represented him one hundred per cent. I never tried to take any credit for myself.
I was never in one of those panel discussions without some of them just waiting their chance to
accuse me of "inciting Negroes to violence." I didn't even have to do any special studying to
prepare for that one.
"The greatest miracle Christianity has achieved in America is that the black man in white Christian
hands has not grown violent. It is a miracle that 22 million black people have not risen up
against their oppressors-in which they would have been justified by all moral criteria, and even by
the democratic tradition! It is a miracle that a nation of black people has so fervently continued to
believe in a turn-the-other-cheek and heaven-for-you-after-you-die philosophy! It is a miracle
that the American black people have remained a peaceful people, while catching all the centuries
of hell that they have caught, here in white man's heaven! The miracle is that the white man's
puppet Negro 'leaders,' his preachers and the educated Negroes laden with degrees, and others
who have been allowed to wax fat off their black poor brothers, have been able to hold the black
masses quiet until now."
I guarantee you one thing-every time I was mixed up in those studios with those brainwashed,
"integration"-mad black puppets, and those tricky devils trying to rip and tear me down, as long as
the little red light glowed "on the air," I tried to represent Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of
Islam to the utmost.
Dr. C. Eric Lincoln's book was published amid widening controversy about us Muslims, at just
about the time we were starting to put on our first big mass rallies.
Just as the television "Hate That Hate Produced" title had projected that "hate-teaching" image of
us, now Dr. Lincoln's book was titled The Black Muslims in America. The press snatched at that
name. "Black Muslims" was in all the book reviews, which quoted from the book only what was
critical of us, and generally praised Dr. Lincoln's writing.
The public mind fixed on "Black Muslims." From Mr. Muhammad on down, the name "Black
Muslims" distressed everyone in the Nation of Islam. I tried for at least two years to kill off that
"Black Muslims." Every newspaper and magazine writer and microphone I got close to: "No!
We are black people here in America. Our religion is Islam. We are properly called
'Muslims'!" But that "Black Muslims" name never got dislodged.Our mass rallies, from their very
beginning, were astounding successes. Where once Detroit's struggling little Temple One proudly
sent a ten-automobile caravan to Chicago to hear Mr. Muhammad, now, from East Coast
Temples-the older Temples as well as the new ones that all of the massive publicity had helped
us to bring into being-as many as 150, 200 and even as many as 300 big, chartered buses rolled
the highways to wherever Mr. Muhammad was going to speak. On each bus, two Fruit of Islam
men were in charge. Big three-by-nine-foot painted canvas banners hung on the buses' sides, to
be read by the highway traffic and thousands of people at home and on the sidewalks of the
towns the buses passed through.
Hundreds more Muslims and curious Negroes drove their own cars. And Mr. Muhammad with his
personal jet plane from Chicago. From the airport to the rally hall, Mr. Muhammad's motorcade
had a siren-screaming police escort. Law agencies once had scoffed at our Nation as "black
crackpots"; now they took special pains to safeguard against some "white crackpots" causing any
"incidents" or "accidents."
America had never seen such fantastic all-black meetings! To hear Elijah Muhammad, up to ten
thousand and more black people poured from public and private transportation to overflow the big
halls we rented, such as the St. Nicholas Arena in New York City, Chicago's Coliseum, and
Washington, D.C. 's Uline Arena.
The white man was barred from attendance-the first time the American black man had ever
dreamed of such a thing. And that brought us new attacks from the white man and his black
puppets. "Black segregationists... racists!" Accusing us of segregation! Across America, whites
barring blacks was standard.
Many hundreds arrived too late for us to seat them. We always had to wire up outside
loudspeakers. An electric atmosphere excited the great, shifting massesof black people. The long
lines, three and four abreast, funneling to the meeting hall, were kept in strict order by Fruit of
darsice
(darsice)
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