According to an article entitled "Black Gods of the Inner City" (by Prince-A-Cuba),
Gnosis Magazine, Fall 1992, pp. 56-63:
The story of the NOI itself starts with a man variously known as Wali Farrad,
W.D. Fard, Wallace Fard Muhammad, and Farrad Muhammad, but who is best known
as Master Fard Muhammad. According to his sucessor,
Elijah Muhammad,
He came alone. He began teaching us the knowledge of ourselves, of God and
the devil, of the measurements of the earth, of other planets, and the civilizations
of some of the planets other than the earth. He measured and weighed the earth
and the water; [he gave] the history of the moon; the history of the two nations
that dominated the earth. He gave the exact birth of the white race; the name of
their God who made them and how; and the end of their time, the judgement, how it
will begin and end.
According to the same source, Fard had said, "My name is Mahdi; I am God."
And according to another source, Fard, when asked who he was by the Detroit
police, responded: "I am the Supreme Ruler of the Universe."
Master Fard Muhammad is officially noted by the NOI as having arrived in Detroit
on July 4, 1930, and departed on June 30, 1934. (There is an older tradition of
an earlier arrival twenty years previous as well as attendance at the University
of Southern California.) In the interim, Fard established temples in several
cities and created a hierarchical organization composed of a men's military training
unit called the Fruit of Islam (FOI), a ministers' corps, and a women's auxiliary
called the Muslim Girls Training and General Civilization Class (MGT-GCC). This
infrastructure was built upon Fard's ideological foundation known as the "Secret Ritual,"
which, arranged in a question-and-answer format, became better known as the "Lost-Found
Muslim Lessons" or simply as "the lessons."
Within these lessons were the basic elements of an ancient mystery school. It involved
secrecy from outsiders; an esoteric ritual containing keys for recognition between
fellow members; a cohesive world view; and a tradition that could be explained only
to initiates. Central to these teachings were the knowledge of self and the Black man's
godhood. According to these teachings, the Black man was by nature divine, and in fact
was the original man, ancestor of the human race (antedating Louis and Mary Leakey's
discoveries of early human remains in Africa by nearly thirty years.)
White people, on the other hand, were produced out of Black people by a scientist
named Yacub approximately six thousand years ago. Discovering a recessive gene in
the Black man, Yacub used a system of eugenics on a group of sixty thousand people
on an island and, after six hundred years, was able to create a biological mutation:
the White man. Of course Yacub did not live to see his creation, but he left behind
an infrastructure to propogate his system, as well as the ideological basis for
White supremacy. Bleached of the essence of humanity, Whites were "without soul."
Nonetheless the race was destined to rule for an allotted period extending to
1914 A.D., though, as Fard's messenger Elijah Muhammad put it, "a few years of grace
have been given to complete the resurrection of the Black man, and especially the
so-called Negroes whom Allah has chosen for this change (of a new nation and world).
They (so-called Negroes) have been made so completely mentally dead ... that extra
time is allowed." It was also taught that the supreme god amongst this mighty
nation of Black gods commanded the name of Allah. This title was claimed by Master
Fard Muhammad himself.