After Fard’s disappearance, Muhammad anointed himself the Messenger of Allah and continued to build the Nation, despite dissension and death threats against him from some members. Muhammad preached about the “Original Man,” Allah, a black man who created the universe. The Muslims believed that the “so-called Negro” was a descendant of the Original Man, who belonged to the Tribe of Shabazz, an ancient group that founded the Holy City of Mecca and eventually migrated to Africa.39
According to Muhammad, the origins of the white man could be traced back to Yacub, an evil “big head scientist.” Nearly 6,600 years ago, Yacub began preaching a dangerous version of Islam in the streets of Mecca. When authorities learned about his distortion of true Islam, he and his 59,999 followers were exiled to the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea. There, Yacub sought revenge by creating a “devil race” that would dominate the Black Nation through tricks, lies, and deception. Mutating the germs of the black man, Yacub produced “pale-faced, blue-eyed” men who were weaker morally and physically. He planned for these devils to rule the earth for more than six thousand years, testing the strength of the Black Nation.40
Muhammad prophesied that the white man’s rule would end in 1970 after the “Battle of Armageddon.” Destruction of the white man, he foretold, would be carried out by the Mother Ship, a wheel-shaped spacecraft a half-mile wide. Piloted by the most intelligent black men, the Mother Ship would carry fifteen hundred bombers. The plane could not be attacked, of course, because it could disappear behind the stars. In the days leading up to the resurrection, the Mother Ship would litter the earth with pamphlets printed in English and Arabic, telling Allah’s followers where to hide when the planes attacked. When the battle was over, the white man would be eliminated from the planet and the black man would rise up from the smoldering ashes. In the 1960s, purported sightings of unidentified flying objects startled many Americans, but for followers of Muhammad, the presence of flying saucers portended that the Day of Judgment was near.41
Cassius Clay began reciting Muhammad’s lessons, leaving his friends at a loss as to what he was talking about. Ferdie Pacheco recalled driving around in his vintage Cadillac convertible on a muggy Miami night with Clay and two women. Suddenly, Clay tapped the doctor on the shoulder and told him to pull over to the side of the road. He stood up and pointed toward the stars.42
“See that?” Cassius asked, his arm extended toward the sky. “It’s the spaceship.”
“What spaceship is that?” one of the women asked.
Clay stared at her, dumbfounded that she did not know about the spaceship. Then he launched into a lecture on Nation theology.
“One day, ’bout six thousand years ago, a bad, mad scientist named Dr. Yacub created the white race off the black. . . . The mad doctor made the whites superior, and pushed the blacks down into slavery. That period is coming to an end now.”
“What’s that got to do with the spaceship?” the young woman asked.
“Well, a spaceship took off with twenty-six yellow families living on it, circling the globe. They called it the Mother Ship. The non-white races are being oppressed by the whites, and soon they will come down and wipe out the white race.”
“What they been waiting for, chile?” asked the older woman.
Clay, ignoring the question, rambled on in a serious tone. “Once a year they come down from the North Pole, put down a big plastic hose, and scoop up enough oxygen and ice to last them a year,” he said.
Then, he just pointed toward the sky, looking in awe: “The Mother Ship.”
For Cassius, the Muslims’ tales about a big-headed scientist, mythical spaceships, and the coming of Armageddon were more than the stuff of fantasy. Muhammad’s prophecy offered Clay a means of survival in a hostile country. Cassius’s own belief in prophecy developed as a youth living in segregated Louisville. A schoolteacher explained,