‘N.Z. man founded cult’

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33532, 13 May 1974, Page 1

‘N.Z. man founded cult’

By

JOHN N. HUTCHISON,

a former public affairs officer at the United States Embassy in Wellington.)

The Mayor of San Francisco (Mr J. Alioto) has asserted that some of the gunmen whose random, senseless street killings have terrorised his city as well as Sacramento, the State capital, are members of the Black Muslims, a Negro separatist movement said to have been founded more than 40 years ago by a New Zealander. The Black Muslim lead-

ership denies that it is any longer dedicated to homicidal violence, which marked its earlier history since a man named Wallace Dodd, later calling himself Walter Farad, organised the fanatical separatist cult. Farad was the subject of a news story in the “San Francisco Examiner,” in 1963, when the extremist Black Muslims were officially branded as “a threat to the peace and security of the state.” The “Examiner” on May 2 this year, in an article reviewing the current fear and furore over the unexplained “Zebra” killings of at least 12 persons in the city in the last few months, said: “the founder, Farad . . . wasn’t even a black man. He was

bom Wallace Dodd in New Zealand, the son of a British seaman and a Polynesian mother, and at first identified himself as white or Maori.” ’

The newspaper says that Dodd was sent to California’s famous San Quentin prison in 1926 on narcotics and bootlegging charges, and was released in 1930. He then went to Detroit, claimed to be from Mecca and established himself as the leader of 8000 blacks. In 1933, according to the "Examiner’s” 1963 copyrighted story, Dodd, now Farad, was ” arrested and ordered out of the city. “Some devout followers,” the newspaper reported, “believe that Farad, lastl

seen in 1934, headed for New Zealand, is still alive, and will be for 400 years.” A former assistant of Farad — bom Robert J. Poole and since calling himself Elijah Muhammad — became the leader of the sect in 1933. It now has a reputed membership in the hundreds of thousands, total assets of SNZS3m and a weekly newspaper with a circulation of 800,000. After many years during which Elijah Muhammad savagely attacked the white race, and a few years during which Black Muslims were accused of carrying out “executions” of wTiite people, the black leader now tells his followers to “honour and respect” (white people.