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The Muslims PresentOrgena Geoffrey Lokke America’s introduction to the Nation of Islam (NOI) was a television documentary called The Hate That Hate Produced (Wallace and Lomax 1959). Its broadcast helped propel both Elijah Muhammad and his national spokesman Malcolm X onto the national stage. The episode of Newsbeat opens with a few words from host and coproducer Mike Wallace. He calls it “a story of the rise of black racism, of a call for black supremacy.” The scene cuts to a crowd of thousands of black Muslims. They are listening to a man proclaim: 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 adul- terer 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 troublemaker on earth. So therefore ladies and gentlemen of the jury I ask you to bring back a verdict of guilty as charged. (in Wallace and Lomax 1959) They cheer. Wallace explains that the scene is from a morality play called The Trial (1956): “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 spon- sored and produced by a Negro religious group who call themselves the Muslims” (in Wallace and Lomax 1959).1 Spike Lee, in his 1992 filmMalcolm X, begins with this same “I charge the white man” speech; as does C. Eric Lincoln in his book The Black Muslims in America ([1961] 1994:1). Lincoln tells us the play is by Louis X, a young minister from Boston, now known as Louis Farrakhan.2 Lincoln says The Trial typically appears in the same program as a work called Orgena (1959). Lincoln calls them “propaganda pieces designed to show the cupidity of the white man and the depths to which the Negro has fallen in trying to be like him” (108). Devised alongside his fellow artists from Mosque No. 11 in Boston, the musical pageant Orgena was an 1. It is unclear when and where this performance of The Trial took place. In a 2016 article, Fredrik deBoer says it was recorded in Washington, DC (deBoer 2016). If so, then it might have been the rally at Uline Arena on 31 May 1959 (Marable and Felber 2013:xxxi). Between seven and ten thousand were present that day. Marable and Felber’s chronology also notes The Trial was performed on 1 January 1959 that year at Mosque No. 7 in New York (xxxi). 2. Farrakhan has led the Nation of Islam since 1978. Geoffrey Lokke is a writer and director. His recent work is published or forthcoming in Adaptation, African American Review, and PAJ. As a director, his work has been sponsored by the East Central European Center at Columbia University, the Harriman Institute, and the Václav Havel Library Foundation. He lives in the Bronx. [email protected] TDR: The Drama Review 62:2 (T238) Summer 2018. ©2018 78 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_a_00749 by guest on 29 September 2021 expansion of The Trial, or rather a shortened version of the play was performed as Part Two of the pageant. The Muslims (as they were billed) toured Orgena around the east coast between 1959 and 1961. They sold out Carnegie Hall twice (in 1960 and 1961). Despite Farrakhan’s notoriety and the novelty of his singing in a musical, both Orgena and The Trial have managed to evade any dedicated study. I remedy this by analyzing Orgena, considering its place in black theatre history — ­especially its relationship to its most obvious antecedent, W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1913 pageant, The Star of Ethiopia. Noting Farrakhan’s early years as a calypso singer, I pay particular attention to how Orgena repurposes traditional black spirituals. Orgena is part of a larger mainstreaming of NOI culture, an infusion of its signs and mythology into black revolutionary art, music, and liter- ature. My research relies on a rare 1961 recording of Orgena as it was performed in Boston (Farrakhan 1961).3 The Charmer and the Mosque Louis Eugene Walcott was born in the Bronx in 1933. When he was five his Barbadian-born mother Mae (née Clark) moved him and his brother Alvan to Roxbury in Boston where she had them take music lessons (Gardell 1996:119). Mae worked multiple jobs to afford a piano for Alvan and a violin for Louis (Levinsohn 1997:183). Young Walcott sang in the choir at St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church, where he also gave recitals. According to Mattias Gardell, he was playing with the Boston College Orchestra by age 12 (1996:119). In 1949, he appeared on national television, playing violin on The Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour (Levinsohn 1997:205). By this time Walcott was enamored with calypso. Around 1947, his friend John Bynoe organized a fundraising con- Figure 1. From left: Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, and Louis X, ca. 1960. cert for a local football team (Photo by Lloyd Yearwood/Three Lions/Getty Images) for which he invited Joe Clark and His Calypsonians from New York to perform. In the middle of their set Walcott told him, “I can do that” (in Magida 1996:21–22). He started playing Roxbury nightclubs at 16, calling The Muslims Present 3. Orgena and The Trial have gone largely unstudied partly because of the scarcity of recordings and the fact the scripts remain unpublished. By my count, only Fatimah Fanusie and Christopher Hitchens reference recordings of Orgena (Fanusie 2001:162; Hitchens 1986:136). Other discussions of the pageant are based on brief descrip- tions (typically Lincoln’s). Only Fanusie (2001) and Joseph Rega (2014) use the more detailed synopses found in the Muhammad Speaks advertorials (Muhammad Speaks 1960a; 1960b). I came across this audio recording in an Orgena online catalog from the Messenger Elijah Muhammad Propagation Society at www.memps.com. 79 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_a_00749 by guest on 29 September 2021 himself The Charmer (24). Walcott briefly attended a teachers college in North Carolina, but never settled in, apparently embittered by Harry Belafonte’s newfound success. Dropping out of school, he resumed his calypso career. Performing as Calypso Gene, Walcott became “a mid- sized sensation” in New England, and toured the Midwest (22–29). Walcott put out a number of singles as the Charmer (sometimes with “His Calypso Rhythm Boys”). He had one full album, Trinidad’s Newest Sensation (1954), which featured songs like “Fire Down There” and “Ugly Woman.” The album was released by Monogram.4 There are some recurring themes to the songs; “Is She Is, Or Is She Ain’t” ridicules a trans woman and “Female Boxer” is about a woman who punches like a man. Walcott sings with an entirely credi- ble Caribbean accent (presumably easy to learn growing up with a mother from Barbados). The Charmer is on two volumes of 50’s Calypso Music from Trinidad (Black Round Records 2011a; 2011b). All his music as the Charmer was reissued in 1999 as Calypso Favorites 1953–1954 on Bostrox Records. Farrakhan has described how a political militancy entered his music early on. On his way down south before starting college, he had a layover in Washington, DC, where he was turned away from a segregated movie theatre. He recalls: “I was very, very, very angry with America, and I started writing a calypso song called ‘Why America Is No Democracy’” (Farrakhan and Gates 1996:146). Arthur J. Magida says this “hints at Walcott’s pre–Nation of Islam politics: a probable amalgam of Garveyism and black resentment” (1996:26). That is fine, but the songs he recorded as the Charmer have no political edge. “Brown Skin Gal” might be an exception, with its white sailors deserting pregnant “island” mothers (The Charmer 1999). Still, its tone fits bet- ter with the playful calypsos on Trinidad’s Newest Sensation than the often pained, nationalist songs from Orgena. In February 1955, Walcott was in Chicago headlining an eight-week revue. He ran into an old friend who had recently converted to Islam and invited Walcott to come with him to lis- ten to Elijah Muhammad speak. Walcott agreed, and when he got home that night started copy- ing out the form letter that was used by recruits to convert/register as a Muslim with the NOI (Magida 1996:30). Around this time, he first heard Malcolm X speak. “I never heard any man talk like that. I was convinced this was where I wanted to be” (Farrakhan and Gates 1996:148). Walcott soon moved to New York to study under Malcolm at Harlem’s Mosque No. 7, taking the name Louis X. He continued to play calypso gigs downtown until he received word of an ultimatum from Elijah Muhammad. He was given 30 days to choose between his music and the movement. Farrakhan says he made up his mind at once, but decided to spend the month play- ing a series of final shows (Gardell 1996:120). Farrakhan says his last night was at a club upstate.

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