Negroes attended a Bible class, and I went there.
Conducting the class was a tall, blond, blue-eyed (a perfect "devil") Harvard Seminary student.
He lectured, and then he started in a question-and-answer session. I don't know which of us had
read the Bible more, he or I, but I had to give him credit; he really was heavy on his religion. I
puzzled and puzzled for a way to upset him, and to give those Negroes present something to
think and talk about and circulate.
Finally, I put up my hand; he nodded. He had talked about Paul.
I stood up and asked, "What color was Paul?" And I kept talking, with pauses, "He had to be
black... because he was a Hebrew... and the original Hebrews were black... weren't they?"
He had started flushing red. You know the way white people do. He said "Yes."
I wasn't through yet. "What color was Jesus... he was Hebrew, too... wasn't he?"
Both the Negro and the white convicts had sat bolt upright. I don't care how tough the convict, be
he brainwashed black Christian, or a "devil" white Christian, neither of them is ready to hear
anybody saying Jesus wasn't white. The instructor walked around. He shouldn't have felt bad. In
all of the years since, I never have met any intelligent white man who would try to insist that
Jesus was white. How could they? He said, "Jesus was brown."
I let him get away with that compromise.
Exactly as I had known it would, almost overnight the Charlestown convicts, black and white,
began buzzing with the story. Wherever I went, I could feel the nodding. And anytime I got a
chance to exchange words with a blackbrother in stripes, I'd say, "My man! You ever heard about
somebody named Mr. Elijah Muhammad?"
darsice
(darsice)
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