his ministers. He was saying that the teachings should be spreading further than they had, and
temples needed to be established in other cities.
It simply had never occurred to me that / might be a minister. I had never felt remotely qualified to
directly represent Mr. Muhammad. If someone had asked me about becoming a minister, I would
have been astonished, and told them I was happy and willing to serve Mr. Muhammad in the
lowliest capacity.
I don't know if Mr. Muhammad suggested it or if our Temple One Minister Lemuel Hassan on his
own decision encouraged me to address our assembled brothers and sisters. I know that I
testified to what Mr. Muhammad's teachings had done for me: "If I told you the life I have lived,
you would find it hard to believe me.... When I say something about the white man, I am not
talking about someone I don't know... ."
Soon after that, Minister Lemuel Hassan urged me to address the brothers and sisters with an
extemporaneous lecture. I was uncertain, and hesitant-but at least I had debated in prison, and I
tried my best. (Of course, I can't remember exactly what I said, but I do know that in my beginning
efforts my favorite subject was Christianity and the horrors of slavery, where I felt well-equipped
from so much reading in prison. )
"My brothers and sisters, our white slavemaster's Christian religion has taught us black people
here in the wilderness of North America that we will sprout wings when we die and fly up into the
sky where God will have for us a special place called heaven. This is white man's Christian
religion used to brainwash us black people! We have accepted it! We have embraced it!
We have believed it! We have practiced it! And while we are doing all of that, for himself, this
blue-eyed devil has twisted his Christianity, to keep his foot on our backs... to keep our
eyes fixed on the pie in the sky andheaven in the hereafter... while he enjoys his heaven
right here... on this earth... in this life."
Today when thousands of Muslims and others have been audiences out before me, when
audiences of millions have been beyond radio and television microphones, I'm sure I rarely feel
as much electricity as was then generated in me by the upturned faces of those seventy-five or a
hundred Muslims, plus other curious visitors, sitting there in our storefront temple with the
squealing of pigs filtering in from the slaughterhouse just outside.
In the summer of 1953-all praise is due to Allah-I was named Detroit Temple Number One's
Assistant Minister.
Every day after work, I walked, "fishing" for potential converts in the Detroit black ghetto. I saw
the African features of my black brothers and sisters whom the devilish white man had
brainwashed. I saw the hair as mine had been for years, conked by cooking it with lye until it lay
limp, looking straight like the white man's hair. Time and again Mr. Muhammad's teachings were
rebuffed and even ridiculed... ."Aw, man, get out of my face, you niggers are crazy!" My head
would reel sometimes, with mingled anger and pity for my poor blind black brothers. I couldn't
wait for the next time our Minister Lemuel Hassan would let me speak:
"We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, my brothers and sisters-Plymouth Rock landed on us!"...
"Give all you can to help Messenger Elijah Muhammad's independence program for the black
man!... This white man always has controlled us black people by keeping us running to him
begging, 'Please, lawdy, please, Mr. White Man, boss, would you push me off another crumb
down from your table that's sagging with riches... .'
"... my beautiful, black brothers and sisters! And when we say 'black,' wemean everything not
white, brothers and sisters! Because look at your skins! We're all black to the white man, but
we're a thousand and one different colors. Turn around, look at each other! What shade of
black African polluted by devil white man are you? You see me-well, in the streets they used to
call me Detroit Red. Yes! Yes, that raping, red-headed devil was my grandfather! That close,
yes! My mother's father! She didn't like to speak of it, can you blame her? She said she never
laid eyes on him! She was glad for that! I'm glad for her! If I could drain away his blood
that pollutes my body, and pollutes my complexion, I'd do it! Because I hate every drop of the
rapist's blood that's in me!
"And it's not just me, it's all of us! During slavery, think of it, it was a rare one of our black
darsice
(darsice)
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