Calistran and the Zebra Killings of San Francisco

Muhammad Abdullah al-Ahari Chicago, Illinois May 29, 1994 Preface "When violence occurs in the Black community, Blacks always note that police investigation is usually cursory. Black killing Black seldom, if ever, makes page one of the newspapers. However, as Blacks see it, when Black violence strikes the White community, police reaction is swift and overwhelming. The Black community becomes a hunting ground. Helmeted, shotgun-bearing officers cruise through their neighborhoods. Whether they know it or not, they only add to the growing hostility between themselves and the community. The faces that stare at each other are less than friendly. The Black is reminded that if his description resembles that of the suspect, he might end up on the wrong side of a cell door." (San Francisco Examiner reporter Bob Hayes after an interview with Dr. Price Cobb, author of Black Rage.)

History and Teachings of Calistran A very strange and frightening work appeared in 1979 called Zebra: The True Account of the 179 Days of Terror in San Francisco (New York: Richard Marek Publishers, 1979). The author Clark Howard spent nearly five years in researching and writing this compelling narrative. Zebra is the story of how five young Black men held the city of San Francisco in a virtual reign of terror for 179 days. They committed rape, murder, robbery, kidnapping, and terrible mutilations. In all told them had 23 victims in San Francisco. Fifteen of which died and eight that survived the ordeal. The crimes were termed the Zebra killing because that was the radio band that the police used on their radios to gather information as the crimes occurred. However, later cynics would see it as a reference to the Black on White crimes. The victims ranged from Salvation Army workers to Merchant Seamen to transient homeless street people. The most gruesome of the crimes includes beheading, homosexual rapes, and faces of the living being carved liked a roast. The crimes themselves were indeed horrible and were carried out by heavily indoctrinated, psychotic, deranged young Black men and in no way are reflective on the Black Community as a whole or to the Nation of Islam in particular. For this reason I will go in the

history and doctrines of Calistran and only briefly on the crimes or into the personalities involved. The members of the Calistran sect also called the Death Angels belonged to a cult that sprung from the California temples of the Nation of Islam in the early 1970's and were eventually responsible for over three hundred of these grizzly murders. The Nation of Islam was started in 1930 by a mysterious stranger- Farrad Muhammad- who walked in to Paradise Valley in Detroit selling silks and other items to the Black of Southern origin who had settled there. He taught that the Black were the original rulers of the Earth and were tricked out of their authority by an evil Black scientist who created the White Devil race through a form of genetic selection. He taught he was the Son of Man and a Prophet of Allah. One of his minister- Robert Poole (later known as Ghulam Bogans and Elijah Muhammad) would come to teach that this stranger- Farrad Muhammad allegedly of Quraish-Meccan origins was Allah incarnate. (see my End of Time and the Fulfillment of the Prophecies for more details). Farrad sought to have his followers see him as a martyr who was constantly harassed by the authorities for his righteous teachings. Always mysterious in his movement and teachings, he vanished from sight in late 1934 never to be heard from again except through visions, telegrams and occasional letters. Farrad's teachings were a strange mixture of Masonry, military directives, Ismaelism, Sufism, Ahmadiyyah, Southern Christianity, and his own teachings to boot. One officer investigating the murders of the Black Angels in San Francisco found a copy of the lessons in a hand-written 8 1/2-inch-by-11inch stack of papers. Some of the quotes that Clark Howard reproduces from the interview with this officer include the following teachings, "...Why must a Muslim murder the devil? Because he is one hundred percent wicked and his ways are like a snake....All Muslims must murder the devil...is required to bring four devils, and his reward shall be transportation to the Holy City Mecca...Good believers say, Islam comes first and family second...You see us pulling the wagons filled with the dead. Help us and Allah will bless you...We believe in the destruction of the devil will take place in America...If we divide ourselves into groups and each one wants an independent leader, this is the work of the devil (white race)...this dividing of the Black man one against the other is the basis of the rule of the white man...the White race is always referred to

as the devil, due to the wickedness of the people...Devil means a totally wicked people...the enemies of Allah are known as the White race or European race, who are the sole people responsible for misleading nine-tenths of the Black nation...love your brother believers as yourself...kill no one whom Allah has not ordered killed...How long has the devil White man to rule and when is his time up? The exact day is only known to Allah...Islam is the only religion that will survive the final war between Allah and the devil. Islam will put the Black man of America on top of all civilization...". (Howard, pp. 283285). Even during the early years of the Nation of Islam there were rumors of an elite group of Black Assassins whose job was to systematically kill and mutilate "the White Grafted Devil" in order to purge the greater Black Nation of its detrimental effects and to keep the blood of the "Original Black Man- God of the Universe" pure only to be intermingled with the blood of the Black Woman "Mother of Civilization". The details of this are to be found in Beynon's "The Voodoo Cult Among the Negro Migrants of Detroit". Beynon told us, "These cases of `human sacrifice' have directed to the organization much attention from the Police Department, so that the movement has been forced to pursue many of its activities in secret." He also tells this, in addition to a question as to the divinity of Farrad, lead to splits in the early Nation of Islam. Elijah took over the movement but not without a fight from those who choose to see Farrad as only a Messenger of Allah and Elijah as a false Prophet trying to usurp power and overstep his position in the movement. The main leader of this now defunct movement was Abdullah Muhammad, a former Moorish Science Temple minister. In 1934 Elijah tried to setup another Chicago Temple but the opposition in the New Mecca was too strong. He later fled to the third temple Farrad started in Milwaukee and then to Washington, D.C. where he began to rebuild his scattered following and to study more deeply into the esoteric teaching in the lessons of the exalted Hidden Imam and Mahdi now called Allah Incarnate. Farrad gave him the keys in his lessons and oral teachings and a list of 104 books to read to further indoctrinate this young minister and newly Messenger of Allah. Elijah was eventually made in a martyr himself by arrests for causing delinquency of a minor by teaching children in the Nation run school- University of Islam- which was not state

licensed and for calling for his followers to reject the draft during World War II. He served a very brief prison term for the first charge and five years for the second. His fame grew after his teaching of Malcolm Little (Malcolm X), Louis Wolcott (Louis Farrakhan), and Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali). Malcolm taught Clarence 13X who later was martyred himself and had founded the still growing Five Percenter Nation and its associate groups such as the Zulu Nation. In California ministers such as John Muhammad taught the street wise youth of San Quentin, Folsom Prison, Oakland and San Francisco (the teachings spread later) the lessons of Farrad Muhammad. It was these lessons that formed the doctrinal basis for the slaying of White Devils that held San Francisco in a virtual reign of terror for over six months. Elijah himself died in 1975 at the age of seventy-seven and was succeeded by his son Wallace who taught a more Orthodox Islam. Many in the former Nation of Islam refused to follow these old teachings of the East and reverted to the earlier teachings under such leader as Farrakhan, John Muhammad, Silas Muhammad, Clarence 13X's successors and those in the still operating Calistran (at present its basic core is the Folsom and San Quentin Prison). Meetings for Calistran were held separate from the local Nation of Islam temples. Members saw themselves as an elite guard that wished to leader the rise of the New World Ordermost certainly a Black World. The Nation of Islam did not recognize Calistran as a group separate from the Nation of Islam. The leaders were always a shadowy group who taught that killing a certain number of White Grafted devils would allow them into an elite group in the Nation called the Death Angels. These "Death Angels" were later to be called deranged and dangerous by spokesmen for the "official" Nation of Islam. To become a member of the"Death Angels" a/k/a Calistran, one had to kill four White children, five White women, or nine White men. When the quota was reached, the new member had his picture taken and black wings were drawn extending from his neck on the photo. In October 1973 there were fifteen Death Angels in California. Together they were responsible for killing 135 White men, 75 White women, and 60 White children throughout the state. The murder took place in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Long Beach, Signal Hill, Santa Barbara, Palo Alto, Pacifica, San Diego, and Los Angeles; and in the counties of San Mateo, Santa Clara, Los Angeles, Contra Costa, Ventura, and

Alameda. A typical meeting is portrayed by Howard on pp. 19-24. "The meeting were held in the loft of a San Francisco warehouse. They were conducted by a dignified Black man with a Vandyke beard. He wore a business suit and spoke in a quiet, almost ministerial tone. `The population of the White man in North America has reached one hundred and three million. The population of the Black man is only seventeen million...the population of the White man throughout the world is only four hundred million, while the population of the Black man throughout the world has now reached four and a half billion...'." The speaker goes on to tell the area of land and how much is controlled by the White and Black race, how the White race came into existence, and it came to rule over the Black race. After explaining the creation of the White race by the evil Black scientist Yakub, he goes on to tell of how only the Poor Righteous Teachers (the Five Percenters) can overcome the teachings of the Teachers of Spookollogy, Tricknollogy and the Mystery God (the Ten Percent) in order to bring the mislead (the eighty-five percent) into the true light of Islam. The four hundred years of White subjugation of the Black Man in America, is due to end. In order to prove his points, he reads from the Message to the Black Man by Elijah Muhammad and then quotes the lessons that tell to kill the grafted White devil and the meeting ends with him telling the audience about the Black Angels. The teachings of Calistran and the indoctrination of its members lead to some of them taking their teaching literally and going after meetings to find White Grafted Devils to kill in order to assist the rise of the Black nation. On February 17, 1974 a strange letter arrived on the desk of the San Francisco detectives in charge of investigating the socalled Zebra killings. It was from a fringe member of Calistran. The letter is below as it appeared on pages 269-271 of Zebra. "I was once a Muslim and I know that the Muslims do advocate the killing of whites. In fact, they preach the extermination of the entire White race. [Here he asks for his name not to be released for fear of his life.] Perhaps an understanding of some of the basis for the White race hatred would make it easier to understand how a Muslim can kill without the slightest feeling of guilt. It is believed and taught that every Black person is born with a black and brown gene. At one time, long ago, a Muslim scientist kept extracting the brown gene until he came up with a yellow person and finally a white person who was the epitome of everything bad. The purpose of

this, so says the myth, is for the perfection of the Black man. Through looking at the evil of the `White devil' and struggling with him could he in turn perfect himself. The Muslim ministers teach that the `hereafter' is not going to be heaven but rather the earth after the `White devil' has been overcome. It is very easy to hate enough to kill if you are a Muslim. When you go to the Temple you are told how the White devil raped your grandmother and how she was made to pull the plow with her body while the White devil's animals rested. You are worked into a religious fervor, a fervor of hate. You feel that it is your sacred duty to avenge the injustices that were done to your ancestors. The ministers tell you that you should kill White babies, that no White man should survive on earth, that the Black race must overcome the devil. Many times I became so angry that I wanted to run out and hack up a White person. I would have felt justified in doing it. The Muslims take no responsibility for the reactions to their teachings. The killings of Whites is no new thing. Every month I was there someone had gone out and killed someone. Check the police records for the motiveless, brutal killings of Whites in the streets the past few years and you will see this is true. The Muslims have a built in protection whereby if you get into trouble with the police you are no longer a Muslim. It is not that no Muslim ever does anything wrong but rather that he is disowned by the group if he ever gets caught. The Muslims indoctrinate their members in three ways. The first is the teachings of race hatred and of the superiority of the Black race. The second is through symbology. Symbols of the cross, the flag, and then the sword are placed on pictures or blackboards in the Temples and you are constantly reminded that the White religion, the White nation, and the White race should come to a violent end. The third means is through the militarylike drilling of the Fruit of Islam (FOI-Muslim men's group). Here you are taught to march, to respond to commands without thinking, to react without judgement. A command need only be whispered and you are so well trained that you react before you even realize you have reacted. I have heard a Muslim minister speak of the killing of Whites in San Francisco...". The official reason given by Calistran for the killing sprees was to scare Whites into moving in order to make San Francisco a Black Muslim city. An attempt by leaders of Calistran to stop their members from killing as per orders from the New Mecca of Chicago is detailed on by Howard on pp. 304-307. There we read of a vain attempt to get the aspiring Black Angels to start a program to run pimps, hookers, drug dealers and addicts out of the Black community.

That attempt was in vain. This reminds us, however, of Minister Farrakhan calling for this only after his one son was forced to enter a drug treatment program in lieu of prison for a conviction on drug dealing charges. These killings were committed, as per police records of the San Francisco murders, by nine members of Calistran. Only four were able to be charged however. These murders resulted in the longest criminal trial in California history- a year and six days (March 3, 1975 to March 9, 1976). More than a hundred and eighty witnesses testified. The transcripts were over fourteen thousand pages bound in 141 volumes. The Nation sent lawyers for only those who did not confess. Jesse Lee Cooks was not provided one by the Nation as he confessed to one murder. All of the defendants worked for Black Self Help (a moving company) and were members of the Nation of Islam. The five who were on trial were: Anthony Harris- the one who turned state's evidence, Manuel Moore, J.C. Simon- a self proclaimed prophet, Jesse Lee Cooks,and Larry Green. In prison the group Calistran continued. J.C. Simon made attempts to convert the Black Muslim population at Folsom prison to his laws which he claimed were given to him by Allah to lead the Black Angels or Calistran. Jesse Lee Cooks is also at Folsom. Larry Green and Manuel Moore are at San Quentin. The role they have in present day Calistran is unknown to this writer. Anthony Harris is at present living under a new identity with his wife and daughter.

Bibliography Beynon, E.D., "The Voodoo Cult Among the Negro Migrants in Detroit", American Journal of Sociology (May 1938). El, Muhammad Abdullah al-Ahari Bektashi, End of Time and Fulfillment of the Prophecies (forthcoming).

Howard, Clark, Zebra: The true account of the 179 days of terror in San Francisco (New York: Richard Marek Publishers, 1979).