So to some extent this is a bit of a rehash.
I started down this road because “Mr. H” used to
mention the ‘Black Muslims’ in many of his posts. I wanted to try to figure out
what his posts meant and in the process discovered ‘The Voodoo King (of Detroit)’,
which took me back to my youth.
I was born in Detroit and spent my grammar school
days in Cleveland, Ohio. Every summer my parents would drop my brother and I
off at our grandparents in Detroit for a week, and every summer we’d have a
‘sleep over’ with all of my cousins. As we settled down for bed and my grandmother
said goodnight, my grandfather would come in and tell us about the ‘Voodoo King
of Detroit’ and how his followers would come for us in the middle of the night
and stab us in the heart. His story always ended with the warning that, ‘they’
will be 'coming for you while you sleep tonight'. This was usually followed by
my grandmother's insistence that he, ‘Stop it!’
Years later I WAS lurking AROUND this BLOG reading
Mr. Hendrickson's COMMENTS about BLACK Muslims AND Manson. I decided to
research that and like Starviego, I found the Voodoo King (of Detroit).
Wallace D. Fard (He's not the Voodoo King)
Contemporary, Detroit, newspapers call him Wallace
D. 'Farad' but every other historical record says 'Fard'. Wallace D. Fard is
the original source for what later came to be called ‘Helter Skelter’ by
Charles Manson. That is him below.
According to the FBI, Fard was born Wallace Ford in
Portland, Oregon February 25, 1891. His parents were Zared Ford and Beatrice
Ford, both born in Hawaii.
The FBI file claims Fard was arrested in Los
Angeles for assault in 1918 and on narcotics charges in 1926. On the second charge,
he spent three years in San Quentin. (FBI Records: The Vault, Wallace Fard
Muhammed, Parts 1-7.)
Wallace D. Fard appears on the historical stage July 4, 1930 in Detroit,
Michigan, where he is working as a door to door silk peddler selling to the
African-American community. Fard had an East Indian appearance, and was a dapper dresser with perfect white teeth and according to the FBI, maroon eyes. He is described as being extremely likable and charismatic.
While
presenting his sales pitch to his potential buyer Fard would suddenly announce that
they were ‘truly beautiful’ and ‘special’. Fard’s comments would alternate
between flattery and strange, esoteric, references to the ‘lost-found people of Shabazz’. Fard
would close the conversation by advising his listener that she (typically) was
descended from scholars and kings and that ‘her people’ the ‘black’ race had
invented the alphabet, calculus, astronomy and philosophy. The blacks, he would
proclaim, were the elite race, God's chosen people and destined to 'rise!' and
rule the world.
He
explained that this was a divine certainty because Allah had 'willed it to be
so' hinting that he, Fard, was God’s divine messenger. All this was not going
to happen sometime in the distant future but the listener was living in the
time when Armageddon was going to occur. Fard would proclaim that the ‘white
devils’ would soon be destroyed. (Zoe
Colley, 'All America is a Prison', The Nation of Islam and the
Politicization of African American Prisoners, 1955-1965, Journal of
American Studies, 2014). Mystery
Man Kelli B. Kavanaugh, Detroit Metro Times, March 5, 2003. Detroit Free Press, November 21-27, 1932.)
“Given
the importance of Christianity to African American identity and culture, Fard’s teachings inevitably engaged with this
aspect of black life. He made extensive use of the Bible, as the religious text
with which African Americans were most familiar, to portray Christianity as the
white man’s religion and a tool of racial control.
In doing so, he sought to break the bond between African American identity and Christian values. However, at the same time as castigating Christianity as the product of white malevolence, Fard also appropriated elements of biblical discourse to produce a doctrine that, as Zafar
Ansari has shown, bore “a greater
degree of resemblance with Judaism and . . . especially Christianity than Islam.” (Colley)
Fard’s 'truth' included the story of Jacob (Yacub)
and particularly the Book of Revelations, both stories Fard ‘translated’ from
the ‘trickology’ of the ‘white devil’s words’ to their true meaning as revealed
by Allah. And it went like this:
6500 years ago, the only race on earth was the
black race. Then a mad scientist named Yacub created the other races, one at a
time, by a technique known as ‘grafting’. As he did the ‘black’ race slowly
became whiter and whiter until finally he created the ‘blue eyed, white
devils’. These beings were totally evil, a murderous lot who could never be
trusted because they spoke in riddles, confused and manipulated. Fard had been sent to lead the chosen race to
mastery of the world through the coming Armageddon. ( Kavanaugh)
Soon the ‘black people’ would ‘rise’. Some blacks,
however, were ‘lost’. Some, unfortunately, would remain ignorant of the truth and many of the ‘lost’ would perish in the conflict. Blacks would fight blacks as well as whites. In
the end the ‘black man’ would slay the white, each killing four by stabbing
them in the heart and the world would belong to the blacks.
Between 1930 and 1932 Fard recruited a following estimated
by authorities at between 8,000-9,000 from the African-American community in
Detroit. He started a school known as 'The University of Islam' and a 'church'
he named ''The Order of Islam' that he later called 'The Allah Temple of Islam'. Finally it came to be known as the Nation of Islam (NOI).
All of this was
designed to segregate the ‘chosen people’ from the influences of the white
devil and allow them to cast off the teachings of the devil by living apart from
the white devils until the Armageddon came.
Converts to this new religion were required as a
first act to change their name. They must cast off their ‘slave name’ and
abandon their past. Allah would reveal their true name through Fard. They must go
simply by “X” to separate them from their slave master’s name until that day. The adherent
could ask for such a name by using a pre-printed card, which Fard provided, by
most accounts, for $2. In return Fard presented them with an ornate card,
bearing their Muslim name, and, of course, collected his commission from the
printing company. (Erdmann D. Benyon, The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Migrants
in Detroit, American Journal of Sociology, 1938 and Kavanaugh.)
_____
"The true believer who becomes a Muslim was expected to cast off
his old self and take on a new identity. He was no longer a Negro, so
long despised by the white man that he has come almost to despise himself.
Now he was a black man - divine ruler of the universe, different only in degree
from Allah Himself. This rebirth was commemorated by a change in
name." (Lincoln, Dr. C. Eric. 1961, 1973. The Black Muslim
in America. Westport: Greenwood Press, Publishers)
_____
Fard's protégé was one, Elijah Robert Poole (whom
he renamed, Elijah Mohamed). Until his death in 1975 he would head the NOI
after Fard's sudden disappearance, officially, in 1934.
Everything seemed to be going smoothly for Fard.
His following was growing in the African-American community. Donations and
requests for non-slave names were pouring in.
Then the wheels came off.
The
Murder of JJ Smith
On Sunday, November 20, 1932 a follower of Fard, Robert Harris (soon to become known as the 'Voodoo King') murdered another African-American named James J. Smith.
Harris
explained to the court at his initial hearing that Smith agreed to die. Death, Harris explained, was not the end. ‘It will
set Smith free and he will reach a higher state of being’. Smith, allegedly, consented to being stabbed in the heart (the preferred method for killing
‘white devils’ -although Smith was black) and beaten over the head with a car
axle. Harris went on to explain to detectives about the coming race war and how
Smith would now be a warrior in that war ‘inflicting fear on the white devil’.
He also identified his inspiration: Fard.
Fard was arrested. Initially, Fard stuck to his
story about the coming race war and his own divinity but denied telling Harris
to kill Smith or telling Smith to volunteer to be sacrificed.
In a typical
response during less complicated times, Fard, Harris and another high-ranking member of the
group, also arrested at the time, were sent to a psychiatric ward to determine
their sanity. (Detroit Free Press, Monday, November 21-27, 1932)
According to the FBI Fard subsequently admitted the
whole thing was a racket. Fard was released as long as he agreed to disband his
'cult' and leave Detroit forever. He agreed.
Fard relocated to Chicago but things didn’t go well
there, either. On March 6, 1935, one of his followers was summoned to ‘Women’s Court’ for an
altercation with another woman on the train. Some reports say
the assailant pulled a knife on her victim.
About 100 ‘brothers and sisters’ showed up in court
to support the accused, who asked for a 'warrant' for the other combatant's daughter who allegedly kicked her in the shin. About 100 police showed up to make sure things
stayed calm. This filled the small courtroom and the crowd spilled over into the
antechamber. The bailiff ordered the antechamber of the courtroom to be
cleared. There was some confusion over which door to exit and a riot ensued. Shots were fired, knives and clubs were wielded and a police Captain died of a heart attack while diving into the fray. (Chicago Tribune, Wednesday March 6, 1935)
Fard
wasn’t present and while the police were looking for him he and was never found. In fact, he disappeared forever. The NOI claims Fard disappeared a year earlier. In fact, Elijah Mohamed claimed he saw him climb onto an 'airplane' and ascend to heaven. That said, the papers in Chicago are pretty clear who the police wanted to interview: Wallace D. Fard.
That’s why black
prisoners become Muslims so fast when Elijah Muhammad’s teachings filter into
their cages by way of other Muslim convicts. “The white man is the devil” is a
perfect echo of that black convict’s lifelong experience.
The
Autobiography of Malcolm X.
By the early 1960's the NOI’s 'bastardization' of
Islam was booming in the prison systems of the country.
(Aside: In
1961 C.
Eric Lincoln in The Black Muslim in America coined the term "Black Muslim," thus distinguishing
them from orthodox Muslims who he called "moslems" because the NOI is not Muslim.)
Sociologists
observed at the time that this phenomenon was the product of two factors: the
growing numerical dominance of African-Americans within the general prison
population and the impact of the civil rights movement.
The process was bolstered, they said, by prison desegregation. The
removal of racial barriers intensified racial conflict as white prisoners
battled to retain territorial and formal control of the prison yard. (Colley)
_____
“Black Muslim’ prisoners distinguished themselves from other African American
prisoners by shaving their heads and marking the “seal
of Islam” on their foreheads with either cigarettes or caustic soap. (Colley)
_____
During the late fifties and early 1960’s prison and
government officials offered
increasingly shrill warnings about the growing strength of the ‘Black Muslims’
inside their correctional institutions.
By 1961 Time magazine was issuing a warning about
"Black Muslims" in our prisons, referring to them as: "Negro
supremacists dedicated to the extinction of the white race". (Recruits
Behind Bars, Time, March, 1961)
The establishment began to fret about
the influence of the NOI on the 'negro' population as a whole, warning that
blacks were being trained in prison by the NOI for a race war. They, it was claimed, would form the vanguard of the Fruit of Islam the 'security force' of the NOI, in the upcoming racial conflict. Prison officials
were encouraged to ‘crack down’ on the ‘Black Muslims’ and solitary confinement
soon became the home for many. (Colley)
Enter SCOTUS
In 1965 the Supreme Court decided Cooper vs. Pate. In that case an inmate in
an Illinois state prison argued that he was denied access to NOI publications
(Muhammad Speaks) in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 solely because
he was a 'Back Muslim'. A district court dismissed his claim saying, in essence,
that he had no claim under the law because he was a prisoner. By a unanimous
vote SCOTUS ruled that the inmate could bring suit under the Civil Rights Act
of 1871. Prisoners did not lose their all their rights, the court reasoned,
only those necessarily arising from their incarceration or to prevent future
crimes. And the flood gates opened.
Hundreds of lawsuits followed advocating for
prisoner religious rights amongst other causes and seeking NOI literature, prayer
rugs, special dietary accommodations and copies of the Quran.
These events conspired to create the appearance
that there had been sudden upsurge in incarcerated ‘Black Muslims’.
Statistically, that was not the case. By 1966 the NOI’s influence was actually
waning, but ‘Black Muslims’ were now free to openly express themselves in
prison and could sue if they were deprived of this right. They 'came out of the
closet', so to speak, and did so suddenly and with little forewarning.
And Charles Manson was in the thick of it.
Manson
and The Black Muslims
Robert Hendrickson:
“The
Muslim connection did not become significantly relevant to me until after 9/11,
when in 2007, I
was putting “Inside the MANSON Gang” together and came across a
copy of Clark Howard’s “Zebra”. Then, in 2008-10, the “transcribing” process
became a series of “ah-ha” moments. I remembered Phil Phillips talking about
his and Charlie’s relationship with Muslims in prison, but it was certain
dialogue in “Zebra”, combined with specific “transcriptions” that really blew
the Manson case wide open for me.
There are specific keywords, phrases and beliefs that
Charles Manson could only have picked-up from the Black Muslims in prison,
which are also expressed by the Black Muslims in “Zebra”. Thus, if Manson
talked to Family members about a Black and White race war, he got the idea from
the Black Muslims in prison. With regards to the Vietnam War, the Family and I
discussed the issue at length. As for law enforcement threats and harassment,
back then the friction was always apparent to me, but the issue of an actual
violent conflict did not come to a full realization until I understood the
transcriptions, more clearly.”
****
“At the time in the 1960’s, nobody even knew what a
Black Muslim was, let alone an ordinary Muslim. First and foremost, Vincent
Bugliosi was an attorney/prosecutor, who’s job was to get a jury to convict
Charles Manson. That’s it! All this BS we hear today about right/wrong,
Constitutionally correct, etc. is just that – BS. That Bugliosi sold a Black
and White race war motive to a bunch of “moon rocks”, as the failed OJ
prosecutor Marsha Clark calls jurists, may not have required a “judicial
genius”, but it sure didn’t hurt to have one on-board. That said, if Bugliosi
played-up the issue of “Black” Muslims, he would have had to explain the
existence of Black Muslims organizing and preaching against “Whitey” and
“Christians” in California prisons.
Then, if the Black Muslims taught Charlie about the coming
Black/White Battle of Armageddon, why were “they” not also on trial as
co-conspirators? Then you have to explain why Muslims have it in for Christians
and pretty soon you need a jury made up of all college graduates with history
degrees, just to comprehend an otherwise simple Black/White race war. I doubt
that Bugliosi was unaware of the delicate Muslim/Christian conflict connected
to his so-called Helter Skelter race war motive, but simplicity SELLS.
Complicated things do not. And when a prosecutor “builds” his case, that means
precisely that. He carefully builds (puts together) for the jury, ONLY the
“necessary” information (evidence) needed to accomplish HIS goal, which is to
get a conviction.
Otherwise, Bugliosi never even had a meaningful conversation
with Sandra Good – and Phil Phillips (Manson’s best friend in prison) isn’t
even mentioned in the prosecutor’s best-selling book. Paul Watkins introduced
the “Black Muslims” into his Helter Skelter analogy, but nobody even pressed
such an important issue further.”
Interview
with Robert Hendrickson, Ear Candy Magazine, June 2012.
_______________
While I was unable to find evidence directly
corroborating that Manson learned all the above from Black Muslims in prison, the circumstantial evidence strongly suggests it happened. In fact, it is hard
to conceive how he could have avoided it, especially at the rather ‘progressive’
institution, McNeil Island, where he was doing time in the early and mid 1960's.
It is highly probable that during his years at
McNeil Island Manson experienced what must have been, to his eyes and ears, a
rather shocking, and sudden upsurge of Black Muslim activism, freed from the
'closet' by the Cooper decision and
desegregation.
What would he have heard?
The story of Wallace D. Fard and the imminent Armageddon: a black/white race war that was going to happen before
1970.
1970?
Yes. More than one writer in the late fifties
and early sixties mentions ‘the end of the next decade’ or ‘by the end of the
decade’ as a sort of pivotal moment for the ‘Black Muslims’. For example, Time
Magazine:
_____
“The
Moslems themselves talk of 1970 as their D Day, expansively predict that before
that time the big white nations will have eliminated each other with atomic
warfare and Black Africa will stand unchallenged.” (Races: The Black Supremacists, Time,
August 10, 1959)
_____
The very nature of McNeil Island penitentiary supports the
conclusion Manson was exposed to this. Cooper and Post-Cooper court decisions were
likely embraced by the authorities there.
McNeil was a progressive institution
with a long history of adopting modern and even 'experimental' rehabilitative programs like, for example, ‘bibliotherapy’- the notion reading books would cause prisoners to embrace
the American way. Bibliotherapy educated a host of 60's prison radicals.
_____
“[G]enerally speaking, throughout McNeil Island’s 135-year
history-including the years since 1981, when it’s been run by Washington state
– the prison has maintained a kinder, gentler approach, one based on the belief
that hard work and nurturing the inner man can reduce recidivism.
When the prison closes, that will be its legacy: that
criminal justice is about rehabilitation, not retribution.
In the 1960s, the philosophy of prisoner rehabilitation [at
McNeil] began to veer away from work therapy and toward a “medical model,”
characterized by substance-abuse programs and inmate discussion groups. Prison
guards became “correctional officers.”
At McNeil, music was considered therapy: the prison had a
piano and several practice rooms for individuals and groups: jazz combos,
western bands and Dixieland ensembles.”
(http://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/article22203306.html#storylink=cpy)
_____
(Aside: It has been said that Alvin Karpas taught
Manson to play guitar. Probably through one of these programs.)
If Manson was exposed to Black Muslim proselytizing, that
rhetoric spoke of an apocalypse that was coming and soon. The apocalypse would
be a black verse white race war and 'the foot soldiers of the holy war' would
be the Black Muslim convicts.
While he was there, the hierarchy of the
prison suddenly flipped. While it is likely he seldom ever spoke to a black inmate during his previous incarcerations, by 1961-2 'they' were everywhere. And the previously invisible Black Muslims suddenly were on top of
the heap of black prisoners that were suddenly the majority, due to desegregation.
Combine this with events outside the walls and it
must have appeared that the prophecy of Wallace D. Fard was, indeed, ‘coming
down fast’
Watts Riots: August 11-16, 1965
(Aside: note the dates. I have always thought there was more to the dates of these murders then simple coincidence if you were trying to start a race war.)
Detroit Riots: July 23-27, 1967
The Black Panther Party (BPP): founded on October
15, 1966.
May 2, 1967: Thirty armed members of the BPP go to
the California state capital and rally on the steps.
On April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King was
assassinated and the cities of America erupted into violence. Two hundred major
'racial incidents' occurred in 172 American cities.
In August 1968, what has been called a 'police
riot' erupted at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Black Panther, Bobbly
Seal, allegedly said the words below to the gathered 'Yippies' speaking on behalf
of the Black Panther Party:
"The time for singing 'We Shall Overcome' is
past. Everyone should get himself a shotgun or a 357 magnum or a carbine and
kill pigs." (Testimony of undercover police officer Robert Pierson at the
trial of the Chicago 8)
(Aside: The 'Yippies' nominated a pig named
"Pigasus" for President at the convention and demanded secret service
protection for their candidate. Testimony at the trial on this event focused on
the fact that the pig was arrested by the 'pigs' before he could actually
accept the nomination.)
_____
“The BPP,
armed with guns, law books and a menacing bravado projected a militant swagger
that made their threats of starting a revolution for black liberation plausible
despite the considerable evidence to the contrary.” (Joseph Peniel, The
Black Power Movement: A State of the Field)
_____
Even if you assume Manson didn't give two thoughts to the idea
of an imminent race war, the government (our government) did. On June 15, 1969 J.
Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI said of the BPP "without question [the
Black Panther Party] represents the greatest threat to the internal; security
of the country". Through COINTELPRO (already actively seeking to undermine
the BPP and the NOI by 1969) the FBI set out to destroy the BPP in 1969.
Assume, if you will, that Manson sees the sudden
upsurge of Black Muslim 'awareness' while he sits in prison at McNeil Island.
It would have seemed to him to be a shocking event in the hierarchical and
controlled environment of the prison he was used to. Here, blacks were traditionally segregated and
'on the bottom' of the pile. 'Black Muslims' are suddenly preaching an
apocalypse where the white man would be slaughtered. Black inmates were suddenly
empowered in a way that upset the balance of power in the prisons and
terrified the prison establishment.
The ‘Black Muslim’ race war was
also expressed in terms Manson was familiar with from his youth: the origin is the Biblical, The Armageddon. Armageddon: a term Manson will supposedly use repeatedly when speaking of Helter Skelter.
Seemingly out of nowhere in this prison culture, that until that time was not only segregated based upon color but also based
upon power (white power), there arises a race of black warriors who believe God is
about to level the karma of the white man and restore the black man to his
rightful position- ruler of the world.
Manson is paroled into a world he cannot possibly understand the world of 1967- Haight Ashbury.
Here live the 'Leslie Van Houten's' of the world
who have never heard of the Black Muslims and do not 'see' Armageddon 'coming
down fast'. In the world of Ozzie and Harriet (even on dope) such things simply don't
happen. Suddenly, with a little LSD and the events of the day, Manson is a prophet.
Wallace D. Fard’s vision of Armageddon as a black/white
race war happening 'now' is where Helter Skelter was conceived, not in the mind of Vincent
Bugliosi.
Pax Vobiscum
Dreath
