Nation of Islam: Cult of the Black Muslims/Chapter 8
VIII. PUBLICITY
Elijah Muhammad fully understands that wide publicity is extremely necessary for the continuation of the NOI. Though he and his ministers appear before the public frequently to promote NOI teachings--on radio and television, at rallies and feasts, and at the annual conventions--Elijah has long felt the written word could reach "so-called Negroes" who would not attend public functions. Also, he has not overlooked the fact that this method of spreading his "message of Truth" brings in considerable revenue.
A. Publications
Beginning in early 1956, Elijah arranged for a column, under his by-line, entitled "Mr. Muhammad Speaks" to appear regularly in the weekly Negro newspaper, the Pittsburgh "Courier." Immediately, selling papers became one of the most important of the cult's programs. In temples throughout the country, NOI members were given quotas for the number of these papers they were required to buy and resell. By the Summer of 1959, however, Elijah's attempts to dictate the paper's policy caused a conflict with the publisher, and his column was dropped. NOI then switched its hawking activity to another Negro weekly, the Los Angeles "Herald-Dispatch," which also had been printing Elijah's column and other
NOI news. By the Fall of 1961, Elijah and some of his hierarchy decided they had "made money for several other papers, now we will make some for ourselves." In October, 1961, they hired the "Chicago Defender" to print the first issue of their new paper, "Muhammad Speaks." Soon after, the Muslims bought themselves a rotary press and issued their own paper once a month until July, 1962, when they changed it to a bimonthly. Since February 12, 1965, "Muhammad Speaks" has been issued weekly. The paper first sold at 10 cents per copy, but the price was raised to 15 cents in January, 1962, and to 20 cents in April, 1963.
Over the years, other Negro newspapers have intermittently printed articles on the cult, as well as columns written by Elijah and other cult members. But Elijah's dictatorial attitude and demands have caused considerable trouble. The editors of the Los Angeles "Herald-Dispatch" became disenchanted with Elijah and dropped his column in May, 1963. Only the "New Crusader," a struggling Negro weekly published in Chicago, has been fairly consistent in running Elijah's column. Prior to its NOI association, this small paper, edited by a former waiter, was published under another name and supported leftist doctrines.
"Muhammad Speaks" is a tabloid newspaper published by Muhammad's Mosque No. 2, at 634 East 79th Street, Chicago. Generally 24 to 28 pages in length, this paper is superior to the average Negro paper in layout and technical quality. Large headlines in unusual combinations of black and white lettering on a shaded background-streak across the pages. Since mid-1964, more and more pictures have been printed in color.
On the front page of every issue, an article by Elijah Muhammad, usually accompanied by his photograph, dramatically sets forth some phase of his teachings. Very often, also appearing on the front page is either a large picture or a drawing which emphasizes racial strife, police brutality, or some form of violence against the black man. Throughout the paper, nearly everything printed tends to aggravate the soreness of race relations. in the United States and around the world. Always, the white man is portrayed as the brutal oppressor and the black man as the innocent victim. One- or two-paragraph news articles and filler-type inserts printed throughout the paper follow this same line. Some of the articles are dated, but many are not. The time element is not important. One recent issue contained six filler inserts all of which referred to Negro slave revolts in the United States during the 19th century.
To emphasize the progress. of the black man through following Elijah's teachings, many articles describe the achievements of members who operate their own businesses. Each issue of the paper also contains a section called "What Islam Has Done For Me." Therein, various NOI members relate the circumstances which led them into the cult. In all 
Typical Front Pages of Cult Newspaper
Many photographs and pictorial sketches are included throughout each issue of the paper. A typical issue contained five pictures showing Negroes being beaten by white police, two cartoons depicting the Negro being threatened by whites, a large photograph of a sobbing Negro mother whose son had been slain in a riot, and one of a Negro male victim of a beating by white youths.
Interspersed with these pictures of white violence are many news pictures of Elijah, Negro leaders of emerging African countries, smiling and happy NOI members, and prominent Negroes--both Muslim and non-Muslim. The back page of each issue has a photograph of Elijah, and the rest of the page is devoted to "The Muslim Program." This consists of the list of 10 items entitled "What the Muslims Want" and a list of 12 items entitled "What the Muslims Believe."
Considerable advertising appears in each issue of "Muhammad Speaks." The paper regularly carries classified advertisements placed by businesses operated by the various NOI temples and by individual NOI members. In addition to coupons soliciting future classified advertising, many other coupons are printed. Readers are thus enticed to clip and mail these coupons, indicating thereon that they wish to contribute to the "3-Year Economic Plan," or desire to subscribe to "Muhammad Speaks," or perhaps want to purchase books and other products for sale by NOI shopkeepers.
Regular features of the paper are columns
in late 1959, was a young, light-skinned, unmarried Negro girl who became a to Elijah Muhammad and soon began forcefully echoes Elijah's teaching that the Negro woman should completely disassociate herself from the customs and practices of the white woman, that the white race is "the real enemy of our people," and that the black people must develop strong "racial pride and solidarity."
What advocates, however, is not what practices. Since serving as a to Elijah, she has taken two vacations, once travelling to Cincinnati in 1960, where she gave birth to a baby girl, and again to Albuquerque in 1964, where she gave birth to a baby boy. This young who so strongly advocates pride of race, listed on the girl's birth certificate that the baby was white, that she herself was white, and that the alleged father was white.
The messenger of Allah Presents
The Muslim Program
Honorable Elijah Muhammad
| What the Muslims Want |
This is the question asked most frequently by both whites and blacks.
The answers to this question I shall state as simply as possible.
1. We want freedom. We want a full and complete freedom.
2. We want justice. Equal justice under the law. We want justice applied equally to all, regardless of creed, class or color.
3. We want equality of opportunity. We want equal membership in society with the best in civilized society.
4. We want our people in America whose parents or grandparents are descendents from slaves to be allowed to establish a separate state or territory of their own—either on this continent or elsewhere. We believe that our former slave masters are obligated to provide such land and that the area must be fertile and minerally rich. We believe that our former slave masters are obligated to maintain and supply our needs in this separate territory for the next 20 or 25 years—until we are able to produce and supply our own needs.
Since we cannot get along with them in peace and equality after giving them 400 years of our sweat and blood and receiving in return some of the worse treatment human beings have ever experienced, we believe our contributions to this land and the suffering forced upon us by white America justifies our demand for complete separation in a state or territory of our own.
5. We want freedom for all Believers of Islam held in federal prisons. We want freedom for all Black men and women now under death sentence in innumerable prisons in the North as well as the South.
We want every Black man and woman to have the freedom to accept or reject being separated from the slave-masters children and establish a land of their own.
We know that the above plan for the situation of the Black and white conflict is the best and only answer to the problem between two people.
6. We want an immediate end to the police brutality and mob attacks against the so-called Negro throughout the United States.
We believe that the Federal government should intercede to see that Black men and women tried in white courts receive justice in accordance with the laws of the land—or allow us to build a new nation for ourselves, dedicated to justice, freedom, and liberty.
7. As long as we are not allowed to establish a state or territory of our own, we demand not only equal justice under the laws of the United States, but equal employment opportunities—NOW!
We do not believe that after 400 years of free or nearly free labor, swear and blood, which helped America become rich and powerful, so many thousands of black people should have to subsist on relief or charity or live in poor houses.
8. We want the government of the United States to exempt our people from ALL taxation as long as we are deprived of equal justice under the laws of the land.
9. We want equal education—but separate schools up to 16 for boys and 18 for girls on the condition that the girls be sent to womens colleges and universities. We want all Black children educated, taught and trained by their own teachers.
Under such a schooling system we believe we will make a better nation of people. The United States government should provide free all necessary text books and equipment, schools and college buildings. The Muslim teachers shall be left free to teach and train their people in the way of righteousness, decency and self respect.
10. We believe that intermarriage or race mixing should be prohibited. We want the religion of Islam taught without hindrance or suppression.
These are some of the things that we, the Muslims, want for our people in North America.
| What the Muslims Believe |
1. WE BELIEVE in the One God whose proper name is Allah.
2. WE BELIEVE in the Holy Qur-an and in the scriptures of all the Prophets of God.
3. WE BELIEVE in the truth of the Bible, but we believe that it has been tampered with and must be reinterpreted so that mankind will not be snared by the falsehoods that have been added to it.
4. WE BELIEVE in Allah's Prophets and the Scriptures they brought to the people.
5. WE BELIEVE in the resurrection of the dead—not in physical resurrection—but mental resurrection. We believe that the so-called Negroes are most in need of mental resurrection; therefore, they will be resurrected first.
Furthermore, we believe we are the people of God's choice as it has been written that God would choose the rejected and the despised. We can find no other persons fitting this description in these last days more than the so-called Negro's in America. We believe in the resurrection of the righteous.
6. We further believe in the judgement. We believe this first judgement will take place, as God revealed in America.
7. We believe this is the time in history for the separation of the so-called Negro's and the so-called white Americans. We believe the black man should be freed in name as well as in fact. By this we mean that he should be freed from names imposed upon him by his former slave-master. We believe that if we are free indeed, we should go in our own people's names—the black peoples of the earth.
8. We believe in justice for all whether in God or not. We believe as others that we are due equal justice as human beings. We believe in equality—as a nation—of equals. We do not believe that we are equal with our slave-masters in the status of "freed slaves".
We recognize and respect American citizens as independent peoples, and we respect their laws that govern this nation.
9. WE BELIEVE that the offer of integration is hypocritical and is made by those who are trying to deceive the black people into believing that their 400-year-old open enemies of freedom, justice and equality are, all of a sudden, their "friends". Furthermore, we believe that such deception is intended to prevent black people from realizing that the time in history has arrived for the separation from the whites of this nation.
If the white people are truthful about their professed friendship toward the so-called Negro, they can prove it by dividing up America with their slaves.
We do not believe that America will ever be able to furnish enough jobs for her own millions of unemployed in addition to jobs for the 20,000,000 black people.
10. WE BELIEVE that we who declared ourselves to be righteous Muslims should not participate in wars that take the lives of humans. We do not believe this nation should force us to take part in such wars, for we have nothing to gain from it unless America agrees to give us the necessary territory wherein we may have something to fight for.
11. WE BELIEVE our women should be respected and protected as the women of other nationalities are respected and protected.
12. WE BELIEVE that Allah (God) appeared in the person of Master W. Fard Muhammad, July, 1930, the long awaited "Messiah" of the Christians, and the "Mahdi" of the Muslims.
We believe further and lastly that Allah is God and besides HIM there is no God and He will bring about a universal government of peace wherein we can live in peace together.
Back Page of "Muhammed Speaks"
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b7C from 1960 to October, 1963. In September, 1961, where both attended schools. Their marriage was unsuccessful, and they returned to the United States and were divorced in October, 1963. went back to Egypt and married an Egyptian girl. In June, 1964, remarried. This time, she became the
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An editorial in the January 29, 1965, issue of "Muhammad Speaks" reveals the main theme and purpose of Elijah Muhammad's whole publicity program through the years:
- "... we cannot get our freedom, justice and dignity from the American government without Divine help. It has been Divinely predicted that God alone would send a Messenger and that messenger is among us."
.......
- "... The slave is never able to free himself from the master without a guide. And that guide is the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, born to do just that."
But the "so-called Negro" needs prodding. Elijah's articles conclude with the urgent appeal: "HURRY AND JOIN ONTO YOUR OWN KIND, THE TIME OF THIS WORLD IS NOW AT HAND."
Elijah occasionally has had to change this "time" that he foretells, and once again he is warning in the above-mentioned issue of the paper: - "America is falling. Her doom has come and none, said the prophets, shall help her in the day of her downfall .... What is going to happen in 1965 and 1966? It certainly will change your minds about following a doomed people—a people who hate you and your kind, and who call one who teaches the truth about them a hater. They are the producers of hatred of us. We are with God and the righteous."
B. Exploitation of Negro Athletes
Noted Negro athletes, with many admirers among members of all races, are exploited by the NOI to gain publicity for the cult. The NOI has been most successful in this regard with
considerable news coverage. On many occasions, he had been asked by the press about his reputed Muslim connections. During interviews at that time, he gave the impression that he was not a Muslim member, although he admitted his respect for the religion.
Then, the day after Elijah Muhammad announced to the annual Muslim convention in Chicago that was a follower of the Muslims and had accepted him as the "Messenger of Allah." Elijah claimed that the reason had not been defeated was that "Allah and myself said no." then told the press that he had been a member of the Muslims for five years. But what events led up to this declaration by
own father, speaking earlier to the press about his son, said that the Muslims had been "hammering at him and brainwashing him" ever since Like many other Negro youths in Louisville, Kentucky, had evidenced some interest in the Muslims, but he had also "marched for integration." spent considerable time with cult leaders in Miami while During 1962, with his younger brother, he attended several NOI functions in Miami and elsewhere. But little attention was paid to him by the NOI. In fact, the NOI was and in "Muhammad Speaks," of February 18, 1963, printed an article captioned "Memo to ." The article supported what it called 1963, and was gaining considerable attention in the press. Suddenly he became important to the Muslims. Malcolm X developed a close friendship with During the rest of that year, and his brother were introduced as "visitors" at several NOI temples; and the press throughout the country described appearances at various public NOI functions. The interest of the press really became aroused in January, 1964, when disappeared from Miami, where he had been and appeared and spoke before a New York NOI rally. These were the events that took place before and that led to his open affiliation with the NOI.
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Elijah Muhammad has utilized various advertising media to
publicize himself and his cult programs. With typical extravagant and exaggerated claims, he published a schedule in the first edition of "Muhammad Speaks" which listed 198 cities throughout the country where his Weekly radio broadcasts could be heard. As is usual with Elijah's pretentious plans, his radio broadcasting too was beset by problems. Stations which began broadcasting his weekly taped speeches frequently cancelled the program after short periods of time because of complaints from listeners. Those stations which continued to carry his program often had difficulty obtaining new tapes and were obliged to repeat previous programs. 
The Late Malcolm X Little
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Presenting Gift to Elijah
The actual value to Elijah of his radio broadcasting is hardly assessable. However, it is significant that the schedule continues to be set out in the cult paper and that frequently the list of stations carrying his programs and the list of cities reached reflect changes. The March 5, 1965, issue of "Muhammad Speaks" lists 31 cities which can receive Elijah's weekly broadcasts beamed from 19 radio stations around the country. Fourteen of the 31 cities are supposed to be receiving the programs from Station XERF, a Mexican radio station located just across the border from Del Rio, Texas.
Another advertising media tried by Elijah was beset with even more difficulties. Early in 1964, Elijah decided to utilize public transportation systems to carry signs advertising his programs. This plan proved expensive and disappointing to Elijah. Many transportation companies would not accept his advertising, others that agreed to carry the signs soon cancelled the program after receiving complaints from citizens and civic organizations in their areas.
When the transit program was begun early in 1964, the signs carried Elijah's picture and, in large letters, the challenge: "Read--Muhammad Speaks Newspaper." Below these words appeared the name of the local radio station and the time when Elijah's speeches could be heard. Later, after his economic program was devised, those companies still accepting his advertisements displayed pertinent new signs. Again, Elijah's picture drew attention, but the new caption read: "Join Muhammad's 3 Year Savings Plan to Help Fight Poverty and Want — 5335 So. Greenwood Ave., Chicago, 15, Illinois. Buy 'Muhammad Speaks' newspaper."
Early in 1965, because of the expense and the lack of response, the transit advertising program was discontinued.