Founded by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad, the Muslim Cult of Islam started in July 1930. Fard claimed he was sent to wake "the black nation to the full range of the black man's possibilities in a world temporarily dominated by blue eyed-devils". After Fard disappeared, his assistant Elijah Muhammad changed the name to the Nation of Islam and moved the sect from Michigan to Chicago. Continuing in the same hard-line dialogue, he taught that blacks were 'the original people' and whites were 'devils'.

In 1961, Eve Arnold followed the Nation of Islam to their meetings and rallies, and profiling Malcolm X, who later left the Nation for a more traditional form of Islam, and was later assassinated. The later leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, is also featured in the story, and was accused by Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, for involvement in her husband's murder, as he had accused Malcolm of being a traitor for his later criticism of Elijah Muhammad.