With a trunk full of fish, he continued north to a simple two-story red brick building at Augusta and Hoyne. It’s called Temple No. 9, and it belongs to a small quasi-Islamic sect, the Moorish Science Temple of America. It looks like any of the dozens of Polish churches dotting the Ukrainian Village, with wide red doors, a steepled roof, and a ring of cheery stained-glass windows. On the third week of September, hundreds of Moors, as they call themselves, travel to the temple from around the country for their annual convention. It’s the biggest event of the Moorish calendar, and it’s been held in Chicago since the first one in 1928. That makes Temple No. 9 arguably the most important Moorish temple in the country.
Johnson-Bey unloaded the coolers from his car, unlocked the back door to the kitchen, and got to work cleaning and seasoning the fish, which he would later fry up for the temple’s guests. He worked alone. A tall, slender 72-year-old with thick rose-tinted glasses and a fondness for bow ties, he’s the temple’s Grand Sheik—like a Catholic parish’s priest. Since he retired from the CTA two years ago he gets to the temple hours before services start so he can have the place to himself for a bit. His wife, Cora, used to accompany him until she started showing signs of Alzheimer’s. Now he gets the temple ready for services alone, running the heat when it’s cold and airing out the main room when it’s warm. When there’s snow on the ground he brings his twin ten-year-old granddaughters, Nefertiti and Makeda, and they shovel the sidewalk together.
In recent years about 200 Moors have shown up for each convention, where they elect national leaders, review finances, and hold gala religious services. But Johnson-Bey remembers long-ago conventions when thousands traveled to Chicago and paraded along State Street in elaborate costumes. Temple No. 9 only has 23 active members now, many of them quite old—50 is young there—but they tell stories of the 30s and 40s, when there were 10,000 Moors in Chicago alone. A few members, like Sister Matilda Kern-El, who’s in her late 90s, come from families that were among the first converts when the religion was founded in 1913. One of Johnson-Bey’s four children, Reuben Jr., is actively involved in the temple as its chairman; the others come on big holidays. “Everyone is free to make their own choice,” Johnson-Bey says. It’s the same story with the children of other members who are Reuben’s age. “Islamism is a strict lifestyle, and it’s hard to keep the children interested. Once they turn 18, it seems we don’t see them with the same regularity.”
New members are rare, and Johnson-Bey doesn’t make it easy to join. “We see a lot of visitors who first heard about Islamism while they were institutionalized,” he says. “Now, I have nothing against your past if you are up-front with me and tell me exactly when and why you were in the institution. But I have seen visitors who seem chiefly interested in receiving financial support. There are no handouts here. If you knock on the temple doors and I smell alcohol on the breath, or the eyes aren’t clear, and you’re not properly dressed in slacks and a jacket and preferably a tie, I will ask you to return at a later date.” Temples in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Washington, D.C., have kept membership numbers between 50 and 100 by proselytizing in prisons. Temple No. 9 doesn’t do that. “We have true treasures at this temple, sages who hold a wealth of information about the days in the Prophet’s time and this that and the other,” Johnson-Bey says. “I will not allow just anyone to enter these doors.”
Services start at 7:30 on Friday nights. Members know Johnson-Bey is a stickler for punctuality, so if he finds himself sitting alone on the stairs at 8, he knows no one is coming. On some nights it’s just him and Queen Sheba, a woman who lives in an apartment next door. Her family is famous in the organization; her father, Gilbert Cook-Bey, was a first-generation convert who opened the temples in Philadelphia and Detroit. “If all of her family were to show up, they alone would fill this entire building,” Johnson-Bey says. “Some nights Sheba and I sit on the steps, give some of the members a little extra time, what with winter travel and so on and so forth. We get to telling stories of people we both knew, old sages who are no longer with us. Oh my, we do laugh. When it looks like no else is coming, we sing a few hymns, shut the lights off, and go home.”
He’s not worried about what Temple No. 9 will look like down the road, after his stewardship ends. “The Prophet said, ‘Keep my temple doors open, and I will drive them in.’ I intend to hold my end of that bargain, and he will keep his.”