The program
The Hate That Hate Produced began with a narration by Wallace:
While city officials, state agencies, white liberals, and sober-minded Negroes stand idly by, a group of Negro dissenters is taking to street-corner step ladders, church pulpits, sports arenas, and ballroom platforms across the United States, to preach a gospel of hate that would set off a federal investigation if it were preached by Southern whites. [3]
The cameras cut to a scene of Louis X (later known as Louis Farrakhan) indicting "the white man" for his crimes:
I charge the white man with being the greatest liar on Earth! I charge the white man with being the greatest drunkard on Earth.... I charge the white man with being the greatest gambler on Earth. I charge the white man, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, with being the greatest murderer on Earth. I charge the white man with being the greatest peace-breaker on Earth.... I charge the white man with being the greatest robber on Earth. I charge the white man with being the greatest deceiver on Earth. I charge the white man with being the greatest trouble-maker on Earth. So therefore, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you, bring back a verdict of guilty as charged! [4]
Wallace returned to tell the audience:
The indictment you've just heard is being delivered over and over again in most of the major cities across the country. This charge comes at the climax of a morality play called The Trial. The plot, indeed the message of the play, is that the white man has been put on trial for his sins against the Black man. He has been found guilty. The sentence is death. The play is sponsored, produced, by a Negro religious group who call themselves "The Muslims". [3]
During the course of the program, Wallace told viewers more about the Nation of Islam, which he described as "the most powerful of the Black supremacist groups". [5] The documentary included footage of the University of Islam, a school run by the Nation, where, according to Wallace, "Muslim children are taught to hate the white man". [2] It also showed portions of a large Nation of Islam rally, while Wallace told viewers that the organization had 250,000 members, a tremendously inflated number. [6]
The Hate That Hate Produced included interviews between Lomax and Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. [7] When Lomax asked him whether he was preaching hate, Muhammad answered that he was just teaching truth. [7] Muhammad said he believed Black people were divine and white people were devils. [8] He also said that Allah was a Black man. [8]
The program also included Lomax's interviews with Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam's charismatic spokesman. [9] Lomax asked him if all white people were evil, and Malcolm X explained that white people collectively were evil: "History is best qualified to reward all research, and we don't have any historic example where we have found that they have, collectively, as a people, done good." [10] When he was asked about the Nation's schools, such as the University of Islam, Malcolm X denied that they taught Black children to hate; he said they were being taught the same things white students were taught, "minus the little Black Sambo story and things that were taught to you and me when we were coming up, to breed that inferiority complex in us." [10]
The program also includes interviews with James R. Lawson, the president of the United African Nationalist Movement, which advocated freedom for Africans from non-African rule. Lawson was asked about his relationship with African leaders of the time, notably President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. According to commentators Christopher Kyriakides and Rodolfo Torres, this aspect of the program "draws public attention to the significant threat that Black Nationalism, as an enemy within, is presumed to pose to American interests in the Middle East". [11]
At the program's end, Wallace asked for support for Black leaders who were "counseling patience and the relatively slow operation of legal measures". [12] He said it was necessary to make the United States a nation that was truly "indivisible, with freedom and justice for all". [12]
Reaction and legacy
The Hate That Hate Produced shocked many of the millions of people who watched it. [13] Most white people had never heard of the Nation of Islam before, and many were stunned to learn that some Black people had such strong feelings toward white people. [14] For many white viewers, it was the first time they learned there was a radical Black alternative to the Civil Rights Movement. [9]
Some African Americans could not believe that Black people were saying such things out loud, but more than a few agreed with it. [15] The number of people attending Nation of Islam meetings increased significantly, [7] and the group's membership doubled to 60,000 within weeks after the broadcast. [16] [17] [18]
The Hate That Hate Produced catapulted Malcolm X to national attention. Although he had rarely been mentioned in the mainstream press before the program went out, [19] Malcolm X soon became a frequent participant in television debates on race-related issues and one of the most sought-after speakers on college campuses across the United States. [20]
Modern analysis
Some recent commentators feel that The Hate That Hate Produced was biased against the Nation of Islam. One writer said "its title reflected its severe view". [17] Others have described it as "marked [by] a tendency to caricature", [13] "blatantly one-sided", [21] and a "piece of yellow journalism". [2]
One of the first things Wallace said about Muhammad and Malcolm X was that they had served time in prison, a statement that seemed designed to call their leadership credentials into question and suggest the organization itself was criminal. [5] [22] Wallace referred to "this disturbing story" and used phrases such as "Black supremacy", "Black racism", and "gospel of hate" to frighten the white audience, critics say, and no effort was made to balance the presentation. [2] [23]
In his book White Violence, Black Response, Herbert Shapiro criticizes Wallace's opening comments that the Nation of Islam "preach[es] a gospel of hate that would set off a federal investigation if it were preached by Southern whites." He noted that some Southern whites—including state and local elected officials—did in fact preach such a gospel of hate, but the federal government had done almost nothing to stop their hate propaganda. [13] Shapiro also argues that Wallace confused the Nation's rhetoric that condemned white people with a specific plan for violence against white people. [12]
Malcolm X was an African-American revolutionary, Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of Islam (NOI) until 1964, he was a vocal advocate for Black empowerment and the promotion of Islam within the African-American community. A posthumous autobiography, on which he collaborated with Alex Haley, was published in 1965.
The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a religious and political organization founded in the United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930. A black nationalist organization, the NOI focuses its attention on the African diaspora, especially on African Americans. While describing itself as Islamic, its religious tenets, though using Islamic terms, differ considerably from mainstream Islamic traditions. Scholars of religion characterize it as a new religious movement. It operates as a centralized and hierarchical organization.
Black supremacy or black supremacism is a racial supremacist belief which maintains that black people are inherently superior to people of other races.
Louis Farrakhan is an American religious leader who heads the Nation of Islam (NOI), a black nationalist organization. Farrakhan is notable for his leadership of the 1995 Million Man March in Washington, D.C., and for his rhetoric that has been widely denounced as antisemitic and racist.
A number of organizations and academics consider the Nation of Islam (NOI) to be antisemitic. The NOI has engaged in Holocaust denial, and exaggerates the role of Jews in the African slave trade; mainstream historians, such as Saul S. Friedman, have said Jews had a negligible role. The NOI has repeatedly rejected charges made against it as false and politically motivated.
The Five-Percent Nation, sometimes referred to as the Nation of Gods and Earths (NGE/NOGE) or the Five Percenters, is an Afro-American Nationalist movement influenced by Islam that was founded in 1964 in the Harlem section of the borough of Manhattan, New York City, by Clarence 13X, who was previously known as Clarence Edward Smith.
Wallace Fard Muhammad, also known as W. F. Muhammad, Wallace D. Fard or Master Fard Muhammad, was the founder of the Nation of Islam. He arrived in Detroit in 1930 with an ambiguous background and several aliases, and proselytized idiosyncratic Islamic teachings to the city's black population. In 1934, he disappeared from public record, and Elijah Muhammad succeeded him as leader of the Nation of Islam.
Elijah Muhammad was an American religious leader, black separatist, and self-proclaimed Messenger of Allah who led the Nation of Islam (NOI) from 1933 until his death in 1975. Muhammad was also the teacher and mentor of Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, Muhammad Ali, and his son, Warith Deen Mohammed.
Yakub is a figure in the mythology of the Nation of Islam (NOI). According to the NOI's doctrine, Yakub was a black scientist who lived 6,600 years ago and began the creation of the white race through a form of selective breeding, referred to as "grafting", while he was living on the island of Patmos.
"The Ballot or the Bullet" is the title of a public speech by human rights activist Malcolm X. In the speech, which was delivered on two occasions the first being April 3, 1964, at the Cory Methodist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, and the second being on April 12, 1964, at the King Solomon Baptist Church, in Detroit, Michigan, Malcolm X advised African Americans to judiciously exercise their right to vote, but he cautioned that if the government continued to prevent African Americans from attaining full equality, it might be necessary for them to take up arms. It was ranked 7th in the top 100 American speeches of the 20th century by 137 leading scholars of American public address.
Clarence 13X, also known as Allah the Father, was an American religious leader and the founder of the Five-Percent Nation. He was born in Virginia and moved to New York City as a young man, before serving in the United States Army during the Korean War. After returning to New York, he learned that his wife had joined the Nation of Islam (NOI). He followed her, taking the name Clarence 13X. He served in the group as a security officer, martial arts instructor, and student minister before leaving for an unclear reason in 1963. He enjoyed gambling, which was condemned by the NOI, and disagreed with their teachings that Wallace Fard Muhammad was a divine messenger.
Muhammad Speaks was a Black Muslim newspaper published in the United States. It was one of the most widely read newspapers ever produced by an African American organization. It was the official newspaper of the Nation of Islam from 1960 to 1975, founded by a group of Elijah Muhammad's ministers, including Malcolm X.
The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a black nationalist religious group founded in the United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930. While it identifies itself as promoting a form of Islam, its beliefs differ considerably from mainstream Islamic traditions. Scholars of religion characterize it as a new religious movement. It operates as a centralized and hierarchical organization. It has been characterized by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League as a black supremacist hate group.
The Tribe of Shabazz was, according to the Nation of Islam, an ancient black nation that migrated into central Africa, led by a leader named Shabazz. The concept is found primarily in the writings of Wallace Fard Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad. According to the Autobiography of Malcolm X, all the races except the white race were descendants of the Tribe of Shabazz.
"Message to the Grass Roots" is a public speech delivered by black civil rights activist Malcolm X. The speech was delivered on November 10, 1963, at the Northern Negro Grass Roots Leadership Conference, which was held at King Solomon Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan. Malcolm X described the difference between the "Black revolution" and the "Negro revolution", he contrasted the "house Negro" and the "field Negro" during slavery and in the modern age, and he criticized the 1963 March on Washington. "Message to the Grass Roots" was ranked 91st in the top 100 American speeches of the 20th century by 137 leading scholars of American public address.
Louis Emanuel Lomax was an African-American journalist and author. He was also the first African-American television journalist.
Black nationalism is a nationalist movement which seeks representation for black people as a distinct national identity, especially in racialized, colonial and postcolonial societies. Its earliest proponents saw it as a way to advocate for democratic representation in culturally plural societies or to establish self-governing independent nation-states for black people. Modern black nationalism often aims for the social, political, and economic empowerment of black communities within white majority societies, either as an alternative to assimilation or as a way to ensure greater representation and equality within predominantly Eurocentric or white cultures.
African-American Muslims, also colloquially known as Black Muslims, are an African American religious minority. African American Muslims account for over 20% of American Muslims. They represent one of the larger minority Muslim populations of the United States as there is no ethnic group that makes up the majority of American Muslims. They are represented in Sunni and Shia denominations as well as smaller sects, such as the Nation of Islam. The history of African-American Muslims is related to African-American history in general, and goes back to the Revolutionary and Antebellum eras.
Muhammad Ali was initially raised as a Baptist before his high-profile conversion to Islam. In the early 1960s, he began attending Nation of Islam Meetings. There, he met Malcolm X, who encouraged his involvement and became a highly influential mentor to Ali. Ali, who was named Cassius Clay after his father, first changed his name briefly to Cassius X and then finally to Muhammad Ali in 1964.
Malcolm X, an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement, was shot multiple times and died from his wounds in Manhattan, New York City on February 21, 1965, at age 39. While preparing to address the Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in the neighborhood of Washington Heights, Malcolm X was shot multiple times and killed. Three members of the Nation of Islam—Muhammad Abdul Aziz, Khalil Islam, and Thomas Hagan—were charged, tried, and convicted of the murder and given indeterminate life sentences, but in November 2021, Aziz and Islam were exonerated.
