The small, frail boy usually settled his older brothers' and sisters' disputes, Mother Marie said.
And young as he was, he became regarded by them as their leader. And Elijah, about the time he
entered school, began displaying a strong race consciousness. After the fourth grade, because
the family was so poor, Elijah had to quit school and begin full-time working. An older sister taught
Elijah as much as she was able at night.
Mother Marie said that Elijah spent hours poring through the Bible, with tears shining in his eyes.
(Mr. Muhammad told me himself later that as a boy he felt that the Bible's words were a locked
door, that could be unlocked, if only he knew how, and he cried because of his frustrated anxiety
to receive understanding. ) Elijah grew up into a still-frail teenager who displayed a most
uncommonly strong love for his race, and, Mother Marie said, instead of condemning Negroes'
faults, young Elijah always would speak of reasons for those faults.
Mother Marie has since died. I believe that she had as large a funeral as Chicago has seen. Not
only Muslims, but others knew of the deep bond that Messenger Elijah had with his mother.
"I am not ashamed to say how little learning I have had," Mr. Muhammad told me. "My going to
school no further than the fourth grade proves that I can know nothing except the truth I have
been taught by Allah. Allah taught memathematics. He found me with a sluggish tongue, and
taught me how to pronounce words."
Mr. Muhammad said that somehow, he never could stand how the Sandersville white farmers, the
sawmill foremen, or other white employers would habitually and often curse Negro workers. He
said he would politely ask any for whom he worked never to curse him. "I would ask them to just
fire me if they didn't like my work, but just don't curse me." (Mr. Muhammad's ordinary
conversation was the manner he used when making speeches. He was not "eloquent," as
eloquence is usually meant, but whatever he uttered had an impact on me that trained orators did
not begin to have. ) He said that on the jobs he got, he worked so honestly that generally he was
put in charge of the other Negroes.
After Mr. Muhammad and Sister Clara met and married and their first two children had been born,
a white employer early in 1923 did curse Mr. Muhammad, then Elijah Poole. Elijah Poole,
determined to avoid trouble, took his family to Detroit, arriving when he was twenty-five. Five
more children would be born there in Detroit, and, finally, the last one in Chicago.
In Detroit in 1931, Mr. Muhammad met Master W. D. Fard.
The effects of the depression were bad everywhere, but in the black ghetto they were horrible,
Mr. Muhammad told me. A small, light brown-skinned man knocked from door to door at the
apartments of the poverty-stricken Negroes. The man offered for sale silks and other yard goods,
and he identified himself as "a brother from the East."
This man began to tell Negroes how they came from a distant land, in the seeds of their
forefathers.
He warned them against eating the "filthy pig" and other "wrong foods" that it was habitual for
Negroes to eat.
Among the Negroes whom he found most receptive, he began holding little meetings in their poor
homes. The man taught both the Quran and the Bible, and his students included Elijah Poole.
This man said his name was W. D. Fard. He said that he was born in the Koreish tribe of
Muhammad ibn Abdullah, the Arabian prophet Himself. This peddler of silks and yard goods, Mr.
W. D. Fard, knew the Bible better than any of the Christian-bred Negroes.
In the essence, Mr. W. D. Fard taught that God's true name was Allah, that His true religion was