I was totally unprepared for the Messenger Elijah Muhammad's physical impact upon my
emotions. From the rear of Temple Number Two, he came toward the platform. The small,
sensitive, gentle, brown face that I had studied in photographs, until I had dreamed about it, was
fixed straight ahead as the Messengerstrode, encircled by the marching, strapping Fruit of Islam
guards. The Messenger, compared to them, seemed fragile, almost tiny. He and the Fruit of Islam
were dressed in dark suits, white shirts, and bow ties. The Messenger wore a gold-embroidered
fez.
I stared at the great man who had taken the time to write to me when I was a convict whom he
knew nothing about. He was the man whom I had been told had spent years of his life in suffering
and sacrifice to lead us, the black people, because he loved us so much. And then, hearing his
voice, I sat leaning forward, riveted upon his words. (I try to reconstruct what Elijah Muhammad
said from having since heard him speak hundreds of times.)
"I have not stopped one day for the past twenty-one years. I have been standing, preaching to
you throughout those past twenty-one years, while I was free, and even while I was in bondage. I
spent three and one-half years in the federal penitentiary, and also over a year in the city jail for
teaching this truth. I was also deprived of a father's love for his family for seven long years while I
was running from hypocrites and other enemies of this word and revelation of God-which will give
life to you, and put you on the same level with all other civilized and independent nations and
peoples of this planet earth... ."
Elijah Muhammad spoke of how in this wilderness of North America, for centuries the "blue-eyed
devil white man" had brainwashed the "so-called Negro." He told us how, as one result, the black
man in America was "mentally, morally and spiritually dead." Elijah Muhammad spoke of how the
black man was Original Man, who had been kidnapped from his homeland and stripped of his
language, his culture, his family structure, his family name, until the black man in America did not
even realize who he was.
He told us, and showed us, how his teachings of the true knowledge of ourselves would lift up the
black man from the bottom of the white man's societyand place the black man where he had
begun, at the top of civilization.
Concluding, pausing for breath, he called my name.
It was like an electrical shock. Not looking at me directly, he asked me to stand.
He told them that I was just out of prison. He said how "strong" I had been while in prison. "Every
day," he said, "for years, Brother Malcolm has written a letter from prison to me. And I have
written to him as often as I could."
Standing there, feeling the eyes of the two hundred Muslims upon me, I heard him make a
parable about me.
When God bragged about how faithful Job was, said Elijah Muhammad, the devil said only God's
hedge around Job kept Job so faithful. "Remove that protective hedge," the devil told God, "and I
will make Job curse you to your face."
The devil could claim that, hedged in prison, I had just used Islam, Mr. Muhammad said. But the
devil would say that now, out of prison, I would return to my drinking, smoking, dope, and life of
crime.
"Well, now, our good brother Malcolm's hedge is removed and we will see how he does," Mr.
Muhammad said. "I believe that he is going to remain faithful."
And Allah blessed me to remain true, firm and strong in my faith in Islam, despite many severe
trials to my faith. And even when events produced a crisis between Elijah Muhammad and me, I
told him at the beginning of the crisis, with all the sincerity I had in me, that I still believed in him
more strongly than he believed in himself.
Mr. Muhammad and I are not together today only because of envy and jealousy. I had more faith
in Elijah Muhammad than I could ever have in any other man upon this earth.
You will remember my having said that, when I was in prison, Mr. Muhammad would be my
brother Wilfred's house guest whenever he visited Detroit Temple Number One. Every Muslim
said that never could you do as much for Mr. Muhammad as he would do for you in return. That
Sunday, after the meeting, he invited our entire family group and Minister Lemuel Hassan to be
darsice
(darsice)
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