The ornate mansion where Louis Farrakhan lives and directs his separatist Nation of Islam is in an integrated neighborhood of doctors and lawyers and corporate captains, a sheltered place where people are judged less by the color of their skin than by the contents of their wallets.
Two blocks away in the Kenwood neighborhood lie the segregated precincts of 47th Street, in bygone days a bustling thoroughfare through the heart of black Chicago but now a street of sorrow. Today, liquor stores thrive and the corners are crowded with men without means to earn a legal living.
Like his neighborhood, Mr. Farrakhan and his Nation are full of contrasts. His bodyguards project an air of militancy, but his dark suits and bow tie are straight out of a chamber of commerce meeting. He advocates self-sufficiency but seeks out government contracts for his followers. He calls himself a minister of love but says there is no shame in hatred.
Though the basic tenets of the Nation have changed little over seven decades, the group has received new attention, starting last year with Mr. Farrakhan's campaign to reach out to other black groups. Then came a widely condemned speech in November by his spokesman, Khallid Abdul Muhammad, at Kean College in New Jersey, in which Mr. Muhammad castigated whites, Jews, homosexuals and the Pope.
Recent efforts by companies affiliated with the Nation to win multimillion-dollar security contracts from public housing agencies have added fuel to the running debate over religion, racism and what the Nation represents.
Although Mr. Farrakhan has attracted attention for his broadsides against whites and Jews, much of his oratory and writings about everything from homosexuals to abortion to bootstrap capitalism could come from the Republican Party platform.
Mr. Farrakhan was recruited into the Nation almost 40 years ago by Malcolm X. He has called Malcolm X the adored father he never had, but in 1964, when Malcolm X left the Nation for mainstream Islam and its creed of universal brotherhood, Mr. Farrakhan was among his harshest critics.
In private, Mr. Farrakhan is a cordial 60-year-old grandfather who loves to play the violin in the wee hours of the morning. But once he steps before the thousands who come to hear him speak in New York or Chicago or in Atlanta, where he once outdrew a World Series game a few blocks away, he breathes fire. He has spent most of his adult life fighting bigotry with bigotry, hate with hate, justifying his fury and his hope with the Koran in one hand and the Bible in the other.
'Truths' in Slurs
When he suspended Mr. Muhammad for the way he had delivered a speech filled with anti-Semitic remarks and slurs against Catholics, homosexuals and blacks, Mr. Farrakhan said he still agreed with the "truths" Brother Khallid had spoken.
On Sunday afternoon, Mr. Muhammad sat in the front row among 12,000 people at the Nation's annual convention in Chicago. Mr. Farrakhan acknowledged him several times and, after spending nearly two hours talking about eugenics and how whites were created 6,000 years ago by a troubled black scientist named Yakub, Mr. Farrakhan told the convention that though Mr. Muhammad needed to be more diplomatic, he was still "a warrior, a fighter for his people."
'I'm on the Cross'
Mr. Farrakhan said he and his Nation were under attack simply for telling the truth.
"I'm on the cross," he told the crowd as it jumped to its feet and roared its support. "I'm being crucified. But I'm being crucified to raise your consciousness."
Echoes of the speech and others ripple throughout the nation in the group's newspaper, The Final Call, in television and radio broadcasts and on audiotapes and videotapes. But no one seems to know for sure how big the Nation of Islam is -- estimates range from fewer than 10,000 members to 100,000 -- and its leaders generally do not give interviews. Nor does anyone know how much support Mr. Farrakhan really has among blacks outside the insular world of the Nation.
He does get plenty of attention these days. He smiles and scowls from the covers of magazines and from the couch of Arsenio Hall's television show. But the 30-second sound bites have also turned him into a one- dimensional character: the black twin of David Duke.
A Black Horatio Alger
What has been lost in the outcry over his remarks, like his statement in 1984 that Judaism is a "gutter religion," is how politically and socially conservative Mr. Farrakhan actually is, said Chip Berlet, an analyst with Political Research Associates of Cambridge, Mass., which studies right-wing and fringe groups.
"If you look at the content of his politics, it's either conservative or reactionary," Mr. Berlet said. "It's all based on Horatio Alger myths, separatism, relying on authoritarian measures to promote security and safety, and scapegoating Jews."
But Mr. Berlet said too much time is spent discussing and condemning Mr. Farrakhan while bigoted white organizations, many larger and more influential than the Nation of Islam, are treated less harshly.
"The problem of racial nationalism is a real problem, but Minister Farrakhan is a minor player," he said. "There are much bigger white players who don't get the same level of criticism, and that's unfair."
At the convention on Sunday, Mr. Farrakhan again denied he is anti-Semitic or anti-white or that he is motivated by anything other than a love for his people.
Michael Pfleger, a white Roman Catholic priest in Chicago who has known Mr. Farrakhan for 10 years, agrees. The two men have visited each other's homes, and Mr. Farrakhan has lectured twice from Father Pfleger's pulpit.
"I have never found him to be anti-Semitic or anti-white," Father Pfleger said. "I don't think there is any group or religion in America that has done more for the African-American male than the Nation of Islam. I feel the real problem is, America does not know how to handle Louis Farrakhan or the truth."
The Beliefs Whites, the Curse Of the Chosen
The truth according to Mr. Farrakhan is laid out twice a month in the pages of The Final Call, the Nation's newspaper. It can also be found between the covers of his 1993 book, "A Torchlight for America" (FCN Publishing, Chicago) and in the group's theology -- a blend of nationalism, racial chauvinism, capitalism, Christianity, U.F.O.'s and Islam.
According to the Nation, whites were created by Yakub, the mad scientist, as a test for the superior black race, who are the chosen people, and also as a curse on it.
On Sunday, Mr. Farrakhan told the few whites in the crowd, "You are not a devil by the color of your skin; you are the devil by the teachings you have accepted."
Mr. Farrakhan has also said that while he would never mistreat or mock a gay person, God does not approve of homosexuality. In his book, Mr. Farrakhan writes: "We must change homosexual behavior and get rid of the circumstances that bring it about. We must change all behavior that offends the standard of moral behavior set by God through His laws and prophets."
Abortion, Mr. Farrakhan writes, is equivalent to murder. But he says he is "pro-choice in that women should have the right to choose to whom they will commit their lives."
On crime, he talks law and order like a politician 20 points behind in the polls. Saudi Arabia, he writes, has little crime because it is willing to cut off a limb or snuff out a life to punish the wicked.
Solution for Crime
But, so far, he says, "America has not found a way to curb crime and reform those in her society who consistently break her laws, particularly in the black community."
Part of his solution: send black convicts to Africa under Nation of Islam supervision.
Adolph Reed Jr., a professor of political science at Northwestern University who has been following Mr. Farrakhan's career for years, said: "What is most disturbing about Farrakhan has nothing to do with what he says about whites. He has a very conservative, regressive, repressive take on blacks."
The Fruit A Polite Presence On the Streets
A chorus of voices rang out recently from the top floors of a 16-story building at the desperately poor Robert Taylor Homes, a public housing development and one of Chicago's toughest and saddest stretches of real estate.
"Where's Farrakhan? "
"We want Farrakhan. "
"I want to be on the Arsenio Hall show too."
The residents were shouting to 75 neatly dressed, stern-faced men standing at attention in the snow below.
The Fruit of Islam had arrived.
The Fruit is the Nation's paramilitary, unarmed bodyguard. Wherever he goes, Mr. Farrakhan is surrounded by the bow-tie-wearing members of Fruit, who thoroughly search everyone attending one of their leader's speeches.
Next to Mr. Farrakhan, the Fruit of Islam is the most visible part of the Nation. Its members politely hawk the Nation's newspaper and bean pies on city street corners from Washington to Los Angeles.
They also work as security guards in public housing projects in several cities, including Chicago, and are trying to expand their operations, sometimes with the backing of local politicians and often over the opposition of Jewish groups.
During its glory years in the 1950's and 1960's, the Nation built a reputation for turning desperate men away from a life of crime. Its most famous convert, Malcolm X, was a pimp and a drug pusher before joining the movement.
That work continues today, Mr. Farrakhan says. So on a cold Saturday afternoon, the Fruit marched through the project to show their colors and to convince the residents that as Mr. Farrakhan's chief of staff and son-in-law, Leonard Muhammad, put it, "This is a love thing, brother to brother."
Mr. Muhammad led his men past a line of residents, shaking hands and promising free tickets to anyone who wanted to hear Mr. Farrakhan speak at the convention.
"We come in peace," Mr. Muhammad said.
"You're always welcome here," said a 17-year-old resident, Alphonso Lewis. "You're coming to tell us how to live right."
As the Fruit marched through the development, at times chanting Mr. Farrakhan's name, a van of white college students on a sociology class trip pulled up. The students seemed relucant to get out.
"Tell them they're safe," Mr. Muhammad said and smiled. "They're under the protection of the Fruit of Islam."
The Rumors Power Struggle In the Nation?
Black writers and leaders of community groups who monitor the Nation of Islam say that for months there has been talk of a power struggle within the group -- pitting a more moderate Mr. Farrakhan against a more hardnosed right wing that cherishes the Nation's unbending past. Khallid Muhammad is believed to be part of the Nation orthodoxy and is widely popular with its youngest members, who, as one former member put it, "like their rhetoric red hot."
It is difficult to determine how serious the talk of internal conflict is because of the heavy curtain of secrecy the Nation operates behind. In The Final Call, both Mr. Farrakhan and Mr. Muhammad have denied a conflict.
On the surface, at least, the focus remains on Mr. Farrakhan. When he bounded onto the stage on Sunday, the crowd applauded and shouted his name, sounding like distant thunder.
" Farrakhan! Farrakhan! " a woman shouted. "Teach, brother! Teach!" But in his speech Mr. Farrakhan seemed to be answering any potential challenges to his throne. "Some of you want the crown, but you're running from suffering," he said. You would-be leaders, you don't have no government against you talking in an alley. You don't have the might of the Jews against you talking in a basement. I've got it all arrayed against me."
Hint of Amity
Before Mr. Muhammad's speech in New Jersey last November, however, Mr. Farrakhan had appeared to be moderating his views and asking to talk with Jewish groups. He had also been mending fences with more mainstream black political figures, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson; Benjamin Chavis, president of the N.A.A.C.P., and Representative Kweisi Mfume, Democrat of Maryland.
And in the last couple of years, Mr. Farrakhan has seemed to be inching closer to orthodox Islam.
"We still have hopes that Farrakhan is going to come into the Islamic mainstream," said Abdul Karim Hasan, an orthodox Muslim and a former member of the Nation of Islam who has known Mr. Farrakhan for almost 40 years. "Muslims are conservative. Farrakhan is conservative. He's no radical.
"But I do know there will be a great falling away if he just jumps into the mainstream all of a sudden," Mr. Hasan said. "He has to do it gradually; otherwise he won't have anything left."
On Sunday, with all his talk of eugenics, Mr. Farrakhan seemed to be signaling his followers that he was still a true believer.
