New York seemed a million miles away. I hadn’t seen a newspaper that I could read since I left New York. I had no idea what was happening there. A Negro rifle club that had been in existence for over twelve years in Harlem had been “discovered” by the police; it was being trumpeted that I was “behind it.” Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam had a lawsuit going against me, to force me and my family to vacate the house in which we lived on Long Island.

