3 books by Elijah Muhammad

The three books were in a box of other books under a table at the auction house, their spines upright and pointed towards me. They were dog-eared, as if someone had read them quite often and had barely put them down. The other books were closest to me, and eying their titles, I did not find them very interesting.

Then I picked up the three on the end, and was pleasantly surprised to find that they had all been written by the late Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. All appeared to be first-editions.

Message to the Blackman in America (1965)

The Fall of America (1973)

Our Savior Has Arrived (1974)

Each offered a message to what Minister Elijah Muhammad called the “American So-Called Negro.”

Since the beginning, Minister Muhammad and his Nation of Islam were a controversial entity – both beloved and hated, respected and denigrated. He preached a message of self-love and self-reliance to black people at a time when they were treated as second-class citizens. He did not found the Black Muslims (that was W. Fard Muhammad in the 1930s, and there is some question about his identity) but Minister Muhammad made it into a powerful movement over four decades.

He called whites “devils” and blacks “the original race.” He supported the separation of blacks and whites, and encouraged blacks to love themselves first. He also urged them to forsake Christianity and take up what he believed was their true religion of Islam.

Thousands of people listened and believed, and he and the Nation became a very influential movement among a large number of black people. Its most famous disciple was Malcolm X, who recruited new members, opened mosques and became its public face. He parted with Elijah Muhammad in the early 1960s after a trip to Mecca where he met Muslims of all colors worshipping together. He also was disenchanted after learning that the leader had fathered children with teenage members.

Another follower was Muhammad Ali, who changed his name from Cassius Clay, embracing one tenet of the Nation that blacks discard their slave names. One of Minister Muhammad’s most fiery followers was Minister Louis Farrakhan, who splintered from the Nation after Minister Muhammad’s son took over after his death in 1975. The son, Warith Deen Mohammad, preached the universal Islam; Minister Farrakhan adhered to the teachings espoused by Elijah Muhammad.

The books at auction outlined the teachings, thoughts and speeches of Elijah Muhammad over nearly a 10-year period, explaining his brand of Islam and its relationship to black people. Flipping though “Message,” I came across a section with him remarking on what he said was a 1961 California State Senate report accusing “The Negro Muslims” of being un-American.

“Usually, I do not waste my time on the untrue things that I hear or read about me and my followers, stated by our open enemies (the white people) and those of my people whom they have poisoned against self and their kind (the black race),” he wrote. He went on to correct what he considered misinformation about his birth, his arrests, his family (slave) name.

He also recounted the Muslims’ 12-point program for blacks, asking if there was anything wrong with its wording, including:

Separating from the slave master

Pooling resources

Making black neighborhoods decent places to live

Refraining from visiting places where they were not wanted

Building their own homes, schools and hospitals

Spending their money on themselves, and not wasting it on cars, clothes and shoes before buying a new home

Protecting their women

Ridding themselves of wine and other intoxicating drinks

Cosmetically, the books were not in very good shape. Black tape had been applied to the spine of “Message.” Another had a torn and tattered dust jacket, and the other had loose spine and pages.

The auctioneer had bypassed the box of books, apparently assuming that no one wanted them. I pulled the three Elijah Muhammad books out of the box and asked the auctioneer to sell them separately, knowing that bringing attention to them would alert other bidders. It did, and one other bidder stepped in. I won, though, getting all three for $7.