In 1932 a representative from Temple No. 15, in Indianapolis, traveled to the Frazier farm, where the whole family—with the exception of one of Reuben’s uncles—signed up and received nationality cards declaring them Moorish-Americans. The suffix “Bey” was tacked onto their last names, to signify which tribe of the medieval Moors they were descended from. Other new members got “El” or “Ali.” Johnson-Bey says his family probably practiced Christianity before that, but by the time he was born his grandfather was starting a congregation on the Frazier-Bey farm.
After Drew’s death the Moors had broken into rival factions, each claiming superior authenticity. There were shoot-outs and arrests at Unity Hall. One of Drew’s highest-ranking followers, W. Fard Mohammed, left Chicago for Detroit and founded the Nation of Islam, taking a bite out of Drew’s membership. But eventually the dust settled and new leaders emerged. Through the 1930s dozens of new temples opened all over the country. Membership estimates for that time range widely, but most put the number at about 30,000, with the biggest congregations in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit.
The Frazier-Bey farm became a rest stop for high-ranking Moors en route to Chicago. “I was grandpa’s chauffeur,” Johnson-Bey says. “When dignitaries came up to the farm, he’d call for me and I’d drive them around in the backseat. I didn’t say a word, just listened and drove. Grandpa could trust me not to interrupt or to spread around what I heard.” The farm hosted huge barn dances in honor of Drew’s birthday on January 8, and Moors came from all over the country in elaborate turbans and flouncy silk costumes.
Johnson-Bey visited Chicago regularly for the annual convention and meetings of the Young People’s Moorish National League. He became local chairman of the League at 15 and taught a children’s Sunday school class. In 1955 a close family friend asked his mother if he could live with her and her niece for a bit to help out around the house. The friend, Sister M. Tiggs-El, was a famed seamstress who made garments for Moorish holidays—her niece, Venus, is still a member of Temple No. 9. “I didn’t want to leave the farm and come to a whole new metropolitan city,” Johnson-Bey says, “but the family said I should go, and that was that.”
He was 20 when he moved into their apartment, on a stretch of Orleans that would later be enveloped by Cabrini-Green. He thought his stay would be short, but six months later he married Cora Patton-Bey, a young woman he’d seen at League meetings. Reuben Jr. was born a year later. They got an apartment a couple blocks away from the Moorish Science Temple’s home office at 1104 N. Sedgwick. He took a dollar-an-hour job at Montgomery Ward and she worked at a health clinic. At the time Temple No. 9 met in a hall on Orleans rented from a moving company called Howell Brothers. The congregation bought its current home in Ukrainian Village from an order of Buddhist monks in 1984, holding bake sales and rummage sales to raise funds.
In 1985 Johnson-Bey got a job with the CTA, where he was known as “Bey.” He didn’t wear a fez to the office or talk about his religion, but if someone wished him a merry Christmas or called him black, he corrected them. “It didn’t seem to bother them any about me being a Muslim, because I didn’t bother them any about what creed or nationality they belonged to,” he says. “I treated everyone with friendliness and fairness at work, whether Asiatic or European.” It was harder for his school-age children, by then three sons and a daughter, when holidays came around. “In the schools the European children would talk about presents and so on and so forth, but I broke it down for them. I said, December 25th is not the date Jesus was born. It’s a man-made holiday, primarily a business holiday so you can spend your money.” It helped that the Prophet’s birthday celebration came in January; to this day there’s still a large barn dance on the Frazier-Bey farm.
The other members of Temple No. 9 asked Johnson-Bey to be their Grand Sheik in 2005. But with Cora’s decline into Alzheimer’s, he had his hands full. “You have to work with the members and help them resolve their problems,” he says, “and I figured I had enough problems of my own.” He’d also have to officiate weddings and funerals and preach at Friday night services. He finally agreed on the condition that he also could keep his old position as door mufti, guarding the temple from the outside and interrogating visitors at the door. “Due to the fact that we’re in a large metropolitan city, there are not too many people you can trust to guard the door. Sometimes we have neighbors come by, straight from the tavern, swerving and slipping. They might just want to come in from the cold. They might say, ‘Can I just come up, and sit and listen?’ I have to tell them, no, just keep on walking. We have children and sisters up there. You have to do it in a mild manner. We don’t want to cause any confusion or harm. Or if members who have fallen by the wayside come back, and they have alcohol on the breath or they aren’t properly dressed, maybe in headdress they picked up from some other Islamic body, I have a conversation with them and tell them to come by another time. I’m trying to train a couple younger brothers to be on the door, but right now they’re too green.”
One of the brothers he’s working with is J. Mohr-El, who’s in his early 30s and stands out from the reserved older crowd in his baby blue suits, glinting rings, and crocodile-skin boots. He lives in Michigan but stops by the temple a couple times a month when he’s in town visiting family. He’s one of the only members who’s done time in prison, where he first heard of Drew Ali. When he takes the podium on Friday nights, he issues a booming “Islam, y’all!” that makes the other members jump in their seats. His style is more holy roller than they’re used to, rising to thunderous highs and falling almost to a whisper, but the members seem to like it. “Preach it brother!” they shout, the women hiding smiles behind their songbooks. Johnson-Bey tends to fold his hands on his knees, looking blankly ahead or at the clock on the wall.
Mohr-El is one of only two people who’ve been made official members of the temple in the last few years. He attended services for three years before he was accepted. Johnson-Bey admits that his incarceration worried him. “The members kept saying to me, ‘Why don’t you make him a member? He’s been coming for a long time now,'” he says. “Well, I was real skeptical. I finally said I would wait till he asked me himself. We had a frank discussion about his history, and I told him we expect members to abide by all the laws of the government and this that and other.”
He says he was surprised by how the younger man pitched in to help out with the convention. “I got a call on my cell phone when I was out riding one morning, and it was J. Mohr-El. I had just picked up three large buffalo fish, eight pounds each. He asked could I use any help, and I said well, no, all I have to do is clean these fish. He said to let him help me with that. So we rolled up our sleeves and I taught him to clean and season the fillets in the kitchen, and really he was very helpful. He just might be made a mufti, we’ll have to see. He is skilled in cleaning buffalo fish, anyhow.”