The "nationalist rally," which Alfred and his family pass on their way to church at the beginning of Chapter 4, and whose supporters Alfred later encounters, further reflects the culture of the time. During the century from the Civil War (1861–65) to the setting of the novel (1960s), African Americans struggled with the question of whether to try to live with whites or separate from them. Marcus Garvey, who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1916, led one of the first popular black nationalist movements. However, it was Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam (NOI) and Malcolm X's Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) that dominated the black nationalist scene in Harlem in the 1960s.
The roots of the NOI were in Detroit, where a salesman named Wallace D. Fard (pronounced fa-ROOD) founded the Temple of Islam in the early 1930s. In just a few years, Fard developed the Temple into a force for economic independence and racial separatism. He advocated the rejection of white society and warned against the evils of the "blue-eyed devil." Fard taught strict adherence to religious principles through his University of Islam and the Muslim Girls Training Corps. White authorities came to distrust Fard as a violent subversive. Fard disappeared in 1934 when he was offered a choice of leaving Detroit or going to prison. Elijah Muhammad, Fard's top lieutenant, took charge of the Temple of Islam and was the most powerful black nationalist in the country for the next forty years.
Elijah Muhammad moved the NOI's headquarters to Chicago where he built the Temple of Islam Number 2 in the latter 1930s. Under Muhammad's leadership, there were eventually more than one hundred temples nationwide. He further emphasized financial growth for the NOI, sometimes drawing criticism for the Nation's leaders' accumulation of worldly possessions. The disciplined lifestyle of the black Muslims made them attractive employees, and the workers donated freely to the NOI.
