Islam, that the true name for that religion's people was Muslims.
Mr. W. D. Fard taught that the Negroes in America were directly descended from Muslims. He
taught that Negroes in America were Lost Sheep, lost for four hundred years from the Nation of
Islam, and that he, Mr. Fard, had come to redeem and return the Negro to his true religion.
No heaven was in the sky, Mr. Fard taught, and no hell was in the ground. Instead, both heaven
and hell were conditions in which people lived right here on this planet Earth. Mr. Fard taught that
the Negro in America had been for four hundred years in hell, and he, Mr. Fard, had come to
return them to where heaven for them was-back home, among their own kind.
Master Fard taught that as hell was on earth, also on earth was the devil-the white race which
was bred from black Original Man six thousand years before, purposely to create a hell on earth
for the next six thousand years.
The black people, God's children, were Gods themselves, Master Fard taught. And he taught that
among them was one, also a human being like the others, who was the God of Gods: The Most,
Most High, The Supreme Being, supreme in wisdom and power-and His proper name was Allah.
Among his handful of first converts in 1931 in Detroit, Master W. D. Fard taught that every religion
says that near the Last Day, or near the End of Time, God would come, to resurrect the Lost
Sheep, to separate them from their enemies, and restore them to their own people. Master Fard
taught that Prophecy referred to this Finder and Savior of the Lost Sheep as The Son of Man, or
God in Person, or The Lifegiver, The Redeemer, or The Messiah, who would come as lightning
from the East and appear in the West.
He was the One to whom the Jews referred as The Messiah, the Christians as The Christ, and
the Muslims as The Mahdi.
I would sit, galvanized, hearing what I then accepted from Mr. Muhammad's own mouth as being
the true history of our religion, the true religion for the black man. Mr. Muhammad told me that
one evening he had a revelation that Master W. D. Fard represented the fulfillment of the
prophecy.
"I asked Him," said Mr. Muhammad, "'Who are you, and what is your real name?' And He said, 'I
am The One the world has been looking for to come for the past two thousand years.'
"I said to Him again," said Mr. Muhammad, "'What is your true name?' And then He said, 'My
name is Mahdi. I came to guide you into the right path.'"
Mr. Elijah Muhammad says that he sat listening with an open heart and an open mind-the way I
was sitting listening to Mr. Muhammad. And Mr. Muhammad said he never doubted any word that
the "Savior" taught him.
Starting to organize, Master W. D. Fard set up a class for training ministers to carry the teachings
to America's black people. In giving names to these first ministers, Master Fard named Elijah
Poole "Elijah Karriem."
Next, Master W. D. Fard established in 1931 in Detroit a University of Islam. It had adult classes
which taught, among other things, mathematics, to help the poor Negroes quit being duped and
deceived by the "tricknology" of "the blue-eyed devil white man."
Starting a school in the rough meant that it lacked qualified teachers, but a start had to be made
somewhere. Mr. Elijah Karriem removed his own children from Detroit public schools, to start a
nucleus of children in the University of Islam.