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With his network of informants throughout the NOI, Muhammad was well aware of the troubles between Malcolm and Betty, and he certainly knew of the romantic feelings Evelyn still harbored toward Malcolm. And yet he selfishly chose to have her anyway. His decision, however, set off a chain reaction that quickly tested the limits of his control. Evelyn became pregnant in the middle of 1959, and by October she began phoning Muhammad at his home, demanding money. She strongly implied that she would cause trouble for him if it was revealed that she was carrying his child. Muhammad was outraged, convinced that he was being blackmailed. “You must think I’m a fool or Santa Claus,” he told her. After another telephone conversation with Evelyn, Muhammad turned to a minister who had heard the exchange and said coldly, “It looks like she will have to be put down.” In an organization where members were routinely beaten for transgressions as innocuous as smoking a cigarette, this statement could not be simply dismissed as tough talk. But Muhammad did nothing to harm Evelyn, and she gave birth to their daughter, Eva Marie, at St. Francis Hospital, in Lynwood, California, on March 30, 1960.

It would be easy to ascribe Muhammad’s trysts with Evelyn to some secret jealousy he felt over Malcolm’s growing media profile, but Evelyn’s case was not unique. Three months before her child was born, another unmarried NOI secretary, Lucille X Rosary, also gave birth to a child; two more children were born to NOI secretaries that year, in April and December. All were the progeny of Elijah Muhammad, who had taken advantage of the weeklong Chicago MGT tutorials—such as the one Betty had attended—to select attractive and talented young women for service in the national headquarters’ secretarial staff. Once they arrived, it took little for him to get what he wanted from them.

On the surface, Muhammad was not an impressive-looking man. He was short, mostly bald, homely, and his thin body had been crippled by severe bronchitis. But these external features obscured the attractive power that he exercised over his followers. They were convinced that he had actually spoken to God, and that his mission on earth was to redeem the black race. Muhammad radiated power and authority. When he demanded sex from a woman in his organization, it was inconceivable to him that his overtures would be rejected, or even questioned. The fact that his actions directly violated his own sect’s rules regarding sexual transgressions and morality were irrelevant to him.

For a time Muhammad’s long-suffering wife, Clara, pretended that she was unaware of her husband’s lascivious behavior, talking only to her daughter, Ethel Sharrieff, and other female confidantes. She complained bitterly to Ethel, for instance, when she discovered a love letter from one of his mistresses. When she refused to turn it over to him, he angrily stopped speaking to her. Clara Muhammad told her daughter, “I don’t know what he thinks my heart is, flesh and bone or a piece of wood or what.” Leading up to the February 1960 Saviourʹs Day, Clara became overwhelmed by news of additional relations concerning her husband. On February 13, 1960, after a shrill argument, Elijah abruptly abandoned his home. Tearfully, Clara complained to Ethel, “I’m sick of being treated like a dog.”

Thanks to its wiretaps and informants, the FBI was fully apprised of Muhammad’s infidelities. Having been frustrated in their attempts to find Malcolm’s weaknesses, Bureau officials now considered ways to turn Muhammad’s actions to their advantage. On May 22, 1960, FBI assistant director Cartha De Loach approved the text of a fictive anonymous letter to be sent to Clara Muhammad and several NOI ministers. The letter provocatively charged that “there appears to be a tremendous occupational hazard in being a young unmarried secretary employed in the household of Elijah Muhammad.” He had “preached against extramarital relationships but he doesn’t seem to be able to keep things under control in