One Black Allah: The Middle East in the Cultural Politics of African American Liberation,
1955-1970
Author(s): Melani McAlister
Source: American Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Sep., 1999), pp. 622-656
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30042184
Accessed: 10/09/2010 15:10
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
American Quarterly.
http://www.jstor.org
One Black Allah: The Middle East in the
CulturalPolitics of AfricanAmerican
Liberation,1955-1970
MELANIMcALISTER
The George Washington University
The Christian church itself-again, as distinguished from some of its
ministers-sanctified and rejoiced in the conquests of the flag, and encouraged, if it did not formulate, the belief that conquest, and the resulting
relativewell-being of the Westernpopulation,was proof of the favor of God.
God had come a long way from the dessert-but then, so had Allah, though
in a very different direction. God, going north and rising on the wings of
power, had become white, and Allah, out of power, had become-for all
practicalpurposes anyway-black.
-James Baldwin, 1962'
The Arabs, as a colored people, should and must make more effort to reach
the millions of colored people in America who are related to the Arabs by
blood. These millions of colored peoples would be completely in sympathy
with the Arab cause!
-Malcolm X, 22 19602
Two events, separatedby just over a year, in two very different
spheresof culturalactivity,markedtheextraordinary
influenceof Islam
in the African American community in the 1960s. Two prominent
African American men, one an athlete, the other a poet and a
playwright,took highly visible and conscious steps away from theirold
identities and affiliations and began instead to articulate a black
Melani McAlister is an assistant professor of American studies at The George
WashingtonUniversityin Washington,D.C. Her book on the culturalpolitics of U.S.Middle East encountersis forthcoming.
AmericanQuarterly,
Vol.51, No. 3 (September
1999)© 1999AmericanStudiesAssociation
622
ONE BLACKALLAH
623
consciousness and politics based on the teachings of Islam. These two
public transformations-rituals of self-identification and self-naming-point toward an often-neglectedgenealogy of black political and
culturalaffiliation:an AfricanAmericanimaginedcommunityin which
the Arab Middle East is central.
On 25 February1964, the twenty-three-yearold fighterCassius Clay
defeatedSonny Liston andtook the world heavyweightboxing title, the
most lucrative prize in professional sports. On the day after his
triumph,Clay, who had alreadybecome one of the most well-known
and controversial figures in boxing world, announced at a press
conferencethathe was a Muslim.3Until thatday, Clay had been known
as a playful, rather apolitical youngster with a fondness for pink
Cadillacs, extravagantbragging,and comic poetry.4But in the months
before the fight, rumors of his association with the Nation of Islam
(NOI) had circulated widely; he had been seen frequently in the
company of Malcolm X, whom he had invited to his trainingcamp in
Miami.5A few weeks afterthe victory,ElijahMuhammad,the leaderof
the Nation of Islam, bestowed on Clay his Muslim name, Muhammad
Ali. Ali's victory and subsequentannouncementwere widely reported;
his association with the NOI was often viewed with skepticism or
anger. In the spring of 1964, when Malcolm X left the Nation, Ali
stayed, and quickly became the most famous Black Muslim in the
country and one of the Nation of Islam's most prominentspokespersons.6 Just a few monthslater,Ali embarkedon a tourof Africa and the
Middle East. When he returned,he announcedto the press: "I'm not an
American;I'm a black man."7
In 1966, Ali's statusas political figure took a new directionwhen he
refused his inductioninto the U.S. Army, saying "I'm a memberof the
Black Muslims, and we don't go to no wars unless they're declaredby
Allah himself. I don't have no personal quarrel with those Viet
Congs."8That refusal-that risky standon behalf of the politics of his
religious belief-transformed Ali's image: he soon became one of the
most visible and influentialantiwarfigures in the country.He was, in
the words of poet Sonia Sanchez, "a culturalresource for everyone in
thattime," a man whose refusalto fight in Vietnambecame an emblem
of the far reaching influence of the black nationalist critique of
Americannationalismand U.S. foreign policy.9
In 1965, a little over a year after MuhammadAli's highly public
conversion,the poet andplaywrightLeRoi Jones left his literarycircles
624
AMERICANQUARTERLY
in GreenwichVillage to move uptownto Harlem,where he foundedthe
Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BARTS). In Harlem, Jones
turnedhis back on his earlierties with Beat poetry,and even his more
recent success with plays on race relations(The Dutchmanhad won an
Obie award in 1964).10He focused instead on the task of building a
community theater,and on developing the themes and writing styles
that would launch the Black Arts Movement. During his time at
BARTS, Jones wrote A Black Mass, a one-act play that presented in
dramaticform the Nation of Islam's central myth: the story of Yacub,
the evil scientist who "invented"white people. Then, in 1968, Jones
changed his name to Ameer (later to Amiri) Baraka.He studied Sunni
Islam under the tutelage of Hajj Heesham Jaaber, who had been
affiliated with Malcolm X near the end of his life." By then, Baraka,
whom his contemporariesconsideredto be "the most promisingblack
writer"in the nation, was also the best-known representativeof the
Black Arts Movement, a champion of black cultural nationalism, a
significant theorist of the re-emergence of committed art, and an
articulatecritic of U.S. imperialism. Baraka would turn away from
Islam and toward Maoism in the 1970s.12But from at least 1965 until
1973, he andotherssaw Islam as a primarynationalistculturalresource,
an authenticallyblack religion that would be central to the requisite
developmentof an alternativeblack cultureand a liberatedspirituality.
This article analyses the significance of the Middle East in African
Americanculturalpolitics in the late 1950s and 1960s. In particular,it
explores the impact of Islam as a religious practice and as a cultural
poetics, including its more diffuse impact even on those who were not
converts. In recent years, scholars in religious studies have amply
documentedthe remarkablediversity of Muslim practice among African Americans, from orthodox Sunni Islam to the less traditional
doctrines of the Nation of Islam, but the larger political and cultural
influence of Islam as a religious/cultural/politicalnexus has been
remarkablyneglected.13In the 1960s, this influence was significant.By
1965 or 1966, one need not have ever entereda Muslim temple nor read
a Nation of Islam newspaperto know that,within the AfricanAmerican
community,Islam had moved far beyond the sectariancuriosity it had
been just ten years earlier.In a culturalfield that ranged from poetry
and plays to highly charged sports matches, from local community
theatersto the boxing ring, Islam was a significantpresence. In various
manifestations,Islam-and the Nation of Islam in particular-played a
ONE BLACKALLAH
625
central role in reconfigurationsof black radicalism,challenging both
the hegemony of black Christianity'sreligious values and the politics
of integrationassociatedwith it. At the same time, the centralityof the
Middle East to Islamic histories and to many Muslim rituals encouraged the increasing visibility of Arab cultures and Arab politics in
AfricanAmericancommunities.
Islam, like Christianity,has traditionallyturnedto the Middle East as
a "holy land," making salient not only its ancient histories, but also
contemporarypolitical events in the region. In the 1950s and 1960s,
this religiously-infused transnationalismgained a broader currency:
African Americans in this period constructedcultural, political, and
historical links between their contemporarysituation and the Arab
Middle East. In doing so, they articulatedwhat Michael Shapiro has
called a "moralgeography,"a mappingof themselves in relationshipto
the world. This moral geographyimagined a communityvery different
from dominantconstructionsof "America."And despite the fact that
what emerged from this mapping has often been called (even by its
adherents)"blacknationalism,"the communityit envisioned provided
an alternativeto-and in some sense a fundamentalcritique of-the
nation-state.14I will trace several sites for this alternativegeography:
the religious teachings and daily practices of the Nation of Islam; the
influence that the Nation of Islam and other Muslim sects had on
culturalproducers,especially the young men and women who would
become the heart of the Black Arts movement; and finally, the impact
of both religion and art on the anticolonial radicalism of a new
generationof AfricanAmericans.By 1967,theseconnectedinfluenceshad
become an importantfactorin AfricanAmericanunderstandings
of U.S.
foreignpolicy in the MiddleEast,particularlythe 1967 Arab-Israeliwar.
Scholarshipon the 1960s, so often interestedin tracingthe sourcesof
black radicalism,as well as the rising tensions between blacks andJews
in the civil rights movement, has consistently painted the Nation of
Islam as simply a political movement with a religious gloss.15As a
result, a whole history of culturalproductionand religious belief has
been seen as marginal, or merely reactive. This analysis suggests a
more expansive framework for understandingblack culture in this
period. It highlights the cultural politics of non-Christianreligious
formations, suggesting that a properunderstandingof the salience of
religion in the AfricanAmericancommunity(and in the United States
more broadly)must look beyond the well-documentedinfluence of the
626
AMERICANQUARTERLY
Judeo-Christiantradition.By attending to this cultural and religious
history, our understandingof political events also becomes more
nuancedand complex. In particular,we begin to see the ways in which
AfricanAmericaninvestmentsin, and interpretations
of, the Arab-Israeli
conflict developed, at least in part, out of the religious and cultural
alternativesto black Christianitythatbecome influentialin the 1960s.
By History and By Blood
[T]he historic practice of bowing to other men's gods and definitions has
produceda crisis of the highest magnitude,and broughtus, culturally,to the
limits of racial armageddon.
-Addison Gayle, 196816
In the early to mid-1960s, the Nation of Islam broughtits interpretation of Islam to prominencein the African American community,and
defined Islam as the religion of black Americanmilitancy.For African
Americans disaffected with the Christianchurch-those frustratedby
the commitment of black Christians to brotherhoodwith whites or
angered by the continuing violence by white Christiansagainst nonviolent civil rights activists-Islam offered an alternative.Islam, its
adherentsargued,providedthe basis for a black nationalistconsciousness that was separatefrom the civil rights goals of integrationinto a
white-dominatedand oppressive nation. Islam offered a set of values
and beliefs that were at once spiritual,political, and cultural.As LeRoi
Jones described it, Islam offered "what the Black man needs, a
reconstruction... a total way of life that he can involve himself with
that is post-American,in a sense."'17The Nation of Islam in particular
provided an both an alternative religious affiliation and a countercitizenship, an identity that challenged black incorporationinto the
dominantdiscourse of Judeo-ChristianAmerican-ness.
The NOI emerged as a significant social and political force in the
black community in the late 1950s after a period of disarray and
declining membershipin the 1940s. When Malcolm X was released
from Norfolk prison in 1952, he quickly came to play a majorrole in
the organization'sexpansion, establishingtemples in cities all over the
country.By December 1959, the Nation had fifty temples in twentytwo states; the numberof members in the organizationis difficult to
estimate, but by 1962 was probablyin the range of 50,000 to 100,000,
ONE BLACKALLAH
627
with many more supporters.In 1962, MuhammedSpeaks, the major
NOI newspaper,founded by Malcolm X, had the largest circulationof
any black paper in the country.'8
Although the Nation of Islam was an avowedly "black nationalist"
organization,its vision of black nationalismcannotbe fully understood
separate from either its explicitly religious content or its insistently
transnationaldimensions. In fact, the religious and the transnational
aspects were intimatelyrelated:while the Nation of Islam was unorthodox Islam, Elijah Muhammad had, since the 1930s, consistently
affirmedthe significance of its connection to other Muslim communities aroundthe globe, particularlythose in the Middle East. The Nation
challenged the assumption that African Americans were simply or
primarily a subset of all Americans; its political imaginary never
posited black nationalism as a self-contained sub-nationalism,even
when Elijah Muhammador Malcolm X made claims for the right to
controlspecific tractsof land withinthe United States.Instead,the NOI
built on the fact that Islam was a major world religion with a strong
transnationalorientation;Muslim governmentsand Muslim communities often forged ties across borders,politically and culturally,as well
as religiously.19Drawing on this global vision, the NOI developed a
model of communitythat linked AfricanAmericansboth to Africa and
to "Asia"(by Asia, ElijahMuhammadseemed to mean primarilywhat
is usually called the Middle East).2"By the time it began to reach a
larger audience in the 1950s, the Nation of Islam's vision drew on
several decades of black anticolonialistactivity,led by intellectualsand
activists from W. E. B. Du Bois to Paul Robeson to Walter White,
which had envisioned African Americans as part of a pan-African
diaspora.2'At the same time, the Nation's theological politics departed
from that earlieractivism's primaryfocus on Africa, opting for a more
expansive transnationalismthat included much of the non-white world
(LatinAmerica is somethingof an exception). Like the pan-Africanist
intellectualand culturalmovementsof the 1930s and 1940s, however,
ElijahMuhammaddescribedthe connectionsbetweenAfricanAmericans
andcolonizedpeoplesthrougha languageof naturalizedrace.Muhammad
simplyclaimedbothAfricaandthe MiddleEastas blackheritage,insisting
thatthe Arabianpeninsulaand the Nile valley were the historichome of
whathe called the "Afro-Asiaticblack man"now living in America.
The significance of this religious and racial geography was profound. In the NOI temples being rapidly established in urbanareas in
628
AMERICANQUARTERLY
the late 1950s and early 1960s, ministersbroughta message of worldwide black Islam to thousands of African American converts.22The
Nation taught that Islam was the "naturalreligion of the black man,"
which had been strippedfrom the Africans who were sold into slavery
and taught their masters' Christianity.Lectures in the temples often
harshly indicted the traditionalChristianityof the African American
church and arguedthat AfricanAmericans should recognize their true
heritageas the descendantsof the Muslim prophetMuhammed.Arabic,
the Nation taught,was the original language of black people, not only
because many of the Africans who were taken into slavery and carried
to the new world spoke Arabic, but also because "the so-called
Negroes"in Americawere descendantsof the originalArabic-speaking
peoples to whom Islam was revealed.23As the religious service began,
the minister greeted his parishioners with the Arabic greeting: Assalaam-alaikum(peace be with you) and the membersresponded,waAlaikumas-salaam (and also with you). At the Islamic schools set up
by the Nation, Arabic lessons were an integralpart of the curriculum:
Arabic language instructionwas said to began at the age of three.24
The Nation's theology included an alternativegenealogy for black
Americans, who were understoodto be descendants of the original
inhabitants of Asia in general and Mecca in particular.As Elijah
Muhammadwrote in his 1965 treatise, Message to the Blackman in
America: "It is Allah's (God's) will and purpose that we shall know
ourselves. ...He has declared that we are descendants of the Asian
black nation and the tribe of Shabazz ... [t]he first to discover the best
part of our planet to live on. The rich Nile Valley of Egypt and the
present seat of the Holy City, Mecca, Arabia."25
The Nation of Islam's assertionthat all black people were by nature
Muslims was part of its critique of black Christianity-a critique that
was at once theological, political, and historical. NOI meetings often
had a display, drawnon a blackboard,featuringtwo flags: on one side
of the boardwas a U.S. flag with a cross beside it, and underneathit the
caption, "Slavery,Suffering,and Death."On the other side was drawn
a flag bearing the Crescent, and underneathit the words, "Islam:
Freedom,Justice, and Equality."Beneathboth was a question:"Which
one will survive the War of Armageddon?"26Elijah Muhammad's
message to African Americans focused on pride and transformation.
The Christianityof their slave mastershad functionedto continuetheir
spiritual enslavement, he argued, but Islam, which built upon the
ONE BLACKALLAH
629
teachings of the Bible but succeeded them with additionalrevelations,
would provide the key for understandingold teachings in the way they
were intended,ratherthan throughthe perversionsof white Christianity. In this way, NOI teaching revised, without discarding,important
aspects of Christiansymbolism that were salient in the black community.27At the same time, this teaching also carried with it a racial,
political, and moral geography:it pitted (black) Islam against (white)
Christianityin a world-wide and historic struggle.
This religious mappingof the world-a practicecertainlynot unique
to Islam or the Nation-was directly opposed to contemporaryblack
Christianconstructionsof the Middle East as a "Holy Land"in which
Israel (both ancient and modem) was a strong source of religious and
political identification. Black Christianityhad traditionallypresented
African American history as a not-yet-completed retelling of the
Hebrewstory,a potentialsite for the re-entryof God into historyon the
side of a people.28By the late 1950s, the Christian-dominatedcivil
rights movement was making highly effective use of the exodus as a
figure for African American liberation.The alliance between African
Americans and Jews in the early civil rights movement, though
grounded in the active Jewish participationin the movement, was
almost certainly strengthened by a strong metaphorical affiliation
between the narrativeof ancient Hebrew liberationfrom bondage and
the purposefulimaginingof AfricanAmericanliberationfrom discriminationin the United States.The exodus tropewas a link, one articulated
in churches and meetings, in songs and in sermons, as well as in the
writings of African American intellectuals and activists, from Martin
LutherKing, Jr.to James Baldwin to Joseph Lowrey.
The connection that Black Christiansfelt with the Hebrew story
extendedinto contemporaryinternationalpolitics. The establishmentof
modem Israelin 1948 was a source of enthusiasmand even inspiration
for many African Americans: In 1947, Walter White, the Executive
Directorof the NAACP, had played a crucial role in lobbying African
nationsto vote for the UN resolutionpartitioningPalestineinto Jewish
and Arab areas. Ralph Bunche, the UN Secretary for Peacekeeping,
was active in negotiating the end to the Arab-Israeliwar in 1948 on
terms generally considered favorable to Israel. And in 1948, the
NAACP passed a resolution stating that "the valiant struggle of the
people of Israel for independence serves as an inspiration to all
persecutedpeople throughoutthe world."30
630
AMERICANQUARTERLY
MartinLutherKing, Jr.exemplified the move thatconnectedbiblical
history with contemporarypolitics. He believed that civil rights was
part of an internationaltransformationin power relations. He saw the
rise of anticolonialismand the rise of civil rights activity not only as
parallel sets of events, but as a connected force, with the two
movements affecting and influencing each other in direct ways:
everywhere, the enslaved people were rising up against Pharaohand
demandingto be free.31The success of the new nationalisms,particularly in Africa,Egypt, andIndia,provideda living model for the kind of
successful struggle that King envisioned in the United States. Within
this frame, Israel, as one of the "new nations" seeking freedom and
national rights, represented a relevant model made all the more
powerful by the biblical story of exile and return,and by the ways in
which this rhetorichad played a centralrole in the successful transformation of the Zionist movement into the Israeli state.32
The Nation of Islam's vision of a world-wide Islamic alliance
confrontingwhite Christianitychallenged the black Christiansanctification of ancient Israel and offered an alternative sacred geography
with Mecca as its center. Significantly,Elijah Muhammadtaught that
the stories told in the Christian Bible were prophesies rather than
histories, and that, as prophesy, they spoke of the contemporary
experiencesof AfricanAmericansratherthanthe historicalexperiences
of the ancient Hebrews:
Before the coming of Allah (God), we being blind, deaf, and dumb, had
mistakenthe true meanings of these parablesas referringto the Jews. Now,
thanks to Almighty God, Allah...who has opened my blinded eyes, and
unstopped my ears, loosened the knot in my tongue, and has made us to
understandthese Bible parablesare referringto us, the so-called Negroes and
our slave masters.33
Within the NOI paradigm,Jews were not those whose ancient history
was the prototypefor contemporaryliberation,as was the case for King
and other civil rights leaders, but those whose putative status as "the
chosen people"had usurpedthe position of the black people in relation
to God. This scripturalinterpretationdid a complex culturalwork for
the Nation. Surely this metaphoricalremoval of Jews from the stories
of the Old Testamenthad particularsalience in terms of the domestic
tensions that were alreadyrife in urbanareas between AfricanAmericans and Jews.34Obviously, it carriedthe kernels of the NOI's anti-
ONE BLACKALLAH
631
Semitism, which become more and more pronouncedover the decade.
But the specifically religious contentalso workedaffirmativelyas well,
by mobilizing, appropriating,and refashioningan honoredtraditionto
claim for AfricanAmericanIslam, as earlierChristianityhad done with
Judiasm,or as the Romans did with Greek mythology.
This mixture of denigrationand affirmativeappropriationwas also
apparentin the Nation's attitude toward modem Israel. Like earlier
black nationalistmovements,the NOI saw in the success of Zionism an
example and motivation for black nationalism.35Malcolm X often
referredto Israelrespectfullyin his speeches and interviews,even as he
insisted on the rightnessof the Palestiniancause, as in this remarkably
ambiguouspassage from his Autobiography:
If Hitlerhad conqueredthe world, as he meantto-that is a shudderythought
for every Jew alive today. The Jew will never forget that lesson. ...[T]he
Britishacquiesced and helped them to wrest Palestine away from the Arabs,
the rightfulowners, and then the Jews set up Israel, their own country-the
one thing that every race of man in the world respects, and understands.36
This grudging respect did not translateinto emotional identification
with Zionism's success, as it did within much black Christian discourse, but it did furtherestablish the complex meanings the Middle
East held for the Nation of Islam and its members. If, as nationalists,
they respected and even hoped to emulate Jewish nationalism, they
nonethelesssaw the Arabstrugglewith Israelas a parallelto the Nation
of Islam's strugglefor nationalself-determinationin the United States,
where the Nation claimed the right to "separate"from the rest of the
United States by taking control of three or four states in the South for
black people. Both the Arab (largely Muslim) population in Israel/
Palestine and the black ("originallyMuslim")populationin the United
States were in a struggleover land:controlover thatland was essential
to nationalismand political rights.
In keeping with this sympathy,Malcolm X exhibited a detailed and
early attention to internationalrelations. Inspired and influenced by
events in the third world, Malcolm X often talked about the 1955
Asian-AfricanConference at Bandung,Indonesia,(attendedby Egyptian presidentNasser, Indianprime ministerNehru,and representatives
from twenty-seven other African, Asia, and Arab nations) as one
example of the affiliation of non-white peoples against colonialism.37
After being appointed minister of the Harlem mosque in 1954,
632
AMERICANQUARTERLY
Malcolm X established active contacts with many Arab and African
leadersat the United Nations, who in turnseemed to view the members
of the Nation as fellow travelers-though their practice of Islam was
highly unorthodox,they were potentiallyvaluable allies in the struggle
against imperialism.38
Of the manyconnectionsthe Nationestablished,those withEgyptwere
particularlyimportant.The focus on Egyptdevelopedfor severalreasons:
first,like most black nationalists,NOI leadersbelieved emphaticallythat
Egypt was a black nation and that the greatnessof ancient Egyptian
civilization was proof of the historical greatness of black culture.39
Second,Egyptwas (andis) largelya Muslimnation,thereforeit embodied
the link betweenancientblack greatnessand contemporaryIslam.
Finally, there was Egypt's leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had
come to power in a bloodless coup against the British-backedking in
1952. In the mid-1950s, Nasser had emerged as the most important
nationalistleader of the Arab world and as one of the majorfigures of
the anticolonialnon-alignedmovement.Along with figureslike Castroin
CubaandKwameNkrumahin Ghana,Nasserrepresentedan emotionally
explosive convergenceof anticolonialdefiance and postcolonialglobal
consciousness.40But Nasser, as the leader of Egypt, also representeda
particularconnectionbetween black and Arab anticolonialism:Just as
Egyptwas geographicallypositionedat the intersectionof the MiddleEast
and Africa, in the years after Bandung,Nasser positionedhimself as a
leaderin connectingAfricanandAsian anticolonialmovements.
In 1956, Nasser became an anti-imperialisticon when he nationalized the Suez Canal Company,afterpresidentEisenhowerhad refused
to supportU.S. loans for the constructionof the Aswan High Dam. In
responseto the nationalizationof the canal, Britain(the formercolonial
power), France, and Israel invaded Egypt; both the United States and
the Soviet Union (for different reasons) demanded the immediate
withdrawal of the invading forces.41 The U.S. opposition to the
invasion was widely viewed as a refusal to back the imposition of oldstyle colonialism in the Middle East; not coincidentally,it was also an
assertionof Americandominancein the region.
But Nasser emerged from Suez the real winner. His successful
weatheringof an invasion by the colonial powers made him a hero in
the decolonizing nations, as well as among many African Americans.
Nasser, an avowed Arab nationalist,also came to representblack and
African defiance. Not surprisingly,the Nation of Islam endorsed the
ONE BLACKALLAH
633
Egyptian seizure of the Suez canal and opposed the invasion in its
various publications.42And though the Suez crisis did not receive as
extensive coverage as Bandunghad in the rest of the black press (which
was focused on the Montgomerybus boycott and other developments
in the emergent civil rights movement), many black intellectuals also
respondedcritically. Right after Suez, W. E. B. Du Bois, a long-time
supporterof Israel, hailed Nasser (and criticized Israel's role in the
invasion) in a poem published in Masses and Mainstream:"Beware,
white world, that great black hand/ Which Nasser's power waves/
Grasps hard the concentrated hate/ Of myriad million slaves."43
Observers would later look back on Suez as something of a turning
point in African American perceptions of the Middle East-the moment in which Arab anticolonialismcame home to black Americans.44
The Nation of Islam identified with colonized nations politically,
from the standpointof a "colored"nation oppressed by whites, but it
also drew very specifically on cultural and religious identifications
with Arab nations, which were understood to be also racial and
historical.A year after Suez, in December 1957, Malcolm X organized
a meeting on colonial and neocolonial issues that included representatives from the governments of Egypt, the Sudan, Ghana, Iraq, and
Morocco. That meeting, hosted by the Nation, sent a cable from Elijah
Muhammad to Nasser, who was hosting the Afro-Asian People's
Solidarity Conference in Cairo. In it, Elijah Muhammad,describing
himself as the "SpiritualHead of the Nation of Islam in the West,"
addressed Nasser and the other national leaders as brothers, as coreligionists, and as peers:
As-Salaam-Alikum.Your long lost Muslim brothershere in America pray
that Allah's divine presence will be felt at this historic African-Asian
Conference,and give unity to our efforts for peace and brotherhood.
Freedom, justice, and equality for all Africans and Asians is of far-
reachingimportance,
notonlyto youof theEast,butalsoto over17,000,000
of yourlong-lostbrothersof African-Asian
descentherein theWest....May
our sincere desire for universalpeace which is being manifestedat this great
conferenceby all Africansand Asians, bringaboutthe unity andbrotherhood
among all our people which we all so eagerly desire.45
The cable, and Nasser's friendly reply, circulated widely within the
Nation; these contacts later facilitated Malcolm X's trip to Egypt in
1959, where he laid the groundworkfor Elijah Muhammad'svisit to
Mecca in 1960.46
634
AMERICANQUARTERLY
The Nation of Islam made explicit the link between a sharedheritage
and shared origin: a myth of commonality remapped the dominant
imaginative geography that separatedthe Middle East from Africa,
instead unitingAfrica and North West Asia (the Middle East) into one
geographicalspace deemed "blackAsiastic-African."The vision of one
black culturemeantthatblacknesswas no longer simply a synonym for
Africans and people of recent African descent, but a literal linking
togetherof large groupsof non-Europeans-the "AsiansandAfricans"
connected, in Malcolm X's words, by history and "by blood."
Elijah Muhammad's genealogical and political views were wellknown in the early 1960s, both within and beyond the African
American community.Mainstreammedia heavily reportedthe "Black
Muslim" phenomenon, in multiple television specials and interviews
(often with Malcolm X), paperback "reports,"and newspaper and
magazine articles.47The Nation of Islam was extensively discussed in
public discourse surroundingTheAutobiographyof Malcolm X, which
was published in 1965, just months after he was assassinated.48The
organization was also covered in magazines with primarily black
audiences.49In addition, the Nation made a concentrated effort to
construct its own, alternativepublic sphere based on its a system of
widely disseminatednewspapersand largepublic meetings. From 1959
to 1961, the organization published five different newspapers and
magazines on its own, one of which-Muhammed Speaks, launchedin
May 1960-became extraordinarilysuccessful. By 1961, C. Eric
Lincoln estimated that MuhammedSpeaks had a circulation of over
600,000, "makingit by far the most widely read paper in the black
community."50Nation membersalso producedplays and songs: Louis
Farrakhan(known as Louis X in this period)producedtwo plays in the
early 1960s: Orgena ("a Negro," spelled backwards) and The Trial,
both of which were performed for Muslim audiences at rallies and
meetings. Farrakhan,who had been a Calypso singer before converting, also wrote and recorded several songs, including "White Man's
Heaven is Black Man's Hell" and "Look at My Chains!"51
As culturalsource andresource,then, the Nation of Islam functioned
throughdiverse sites. As a religious and political organization,it took
culture and media representationquite seriously, but it also had an
impact in many spaces/locations that Elijah Muhammad did not
directlycontrol, and thus wielded significantinfluence well beyond its
membership. One site for this more general diffusion of Islamic
ONE BLACKALLAH
635
sensibility was the remarkableinfusion of NOI mythology into the
culturalproductsof the emergingBlack Arts Movement, which would
in turninfluence the directionof black liberationpolitics as the decade
drew to a close. The signs of the Nation were frequentlyincorporated
into the productionsof a new generationof young writers,who took the
symbols and myths of this AfricanAmericanIslamic sect as partof the
raw materialfor the productionof a new, black, postnationalculture.
And We Own the Night52
This is an introductionto a book of plays
i am prophesyingthe death of white people in this land
i am prophesyingthe triumphof black life in this land
and over all the world
we are building publishinghouses, and newspapers,and
armies and factories
we will change the world before your eyes,
izm-el-azam,
yes, say it
say it
sweet nigger
i believe in black allah
governorof creation
Lord of the Worlds
As Salaam Alikum
-Amiri Baraka, 196953
LeRoi Jones left Greenwich Village to found Harlem's Black Arts
RepertoryTheatre/Schoolin 1965. Malcolm X hadjust been killed, and
young African American intellectuals and activists found themselves
and their communities in upheaval-in shock, torn by heated debates
over the split between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad and by
questions of who was responsible for the assassination. Then The
Autobiographyof Malcolm X was released; it became an immediate
best-seller, creating a sensation within the circles of young, increasingly radicalized men and women who had listened to Malcolm X's
speeches and were now riveted by the story of his life.54It was in this
context, coming to termswith the deathof the country'smost important
spokespersonfor black radicalism,that Jones/Barakaset out to form a
community-basedpopulartheater,and to invent a form and language
thatwould reach a broadAfricanAmericanaudiencewith a message of
636
AMERICANQUARTERLY
black (post)nationalism.As Barakalater wrote, he and his colleagues
wanted "[a]n art that would reach the people, that would take them
higher,readythem for war and victory,as popularas the Impressionsor
the Miracles or MarvinGaye. That was our vision and its image keep
us stepping, heads high and backs straight.""55
Though BARTS was short-lived (it collapsed within a year), its
founding was an inspirationto a new generation of poets and playwrights. Black theater and poetry burst onto the national scene-a
flowering of African American cultural production unlike anything
since the HarlemRenaissance.Withina year, small communitytheater
groups were being formed around the country (in San Francisco,
Detroit, Chicago, Washington,D.C., Los Angeles). The new community theaters produced plays and held poetry readings, not only in
theaters, but also in schools, at local meetings, and in the street.56
Baraka himself was also a model; his transformationfrom highly
literarypoet into a radical artist committed to straightforwardpoetic
language and generally short, accessible plays inspired the young
writers who were publishing and performingin his wake (and quite
consciously in his debt): Ed Bullins, Sonia Sanchez, Marvin X, Ben
Caldwell, and Nikki Giovanni, among others.
In the next couple of years, several publishing houses devoted
specifically to black literature were born, and new or revamped
magazines chronicled the scene, including Journal of Black Poetry,
Black Books Bulletin, Black Theatre, and, most importantly,Negro
Digest/BlackWorld.57By April 1966, Negro Digest would have its first
of severalannualissues on AfricanAmericansin theater;laterthatyear,
a San Francisco-based group, which included Baraka (who was a
visiting professorat San FranciscoState), would performat the annual
conventionof the Congressof Racial Equality(CORE).58By 1967, the
new black theaterwas being widely discussed as a majordevelopment
in the artsof the decade, so much so that when HaroldCrusepublished
The Crisis of the Black Intellectual, he ended the book with two
chapterson African Americans and the theater,analyzing the significance of BARTS and declaringthat "therecan be a culturalmethod of
revolutionizing the society in which the theater functions as an
institution."A year later, the most importantAmerican dramajournal
published a special issue on black theater.59
Poetry and plays were the favored genres of the Black Arts movement, despite the fact that both had, up until this point, appealedto a
ONE BLACKALLAH
637
very narrow audience. Both forms were, in Pierre Bourdieu's terms,
sub-fields of highly restrictedproduction,and both carriedthe cultural
capital(andthe distancefrompopularculture)thatcame with theirelite
position.60 But the short poem, the one-act play are often more
accessible to new or non-traditionalwriters,precisely because they are
short, and Black Arts Movement artists tried with some success to
broaden the audience for both genres. Writing in a self-consciously
vernacularlanguage,in free verse and streettalk, and distributingwork
in small pamphletsand in magazines,in paperbackanthologies,and in
publicperformance,they aimedfor a style anda formatthatwas accessible
and relevant to people who might otherwise be uninterestedin or
intimidatedby "art."Like earlieravant-gardemovements,they wantedto
eradicatethe separationof "art"from "life."61Ed Bullins, a playwright
who beganwritingduringthis periodandwho went on to become one of
the most prolific and most-producedplaywrightsof the late 1960s and
early 1970s, argued(as manyin the movementdid) thatBlacktheaterand
poetrywere effectivelytransformingboththe genresandtheiraudiences:
Black literaturehas been available for years, but it has been circulatingin a
closed circle. ... It hasn't been getting down to the people. But now in the
theatre,we can go rightinto the blackcommunityandhave a literaturefor the
people ... for the great masses of Black people. I think this is the reasonthat
more Black plays are being writtenand seen, and the reason thatmore Black
theatresare springingup. Throughthe efforts of certainBlack artists,people
are beginning to realize the importanceof Black theatre.62
The genuine popularityandbroadreachof these new worksis only part
of the story,however; no matterhow many performancesthey gave in
local venues, or how many inexpensive editions they distributed,these
poets and playwrightsnever had the kind of direct reach enjoyed by
majorpolitical or religious groups,includingthe Nation of Islam itself.
Nonetheless, they could have a significantimpactprecisely because of
the prestige that art, even popularizedart, carried--the status it gave
within the African American community,as well as the notorietythat
the new artists were gaining in the mainstream (white-dominated)
media. The mix was potent: cultural capital combined with a new,
populist approach and a broader audience. It gave art and artists a
highly visible role in the African American community overall, and
among youngerradicalsin particular,and it allowed for the dissemination and generalizationof radical political and cultural perspectives.
Thus alreadyby 1966, the influence of Black Arts was strong enough
638
AMERICANQUARTERLY
that the new chair of the StudentNonviolent CoordinatingCommittee
(SNCC), Stokley Carmichael, asserted that poetry writing (and by
extension, poetry reading) were threateningto overtakeother kinds of
political work. In a speech reprintedin the Chicago SNCC newsletter,
he complained: "We have to say, 'Don't play jive and start writing
poems after Malcolm is shot.' We have to move from the point where
the man left off and stop writing poems."63
The Black Arts movement defined political struggle as cultural
struggle;this culturaltransformation,in turn,requireda new spirituality. In literarycircles, Islamic symbolism and mythology were incorporatedinto the self-conscious constructionof a new black aesthetic and
a revolutionaryblack culture. The aim was to establish a basis for
political nationalism through the production of a set of cultural and
spiritualvalues "intune with black people."Those seeking black power
were called upon to understandthe significance of culture.As Baraka
argued, "The socio-political must be a righteous extension of the
cultural.... A culturalbase, a black base, is the completenessthe black
power movement must have. We must understandthat we are Replacing a dying [white] culture,and we must be preparedto do this, and be
absolutelyconscious of what we arereplacingit with."64The attemptto
constructa new black culture was deeply intertwinedwith the search
for religious alternatives to mainstream Christianity,a search that
included not only Islam, but also a renewed interest in the signs and
symbols of pre-Islamic and traditionalAfrican religions (such as the
Yorubanreligion), and the study of ancient Egypt. These influences
were often mixed together, in Baraka's thought as elsewhere, in an
eclectic, sometimes deliberatelymystical, mix.
Baraka's "A Black Mass" exemplifies the cross-fertilization and
appropriationthat linked Islam and the Black Arts movement in the
self-conscious productionof a black mythology.The play was based on
the story of Yacub,the evil scientist who createdwhite people, as told
by Elijah Muhammadand recounted repeatedly in publications and
speeches. "Yacub'sHistory"was "the central myth" of the Nation; it
told the story of black origins and explainedthe currentplight of black
people, while reversing the traditional associations of Eurocentric
Christianity,making "whiteness"the category associated with evil and
thus in need of explanation.65(The story also providedthe background
and justification for the Nation's provocative practice of referringto
whites as "devils.") "A Black Mass" was first written in 1965 while
ONE BLACKALLAH
639
Barakawas at BARTS; it was first performedin Newark in May 1966
(after BARTS folded and Baraka moved to Newark to form Spirit
House) and a month later was published in the little magazine The
Liberator In 1969, it was included in Baraka'scollection, Four Black
Revolutionary Plays.66
When Barakawrote "A Black Mass," he was not a member of the
Nation of Islam, not even identified as a Muslim, though he would
affiliate with orthodox Sunni Islam a few years later. Baraka would
always mix Islam with his support of Kawaida, Ron Karenga's
syncretic doctrine based on traditional African religions, but his
fascinationwith the story of Yacuband his generalinterestin the myths
of the Nation of Islam was not idiosyncratic.67Thus, though "A Black
Mass" was not produced as often as some of Baraka's more explicit
social commentary, Black Arts critics admired it. The editor and
essayist Larry Neal, who was also Baraka's friend and colleague,
describedit as Baraka's"mostimportantplay,"because "it is informed
by a mythology that is wholly the creation of the Afro-American
sensibility."68Another commentatorwriting in Negro Digest called it
"Jones' most accomplished play to date."69The play was an early,
explicit statement of the ways in which, even after the death of
Malcolm X and even with suspicions aboutElijahMuhammad'srole in
his murder,the beliefs of the Nation of Islam were often presentedas
black culture,influencingand infusing a new black sensibility even for
those who were not NOI adherents.In this sense, "A Black Mass" was
both symptomaticand anticipatoryof what would happenin the sphere
of black culturalproductionin the next few years.
The play was a revision and a condensationof "Yacub'sHistory,"
which explained the creation of white people from Earth's original
black inhabitantsas the productof generationsof genetic breeding.70In
"A Black Mass," Yacub, now called Jacoub, is introducedas one of
three"BlackMagicians"who togethersymbolize the black origin of all
religions: accordingto the stage directions,they wear a skullcap,a fez,
and an African fila.7"The play's title alludes to the necessity of black
revisions of religious ritual,and the play itself is designed to revise and
rewriteimplicitly white-centeredorigin myths (and, not incidentally,to
explain and define the theological problem of evil as representedin
white people).
Barakaturns the Nation's myth into a reinterpretationof the Faust
story and a simultaneousmeditation on the role and function of art.
640
AMERICANQUARTERLY
Jacoub,whose lust for creationechoes both Faustand Dr. Frankenstein,
is a complex figure; his desire to "find out everything"makes him in
some ways more attractiveand accessible than his fellow magicians,
who insist that "we alreadyknow everything,"that creationor innovation is impossible and dangerous(24).72But the play's condemnation
of Jacoub is apparent,not only in the fact that he is conducting an
experimentto try to create"whiteness"(surely the moralweight of that
choice needed no furtheramplificationfor the primarilyblack audience
to which the play was addressed), but also in his insistence that
"creationis its own end"(24). His art-for-art's-sake
view was preciselythe
aestheticphilosophythatBarakaandotherleadersof the earlyBlackArts
Movementwere determinedto challenge,and,if possible,eradicate.73
Castigatedby the othermagiciansfor his arrogance,Jacoubnonetheless proceeds with his experiment;as he does so, the naturalworld is
disturbedby raging seas and thunderingskies that have a Lear-like
portentousness.Three women run in from outside, upset and frightened; they wail andmoan, serving as a chorus,and as representativesof
"the people" who will be destroyedby Jacoub's creation. Undeterred,
Jacoubpourshis solutions together:there is an explosion, out of which
leaps a cold white creaturein a lizard-devilmask. The creaturevomits
and screams,"slobberlaughing"its way throughthe audience(30). The
women andthe othermagiciansarehorrifiedby the creaturebut Jacoub
insists that he can teach the beast to talk. But the creaturehas only two
words, incessantly repeated:"Me!"and "White"(30-32).
The beast immediately tries to attack the women, and it soon bites
one of them, Tilia, who is quickly transformedinto anothermonster,
white-blotched and slobbering. With this "bite-caress,"Baraka adds
Draculato his stock of popularculturereferents,and in so doing brings
sexuality to the forefront:the depravedand dangerous-and decidedly
unsexy-red-caped beast infects the women first, using its lust to
spread its "white madness."74If the play allegorically representsthe
rape of black women by white men, it also constructs"Woman"as the
first and most susceptible possible site of the spread of "whiteness,"
thus reproducingthe tendency of many nationalistideologies to make
women's bodies the sites of both nationalistreproductionand potential
culturalimpurity.As Philip Brian Harperhas pointed out, Black Arts
movementrhetoricconsistentlyassociatedproperblacknesswith proper
masculinity, a move that not only marginalizedwomen but also meant
that racial identificationwas figured in terms of a potent heterosexual-
ONE BLACKALLAH
641
ity. Thus "judgementsof insufficient racial identification ... [were]
figured specifically in terms of a failed manhoodfor which homosexuality, as always, was the primary signifier."75 Gender and sexuality
infused the cultural/politicalrhetoricof Black Arts authenticity.
At the end of the play, Tilia and the beast become hideousAdam and
Eve substitutes:The two of them then attackand kill the other women
and the rest of the magicians, includingJacoub.With his dying breath,
Jacoub condemns the two "white beasts" to the caves of the north.
These two creatureswill reproduceand eventuallywill createthe white
race that comes to dominateand enslave the rest of the world. Thus, if
"A Black Mass" describes white people as the spawn of monsters, a
crime against the naturalorder,distortedreproductionis the unspoken
but crucial undercurrent.76
At the end of "A Black Mass," a final narratorvoice-over issues a
call to racial struggle, now framedin mythical and theological terms:
And so Brothers and Sisters, these beasts are still loose in the world. Still
they spit their hideous cries. There are beasts in our world, Brothers and
Sisters. ... Let us find them and slay them. ... Let us declareHoly War. The
Jihad. Or we cannot deserve to live. Izm-el-Azam. Ism-el-Azam. Izm-elAzam. Izm-el-Azam. (39)
The call for Jihad (Arabicfor righteousstruggleor Holy War)becomes
a religious and moralresponseto the problemof evil, the answerof the
present to the history presented in the play. The language of Islamic
militancyis mobilized for black militancy;religious struggleand racial
struggle are made one.
The influence of Islam and Islamic symbolism went well beyond
Baraka;it was highly visible in general in the Black Arts movement,
acknowledged,and often supported,even by those who didn't shareits
presumptions.Members of the Nation of Islam and orthodoxAfrican
AmericanSunniMuslims were active in political and culturalorganizations all over the country.Baraka'sown interestin Islam continuedto
manifest itself in poetry and essays for the rest of the decade.77By the
time Baraka and Larry Neal published the field-defining anthology
Black Fire in 1968, and Ed Bullins edited the collection, New Plays for
the Black Theatre a year later, they were codifying (and of course
canonizing) a body of work, produced and written in the previous
several years, in which the influence of Islam was highly visible. Many
of the plays and essays were either directtranslationsof NOI ideology
642
AMERICANQUARTERLY
(such as Salimu's "Growing into Blackness, which instructedyoung
women on the properIslamic way to supporttheirmen), or they simply
presumedworking familiaritywith Islam on the part of the audience.
Similarly,work by young poets was infused with Islamic referencesreferences that were also often testimony to the influence of Malcolm
X and/or Baraka: Gaston Neal's "Personal Jihad" is one example;
anotheris the long poem, "malcolm"by WeltonSmith, which speaksof
"the sound of Mecca/ inside you" and concludes with detailed references to the Yacub myth in "The Beast Section." The prominence of
Muslim-derivednames was also significant in both collections: many
poems and plays were by writers who had changed their names to,
among others, Yusef Iman, Yusef Rahman, and Ahmed Legraham
Alhamisi, Salimu, and MarvinX.78
Looking at the cultural products and newspaper accounts of the
period, it is clear that the Nation of Islam provided one significant
touchstone for a larger project-that of re-visioning history and
geography in order to construct a moral and spiritual basis for
contemporaryaffiliations and identities. As Larry Neal described it:
"The Old Spiritualityis generalized. It seeks to recognize Universal
Humanity.The New Spiritualityis specific. It begins by seeing the
world from the concise point-of-view of the colonized."79In A Black
Mass, Baraka offered a religiously-infused narrativeas empowering
myth, as a culture specific to black people. Even though the vast
majorityof Black Arts writersandreaderswere not Muslims, this myth
and culture became part of the language and geography of black
culturalidentity. For a new generation,culture then became the basis
for constructingan alternativenation; and this (post)nation-with its
own sense of spiritualityand its own political vision-was the underlying utopiangestureof black nationalistthoughtand literature.Within
this project,Islamic affiliationsoften functionedas both site and source
for those black identities, linking African Americans to the Arab and
Muslim Middle East in ways both literal and metaphoric.
It's Nation Time80so
To be an Americanwriteris to be an American,and for black people, there
should no longer be any honor attachedto either position.
-Addison Gayle8'
ONEBLACKALLAH 643
The culturaland religious influence of Islam would play an importantrole in AfricanAmericanresponsesto the 1967 Arab-Israeliwara war that marked the first major armed conflict in eleven years
between Israel and Arab states, and which for the first time made
Palestinians(the "refugees"from the foundingof Israelin 1948) into a
highly visible componentof the conflict. In May of 1967, the ongoing
tensions between Israel, Egypt, and Syria escalated dramatically.
EgyptianpresidentNasser, involved in a war of words with conservative Arabregimes over the directionof Arabpolitics, had recentlybeen
criticizedby Jordanand Syria for hypocrisy and cowardicein continuing to allow UN troops to be stationed on the Egyptian side of the
borderwith Israel. The UN troops had been positioned in the Sinai in
1957, to guardthe peace afterthe Suez crisis, but Israel had refused to
allow UN peacekeeperson its side of the border.Nasser, stung by the
accusations and attempting to regain his prestige as the region's
preeminentnationalistleader, moved his own troops into the Sinai in
May 1967 and asked the United Nations to withdraw.Several days
later,Nasser provocativelyclosed the Straitof Tiranto Israelishipping.
As American and Europeandiplomats scrambledto cobble together a
multilateraldiplomaticand/ormilitaryresponse (the United States was
particularly concerned to act carefully in light of the increasing
controversiesover the war in Vietnam), Israel insisted on the right of
navigation throughthe internationalwaters of the Strait and declared
the closure an act of war. On 5 June with tensions escalating on all
sides, Israel launched an air attack that virtually destroyed both the
Egyptianand Syrianair forces on the ground.Immediately,Jordanalso
enteredthe battle, attackingIsrael with artilleryand air power. In just
six days, the war was over, with Israelthe clear victor.As a resultof the
conflict, the Israelis conqueredseveral territoriesthat had been previously controlled by Arab countries: the Gaza strip (Egypt), East
Jerusalemandthe WestBank (Jordan),andthe GolanHeights (Syria).82
The mainstreamAfricanAmericanreactionto the war was generally
muted, though decidedly on the side of Israel. But the younger black
liberationmovement, now moving in an increasinglyradicaldirection,
had a very differentresponse.Already,young black activists, building
on the cultural politics articulatedby leaders like Malcolm X and
Baraka and influenced by the writings of anticolonialist and marxist
FranzFanon, had begun to describethe situationof AfricanAmericans
as one of internalcolonization. Increasingly,they drew parallelsto the
644
AMERICANQUARTERLY
struggles for decolonization:from MuhammadAli's jubilant affirmation that he was "not an American,"but "a black man,"to the young
activistscarryingaroundworn copies of Wretchedof the Earth.83These
are "The Last Days of the American Empire,"Jones/Barakawrote in
1964, and for AfricanAmericansto love America would be to become
"equallyculpable for the evil done to the rest of the world."84
This was nowhere more true than in SNCC, which, though it had
been originally allied with the SouthernChristianLeadershipCouncil
(SCLC) and the Christian-basedcivil rights organizations,had become
increasinglyidentified with the internalcolonization model for understandingAfricanAmerican oppression.In May 1967, the organization
made its internationalist approach apparent by declaring itself a
"Human Rights Organization,"establishing an InternationalAffairs
Commission, applying for non-governmentalorganization(NGO) status at the United Nations, and announcingthatit would "encourageand
supportthe liberation struggles against colonialism, racism, and economic exploitation"aroundthe world.85This internationalistapproach
was not an innovation, or a radical departure;it built on both the
anticolonialactivism of earliergenerationsof black Americansand the
more recentculturaland political influence of Islam andAfrican-based
religions. But SNCC's stance was seen-as it was intended to be
seen-as a clear indicationthatthe organizationwas makinga decisive
breakwith the mainstreamcivil rights organizationsand theirmodel of
liberationin one country.
It was in this context that the SNCC newsletter, in the summer of
1967, printedan article about the Arab-Israeliwar. In June,just after
the six-day war erupted, the Central Committee had requested that
SNCC's researchand communicationsstaff investigatethe background
to the conflict. A few weeks later,the organizationnewslettercarriedan
articlethat describedthe war and the post-warIsraelioccupationof the
West Bank and Gaza in a decidedly pro-Arabfashion. The list of facts
about"thePalestineproblem"was highly criticalof Israel(and not just
the recent war):
Did you know that the Zionists conqueredArab homes throughterror,force,
and massacres?Did you know ... thatthe U.S. governmenthas workedalong
with Zionist groups to supportIsrael so that America may have a toehold in
that strategicMiddle East location, therebyhelping white Americato control
and exploit the rich Arab nations?"86
ONE BLACKALLAH
645
The article was accompaniedby a two cartoons and two photographs
thatmany people consideredanti-Semitic:one of the cartoonsdepicted
Nasser andMuhammadAli, each with a noose aroundhis neck; holding
the rope was a hand with a Star of David and dollar signs. An arm
labeled "ThirdWorld LiberationMovements" was poised to cut the
rope. One of the photos showed Israeli soldiers pointing guns at Arabs
who were lined up against a wall, and the captionread:"This is Gaza,
West Bank, not Dachau, Germany."87
The newsletter, and the statements supporting it, were widely
denounced in the mainstreampress and the Jewish community; the
executive directorof the AmericanJewish Congresscalled it "shocking
and vicious anti-Semitism."SNCC historian Clayborne Carson has
arguedthatthe articlewas "unauthorized"
andbased on the opinions of
one individual, a staff writer had been influenced by the Nation of
Islam and had Palestinianfriends in college. But as Carsonalso points
out, SNCC's CentralCommitteehad surely expected a pro-Palestinian
orientationto the investigationthey had requested,and they generally
supportedthe conclusions it drew.88
Carsonbelieves thatSNCC's decision to take up the Arab-Israeliwar
was part of a general trend toward making "gratuitousstatementson
foreign policy issues";by 1967, he concludes, supportfor ThirdWorld
liberation struggles was the only ideological glue that could hold the
fracturingorganizationtogether.89Othersmarkthe SNCC leaflet as an
indicative moment, the coming out of a whole generation of young
blacks who were "usingIsraelas the benchmarkfor theirrepudiationof
their civil rights past."90Certainlyit was the case that the 1967 ArabIsraeli war galvanized Jewish identity in the United States; thus
criticism of Israel became a highly chargedissue for Jews precisely at
the moment that SNCC was making its public statements.91
In general,these assessmentshave built on the assumptionthat,up to
1967, all available narrativesof black liberation had placed African
Americans in a defacto and unproblematicalliance with Israel-an
alliance that would have continuedhad it not been for some individual
or collective failureto sustainthe domestic relationshipforgedbetween
African Americans and American Jews in the civil rights movement.
The fact that mainstreamcivil rights leaders quickly condemned the
SNCC articleand made statementsin supportof Israel seems at first to
confirm this argument:the leaders of old civil rights coalition, influenced by the black Christiannarrativesof exodus and the model of
646
AMERICANQUARTERLY
Zionismforblackliberation,andperhapsappreciativeof the role thatJews
had playedin the movement,felt an emotionalcommitmentto Israel.92
But this division over the Arab-Israeliconflict also points to another
story,the story of how the religious and culturalinfluence of Islam in
the black community intersected with the increasing importance of
decolonizationmovementsworldwide.Placing SNCC's response to the
1967 Arab-Israeliwar in the context of black Islam and its role in the
radicalizationof AfricanAmericancultureandpolitics helps us reframe
the questionswe ask aboutthatmoment and aboutthe history of blackJewish and black-Arabrelationsoverall.
This alternative analysis avoids the common conflation of blackJewish relationswithin the United States, andthe concomitantissues of
racism and anti-Semitism,with the meanings and significance of the
Middle East for African Americans. While it is clear that the two
issues-domestic relationshipson the one hand, and representationsof
Israelandthe ArabMiddle East, on the other-are related,too often the
assumptionhas been that AfricanAmerican views of the Middle East
mustreflect black-Jewishrelationsin the United States, and mustbe, to
the degree that these views are critical of Israel or express affiliation
with Arabs, an expression of black anti-Semitism.93
This is not to say that anti-Semitism was not present in the black
community and the Black Arts movement. It was, and sometimes
virulently. And while it is useful to point out the ways in which
economic tensions in urbanareas framed anti-Jewishfeeling, it is not
sufficient to say, as James Baldwin once did, that blacks were antiSemitic because they were anti-white.94In the case of Baraka, and in
many of the pronouncementsof the NOI, thereis a profounddifference,
both qualitative and quantitative,in the ways that white ethnicities
were targeted.For example, in one well-known poem, "Black Arts,"
Barakamade offhandremarksaboutseveral groups,commentingin the
violent rhetoricthat was often typical of him, that ideal poems would
"knockoff ... dope selling wops" and suggesting that cops should be
killed and have their "tonguespulled out and sent to Ireland."But as
Barakahimself later admitted,he held a specific animosityfor Jews, as
was apparentin the differentintensity and viciousness of his call in the
same poem for "daggerpoems"to stab the "slimy bellies of the ownerjews" andfor poems thatcrack"steelknucklesin a jewlady's mouth."95
Certainly, anti-Jewish feeling did have a bearing on the ways in
which some people (black and white) formed their understandingsof
ONE BLACKALLAH
647
the Arab-Israeliconflict: there were instances at the time of the 1967
war-and there have been since-of people who began by talking
about the Arab-Israeliissue and who ended by criticizing Jewish store
owners or political leadersin the United States for mattersunrelatedto
foreign policy.96(Of course,the tendencyto conflate criticismof Israeli
actions with a criticism of Jews is not limited to African Americans.)
But these anti-Semitic expressions simply don't explain the pro-Arab
feelings of many AfricanAmericansin this period: it is quite possible
to be both anti-Jewishand anti-Arab,as the example of some Christian
fundamentalistgroups illustrates.
I suggest that African American investments in the Arab-Israeli
conflict have a significant history aside from the tensions of blackJewish relations-a historythatdeveloped withinthe black community
as partof a searchfor religious and culturalalternativesto Christianity.
This search was simultaneously as part of an ongoing process of
redefining "blackness"in the United States. The struggle to define a
black culture was never separable from the process of constructing
transnationaldefinitionsof blackness---definitionsthatconnectedAfrican Americans to people of color and anticolonialism all over the
world, including, quite centrally,the Middle East.
Conclusion:Beyond the Black Atlantic
In the few shortyears since its publication,Paul Gilroy's study of the
transnationalcirculation of cultures and peoples that comprise the
"BlackAtlantic"has had a dramaticimpacton the studyof culturaland
political identities.As partof new generationof scholarshipthatmakes
"bordercrossing" and hybridity central to its analysis, Gilroy (along
with Lisa Lowe, George Lipsitz, and Jos6 Saldivar,among others) has
provideda significantnew paradigm,one that traces what Gilroy calls
the "routesand roots"(the literal travel and the rememberedhistories)
that shape transnationalidentities. These powerful interventionshave
moved culturalstudies andAmericanstudies well beyond the nationalist presuppositionsthat have explicitly and implicitly defined their
previous practice.97
But Gilroy's analysis, extraordinaryas it is, is also symptomaticin
its exclusions. Two stand out. First, the reframing provided by the
construct of the "Black Atlantic," though useful, replaces one geographic entity (the nation) with another (the Atlantic). The move
648
AMERICANQUARTERLY
reformulates, but does not overturn, the dependence of nationalist
formations on literal, spatial connections for understandingcultural
constructsof identity.Second, while Gilroy acknowledges some black
(and particularlyAfrican American) connections with regions other
than the Atlantic, he still refuses to see black identificationswith the
Arabworld as anythingotherthan a failureto identify sufficiently with
Jewish history.These two limitations are linked, in that they both can
be traced,at least in part, to lack of attentionto Islam.
In the penultimatesection of The Black Atlantic, revealingly titled
"Children of Israel or Children of the Pharaohs,"Gilroy makes a
compelling argumentagainst some recent triumphalistdefinitions of
blackness. "Afrocentrism"depends on constructingblack history as a
narrativeof unfetteredgreatness from ancient Egypt onward. Gilroy
challenges the Afrocentric model by insisting on the importance of
acknowledging slavery-and thus loss, and dispossession-as central
to a transnationalblack history. Scholars of black culture must not
forget the themes of suffering, escape, memory, and identity that
transverseblack history and which unite certain strandsof black and
Jewish thought.By choosing to highlight slavery and the corresponding theme of diaspora,Gilroy's projectof remembranceilluminatesthe
commonalitiesbetween black and Jewish history.In so doing, it points
to the history of western anti-Semitism and anti-black racism as
intersecting indictments of the modern construction of race. Such
scholarship, Gilroy argues, can play a role in reasserting important
political critiquesof modernity,and of modernity'sracialcategories.In
other words, to insist on rememberingslavery as a central part of the
black experience is also to refuse to forget the centralityof racism in
the project of modernity.This approachrejects the Afrocentric tendency to de-historicize black history through its myopic attentionto
ancient periods of rule, conquest, and triumphantkingdoms, in Egypt
and elsewhere. It instead reminds us that a past markedby suffering
and persecution,if properlyremembered,may offer a special redemptive power to a people-"not for themselves alone but for humanityas
a whole.""98
Such remembranceis indeed crucial, both intellectually and politically. If it is to avoid its own kind of willful ahistoricism,however, this
projectalso will need to accountfor the ways in which the meaningsof
Jewish history were transformed within black cultural production.
Withinimportantsegments of AfricanAmericanpublic life, Jews, both
ONE BLACKALLAH
649
in Israel and in the United States, came to be identified less by their
suffering than by their power. Black (post)-nationalismin the United
States turnedtoward other models, beyond the exodus/Zionistmodel,
for narratinghopes of African American liberation.By taking Islam
seriously, we can contribute to an understandingof religion in the
twentieth-centuryUnited States thatmoves beyond Judaismand Christianity, and attends to attendto the complex religious affiliations that
also linked African American identity with the Arab and Islamic
Middle East.. That attentionwould then also expand our analysis of
transnationalism,and require us to think about identities on a truly
global scale-the "roots and routes" of cultural affiliations are not
necessarily contiguous spaces.
Such a project also brings us back, in new ways, to one of the
fundamental tensions in African American intellectual and cultural
history since WorldWarII: how are we to understandthe relationships
of AfricanAmericansto the projectof U.S. nationalismandthe realities
of power in the nation-state?And how is thathistoryboundup with the
internationalrelations of the nation as a whole? What does the role of
the United States as the chief power of the postwar world ("the chief
neocolonialist power" in LarryNeal's phrase) mean for the notion of
black or African American identity? What are the limits of seeing
AfricanAmericannationalismsas merely domestic matters?
Muchof the discourseof civil rightsviewed blacknessas a subnational
identity and saw the AfricanAmerican struggle as a strivingfor rights
that would, if successful, transformthe nation itself. At the same time,
black nationalistwriterstended to see blackness as a separatenational
identity, which would necessarily in time develop its own foreign
policy, based on alliance with other peoples in a similar structural
position as colonized people. But flowing throughboth of these visions
has been another: that of blackness as a transnationalidentity, and
African Americansas players in a truly global drama.
Thus African American cultural production in the era of black
liberationchallenged the very notion of a national identity by undermining the categories--of land, of culture,of politics-that underlayit.
That is one reason it matters.Not because transnationalidentities are
magically unproblematic;the cultural radicalism of the 1960s often
framed black identity in terms that were ahistorical,masculinist, and
anti-Semitic.This is its irony,its limit, and its loss. But the intervention
was significant: a remapping of the world, an alternative moral
650
AMERICANQUARTERLY
geography,and a new imagined communitythat did not begin and end
withAfrica.Thisalternative
was farmorethana policycritique,it was
a redefinitionanda remapping.It was the searchfor an identitythat
would be, as both Baraka and Neal put it, "post-American"-some-
thingoutsideof, andin oppositionto, the expandingroleof the United
States on the world stage. Often centeredin constructionsof spirituality
and religious belief, this African American narrative of counter-
citizenshipmobilizedthe MiddleEastas botha crucialsignifieranda
utopiangesturein the processof constructingblackidentitieswithin
andacrossnationalborders.
NOTES
1. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (New York, 1963), 46. Originallypublished
in TheNew Yorker,17 Nov. 1962. I owe thanksto the friendsand colleagues who read
earlierversions of this article,particularlyCarlConetta,Ruth Feldstein,Jane Gerhard,
James A. Miller, Teresa Murphy,Brad Verter,Uta Poiger, RobertVitalis, Stacy Wolf,
participantsin the religion and culture workshop at PrincetonUniversity's Center for
the Study of Religion, and the anonymousreviewers for American Quarterly.
2. Malcolm X, speech at Boston University, 15 Feb. 1960, quoted by C. Eric
Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America, 3d. ed. (New York, 1994), 169.
3. On the day afterthe fight, Clay announcedthathe "believedin Allah";at a second
press conferencethe following day, he clarifiedhis membershipin the Nation of Islam.
See Thomas Hauser,MuhammadAli: His Life and Times (New York, 1991), 81-84.
John McDermott,"Champ23: A Man-ChildTaken In By the Muslims,"Life, 6 Mar.
1964, 38-39; Huston Horn, "The First Days in the New Life of the Championof the
World,"SportsIllustrated,9 Mar. 1964, 26ff; "Prizefighting:With Mouthand Magic,"
Time, 6 Mar. 1964, 66-69.
4. See "CassiusMarcellusClay," Time, 22 Mar. 1963, 78-81; Pete Hamill "Young
Cassius Has a Mean & Sonny Look,"New YorkPost, 8 Mar. 1963; HowardTuckner,
"'Man, It's Great To Be Great,'"New YorkTimes, 9 Dec. 1962; and "C. Marcellus
Clay Esq." Sports Illustrated, 10 June 1963, 19-25.
5. Malcolm X with Alex Haley, TheAutobiographyof MalcolmX (1964; New York,
1992), 349-56; Bruce Perry,Malcolm: the Life of a Man who ChangedBlack America
(Barrytown, N.Y., 1991), 245-50; Stan Koven, "The Muslim Dinner and Cassius
Clay," New YorkPost, 23 Jan. 1964; William Braden,"MuslimsClaim the Creditfor
Clay's Victory,"New YorkPost, 2 Feb. 1964; "CassiusX," Newsweek, 16 Mar. 1964.
6. Ted Poston, "Clay in Malcolm X's Cornerin Black Muslim Fight," New York
Post, 3 Mar. 1964; J. Cannon,"TheMuslims' Prize,"JournalAmerican,23 Feb. 1965;
"CassiusClay Says He is Not 'Scared' of Killing Reprisal,"New YorkTimes, 24 Feb.
1965; Milton Gross, "TheMen AroundCassius Clay,"New YorkPost, 28 May 1965;
"FBI Probes Muhammadand Clay," New YorkPost, 28 Feb. 1966.
7. Robert Lipsyte, "Cassius Clay, Cassius X, MuhammadAli," New York Times
ONE BLACKALLAH
651
Magazine, 25 Oct. 1964, 29ff. See also Alex Haley's Playboy interview with Ali in
Oct. 1964, repr.in MurrayFisher,ed., Alex Haley: ThePlayboy Interviews(New York,
1993), 46-79.
8. Bill Jaus, "Cassius:I'm Still Unfit," New YorkPost, 21 Feb. 1966. See Henry
Hampton and Steve Fayer, Voices of Freedom (New York, 1990), 321-34; Hauser,
MuhammadAli, 142-201.
9. Sanchez is quoted in Hamptonand Fayer, Voices of Freedom, 328.
10. For a very useful discussion of Baraka'searly work, see JamesA. Miller, "Amiri
Baraka,"in TheBeats: LiteraryBohemiansin PostwarAmerica:Dictionary of Literary
Biography, Vol. 16 (Detroit, 1983), 3-24.
11. Barakadescribes writing the play in The Autobiographyof LeRoi Jones/Amiri
Baraka (New York, 1984), 210; his affiliation with Sunni Islam is discussed, 267-69.
Barakasays thatJaaber"buriedMalcolm X," but PeterGoldmanmentionsonly Sheikh
Ahmed Hassoun, the Sudanesecleric who had returnedwith Malcolm X from Mecca.
The Death and life of Malcolm X (Urbana,I11.,1979), 302.
' 12. The designation of Barakacame from a poll of thirty-eightprominentblack
writerspublishedin the Jan. 1968 issue of Negro Digest. The writersalso voted Baraka
"the most importantliving black poet," and "the most importantblack playwright."
WernerSollors,AmiriBaraka/LeRoiJones: Questfor a PopulistModernism(New York,
1978), 264n.6. On Baraka'stransformation
to Maoism, see his Autobiography,308-14.
13. On the Nation of Islam in the 1960s, see MathiasGardell,In the Name of Elijah
Muhammad:Louis Farrakhanand the Nation of Islam (Durham,N.C., 1996); and C.
Eric Lincoln, Black Muslims. See also, Aminah Beverly McCloud,AfricanAmerican
Islam (New York, 1995).
14. Michael Shapiro, "Moral Geographies and the Ethics of Post-Sovereignty,"
Public Culture6 (spring 1994): 479-502. Here I am also, of course, engaging with the
issues raisedby Benedict Anderson,ImaginedCommunities:Reflectionson the Origin
and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (New York, 1991).
15. For example, two otherwise excellent books, Howard Sitcoff, The Strugglefor
Black Equality,1954-1992 (New York, 1993); and RhodaBlumberg,Civil Rights: The
1960s Freedom Struggle, rev. ed. (Boston, 1991). Brenda Plummer's wonderfully
comprehensiveRising Wind:Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1935-1960
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1996) is interestedin foreign policy positions of the NOI, but not
the broaderreligious or culturalinfluence.
16. Addison Gayle, "Cultural Strangulation:Black Literature and the White
Aesthetic,"in The Black Aesthetic (New York, 1968), 46.
17. MarvinX and Farkuk,"Islamand Black Art: An Interviewwith LeRoi Jones,"
Negro Digest 18 (Jan. 1969): 4-10ff, repr. in Jeff Decker, ed., The Black Arts
Movement:Dictionary of Literary Biography Documentary Series, Vol. 8 (Detroit,
1991). Jones used the phrase "post-American"earlier as well, in his essay "Whatthe
Arts Need Now," Negro Digest (Apr. 1967): 5-6.
18. Gardell, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad,65. E. U. Essien-Udom, Black
Nationalism:A Searchfor an Identityin America (Chicago, 1962), 84.
19. John Voll, Islam Continuity and Change in the Modern World, 2d. ed.
(Syracuse, N.Y., 1994).
20. PerhapsElijah Muhammadwas also incorporatingsome referencehere to Asia
Minor, which comprises most of modernTurkey.
21. Penny M. Von Eschen's Race Against Empire: Black Americans and
Anticolonialism,1937-1957 (Ithaca,N.Y., 1996), discusses each of these figures in her
excellent study of the internationalismof African American politics in the period,
focused primarilyon Africa.
652
AMERICANQUARTERLY
22. Until Elijah Muhammad'sdeath in 1975, NOI generally used the term temples;
after Wallace D. Muhammadtook over leadershipand began a transformationof the
organizationinto the American Muslim Mission, with a more orthodox doctrine, the
term mosques was used. Eventually, followers simply joined whatever local mosque
was in theircommunity,and the organizationdissolved. The originalNOI was revived
by Louis Farakkanin 1985. Gardell,In the Name of Elijah Muhammad,99-135.
23. On Muslim slaves and early Muslim communities in the United States, see
RichardTurner,Islam in the African-AmericanExperience(Bloomington,Ind., 1997).
Thereis some indication,however, thatMuslim Africanswere less likely thanothersto
be takenand sold as slaves; see MorroeBerger,"TheBlack Muslims,"Horizon (winter
1966), 49-64.
24. According to Lincoln, Black Muslims in America, 120.
25. Elijah Muhammad,Message to the Blackman(Chicago, 1965), 31.
26. Describedby MalcolmX, Autobiography,224-225. Also in Perry,MalcolmX, 142.
27. On the theological differencebetween Nation of Islam and both Christianityand
orthodox Islam, see Gardell,In the Name of Elijah Muhammad,144-86.
28. JonathanKaufmandescribes the exodus metaphoras a primarylink between
black and Jewish historyin BrokenAlliance: The TurbulentTimesbetweenBlacks and
Jews in America, rev. ed. (1988; New York, 1995), 35.
29. I discuss this connectionin more detail in Epic Encounters:Race, Religion, and
Nation in U.S. Representations of the Middle East 1945-2000 (Berkeley, Calif.,
forthcoming).Lowrey makes the link while being interviewedby Howell Raines, My
Soul is Rested:MovementDays in the Deep SouthRemembered(New York, 1977), 69.
For one example of MartinLutherKing's use of the trope, see his last speech: "I See
the PromisedLand,"speech given on 3 Apr. 1968 at the Mason Temple in Memphis,
and repr.in A Testamentof Hope, ed. James Washington(New York, 1986), 279-86.
30. Robert Weisbord and Richard Kazarian, Jr., Israel in the Black American
Perspective (Westport,Conn., 1985), 20-22.
31. See David Garrow,Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King and the Southern
ChristianLeadership Conference(New York, 1988), 110-15; and King, "My Trip to
the Land of Gandhi,"in A Testamentof Hope, 23-30.
32. JonathanBoyarinarguespersuasivelythatthe influence of the Exodus tropealso
worked in the other direction:the civil rights connotationsof exodus played a role in
the increasingtendency to use that rhetoricto representIsrael. "ReadingExodus into
History,"New LiteraryHistory 23 (summer 1992), 540.
33. E. Muhammad,Message to the Blackman,95-96.
34. Of the many that explore this history, perhapsthe best single source is Bridges
and Boundaries:AfricanAmericansand AmericanJews, ed. JackSalzamn(New York,
1992). On the pre-war period, see Hasia Diner, In the Almost Promised Land:
AmericanJews and Blacks, 1915-1935 (Baltimore,Md., 1992).
35. Paul Gilroy explores the link with Zionism in TheBlackAtlantic:Modernityand
Double-Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass., 1993); see also Hollis Lynch, Edward
WilmontBlyden: Pan-Negro Patriot, 1832-1912 (New York, 1967).
36. Autobiographyof Malcolm X, 320.
37. Malcolm X, "Message to the Grassroots,"Nov. 1963, repr. in Malcolm X
Speaks, ed. George Breitman(1970; New York, 1992), 5-6.
38. Plummer, Rising Wind, 284-85; Louis Lomax, When the Word is Given: A
Report on Elijah Muhammad,Malcolm X, and the Black Muslim World (New York,
1963), 72-73.
39. For a discussion of black responsesto the King Tut exhibit, for example, see my
ONE BLACKALLAH
653
"'The Common Heritageof Mankind':Race, Masculinity,and Nation in the King Tut
Exhibit,"Representations54 (spring 1996), 80-103.
40. See Plummer,Rising Wind,257-72.
41. The events of the Suez Crisis are detailed in Donald Neff, Warriorsat Suez:
Eisenhower Takes American into the Middle East (New York, 1981); R. Bowie,
"Eisenhower,Dulles, and the Suez Crisis,"in Suez 1956, ed. William Roger Louis and
Roger Owen (Oxford, 1989).
42. For example, a strongeditorialin one early NOI publication,TheMoslem World
and the U.S.A., quoted by Essien-Udom,Black Nationalism, 302.
43. W. E. B. Du Bois, "Suez,"originallypublished in Masses & Mainstream,Dec.
1956, repr. in Creative Writingsof W. E. B. Du Bois, ed. HerbertAptheker (White
Plains, N.Y., 1985), 45-46.
44. Weisbord and Kazarian,quoting an interview with BaynardRustin, make the
argumentfor the retrospectivesignificanceof Suez in Israel in the BlackPerspective,31.
45. Plummer,Rising Wind,261. Also quotedby Lincoln,Black Muslimsin America,
225.
46. Perry,Malcolm, 205-6. NeitherMalcolm X nor ElijahMuhammadwas in Saudi
Arabiaduringthe period of the hajj, or pilgrimage, in 1959-1960.
47. The television special "The Hate that Hate Produced,"produced by Mike
Wallace and Louis Lomax, aired in 1959. Already in 1959 and 1960, the "Black
Muslim" movement had been covered in articles in Time ("Black Supremacists,"10
Aug. 1959), Newsweek("TheWay of Cults,"7 May 1956), TheNew YorkTimes("Rise
in Racial Extremism,"25 Jan. 1960), ChristianCentury("Despairserves purposesof
bizarre cult," 10 Aug. 1960), and Reader's Digest (Alex Haley, "Mr. Muhammad
Speaks,"Mar. 1960). The first book-length study, Eric Lincoln's scholarly The Black
Muslimsin America,was publishedin 1961; a year later,JamesBaldwin's "Letterfrom
a Region in My Mind,"came out in TheNew Yorker,andE. U. Essien-Udompublished
Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America. Louis Lomax's popular
account of the Nation of Islam, Whenthe WordWas Given, came out in 1963, and in
that same year, Malcolm X was interviewed by Playboy (May 1963), while Alfred
Black and Alex Haley published a long article in the SaturdayEvening Post ("Black
Merchantsof Hate," 26 Jan. 1963). Some of this coverage is discussed in the third
edition of Lincoln's study, 174-76.
48. The book was excerptedin TheSaturdayEveningPost, 12 Sept. 1964, before its
official publication. It was widely reviewed; see, for example, I. F. Stone's review,
"The Pilgrimageof Malcolm X," in The New YorkReview, 11 Nov. 1965.
49. Negro Digest ran several articles on the "Black Muslims" in the early 1960s,
including an article by Elijah Muhammadcalled "Whatthe Black Muslims Believe,"
Nov. 1963. Jet covered the impact of Muslim identity on the career of Cassius Clay:
"Will link with Malcolm X harmClay's career?,"26 Mar. 1964. Coveragein the black
presswas often ambivalent:when MalcolmX was killed, Sepia magazine'sheadlinewas
"TheViolent End of MalcolmX: He TaughtViolence, He Died Violently,"May 1965.
50. Lincoln, Black Muslimsin America, 128. On the black public sphere,see Public
Culture (Fall 1994), now available as The Black Public Sphere (Chicago, 1995), in
particularManthiaDiawara, "MalcolmX and the Black Public Sphere."
51. Lincoln, Black Muslims in America, 108.
52. From Amiri Baraka,"State/meant,"in Home (c. 1966; New York, 1998), 252.
53. Baraka,Four Black RevolutionaryPlays, (New York, 1969), vii-viii.
54. Baraka,Autobiography,203. For a contemporarydiscussion of the response,see
LawrenceP. Neal, "Malcolmand the Conscience of Black America,"TheLiberator6
(Feb. 1966): 10-11. Mance Williams discusses the impact of Malcolm X's Autobiog-
654
AMERICANQUARTERLY
raphyon the Free SouthernTheatercompanyin Black Theatrein the 1960s and 1970s:
A Historical-CriticalAnalysis of the Movement(Westport,Conn., 1985), 62.
55. Baraka,Autobiography,204.
56. See Ed Bullins, "A Short Statement on Street Theatre,"The Drama Review
(summer 1968), 93.
57. New publishinghouses included Dudley Randall's BroadsidePress, Chicago's
ThirdWorldPress, andWashington'sDrumand SpearPress. For a useful discussion of
the publishing scene, see The Norton Anthology of African American Literature,ed.
Henry Louis Gates and Nellie McKay (New York, 1997), 1791-806.
58. Baraka,Autobiography,249.
59. HaroldCruse, "Intellectualsand the Theaterof the the 1960s," in Crisis of the
Negro Intellectual (New York, 1967), 531. See also the penultimatechapter of the
book, '"TheHarlem Black Arts Theater.The special issue of The Drama Review on
black theatrewas summer 1968.
60. PierreBourdieu, The Field of CulturalProduction (New York, 1993).
61. Peter Burger, Theoryof the Avant-Garde(Minneapolis,Minn., 1984).
62. Interviewwith Ed Bullins, New Plays from the Black Theatre,ed. Bullins (New
York, 1969), vii.
63. Carmichael,"We are going to Use the Term 'Black Power' andWe are Going to
Define It Because Black Power S eaks to Us," in Black Nationalismin America, ed. J.
Bracey, August Meier, and E. Rdwick (New York, 1970), 472. Carmichaelis also
quoted by Philip B. Harper,Are Pe Not Men? Masculine Anxietyand the Problem of
African-AmericanIdentity(New York, 1996), 51.
64. Baraka,"The Need for a C lturalBase to Civil Rites and Bpower Mooments,"
originally published in The Black Power Revolt, repr. in Raise, Race, Rays, Raze:
Essays since 1965 (New York, 1971), 43-46. On the broad diffusion of cultural
nationalism, see William Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power
Movementin American Culture,1965-1975 (Chicago, 1992).
65. Lincoln, Black Muslims in America, 72.
66. Publicationhistory from Te Black Arts Movement,ed. Jeff Decker, 120-21.
The following dicussion quotes from the text Four Black RevolutionaryPlays (New
York, 1969). Subsequentpage numbersin parentheses.
67. For example, in his pamphlet,"7 Principlesof US MaulanaKarenga& the Need
for a Black Value System," later repr. in Raise, Race, Rays, Raze.
68. LarryNeal, "TheBlack Arts Movement"in Visionsof a LiberatedFuture:Black
Arts Movement Writings, ed. by Michael Schwartz (New York, 1989), 73. Mance
Williams points out thatthe music of Sun-Rahad big influence on A Black Mass--Sun
Ra performedthe music for the originalproduction,also heardon the recordedversion
of the play. Black Theatre,23.
69. K. William Kgositsile, "Towards Our Theater: A Definitive Act" in Negro
Digest (Apr. 1967), 15.
70. Elijah Muhammad explained the story of Yacoub frequently, including in
Message to the Blackman, 117-19. This myth was dropped from Nation of Islam
theology after Wallace D. Muhammadtook over leadership of the community after
Elijah Muhammad'sdeath in 1975. McCloud,AfricanAmericanIslam, 72-88.
71. The transformationof the name of the villain Yacub into a name (and a spelling)
that looks more like Jacob may have anti-Semiticovertones,though this is not explicit
elsewhere in the play.
72. As WernerSollors has pointed out, Baraka'sversion of the story draws on the
Frankensteintale; he conflates the 600 years of Elijah Muhammad's"history"into a
single, terriblemoment. Questfor a Populist Modernism,211.
ONE BLACKALLAH
655
73. For a critique of the "Western aesthetic," see Larry Neal, "The Black Arts
Movement," in Visions of a Liberated Future and "Some Reflections on the Black
Aesthetic,"in The Black Aesthetic, ed. Addison Gayle (New York, 1968).
74. The link betweensexualityandclassic horrorfilms has been extensivelydiscussed;
one interestingrecent example is Rhona Berenstein,Attack of the Leading Ladies:
Gender,Sexuality,and Spectatorshipin Classic Horror Cinema(New York, 1996).
75. Philip Brian Harper,"Black Rhetoric and the NationalistCall," in Are We Not
Men, 50.
76. There have been several otherimportantstudies of the masculinistbias of much
of the Black Arts movement. See Joyce Hope Scott, "FromForegroundto Margin:
Female Configurationsand Masculine Self-Representationin Black Nationalist Fiction," in Nationalisms and Sexualities, ed. Andrew Parker,et. al. (New York, 1992);
and E. Frances White, "Africa on My Mind: Gender, Counterdiscourse,and African
AmericanNationalism,"in Wordsof Fire, ed. Beverly Guy-Sheftall(New York, 1992).
77. "From:The Book of Life," for example, writtenafter the Newark riots in 1967
and collected in Raise, Race, Rays, Raze.
78. LarryNeal and LeRoi Jones, eds. Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American
Writing(New York, 1968). Essays with Islamic themes in the anthologyinclude David
Llorens,"TheFellah, the Chosen Ones, The Guardian,"and NathanHare,"Brainwashing of Black Men's Minds." In the Bullins anthology, other examples of NOIinfluencedplays are "El HajjMalik:A Play aboutMalcolm X," by N. R. Davidson, Jr.
and "TheBlack Bird (Al TairAswad)"by MarvinX. See also For Malcolm:Poems on
the Life and Death of Malcolm X, ed. Dudley Randall and Margaret Burroughs
(Detroit, 1969).
79. LarryNeal, "The Black Arts Movement,"77.
80. Amiri Baraka,"It's Nation Time,"originallypublishedin It's Nation Time,repr.
in Selected Poetry ofAmirit Baraka/LeRoiJones (New York, 1979), 198-200.
81. Addison Gayle, The Black Aesthetic (New York, 1971), xvi.
82. Useful descriptions of the 1967 war include William Quandt, Decade of
Decisions: American Policy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1967-1976 (Berkeley,
Calif., 1977); and Donald Neff, Warriorsfor Jerusalem (New York, 1988).
83. Alvin Poussaint, "An Overview of Fanon's Significance to the American Civil
Rights Movement,"in An InternationalTributeto Frantz Fanon (New York, 1978).
84. LeRoiJones,"TheLastDays of the AmericanEmpire(Includingsome Instructions
for Black People),"repr.in Home: Social Essays (1966; Hopewell, N.J., 1998).
85. ClayborneCarson,In Struggle: SNCC and The Black Awakeningof the 1960s
(Cambridge,Mass., 1981), 192-98 and 266. See also Stokley Carmichaeland Charles
Hamilton,Black Power: The Politics of Liberationin America (New York, 1967).
86. Weisbordand Kazarian,Israel in the Black Perspective, 33.
87. "ThirdWorld Round Up: the Palestine Problem:Test Your Knowledge,"SNCC
Newsletter, June-July 1967. The cartoons and photos are described in Weisbord and
Kazarian,Israel in the Black Perspective, 35-36.
88. Carson,In Struggle, 265-69.
89. Carson, "Blacks and Jews in the Civil Rights Movement," in Bridges and
Boundaries, ed. Jack Salzman.
90. MurrayFriedman,WhatWentWrong:The Creationand Collapse of the BlackJewish Alliance (New York, 1995), 227-233. JonathanKauffman'swonderful study,
BrokenAlliance, also makes a similarpresumption.
91. See ArthurHertzberg,"Israeland AmericanJewry," Commentary,Aug. 1967.
Taylor Branch, "Blacks and Jews: The Uncivil War," in Bridges and Boundaries.
Michael Stab argues that Holocaust memory and Israel were both importantto Jews
656
AMERICANQUARTERLY
well before 1967; "HolocaustConsciousness, Black Masculinity, and the Renegotiation of Jewish AmericanIdentity, 1957-67," paperpresentedat the annualmeeting of
the AmericanStudies Association.
92. Whitney Young, A. Philip Randolph,and Bayard Rustin sharplycriticized the
SNCC leaflet, and MartinLutherKing made several statementsof supportfor Israel
after the 1967 war. In 1975, several leaders, including Bayard Rustin, William
Fautnoy, and Andrew Young, formed BASIC (Black Americans in Supportof Israel
Committee),pamphletin Schombergclipping file, labeled "Israel."
93. Cornel West points out the significance of the principle of Palestinianrights in
"On Black-Jewish Relations," in Black and Jews: Alliances and Arguments (New
York, 1994), 144-153. Alice Walker makes a similar point in, "To the Editorsof Ms.
Magazine,"in In Search of Our Mother's Gardens (San Diego, 1983), 347-54. See
also June Jordan,Civil Wars(Boston, 1981).
94. James Baldwin, "Negros are anti-Semiticbecause they are anti-White"(1967),
repr.in The Price of the Ticket:CollectedNon-Fiction, 1948-1985 (New York, 1985).
95. "Black Art,"originally published in The Liberator(Jan. 1966) and collected in
Black Magic (1969). Reprintedin Selected Poetry. See Amiri Baraka,"I was an AntiSemite," Village Voice (20 Dec. 1980), 1.
96. Carson points to one such example in the press conference given by SNCC
programdirectorRalph Featherstonein the wake of the crisis, In Struggle, 268. Since
the Nation of Islam was revived by Louis Farakkhanin 1975, these kind of statements
have been frequent.Gardell,In the Name of Elijah Muhammad,246ff. See also Ellen
Willis, "The Myth of the Powerful Jew," in Blacks and Jews.
97. Lisa Lowe, ImmigrantActs (Durham,N.C., 1996); Jose David Saldivar,Border
Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies (Berkeley, Calif., 1997); George
Lipsitz, Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism,and the Poetics of
Place (New York, 1994). These scholars are often drawing on postcolonial theory,
including Homi Bhabha,esp. The Location of Culture(New York, 1994).
98. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, 208.