The Messenger, page 28
Bureau continues to receive information through investigation conducted by Chicago and Phoenix and the sources available to these offices that Elijah Muhammad is engaging in extramarital activities with at least five female members of the Nation of Islam (NOI). This information indicates Muhammad has fathered some children by these women and that his wife, Clara, has become aware of his infidelity which has resulted in domestic strife. Apparently, Muhammad is furnishing financial support to at least some of these women and their children and contemplates a nursery to get his illegitimate children under one roof.…
Chicago and Phoenix should make recommendations concerning the use of information thus obtained to discredit Muhammad with his followers. This could be handled through the use of carefully selected informants planting the seeds of dissension through anonymous letters and/or telephone calls and through various other selected actions.…62
While agents dreamt up ways to implement the suggestion from FBI headquarters, Clara and Herbert made final arrangements for their trip to Egypt. On April 30, a source at Trans World Airlines told Chicago FBI agents that Clara and Herbert were leaving on TWA Flight 800 from O’Hare International Airport at three o’clock on the afternoon of May 3.63 Clara’s ticket was one-way to Cairo, the flight’s final destination after several stops in Europe. The day after Clara left, Muhammad’s mistresses flooded him with phone calls. All of them wanted the same thing: money. Muhammad refused, telling one that the money he gave her in April was enough to last until October. Another threatened to go to his house in Chicago and cause a disturbance if he didn’t relent. “Go wherever you want because it won’t make any difference,” he told her. “You can’t prove anything.”64
“Are you going to send the money or not?” the former secretary asked.
“No,” he replied.
“Then I’m going to call your family and tell your daughter just how you are.”
“Listen,” he said softly, perhaps realizing that he had overplayed his hand, “now is not the time for anything like—”
“I’m going to tell her,” she said, then quickly hung up.
When he told the secretary that he didn’t have time to deal with their personal relationship just then, he assumed that she would understand why, though clearly she didn’t. He was deeply involved in a major crisis: a Muslim had been murdered in cold blood six days earlier, and nearly every Muslim in the country was ready to declare war. The fatal disturbance involved the Los Angeles Police Department and Ronald X Stokes, the popular secretary of Muhammad’s Mosque No. 27 at 5606 South Broadway. On April 27, Stokes was handing freshly cleaned clothing to another Muslim when a police officer took an interest in the transaction.65 According to the officer, he thought that Stokes was selling stolen clothing from the trunk of his car. The officer approached Stokes’s vehicle with his weapon drawn. He asked Stokes to show him his business license. As Stokes tried to explain that he worked at a local cleaners which gave him a discount for bringing it so much business (he personally picked up and delivered clothing to his coreligionists), the officer assumed he was lying. The next words out of the officer’s mouth were guaranteed to provoke a fight: “Nigger,” he said, “turn around and put your hands up against the car and spread-eagle.”
“We didn’t do anything,” Stokes protested. He offered to take the officer to the cleaners to prove that the clothing wasn’t stolen, but the officer wouldn’t hear of it. Stokes grew nervous as he faced the officer’s drawn gun, and he accused the policeman of harassment at the same time that he was trying to reason with him. Several onlookers ran a block or so to the mosque and alerted the Muslims to what was happening. By the time they arrived, Stokes had been felled by a bullet to the chest. His blood colored the sidewalk as the officer, who had summoned reinforcements, joined other officers in beating the handcuffed victim. The back of Stokes’s head was crushed from the impact of the blows. When the Muslims saw what had happened, a few fought with the police while others ran back to the mosque to protect the women and children. Those who stayed with Stokes were seriously injured, two so severely beaten with nightsticks that a hospital spokesman said they were not expected to live. Another was shot in the groin, and one was shot in the lower back, leaving him permanently paralyzed.66
By the time the police invaded the mosque, most of the women and children had escaped through a rear entrance. The men, who had been trained to protect the sanctity of their temple with their lives, found themselves in circumstances harkening back to slavery. Though the police knew that Muslims did not keep weapons in the mosque (Muslims frequently made a point of this in an attempt to avoid violent confrontations with police), they ransacked the place on the pretext of searching for them. Once they were absolutely sure the Muslims were unarmed, police ordered them to form a single-file lineup. “We shot your brother outside,” one officer yelled at them. “Are you going to do something about it?”67 The Muslims stood there, saying nothing. The officers then conducted one of the most bizarre strip searches in the annals of law enforcement. First each man’s jacket was ripped up the middle, and then while some officers held the group at gunpoint, others pulled each man aside for a more thorough search. The officers used their hands and a sharp object to cut each man’s pants to shreds, exposing their underwear. Several men accused of acting “belligerent” were poked in the rectum with nightsticks. As a final act of humiliation, they were made to walk slowly outside and get into police cruisers. Hundreds of witnesses watched as the Muslims were taken away in shame. Fourteen Muslims, including Minister John Shabass, were booked for assaulting a police officer and other charges.68
As word of the assault traveled eastward, Malcolm X and others were considering means to take an army of Muslims to Los Angeles to go into battle. But when he asked Muhammad for approval, the Messenger was aghast. “There’s already been one bloodbath. Why do we need another?” Malcolm was angry, he said later, but abided by Muhammad’s decision. “I told you we would lose some good soldiers in the war with the devils,”69 Muhammad added, “and we will lose more. Allah is the Best Knower. He will settle the score.” He instructed Malcolm to tell the Muslims to go back to their homes, and asked his national representative to fly to Los Angeles as soon as possible. For the first time in recent memory, civil rights leaders heard Muhammad asking for their help in the name of brotherhood. The conciliatory note came after Dr. King, Roy Wilkins, and other civil rights leaders called or sent telegrams to Muhammad to express their condolences and to denounce police brutality.70
“In these crucial times we must not think in terms of one’s religion, but in terms of justice for us black people,” Muhammad said at a press conference in Chicago. “This means a united front for justice in America. It would have been more safe on the 27th of April for our people in Los Angeles to be among wild lions than in civilized America. What happened to us on April 27 could and is happening to you and me throughout America.”71 Malcolm X joined several black leaders in Los Angeles for a rally at the Second Baptist Church on May 17. The highlight of the rally, which drew 3,000, was an announcement from the NAACP that it would support the NOI’s call for an investigation into the raid on a house of worship. Malcolm X controlled his anger during the press conference, but later told his top aides in New York that the lack of direct action for the murder of Stokes was one of several indicators that the Muslims were seen as “all talk and no action.”72 Malcolm’s speech at Second Baptist evoked comments from Mayor Sam Yorty, who portrayed it as an incitement to violence. When a second rally was scheduled, Muhammad privately expressed fears about what Malcolm X might say next. “I don’t know who’s to control Malcolm,” he said to a member of the Los Angeles mosque. “Just tell Malcolm to cool his heels.”73
Muhammad gave several speeches in the weeks after the assault that were filled with talk of fire and brimstone, but suspiciously silent on self-defense. He was starting to sound like the Christian preachers whose “turn-the-other-cheek” philosophy he ridiculed. An airline tragedy on June 4 served to bolster Muhammad’s claim for divine retribution. “The airplane crash in France in which 130 people from Georgia was killed was the work of Allah for what the white man had done to the so-called Negroes,” he said at McCormick Place on July 15. “More of this will come.”74 With the exception of the six-member flight crew, everyone on board was from Georgia, the state for which he harbored the most hatred. Muhammad’s contention about the loss of innocent lives in the airplane catastrophe did little to assuage the anger of Muslims in Los Angeles, as the officer who shot Stokes testified that the fatal wound was struck only after Stokes moved his hands “menacingly.” A jury agreed, and held that it was a case of “justifiable homicide.”
While Muhammad vented his rage against injustices in America, his harem of secretaries were meeting in Chicago to vent their rage against his personal injustices. On May 10, several of them discovered the curious and coincidental nature of their relationships with the Messenger. Except for the two sisters, the secretaries were unaware that Muhammad had given each of them the same spiel about his sperm being “divine seed.” He had been lying to all of them about his affections and marital intentions. None seemed to take the revelation harder than Tynetta X Nelson. On May 17, 1962, she called the Messenger at his home in Phoenix. As agents monitored and recorded the conversation, she argued with him about his promiscuity and asked him about rumors that he was involved with the other secretaries. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Messenger replied. “Don’t tell me you don’t!” Tynetta yelled. “It’s a lie, the biggest one I’ve ever heard … I’m not going to have it!” If he kept seeing anyone besides her, she said, she was going to have to have another man’s arms around her. “Oh, you don’t have anyone else,” he said. “Come on,” he pleaded, “don’t talk to me like that.”75
“All right,” Tynetta snapped, “but if you try a trick like that again—” Without completing the thought, she hung up.
As the Messenger was whirled around in a cyclone of trouble, Clara was in Egypt enjoying peace of mind for the first time in years. Time flew by. Her eight-week stay extended to ten, then twelve, then to four months, and Elijah began wondering whether she had finally made good her threat to leave him. As he had done when he was in Egypt in 1959, he made frantic calls to her, telling her all the things a neglected woman needs to hear. Several love letters later, Clara relented and agreed to return to him. She arrived in New York on August 2, then took a flight to Chicago later that evening.76
What Clara discovered upon returning home extinguished whatever remained of love in her marriage of four decades: word of Elijah’s escapades had spread throughout the NOI faster than an Asian flu. The real trouble began on July 12, when Evelyn called Muhammad to demand more money. When he balked, she accused him of treating his illegitimate children like mangy stray dogs. “You don’t allow your other children to live on $300 a month.… All I want is money to pay the rent and to get some food and clothing.” But Muhammad remained unmoved. “You’re trying to blackmail me and therefore I won’t speak to you or give you one red cent!”77 Evelyn called again the next morning. If Muhammad wasn’t at her door by three o’clock that afternoon, she was coming over to his house. He replied that he was too busy, but gave in a little by promising to meet her demands before dusk. During the dinner hour, when they knew Muhammad would be entertaining, Evelyn and Lucille took their children over to his house. They banged on the door, but no one answered. Reluctantly, they left the toddlers at the front entrance and started to walk away.78 When Raymond Sharrieff called to the women to come back and get their children, they refused. Muhammad didn’t give them enough money to raise his children, they said, so let him raise them. To avoid a scene at the Messenger’s front door, Sharrieff waited until the mothers left, then called the police and told them that someone had abandoned several young children on his doorstep. The children were taken to the precinct and handed over to social workers for investigation.79
Muhammad called Evelyn the next morning to complain about her actions. She tried to reason with him, she said, but he had ignored her. “From now on, I’m not going to protect you in any way, shape, or form. If you want trouble, you’ll get it.”80 While in custody, Evelyn told Chicago policemen that she had gone to the house to collect child-support money. Although she refused to divulge his name to the policemen who interrogated her about the father of her children, she told Elijah that she was through protecting him. Calling the police on his own children, Evelyn said, “was the dirtiest thing you could do.” From now on, he would have to deal with her lawyers. “I’m not going to be pushed around anymore.” No charges were leveled against Evelyn and Lucille for abandoning their toddlers, but the police department’s juvenile section put them on notice that the penalties would be severe should there be another child-neglect incident.81
In a memorandum dated July 14 to William C. Sullivan, FBI official Fred J. Baumgardner wrote that the incident could be the break the Bureau was waiting for. The Bureau could use its contacts within the Chicago Police Department to “conduct an independent investigation directed toward bringing the incident to public attention and causing a bastardy charge to be filed against Muhammad.”82 On July 31, Sullivan authorized the Chicago SAC
to prepare and mail an anonymous letter to Clara Muhammad upon her return from Egypt. Chicago is also authorized to prepare and mail similar anonymous letters containing substantially the same information as the letter mailed to Clara Muhammad to selected individuals listed on page 3…. These letters should be mailed at staggered intervals using care to prevent any possibility of tracing the mailing back to the FBI.83
Despite the letters that Clara had found earlier and her repeated pleas to her husband to reform, the anonymous letter made it obvious that the sixty-four-year-old Elijah was continuing his indiscretions. In August 1962, Robert 5X, a member of the Boston mosque, was considering proposing to Evelyn X, but first he wanted to know how, as a good Muslim, she could justify having two children out of wedlock. After being evasive for a long while (she routinely claimed her “husband was away”), she reluctantly told her suitor the truth. The reason she had not married the father of her children, she said, was because the father was already married. His name was Muhammad—Elijah Muhammad.84 Robert 5X was shocked. He loved her, but found what she was saying simply impossible; it was blasphemous, the product of a sick or defective mind. Robert rushed to Captain Clarence X Gill for advice. Gill told him that he would look into her allegations, and also said that he would have to tell Minister Louis Farrakhan immediately. Shortly after Gill told Farrakhan, Evelyn X was transferred from Boston to Chicago. Another secretary from the Boston mosque, Lucille X Rosary, was transferred back to Chicago around the same time. She, too, had borne a child out of wedlock while working in the Messenger’s office in Chicago.85
While Muhammad was enmeshed in his personal crises, Malcolm X was kept busy managing the empire. In mid-August, he produced a special edition of Muhammad Speaks that focused on the Stokes incident. Using autopsy photographs, photos taken of Stokes as he lay in a pool of blood, and photos taken of the other victims, he brought the special edition out on the heels of a grand jury’s finding that the death of Stokes was “justifiable homicide.” One photo revealed powder burns on Stokes’s chest, suggesting that he was shot at extremely close range.86 The outrage sparked by the publication led to minor civil unrest in Los Angeles, and police feared that conditions were ripe for a riot. On August 14, 1962, Charles Nicodemus of the Chicago Daily News broke a story about a pending probe of the NOI:
The House Rules Committee Tuesday recommended a congressional investigation of the Black Muslim movement. A resolution adopted by the powerful House unit asked that the investigation probe into possible subversive or un-American activities of the black supremacy cult be conducted by the Committee on Un-American Activities.87
The resolution, introduced by South Carolina Congressman L. Mendel Rivers, alleged that a lower-court judge had erred in finding that the NOI practiced a legitimate faith. At a press conference on the steps of the Capitol Building on August 14, Rivers promised to
open up the unsavory history of the Black Muslims for all America to see. We know that the organization is dedicated on a national level to violence, bloody deeds, hatred, and death. We need to look at this group because it is tailor-made for a Communist takeover.88
After picking up support from Francis E. Walter, head of the House Un-American Activities Committee, Rivers persuaded the House Rules Committee to endorse the probe. “It appears to be clear that on the simple basis of what the Muslims teach, they are subversive to our form of government and pose a growing danger to our internal security,” Walter’s statement for the Congressional Record read on September 4. There was evidence, he added, that the “Communist Party tried to work for united-front type of operation” with the Nation of Islam.89 A resolution demanding the investigation was passed in early September, and subpoenas were issued ordering Muhammad, Malcolm, and other top officials to come to Washington to face the House Un-American Activities Committee.
If Rivers sounded like a man with a card up his sleeve, he was. Weeks before the August 14 press conference, he had conferred with top FBI officials about the NOI. During the discussions, Hoover assured Rivers that the information in the Bureau’s files would “make Elijah Muhammad look ridiculous.” The Bureau gave Rivers a copy of its files on Wallace D. Fard. In summaries, agents described Fard as a white confidence man with an extensive criminal record. It also gave Rivers its file on Muhammad, which emphasized that he was once convicted of “contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”90 The decision to haul Muhammad before HUAC generated numerous letters of protest from civil rights groups, but the hearings moved ahead. The threat of the probe, the Bureau learned, frightened Muhammad, who was determined at all costs not to return to prison.
