Out
Elijah Muhammad had me fly to Phoenix to see him in April, 1963.
We embraced, as always--and almost immediately he took me outside, where we began to walk by his swimming pool.
He was The Messenger of Allah. When I was a foul, vicious convict, so evil that other convicts had called me Satan, this man had rescued me. He was the man who had trained me, who had treated me as if I were his own flesh and blood. He was the man who had given me wings--to go places, to do things I otherwise never would have dreamed of. We walked, with me caught up in a whirlwind of emotions.
"Well son," Mr. Muhammad said, "what is on your mind?"
Plainly, frankly, pulling no punches, I told Mr. Muhammad what was being said. And without waiting for any response from him, I said that with his son Wallace's help I had found in the Quran and the Bible that which might be taught to Muslims--if it became necessary--as the fulfillment of prophecy.
"Son, I'm not surprised," Elijah Muhammad said, "You always have had such a good understanding of prophecy, and of spiritual things. You recognize that's what all of this is--prophecy. You have the kind of understanding that only an old man has.
"I'm David," he said. "When you read about how David took another man's wife, I'm that David. You read about Noah, who got drunk--that's me. You read about Lot, who went and laid up with his own daughters. I have to fulfill all of those things."
It was a big order--the organization I was creating in my mind, one which would help to challenge the American black man to gain his human rights, and to cure his mental, spiritual, economic, and political sicknesses. But if you ever intend to do anything worthwhile, you have to start with a worthwhile plan.
Substantially, as I saw it, the organization I hoped to build would differ from the Nation of Islam in that it would embrace all faiths of black men, and it would carry into practice what the Nation of Islam had only preached.