measures, and for many blacks, times were chronically desperate. If nationalism could create a strong and effective
insularity, deliver on its promise of self-respect, then the hurt it might cause well-meaning whites, or the inner turmoil
it caused people like me, would be of little consequence.
If nationalism could deliver. As it turned out, questions of effectiveness, and not sentiment, caused most of my
quarrels with Rafiq. Once, after a particularly thorny meeting with MET, I asked him whether he could turn out his
followers if a public showdown with the city became necessary.
“I don’t got time to run around passing out flyers trying to explain everything to the public,” he said. “Most of the
folks out here don’t care one way or another. The ones that do are gonna be double-crossing Negroes trying to mess
things up. Important thing is to get our plan tight and get the city signed on. That’s how stuff gets done-not with a big
crowd and noise and all that. Once we got a done deal, then y’all announce it any way you like.”
I disagreed with Rafiq’s approach; for all his professed love of black people, he seemed to distrust them an awful lot.
But I also knew his approach was dictated by a lack of capacity: Neither his organization nor his mosque, I had
discovered, could claim a membership of more than fifty persons. His influence arose not from any strong
organizational support but from his willingness to show up at every meeting that remotely affected Roseland and shout
his opponents into submission.
What held true for Rafiq was true throughout the city; without the concentrating effect of Harold’s campaign,
nationalism dissipated into an attitude rather than any concrete program, a collection of grievances and not an
organized force, images and sounds that crowded the airwaves and conversation but without any corporeal existence.
Among the handful of groups to hoist the nationalist banner, only the Nation of Islam had any significant following:
Minister Farrakhan’s sharply cadenced sermons generally drew a packed house, and still more listened to his radio
broadcasts. But the Nation’s active membership in Chicago was considerably smaller-several thousand, perhaps,
roughly the size of one of Chicago’s biggest black congregations-a base that was rarely, if ever, mobilized around
political races or in support of broad-based programs. In fact, the physical presence of the Nation in the neighborhoods
was nominal, restricted mainly to the clean-cut men in suits and bow ties who stood at the intersections of major
thoroughfares selling the Nation’s newspaper, The Final Call.
I would occasionally pick up the paper from these unfailingly polite men, in part out of sympathy to their heavy suits
in the summer, their thin coats in winter; or sometimes because my attention was caught by the sensational, tabloid-
style headlines (CAUCASIAN WOMAN ADMITS: WHITES ARE THE DEVIL). Inside the front cover, one found
reprints of the minister’s speeches, as well as stories that could have been picked straight off the AP news wire were it
not for certain editorial embellishments (“Jewish Senator Metzenbaum announced today...”). The paper also carried a
health section, complete with Minister Farrakhan’s pork-free recipes; advertisements for Minister Farrakhan’s speeches
on videocassette (VISA or MasterCard accepted); and promotions for a line of toiletries-toothpaste and the like-that the
Nation had launched under the brand name POWER, part of a strategy to encourage blacks to keep their money within
their own community.
After a time, the ads for POWER products grew less prominent in The Final Call; it seems that many who enjoyed
Minister Farrakhan’s speeches continued to brush their teeth with Crest. That the POWER campaign sputtered said