My Essay on the Moorish Science Temple, Part 1

Current or former MST location in Chicago. Taken by Google Street View, April 2009

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I DECLARE it does appear to me as though some nations think God is asleep, or that he made the Africans for nothing else but to dig their mines and work their farms, or they cannot believe history, sacred or profane. I ask every man who has a heart, and is blessed with the privilege of believing—Is not God a God of justice to all his creatures? Do you say he is? Then if he gives peace and tranquility to tyrants and permits them to keep our fathers, our mothers, ourselves and our children in eternal ignorance and wretchedness to support them and their families, would he be to us a God of Justice? I ask, O, ye Christians, who hold us and our children in the most abject ignorance and degradation that ever a people were afflicted with since the world began—I say if God gives you peace and tranquility, and suffers you thus to go on afflicting us, and our children, who have never given you the least provocation—would He be to us a God of Justice?

—David Walker

DuBois, W. E. Burghardt. "The Talented Tenth."  in: Washington, Booker T., et al. The Negro Problem. Mobile Reference, 2009. Web. [Google Books]

IT'S not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

—Barack Obama

"Top 10 gaffes in presidential campaigns." SFGate.com. Web. 13 Oct. 2012.  [http://www.sfgate.com/news/slideshow/Top-10-gaffes-in-presidential-campaigns-49242.php#photo-3472619]

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If you seek out the places where the religious community Moorish Science Temple of America is or was once located, by present-day virtual means, you are often transported into disconsolate environments.

These tend to be urban ones: names of shops are painted onto signs and awnings by hand, the antiquish false fronts would fit perfectly into the Wild West, the street is fissured or seamed by dark tar strips, a quadrangle of grass grows where a house was torn down, old-fashioned sedans are parked alongside the road, in extreme cases the roof is dilapidated so that it must be drenched during rain, industrial terrain is immobile, windows of houses down the street are nailed shut with boards, and the shop or house itself has grates in front of the windows and door to ward off theft and violence. A casual search for an address in Pittsburgh leads to local news of three shooting deaths within two years in front of one bar, and one in Fayetteville in Georgia leads to a police blotter.

Therefore it seems, also if one reads of the history of the Temple, that to arrive at the truest picture of the origins and present state of the Moorish Science Temple's congregation, one must endeavour to understand its socioeconomic context, formerly and currently. Many aspects of the doctrine and mythology, and all of the internal politics, of the Temple will come short in this essay, also because even scholars dispute what information is fact and which fiction¹; while Chicago is particularly focused upon since it can serve as a microcosm of the industrial north.

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Google Street View. Web. 7 Sept. - 13 Oct. 2012.

Sherman, Jerome L. "Does bar play a role in violence?". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 22 Nov. 2009. Web. 30 Sept. 2012.

"Rockdale Blotter - 10/29/10." Rockdale Citizen 28 Oct. 2010. Web. [http://www.rockdalecitizen.com/news/2010/oct/28/rockdale-blotter-102910/]


1 Even the year of the founder, Noble Drew Ali's, death varies depending on the scholar.
Pinn, Anthony B. Varieties of African American Religious Experience. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1998. 215. Web. [Google Books]
The Illinois State Archives have a death record for "Timothy Drew" on July 20, 1929; and the African-American newspaper, the Chicago Defender (the image is credited to a "Defender Staff Photographer"), apparently ran a photo of "Noble Drew Ali"'s funeral. The caption mentions that he was buried at Burr Oak cemetery, where his headstone bears the date "1929."
"Prophet Noble Drew Ali's funeral." Moorish Society. 4 Apr. 2012. Web. 29 Sept. 2012. [http://moorishsociety.com/2012/04/04/prophet-noble-drew-alis-funeral/]
Illinois Statewide Death Index. Web. 2 Oct. 2012 [http://www.ilsos.gov/isavital/idphDeathSearch.do Search for "Drew" and "Timothy."]
"Noble Drew Ali." FindAGrave.com. 1 Feb. 2005. Web. 13 Oct. 2012. [Link]
So the year 1929 — not 1920 — seems plausible.

[P.S.: Really not so fond of the new MLA formating, which I am using for all my footnotes and which looks very different from what it did back in 2005 when I last applied it to university work.]