Malcolm X (15 page)

In early 1948, a curious letter arrived from his brother Philbert, one that would have enormous consequences. Philbert explained that he and other family members had all converted to Islam. Malcolm was not surprised by the sudden enthusiasm, and did not take this particular turn very seriously. Philbert “was forever joining something,” he recalled. Philbert now asked his brother to “pray to Allah for deliverance.” Malcolm was not impressed. His reply, written in proper English, was completely dismissive.

Philbert’s letter was in fact the opening salvo in a family campaign to convert Malcolm to a nascent movement called the Nation of Islam. As Wilfred later explained, “It was a program designed to help black people. And they had the best program going.” They were determined to get Malcolm on board. After Philbert’s letter had no effect, the family decided that an overture from Reginald might be more effective. Reginald wrote a “newsy” missive that contained no overt references to the Nation of Islam, but concluded with a cryptic promise: “Don’t eat any more pork, and don’t smoke any more cigarettes. I’ll show you how to get out of prison.” For days, Malcolm was puzzled. Was this some new way to hustle? He still had many doubts, but decided to follow the advice and stopped smoking. His new refusal to eat pork provoked surprise among inmates at the dining hall.

Meanwhile, Ella’s appeals and letter writing finally won out: in late March 1948, Malcolm was transferred to the Norfolk Prison Colony. Established in 1927 as a model of correctional reform, the facility was located twenty-three miles from Boston, near Walpole, on a thirty-five-acre, ovalshaped property that looked more like a college campus than a traditional prison. However, it did possess strong escape deterrents, most prominently a five-thousand-foot-long, nineteen-foot-high wall surrounding the entire grounds, topped by three inches of electrified barbed wire. The philosophy behind the prison was rehabilitation and reentry into society. Prisoners lived in compounds of twenty-four houses, with individual and group rooms, all with windows and doors.

Compared to Charlestown, Malcolm had a life as eased of restrictions as one might find in a state penitentiary. First and foremost, he was treated like a human being. He was not locked into a room at night. He had two lockers, one in his room for personal clothes and toiletries, the other in his housing unit’s basement, for his work uniform. Two inmates in each house were responsible for serving meals, cleaning the dining and common rooms, and minor repairs. There were meetings every Saturday night, at which inmates’ concerns were addressed. Prisoners could elect their own representatives to house committees, and an inmate chairman was responsible for running them. Norfolk encouraged the prisoners to participate in all sorts of educational activities, such as the debating club and the prison newspaper, the
Colony
. Entertainment, which consisted of both outside groups and inmate-initiated shows, was organized on Sunday evenings. Religious services were held weekly for Roman Catholics, Protestants, Christian Scientists, and Theosophists, while monthly group meetings and religious holiday observances were permitted for “Hebrews.”

This new life suited the newly disciplined Malcolm well, and he continued his plan to educate himself broadly. He eagerly participated in the facility’s activities, and extended his reading agenda to include works on Buddhism. Unfortunately, his new commitment to self-improvement did not extend to improved work habits. In the prison laundry and on kitchen duty, his work performance was once again rated as substandard, his supervisors describing him as “lazy, detested work in any form, and accepted and performed given work seemingly in silent disgust.” He was careful, however, to work just enough to avoid any major infraction, which would have jeopardized his place at Norfolk. He also stopped cursing the guards and fellow prisoners.

Reginald was the first relative to visit Malcolm in the new place. First he filled him in on family gossip and told him about a recent visit to Harlem he’d made, but eventually he turned the conversation to a new subject: Islam, or the “no pork and cigarettes riddle,” as described in the
Autobiography
.

“If a man knew every imaginable thing that there is to know, who would he be?” Reginald asked.

“Some kind of a god,” replied Malcolm.

Reginald explained that such a man did exist—“his real name is Allah”—and had made himself known years before to an African American named Elijah—“a black man, just like us.” Allah had identified all whites, without exception, as devils. At first, Malcolm found this extremely difficult to accept. Not even Garveyism had prepared him for such an extreme antiwhite message. But afterward, when he had carefully cataloged each significant relationship he had ever developed with a white person, he concluded that every white he had ever known had held a deep animus toward blacks.

The seed was sown. Not long after this conversation, Hilda paid a visit and filled in the backdrop to the family’s conversion. It had begun quietly and casually. Sometime in 1947, while waiting at a bus stop, Wilfred had struck up a conversation with a young, well-dressed black man, who began discussing religion and black nationalism and invited him to visit the Nation of Islam’s Temple No. 1 in Detroit. When Wilfred went, he found a modest storefront church. It was a rental property with a hall that could probably accommodate about two hundred people, though there seemed to be fewer than a hundred actual members. What Wilfred heard there sounded comfortingly familiar: a message of black separatism, selfreliance, and a black deity that reminded him instantly of Earl Little’s Garveyite sermons.

It took only a few months for Hilda, Philbert, Wesley, and Reginald to also become members. Wilfred would later explain, “We already had been indoctrinated with Marcus Garvey’s philosophy, so that was just a good place for us. They didn’t have to convince us we were black and should be proud or anything like that.” There were personal connections to the NOI's first family, Clara and Elijah Poole, that made the family’s attraction to the Nation of Islam natural. When Earl had been living in Georgia, he had occasionally preached in the town of Perry, the home of Clara Poole’s parents. Ella had grown to adulthood in Georgia before moving to the North, and she had met both Clara and Elijah Poole years before they were linked to the Nation.

During her visit, Hilda also explained to Malcolm the central tenet of Nation of Islam theology, Yacub’s History, which told how an evil black scientist named Yacub had genetically engineered the creation of the entire white race. Allah, in the person of an Asiatic black man, had come into the world to reveal this extraordinary story, and to explain the legacies of the white race’s monstrous crimes against blacks. Only through complete racial separation, Hilda explained, could blacks survive. She urged Malcolm to write directly to the Nation of Islam’s supreme leader, Elijah Muhammad—as Elijah Poole had renamed himself—who was based in Chicago. He would satisfy any doubts Malcolm might have. Malcolm was amazed by his sister's obvious devotion, and afterward wrote, “I don’t know if I was able to open my mouth and say goodbye.”

Over the next few weeks, he grappled with what he had been told. The black nationalist message of racial pride, a rejection of integration, and self-sufficiency rekindled strong connections with the driving faith of his parents. The NOI's condemnation of all-white institutions, especially Christianity, also fitted with his experiences. Yet the bitter young nonbeliever had never shown the least interest in organized religion or the spiritual life. For Malcolm, the lure was more secular: Nation of Islam held out the possibility of finding self-respect and even dignity as a black man. This was a faith that said blacks had nothing for which to be ashamed or apologetic.

But above any spiritual or political goals was one important personal one: conversion was a way to keep the Little family together. As all the Little children had reached adulthood, the possibility of the family’s disintegration had again become a problem. By 1948, both Wilfred and Philbert had been married for several years. In 1949, Yvonne Little married Robert Jones, and the couple relocated to Grand Rapids. As the family grew and spread across new communities, the Nation of Islam would provide a common ground. Malcolm was the last to join, but his commitment was complete, and he embraced this opportunity to enact a wholesale change in his future life. Malcolm—Detroit Red, Satan, hustler, onetime pimp, drug addict and drug dealer, homosexual lover, ladies’ man, numbers racketeer, burglar Jack Carlton, and convicted thief—had convinced himself that a total revolution in his identity and beliefs was called for. After redrafting a one-page letter to Elijah Muhammad “at least twenty-five times,” he mailed it off. It wasn’t long before he received Muhammad’s reply, together with a five-dollar bill. He had taken his first decisive step toward Allah.

Although Malcolm did not realize it, by becoming members of the Nation of Islam, his brothers and sisters had entered into the richly heterodox community of global Islam. Extremely sectarian by the standards of orthodox Islam, the Nation of Islam nevertheless became the starting point for a spiritual journey that would consume Malcolm’s life.

Islam was established in what is today Saudi Arabia in the early seventh century CE by a man known as the Prophet Muhammad. Over the course of more than two decades, from roughly 610 CE to 632 CE, hundreds of beautiful verses were revealed to Muhammad and passed on by poetic recitations, just like Homer's stories or the love songs of the troubadours. These verses became known as the
Qur’an
, and Islam’s enduring power as a religion rests, in part, on its elegance and simplicity. At its core is the metaphor of the five pillars. The first pillar is the profession of faith, or
shahada
: “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is God’s Messenger.” The other four are acts a devout Muslim must perform: daily prayers (
salat
); tithing, or alms to those less fortunate (
zakat
); fasting during the month of Ramadan; and making a pilgrimage to Mecca (
hajj
). Many Muslims characterize
jihad
, meaning “striving” or “struggle,” as a sixth pillar, separating it into two types: the “greater jihad” that refers to a believer’s internal struggle to adhere to Islam’s creed, and the “lesser jihad,” the struggle against those who oppose Muhammad’s message.

In the Prophet’s day, Islam was an embracing, not excluding, religion that drew on the practices of other contemporaries. Muhammad had taught that both Jews and Christians were
ahl al-Kitab
(People of the Book), and that the Torah, the Gospels, and the Holy Qur'an were all a single divine scripture. Early Islamic rituals drew directly upon Jewish traditions. At first, Muslims prayed in the direction of Jerusalem, not Mecca. The Prophet’s mandatory fast was initiated each year on the tenth day (
Ashura
) of the first month of the Jewish calendar, the day more commonly known as Yom Kippur. Muhammad also adopted many Jewish dietary laws and purity requirements, and encouraged his followers to marry Jews, as he himself did. Second only to the Qur'an, and also central to Islam, is the
Sunna
, the collective traditions associated with Muhammad, which include thousands of stories, or
hadith
, all roughly based on the actions or words of the Prophet or those of his closest disciples.

What was truly revolutionary about the Islamic concept was its transethnic, nonracial character. Islam is primarily defined by a series of actions and obligations that all believers follow. In theory, differences in native language, race, ethnicity, geography, and social class become irrelevant. Indeed, from the beginning, individuals of African descent have become Muslims (literally, “those who submit” to God). Muhammad had encouraged the emancipation of African slaves held by Arabs; his first
muezzin
(the individual who calls believers to prayer) was an Ethiopian former slave named Bilal.

Over time, the religious pluralism of the
ummah
—the transnational Islamic community—gave way to an exclusive monotheism. After the Prophet’s death, Jews and Christians were perceived to be excluded from the community; centuries later, Islamic legal scholars would divide the entire world into two, the
dar al-Islam
(House of Islam) and the
dar al-Harb
(House of War), or those who oppose the believers.