all these intellectual and professional black men could seem to think of was humbling themselves,
and begging, trying to "integrate" with the so-called "liberal" white man who was telling them, "In
time... everything's going to work out one day... just wait and have patience." These
intellectual and professional Negroes couldn't use what they knew for the benefit of their own
black kind simply because even among themselves they were disunited. United among
themselves, united with their own kind, they could have benefited black people all over the world!
I would watch the faces of those intellectual and professional Negroes growing grave, and set-as
the truth hit home to them. We were watched. Our telephones were tapped. Still right today, on
my home telephone, if I said, "I'm going to bomb the Empire State Building," I guarantee you in
five minutes it would be surrounded. When I was speaking publicly sometimes I'd guess which
were F.B.I. faces in the audience, or other types of agents. Both thepolice and the F.B.I. intently
and persistently visited and questioned us. "I do not fear them," Mr. Muhammad said. "I have all
that I need-the truth."
Many a night, I drifted off to sleep, filled with wonder at how the two-edged-sword teachings so
hurt, confused, concerned, and upset the government full of men trained highly in all of the
modern sciences. I felt that it never could have been unless The Most Learned One, Allah
Himself, had given the little fourth-grade-trained Messenger something.
Black agents were sent to infiltrate us. But the white man's "secret" spy often proved, first of all, a
black man. I can't say all of them, of course, there's no way to know-but some of them, after
joining us, and hearing, seeing and feeling the truth for every black man, revealed their roles to
us. Some resigned from the white man's agencies and came to work in the Nation of Islam. A few
kept their jobs to counterspy, telling us the white man's statements and plans about our Nation.
This was how we learned that after wanting to know what happened within our Temples, the white
law agencies' second major concern was the thing that I believe still ranks today as a big worry
among America's penologists: the steadily increasing rate at which black convicts embrace Islam.
Generally, while still in prison, our convict-converts preconditioned themselves to meet our
Nation's moral laws. As it had happened with me, when they left prison, they entered a Temple
fully qualified to become registered Muslims. In fact, convict-converts usually were better
prepared than were numerous prospective Muslims who never had been inside a prison.
We were not nearly so easy to enter as a Christian church. One did not merely declare himself a
follower of Mr. Muhammad, then continue leading the same old, sinful, immoral life. The Muslim
first had to change his physical and moralself to meet our strict rules. To remain a Muslim he had
to maintain those rules.
Few temple meetings were held, for instance, without the minister looking down upon some
freshly shaved bald domes of new Muslim brothers in the audience. They had just banished from
their lives forever that phony, lye-conked, metallic-looking hair, or "the process," as some call it
these days. It grieves me that I don't care where you go, you see this symbol of ignorance and
self-hate on so many Negroes' heads. I know it's bound to hurt the feelings of some of my good
conked non-Muslim friends-but if you study closely any conked or "processed" Negro, you usually
find he is an ignorant Negro. Whatever "show" or "front" he affects, his hair lye-cooked to be
"white-looking" fairly shouts to everyone who looks at his head, "I'm ashamed to be a Negro." He
will discover, just as I did, that he will be much-improved mentally whenever he discovers enough
black self-pride to have that mess clipped off, and then wear the natural hair that God gives black
men to wear.
No Muslim smokes-that was another of our rules. Some prospective Muslims found it more
difficult to quit tobacco than others found quitting the dope habit. But black men and women quit
more easily when we got them to consider seriously how the white man's government cared less