Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, the
Speaker 1: only history podcast. I'm your host Margaret Kiljoy, and with
Speaker 1: me today is the one and only Ian Johnson.
Speaker 2: Hey, Magpie, I'm great. I'm excited to be here, you know,
Speaker 2: on Mike for a change.
Speaker 3: It's nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Best known to listeners of this podcast as the
Speaker 1: person I mentioned at the start of every episode because
Speaker 1: he's also our audio engineer. Sophie is our producer, Hi Sophie, Hello, friends,
Speaker 1: and our audio engineer is Ian Hi. Ian Hi. Oh
Speaker 1: you could say hick, I can say.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: There's been so many times where I wanted to like
Speaker 2: edit in myself saying Hi back when I'm like, that's
Speaker 2: maybe too much, it's not.
Speaker 1: Now you should, you totally should.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'll just start doing it every now and then.
Speaker 1: All right, unwoman wrote Earth theme music. This week is
Speaker 1: a special week. We did an episode a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks ago about the pastist burglars who exposed Cointel pro
Speaker 1: which they did by breaking into an FBI office while
Speaker 1: Muhammad Ali was fighting the Fight of the Century that
Speaker 1: everyone would be distracted. My friend Ian said, Hey, Magpie,
Speaker 1: what about an episode about Mhammad Ali? So that's what
Speaker 1: we're doing yay, Yeah, I guess you kind of Usually,
Speaker 1: you know, here's the great reveal to the the guest,
Speaker 1: but you already knew what it was going to be.
Speaker 3: We're going off screens, I know, I.
Speaker 1: Know, all right, So this week we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the Greatest with a capital G. Muhammad fucking Ali,
Speaker 1: the man who declared he was the greatest, is a
Speaker 1: self appointed nickname and fucking proved it. He is the
Speaker 1: three time heavyweight champion.
Speaker 3: Of the world.
Speaker 1: He is a gold medal winner. He is a devout Muslim.
Speaker 1: He was a humanitarian. He was an anti war activist
Speaker 1: who threw his life and career into the fire rather
Speaker 1: than do some racist imperialism on behalf of the US government.
Speaker 1: He was an icon of black pride for his refusal
Speaker 1: of the sort of humility that is racistly expected of
Speaker 1: black men. He was an icon of the anti war movement.
Speaker 1: He was a shit talker. He was a poet. He
Speaker 1: was sometimes the first rapper. And you're going to be
Speaker 1: shocked to learn that. I want to spend as much
Speaker 1: time on the context that he's coming out of as
Speaker 1: I do in his biography, because you can listen to
Speaker 1: his biography a lot of places, but the context that's
Speaker 1: what's often missing. Really shaking up the format here, and
Speaker 1: you'll be shocked to know that he's morally complex, as
Speaker 1: basically every human is. And I actually, I really like
Speaker 1: what his moral complexity does for this story and shows
Speaker 1: like I actually, okay, the this wasn't a like, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden near the end you learn this person's
Speaker 1: terrible or something. This was instead like, oh, this person
Speaker 1: was always engaging in complicated things as like well as
Speaker 1: he possibly could. Really fucking interesting. I really I knew
Speaker 1: the like I mean, this is usually the case, right,
Speaker 1: I know, the sort of cliff notes version of there
Speaker 1: as people and then learn more about them. That's the
Speaker 1: job I do for a living. But I really liked
Speaker 1: this one, So thanks for thanks for putting this one
Speaker 1: in front of me. Yeah, what do you where are
Speaker 1: you coming from? When you were like, you know, let's
Speaker 1: do Muhammad Ali.
Speaker 2: Well, when we were talking about the Fight of the
Speaker 2: Century and kind of the relationship between Joe Frasier and
Speaker 2: Muhammad Ali and you know the cultural I guess impacts
Speaker 2: surrounding that and you know, their differences, I just thought
Speaker 2: that that dynamic was really interesting, and I was curious
Speaker 2: to dive a little deeper into that and kind of
Speaker 2: the cultural significance underpinning all of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's God, there's so much there, Yeah, so much.
Speaker 1: I got to some of it, but you know, all right,
Speaker 1: So the context that I want to talk about, I
Speaker 1: want to talk a bit about black athletes in the US,
Speaker 1: and boxers in particular, and how they relate to US
Speaker 1: race relations. And by US race relations, of course, I
Speaker 1: mean white supremacy that has been the dominant form of
Speaker 1: race relations in this country since before it was a country.
Speaker 1: And I want to talk about the Nation of Islam
Speaker 1: because for a lot of his career, Muhammad Ali was
Speaker 1: a member that particular and not well understood religion, which
Speaker 1: I had. Also, you know, I knew the big picture
Speaker 1: notes about the Nation of Islam. So I don't know
Speaker 1: enough or have enough time in an episode that isn't
Speaker 1: focused on it, to talk anywhere near the whole breadth
Speaker 1: of how black people have interacted with sports in the US.
Speaker 1: Right is an incredibly complicated thing. The short of it,
Speaker 1: as I understand, there's been historically very few avenues towards
Speaker 1: fame and financial success available to a lot of black
Speaker 1: people in this country because of the aforementioned white supremacy,
Speaker 1: and music and sports top that list things that put
Speaker 1: people on pedestals, but also also then keep people out
Speaker 1: of systemic power, and a lot of people have done
Speaker 1: really cool shit with that platform regardless. So one of
Speaker 1: the more recent examples that I think happened in people's
Speaker 1: living memories, so probably people know this are the strikes
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty when in August of twenty twenty, even I,
Speaker 1: who doesn't follow sports, famously knew about these and was
Speaker 1: excited about them. We were talking off Mike beforehand about
Speaker 1: the fact that I don't know anything about sports.
Speaker 3: I knew enough, you knew enough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've actually I've written, I've ghost written two romance
Speaker 1: novels that sports characters are the main characters of them.
Speaker 1: You know who Shack was? Yeah, I yah know, fuck
Speaker 1: yah macpie. Yeah. I also know the average height of
Speaker 1: a quarterback in the NFL because I had to make
Speaker 1: a character be the average height of a quarterback in
Speaker 1: the NFL, which is five foot time concept I know
Speaker 1: was shorter than I expected.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, So in August of that year, at twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: cops tried to murder this guy named Jacob Blake and
Speaker 1: Kenosha allegedly tried to murder. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: have to legally say allegedly, but cops, you know, shot
Speaker 1: a guy a bunch of times because they wanted him
Speaker 1: to be dead. The word that I have for that
Speaker 1: is a murder. Cops have a different word, Fuck the cops.
Speaker 1: They keep murdering black people. So the Milwaukee Bucks, which
Speaker 1: is a basketball team, which I've learned, they went on strike.
Speaker 1: They refused to leave their locker rooms. Their opponents or
Speaker 1: the Orlando Magic didn't accept the forfeiture. Like as far
Speaker 1: as I understand, they could have won by default, but
Speaker 1: they didn't because they were cool. Also right, Yes, soon
Speaker 1: teams across the NBA, the WNBA, baseball, hockey, soccer, tennis,
Speaker 1: and football all went on strike, with black players and
Speaker 1: white players and coaches taking the knee, despite Republican lawmakers
Speaker 1: throwing a fit and threatening to fund cut everyone's funding.
Speaker 1: But I want to talk more about boxing. And I
Speaker 1: think I think we've mentioned Jack Johnson, the Galveston Giant
Speaker 1: on the show before, but I don't remember when. I
Speaker 1: don't remember what episode, and I don't think we talked
Speaker 1: about him in great detail. I'm gonna talk about him,
Speaker 1: you remember, I don't remember.
Speaker 3: I don't know we talked about him much episode either. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Jack was born in eighteen seventy eight. He was born
Speaker 1: to two formally enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, or at
Speaker 1: least he grew up in Galveston, Texas. He actually grew
Speaker 1: up personally. He grew up without experiencing much segregation. In
Speaker 1: his neighborhood. Everyone was poor as fucking stuck together, and
Speaker 1: his friend group was at least white as black. He
Speaker 1: had a fairly progressive viewpoint on that white and black
Speaker 1: people could just get along. He moved to New York
Speaker 1: City when he was sixteen. He started boxing at the
Speaker 1: gym that he got hired as a janitor before right.
Speaker 1: He was like, I need a job and they'll like
Speaker 1: be a janitor, and he was like cool, can I
Speaker 1: box two? And they're like sure, nice, yeah, And he
Speaker 1: was really fucking good at it. He wounded back in
Speaker 1: Texas in eighteen ninety eight, he had his debut fight
Speaker 1: where he knocked a guy out. Prize fighting, however, was
Speaker 1: illegal in Texas, so he went to jail for fighting,
Speaker 1: and he went to jail with another boxer, an older
Speaker 1: Jewish guy, who trained him literally in the cell. Spectators
Speaker 1: would come and watch them. Yeah, they were in jail
Speaker 1: for like twenty eight days or something, and they would
Speaker 1: box in the cell and then like spectators would show up.
Speaker 1: And I can't like, maybe it's like some like such
Speaker 1: an old timey jail that the spectators are people off
Speaker 1: the street.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like you're they're watching them train in the
Speaker 2: jail cells.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Wow, Okay, he's like count of Monte Cristo type shit.
Speaker 3: That's cool.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so he becomes a very good boxer. By
Speaker 1: nineteen oh three, Johnson won the Black Heavyweight Championship, which
Speaker 1: was different than the World Heavyweight Championship because of racism.
Speaker 1: He wanted more. He wanted the World heavyweight championship regardless
Speaker 1: of race. No black man had never held it because
Speaker 1: no black man was ever allowed to fight for it
Speaker 1: because there was a problem. The problem was racism. I
Speaker 1: think I already spoiled that one. It's usually the problem
Speaker 1: when we're Yeah, actually you could just leave.
Speaker 3: It at that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's usually just the problem. Yeah every time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the raigning champion. His name was James J. Jeffries,
Speaker 1: which for astute observer observers will notice that is too
Speaker 1: many J initials.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just triple J. That's a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, his a litter of parents had raised him
Speaker 1: a racist, and Jeffries straight up retired rather than fight
Speaker 1: Jack Johnson, who also has two J initials, which is
Speaker 1: like an acceptable number of jays.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, two is good. Three are pushing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like one is ideal. I think that
Speaker 1: you're doing really well yourself. Good number of jys. So
Speaker 1: triple J retires and his white Canadian dude named Tommy
Speaker 1: Burns he winds up with the belt despite having no
Speaker 1: js anywhere in either of his names, and he had
Speaker 1: a really cool thing going for him, Tommy Burns, which
Speaker 1: is that he wasn't a piece of shit racist.
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, he was a.
Speaker 1: German Canadian from a poor as fuck family. Literally five
Speaker 1: of his siblings died before they became adults.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was the heavyweight champion. He was five foot
Speaker 1: seven and one hundred and seventy five pounds. For modern context,
Speaker 1: modern boxing heavyweight starts at two hundred pounds overall, The
Speaker 1: size of boxers has increased over the past century, or
Speaker 1: at least of heavyweights, and he once said quote, I
Speaker 1: will defend my title against all comers, none barred by this.
Speaker 1: I mean white, Black, Mexican, Indian, or any other nationality.
Speaker 1: I propose to be the champion of the world, not
Speaker 1: the white or the Canadian or the American. If I
Speaker 1: am not the best man in the heavyweight division, I
Speaker 1: don't want the title.
Speaker 3: I like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, So they fought in nineteen oh eight. After
Speaker 1: fourteen rounds, Burns conceded. He conceded for two reasons, one
Speaker 1: because he was physically too fucked up to continue, and
Speaker 1: two because people were afraid of the race riots that
Speaker 1: would come if the crowd saw a black man beat
Speaker 1: a white man even further. Yeah, so Jack Johnson, the
Speaker 1: black boxer with the proper number of J initials, became
Speaker 1: the first black man to hold the title of heavyweight
Speaker 1: Champion of the World, and he gave a shout out
Speaker 1: to Tommy Burns for being the first white man to
Speaker 1: actually give a black man a chance to win the title,
Speaker 1: and white people flipped out. This is going to be
Speaker 1: really surprising. No one's going to have seen this coming.
Speaker 1: White people as a category seem to have a problem
Speaker 1: with not being the best at everything. I think that
Speaker 1: they're afraid that other people treat them the way that
Speaker 1: they've been treating people.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Interesting, Yeah, like, oh.
Speaker 1: Is it a problem to be the minority in the US?
Speaker 1: Why would it be a problem? How do you treat minorities? What?
Speaker 1: So something had to be done right because this atrocious
Speaker 1: thing has happened. The white man has been proven to
Speaker 1: not be inherently the best at everything.
Speaker 3: Oh no, what are we going to do?
Speaker 1: Fortunately, there was this guy who I used to think
Speaker 1: was cool but turns out to be a piece of shit.
Speaker 1: You ever heard of the writer Jack London.
Speaker 3: Yes, I've heard the name. I'm not super.
Speaker 1: Fucking Call of the Wild.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yes, Yes.
Speaker 1: He was a huge celebrity at his time, in a
Speaker 1: way that novelists don't really pull off today because there's
Speaker 1: like movies, so people don't have to read books as much, right,
Speaker 1: They've like choices, And I always thought Jacklinin was probably cool.
Speaker 1: I never really read his books, but I was like
Speaker 1: passively aware of the fact that he was a socialist,
Speaker 1: he was into animal rights. He was a big old
Speaker 1: racist piece of shit. More than a product of his
Speaker 1: time racist And there's like, I mean, are we look
Speaker 1: at look look at this man's face.
Speaker 2: Oh yeahs yeah, oh yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: That man says slurs. That's true.
Speaker 5: And there's like, as a matter of fact, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: I read so many fucking papers of people trying to
Speaker 1: defend him and his racism. Oh no, because he like
Speaker 1: also occasionally said vaguely okay things about race. I was
Speaker 1: looking for like a redemption arc, like oh he must
Speaker 1: have changed, Like no, he just he just was inconsistent.
Speaker 1: But you know what if something is like by meaning
Speaker 1: cereal and it's like fifty percent deer shit, you know
Speaker 1: I'm not like, oh I like the fifty percent. That's
Speaker 1: not deer shit. Like no, I just throw away the
Speaker 1: fucking bull. So he wrote essays Jack London, our guy.
Speaker 1: He wrote essays about the yellow peril of Asian people
Speaker 1: moving into the US. He didn't coin the phrase yellow
Speaker 1: peril that predates him. He coined a different phrase, the
Speaker 1: Great White Hope.
Speaker 3: Ah okay.
Speaker 1: He started writing in papers the Twitter of the era
Speaker 1: that what we needed was the great White hope to
Speaker 1: beat Jack Johnson. He said, quote Jim Jeffries must now
Speaker 1: emerge from his alfalfa farm and remove that golden smile
Speaker 1: from Jack Johnson's face. Jeff, it's up to you. The
Speaker 1: white man must be rescued.
Speaker 5: Oh god god, yeah, I mean, I don't want to
Speaker 5: disrespect our listeners by actually vomiting into the microphone. But
Speaker 5: just just imagine, yeah.
Speaker 3: Just the fragility of it all. It's like a first
Speaker 3: of all white people that you had enough help. You
Speaker 3: don't need to say it, you don't need you don't
Speaker 3: need help. It's that's just ridiculous. Oh my god. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so just keep going.
Speaker 1: So the piece of shit racist Jim Jeffries was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll do it. I'll wipe that smirk off of his face,
Speaker 1: you know. And this was the first Fight of the Century.
Speaker 1: It actually happens in the same century as the Second
Speaker 1: Fight of the Century. Jack was not subtle about his motives.
Speaker 1: In case anyone thinks I'm like reading a little bit
Speaker 1: too much into it, he said, quote, I am going
Speaker 1: into this fight for the sole purpose of proving that
Speaker 1: a white man is better than a negro. As compared
Speaker 1: to Jack, who was like not like like, he wasn't
Speaker 1: like I'm doing this for the black man, which would
Speaker 1: have been entirely chill if he had been. He just
Speaker 1: was like, let the best man win. Like that's his
Speaker 1: literal quote is.
Speaker 3: Let thet Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Bookies gave the odds of ten to seven in favor
Speaker 1: of Jeffries, the racist white guy. I can't keep their
Speaker 1: names apart because their name's not the same to me,
Speaker 1: because that's the way my brain works, and their names
Speaker 1: start with the same letter. So they gave ten to
Speaker 1: seven odds in favor of Jeffreys, which makes no fucking sense.
Speaker 1: The guy hadn't fought in years. He like, yeah, they
Speaker 1: favored the outer shape white guy over the black man
Speaker 1: in his prime.
Speaker 2: So Jack, he's the world champion at this time, Jack Johnson, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So they're like, yeah, the other guy who hasn't fought
Speaker 2: in like three years is definitely gonna beat the world champion.
Speaker 3: Okay, sure, look at the color of his skin.
Speaker 1: How could he not win?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's like, how could he lose?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he can't go wrong. Just been on the white guy. God.
Speaker 1: So Jack beat the shit out of Gym and eventually
Speaker 1: Jim sided threw in the towel in the fourteenth round.
Speaker 1: So not only was Jack and Jack was not only
Speaker 1: the first person to ever knocked down Jim in a fight,
Speaker 1: but Jack did it twice that night.
Speaker 3: Oh no, he's and.
Speaker 1: The boxing promoter John Sullivan, who I think he's the promoter.
Speaker 1: I didn't like follow this side quest, but I think
Speaker 1: he's the guy who basically made boxing all like a
Speaker 1: thing of national attention. Right. John Sullivan put it plainly,
Speaker 1: the fight of the century is over and a black
Speaker 1: man is the undisputed champion of the world. So white
Speaker 1: people rioted all over the country.
Speaker 3: Oh of course, okay, yeah, of.
Speaker 1: Course they did. They can't not. Apparently, Jack Johnson now
Speaker 1: the heavyweight champion of the world. He just wants people
Speaker 1: to fucking get along and he wants to be treated right.
Speaker 1: He used his prize money to open a desegregated nightclub
Speaker 1: run by his white wife. He got arrested for having
Speaker 1: a white wife. Basically, he was arrested for quote transporting
Speaker 1: her because she was probably also a sex worker, but
Speaker 1: she was like legitimately his wife, and so in this way,
Speaker 1: anti sex work laws were used to further racism and misogyny.
Speaker 1: But did you know that we carefully we don't carefully
Speaker 1: screen our ads against misogyny and those things do we
Speaker 1: because they're randomly generated. Did you know that the other
Speaker 1: thing he did with his money is buy stuff? Just
Speaker 1: like you, the listener can also use your prize money
Speaker 1: from the prize of work to buy stuff from ads.
Speaker 1: How do I do?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 1: I thanks, here's ce Meds and we're back. We're talking
Speaker 1: about Jack Johnson, the heavyweight champion of the world in
Speaker 1: the you know, nineteen oughts and nineteen tens for a
Speaker 1: little while. Jack Johnson himself was criticized at the time
Speaker 1: because he also didn't want to fight black people and
Speaker 1: give them a chance at the title, because history is
Speaker 1: complicated and doesn't give us easy heroes all the time.
Speaker 1: But the next black boxer he fought was Jim Johnson,
Speaker 1: who had recently fought Joe Jeannette a bunch of times.
Speaker 3: Because all these j names, it's kind of crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know whether it was like a rule
Speaker 1: that you couldn't compete if you didn't have a JJ name.
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely sure, but yeah, so boxing has a
Speaker 1: racist past, and these racialized conflicts are going to play
Speaker 1: heavily into Muhammad Ali's life, and there's going to be
Speaker 1: another Fight of the Century with oddly similar presentation of
Speaker 1: racial dynamics that we'll talk about. There's another class. There's
Speaker 1: a couple of other classic moments in black sports as
Speaker 1: relate to larger race politics that I don't have time
Speaker 1: to go into, but some of them are when black
Speaker 1: athletes beat the Nazi master race in Berlin in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, only to have to come back in segregated
Speaker 1: units to Germany to fight and beat the Nazis, one
Speaker 1: racist country helping fight another even more racist country. Then
Speaker 1: you have nineteen sixty eight, when two black runners, Tommy
Speaker 1: Smith and John Carlos, won the Golden bronze and the
Speaker 1: two hundred meter in the Olympics. They raised their fist
Speaker 1: in the Black Power salute during the national anthem, standing
Speaker 1: on the podium without shoes to represent black poverty. The
Speaker 1: silver medallist was a white Australian named Peter Norman. He
Speaker 1: wore a badge in solidarity with the other two and yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. All three faced a ton of backlash
Speaker 1: for the action, and where all three of them were
Speaker 1: ostracized by their nation's sports communities. They had been inspired,
Speaker 1: of course, by the courageous career at risking actions of
Speaker 1: a black athlete from before them, Muhammad Ali from the
Speaker 1: years for them. Actually, I'll talk about the other big
Speaker 1: piece of context, the Nation of Islam. Are you familiar
Speaker 1: with the Nation of.
Speaker 2: Islam Again, I think, like more cliff notes version. I know,
Speaker 2: and I may be wrong about this, but I believe
Speaker 2: they were a slightly more like militant wing of Islam.
Speaker 2: And I know they attract a lot of people in
Speaker 2: African American community. I know a lot of people converted
Speaker 2: to Nation of Islam. So that's like kind of the
Speaker 2: extent of what I.
Speaker 5: Know, not without like I would say, for lack of
Speaker 5: a better word, controversy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Oh, then the next line in Margaret's script literally says,
Speaker 5: the Nation of Islam is one of the most controversial
Speaker 5: organizations I can think of.
Speaker 2: Like, I know a lot of people would like hire
Speaker 2: them for security for things and stuff like that. Like
Speaker 2: that's next the gist of my knowledge.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so yeah, say they're controversial, Margaret.
Speaker 1: I would I would say that they're one of the
Speaker 1: most controversial organizations I can think of. Oh good, and
Speaker 1: they have there's like some interesting good mixed in with them.
Speaker 1: But I'll let what I'm aware of them speak for itself.
Speaker 1: Nation of Islam is a black religious organization that considers
Speaker 1: itself part of Islam, but that favor isn't returned by
Speaker 1: the rest of the Muslim world. Oh okay, yeah, they
Speaker 1: are theologically distinct. There's this really sketchy guy named Wallace
Speaker 1: Fard Muhammad. It's possible, depending on who you ask, he
Speaker 1: might have been a god among men, the Savior. It's
Speaker 1: also possible that he was a con man. It's possible
Speaker 1: but unlikely that he was white. It's possible but unlikely
Speaker 1: that he was black. He was a door to door
Speaker 1: salesman who in nineteen thirty started a religion among black
Speaker 1: people in Detroit. He started off mostly talking about the
Speaker 1: Bible to his new followers because the Bible resonated with people,
Speaker 1: but soon he started talking about Islam. In the four
Speaker 1: years he ran the organization, he built it from the
Speaker 1: ground up to about eight thousand.
Speaker 3: Members in four years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, yeah, no, It's an impressive thing that he did,
Speaker 1: and it is a really interesting mix of really cool
Speaker 1: and really shitty. I mean whatever, of course, I'm well,
Speaker 1: I will have my biases in this, but I'm you know,
Speaker 1: will do my best. The basic ideas behind it were
Speaker 1: self improvement and community improvement for black people. It didn't
Speaker 1: start off as a black nationalist organization, but instead an
Speaker 1: a political, cultural, economic, and religious one. They believed in
Speaker 1: black economic self determination. That people should start businesses and
Speaker 1: take care of the community. That people should eat healthy,
Speaker 1: They should avoid drugs and alcohol. They should eat mostly vegetarian,
Speaker 1: eat mostly organic. They should avoid foods associated with the
Speaker 1: Black South, like collared greens and cornbread. That men should
Speaker 1: wear suit and ties. Women must dress modestly and not
Speaker 1: in pants. Covering your head was optional, but encouraged. No
Speaker 1: sex before marriage, compulsory monogamous heterosexuality, and so Wallace far
Speaker 1: Muhammed didn't really like being a figurehead of it all.
Speaker 1: He appointed others and then receded into the background, and
Speaker 1: so Wallace, no one knows who the fuck he was.
Speaker 1: He claims a lot of stuff, the FBI claims a
Speaker 1: lot of other stuff. To the nation of Islam, he
Speaker 1: is a literal god, a prophet equal to her, greater
Speaker 1: than Muhammed, which is a big part of why the
Speaker 1: rest of Islam doesn't like or doesn't make sense. Yeah
Speaker 1: to the FBI, who spent decades researching his background or
Speaker 1: just as likely, maybe more likely, fabricating shit to tear
Speaker 1: down his movement. The FBI claimed a lot of shit
Speaker 1: about him. They claimed he was a white Spanish European,
Speaker 1: a native Hawaiian, a Turkish born agent of the Nazi
Speaker 1: Party who was swindling people by charging them to convert
Speaker 1: to Islam. I don't have any reason to trust anything
Speaker 1: the FBI says, or anything that Wallace Vard Muhammad says.
Speaker 1: The current scholarly take seems to be that the most
Speaker 1: reliable thing is that he's most likely he's from Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: which doesn't mean that is white. Is bullshit, And the
Speaker 1: same take has him in prison in San Quentin and
Speaker 1: California in the nineteen twenties, where it's possible that, if
Speaker 1: this is the case, that he learned about black nationalist
Speaker 1: Islam from a career criminal and con man named Lucius Lehmann,
Speaker 1: who was a black nationalist a Muslim in prison in
Speaker 1: California in the nineteen tens and twenties. Okay, The other
Speaker 1: suggested inspiration besides Lucius is a group called the Morris
Speaker 1: Science Temple of America, which is founded in nineteen thirteen,
Speaker 1: Wallace had some run ins with the law, most likely
Speaker 1: before the group started, Like he was probably this guy
Speaker 1: who was in jail whose name was Ford, I believe
Speaker 1: at that time, but he certainly had run ins with
Speaker 1: law afterwards. In nineteen thirty two, one of the of
Speaker 1: Islam people, and I actually don't think it's fair to
Speaker 1: put this on Nation of Islam, to be clear. In
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two, one of the Nation of Islam people
Speaker 1: in Detroit sacrificed another guy his tenant ritualistically to Allah
Speaker 1: on an altarstone I think in his basement.
Speaker 3: Yikes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was like, this is how the Nation of
Speaker 1: Islam like. It's kind of like the first Satanic panic
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways that I've ever well, I
Speaker 1: guess witch hunts. Okay, there's always been Satanic panics.
Speaker 2: Was that kind of the thing that like vaulted them
Speaker 2: into a little more notoriety like this, this ritualistic sacrifice.
Speaker 1: I am. I'm aware of it as the It is
Speaker 1: the first time I started. It is the first time
Speaker 1: I have been able to note that they started getting
Speaker 1: national attention. And yeah, they got a lot of negative
Speaker 1: attention about a voodoo cult in Detroit, and I there's
Speaker 1: a scholarly paper that talks about how I mean, that's
Speaker 1: just racism, right, Like they weren't practicing voodoo, was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: black people, scary religion.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: It didn't help that five years later, another Nation of
Speaker 1: Islam man would be arrested for planning to boil his
Speaker 1: wife and daughter alive. So Wallace dips out of Detroit
Speaker 1: for a while after the sacrifice. I read it basically
Speaker 1: as the police were like, hey, get out of here,
Speaker 1: all right, and so like kind of set up more
Speaker 1: in Chicago. In nineteen thirty four, the police raided their
Speaker 1: University of Islam and arrested Fard and after that after
Speaker 1: I don't think he stayed in jail. He just disappears.
Speaker 1: He handed over control the organization to a successor and
Speaker 1: was never heard from again. Obviously there are conspiracies about this. Personally,
Speaker 1: I just assumed that being a living god got too
Speaker 1: hot and he wanted to take his money and go,
Speaker 1: But I don't know. He handed over control the organization
Speaker 1: to a black man named Elijah Mohammad, who led the
Speaker 1: nation from nineteen thirty four to nineteen seventy five until
Speaker 1: his death, and he's heavily involved in the rest of
Speaker 1: the story. He's the guy who gives Muhammad Ali his name.
Speaker 1: What do they believe? They consider themselves to be a
Speaker 1: branch of Islam, but their beliefs are considered heretical to
Speaker 1: mainstream Islamic faiths, or would be if they're in the
Speaker 1: context of being Islam. You know, both Sunni and Sheiite
Speaker 1: Islam rely on five pillars. They phrase these two pillars differently,
Speaker 1: or sorry, the two organization. The two religions phrase the
Speaker 1: five pillars differently, but basically, these five pillars are the
Speaker 1: Muslim creed, that is, declaring that there is no God
Speaker 1: but God and that Mohammad was a messenger of God. Prayer,
Speaker 1: charity to the poor, fasting during the month of Ramadan,
Speaker 1: and the pilgrimage to Mecca for those who are able.
Speaker 1: Those are the five pillars. The nation of Islam doesn't
Speaker 1: share these five pillars. They believe some other stuff. I
Speaker 1: think this is worth covering. I almost took this chunk
Speaker 1: out because it sounds ridiculous. But the thing that all
Speaker 1: religions sound ridiculous if you just like lay out what
Speaker 1: they believe, you know, right, and so I overall I
Speaker 1: think my current theory is that we should judge religions
Speaker 1: based not on their beliefs, but based on one how
Speaker 1: its institutions behave and two how it's practitioners behave.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. Yeah. How that's like practiced in the world
Speaker 3: in everyday life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like you know, you can take any
Speaker 1: major religion and you can see the institutions of it
Speaker 1: behaving in a certain way and the practitioners behaving a
Speaker 1: different way, you know, and like, yeah, that's completely unrelated
Speaker 1: to whether or not people think that you can like
Speaker 1: talk to snakes or drink wine that is blood, or
Speaker 1: you know whatever like belief system. Right, So, and I
Speaker 1: think that their beliefs the reason I ended up keeping
Speaker 1: this in. I think their beliefs are really worth understanding
Speaker 1: in the context of nineteen sixties race relations and specifically
Speaker 1: the actions of Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, and some of
Speaker 1: the other folks. The Nation of Islam says that there
Speaker 1: have been a bunch of mortal gods. They are all
Speaker 1: black men named Allah. The last of these mortal gods
Speaker 1: was their founder, the mysterious fard guy Elijah Muhammad, the
Speaker 1: guy who takes over. He's just the divine messenger. The
Speaker 1: first of these gods made a group called the tribe
Speaker 1: of Shabbaz, from whom all people of colored are descended,
Speaker 1: and this is ruled over by twenty four scientists. White
Speaker 1: people were made by one of these scientists who went rogue,
Speaker 1: named Yakup, about six six hundred years ago. White people
Speaker 1: were created through selective breeding, basically eugenics, on the Greek
Speaker 1: island of Patmos, and it took six hundred years, so
Speaker 1: Yacup didn't survive to see the end of this experiment,
Speaker 1: but he lived for one hundred and fifty years and
Speaker 1: God in motion. And because of the way that white
Speaker 1: people were created the violence of the eugenics, white people
Speaker 1: came out evil, lacking empathy and inner divinity. Moses tried
Speaker 1: to tame these new barbaric people for a while, but
Speaker 1: then gave up and blew up three hundred of them
Speaker 1: with dynamite. So then Jesus showed up and tried once
Speaker 1: again to teach and civilize the white people, but it
Speaker 1: didn't stick either.
Speaker 3: My mind is a little blown. I don't know. Some
Speaker 3: of that is I don't know. Some of that doesn't
Speaker 3: sound too far fett.
Speaker 1: I know, I know that's like, that's that's what's so
Speaker 1: interesting about Nation of Islam, And like you're like, will
Speaker 1: I get where it's coming from, you know, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: So this is where the term white devil comes from, Okay,
Speaker 1: a belief that white people are literally the devil and
Speaker 1: have no inner divinity. And the belief was that these
Speaker 1: devils would rule the earth for six thousand years, but
Speaker 1: around the year nineteen fourteen that tide had turned and
Speaker 1: the era of white supremacy would come to an end.
Speaker 1: And that part I'm entirely cool with. In this theology,
Speaker 1: some white people tried to become black again, and in
Speaker 1: the process they became gorillas. Quote, all of the monkey
Speaker 1: family are from this two thousand year history of the
Speaker 1: white race in Europe, which is an interesting inversion of
Speaker 1: the traditional racist trope.
Speaker 3: Right yeah, I was just gonna say that, that's yeah,
Speaker 3: it is interesting.
Speaker 1: I know, and I can't figure out later Muhammada he
Speaker 1: is going to call his black opponent Joe Frasier a gorilla,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it's related to this, but it's
Speaker 1: like an interesting right Yeah.
Speaker 3: I did know about that part.
Speaker 2: I was gonna bring that up when we got there,
Speaker 2: but we'll talk about when we get there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel bad, I'm like leading with like I
Speaker 1: think Muhammad Ali is really fucking cool. I want to
Speaker 1: be like really clear about that when I talk about
Speaker 1: all this context.
Speaker 5: It just so happens that whenever you do the context
Speaker 5: for this show, it feels like it's behind the bastards.
Speaker 3: I know, I know.
Speaker 5: I'm like, I'm like, you definitely lead up to the good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and it's like I wouldn't do Nation of
Speaker 1: Islam as like a pure bastard either, right.
Speaker 5: Like, no, no, no, no, it definitely seems like there's
Speaker 5: multiple sides.
Speaker 2: Yeah, things, It's almost like there's nuance and yeah.
Speaker 1: So the Nation of Islam they believe that knowledge of
Speaker 1: the self is the path to divinity, and that basically
Speaker 1: all people, actual people, not white people, are themselves gods
Speaker 1: or part of God, and there is no afterlife, that
Speaker 1: the material world does everything, and that one could develop
Speaker 1: one's own psychic powers. Dinosaurs are a hoax created by
Speaker 1: white people. Islam is the original religion Arab because the
Speaker 1: original language a Ufo called the mother plane, the mothership
Speaker 1: or the wheel is going to show up and transport
Speaker 1: all of the righteous up into it and then bomb
Speaker 1: everyone else on earth. That's the beliefs in a nutshell. Okay,
Speaker 1: the beliefs aren't what matter. What they do as an
Speaker 1: institution matters, and as an individuals. My rough takeaways at
Speaker 1: what they do as an institutions lots of bad stuff
Speaker 1: with some good empowerment mixed in, and then what they
Speaker 1: do is individuals is like a lot more balanced.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Their institutional promotion of anti Semitism is not good, their
Speaker 1: intense patriarchy and anti queer politics aren't good, and their
Speaker 1: interest in black separatism and black supremacy put them in
Speaker 1: bed with some interesting people. In nineteen sixty one, they
Speaker 1: invited the leader of the America Nazi Party to speak
Speaker 1: of alongside their famed spokesman Malcolm X, because both groups
Speaker 1: are separate the races.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, that's not good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then Elijah Muhammad himself was taking a ton
Speaker 1: of money from this white supremacist oil baron and used
Speaker 1: it to buy himself a bunch of houses. Because that's
Speaker 1: also not good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's members crop up doing cool shit all the time.
Speaker 1: The only time I think we've brought them up so
Speaker 1: far on the show that I can remember off the top.
Speaker 3: Of my head.
Speaker 1: It was a Nation of Islam librarian who got radical
Speaker 1: books in the hands of Cha Chai Yumennez, the founder
Speaker 1: of the Young Lords. A lot of their recruiting happened
Speaker 1: in prisons, and they built infrastructure within prison for black
Speaker 1: and brown empowerment. Like a lot of them got jobs
Speaker 1: as librarians, so they get rad books to people and
Speaker 1: that's fucking cool. And the teachings that they had about
Speaker 1: black self reliance, about Pan Africanism, about black pride, about
Speaker 1: economic self determination. There's the shit was game changing when
Speaker 1: they started doing it. And they needed a way to
Speaker 1: talk about white supremacy. All white people being the devil
Speaker 1: is not the most subtle or nuanced way, but I
Speaker 1: don't know, like, just look at what the white people
Speaker 1: have done the world.
Speaker 3: At least.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly, it is a reasonable conclusion to have
Speaker 1: reached with the evidence that is available to them. I
Speaker 1: will say, yeah, And then I'm going to talk about
Speaker 1: one of the more famous Nation of Islam people. But
Speaker 1: first I'm going to talk about sweet, sweet deals. Stuff.
Speaker 1: Just fill your life with stuff. Do you have a
Speaker 1: room and it's not full of stuff? You could do
Speaker 1: something about that. Uh, literal stuffing. We are brought to
Speaker 1: you by stuffing, vegan stuffing.
Speaker 3: Okay, nice, Yeah, everybody can enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, oh god, but if it's gluten free and vegan,
Speaker 1: then no one will enjoy it. All right, here's some
Speaker 1: ads and we're back. We were talking about Malcolm X.
Speaker 1: I'm reasonably sure he'll get his own week at some point,
Speaker 1: but he was a mentor and a friend to Muhammad
Speaker 1: Ali and also kind of presages a lot of the
Speaker 1: kind of arcs that a lot of Nation of Islam people,
Speaker 1: including Muhammad Ali, are going to have. So I want
Speaker 1: to talk about him also because he's really fucking cool.
Speaker 5: I was gonna be like, yeah, and the coolness factor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, he's just Yes, he's really fucking cool. So
Speaker 1: Malcolm X is this fucking amazingly charismatic speaker and thinker.
Speaker 1: He is incredibly polarizing of a figure, especially during his day.
Speaker 1: Now everything gets like whitewashed, and so he's like less polarizing,
Speaker 1: you know. M I think he's rad. He was first
Speaker 1: and foremost for the liberation of black people, and his
Speaker 1: opinions about what would get them there changed over time,
Speaker 1: but they didn't waiver from militancy. He openly discussed how
Speaker 1: his politics countered that of the nonviolent but also rad
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Junior. Like, basically, Malcolm X was like, look,
Speaker 1: you better give it to Martin and the pacifists or
Speaker 1: you'll be dealing with us and we're not pacifists. And
Speaker 1: that is a good position of strength to argue from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty badass. I like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, And I like that he was conscious about it.
Speaker 1: I had always knew of this dynamic, but I didn't
Speaker 1: specifically know that it was that. He was very aware
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, And he didn't see eye to eye
Speaker 1: with Martin Luther King Junior, but they did talk. They
Speaker 1: were aware that they were on the same side.
Speaker 3: You know. Great, there's that mutual respect there, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He was also a black nationalist, and what that
Speaker 1: meant to him seems to have had two different forms.
Speaker 1: For most of his political career, he was in the
Speaker 1: Nation of Islam. He referred to himself as being used
Speaker 1: by Elijah Muhammad during this time, and during this time
Speaker 1: he was a black separatist as well as a nationalist,
Speaker 1: and he advocated the teachings of the Nation of Islam
Speaker 1: and He also changed his last name to X to
Speaker 1: remove his slave name, the name he'd inherited from a
Speaker 1: legacy of slavers, to something that signified how his heritage
Speaker 1: and even his name had been stolen from him. And
Speaker 1: a lot of people within the Nation of Islam took
Speaker 1: the last name X. Obviously, Malcolm X is the most
Speaker 1: famous of these people. Then, Malcolm X became disillusioned with
Speaker 1: the nation around nineteen sixty four or so. Particularly, he
Speaker 1: became disillusioned with Elijah Muhammad. He became disillusioned for two
Speaker 1: major reasons that I know of. First, Malcolm X is
Speaker 1: a militant right and he believes in building black power.
Speaker 1: Some cops raided a temple, a Nation of Islam temple
Speaker 1: in la and they shot seven Muslims and they killed
Speaker 1: one of them, and Malcolm was like, all right, it's
Speaker 1: fucking on right, this is what we're gonna do. And
Speaker 1: Elijah Muhammad was like, no, let's like talk with politicians
Speaker 1: and do really boring stuff instead. So Malcolm X wasn't
Speaker 1: excited about that. There was another thing that disillusioned him.
Speaker 1: Elijah Muhammad's a fucking pedophile, oh no, and a hypocrite
Speaker 1: the nation. He preaches absence before marriage. Elijah admitted to
Speaker 1: sleeping with the word here would be raped, but his
Speaker 1: admission is to sleeping to with, so be specific about
Speaker 1: that eight different teenagers who worked as secretaries under him,
Speaker 1: impregnating seven of them.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Oh my god. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Power corrupts people, and the people who attracted the
Speaker 1: power often start off corrupt. So Malcolm finds out and
Speaker 1: accuses of him of it and Elijah. The reason that
Speaker 1: we know Elijah admitted it is because he defended himself.
Speaker 1: And his defense was like, well, lots of biblical prophets
Speaker 1: fucked kids. It's like fine, right.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And it was this willingness to stand up to the
Speaker 1: authoritarian leader slash prophet that got Malcolm X killed. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four, he left the Nation of Islam. He
Speaker 1: was still a black nationalist and a Muslim, but he
Speaker 1: wasn't a cultist. Essentially from this context, he converted to
Speaker 1: Sunny is and he went on a pilgrimage and he
Speaker 1: saw Muslims of every race coming together, and this like
Speaker 1: changed him. And he talked a lot about how he
Speaker 1: was like I shared plates with like blonde haired, blue
Speaker 1: eyed Muslims and we were like all together in Islam.
Speaker 1: He started to reject the term black Muslim and started
Speaker 1: to refer to himself as a Muslim who was black.
Speaker 1: This is not this is not because he like doesn't
Speaker 1: care about blackness still as his first and foremost thing,
Speaker 1: just like specifically the context of how black and Muslim
Speaker 1: relate to each other. And that famous photo of him
Speaker 1: holding a rifle right standing by a window and like
Speaker 1: looking out the window looking all like badass and sketchy.
Speaker 1: You know, that's him looking for a nation of Islam
Speaker 1: assassins who are trying to come kill him. That's not
Speaker 1: him like standing down the cops or like white supremacy.
Speaker 1: That is him defending himself from the nation of Islam.
Speaker 1: So he leaves, and he tries to convince his young
Speaker 1: friend Muhammad Ali to join him and leaving the nation
Speaker 1: of his lif but it didn't work. Muhammad Ali later
Speaker 1: referred to not listening to Malcolm as one of the
Speaker 1: biggest regrets of his life. He has a whole little
Speaker 1: chapter in one of his later books that I read
Speaker 1: The Soul of a Butterfly, talking about how he wasn't
Speaker 1: ready to go with Malcolm because he had just really joined,
Speaker 1: but he wished he had and that would have you know. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So the Nation of Islam starts making their desire to
Speaker 1: kill Malcolm X really fucking plain. They run statements in
Speaker 1: their paper that are basically like, we're going to assassinate
Speaker 1: Malcolm X though like show like political cartoons that are
Speaker 1: just like Malcolm X decapitated, very subtle. Yeah. Yeah. Then
Speaker 1: on February twenty first, nineteen sixty five, he was speaking
Speaker 1: to a crowd of four hundred people in Manhattan when
Speaker 1: three men from the Nation of Islam rushed the stage
Speaker 1: with a sawed off shotgun and handguns. He was shot
Speaker 1: like eleven times. He died shortly after arrival at the hospital,
Speaker 1: but there wasn't justice for his killing. Three people were
Speaker 1: thrown in prison, three people from the Nation of Islam.
Speaker 1: Two of them were innocent. One of them, Talmadge Hair,
Speaker 1: confessed but he was like, look, these other two guys,
Speaker 1: they weren't with me. And they were like, well, who
Speaker 1: was with you? And He's like, man, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to fucking tell you he was with me. I'm not
Speaker 1: a fucking snitch. I'm just telling you it's not These
Speaker 1: two guys right. All three got convicted, the other two
Speaker 1: maintained their innocence. Talmadge and the two innocent men, all
Speaker 1: three of them, while they were in prison, left the
Speaker 1: Nation of Islam and converted to Sunni Islam. The two
Speaker 1: innocent ones were later exonerated in twenty twenty one when
Speaker 1: it was proven that the FBI and the NYPD intentionally
Speaker 1: held withheld evidence and the guilty guy regrets what he did.
Speaker 1: It was also proven that co Intel pro was heavily
Speaker 1: involved in creating at tension between Malcolm and Elijah. An
Speaker 1: FBI infiltrator met with the assassin the night before the
Speaker 1: cop showed up at the scene of the murder with
Speaker 1: their like hands in their pockets, and they like didn't
Speaker 1: give a shit, you know. So if one were to
Speaker 1: ask who killed Malcolm X, you could go with what
Speaker 1: the poet James Baldwin had to say. He told white
Speaker 1: reporters in France, you did it. It is because of you,
Speaker 1: the men that created this white supremacy, that this man
Speaker 1: is dead. You are not guilty, but you did it.
Speaker 1: Your mills, your cities, your rape of a continent started this.
Speaker 1: In more practical terms, I assume it was the FBI
Speaker 1: playing the Nation of Islam to assassinate him. There's a
Speaker 1: wrongful death suit filed by his kids currently against the CIA,
Speaker 1: the FBI, and NYPD. But I think part of why
Speaker 1: he had to die from the Nation of Islam and
Speaker 1: from the government's point of view, is that he was
Speaker 1: on this page of uniting people right near his death
Speaker 1: right his black Yeah, like, his black nationalism turned from
Speaker 1: segregation to what black nationalism is mostly understood as starting
Speaker 1: from the late sixties, which is self determination for black people.
Speaker 1: He didn't stop hating white supremacy, he didn't stop having
Speaker 1: that be his like main enemy. I think it was
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four someone was like, oh, are you
Speaker 1: a socialist? And he's like, look, I'm for whatever for
Speaker 1: these black people, Like that's what I'm talking about, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they viewed him as a threat because he was
Speaker 2: getting everybody to realize that, you know, we're stronger together
Speaker 2: when we're all you know, fighting against a common oppressor
Speaker 2: instead of you know, infighting and trying to divide ourselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I can see how some people would feel threatened
Speaker 3: by that notion.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I'm not like a big men of history
Speaker 1: kind of girl. But it's like really hard when I
Speaker 1: read about the nineteen sixties, it's hard to have to
Speaker 1: think what could have happened if Malcolm X and m
Speaker 1: okay I had gone to like live a while.
Speaker 3: Longer, right, I think about that a lot too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because because Martin Luther King is becoming more and
Speaker 1: more radical near his death, and Malcolm X stays just
Speaker 1: as radical but becomes more tempered. You know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't fucking know. What do you think would have happened?
Speaker 2: I honestly feel like the outcome would have probably been
Speaker 2: inevitable with both of them, just because they were a
Speaker 2: threat to the establishment for a lot of people.
Speaker 3: But I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think they could probably could have got
Speaker 2: a lot more shit done before they were gone, But yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I think I mean, I think that's
Speaker 2: kind of a one of the what ifs of history
Speaker 2: that we'll never really know.
Speaker 3: But yeah, totally interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And it's like it's like half I want
Speaker 1: them to have lived longer just because, like.
Speaker 3: Well because they didn't deserve to die yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly, Like, which is like fucking mad.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like twenty years before I was born. But
Speaker 1: I'm fucking mad so to close out on the Nation
Speaker 1: of Islam to show their arc, because I think their
Speaker 1: arc matters. Throughout the late sixties and early seventies, they
Speaker 1: were in conflict sometimes the Black Panthers and also other
Speaker 1: black Muslim organizations. But it's like I'll read this, right,
Speaker 1: you know, I read like, oh, they were in conflict
Speaker 1: with Black Panthers and things like that, right, and sometimes
Speaker 1: like actual conflict. But then there's also like Muhammad Ali
Speaker 1: was a you know, was a Nation of Islam, and
Speaker 1: he was not a Black panther, but like later we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about how a lot of the Black
Speaker 1: panthers liked him, you know, and like that. Right, So
Speaker 1: it's still messy, but there was conflict. And then in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, Elijah Muhammad died his son, who he
Speaker 1: didn't like, Like Elijah didn't really like his kid at
Speaker 1: this point because they were in conflict all the time.
Speaker 1: His son takes over and his son had like actually
Speaker 1: left Nation of Islam several times over ideological stuff. His
Speaker 1: son converse it to Sunni Islam far it is no
Speaker 1: longer a god, there's no longer a UFO. White people
Speaker 1: are no longer devils made by a rogue scientist named Yaka,
Speaker 1: and his new teaching around this is honestly really good.
Speaker 1: The issue, as he referred to it as mental whiteness,
Speaker 1: not light skinned people, and as someone who believes that
Speaker 1: the creation of the social construct of whiteness is one
Speaker 1: of the worst things that ever happened in human history,
Speaker 1: that seems like a fair way to put it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I like
Speaker 2: that that framing of it. Yeah, that kind of like
Speaker 2: you know, mindset and hatred and oppressing it. That's that's taught,
Speaker 2: you know, that's that's learned. That's not people are just
Speaker 2: aren't born one day they're like, oh yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: thinking that that's kind that came from somewhere, you know.
Speaker 3: What I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally. And so so Elijah's son, who's for
Speaker 1: some reasons, name I didn't write into the script because
Speaker 1: I terrible, because I didn't expect him to be in
Speaker 1: it for more than like a paragraph when I first
Speaker 1: started writing it. But his son converse the whole organization
Speaker 1: towards Sunni Islam and against racial separatism. He renamed it
Speaker 1: the World Community of Islam in the West and later
Speaker 1: the American Society of Muslims. And this group kicks around
Speaker 1: for about a decade before basically the leader was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, you should just go join your local mosque.
Speaker 1: There's already Muslim organizations, they're called mosques. But in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, two years after most of the organization converted
Speaker 1: to Sunni Islam, this guy named Lewis Farrakhan, who's still around,
Speaker 1: he split off from the new version and restarted it
Speaker 1: as the Nation of Islam, complete with things like I
Speaker 1: was in the UFO and bonus points. I bet you
Speaker 1: were thinking, ian You were thinking to yourself before we
Speaker 1: started recording, there's no way el Ron Hubbard is going
Speaker 1: to come up right.
Speaker 3: This isn't astard.
Speaker 5: Oh no, shut the fuck up, no way.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh god, we both just got so triggered.
Speaker 5: I yeah, like so triggered, and we can't even talk
Speaker 5: about it.
Speaker 1: But we're that triggered. Just no, just so the E
Speaker 1: and are fucking triggered right now. Yeah. So, so they
Speaker 1: all get into dianetics because it's fair enough.
Speaker 4: Oh this just took a really bad turn, okay, And
Speaker 4: that's the that's the ship the scientologists are into, and specifically,
Speaker 4: Farakhon is like, white people go join Scientology, black people
Speaker 4: join Nation of Islam.
Speaker 1: We'll all do Dianetics. Oh gosh, they're still around. The
Speaker 1: Southern Poverty Law Center considers them a hate group. The
Speaker 1: Anti Defamation League takes issue with how constantly Lewis Ferrikhon
Speaker 1: talks about how all the evil Jews who run the
Speaker 1: world to be fair. Fara gets a question mark here.
Speaker 1: Farakhn insists that he's only against the evil Jews who
Speaker 1: rule the world, not the working class Jews, and he
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to understand why this conspiracy shit is anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: But uh, I'm more positive. I don't know. I'm Bala Shabaz,
Speaker 1: Malcolm X's daughter.
Speaker 5: You you've dropped dianetics in this episode.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm like, I'm like, how do I how
Speaker 1: do I move on from that?
Speaker 3: Maganize? How do we recover from this?
Speaker 1: Fuck?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 1: The fact that this is not what most the people
Speaker 1: of Nation of Islam did. Most of them became Sunni
Speaker 1: Muslim and stayed consistently against white supremacy and for black
Speaker 1: power and didn't get into dianetics. That's the that's the positive.
Speaker 3: Okay, that a little bit better.
Speaker 1: Malcolm X's daughter Keabias Shabaz, she probably tried. She might
Speaker 1: have tried to kill Ferikhon for killing her father. She
Speaker 1: maintains her innocence, but you know the old saying, we'd
Speaker 1: support her even if she is innocent, And she might
Speaker 1: have been set up for this by the FBI, and
Speaker 1: FBI informant tried to seduce her and was in on
Speaker 1: the plot to kill Ferikhon. And that's this all brings
Speaker 1: us to Muhammad Ali, who will talk about on Wednesday.
Speaker 3: All right, No, we set the stage. This is good,
Speaker 3: this is yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that that ARC stuff is like
Speaker 1: is what really interests me is the like because there's
Speaker 1: really interesting shit that they're doing about just black empowerment,
Speaker 1: you know, I like, and it's like really easy to
Speaker 1: like point at the like really specific bad stuff, right
Speaker 1: and it's like harder to quantify like economic improvement in
Speaker 1: areas and things like that, you know. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so that's what you can listen to us talk
Speaker 1: about what you actually tuned in for today.
Speaker 3: Oh god, no, no, this is good.
Speaker 2: The context is always important. That's what makes the show great,
Speaker 2: it's the context, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks, because, like I I've paid a lot of
Speaker 1: attention to how people talk about Muhammad Ali and it,
Speaker 1: and most of it is this like fairy tale version.
Speaker 1: Is this like right simple story of a kid who
Speaker 1: becomes the greatest and that's true, you know, but like
Speaker 1: there's just more story. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So tune in
Speaker 1: on Wednesday. And in the meantime, Ian, you guys think
Speaker 1: to plug.
Speaker 2: Uh, just cool Zone Media, this wonderful show that I
Speaker 2: get to work on every week. I guess you're already
Speaker 2: listening to it, so I don't need to plug it.
Speaker 2: But uh yeah, you know, just our wonderful team at
Speaker 2: Cool Zone Media. We do a lot of cool stuff.
Speaker 2: We have some more cool stuff coming up on the
Speaker 2: way later this year's and uh, just a good time.
Speaker 2: I love I love working with this crew.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you I don't know, I really like
Speaker 1: this crew too.
Speaker 3: Just keeping us humble, I have respected.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So if you guys think to plug, yeah, I'm
Speaker 5: gonna plug plug once again. My my dear dear dear
Speaker 5: friend and your dear friend and Ian's dear friend, Jamie
Speaker 5: Loftus's book Raw Dog that is about hot dogs, which
Speaker 5: was my favorite edit Note You've ever given me? Bagpie
Speaker 5: is available for pre order now and comes out May
Speaker 5: twenty third.
Speaker 1: I worry that fewer people go out and check it
Speaker 1: out because I insist that we point out that it's
Speaker 1: about hot dogs. Maybe we're all doing Jamie at the service.
Speaker 1: It's totally about sex.
Speaker 5: It's about hot dogs, but it's also like really cool.
Speaker 5: There's like some really good labor labor stuff in there
Speaker 5: as well. It's it's you know, definitely should just.
Speaker 2: Just let people find out what the book is about. Yeah,
Speaker 2: how about that?
Speaker 1: How about Yeah it's fair enough.
Speaker 5: But yeah, that's what I got. And you know, at
Speaker 5: cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: All right, we will see you all Wednesday. All thank you.
Speaker 5: Cool people who did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 5: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
Speaker 5: visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us
Speaker 5: out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 5: get your podcasts of