The Dead Are Arising by Les Payne

Author:Les Payne [Payne, Les]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-08-13T00:00:00+00:00

Unlike bigger Northern cities, which were quite cosmopolitan, Hartford afforded Malcolm the opportunity to isolate recruits into a cocoon for intensified conditioning and indoctrination. Single male members were persuaded to live under a semicommunal system. John Peoples was assigned to rent out complete floors in adjacent North End apartment buildings. The initiates continued working their separate jobs about the city but withdrew from non-Muslim life after hours into something of a cultlike setting. They shopped, cooked, and ate cooperatively. Each one bathed, washed his clothes, and took care of his personal affairs in accordance with strict Muslim dictates.31

After months of struggling with anarchy among members of the Philadelphia operation, Malcolm was relieved to build a temple from the ground up. The barrackslike living conditions made it easier to instill discipline. Each man was assigned as his brother’s keeper and enforcer of Muslim standards of diet, dress, socializing, and daily prayer.

A primary rule of the “barracks” was that all men must work. Malcolm did not tolerate sloth or allow members, or their families, to subscribe to public welfare. The half dozen bachelors studied Qur’an (in English translation) and secular books together, conducted meetings, and traveled to the temple in Springfield and elsewhere in the Northeast. Occasionally, they were called upon to provide security for Malcolm and visiting Muslim officials. In their withdrawal from the larger society, the young Muslims reinforced one another in a strict policy of no smoking and no drinking, as well as prayer five times a day, and a single daily meal consisting mainly of rice, fish, and large doses of milk. Malcolm was a frequenter of the nearby Lincoln Dairy, where he indulged his great passion for ice cream, a pleasure the Messenger thankfully had not outlawed.

“We began to eat what Malcolm taught were the proper foods,” said St. John. “The bean was a basic food; it was served in many different ways, bean soup, and bean pie. We were taught to eat more fish and eat the meat from the common animals like lamb, beef from the cow, chicken. We were encouraged to buy our meats from kosher markets where the meat was properly killed, properly taken care of.” 32 In addition to banning pork, the Messenger’s prescription for “eating to live” eschewed such other staples of the Southern “soul food” diet as collard greens, black-eyed peas, and corn bread.

No women were allowed in these communal Hartford apartments, which had to be kept neat and broom clean in case of a spot inspection by Malcolm or visits from out-of-town Muslim officials. Between work, housecleaning, study, meetings, and travel, the young Muslims had no time for courting—which was not allowed. Although not strictly arranged, marriages were usually announced within the community with the briefest period of association.

Malcolm made unannounced visits to the barracks and spoke with the men at length and, in a more relaxed way, about things he never mentioned to mixed audiences from the podium. In addition to discussing black history, slavery, Muslim dieting, and

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