Elijah Muhammad
ELIJAH MUHAMMAD (1897–1975), major leader of the American Black Muslim movement, the Nation of Islam, for forty-one years. Born Robert Elijah Poole on October 10, 1897, near Sandersville, Georgia, he was one of thirteen children of an itinerant Baptist preacher. He attended rural schools but dropped out at the fourth grade to become a sharecropper in order to help his family. In 1919 Poole married Clara Evans and in 1923 his family joined the black migration from the South, moving to Detroit. For six years, until the beginning of the Great Depression, he worked at various jobs in industrial plants. From 1929 to 1931 Poole and his family survived on charity and relief, an experience that was reflected in his later hostility toward any form of public assistance and in his strong emphasis on a program of economic self-help for the Nation of Islam. "Do for self" became his rallying cry.
In 1931 Poole met Wallace D. Fard (1877?–1934?, also known, among other aliases, as Walli Farrad and Prophet Fard), who had established the first Temple of Islam in Detroit. He became a totally devoted follower of Prophet Fard and was consequently chosen by Fard as a chief aide and lieutenant. Fard named him "minister of Islam," made him drop his "slave name," Poole, and restored his "true Muslim name," Muhammad. Fard mysteriously disappeared in 1934, and, after some internal conflict among Fard's followers, Elijah Muhammad led a major faction to Chicago, where he established Temple No. 2, which became the main headquarters for the Nation of Islam. He also instituted the worship of Prophet Fard as Allah and of himself as the Messenger of Allah. As head of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad was always addressed as "the Honorable." He built on the teachings of Fard and combined aspects of Islam and Christianity with the black nationalism of Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) into an unorthodox Islam with a strong racial slant. His message of racial separation focused on the recognition of true black identity and stressed economic independence.
Elijah Muhammad spent four years of a five-year sentence in federal prison for encouraging draft refusal during World War II. After his release in 1946 the movement spread rapidly, especially with the aid of his chief protégé, Malcolm X (1925–1965). During its peak years the Nation of Islam numbered more than half a million devoted followers, influenced millions more, and accumulated an economic empire worth an estimated eighty million dollars. Elijah Muhammad died on February 25, 1975, in Chicago and was succeeded by one of his six sons, Wallace Deen Muhammad.
Malcolm X.
Bibliography
Clegge, Claude III. An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad. New York, 1997. A biography of Elijah Muhammad.
Elijah Muhammad. The Supreme Wisdom: Solution to the So-Called Negroe's Problem. Chicago, 1957.
Elijah Muhammad. Message to the Blackman in America. Chicago, 1965.
Essien-Udom, E. U. Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America. Chicago, 1962. A sociological study of the Nation of Islam in Chicago.
Lincoln, C. Eric. The Black Muslims in America. Boston, 1961. Lincoln was officially given access to the Nation of Islam by Elijah Muhammad, and his study remains the best historical overview of the development of the movement.
Mamiya, Lawrence H. "Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Final Call: Schism in the Muslim Movement." In The Muslim Community in North America, edited by Earle H. Waugh, Baha Abu-Laban, and Regula B. Qureshi. Edmonton, Alberta, 1983. A study of Louis Farrakhan, who as successor to Malcolm X as "national representative," has sustained the black nationalist emphases and other teachings of Elijah Muhammad.
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