood on the corner of 127th Street andSeventh Avenue, smiling only when Gottehrer showed up with six buses. “Itwasn’t really the buses,” Allah told him later, “even though I wanted them. Butyou kept your word.”22 Three hundred young Five Percenters piled onto thebuses and Gottehrer filled his own car with sandwiches provided by a restau-rant chain through the Citizens’ Summer Committee. On the way to the park,Gottehrer remembered Allah telling him that Five Percenters did not eat pork.He pulled over and examined a sandwich, discovering ham and cheese. One by one, Gottehrer spent two hours removing the ham and rewrapping the six hundred sandwiches (two to a child).Three days after the successful bus trip, Allah attended a meeting betweenMayor Lindsay and black community leaders at Gracie Mansion. Among thosepresent were CORE’s Floyd McKissick and Manhattan borough presidentPercy Sutton. The purpose was not to negotiate, says Davidoff, but lay thefoundations for dialogue between the mayor and the community. Originally96 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 96scheduled for 5:00–6:00 p.m., the meeting ran nearly five hours as each politi-cian delivered a long prepared speech. “Everyone was hustling for a slice of theanti-poverty pie,” recalls Gottehrer.23 At one point Lindsay tried to dip out ofthe room, only to be pulled back in by leaders threatening riots if they weredenied the chance to speak. The only men that refrained from addressing themayor were Allah and Charles Kenyatta.On August 5, Lindsay accompanied eighty-six Harlem youths on a walkingtour of Harlem before joining them on their first plane ride: an hour-longflight on a four-engined Eastern Airlines Constellation that flew over the Hudson River, parts of Brooklyn, Staten Island, and New Jersey.“Lindsay goes aloft with slum group,” announced the New York Times. Thearticle mentioned the participation of Five Percenters, who the UrbanLeague’s Herbert Miller described as “a militant group of teen-agers, mostlyschool dropouts, who have chips on their shoulders which we are trying toremove.” Times writer John P. Callahan lacked a sufficient background inSupreme Wisdom to know what “Five Percenter” meant, but he at leastskipped the accusation of ties to Communists:The Five Percenters take their name from their contention that only 5 per centof all Negroes are militant enough to redress their grievance against what theyfelt was ill treatment by whites. However, according to Barry Gottehrer, assis-tant to the Mayor and head of the Summer Task Force, about a year ago theyabandoned their militance.Mr. Gottehrer said, “They now believe that everyone—whites and Negroes—should learn to live together in harmony and understanding, and that is pre-cisely why we are working with them in every way to help themselves.”24For Sid Davidoff, working with Five Percenters was strictly business. Allah“knew we weren’t there because we liked the guy, but because we needed him;”likewise, “Allah saw us as a way of stopping police oppression and meeting hisown needs.”25 Barry Gottehrer, however, felt a growing personal attachment tothe group through his long nights at the Glamour Inn and corner dice games,and developed such a close friendship with Allah that Deputy Mayor RichardAurelio asked him whether his priorities were in order.26 Davidoff also grewconcerned. He once accompanied Gottehrer to the Glamour Inn for a nightwith Allah, “who was in rare form,” remembers Gottehrer, “high less oncocaine than on his wit.” Davidoff was later shaking his head. “Anyone wholikes to spend time with a guy like that has got to be either stupid or crazy,” hetold Gottehrer. “And I know you’re not stupid.”27Gottehrer called Rev. Eugene Callender, who had become head of the UrbanLeague in 1966, and Allah did get his school: a small building with a storefrontALLAH AND THE MAYOR 97ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 97that the city had won in a tax case, adjacent to the Wellworth and just five doorsfrom the Glamour Inn. It had most recently been home to a barbershop.Through the Urban League, Gottehrer arranged for the Five Percenters toacquire the building at a cost of a dollar a year. The new headquarters was sit-uated in harmony with Allah’s Supreme Mathematics, located on Seventh(God) Avenue. Even the address, 2122, held up in the “science of everything inlife,” as 2 + 1 + 2 + 2 = 7. A large 7 was painted on the front door. For Five Percenters, the school meant everything from the promise of a better future tothe mayor embracing their beliefs.Allah, however, would grow wary of the arrangement as his dream of anautonomous Five Percenter school met its disappointing reality, governed bymore than one hostile agenda. The Urban League’s educational director, HarvOostdyk, was a white Christian who ran classes for drop-outs at the Church ofthe Master on Morningside Avenue. Oostdyk had initially staffed his streetacademies with members of the “Young Life” outreach ministry,and thefuture author of Step One: the Gospel and the Ghetto prayed to bring drop-outsnot only diplomas but eternal salvation. “Used to be every other word wasJesus,” remarked a streetworker to Featherstone, “but Jesus hasn’t all thatmuch of a following in Harlem, and now he’s stopped that kind of talk.”28Featherstone describes Oostdyk as envisioning “great corporate involve-ment in the renewal of the ghetto, arguing that business is the one segment ofwhite society black people do not regard with disillusionment.”29 Street acade-mies were mostly funded through a $700,000 grant from the Ford Foundation,with lesser funds coming from the city, and Oostdyk procured sponsorshipfrom companies including IBM, American Airlines, American Express,Citibank, and Chase Manhattan. “The price of involvement with public schoolsand corporations may, in the end, be too high,” Featherstone muses.30 “Thereare so many billions of dollars coming out in the people’s hands,” Allah com-mented, “but the children are not getting any benefit from it.”31 Featherstoneconsidered that the street academy experiment might have been doomed byopposing interests that could not be reconciled: “The program needs to be asvarious as the streets, and yet it is hard to envision militant streetworkers toeinga line chalked by the city schools, just as it is hard to believe that many corporateofficials would be pleased by the tone of some of the discussions I heard.”32The city hoped to keep academy rhetoric in line. One storefront school wasclosed because its director was considered “too extreme,”33 and Allah’s streetacademy received impromptu check-ins from NYPD Deputy Chief InspectorEldridge Waith.34The Five Percenter school followed a standard Urban League program, serv-ing a range of ten to thirty students with three certified teachers and three98 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 98streetworkers.35 Upon graduation a student would move on to an “Academy ofTransition” before being recommended for the third and final level, a collegepreparatory school. Allah offered suggestions for how his school should run,but they mattered little to Harv Oostdyk, his corporate sponsors, or the UrbanLeague that had not wanted to work with Five Percenters in the first place.According to Featherstone, “Allah complained of neglect. In his view, ‘the chil-dren’ need more training for jobs and literacy; only a few could take advantageof college preparatory courses, and without basic skills they were going to fallprey to ‘savages and wolves in the streets.’ ”36Gottehrer also witnessed Allah’s Suns challenging the relevance of theirclasses, for different reasons: “The academic curriculum took a beating rightfrom the start, as the Five Percenters had their own ideas. They believed thatthe most important thing is to have knowledge of self and, as everybody isgodly inside, so everybody is Allah. As a consequence, they felt free to reject asmuch as they accepted from the teachers the Urban League hired.”37“I just want the government to give the children more qualified teachersthan those people they are giving this money too,” Allah pleaded.38 Discussinga teachers’ strike with Eldridge Waith, he remarked, “we’re going to do the jobright for our children, even if they don’t.”39 It was eventually agreed that youthswould seek their state-mandated curriculums at other street academies, andFive Percenters would take over instruction at Allah’s school. According toPrince, Allah hoped to maintain classes in five subjects: mathematics, history,English, Arabic and self-defense. Amar Education taught math. Divine Godtaught English. No youths could be found to teach history or Arabic. Zumar,who began studying martial arts in 1961 under Shariff X and received his firstblack belt in 1967, was assigned to train Five Percenters in self-defense. Anative of Jamaica, Queens who was sometimes called “Green Eye” Zumar, hehad a reputation as a “walking weapon” and considered himself Allah’s personal bodyguard.40 Like many street academies, classes were gender-segregated; Knowledge Allah taught the sisters.The math, English and defense classes “didn’t last very long as I remember,”wrote Prince.41 “The Five Percenter academy is being allowed to languish,”observed Featherstone; “the street academies will have to begin thinking ofother challenges besides college to offer the mass of angry black youth in thecities.”42Allah continued to search for ways to help his young Gods. Through a FivePercenter named Dumar he met with Ed Carpenter, headmaster of HarlemPrep, which had been founded by Rev. Eugene Callender.43 At the top of theUrban League’s three-level program, most of Harlem Prep’s seventy studentshad come from street academies. The school’s logo read “Umojo Undugo,”ALLAH AND THE MAYOR 99ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 99Swahili for “Unity and Brotherhood,” and its history teacher was none otherthan famed scholar Yosef ben-Jochannan, who wore a Marcus Garvey UNIApin on his lapel.44Ed Carpenter and Allah became instant friends. Carpenter came to beknown as “God Carp,” hung a Universal Flag in his office and agreed to accept any Five Percenter that Allah sent him.45 Al-Shakeim and Born Allahwere elected president and vice-president of Harlem Prep’s first student government.Regardless of the success or failure of his street academy, Allah’s growing“Five Percent Nation” would evolve on its own terms. As an NOI lesson statedthat by bringing the heads of four devils, a man would be rewarded with a but-ton to wear on the lapel of his coat, Allah asked Barry Gottehrer to print theUniversal Flag on pins for his Five Percenters to wear. City Hall opposed theidea, fearing that “a medallion would give them legitimacy” and sparkincreased recruitment or even violence. Gottehrer went ahead and made thepins, along with full-sized flags that Five Percenters signed with both their“honorable” and “righteous” names; i.e., their born names and adopted FivePercenter names. Ronald Robinson’s righteous name, Understanding MasterAllah, was too long to fit so he shortened it to Um Allah. Vincent Chambers,the Mosque No.7 youth who became I-Jabar in Otisville, came to the schoolwith his newborn niece Yakeema to pick up his pin. Allah put the pin onYakeema, remarked, “that’s hers” and told I-Jabar that he’d get his own pinwhen he changed his name. I-Jabar later became Allah Supreme God.46And the Five Percenters, Gottehrer notes, “did not start a war.”47In the mid-1940s, one of Elijah’s Muslims wrote a “national anthem” withthe refrain, “So let us rise ye Moslems, Fight for Your Own,” which enteredinto NOI ritual and was sung by Muslim men like Clarence 13X before prayerat Mosque No.7. The Five Percenters would adopt their own anthem, com-posed in its earliest version at Rikers when Knowledge Allah (then Dihoo) wasplanting flowers around the administration buildings. To pass the time, heplayed with Supreme Mathematics in his head and came up with the founda-tion for a new song. After his release, he continued to work on his lyrics withhelp from Amar Education and other youths at the street academy. One dayAllah walked in, heard them and asked what they were doing.“It’s a song we made,” replied Knowledge.“Let me hear,” Allah told the boys,48 so they clapped the rhythm and sang:Chorus: Peace Allah, Allah-U-Justice Peace Allah, Allah -U-Justice each and every day 100 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 100each and every way I’m going to Show and Prove and teach the righteous way (Chorus) the Knowledge [1] is the Foundation the Wisdom [2] is the way the Understanding [3] shows you, that you are on your way (Chorus) the Culture [4] is I-God the Power [5] is the Truth Equality [6] only shows you that you have planted your roots (Chorus) God [7] came to teach us of the righteous way how we must Build [8] with thatwhich he taughtus build to be Born [9] on this glorious day (Chorus) the Knowledge [1] of the Cipher [0] is to enlighten you just to let you know that GOD is right amongst you (Chorus) PEACE!“Yeah okay,” Allah exclaimed, “that’s our national anthem!” He had the youngmen present their song, titled “The Enlightener,” at the next rally. The chorus’“Peace Allah, Allah-U-Justice” is often sung as “Allah and Justice” in respectfor Brother Jimmy, who had changed his righteous name from Jesus to Jus-tice—a move inspired by Colossians 4:11 (“And Jesus, which is called Justus,who are of the circumcision”49) and/or the question-answer catechisms ofNoble Drew Ali:36. What does the name Jesus mean? Jesus means Justice.50The meaning would also be recast in a Five Percenter light, to bring downthe mystery god and present man’s divinity in a Christian context as “Arm,Leg, Leg, Arm, Head” had done within an Islamic one: “Jesus is Just Us.”51Moorish Science retained an influence on the group, as found in one of themore suspect narratives from Allah’s hagiography. Universal Shaamgauddwas walking down Brooklyn’s South Oxford Street, wearing his Five Percenter“crown” (tassled skullcap) when he was stopped by a fez-wearing Shriner. “Ifelt like a fire breathing dragon,” writes Shaamgaudd; “I was going to roast thisold 10%er alive.” The Shriner was impressed with Shaamgaudd’s knowledgeand invited him back to his den for tea and cookies. Shaamgaudd joined him but declined the tea and cookies. The Shriner tried to get the best ofALLAH AND THE MAYOR 101ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 101Shaamgaudd with his books and pictures, but Shaamgaudd provided break-downs of their true meanings. For every question the Shriner asked, Shaam-gaudd would “serve it to him fried.” The Shriner ate it up, exclaiming “yes, Lord!” He said that if Shaamgaudd agreed to teach his and his brothers’children twice a week, he would donate five or six brownstone houses on SouthOxford to the Five Percenters. Shaamgaudd answered that he first had to askAllah.Upon arriving in Harlem, Shaamgaudd excitedly told Allah the story.“That was no ordinary man, son,” said Allah, “that was Satan. He was tryingyou as he did Jesus before you.” Allah warned Shaamgaudd that the Shrinerwould try three times to tempt him, and wouldn’t be alone.At the next encounter, Shamgaudd met two more Shriners. The first oneasked Shaamgaudd a question, to which he answered, “It is written, man shallnot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth ofAlmighty God Allah!” The Shriners smiled and offered another question.Shaamgaudd replied, “Have you not heard that thou shalt not tempt the Lordthy God?” At this point the Shriners were kissing their aprons and rubbingtheir fezzes. They asked their third question and heard Shaamgaudd answer,“Get behind me, Satan! Have you not heard that thou shalt worship the Lordthy God and Him alone shall you serve?” The overjoyed old Shriners fell totheir knees and kissed Shaamgaudd’s boots, crying, “We bear witness, you aretruly the son of Allah!”“Allah is the God,” replied Shaamgaudd. “Always has been, always will be.”He greeted them with “peace” and continued down the street, tears streamingdown his face.52 Shaamgaudd’s account is reminiscent of C. Kirkman Bey’s TheMysteries of the Silent Brotherhood of the East, which, like Noble Drew Ali’s Circle 7 Koran, was lifted from Levi Dowling’s Aquarian Gospel. Bey retells thestory of Jesus passing various tests to enter new Adept chambers. After his mas-ter names him “Logos of the Holy One, the Circle of human race, the Seven ofthe time,” Jesus is visited by a “tempter” dressed in the “somber garb” of apriest. Jesus sees through the tempter’s deception, then encounters two moremen in the same disguise and thwarts them in turn. For passing this second test, Jesus is rewarded by his master with a scroll bearing the word,“JUSTICE.”53Brooklyn’s Flatbush section offered a young rival to Allah in Dwight York.After his release from prison, York embraced Sunni Islam at the Islamic Mission of America, Inc. Mosque on State Street and took the name Isa Abdul-lah. He was only one of a growing number of African-American converts at themosque, which had been founded by a West Indian named Daoud Faisal, Pakistan-born Maqbul Ilahi, and a handful of Yemeni seamen. Faisal proved102 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 102unwilling or unable to address the needs of converts, and in 1967 demandedthat the mosque’s black members carry “Sunni identification cards” to provethat they were not in the Nation of Islam. Many broke away to form the Dar ul-Islam, a politically charged Sunni movement. York formed Ansar Pure Sufi,which blended Five Percenter teachings with those of Elijah Muhammad,Sufism, Judaism and the Sudanese Mahdi movement. Members wore a cres-cent, ankh and the Star of David on green and black shirt and pants. Throughthe late 1960s and early 1970s, York’s movement went through a series of nameand uniform changes, from Nubians in African robes and caps to NubianIslamic Hebrews in dashikis and black fezzes and finally the Ansar communityin white robes and turbans, with its own mosque on Bushwick Avenue. Yorkhimself became Isa al-Mahdi, built ties with the Sudanese government and cre-ated his own personal army, modeled after the FOI: the Swords of Islam (SOI).Ansars and Five Percenters occupied opposite ends of Bushwick Avenue andengaged in minor confrontations. Allah Supreme God recalls walking downPitkins Avenue when an Ansar saw his Universal pin and mocked him: “You’renot Allah, you’re not Allah.” A crowd quickly gathered around the ensuingverbal battle. Allah Supreme God had them laughing at the Ansar, who insistedthat God was unseen and omnipresent.“Is He standing by that fire truck?” asked Allah Supreme God.“What fire truck?”“Well, if He’s everywhere—”Other Five Percenters showed up and gave their own intellectual bombingsto the Ansar while Allah Supreme God continued on his way.Oral apocrypha within both the Five Percenter and Ansar communitiesspeak of a prison encounter between the Mahdi and Allah. Five Percenter leg-end says that York met Allah in Matteawan and became his student for a time.The Ansar version maintains that York spotted Allah while they were both atElmira Reception Center in Beacon, where new male commitments were heldbefore going to their assigned prisons. York had received a three year maxi-mum sentence following his October 1964 arrest for assault, possession of adangerous weapon and resisting a police officer. At Elmira York supposedlyapproached Clarence, scoffed, “so you’re supposed to be Allah?” and thenpunched him in the face.54Neither story is true. York was never at Matteawan, and Elmira ReceptionCenter only took men aged sixteen to twenty-one. When nineteen-year-oldYork entered Elmira on January 6, 1965, Allah would have been approachinghis thirty-seventh birthday.55The Five Percenters’ fable of York in Matteawan seems a misplacement ofRobert Walker. “Allah the Sun” later wound up at Great Meadows, where heALLAH AND THE MAYOR 103ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 103told inmates that he was “Great God Allah in the Wisdom Body.” Despite hisclaims to be the true Allah, Walker’s new name was based on his mentor’snumerology. “Wisdom” expressed the number two; Allah in the KnowledgeBody would have been the first (Clarence). After release Walker founded hisown Brownsville, Brooklyn faction, the “First Born Muslims,” with a core ofthirteen “Archangels:” Lord Eternal Allah, Lord God Allah, Mallah God Allah,Infinite God Allah, Eminent God Allah, Lord Allah, Lord Blesseth Allah, Gal-lah, Boundest God Allah, Organic Allah, Glorious God Allah, Exziel Allah, andVictorious God Allah. “My wings are 4 feet wide and 7 feet long,” Archangelsbragged. The First Born Muslim logo, a thirteen-pointed star, came in two ver-sions: one with a 7 in the center for men, the other with a star and crescent forwomen. “Walker’s teachings were beautiful,” remembers Infinite Al’Jaa’-Maar-U-Allah, “but his actions weren’t.”56 Walker won converts by renderingFive Percenters susceptible with free drugs57 and requiring female followers tosleep with any jailed First Born Muslim upon his release.58 First Born Muslimsengaged the Five Percenters in verbal confrontations, challenging them notonly with the 120 but Walker’s own “3rd Prophecy Lessons/1–30” and anadded weaponry of questions such as, “Tell us how did God Allah create thesun in the above?” and “How fast does a fly’s heartbeat go beep beep?”59Among the Five Percenters mesmerized by Walker were Brownsville nativesGeneral Wise-Allah, who trained the First Born Muslims in martial arts, andKatanga Ali, regarded as a rising scientist of the 120. After a disagreement withWalker in the summer of 1968, Katanga Ali broke away and organized a smallcache of followers who all took Ali for their surnames. Walker’s sect—the off-shoot of an offshoot of an offshoot—had now spawned its own heresy, the “AliFamily.” Accidental meetings between Walker and Ali in public parks or onsidewalks resulted in impromptu “teaching battles” in which each attemptedto show up the other.Katanga Ali later renamed himself Notorious Victorious Great God Allahand opened his own “street academy” on Blake Avenue between Amboy Streetand Hopkinson Avenue. Shortening his new name to God Allah and hangingone of Robert Walker’s flags in his school, he managed to offend both the FivePercenters and First Born Muslims. Walker took over the school and kept theflag while Five Percenters tried in vain to convince him to take it down, plead-ing that the thirteen-pointed sun was not “right and exact.” Eventually a groupof Five Percenters entered the school and destroyed the flag, exiling bothRobert Walker and Katanga Ali from the premises.60Members of the First Born Muslims and Ali Family did recognize ClarenceSmith as Allah and use his Supreme Mathematics, and eventually the offshootswere absorbed back into the Five Percent. Walker would change his name 104 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 104from Great God Allah in the Wisdom Body to Al-Champaine, abandon thelessons for full-on pimping and ultimately disappear from the scene.61 Aliwould drown in 1969.62 Infinite Al’Jaa’Maar-U-Allah, an active Five Percenterwho considers Ali one of his early educators, continues to “wear the Ali Family.”63As the Five Percenters took turns speaking at a Harlem parliament, anunknown man used his turn to denounce Allah’s teaching and put himselfover as a new leader. The Five Percenters stood up and walked toward the man,ready to take him out (“GODS didn’t PLAY back then,” writes Kalim on theincident). The rising tension could have reminded Allah of his own rebellionat Mosque No.7 years before, when the FOI started moving in on him as hespoke at the podium. Perhaps recognizing the moment’s parallel in his life,Allah stood up and told his Five Percenters to stop.“He can have all those that want to follow him,” said Allah, who then walkedaway from the parliament with most of his young Gods in tow.64While fending off aspiring prophets and their scriptures, Allah was alsochallenged by the secular Black Power movement. To the new wave of militants, Allah’s sin was not his claim to be God, but his statement of being“neither pro-black, nor anti-white” and cooperation with City Hall. Allahtaught Five Percenters to respect the government, and hoped that rather thanseparate, they would become part of mainstream America and change it from within. Through Lindsay’s programs, Five Percenters were going to freemovies and shows, even catching the Jackson 5 at the Apollo (some thoughtthat Jermaine Jackson was a Five Percenter, because he had a “Five Percenter-sounding name”65). Reporters from the local media, hoveringaround the Street Academy with hopes of catching revolutionary rhetoric,found interviews with Allah to instead be “free commercials for the Lindsay administration.”66 Meanwhile, extremists warned Allah’s followers,“you can’t deal with Whitey. Don’t go to his schools, don’t work for him. Stayon the street.”67 Allah assured Gottehrer that he’d bat away all “tempters” like flies.In June 1967, sixteen RAM members were arrested for plotting the assassi-nation of moderate black leaders. A police raid found “over thirty weapons, amachine gun, three carbines, a dozen rifles, a machete, 1,000 rounds of ammu-nition, police riot helmets, walkie-talkies, and 275 pounds of heroin.”68 OnSeptember 18, an NYPD officer confided to the Special Agent in Charge thatpolice were planning a similar “secret raid” on Five Percenters in the Bronx.Some time between 12:00 and 2:00 a.m. on an undetermined date, officerswould storm several apartments in a five-story brick tenement building onClay Avenue between 166th and 167th Streets, expecting to find “numerousALLAH AND THE MAYOR 105ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 105weapons.” The next day it was revealed that there had been no raid plannedand the whole thing was a hoax.After the closing of his Black Arts Repetory Theater, LeRoi Jones/AmiriBaraka returned to his hometown of Newark, New Jersey and established ablack community theater called the Spirit House. In addition to performancesof Baraka’s plays, the Spirit House played host to a developing scene of blacknationalism. At a winter 1967 rally, Baraka’s opening speaker made an electri-fying appearance, pulling up in front of the Spirit House in a chauffeuredCadillac with the personalized license plate, “ALLAH.”69 The rear passenger-side door was opened to reveal the man himself, sporting a shiny gold suit andmatching fez. Despite his headwear, Allah’s personal vibe was said to resemblethat of a Christian minister70 as he drew his speaking style from black Baptiststreet-corner preachers who competed with each other to give dazzling rapsand capture the attention of passersby.For an audience of black Marxists, Allah might have been expected to speak on white devils or the class war between bourgeois Ten Percenters(“bloodsuckers of the poor”) and proletariat Five Percenters (“Poor RighteousTeachers”); but in his fifteen-minute address, he spoke only of the need torespect women (“Queens”) and then launched into his favorite topic: numbers.Teaching from the Supreme Wisdom, Allah skipped its ideologically loaded sec-tions in favor of “Actual Facts,” which dealt with geographical measurements(“Mount Everest is 29,141 feet high”71). He then built on the statistics with hisown numerology.72 It might have been an odd choice of material for this crowdof leftist intellectuals, but Allah was often finding himself out of place.The 1967 “Cops and Robbers” Christmas party in Barry Gottehrer’s UrbanAction Task Force office was intended as a surreal sort of social experiment.Inspired by the film Ten Little Indians, he hoped to bring together charactersfrom all walks of New York life—“movie stars, revolutionaries, businessmen,politicians, clergymen, police, union leaders”—and see how they’d interact foran evening. For the role of revolutionary, Gottehrer invited Allah.For Gottehrer, the highlight of the night was a discussion between Allah andBronx district attorney Burt Roberts in which a smiling Roberts told him, “Ihave no problem with you being Allah, you can be Allah all you want—inManhattan, in Queens, in Kings County. But you come up to Bronx Countyand tell people you’re Allah and I’ll have your black ass in jail.” The surround-ing crowd, which included a Wall Street broker, Hollywood director and high-ranking members of the police and fire departments roared with laughter.73Perhaps unknown to Roberts, Allah had already established a presence in theBronx. The borough had a Five Percenter stronghold at the Hewitt Place homeof Al-Jamal(not to be confused with First Born Al-Jamel), who had been106 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 106taught by First Born Bisme. “Gods from all over Pelan would come up to thecrib,” says U-Allah (the former Shameik), part of the cipher’s “hardcore”along with Born Allah, Shara, El-Bar-Sun, Little Bish-me, Obey, Kindu andWarkim. “We would see if they were strong or weak. If you were weak youwouldn’t come back, because we wasn’t playing, you might get seriously hurt,and a lot did.”74 In 1967 Born Allah, who along with Shara organized the firstparliament in the Bronx, taught the Supreme Wisdom in a school on ProspectAvenue. At the end of the year, perhaps in reaction to the Burt Roberts com-ment, Allah designated Born Allah and U-Allah as Captain and Lieutenant ofFive Percenters in the Bronx.75 The pair soon obtained work with a commu-nity-based organization called Bronco S.I.A. and impressed the director somuch that she let them use her storefront for weekly rallies. They later starteda high school diploma class.The apparent saltation of Allah was a boon for Lindsay’s cause in Washing-ton. Accompanied by Gottehrer, the mayor appeared before Senate Appropri-ations Committee hearings in February to justify his summer programs’ $37 million budget and secure increased funding for the fiscal year. His reportto the committee asserted that through programs such as the Urban ActionTask Force, the city had established positive ties with organizations oncedeemed unreachable: “the Five Percenters, a group of some 500 to 700 Negroyouth who were supposed to be violently anti-white but proved to be quite dif-ferent, is an excellent case in point.”76 Such groups were often considered“ready to riot” but turned out to be “far more constructive and cooperative inface-to-face confrontations and relationships.”77It would never prove more true than on April 4, 1968. Lindsay and his wifewere at the opening of a Broadway play when his media consultant called thetheater with news that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated. AnNYPD detective found the mayor and informed him during the start of theplay’s second act. Lindsay immediately left the theater, called Barry Gottehrerand Police Commissioner Leary and learned of growing mobs in Harlem andBedford-Stuyvessant. The mayor, convinced that “somebody white just has toface that emotion and say that we’re sorry,” decided against all advice to walkthrough the streets of Harlem. Gottehrer was the first of Lindsay’s men to head uptown. Loudspeakersfrom Harlem record stores, usually blaring soul or Spanish music, now playedKing speeches. As he moved out of one store’s range into another, the speechesmangled together as though a Martin Luther King stood on every corner,preaching from a stepladder. “King’s presence was so palpable,” Gottehrerremembers, “you half expected to see him moving through the crowd thatspilled into the streets.” Gottehrer headed for the Glamour Inn, found AllahALLAH AND THE MAYOR 107ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 107and told him that the mayor was coming. Allah left to round up his Five Per-centers and give them instructions: prevent fights, protect the stores andspread word that Martin Luther King stood for peace and wouldn’t want anyone honoring his memory through violence and destruction.The mayor was driven to Frank’s Restaurant on 125th and met with JoeOverton, head of the Harlem retail clerks’ union, who offered his men as body-guards. Also present was at least one representative sent by Bumpy Johnson.78Someone entered the Glamour Inn to tell Gottehrer that Lindsay was walkingdown 125th. Gottehrer ran outside and entered the sidewalk-to-sidewalk mob,hoping to wade his way through the people to Lindsay. The six-foot-four mayorwas easy to spot, towering over most men in the crowd. “Jesus,” feared themayor’s man, “this is just the night for someone to take a shot at him, too.”Lindsay put his hand on the shoulders of men he passed, offering silent, solemnnods in recognition. Occasionally the mayor heard sounds of breaking glass.Lindsay’s group converged with Allah’s assembled Five Percenters, whoangered Joe Overton’s thugs by acting as an informal security team. Overton,as Barry Gottehrer remembers, “was more interested in exploiting the mayorthan in helping us.”79 Lindsay and Allah turned onto Seventh Avenue togetherand walked toward the Glamour Inn. One of the union bodyguards beganpushing Five Percenters out of his way, causing some Five Percenters to pushback. When Allah himself was pushed, the scene erupted. A confused Lindsaywas almost knocked down in the mêlée before getting whisked away in PercySutton’s limousine. Lindsay remarked that he felt as though one group was try-ing to kill him while the other was trying to save him, but he didn’t know whichwas which.80Lindsay’s later published account would refrain from naming names, brushover the turmoil, and deny any discord within his entourage:Finally, I looked up and saw several very large black men on either side of me,all of whom I knew and had worked with. We edged to a clearing in the crowd,when another group of men moved close—also men I knew. The two groupsbegan arguing about which was the better route for me to take. (It was laterreported that I had been wedged in between hostile groups and had been drivenoff the street. In fact, the opposite was true. I was in the best of hands.)81The march through Harlem was a defining moment in the careers of both theMayor and the Father. While riots destroyed urban centers across the country,New York suffered minimal damage. Lindsay was praised in the Village Voiceas “the only white Mayor in America ... to have the grudging trust of the blackunderclass.” Life ran a cover story on “the Lindsay Style,” with photographs ofthe mayor cleaning up a city street and “rapping” with Charles Kenyatta.108 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 108Chicago lay in ruins. At least eleven people were dead, three hundredarrested for looting and thousands left homeless. Fires ravaged West MadisonStreet for twenty-eight blocks and power and phone lines were dead across thecity.82 A ragged and emotionally drained Mayor Daley surveyed the damagefrom a helicopter. The next day he delivered an incoherent tirade about vio-lence in public schools, “beatings of girls, the slashing of teachers and the gen-eral turmoil and the payoffs and the extortions. We have to face up to thissituation with discipline. Principals tell us what’s happening and they are toldto forget it.”83 Daley later blamed the police for their restraint in dealing withrioters and delivered orders that he had assumed were already policy: “shoot tomaim or cripple arsonists and looters—arsonists to kill and looters to maimand detain.”84 In the aftermath of the riots, members of the Vice Lords set upemergency relief services and distributed three thousand fliers asking the com-munity to “be cool and to honor our dead brother with the non-violence thathe preached.” A Washington Post editorial pinned Chicago’s destruction onMayor Daley’s failure to embrace groups like the Blackstone Rangers, who hadkept the South Side’s Woodlawn section safe while the West Side burned: “theDaley system is inappropriate to the ghetto. Unlike Mayor John V. Lindsay ofNew York, Daley has refused to deal with militant neighborhood Negro lead-ers as autonomous peers ... Chicago has neither independent political leaders(as in Los Angeles) nor communication links between the Mayor and the mil-itants (as in New York).”85In New York, Allah received public commendation for his efforts and hisfollowers were praised as peacekeepers, despite one television report that iden-tified looters as Five Percenters.86 “The Five Percenters,” says Sid Davidoff,were “as important as anyone” involved with preventing riots that night.87 Aphoto of Allah and Lindsay hung in the streetacademy’s window, signed by themayor: “to Allah, thanks a lot.” Allah signed a duplicate print that would laterhang in Gottehrer’s City Hall office: “to the greatest mayor that ever been inNew York City.” At a memorial ceremony for King in Central Park, MayorLindsay, Percy Sutton, and Charles Kenyatta were among those looking on asAllah was embraced by Governor Nelson Rockefeller.88Not everyone was impressed. Militants passed around mimeographs claim-ing that Allah had not only sold out to white interests, but was also guilty of“cutting black women.”89 A group called the “Kufere Muslims” took strongoffense at the photo of Allah and Lindsay. One Kufere Muslim named Azreamstormed into the school, tore down the picture and ripped it to shreds while hisfriends assaulted the young Five Percenters present. Uhura led a mission to“return the favor in spades.”90 At the other end, Lindsay’s outreach to the blackghetto and leaders like Allah distanced him from white ethnic groups and theALLAH AND THE MAYOR 109ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 109NYPD. Lindsay made the cover of Time in November, but the article insidementioned two thousand policemen picketing in front of City Hall with signsdeclaring, “Dump Lindsay” and “We want Daley.”91The partnership reached an odd apex when Allah handed over the SupremeWisdom Lessons to City Hall, as part of his “Book of Life” to be printed at thecity’s expense. The Book of Life also contained a manual to assist interpreta-tion, as well as the first and last suras of the Qur’an.92 For Allah the book was apractical move, with only the lessons’ integrity in mind; Five Percenters teach-ing strictly by word of mouth had spawned differing versions of the text. ToMuslims, however, and perhaps a few Five Percenters, he had done theunthinkable: Master Fard’s key to destroying the devil was now in the hands ofthe mightiest devil in New York.But what was a devil? Allah’s understanding of the term had changed since1964. When one of his challengers asked him the 38th degree in the Lost-Found Muslim Lesson No.2, “Then why did God make devil?” the questionmight have been a mockery of his claim to be Allah—or a test of his commandover the 120, in the same manner that Allah and Abu Shahid practiced theirlessons in the Hole. Allah was expected to recite the 38th degree’s entireanswer, perfectly word for word:To show forth His power – that He is All-Wise and Righteous. That He couldmake a devil, which is weak and wicked, and give the devil power to rule theearth for six thousand years and, then, destroy the devil in one day withoutfalling victim to the devil’s civilization. Otherwise to show and prove that Allahis the God – always has been and always will be. Instead of rattling off the memorized response, however, Allah replied simply:“I didn’t make no devil, son.” The man asked two more times and received thesame answer.One cloudy morning on 125th and Seventh, Allah was drinking his coffeeand took Universal Shaamgaudd through the 8th, 13th, 35th, and 37th degreesin the Lost-Found Muslim Lesson No.2. The 8th and 13th degrees asked whatbrought rain, hail, snow and earthquakes. The 35th degree addressed the endof the devil’s civilization, while the 37th asked what the devil taught the Eighty-Five Percent about God. As they walked, Shaamgaudd noticed that it was rain-ing on one side of the street and snowing on the other.“All right, son,” said Allah, well aware that the Sun had something on hismind. “Tell me about it.”“You teach me all these things,” answered Shaamgaudd, “you show me all ofthese miracles, yet when I go back and tell people these things they tell me I’mlying or that I’m going crazy, I tell them that I’m your son and that the Son is110 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 110just like the Father, and they be sayin’ that if you God then do this or do that,show me your powers if you are like your father! And those things make mewonder, when are you going to give me the power to have and do as I want to?”“If I give you that power right now,” replied Allah, “what would be the firstthing you would do?” Shaamgaudd paused to consider his answer.“I would take the devils off the planet Earth.”“Son,” said Allah, “you would have just killed a lot of people that you loveand that I love as well, not only your friends and relatives but a lot of yourbrothers. You see, anyone who does devilishment is a devil. Anyone who lies,steals or cheats and tries to master other people is a devil. Those who break theTen Commandments are devils. You see, son, I’m Allah and I’m the God of allthe people. Do you think that I do not hear the prayers of people who are notblack? If a person has lived a good life and tried to help other people and haskept the faith of their religion as it was handed down to them from my mes-senger, prophet or apostles and does not do devilishment, then that person isnot a devil; even if they do not know that my proper name is Allah.”It may be hard to take Shaamgaudd’s inflated apologues seriously, and theidea of Allah “hearing prayers” betrays the heart of his doctrine, but the para-ble illustrates Allah’s very real evolution. Like Malcolm X in Mecca, Allah (inhis own Mecca, Harlem) had outgrown the Nation of Islam’s racial antago-nism. Willieen Jowers, who remembers Allah preaching hatred of whites earlyin the movement, says that he had “seen where he was wrong.”93 Allah wouldsay that he felt as though Muslims and the “whole world” opposed him becausehe was neither “anti-white, nor pro-black. They really against me ’cus every-body is against the whites. Why let me tell you something. Who is man if heain’t man? Tell me.”94Both Gottehrer and Davidoff insist that Allah was friendly towards whites.Davidoff sees parallels between his own Jewish heritage and Allah’s belief thatAfrican-Americans were “Chosen People.” He refuses to condemn Allah asteaching black supremacy: the message was only “to instill spirit and self-confidence in his followers, to take some pretty bad kids and give them self-respect.”95 Like Davidoff’s Judaism, Allah celebrated the unique history andstruggle of a specific people.Even Allah’s concept of what a Five Percenter was, or who could be one, hadchanged over the years. During one of his lectures at the street academy, Allahtold the youths that he trusted Gottehrer and Davidoff and considered themboth to be Five Percenters. “Since I didn’t eat pork anyway,” jokes Davidoff, “itdidn’t make much difference.” But in reality, the City Hall general saw deepermeaning in the gesture: “it was a way of saying ‘we’re partners,’ and ensuringthat partnership.”96ALLAH AND THE MAYOR 111ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 111John “Azreal” Kennedy, Allah’s white student at Matteawan, was released inSeptember 1968 and went home to Guttenberg, New Jersey. He made his firsttrip to Harlem that following February, during one of the worst snowstorms inNew York history: the infamous “Blizzard of 1969” that caused the entire cityto shut down. Also known as the “Lindsay Storm,” City Hall’s ineffectiveresponse to the storm would almost cost the mayor his reelection. Azreal waspractically skating up the frozen Seventh Avenue when he found the streetacademy. Spotting him from the window, Allah ran outside, picked up Azrealand swung him around. “If any of you have a problem with Azreal,” he told theFive Percenters, “you have a problem with me.” A probably joking Allah thenblamed Azreal for the blizzard.“Anybody can be a Five Percenter,” said Allah, “white, I don’t care who theyare, could be a Five Percenter, ’cus a Five Percenter is one that is civilized.”97Gottehrer was sitting with Allah in a bar one night when Allah suggested that he quit his job at the mayor’s office and work for him. Gottehrer said that he didn’t know what kind of work he could offer; Allah told him that if he moved to Harlem, he could be Moses. Besides,according to Gloria Steinem, Allah believed that he had a better chance than Lindsay of becoming president.98“It’s all very well for you to be Allah,” Gottehrer replied, “but I know I’m notMoses.”“But Barry, if you’re not Moses—who is?”If the mayor’s aide had been more learned in Nation of Islam canon, hewould have seen what Allah was getting at: Moses (Musa) was the “half-original” prophet that God had sent to Europe, to civilize the savage white menand bring them out of their caves.Allah’s movement remained focused on pride and empowerment. On thestreets with Harlem’s youth every day, he could directly engage the culture ofblack nationalism. Allah embraced Afrocentrism and sometimes woredashikis; his Suns, often with African names such as Yamuse and Uhoso,adopted a trademark Five Percenter “crown,” a knit kufi with one tassel. Thebrightly colored headwraps worn by many Five Percenter “Queens” owe less toIslamic dictates of hijab than to the late-1960s boom of interest in African his-tory and culture. It came as a stark contrast to Elijah Muhammad, who in June1968 threatened women that wore “traditional African tribal styles and gar-ments with gay colors” with explusion from their mosques. From his isolatedmansion Elijah declared that he would not “adopt any of those jungle styles ofour people,” dismissed African culture as “uncivilized” and “degrading” andcondemned the afro as “bushy hair the style of savages.”99 Elijah’s lessons from1934 taught that Africans had “strayed away from civilization and are living a112 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 112jungle life.” Muslims were even taught to distance themselves from the shame-ful word “Africa,” which had been used by the devil to divide Original people.Elijah in his jewel-encrusted fez and bowtie was the product of another time,old enough to be grandfather to the average 1960s black nationalist. Like agrandfather, some of what he said was outdated, even embarrassing to youngermen who nonetheless owed him their existence.Allah had his own contradictions. As Gottehrer had realized at their firstmeeting, what the man said did not always match what was said about him. Ear-lier in the year, state law had been passed that prohibited police officers fromusing guns unless their lives or the lives of others were threatened.100 During aninterview with religious ministers at Otisville Training School for Boys, Allahbemoaned the law, as well as New York’s rejection of capital punishment, assigns of the United States “going backwards; you’re gonna see.”101 The Allahfrom this interview does not match the Allah of Gloria Steinem and LloydWeaver’s New York article, speaking openly of self-defense against officers:Bakar Kasim and two sisters got busted over in Brooklyn where they wereteaching. Some cops come messing with them, and one of the sisters bit him onthe hand. He shouldn’t have had his hand on her, and the man should havetook his head! Now, you know we believe in peace, but I didn’t say if we areattacked don’t fight! You say you are God, and a sister is in jail for biting apoliceman on the hand. Malcolm said he’d rather have the women than thenigg*rs.102In both the Otisville interview and New York article, Allah stressed respect forthe American flag and government. The Otisville interview’s most shockingmoments occurred when Allah continually harped on the topic of foreign policy:I am not against the United States ... I say go to war, if the country calls them ...if the country treats them what? Right! I say go! Now, because I don’t think Irather for them to go up under anyone else command, such as other countries.Now, you know for a fact that other countries are strong ... this country isfalling because we see it even through the hippies ... the what? The children noware leaving what? Home! They don’t want to fight no more, do they? Do they?If they don’t fight, how you going to win? How? Tell me, if everybody keepprotesting against war, how you gonna win? The earth gotta be builded on andit’s your duty to teach the uncivilized people. I don’t care if they are black orwhite. That’s your duty. That’s the law of nature. Now, Russia is building upagainst this country, right? They got people coming here protesting no war,right? Who you think going to win after a while, if the children are not keptstrong. Unite for one common cause, huh? You show me! The children are notfighting children no more. They don’t care no what? More.103ALLAH AND THE MAYOR 113ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 113“I’m not against the United States of America in Vietnam,” Allah said later inthe recording. “They should go there and kill all them people that don’t wantto build and become civilized.”104 He also criticized Muhammad Ali, who hadrefused to fight in Vietnam on religious and moral grounds, for “not fightingfor his own country he came from.” “Where did his teaching come from?”asked Allah. “Did it come from me?” Allah then asserted that Ali’s views camefrom the white community.“The wealth of any country is the children,” said Allah. “If you don’t keepthe young people strong, how you gonna win? Bombs won’t do it. The bombshaven’t made Vietnam submit ... you’ve got to have the manpower! Feed themthe right food. Don’t teach religion.” In the most bizarre application ever madeof the Supreme Wisdom, Allah gave the 120 an ultra-right reading: belief in themystery god keeps American soldiers soft and thus inefficient killing machines.“If you continue to teach that child about religion,” he exclaimed, “the firstthing that boy gonna be hard on is Jesus comin’. He ain’t gonna fight!” Allah’sobservation actually echoed statements of Elijah Muhammad: “the white manhates to go to war, even to fight for his own country. They don’t want to fightanother week.”105 Allah knew the mentality of a soldier:You got to kill all religion or else you’re gonna lose all fighting men. And theywill not have the heart to kill. And you’ve got to have the heart to kill. You’ve gotto! Everyone has to have the heart to what? To kill ... Now I don’t tell the chil-dren, “don’t go to war.” ’Cus I’d go back with ‘em. I enjoyed it [unintelligable]when I was over there. I enjoyed it. ’Cus it’s somethin’ to kill and don’t worryabout it ... Now when I was in the army, I knew I was fighting for the countryand also myself. And I was the one to come home when many didn’t.106“You can’t say that Russia’s not strong,” said Allah, “ ’cus Russia’s strong.Because the children here have used drugs, they’re going back to sleep.” Hethen warned the white ministers, “and now they’re getting to your people ...and sooner or later you’re going to see the downfall.” Allah was candid aboutthe “trials and tribulations” of his own drug use: “I have messed with cocaine,I’ve messed with everything but LSD. I’m not gonna take none of them trips.Now, did I gain from using cocaine? Yes. I know what it do for me.”Discussion went everywhere from Allah’s experience in Matteawan to hisviews on relationships. He said that he had no problem with youths attendingchurch if they were not forced: “Go. Go! You’ll benefit from it.” MentioningBarry Gottehrer’s upcoming Christmas party, he added, “Muslims don’t believein Christmas. I would like to have a Christmas party for the Five Percenters.”Asked whether he was nonviolent, Allah stated that fighting when it was necessary for survival could not be called violence. “I’m civilized,” he said.114 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 114“You want the boys,” asked one of his interviewers, “to follow these ...”“I want them to obey your orders,” Allah replied.“Personal, cooperative approach?”“You try to force them under religion, you can’t win.” As the interviewwrapped up and Allah was thanked for his time, he took the final seconds todrive home his main point: “All right, gentlemen. I’m not against nobody.” Herepeated that he wasonly trying to make young people strong and keep thecountry safe: “ ’Cus this is a new country, you know that this is a new what?Country!”107It was one thing for Allah to “sell out” to City Hall; but his hidebound viewsnow overstepped the liberal Lindsay, who had earned resentment from both warsupporters and the police. Allah’s conservatism may be understood with a senseof what he had to work against. He was the leader of a movement that rumorlinked to Black Muslims, Blood Brothers, street gangs and Chinese Commu-nists, accused of plots that ranged from muggings to blowing up the Statue ofLiberty. Five Percenters went in and out of reform schools and juvenile centers;Allah himself had arrived fresh out of a State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.And here he was at a youth prison, advocating for his Suns, attempting to getthem out of mandatory church attendance or at least spare them from beatingsfor getting caught with the lessons. With teenaged Five Percenters locked up atOtisville, Allah might have said what he could to get guards off their backs.Allah was also permitted to visit Five Percenters at New York’s Juvenile Center, addressing a group of boys on a ballfield and receiving invitations fromthe Center to return. Director Wallace Nottage allowed Five Percenters to holdparliaments on Sundays while other youths attended church, and respectedtheir dietary requirements: “if the boys in this group do not want to eat pork,we don’t force it on them or make them get along on bread and milk for ameal.” A fourteen-year-old Five Percenter known as Salik remarked that theJuvenile Center was “all right now that they give us some kind of considerationso we can keep our rules.” Salik also said that he was serving his sentence “with-out complaint.”108 Allah taught Five Percenters in trouble to turn themselvesin and accept the consequences for their actions. Universal Shaamgauddclaims that Five Percenters would waltz into court with their towels and tooth-brushes, announcing that they had come to surrender because they wanted tobe righteous; “I wish you could have seen the look on some of the judges’faces.”109 To foster a better rapport with the NYPD, Allah sent U-Allah,Shareik, Zumar and El-Bar-Sun to Fire Island to befriend a graduating classfrom the police academy.110On May 22, 1968 Allah attended a meeting of a youth parole agency after aparolee invited staff members to a parliament. Accompanied by Dumar andALLAH AND THE MAYOR 115ch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 115his girlfriend, a parolee named Omika, Allah gave the board a brief introduc-tion of himself and his teachings. He stated that Five Percenters were beingattacked by Elijah’s Muslims and black nationalists, who called them “Toms”for their work with the mayor’s office. While admitting that the majority ofFive Percenters had been in prisons or other institutions, Allah told the boardthat true Five Percenters gave up crime and drugs. He then offered his help tothe agency in working with “parolees who are declaring their allegiance to the5%ers and yet are violating the basic teachings of the group.” A memo on themeeting describes Allah as “a very bitter, angry man, who became impatientwith questions that members of the staff directed to him. He later expressed his amazement ... at the ‘narrow mindedness’ and ‘inability of so-called professional social workers to accept or even try to understand’ the reality of a philosophy that is foreign to middle-class idealists.”111According to the memo, Allah had also stated that he would soon be leavingthe movement. Without saying when or where he’d be going, he mentionedthat each Five Percenter would have to continue the teaching in his absence.116 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch6-8.qxd 2/24/2007 2:24 PM Page 1169Swarms of DevilsIf even a tenth of the threats against Allah were actually voiced, there wereplenty of people around with a motive.Barry GottehrerWhen he said he wasn’t anti-white, all the black revolutionaries turnedagainst him. When he said he was Allah, all the Muslims turned against him.When he told us not to use dope, all the hustlers turned against him. So nowhere he was on Seventh Avenue, at the time where there was nothing but hus-tlers, revolutionaries and Black Muslims, he was standing alone.Gykee Mathematics AllahThe new brown and yellow Mosque No.7 was completed in January 1969,built at 116th and Lenox on the ruins of the old. “We’ll top it with a dome,a crescent and a star in a few weeks,” said Minister Louis Farrakhan. CaptainJoseph X boasted of plans for a new Salaam restaurant on Lenox with carpetedfloors, chandeliers and Pakistani delicacies. Amidst all the optimism, themosque’s Lenox side neighbored a tenement still gutted from the fire of fiveyears ago.The factional warfare that nearly annihilated Harlem’s Black Muslims, SunniMuslims, and Five Percenters had seemed a faded memory until Gloria Steinemfeatured Allah in a 1968 article for her New York magazine. In “Special Report:The City on the Eve of Destruction,” Steinem and Lloyd Weaver blamed theNOI for the 1964 attempt on Allah’s life and claimed that he was “on the listafter Malcolm X.” Steinem was far from an expert on the Nation or its divisions,attributing the strife to Allah’s supposed claim that Elijah Muhammad shouldserve as his messenger. Regardless, the story weighed heavily with Allah.Like Malcolm before him, Allah’s experience with the Muslims preparedhim for their techniques. On one occasion, a Muslim peddling MuhammadSpeaks approached Allah and suddenly dropped his newspapers. As he bentover to pick them up, Allah went down too, their eyes locked until both menwere again standing upright. The Muslim walked away with his papers andAllah explained that it was an old FOI trick to bend over, ostensibly to pick up117ch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 117a dropped item, and then take down your mark by the cuffs of his pants. Thefoiled Muslim later became a Five Percenter and took the name Bohar.1Though he had thwarted one attempt, Allah knew that his days were num-bered; Harlem remained covered in battlelines and not all of the combatantswere known. With the same stoicism with which he treated Malcolm’s death,Allah told his Five Percenters that if he died, “I don’t want you standing overme crying; because if I could, I’d reach up and slap you.” In increasingly fre-quent allusions to his own death, he told youths that they’d have to carry onwithout him and “never let anyone stop this.” Likewise, Five Percenters wereaware of the danger and remained fiercely protective of their Father. WhenBorn Allah noticed a man who was arguing with Allah reach into his backpocket, he “set it on this cat.”2 Youths such as God Kalim were willing to givetheir lives for Allah. Kalim had joined the Five Percent in May 1966, whileAllah was in Matteawan; the two did not have a face-to-face encounter untilDecember 20, 1967, the day of Kalim’s release from New Hampton. “I wasfinally meeting Allah,” remembers Kalim, “who I had been told of and believedin for 18 months. I was ready to submit to him and make him my God.” Thefirst thing Allah said to him, however, was “Sun, all I can tell you is that you areGod.” A stunned Kalim found that the weight he had put on Allah was placedback on his own shoulders.3Later thrown out of his mother’s house and forced to live at the street acad-emy, Kalim told Allah that he’d “take care” of anyone that planned harm forhim. Allah only smiled. One night Allah and his friend Old Man Streets cameinto the school after a night at the Hole, where Allah had been shot five yearsearlier. While they spoke, Allah pointed at a half-asleep Kalim and asked, “howcan I die if he keeps on teaching?”4 To make Kalim feel better, Allah would cutback on explicit mentions of death, instead saying that he’d soon “go home”and replacing talk of “when I die,” with, “after this year.”It has beensaid that Allah was ready to go; being the father figure for hun-dreds of teenagers had taken its toll. “He couldn’t get no rest,” says Azreal, whor*members young Five Percenters climbing a fire escape just to watch Allahsleep.Allah continued teaching nonviolence, stating that a gun was the new crosssince “they tried to crucify me with a gun.” He had two crosses at the streetacademy, a Winchester 30.30 and 30.06. The 30.06 was kept in a locked cabi-net, the 30.30 in an open one. One night he put Kalim in charge of the 30.30and left for the neighboring Wellworth Bar, where Allah’s friendship withmanager “Tuttie” had secured weekend jobs for Five Percenters.When word hit the school that someone had trapped Allah in the Well-worth, Kalim loaded the 30.30 and ran over to find Allah staring down a 118 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 118gunman who hoped to shoot his friend, “West Indian.” Allah was standingbetween the two men, blocking the gunman’s shot. As Five Percenters formeda circle around the scene, Kalim prepared to take aim. Allah saw the kids andordered, “get out of the line of fire.” The Five Percenters retreated back to theschool. Allah later emerged unharmed but furious at his Five Percenters for theway that they panicked. He threw everyone out and confiscated their keys tothe building, but returned them before the night was over.In May, the 30.30 rifle was stolen from Allah’s cabinet. Rumors accused various Five Percenters. When a witness tried telling Allah who he had seenleaving the school with the rifle, Allah put his hands over his ears and shoutedthat he did not want to know.On June 7, Charles Kenyatta was shot in his car in the Bronx. “The BlackMuslims are out to get me,” he told paramedics on the scene. He was rushed toFordham Hospital and later transferred to Bellevue, where nurses constantlymoved him from one room to another to prevent further attempts on his life.State Assemblyman Charles Rangel accused New York’s narcotics syndicateof the attack, due to Kenyatta’s tireless anti-drug efforts. Kenyatta survivedand would later blame the Nation of Islam and/or corrupt officers in theNYPD who themselves benefited from the drug trade.Allah spent the night of June 11, 1969 at his mother’s apartment. The nextmorning he said he’d enjoyed the best rest of his life. Allah’s mother asked ifthere was any way he could “get out of it,” to which he replied: “when they areready, they will kill you.”Later he went out with Al Murphy and Barry Gottehrer, who was still shakenfrom the attack on Kenyatta. Though much of their conversation remainedlight, Gottehrer expressed serious concern for Allah. Allah in turn worriedabout the mayor’s aide, but didn’t seem to fear for himself. “Who can killGod?” he asked. Gottehrer couldn’t answer, as the basem*nt shooting had allbut proven Allah invincible.They eventually parted ways. Murphy went club-hopping, Gottehrer wenthome and Allah went to play craps on a corner. Across from the street acad-emy, protesters were squatting to prevent the construction of the State OfficeBuilding, hoping that the city would instead give them a Malcolm X/MartinLuther King School.At some point Allah headed over to the street academy and spoke at lengthto God Kalim, Um Allah, Radu, and Al-Raheem about women and relation-ships. He called two of them “fa*ggots” for letting their women tell them whatto do. He told one that he wasn’t a fa*ggot, but said to the last, whose girlfriendhad cheated on him, “I can’t call you a fa*ggot, but if you go back to that woman,you are a fa*ggot too!” He punched one of the “fa*ggots” in the chest.5 Other FiveSWARMS OF DEVILS 119ch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 119Percenters came in and out of the school, including the First Born’s Al-Jamel,who had taken part in the protest. Sometime around 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., June 13,Allah left his final message on the chalkboard: “Teach On!” and went outsideto hail a Yellow Cab. As Allah climbed in, according to Kalim, Prince ran to thetaxi and handed something to him.6 The Five Percenters that lived in theschool at that time—Kalim, Islam Ubeka, Ladu, and Raheem—went insideand called it a night.Sometime near 4:00 a.m., Allah headed over to Dora’s apartment (his habitafter winning at craps) at 21 West 112th Street, in Martin Luther King Towers.A short time later, Murphy called Gottehrer, sounding intoxicated.“Are you all right?” he asked.“Sure,” replied Gottehrer. Murphy asked if he had taken Allah home; Barryanswered that he had last seen Allah in the street, gambling. Murphy then toldthe mayor’s man that Allah was dead, that “somebody shot the sh*t out ofhim.”7 Allah had been ambushed from behind by three black men, shootinghim in the head, back, chest and legs. The assailants fled in a white Chrevrolet.Gottehrer arrived at Martin Luther King Towers to find that the body hadalready been taken. He examined the splattered blood in the elevator andAllah’s chalk outline in the lobby, and even spotted a shard of bone on thefloor. After Murphy arrived the two went to the fifth floor to see Dora and thechildren. Gottehrer later called two of his secretaries, both black women, totend to the family. Allah’s sons by Willieen Jowers, A-Allah and B-Allah, wereboth incarcerated at the time. His son “Little Allah” (by Guvasia) might havebeen less than a year old.Word spread among the Gods. Uhura called Abu Shahid at his hotel roomon 136th and Lenox. Born Allah called U-Allah in the Bronx, who rushed withShareik to Mecca. Al-Raheem went to the street academy and woke up the kidsthat lived there. They ran to the corner of 127th Street, where a friend of Allah’soffered to drive them to the scene. The Five Percenters jumped out of the car at116th and Lenox to run the rest of the way.Though Allah had just won at craps, police found no cash on him; his walletcontained only receipts indicating that he had been on the city’s payroll (“Ten-sion Reduction Fund”). At 9:45 p.m. the NYO sent a teletype marked “urgent”to J. Edgar Hoover, informing him that “the leader of the Five Percenters, aNegro youth group” and “recent aide to Mayor John Lindsay” had beengunned down. Reporters exaggerated the mutual respect between Kenyattaand Allah into a close alliance of NOI apostates, directing fingers to be pointedat Mosque No.7. “Kenyatta’s Pal Killed,” cried a Daily News headline, “CopsSee Muslim War.” The article quoted an unnamed police spokesman as statingthat the Black Muslims were sick of “splinter groups” and the Kenyatta/Smith120 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 120attacks were opening shots in an “all-out war.” Gottehrer believes that therumors were started by an individual “fairly high up” in the NYPD.8 During anemergency meeting at Gracie Mansion, a furious Lindsay erupted at Chief ofDetectives Frederick M. Lussen: “I don’t give a damn what kind of leads youhave, that kind of story does not get into the papers. You stop those rumors.”9Louis Farrakhan expressed outrage at “white insinuations,” claiming tohave a healthy relationship “with the Five Percenters and many other blackgroups who disagree with our views.” Meanwhile, some Five Percenters sus-pected Bohar, the former Muhammad Speaks salesman who joined Allah aftertrying to attack him. Bohar changed his name to Gohar and moved to New Jer-sey, where he later reverted to Islam. According to Gottehrer, both Muslimsand Five Percenters began arming themselves in preparation for a war thatcould go down “simply because enough people expected it.”10On Monday the mayor and Gottehrer went to the street academy andexpressed their condolences to the forty or so Five Percenters present. “Broth-ers,” said Lindsay, “I hope you know the sadness in my heart at Allah’s death.”In all likelihood, says Sid Davidoff, Lindsay would not have been able toexplain the Five Percenter philosophy if asked, but he did graspAllah’s “disci-pline and intention ... Lindsay understood that better than any of us.”11 Themayor told the group that Allah had made an important contribution in thelast few years, especially in education, and pointed out that six of the youthspresent would be attending college in the fall. The Five Percenters gave Lind-say their word that they would stay in school and refrain from any violent retal-iation for Allah’s murder. One youth stated that the only way to show their lovefor Allah was to “build—to get our own carpenters, doctors, lawyers, painters,electricians.” The city continued offering bus trips, free admission to theatersand “all sorts of things to appease and console us,” remembers Gykee, “notknowing how we were going to react, [but] nothing seemed to matter to manyof us at that point.”12 One week after the assassination, four Five Percenters—Wabu, U-Allah, Warkim and Shara—would be arrested for assault and sent toRikers.13 “This was a horrible time for us,” recalls U-Allah. “We was at ourmost dangerous mood. A couple of people got hurt just by looking at us.”14While the Washington Post Times-Herald misunderstood the group’s nameas meaning that “95 percent of the blacks did not care about improving thecommunity, but 5 percent did,” the media’s treatment was mostly positive. The New York Times even reported that the street academy had one whiteenrolee, twenty-year-old John Kennedy. Allah “gave me knowledge of self,”Azreal told the reporter. “Allah loved everybody.”The truth of Allah’s incredible journey was best expressed accidentally in anunderstated Washington Post Times-Herald headline: “Harlem Moderate isSWARMS OF DEVILS 121ch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 121Murdered.” Just four years earlier, the Harlem Moderate’s “youth group”received comparisons to the Hitler Youth. He had gone from a Korean Warhero to the Fruit of Islam to a feared “gang leader” to a “moderate” that keptHarlem safe by marching with its mayor. Once accused of conspiring to kill thePope, he later earned public commendation and hobnobbed at City HallChristmas parties. Gloria Steinem’s magazine and the New York Times put himon coffee tables throughout the city, he was featured on Canadian television,and a sociologist came from Sweden to interview him. It was even rumoredthat this former shoe shiner, shipping clerk, house painter, and master gam-bler had scheduled a formal meeting with Chinese delegates for later in themonth.Allah’s funeral was held on the Monday afternoon at Unity Funeral Chapelon Eighth Avenue and 126th Street, just a block from the Glamour Inn. Up tofour hundred people attended the serivce, including dozens of on-duty policeofficers. “Allah cannot die,” cried Five Percenters as they approached the wal-nut casket and beheld the Father in his double-breasted suit, a gold crown onhis head: “Allah is God, and God lives forever!” The funeral procession, whichincluded seven buses packed with young black men, rode through Harlem toFerncliff Cemetery. A minister delivered the eulogy and a prayer. A young girlperformed a song she had written, titled simply “Allah.” A latin God known as“Puerto Rican Kendu” was appointed to be Allah’s cremator, pulling the leverto destroy his physical remains. A reception was held at the home of Allah’sbrother, attended by Gottehrer and marked by heavy drinking. Meanwhile, alarge circle of youths gathered on a softball field, sang the Five Percenteranthem and vowed to teach until they died.15Some Gods never got over it, that night as I laid in my bed, I thought about the“Father” and the influence he had on my life. I thought of how one time Allahpunched me in my chest, because I wouldn’t take money that he was offering tome ... I thought of the first time that I met him. I laid in my bed thinking aboutthe Man, who we called “Father” and cried.U-Allah16With Malcolm, Martin and Allah wiped out in a five-year span, the Bureaulooked to what targets it had left. June 15, just two days after Allah’s assassina-tion, J. Edgar Hoover issued the following statement: “The Black PantherParty, without question, represents the greatest threat to internal security ofthe country.” Investigation of the Allah case was left to local authorities. A June24 article in the Daily News reported Chief of Detectives Lussen as stating thatthe Kenyatta and Allah shootings could have been linked to a ten-man extor-tion ring. The extortionists usually acted in groups of three and pretended to122 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 122be seeking “contributions to advance the civil rights cause.” While claiming tohave already identified the suspects, Lussen refused to give names. He didreveal that his investigation would look into the $43,000 bank account ofEdwin Ellis, former editor of black nationalist magazine The Liberator. OnJune 22, Ellis was arrested for the shooting of thirty-four-year-old Bronx resi-dent James Howard, which Lussen suggested was a case of mistaken identity;17was the intended target Allah’s right-hand man, Jimmy “Justice” Howard? TheNYPD speculated that the extortionists were active members of the Fair Playfor Cuba Committee and had hired Anthony Reed, Jr. to kill both Allah andKenyatta, either for their work with Mayor Lindsay or the possibility that theywere “cutting into territory” by extorting local businesses themselves. Reed inturn was killed only six days after Allah; perhaps, as police guessed, “because heknew too much.”Gottehrer calls Lussen’s extortion-ring story a “blatant example of manag-ing the news,” meant only to cool off the tension that Lussen had causedbetween Five Percenters and the NOI.18 It did not seem that the NYPD evertreated Allah’s murder seriously; the Fair Play for Cuba Committee had dis-banded in 1963. The police weren’t even sure of Allah’s real identity: his sisterBernice had to publicly refute NYPD insistence that their family name wasJowars.19The final pages of Allah’s FBI file mention a police inquiry at the ApolloTheater. The largely censored summary offers little more than a cryptic pas-sage: “three negro males who told him he had not done enough for the blackcommunity and if he did not cooperate with them he might not leave thebuilding alive.” It appeared that a limited amount of NYPD questioning fol-lowed, in which someone with a censored name was identified as having oncebelonged to the Revolutionary Action Movement and Black Panthers.Another censored party requested that the above information be kept insidethe Bureau, as “investigation into this matter is still pending and much of theinformation is to date unsubstantiated.” The FBI file on Clarence 13X Smith,opened while he was at Bellevue Hospital, was closed on June 25, 1969. InAugust the NYPD arrested twenty-nine-year-old Aubrey Cline, an unem-ployed African-American with a “long police record” of arrests for assaults andnarcotics, and charged him with shooting Allah. Cline awaited trial in theTombs, where he was confronted by Five Percenters and denied any involve-ment in the murder. “Police are expected to arrest other suspects momentar-ily,” reported the Amsterdam News.20 But they never did, and on March 27,1973, charges against Cline were finally dismissed.Allah had stopped identifying as a Muslim years before his death, and whathe once practiced as “Islam” had very little to do with the Muhammad of SWARMS OF DEVILS 123ch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 123seventh-century Arabia; but parallels do run between the Prophet and theFather, highlighted first by the Five Percenters’ renaming of Harlem as Meccaand Brooklyn as Medina.Both Muhammad and Allah were well-known as men of character beforeembarking on their prophetic careers. In the beginning, they intended only topurify existing traditions: Muhammad stressed that he was simply a continua-tion in the line of Abraham, Moses and Jesus, while Allah remained a faithfulbelieverin Elijah Muhammad. However, when differences became irreconcil-able, both men broke away and forged ahead on new paths.Muhammad and Allah both started as renegades, persecuted by the estab-lishment, but ended their careers as political leaders.Considering the companions of Muhammad, one can see their counter-parts in the early Five Percenters. Muhammad’s first male follower was hisnephew Ali, who through years of righteous struggle evolved from a feebleyouth into the Lion of Islam, the Prophet’s right-hand lieutenant. Reveredlikewise for his steadfast devotion and bravery on the battlefield, the Ali of1960s Harlem was Karriem, the Black Messiah. The Sahabas’ Umar bin Khat-tab might have been the First Born’s Uhura. Both Muhammad and Allah hadsoldiers and willing martyrs, but placed a greater value on education. Muham-mad taught that the ink of scholars outweighed the blood of martyrs and thata Muslim should seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave. Allah, while top-ping a list of New York’s most feared subversives, asked the mayor to give hima school.As with Muslims following the death of the Prophet Muhammad, Allah’smurder left his Five Percenters faced with the difficult issue of succession. InIslam, the crisis of who could lead in Muhammad’s absence resulted in theSunni-Shi’a schism that continues to bring division, persecution and occa-sional violence throughout the Muslim world. Barry Gottehrer writes that inthe summer of 1969, “all kinds of people were trying to take over the Five Per-centers.”21 He asked Abu Shahid who would now lead the community. “Who-ever thinks he can handle it,” Shahid replied.22 Some Five Percenters believedthat Allah had groomed Knowledge Allah to succeed him.23 Others looked toA-Allah and B-Allah, Allah’s sons by Willieen Jowers, but she warned her boysthat they would inevitably be killed too.24 Both refused leadership roles.Black Messiah was in prison upstate and read in the newspaper that Allahwas murdered. His fellow inmates kept telling him, “when you go home, youhave to take over the nation.” After his release he heard more of the same inHarlem, with the lost and confused begging him to lead the Five Percent.“They were wrong for putting that weight on him,” said Allah Supreme God,“the Father told us to share that weight.” Black Messiah sank into a deep124 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 124depression and used drugs to escape the pressure. According to Allah SupremeGod, he “never really bounced back.”25For many the logical choice to lead was Justice, but he “made only a dutifulgesture toward carrying on for his friend”26 and fell into increased drug use.27Gottehrer observed that Justice lacked not only Allah’s charisma, but also hisheart and nerve. This became apparent one night as a co*ked-out Justice wasriding around town with Gottehrer and Murphy. Justice, suddenly convincedthat the two had killed Allah and were going to take him next, tried jumpingout of the car as it turned the corner. Gottehrer and Murphy then jokinglythreatened to toss Justice in the river, causing him to tremble uncontrollably.Justice lived at the street academy and then briefly with a woman beforedrifting away from the Five Percenters for some time. During his stint at theschool he managed to solve the question of leadership by declaring that theFive Percenters should have no leader, so that “no one could kill a leaderagain.”“That’s bullsh*t,” Abu Shahid told me. “The Father was the black seed, I’mthe brown seed, it’s mine by nature. No one can take that away from me untilI’m gone, then it’s the next one.”28Abu Shahid was addicted to heroin and eventually caught an arrest inBrooklyn for armed robbery and attempted homicide. Despite acquiring alawyer through Livingston Wingate, he was sentenced to four years at AuburnPrison.29 Ebeka, once considered by the FBI to be third-in-command behindAllah and Justice, had returned to the Nation of Islam—allegedly by Allah’sorder—and later went to prison.30Barry Gottehrer estimated that in 1969 there might have been four hundredFive Percenters in Harlem and one hundred and fifty in Brooklyn, but theyquickly dissipated. Allah’s street academy was all but empty as membersmoved on or found themselves in jail. Uhoso had started trouble at a SteakHouse on Dekalb Avenue and got himself stabbed; he lived but was sentupstate for three years. Jamar Allah, who learned of the assassination whilewatching the six o’clock news in Rikers, states that over half of Allah’s follow-ers there abandoned the Five Percent. Prince received a sentence of 5 to 20 for shooting and killing Dahu, the older brother of Black Messiah and studentof the Harlem Six’s Walik, after Dahu had robbed his apartment. Azrealreturned home to Guttenberg, New Jersey and went roughly two years withoutleaving his mother’s house. Bisme, an especially close friend of Black Messiahand once regarded as skilled with the lessons, took hard to the bottle. SomeFive Percenters that came up through the street academy or Harlem Prep leftNew York for college. Dumar went to the University of Massachusetts; UmAllah, whose journey to Allah Wa‘de Allah began with the Blood Brothers inSWARMS OF DEVILS 125ch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 1251964, flew to California to attend the Polytechnical Institute. A handful ofyouths continued to use the street academy as a clubhouse, trading storiesabout Allah until going their separate ways.31 When asked how many Five Per-centers there might be in the future, Justice considered that it might comedown to nine or seven, maybe five, perhaps three or only one.32Meanwhile, criticisms that John Lindsay had spent city funds “buying offmilitants” put him at odds with his party. Opposing the mayor’s reelection bidin the 1969 Republican primary were Long Island state senator John Marchiand Brooklyn assemblyman Vito Battista, who named the election’s key issuesas “anarchy in the schools, terror in the streets, and runaway welfare.” Accusedof abandoning the city’s white ethnic groups to reach out to blacks and his-panics, Lindsay hustled for votes in Irish, Italian and Jewish neighborhoods.The primary was scheduled for June 17, following a week in which the NewYork Times reported Allah’s assassination, rumors of a Black Muslim war andLindsay’s visit to the Five Percenters’ Street Academy. Marchi took the nomi-nation with 113,000 votes to the mayor’s 107,000. President Nixon gaveMarchi his endorsem*nt: “The American people in our cities, in our smalltowns and in this country are fed up to here with violence and lawlessness, andthey want candidates who will take a strong stand against it.” Lindsay wouldhave to run against the party that put him in office.The Democratic nominee, Controller Mario Procaccino, was described byjournalist Nicholas Pileggi as “ethnic in the extreme,” “unabashedly patriotic,”and “unsophisticated.” Jimmy Breslin wrote of Procaccino as “short, wad-dling, crying, sweating Mario, his mustache from Arthur Avenue, his suit fromthe garment center, his language from all the years of all the neighborhoods ofNew York.”“The forces of reaction and fear have captured both major parties,” saidLindsay after the primaries. “These parties have been captured by the veryforces of hatred, fear and negativism.” He formed his own party, the Indepen-dent Party of New York City, designed to last only through the November elec-tion. The incumbent mayor was now a third-party dark-horse, with few givinghim even a remote chance at reelection. “If John Lindsay wins against MarioProcaccino,” wrote a New York Times reporter, “it will be like Montclair StateTeachers College beating Notre Dame.”The work that characterized Lindsay’s relationship with Allah was exploitedby both his campaign and its opponents. Lindsay ads showed off his record ofkeeping New York calm while other cities burned in race-riots—a legacy thathe largelyowed to Allah.During a debate at the studios of WABC-TV, Procaccino charged that themayor used city programs to employ “hardened criminals and troublemakers,”126 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 126claiming evidence that would indict a prominent Lindsay aide: Barry Gottehrer. “Is it proper for John Lindsay to buy off hardened criminals?” askedProcaccino. “As Mayor, I’ll stop this practice. I will deal only with the respon-sible persons in the troubled neighborhoods.” Lindsay compared the attack toMcCarthy’s Communist witch-hunts of the 1950s. “You know,” Procaccinotold the mayor, “you boast of your relationship with the black community.Well, I know the black people better than you ever will ... I understand theirhopes, their dreams, their aspirations, because I know what they are.”“I don’t boast of anything,” countered Lindsay, “because I know how muchhas to be done in this great city ... that night that Martin Luther King was killed,which you referred to, Mr. Procaccino, I could have used you at two o’clock inthe morning on 125th Street in Harlem.” After the debate aired on television,Lindsay issued a statement demanding a “full list of names and facts” by 6:00 p.m. Lindsay’s deadline came and went, after which his spokesman citedProcaccino’s refusal as proof of “the irresponsibility of the charges.”Procaccino’s evidence turned out to be the Malcolm X Afro-American Cul-tural Center in Queens, described as an outgrowth of the Urban Action TaskForce and one of fourteen “satellite” storefronts founded in the summer of1967.33 The Malcolm X center, with walls covered by murals of African tribes-men and Black Panther posters, was responsible for free lunch programs,clothing programs, classes on black history, drug education, recreation pro-grams and a new public library named for Langston Hughes. An internalNYPD memo described the center as working to turn “hard core youths of thearea” into “useful citizens” and claimed that funding for salaries and rent wasoverseen by Gottehrer and Davidoff.One of the youths employed by the center, Fred Fernandez, was a formerRAM member who had been arrested in the 1967 raid and charged with plot-ting the assassinations of moderate black leaders Roy Wilkins and WhitneyYoung. The center’s director spoke of Fernandez as one of over one hundredleaders “we finally were able to reach” in 1967.Gottehrer appeared before a grand jury in Queens and denied that Lindsaywas throwing around city money to keep the streets calm: “if you buy off kidsfor peace, someone might buy them off at a higher price for war.” The caseagainst him fell apart. Assistant District Attorney James Robertson, whothought he could prove that Gottehrer had paid young hoodlums with his ownmoney, did not know the difference between the Youth Board and UrbanLeague or how programs were funded. Gottehrer did not even know why hewas asked to testify. After the hearing, Robertson praised him to reporters.Between the mayor and the Jewish vote stood Rabbi Meir Kahane, whowrote anti-Lindsay op-eds for the Jewish Press and heckled him at publicSWARMS OF DEVILS 127ch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 127appearances. Deputy Mayor Richard Aurelio described Kahane as “showingevery sign of being unstable and unbalanced and hostile beyond reason.” Therabbi founded a Zionist answer to the Black Panthers, the Jewish DefenseLeague, which used as its logo a Black Power-esque fist inside a Star of Davidand chanted slogans such as “Every Jew a .22.” Lindsay’s team invited ShalomKlass, publisher of the Jewish Press, to Gracie Mansion. Klass expressed hisreservations about endorsing Lindsay, as many of his readers feared that themayor was anti-Semitic. Lindsay stormed out of the room. Before the meet-ing’s conclusion, however, Klass had agreed to fire Kahane—in exchange foran old Brooklyn train station to use as his newspaper’s headquarters, leasedfrom the city for a dollar a year.One month before the election, Lindsay was getting doused with cham-pagne by New York Mets pitcher Tom Seaver, catcher Jerry Grote and out-fielder Rod Gaspar in the team’s Shea Stadium clubhouse. After seven seasonsfinishing last or second to last, the “Miracle Mets” had won the World Series infive games. Photos of Lindsay celebrating with the team helped humanize theopera-attending, tux-wearing WASP that Procaccino had derided as a “limou-sine liberal.” The mayor hoped for the team’s underdog charm to rub off on histhird-party campaign. At a dinner he introduced himself as John “Met” Lind-say and declared, “now New York needs just one more miracle.”And the miracle came through, with Lindsay receiving 1,012,633 votes inNovember to Procaccino’s 831,772 and Marchi’s 532,411. The mayor took 85percent of the total black vote and 65 percent of the Hispanic, a strong 45 per-cent of the Jewish vote and even 25 percent of Catholic voters while runningagainst two Catholic opponents.Personal attacks, empty political friendships and the death of Allah had leftBarry Gottehrer jaded. He recalled:A new term meant a new kind of administration and new kinds of problems. Itried to imagine what Allah would have thought. It didn’t seem too incredibleto me that maybe some of the people I worked with every day were members ofthat wicked 10 percent he used to talk about, and the growing list of friends ofmine who were dead, shot up or in jail, just might, from time to time, have beenin touch with the True Wisdom of the 5 percent.34It was all bad news. In March 1970, the New York Times reported on a smallblack cult charged with the murder and mutilation of a white teenager inDetroit. The sect’s founder, known as “Enoch,” had attracted followersthrough karate and culture lessons at an Urban League street academy.35Though unconnected to Allah’s street academy or Barry Gottehrer, it did nothelp the credibility of either in New York. Meanwhile, the Five 128 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 128Percenters were showing all the signs of an early extinction. Gatherings atMount Morris Park and the Harriet Tubman School, once overflowing, hadthinned out. Gykee recalls a parliament attended by only nine people.36 When Gottehrer left New York in 1971, he was sure that he had heard the last of theFive Percenters.SWARMS OF DEVILS 129ch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 12910The Lives of NationsPulp novel Black Angels depicted the Nation of Islam as governed by a shad-owy group of elders, the “Guardian Angels,” who manipulated eventsamong Muslims from behind the scenes. In the early 1970s, author SterlingHobbs was Sterling X, a student minister at Mosque No.7. During his stint infederal prison (Lewisburg, 1979–1982) for murder, the FBI allegedly offeredhim freedom if he’d kill a prisoner who had been transferred from Atlanta.When Hobbs refused, the agents told him that he should be their hit man, sincethey believed that he had already been one for the NOI; they apparently hadhim confused with the Sterling X Hobbs at Philadelphia’s Mosque No.12,regarded as a “gangster” in Muslim circles.1 After the Philadelphia Hobbsattacked a group of Wallace Muhammad’s supporters, an FBI memo namedhim as “the individual usually called upon by mosque officials when the needfor physical force is anticipated.” On December 29, 1964, when Malcolm Xand his bodyguards arrived at a Philadelphia radio station, they wereambushed by Sterling’s doom squad. Malcolm later called Betty and told her toput his shotgun near the door.The Guardian Angels of the Harlem Hobbs’ fiction carried out much oftheir operations through a network of secret agents, known as “Five Per-centers,” who smuggled themselves into minor administrative roles at templesthroughout the country. Later, one of the Five Percenters named Clarence 13X defected and started hisown cult which he also named the Five Percenters.When Clarence declared himself “SupremeAllah” and began attracting hundreds of followers from prisons and reformatories in the New York area, theGuardian Angels decided to give him some assistance. One of his “followers”arranged a meeting to prove beyond all doubt that Clarence, the Father, was infact the Supreme Allah.He gathered a group of believers around Clarence and screamed: “I know you areAllah. You are He who lives and dies not!” Then he emptied a revolver intoClarence’s body. Clarence died on the spot.2The fiction illustrated a serious crisis for the real Five Percenters. The130ch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 130Father’s primary representatives were high-school and junior-high boys witha tendency toward hyperbole, who used his survival of the 1964 shooting asproof that he was Allah. His initial victory over bullets won him some awe-stricken youths, but he lost many with the rematch.Allah had allegedly predicted that after his death, his nation would itself liedead for a year. He also taught his Five Percenters that if they ever wanted to seehim, they needed only to come together and say his name. The rebirth of thepoor and righteous began with a December 4, 1970 dance in Queens. The eventwas organized by Born Allah and featured entertainment from Sabu & the Sur-vivors, with Five Percenters Emmanuel “Rahiem” LeBlanc doing lead vocalsand Keith “Sabu” Crier on bass. The group, which also arranged music for the“Enlightener,” would later form GQ and score a top 100 hit with “DiscoNights” (during their appearance on American Bandstand, Dick Clark wouldask Sabu and Rahiem, “what happened to the regular names, like James andCharles?”3). A New Year’s party at the street academy had Five Percenters againsharing stories, while a party in Hollis, Queens reunited Five Percenters fromHarlem Prep.4 Agreements were made that each Five Percenter would bringone new person to the next parliament; when the time came, some weredescribed as bringing entire “tribes.” Born Allah, Kassiem Allah and GodKalim were known as prolific teachers in Pelan (the Bronx), and Chauncey“God B” Milliner, Allah Mathematics, and Rasheem reclaimed the Desert(Queens). Medina (Brooklyn) had Allah-U-Akbar, Father Ubeka, and the newFive-Percent “Father Divine.” Classes were held in the community room of theMarcy projects with the likes of Big God Lord Supreme, Justice Foundation,Kendu Foundation and Melson. Knowledge of self reached a new crop of FivePercenters who had never walked with the Father, but could nonetheless holdfast to the rope of his word.To these youths, the Father seemed distant. He was unknowable, a “legend, amyth,” says Beloved Allah, who joined in 1972 at the age of fifteen.5 Some ofthose touched by Five Percenter discourse were too young to really comprehendthe philosophy. During work with the Thunderbirds, a preadolescent gang in aHarlem housing project, researcher Clarence Robins interviewed two eight-year-old members who might have misheard some Five Percenter dialogues:GREG: And sometimes I’ll curse with “B.B.”CR: What’s that?GREG: Oh, that’s a “M.B.B.” Black Boy. ’Merican Black Boy.CR: Oh.GREG: Anyway, ’Mericans is same like white people, right?THE LIVES OF NATIONS 131ch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 131LEON: And they talk about Allah.CR: Oh yeah?GREG: Yeah.CR: What they say about Allah?LEON: Allah–Allah is God.GREG: Allah–CR: And what else?LEON: I don’ know the res’.GREG: Allah i–Allah is God, Allah is the only God, Allah–LEON: Allah is the son of God.GREG: But can he make magic?LEON: Nope.GREG: I know who can make magic?CR: Who can?LEON: The God, the real one.CR: Who can make magic?GREG: The son of po’—CR: Hm? GREG: I’m sayin’ the po’k chop God! He only a po’k chop God!6Shabu was ten years old when his cousin Supreme Shabazz Adew Ali broughtknowledge from the Albany projects to the Cypress Hill Houses. Supreme toldShabu that he’d have to fast for seven days, living on only water and ice cream.Shabu gave up on the Five Percenters because he couldn’t maintain the fast,but in fifth grade he regained interest after questioning that blond-haired Mystery God who put black people in chains. For post-1969 “newborns,” theFive Percent worldview would be less about Allah’s charisma or paternal lovethan an intellectual and political stand.At the April and May 1971 parliaments, plans were announced for an “Edu-cational Show and Prove” that would be held at Harlem Prep, showcasing tal-ent and scientific exhibitions by Five Percenters. Intended to demonstrate thatAllah lived on through his Five Percenters, the Show and Prove would bescheduled for June 13—the second anniversary of his assassination. Harlem132 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 132Prep headmaster Ed “God Carp” Carpenter offered his full endorsem*nt to theevent, not only waiving the school’s usual $500 rental fee but donating $500 forsupplies.Admission was $1.00 in advance, $1.50 at the door and free for children,who each received a free dictionary. Five Percenters started coming in after2:00 p.m. Around 4:00, Kundalini Isa Allah showed up with a van full of chil-dren from the Bronx.Serving as the night’s emcee, Dumar introduced performers. A female FivePercenter named Latisha sang a song entitled “Allah’s Blessings,” which hadbeen written by Eye God (William Craig/Amin of the Harlem Six). Five youngdrummers from Queens, having previously practiced on empty boxes, cansand cars, performed on congas donated by African drummer La Roc Bey.Ranging in age from nine to thirteen, each youth performed a solo andreceived his own standing ovation.During intermission it was announced that Amar, a visual arts student atHarlem Prep, was showing his film—the first documentary on the Gods pro-duced by a God, with Prince providing commentary—in the screening roomdownstairs.Children’s science exhibits served to “show and prove” Allah’s teaching.The Allah Science Award was bestowed on a boy for his exhibit, “What MakesRain, Hail and Snow.” Using an AC/DC battery, 100-watt bulb and pan ofwater, he proceeded to make vapor and turn it back into water. Another youthearned a Headmaster Award for his exhibit, “Spook in the Bag.”At 7:00 p.m., Gods watched karate demonstrations by Born Allah’s brotherJabar Abdul Jabbar and the Father’s former bodyguard Green Eye Zumar, whotook on six opponents at a time. After the karate came a fashion show and thenAfrican dancing courtesy of the Ndgu Dancers, who in 1973 would be featuredon CBS’ The People’s Show. Luasia, the troupe’s choreographer, performed a“Supreme Alphabetic finale” with female Five Percenters (referred to as“Queens” or “Earths”) Mecca, Makeba, El-Latisha, Tykina, Shalaysa, Asia,Shalema, Guvasia (mother of Allah’s son “Little Allah”) and two “youngprincesses,” each girl spelling out her name in rap style. Sabu and Rahiem thenled a sixteen-piece band including Knowledge Allah, Kaseem Allah andKiheim, playing original and popular music while Gods and Earths danceduntil two in the morning. The Show and Prove had been such a success that itwould become an annual event.Like the Father said, all they needed to do was come together. The Harlemstreet academy (renamed Allah School in Mecca) was again packed with Gods,while in Brooklyn Five Percenters pooled their resources to establish similarprograms in Brownsville, Fort Green, and Bed-Stuy and acquired a buildingTHE LIVES OF NATIONS 133ch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 133on Sterling Place and Washington Avenue for a free-lunch program. For a timein the mid-1970s, most of the students at Westinghouse High School were FivePercenters; students were even given a special African Studies class in which tobuild, drawing Gods from throughout the city for one period in the school day.U-Allah, who had been incarcerated at Rikers and Elmira from June 1969 toFebruary 1971, looks back on a resurrected cipher in the Bronx:In the year of 1971, we was teaching all over Pelan. Around my way (158thStreet off of 3rd ave) was Harmeen and his brother Bish-me, Jabber, Al-Raheem from Mecca who came and lived with me and family for a littlewhile. We were real strong in my area. We had Jamar, Knowledge-Born, Dihu,Uhuru, Dakiem, the young gods of Bathgate Ave., were older now, and stillstrong. Pelan at this time was united from one end to the other. A lot of newGods were on the scene now, I didn’t care, as long as they were strong and hadIslam in their hearts.7Allah’s nation stretched even beyond the five boroughs. Ernest Allen, Jr. calls itan “extraordinary growth” that “remains, for the most part, an undocumentedprocess.”8 The Gods have maintained limited oral and written history on theirexpansion, which rarely amounts to more than the names of early Gods whoblazed trails in a given area. Wise Allah and Dakim maintained ciphers in Beacon and Newburgh, regarded as legacies of early visits to Matteawan.Knowledge God and Trusan carried the teachings to Asbury Park, New Jersey.Kashiem Allah traveled from Queens to New Haven, Connecticut, where hegave lessons to students at Jackie Robinson Middle School, spawning the city’sseven First Born—Be Wisdom Allah, Just-I-C Equality Allah, Supreme Allah,Rahiem Allah, El-Sun Allah, Universal Allah, and Sincere Allah.In 1971 Amar Self, who had been taught in Harlem by the Father, moved tonorth Philadelphia. To avoid the escalating gang conflicts he relocated withQueen Asia to Powelton Village, where he met three youths named Jimmy,Larry and Kevin. One summer afternoon on the corner of 36th and Baring, hetold them that they were gods. Jimmy became Jamel, Kevin became Ramel andLarry took the name Kahim. The group made a pilgrimage to Harlem andreturned home determined to teach. Ramel would build at the dice and cardgames along the south side’s Webster Street, attracting students who becameSatu, Knowledge Divine, Tauhid, and Born Divine. During this time, a gradu-ate of Allah’s street academy named Messiah had come to Philadelphia toattend Gettysburg College, where he recruited Salim, Rahiem, and Sharrief.Philadelphia now had two ciphers developing simultaneously, one in thestreets and one on the campus. The city’s sections were renamed as parallels toNew York: south Philly, where the knowledge originated, became Mecca; west134 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 134Philly was renamed Medina; the east side became the Desert; and north Philly,because of its gangs and strife, was renamed Pelan. The city as a whole wouldcome to be known as Power Hill.Ramel’s student Satu went to jail, where he encountered hostility from NOIMuslims. Though “heavily outnumbered and threatened daily” he continuedto teach until his death in 1973. One of Satu’s students in the prison, Rshine Jus-tice, would teach in Power Hill after his release.9 Philadelphia’s Five Percenterhistory seems representative of what took place in cities across the country: theculture first came by way of Gods from New York and spread among a varietyof circles (as rapper Lord Jamar puts it, “from the jails to the college dorms”),despite threats from Muslim squads, common gangs and law enforcement.Sha Sha (from Brooklyn) and Raheem God (from Queens) taught in NorthCarolina; Freedom (from the Bronx) taught in South Carolina. Hasheembecame the first God to teach in Atlanta, which he named Allah’s Garden.Bisme brought the message to Washington, D.C. Back in Harlem and Brook-lyn, meetings were packed; according to Kalim, “you had to get to Parliamentearly just to get a seat.”10 Despite everything, the Five Percenters had managednot only to carry on but penetrate the greater consciousness of black America,even influencing those who may have never heard the term “Five Percenter.”Omar Abdul-Malik, Research Fellow in Islamic Studies at Harvard DivinitySchool, cites the Five Percenters as at least partly responsible for the popular-ity of “Muslim names” such as Karriem in the African-American communityat large.11 La Shu Bee, a member of the early hip-hop group Crash Crew, wasoften mistaken for a Five Percenter because of his name. In the film Wattstax,comedian Richard Pryor seems to be spoofing Five Percenters—or at least FivePercenter-styled characters:In my neighborhood, used to be some beautiful black man would come in theneighborhood dressed in African sh*t, really nice sh*t, you know, and he’d be“peace, love. Black is beautiful. Remember the essence of life, we are people ofthe universe, and life is beautiful.” And my parents would go, “that nigg*’scrazy.” I used to go to the meetings, though. I got ultra-black for a while andbrothers be rappin’, I never knew what they were saying, though. But thebrother be havin’ emotion: “you see, the first thing you gotta know is by eatin’pork, now you eat a piece of pork, you don’t realize the suffocations of this indi-viduality’s prospects! What the Man is tryin’ to lay on you through porkitis, youwill not understand because the trickinosis of your mind will not relinquish thethought of individuality!”12As Five Percenters came together, the Muslims tore themselves apart. DuringSterling Hobbs’ time in Harlem he saw the NOI, permanently disfigured afterTHE LIVES OF NATIONS 135ch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 135the slaughter of Malcolm, spiral further into collective madness. Imaginingsomeone behind the scenes with a beautiful master plan might have been theonly way to make sense of it.The Messenger turned seventy-three in 1970. He had seen his Nationthrough the post-Fard power struggles, accusations of pro-Japanese subver-sion and criticisms from Sunnis, Moors, and civil rights leaders. In the earlydays he lived as a fugitive from his own congregation, fled across the country,sat in prison for a time and still heard Fard’s voice coming to him like thunderout of a clear blue sky. He lost and won back a son. He survived Malcolm, Mar-tin, Allah and even the Black Power movement that called him outdated;COINTELPRO had effectively squashed the Black Panther Party in five yearsor less but couldn’t bring down the Nation of Islam in four decades. Throughthree wars and six presidents it was J. Edgar Hoover vs. Elijah Muhammad,move for move. Hoover gave a newspaper reporter the material to pump outan article accusing W. D. Fard of being a white con-man; Elijah offered$100,000 to anyone that could come forward with proof. Hoover sent word ofElijah’s extramarital affairs to his wife and daughters, and in 1969 it becameknown that the FBI had tapped the Messenger’s phone for at least six years. Elijah lashed out against the “ever-evil snoopers” who followed him around.In 1972, after nearly four decades of back-and-forth, Hoover passed away andElijah was still in power.But he was so old and frail now that the Feds no longer called him a securitythreat, instead watching his fading health with high interest. With the Messen-ger’s days clearly numbered, both the Muslims and FBI anticipated a war ofsuccession and recognized two clear contenders. Dialogues in Black Angelsbetween the shadowy rulers of the NOI seem at least inspired by real argu-ments that Hobbs overheard among Muslims in Harlem: “Louis is only forty years old,” pleads an Angel named Isaac. “He has servedthe cause faithfully and tirelessly.”“The Saviour himself chose Wallace,” counters Jacob (Ya’qub). “He taughtClara the proper way to raise him, what to teach him and what to feed him. His most formative years were spent in accord with the Saviour’s instructions.The boy is a genius. And you say that Wallace is spiritually inclined. I dare saynot a man alive is as spiritually inclined or as theologically enlightened as Wallace.”“I don’t trust him, Ya’qub. He’s always in and out, never settled. If he can’tsettle his own life, how can he stabilize the Nation? And all of that Arab motif.He’s too much in love withthe Arab style, Arab culture. He has no loyalty to hisfather.”The Angels finally decide that in a time of crisis, the Muslims would look 136 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 136to the “royal family” for guidance. But to secure the throne for WallaceMuhammad, his father must pass soon; a few years down the road and Far-rakhan could pose a serious threat. The Angels then agree to assassinate theMessenger.13In real life, Elijah was losing his grip on the empire; mosques throughout theNation fell into discord, with the conflicts sometimes getting physical. SomeMuslims waited impatiently for Elijah to loosen his ban on political actionwhile others resented the Nation’s existing power structure of men like Ray-mond Sharrieff, Supreme Captain of the Fruit of Islam, and Elijah’s family.New movements popped up with names like “Young Muslims” and “SaudiArabia,” some pledging their spiritual allegiance to the Messenger yet existingbeyond his control.In October 1971, four men who had plotted on the life of Sharrieff werefound dead. One of Sharrieff’s assistants was later shot in a restaurant, and hissecretary was almost hit by gunfire at the headquarters of Muhammad Speaks.On April 14, 1972, two patrolmen from the 28th Precinct responded to afalse call of 10–13 (officer down) on the second floor of 102 East 116th Street,on the corner of Lenox. Philip Cardillo and Vito Navarra entered MosqueNo.7 and were met on the stairs by up to twenty Muslims. Police reenforce-ments arrived and stormed the mosque. As “Muslims and cops swung fists andbilly clubs at each other, the high-ceilinged hallway resounding with scream-ing and cursing,” a beaten Navarra managed to make it out. The battle spilledthrough the main entrance to the sidewalk, and the Muslims locked theirdoors with three officers trapped inside: Cardillo, Ivan Negron and Negron’spartner, Victor Padilla, whose gun was lost in the attack. Cardillo had beenshot and a Muslim later identified as Lewis 17X stood over him with a gun.Police broke down the mosque door, fired at the Muslims and forced theminto the basem*nt. Louis Farrakhan and Congressman Charles Rangel arrived,warning the police to leave immediately: “If you stay, there is nothing we cando to protect you. You’ll be overrun. There’ll be rioting. People may be killed.”Chief of Detectives Albert Seedman was ordered by his superiors to release theseventeen Muslim men from the basem*nt.Members of a growing mob outside screamed at police, “I hope you die, youpigs. I hope you drop dead.” A police car was overturned and set ablaze, bottlesand bricks were thrown at officers from neighboring rooftops, a detective wassmashed in the head with a brick and a white female reporter was knockeddown and trampled. Mayor Lindsay, who just a week before had pulled theplug on his disasterous bid for the White House, refused to classify the incidenta riot. “What’s a thousand people, twelve hundred people?” he scoffed at the NYPD deputy commissioner for public affiars, Robert Daly, who had THE LIVES OF NATIONS 137ch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 137estimated the mob at reaching upwards of twelve hundred people. “You can’thave a riot with a thousand people or twelve hundred people.”14On January 18, 1973, at 4:00 p.m., two men arrived at the Washington, D.C.headquarters of Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, who had left Harlem’s Mosque No.7to start his own group following the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam. Khaalis hadrecently circulated letters condemning Elijah’s Muslims as “eaters of theirdead brothers’ flesh” with “polluted minds.” The men knocked on the frontdoor and were answered by a young man named Daud. After exchanges ofsalam, one of them introduced himself as Tommy and said that he had calledearlier with interest in purchasing Hanafi literature. Tommy gave Daudmoney for the books; as Daud left to get him change, the men stormed into thehouse, joined by five or six other men, yelling “this is a stickup.” They shotDaud, shot Abdul Nur in his bedroom, found Khaalis’ wife Bibi and made herwatch them drown her one-year old girl and newborn boy in a bathtub. Thenthey dragged her to the basem*nt, let her witness the drowning of her nine-dayold granddaughter in a sink and then shot her. They killed her toddler Abdul-lah in a powder room, and Khaalis’ ten-year-old son Rahman on Daud’s bed,and put Daud’s mother Amina in a closet and shot her in the head.As the assailants left, one shouted, “Don’t mess with Elijah!”“They were so threatened,” mourned Khaalis’ student, pro basketball starKareem Abdul-Jabbar, “that they had to take the lives of children.” The nextissue of Muhammad Speaks called Khaalis a “modern-day Uncle Tom.”According to Farrakhan, the killers were agents of the United States govern-ment who hoped to divide the Muslims. Four members of PhiladelphiaMosque No.12 would later be convicted and each receive seven consecutive lifesentences.Two days after the Khaalis massacre, a Muslim was murdered execution-style with two shots to the head. Then four gunmen shot and killed HakimJamal, relative of Malcolm X and leader of the Malcolm X foundation.In September, two members of the “New World Nation of Islam” sent a bul-let into the eye and through the brain of Newark’s Minister James Shabazz inretaliation for the deaths of NWNOI members in prison. Two weeks later, twinbrothers Roger and Ralph Bankston were found dead; police suspected twoMuslims, who were in turn found beheaded in a vacant lot. The New WorldNation of Islam had been founded in 1960 by Muhammad Ali Hasan, whoclaimed to be under the direction of Elijah Muhammad. In 1965, Hassan was arrested in Newark, NJ after the city mayor witnessed him fleeing a bankrobbery. Hassan crashed into a telephone pole, lept out of his car and shot atthe mayor’s windshield. He continued to lead his sect from Trenton StatePrison.138 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 138The 10th degree from Lost-Found Lesson No.1 (“Why did Muhammad andany Muslim murder the devil?”) found its way to national headlines in early1974. As with Robert Karriem forty years earlier in Detroit, Fard’s requirementthat a Muslim kill “four devils” received a literal reading and was carried out bybelievers in the San Francisco area looking to earn their trips to Mecca. A seriesof black-on-white attacks (nicknamed the “Zebra” killings, ostensibly after the“Z” radio band assigned to the crimes) yielded the discovery of the Death Angels,an underground circle of Muslims said to earn “points” by killing Caucasians,earning extra credit for decapitations, mutilations and female or child victims.The Death Angels successfully took fourteen devils off the planet (all but one byshooting) and seriously wounded seven others. One victim was kidnapped andraped. San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto blamed the group for over eightyunsolved murders throughout the state. One police informant claimed that theDeath Angels were not limited to the San Francisco mosque but actuallybelonged to a nationwide network with roughly two thousand members.On February 25, 1975, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad died of chronicheart failure. The timing of his death—as with Malcolm’s ten years and fourdays earlier—gave incredible weight to the next day’s start of the Savior’s Dayconvention. Again, the celebration of W. D. Fard’s birth became an opportu-nity to put on heavily symbolic displays, reassure the faithful and carry theNation of Islam through a turbulent time.Elijah had never officially named a successor, saying that the matter wascompletely “up to Allah.” The family closed its ranks behind Wallace, who hadbeen prophesied by W. D. Fard to become a great spiritual leader. The Savior’sDay speech of Wallace’s primary threat, Louis Farrakhan, erased any rumor ofan NOI civil war: “I, like all the rest, submit and yield to see that the work of Eli-jah Muhammad is carried onby his son Wallace D. Muhammad.” Wearing aFruit of Islam uniform, Wallace was hoisted upon the shoulders of FOI andcongratulated before a giant portrait of his father.“No one can really say how he will act now,” an unnamed source told theNew York Times. “He might not turn out as they expect.”In his own address, Wallace made reference to white devilry only as a men-tal state.15 The distinction may seem neglible to outsiders, but Elijah’s son hadmade the first cautious step in pulling his Nation to al-Islam. At heart Wallacehad been a Sunni for years, repeatedly leaving the Nation over its worship ofW. D. Fard as God. Reconciliations with his father in 1965 (after the death ofMalcolm X) and 1969 or 1970 (after the death of Allah) might have been purelyfor his survival.He later abolished the Fruit of Islam and dismissed old hard-liners like Raymond Sharrieff. With NOI mosques formerly modeled after churches,THE LIVES OF NATIONS 139ch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 139Wallace took out the seats to allow for traditional Muslim prayer. He spoke ofAfrican-American Muslims as “Bilalians,” in reference to Bilal, an Ethiopiancompanion of the Prophet Muhammad, and renamed the NOI newspaperBilalian News. He appointed a Pakistani imam, Muhammad Abdullah, to headhis Oakland mosque. After Abdullah’s death, Wallace would claim that theimam had been none other than a repentent W. D. Fard, having returned indisguise to undo his work.At a June 16 rally in Chicago’s McCormick Place, Wallace dropped hisbiggest bombshell in front of twenty thousand believers: the Nation of Islamwould allow white members.“There is not even a ripple of discord in the Nation,” insisted Louis Far-rakhan, who had renamed himself Abdul Haleem Farrakhan. “We are allhappy over the emergence of the Honorable Wallace Muhammad ... no oneamong us is high enough to tie the shoelaces of Wallace.” Eventually giving theNation of Islam a complete rebirth as the World Community of Islam in theWest (WCIW), in barely a year Wallace removed all traces of Elijah’s legacy.He’d cap it off by changing his own name; to wash his hands of Wallace D. Fardand assume a more “Muslim” aesthetic, he became Warith Deen. To gain dis-tance from his father, he changed his spelling of Muhammad to Mohammed.In a move to heal the wounds of the past, and perhaps demonstrate who hadreally won the war, Wallace renamed Mosque No.7 in honor of its former min-ister: Masjid Malcolm Shabazz. He then removed Minister Farrakhan from hispost, appointing him an “international representative.”As Wallace methodically dismantled forty years’ worth of labor, thousandsabandoned the WCIW, most to go their own ways. Silas Muhammad scooped upa handful of supporters and formed his own hardline group. By 1977, Farrakhanwas again teaching Elijah’s doctrines. On March 7, 1978, tired of being a “prosti-tute” for a “cheap hypocrite,” he officially left Warith Deen’s WCIW to resurrectthe Nation of Islam. “Family don’t make you right,” he announced, “family don’tgive you no power.” Still, to counter Warith Deen’s gravitas as Elijah’s son, Farrakhan recruited the Messenger’s six former secretaries and thirteen illegiti-mate children. With the 116th and Lenox mosque under Warith Deen’s control,Farrakhan established a new “Muhammad Mosque #7” in Brooklyn.Farrakhan may have looked to the Gods as a possible constituency; duringWarith Deen’s reforms, many dissatisfied Muslims joined the Five Percenters.The resurrected Nation of Islam would move its flagship mosque to 127thStreet and Lenox Avenue in Harlem, barely a block from the Allah School. Astory also spread among the Five Percenters that Allah had told his First Born,“if anything happens to me, go back to Elijah.” The NOI would even developmathematical exegesis influenced by Allah’s Supreme Mathematics.16140 THE FIVE PERCENTERSch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 140At Arizona State University, Farrakhan delivered a lecture entitled “Is theHouse Divided?” and fielded questions from the audience. One youth stoodand asked, What do you think about the Five Percent Nation of Islam? Because there are alot of Muslims who say that the Five Percent Nation of Islam is a bunch of gang-sters and street—uh, street, you know, garbage. And that we don’t give, that theFive Percent Nation of Islam do not tell the true righteousness and that the truerighteousness is in the Bilalian and Muhammad Speaks—also that a lot of thebrothers that are Muslims started off as in the Five Percent Nation of Islam andthey forget all about it.17“Thank you,” said Farrakhan. “You heard him, didn’t you? There was abrother who was in Temple Number 7 in New York City under the name ofClarence 13X—” Immediately a member of the audience shouted his disap-proval, to which Farrakhan answered, “no, don’t do that. The Holy Qur’ansays evil is a bad name after faith.” The minister then praised Five Percentersfor keeping to Elijah Muhammad’s lessons when many did not, and evenoffered posthumous approval from the Messenger:I’m telling you that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad respected those youngbrothers and sisters who called themselves the Five Percenters. Now, I talked tothe Honorable Elijah Muhammad about that group that was developing inNew York and now spreading. He said, “That’s good. That is good. They arestudying that which Allah questioned me on and they are studying my answersto those questions.”18At his final Savior’s Day celebration in 1974, Elijah’s address had revealed thevery fine line between Nation of Islam and Five Percent Nation of Islam teach-ings—a line that, for many, continued to blur:Every time you look at a black man, you’re looking at God. Maybe some of uswill say, “Oh no! I’m no God and you’re no God.” Okay, get your God out andshow him to me. You can’t do that. You say that God is a spirit. Show him to me.You can not show me your spirit God. Then you say, he’s not to be seen. Wellthen, I don’t want to see him if he don’t want to see me ... for 43 years, I havebeen teaching that God is man!19THE LIVES OF NATIONS 141ch9-11.qxd 2/24/2007 2:30 PM Page 14111Warrior StripesWhen the gangs I hung out with in the ’70s gave way to ’80s hip-hop culture, itwas the street language, style and consciousness of the Five Percent Nation thatserved as a bridge.Russell SimmonsThere may be no easier way to offend Five Percenters than to call them agang—neglecting the members that have parlayed their beliefs into a reha-bilitating influence, Gods and Earths that have never been involved with crim-inal activity, and not least of all the “seeds:” children of loving Five Percenterparents, who often excel in school and stay out of trouble. The Five Percenterswere labeled a gang from their inception, viewed originally as an outgrowth ofthe Blood Brothers and old-fashioned fighting gangs and later confused withthe Zebra Killers. Allah’s journey from “Harlem rowdy” to legitimate commu-nity leader, as well as his oft-repeated vow to be “neither pro-black, nor anti-white” are forgotten today by columnists like the Washington Post’s DanielPipes, who calls the Five Percenters a “more aggressive NOI offshoot” full of“violent ex-cons, hoods, unsocialized individuals.”In the years immediately following Allah’s assassination, his post-Matteawan transformation of the Five Percenters into a “youth group”encouraging civic pride and education, embraced by the mayor and hailed forpreventing riots, was viewed as a model by New York gangs. During the firsthalf of the 1970s, Bronx and East Harlem gangs clashed not over turf or respectbut access to city programs, including summer jobs and recreational activities.A five-gang coalition called the Brotherhood arranged meetings with theBronx borough president, hoping to acquire its own clubhouse for the purposeof hosting high-school equivalency classes. No less than sixty-eight Bronxgangs later came together as the Family