Like other men with a messianic complex, Muhammad seemed to grow both in stature and spirit behind bars. First of all, he was clearly able to direct the movement even while he was in prison, and once he was released, he began uttering statements that made Fard and, indeed, the early Elijah Muhammad sound conservative. In bold staccato phrases, punctuated by clearing of the throat so endemic to Southern Negro preachers, Muhammad shouted to the throng that the white man is a snake, a devil by nature, evil, incapable of doing right. Despite the fact that he was still garbed in his “release suit,” Muhammad told the Chicago crowd that it made no sense for Negroes in this country to have fought against the Japanese, who were victimized by the same blue-eyed devil who had victimized the American Negro. But Muhammad did not stop there; he said that the American Negro had had no stake in World War II. “Rather,” Muhammad said, “the American Negro should be saving his energy and ammunition for ‘The Battle of Armageddon,’ which will be waged in the wilderness of North America. This battle--and this is one of the central teachings of the Nation of Islam--will be for freedom, justice, and equality. It will be waged to success or under death.” Muhammad always titillates his followers by telling them that he cannot at this moment let them know just when the battle will take place and who the protagonists will be. But one has only to sit in the audience and hear his followers applaud and laugh to know that they fully believe that the time of the bloodletting is nigh and that the struggle will be between black and white.
Despite his boldness, the movement stagnated under Muhammad’s leadership. In the mid-forties “The Big X” came on the scene. And with the arrival of Malcolm Little--christened into Islam Malcolm X and elevated by Elijah Muhammad to be Malcolm Shabazz, but known to the pimps, prostitutes, and dope addicts as “Big Red”--the Black Muslim movement really began to move.
Malcolm Little was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925, and like Elijah Muhammad he was the son of a Baptist minister. The family soon moved from Omaha to Lansing, Michigan. Malcolm’s father was a follower of the Black Nationalist, Marcus Garvey, who felt that all Negroes should return to Africa and escape the oppression of the white man. The Ku Klux Klan burned down the family home when Malcolm was only six years old. “The firemen came,” Malcolm says, “and just sat there without making any effort to put one drop of water on the fire. The same fire that burned my father’s home still burns in my soul.”