In the ’60s, a group of African-American Muslims became known as “Black Muslims.” Although the movement was surrounded by controversy, these Muslims helped to found the first Islamic masjid’s (mosques) in Dallas.

Marzuq Jaami was one of these young African-American Muslims. He with some other Islamic leaders spoke to a crowd of more than 100 people on the history of the Black Muslim movement and how it helped to establish the religion in North Texas.

“I was a young man stretching out and running on the track at Liberty High

School one afternoon when I saw these boys off by themselves,” Jaami reflected.

“Don’t go over there with them Muslims, they’ll kill you!” one of his friends said.

Jaami didn’t understand.

“I saw some young boys that were neat, clean, and seemed to be acting in a proper way,” Jaami said. “They seemed to be a little better off than us, truth to tell. I asked myself why they were thought to be so dangerous?”

One day a couple of the men disappeared. The friends started to worry about them and then they showed back up. They explained they had gone to a mosque.

Jaami explained that a mosque is not necessarily the big temple. Rather it is anywhere people gather to pray. It can be a person’s house or a gym.

“The other brothers were laughing at these two cats, they must have really been trippin’,” Jaami said. “We thought they said they had been to Mars and them boys must’ve been drinking something really strange to think that they could make a trip like that. We asked them how they could make a trip to Mars when they didn’t even have bus fare to the movies.”

The boys stayed up until one o’clock the next morning trying to explain what a mosque was. In the end, they invited the others to attend prayer in a couple of weeks. The invitation was accepted.

Jaami said that he learned a lot from that first visit to the mosque.

“When I was a young boy growing up in the poor negro suburbs of Dallas, my grandmother told me that there are 99 attributes to God’s name,” Jaami said. “She told us how we were descended from slaves and she showed us the right way to live. She lived like a Muslim, but I didn’t realize it then. I thought it was Baptist, after all I had been attending Baptist churches all of my life. When I went to prayer that night, they started about the 99 attributes of God and they instantly had my attention.”

Jaami said that his religious journey was started by Wallace Dean Mohammed, an imam of the faith and son of the founder of the Nation of Islam, more commonly known as the Black Muslims. An imam is a learned religious leader like a Jewish rabbi, a Catholic priest or Protestant minister.

“These were troubled times in the country,” Jaami said. “We were struggling for an identity and the missing parts of our souls. Dallas was either negro or white. We were negroes, not blacks, and we resented anyone calling us blacks. We hated labels and being placed in a category.”

Elija Mohammed, Wallace Dean Mohammed’s father and father of the movement, called all caucasians”devils.” He wanted people to understand what it felt like to be labeled. This stirred up even more hatred in the community.

“Police in Alabama raided a mosque where some sisters were prayin’ and arrested them,” Jaami said. “I gotta hand it to the sisters, they put up a fight. From there the hate spread to Dallas and across the country. People were being arrested all over the place whether they were doing something or not. Someone walking on the wrong side of the street was arrested, if the police were in the mood.”

As the tempers elevated in the white neighborhoods and police hostilities increased, the African-American community united even tighter.

Jaami told of Malcolm X’s visit to Dallas and the fear it stirred up in the white community.

“They were really afraid of us because for the first time we were united. Someone like Malcolm X who could gather 2,000 brothers for a march without a lot of effort was a force to be taken serious,” he said.

Elijah Mohammed met with Malcolm and saw his anger. He told Malcolm X to go to Mecca.

“He did,” Jaami said. “Malcolm came back and said that it was the most incredible thing he had seen. Malcolm said that there were people in Mecca that were whiter than people in this country. The whites in Mecca didn’t seem to have any anger. He had really learned something.”

Jaami said that he was talking about Malcolm X with Wallace Dean Mohammed after he left. They didn’t believe the boy would live long because he had too many enemies already.

“The Cubans, the Mafia, the F BI, everyone was after him,” Jaami said. “But we knew the boy was gonna shine bright. After him came Cassius Clay and the others. Elijah taught them to hate the white devils, but Wallace Dean Mohammed said that enough was enough. The whites were learning from their mistakes and that it was time to put the past in the past. We were not to call them devils anymore. [He] taught us the true ways of Islam. Peace.”

Jaami is now the assistant director of the Muslim American Society’s Dallas Masjid of Al-Islam.

“When I see the anger people are directing at our brothers and sisters because of they’re Muslim, I see those times all over again,” Jaami said. “I pray to Allah that that never happens again. That’s why we’re here this weekend. We want to answer people’s questions and relieve their fears.”