America boldly.

In 1929 a power struggle broke out between Noble Drew Ali and Claude
Green, one of his organizers. When Green was found murdered, the
Chicago police charged Ali with the crime. While Ali was out on bond, he
too died under mysterious circumstances. While some claimed that he had
been beaten by the police, others said that he had been "mugged" by
Green's followers. Before he was released on bail Ali wrote a letter from
prison to his followers encouraging them to have faith in him and in
their future. His letter bore distinctly messianic overtones. After
assuring them that he had redeemed them, he concluded by extending to
them his peace and by commanding them to love one another. His movement
splintered after his death into innumerable competing factions.

In Detroit, sometime before 1930, a dark-skinned man appeared
selling silk and raincoats. He said that he was W. D. Fard and that he
had come from the Holy City of Mecca in order to save the American Negro.
People generally described him as being unusually light-skinned for a
Negro with perhaps an Oriental cast. Fard also taught that the American
Negro was Islamic in origin and that he should return to his ancestral
faith. Sometime in 1933 or 1934 he disappeared as mysteriously as he had
come. While many believed that Fard and his movement must have been
connected with Noble Drew Ali and the Moorish American Science Temple,
the Black Muslims have always denied it.

Fard founded, in Detroit, Muslim Temple Number One, and he acquired a
handful of devout followers. He insisted that the Muslims should refrain
from eating pork, should pray facing the East, and should practice a
daily washing ritual. Muslim members were reminded that their last names
had been imposed upon them by the white man whom Fard equated with the
Devil. It is the practice among Muslims to drop their Christian name and,
until their true names will be revealed to them, to substitute the letter
X for their last name symbolizing the unknown. Fard insisted that the
first man had been a black man and that whites were a corruption of
humanity. The days of the White Devil, he said, were numbered. Blacks
should deliberately withdraw from white society in order not to be caught
in its final destruction.

The Muslim's life was rigidly disciplined. There were temple services
almost every evening. Individual behavior and dress were carefully
dictated. Besides forbidding the eating of pork, d