grandmothers, our great-grandmothers and our great-great-grandmothers who escaped the white
rapist slavemaster. That rapist slavemaster who emasculated the black man... with threats, with
fear... until even today the black man lives with fear of the white man in his heart! Lives even
today still under the heel of the white man!
"Think of it-think of that black slave man filled with fear and dread, hearing the screams of his
wife, his mother, his daughter being taken-in the barn, the kitchen, in the bushes! Think of it,
my dear brothers and sisters! Think of hearing wives, mothers, daughters, being raped! And
you were too filled with fear of the rapist to do anything about it! And his vicious, animal attacks'
offspring, this white man named things like 'mulatto' and 'quadroon' and 'octoroon' and all those
other things that he has called us-you and me-when he is not calling us 'nigger'!
"Turn around and look at each other, brothers and sisters, and think of this! You and me,
polluted all these colors-and this devil has the arrogance and the gall to think we, his victims,
should love him!"
I would become so choked up that sometimes I would walk in the streets until late into the night.
Sometimes I would speak to no one for hours, thinking to myself about what the white man had
done to our poor people here in America.
At the Gar Wood factory where I worked, one day the supervisor came, looking nervous. He said
that a man in the office was waiting to see me.
The white man standing in there said, "I'm from the F.B.I." He flipped open-that way they do, to
shock you-his little folded black leather case containing his identification. He told me to come with
him. He didn't say for what, or why.
I went with him. They wanted to know, at their office, why hadn't I registered for the Korean War
draft?
"I just got out of prison," I said. "I didn't know you took anybody with prison records."
They really believed I thought ex-convicts weren't supposed to register. They asked a lot of
questions. I was glad they didn't ask if I intended to put on the white man's uniform, because I
didn't. They just took it for granted that I would. They told me they weren't going to send me to jail
for failing to register, that they were going to give me a break, but that I would have to register
immediately.
So I went straight from there to the draft board. When they gave me a form to fill out, I wrote in
the appropriate places that I was a Muslim, and that I was a conscientious objector.
I turned in the form. This middle-aged, bored-acting devil who scanned it looked out from under
his eyes at me. He got up and went into another office, obviously to consult someone over him.
After a while, he came out and motioned for me to go in there.
These three-I believe there were three, as I remember-older devils sat behind desks. They all
wore that "troublesome nigger" expression. And I looked "white devil" right back into their eyes.
They asked me on what basis did I claim to be a Muslim in my religion. I told them that the
Messenger of Allah was Mr. Elijah Muhammad, and that all who followed Mr. Muhammad here in
America were Muslims. I knew they had heard this before from some Temple One young brothers
who had been there before me.
They asked if I knew what "conscientious objector" meant. I told them that when the white man
asked me to go off somewhere and fight and maybe die to preserve the way the white man
treated the black man in America, then my conscience made me object.
They told me that my case would be "pending." But I was put through the physical anyway, and
they sent me a card with some kind of a classification. That was 1953, then I heard no more for
seven years, when I received another classification card in the mail. In fact, I carry it in my wallet
right now. Here: it's card number 20 219 25 1377, it's dated November 21, 1960. It says, "Class 5-
A," whatever that means, and stamped on the card's back is "Michigan Local Board No. 19,
Wayne County, 3604 South Wayne Road, Wayne, Michigan."
Every time I spoke at our Temple One, my voice would still be hoarse from the last time. My
throat took a long time to get into condition.