Leader of the Nation of Islam for four decades. James Baldwin spent an evening at his Chicago house and made it the pivot of The Fire Next Time; the break between Muhammad and Malcolm X is what One Day When I Was Lost has to dramatise.
Elijah Muhammad led the Nation of Islam for forty years, from a Detroit storefront movement to a national organization with temples, schools, farms, and a newspaper — and with Malcolm X as its most famous minister until Malcolm X broke with the movement in 1964. James Baldwin spent an evening at his table in Chicago in the summer of 1961 and made that dinner the pivot of The Fire Next Time.
He was born Elijah Robert Poole on 7 October 1897 in Sandersville, Georgia, the seventh of thirteen children of a sharecropper and Baptist lay preacher. His schooling ended in the fourth grade; the work that followed was sawmills and brickyards, and the Georgia of his youth showed him lynchings he spoke of for the rest of his life — he later said he had "seen enough of the white man's brutality to last me 26,000 years." He married Clara Evans in 1917, and in 1923 the family joined the Great Migration north to the Detroit area, where he took assembly-line and factory work through the twenties and lost it in the Depression.
In the summer of 1931 he heard Wallace D. Fard, a door-to-door silk peddler preaching a new religion that fused Islam's name with Black self-sufficiency and a theology of white people as devils. Poole became his most devoted follower, took the name Elijah Muhammad, and when Fard disappeared in 1934, claimed the succession — teaching thereafter that Fard had been Allah in person and that he himself was his Messenger. He moved the headquarters to Temple No. 2 in Chicago.
He was jailed briefly in 1934, when Detroit authorities charged the Nation's school with keeping children out of the public system. During the Second World War he told his followers not to register for the draft, and served four years in the federal prison at Milan, Michigan, from 1942 to 1946, while Clara Muhammad ran the movement. The imprisonment fixed his authority. Afterward the Nation grew on two engines: recruitment in prisons — which brought in the young Malcolm Little — and an economic program of temple-owned bakeries, groceries, farms, and the newspaper Muhammad Speaks.
Muhammad's Nation demanded discipline its leader did not keep. Malcolm X's discovery that Muhammad had fathered children with several of his young secretaries — facts later aired in paternity suits — was among the causes of the 1964 break, along with Muhammad's silencing of Malcolm over the Kennedy assassination remarks. When Nation of Islam members shot Malcolm X in February 1965, Muhammad denied ordering the killing. He led the movement for ten more years.
What Muhammad built was as much a regimen as a religion. Members took new names, dressed formally, and submitted to the Fruit of Islam's discipline; pork, alcohol, and tobacco were forbidden, and Muhammad's dietary teaching filled a book of its own, How to Eat to Live. His doctrine went into Message to the Blackman in America in 1965, and out every week through Muhammad Speaks, for years one of the largest Black-owned newspapers in the country.
The economics were the argument made visible. By the early 1970s the Nation owned farms, bakeries, groceries, and restaurants across several states, ran its Muhammad University of Islam schools in dozens of cities, and Muhammad claimed a fortune in the tens of millions — separatism funded by its own commerce, displayed each year at the Saviours' Day convention in Chicago.
The Baldwin connection is a single dinner, closely recorded. After seeing Baldwin on television with Malcolm X, Muhammad invited him to the mansion on Chicago's South Side that served as the Nation's headquarters. Baldwin went in the summer of 1961, was seated at Muhammad's side, and listened while the Messenger worked on him — courteously, patiently — to join. Baldwin's account of the evening, in the long essay "Down at the Cross," is the pivot of The Fire Next Time: he found himself charmed by the man, persuaded of the suffering the Nation answered, and unable to accept the theology. He left in the Nation's car, and the essay records the distance between guest and host that the evening's courtesy never closed.
The relationship between Muhammad and Malcolm X — adoption, elevation, and rupture — is also the dramatic spine of One Day When I Was Lost, the screenplay Baldwin drew from The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Elijah Muhammad died of congestive heart failure in Chicago on 25 February 1975, at seventy-seven — the eve of the Nation's annual Saviours' Day convention — and is buried at Mount Glenwood Memory Gardens in Glenwood, Illinois. His son Wallace, later Warith Deen Mohammed, was acclaimed as his successor at the convention the next day, and promptly dismantled the theology, leading most of the movement into orthodox Sunni Islam; Louis Farrakhan revived the Nation of Islam's name and doctrine in the late 1970s.
Born Elijah Robert Poole in Sandersville, Georgia, on 7 October.
Marries Clara Evans. They have eight children.
Joins the Great Migration north to the Detroit area with his family.
Hears Wallace D. Fard preach in Detroit and becomes his most devoted follower.
Fard disappears; Muhammad claims the succession and moves the Nation of Islam's headquarters to Chicago.
Imprisoned for instructing followers to refuse the draft; serves four years at Milan, Michigan, while Clara Muhammad runs the movement.
Hosts James Baldwin at dinner at his South Side Chicago mansion — the evening at the center of The Fire Next Time.
Malcolm X leaves the Nation after his silencing and the paternity revelations; Nation members assassinate him the following February, and Muhammad denies ordering it.
Dies of congestive heart failure in Chicago on 25 February. His son Warith Deen Mohammed leads most of the movement into Sunni Islam.
Depicted in · Book
The break between Muhammad and Malcolm X is what the script has to dramatise; Baldwin knew the material first-hand from the evening recounted in The Fire Next Time.
— James Baldwin, One Day When I Was Lost (1972)
Depicted in · Book
The long essay pivots on an evening at Muhammad's Chicago house — Baldwin's first-hand account of the Nation of Islam's leader at his own table.
— James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963), 'Down at the Cross'
Depicted in · Book
The book's central relationship after the conversion: the leader Malcolm X corresponded with from prison, served for twelve years, and broke with in 1964. The later chapters record the silencing, the paternity revelations, and the threats that followed him out of the Nation of Islam.
— Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)
The leader of the Nation of Islam from 1934 until his death in 1975. Born Elijah Poole in Georgia in 1897, he inherited the movement from its founder Wallace D. Fard, whom he taught his followers to regard as Allah in person, and built it into a national organization of temples, schools, and businesses.
Mentor, then adversary. Malcolm X converted in prison, rose to become the Nation's most famous minister, and broke with Muhammad in March 1964 — over his silencing, and over Muhammad's children with his young secretaries. Nation of Islam members assassinated Malcolm X in February 1965; Muhammad denied ordering the killing.
Yes. In the summer of 1961 Muhammad invited James Baldwin to his mansion on Chicago's South Side after seeing him on television with Malcolm X. Baldwin's account of the evening, in the essay "Down at the Cross," is the centerpiece of The Fire Next Time.
Of congestive heart failure, in Chicago on 25 February 1975, at seventy-seven. He had led the Nation of Islam for just over forty years.
His son Wallace, later known as Warith Deen Mohammed, succeeded him and led most of the membership into orthodox Sunni Islam, abandoning his father's theology. Louis Farrakhan revived the Nation of Islam's original name and doctrine in the late 1970s.
Depicted in
The break between Muhammad and Malcolm X is what the script has to dramatise; Baldwin knew the material first-hand from the evening recounted in The Fire Next Time.
Depicted in
The long essay pivots on an evening at Muhammad's Chicago house — Baldwin's first-hand account of the Nation of Islam's leader at his own table.
Depicted in
The book's central relationship after the conversion: the leader Malcolm X corresponded with from prison, served for twelve years, and broke with in 1964. The later chapters record the silencing, the paternity revelations, and the threats that followed him out of the Nation of Islam.