Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [50]
The seed was sown. Not long after this conversation, Hilda paid a visit and filled in the backdrop to the family’s conversion. It had begun quietly and casually. Sometime in 1947, while waiting at a bus stop, Wilfred had struck up a conversation with a young, well-dressed black man, who began discussing religion and black nationalism and invited him to visit the Nation of Islam’s Temple No. 1 in Detroit. When Wilfred went, he found a modest storefront church. It was a rental property with a hall that could probably accommodate about two hundred people, though there seemed to be fewer than a hundred actual members. What Wilfred heard there sounded comfortingly familiar: a message of black separatism, selfreliance, and a black deity that reminded him instantly of Earl Little’s Garveyite sermons.
It took only a few months for Hilda, Philbert, Wesley, and Reginald to also become members. Wilfred would later explain, “We already had been indoctrinated with Marcus Garvey’s philosophy, so that was just a good place for us. They didn’t have to convince us we were black and should be proud or anything like that.” There were personal connections to the NOIʹs first family, Clara and Elijah Poole, that made the family’s attraction to the Nation of Islam natural. When Earl had been living in Georgia, he had occasionally preached in the town of Perry, the home of Clara Poole’s parents. Ella had grown to adulthood in Georgia before moving to the North, and she had met both Clara and Elijah Poole years before they were linked to the Nation.
During her visit, Hilda also explained to Malcolm the central tenet of Nation of Islam theology, Yacub’s History, which told how an evil black scientist named Yacub had genetically engineered the creation of the entire white race. Allah, in the person of an Asiatic black man, had come into the world to reveal this extraordinary story, and to explain the legacies of the white race’s monstrous crimes against blacks. Only through complete racial separation, Hilda explained, could blacks survive. She urged Malcolm to write directly to the Nation of Islam’s supreme leader, Elijah Muhammad—as Elijah Poole had renamed himself—who was based in Chicago. He would satisfy any doubts Malcolm might have. Malcolm was amazed by his sisterʹs obvious devotion, and afterward wrote, “I don’t know if I was able to open my mouth and say goodbye.”
Over the next few weeks, he grappled with what he had been told. The black nationalist message of racial pride, a rejection of integration, and self-sufficiency rekindled strong connections with the driving faith of his parents. The NOIʹs condemnation of all-white institutions, especially Christianity, also fitted with his experiences. Yet the bitter young nonbeliever had never shown the least interest in organized religion or the spiritual life. For Malcolm, the lure was more secular: Nation of Islam held out the possibility of finding self-respect and even dignity as a black man. This was a faith that said blacks had nothing for which to be ashamed or apologetic.
But above any spiritual or political goals was one important personal one: conversion was a way to keep the Little family together. As all the Little children had reached adulthood, the possibility of the family’s disintegration had again become a problem. By 1948, both Wilfred and Philbert had been married for several years. In 1949, Yvonne Little married Robert Jones, and the couple relocated to Grand Rapids. As the family grew and spread across new communities, the Nation of Islam would provide a common ground. Malcolm was the last to join, but his commitment was complete, and he embraced this opportunity to enact a wholesale change in his future life. Malcolm—Detroit Red, Satan, hustler, onetime pimp, drug addict and drug dealer, homosexual lover, ladies’ man, numbers racketeer, burglar Jack Carlton, and convicted thief—had convinced himself that a total revolution in his identity and beliefs was called for. After redrafting a one-page letter