that the end was closing in on Archie. I became too moved about what he had been and what he
had now become to be able to stay much longer. I didn't have much money, and he didn't want to
accept what little I was able to press on him. But I made him take it.
I keep having to remind myself that then, in June 1954, Temple Seven in New York City was a
little storefront. Why, it's almost unbelievable that one bus couldn't have been filled with the
Muslims in New York City! Even among our own black people in the Harlem ghetto, you could
have said "Muslim" to a thousand, and maybe only one would not have asked you "What's that?"
As for white people, except for that relative handful privy to certain police or prison files, not five
hundred white people in all of America knew we existed.
I began firing Mr. Muhammad's teaching at the New York members and the few friends they
managed to bring in. And with each meeting, my discomfort grew that in Harlem, choked with
poor, ignorant black men suffering all of the evils that Islam could cure, every time I lectured my
heart out and then asked those who wanted to follow Mr. Muhammad to stand, only two or three
would. And, I have to admit, sometimes not that many.
I think I was all the angrier with my own ineffectiveness because I knew the streets. I had to get
myself together and think out the problem. And the big trouble, obviously, was that we were only
one among the many voices of black discontent on every busy Harlem corner. The different
Nationalist groups, the "Buy Black!" forces, and others like that; dozens of their step-ladder
orators were trying to increase their followings. I had nothing against anyone trying to promote
independence and unity among black men, but they still were making it tough for Mr.
Muhammad's voice to be heard.
In my first effort to get over this hurdle, I had some little leaflets printed. There wasn't a much-
traveled Harlem street corner that five or six good Muslim brothers and I missed. We would step
up right in front of a walking black man or woman so that they had to accept our leaflet, and if
they hesitated one second, they had to hear us saying some catch thing such as "Hear how the
white man kidnapped and robbed and raped our black race-"
Next, we went to work "fishing" on those Harlem corners-on the fringes of the Nationalist
meetings. The method today has many refinements, but then it consisted of working the always
shifting edges of the audiences that others had managed to draw. At a Nationalist meeting,
everyone who was listening was interested in the revolution of the black race. We began to get
visible results almost immediately after we began thrusting handbills in people's hands, "Come to
hear us, too, brother.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us how to cure the black man's spiritual, mental,
moral, economic, and political sicknesses-"
I saw the new faces of our Temple Seven meetings. And then we discovered the best "fishing"
audience of all, by far the best-conditioned audience for Mr. Muhammad's teachings: the
Christian churches.
Our Sunday services were held at two P. M. All over Harlem during the hour or so before that,
Christian church services were dismissing. We by-passed the larger churches with their higher
ratio of so-called "middle-class" Negroes who were so full of pretense and "status" that they
wouldn't be caught in our little storefront.
We went "fishing" fast and furiously when those little evangelical storefront churches each let out
their thirty to fifty people on the sidewalk. "Come to hear us, brother, sister-" "You haven't heard
anything until you have heard the teachings of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad-" These
Congregations were usually Southern migrant people, usually older, who would go anywhere to
hear what they called "good preaching." These were the church congregations who were always
putting out little signs announcing that inside they were selling fried chicken and chitlin dinners to