This letter of application is dispatched to Chicago, and if the copy contains no errors, the visitor is sent a detailed questionnaire that inquires into his family and employment status. This completed, the applicant is given a thorough investigation by local members of The Fruit. If the applicant stands muster, he is admitted to membership in the Black Muslim movement. Then, and only then, is the convert allowed to drop his “slave” name. If his name is, say, John King, he becomes John X; if there are other Johns in the local temple, his “X” will denote that he is the third, fourth, or whatever number John to join that particular temple. Thus it is very common to find John 2X or John 7X. Lincoln discovered a midwestern Muslim whose name was John 17X. The “X” is the Black Muslim’s way of saying that his own origins--before the white man--and name are a mystery; it is also the Muslim’s shout that he is an “ex,” and “no longer what I was when the white man had me deaf, blind, and dumb.” I have sat with Black Muslims during temple meetings and have seen the people, particularly the young children, come alive with a new sense of identity; they seem to have a new reason to go out and do battle with the rats and roaches in the slums that are their homes. A feeling of unity and love for one another grips the entire room as they silently stand to be dismissed. They stretch forth their hands, palms upward, and in the name of Allah, the most powerful and all-merciful God, they vow to go in peace. But every Black Muslim temple meeting is saturated with expectation. It reaches its peak when the minister makes the promise that the War of Armageddon is drawing closer and closer. No one ever really says it, but there is an intense feeling that one day soon, at just such a meeting, the “word”--probably from Elijah Muhammad but through Malcolm X--will be given. Just what the word is nobody says; just what will happen when the word is given nobody seems to know. Yet everybody--man, woman, and child--is determined to be on hand when the “word” comes. Such meetings as these have been going on all over the nation for several years. Most of us heard talk about the “temple people,” as the Black Muslims were called, but there was very little real information about them. Nobody seemed to know just how many temple people there were, how they were organized, what they were really about. The consensus was that they were just another offbeat sect, one of the scores of “Islamic” movements that have sought to convert American Negroes during the past century. We had no idea of the power of the Black Muslims as a religious and political organization capable of rallying mass support. But early in 1959 we got the message. _The Alert Is Given_