Elijah Muhammad - P

Elijah Muhammad (Elijah Poole b. 1897, d. 1975) led the Nation of Islam (NOI), for more than forty years. The NOI was one of the earliest Black Nationalist movements in the U.S. inspired by the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA) Founded in 1913 by Noble Drew Ali and the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) founded by Marcus Garvey in 1918 [see annotation 31]. Born in Sandersville, Georgia, Muhammad married while in the south but moved his family to Detroit in 1923. There he met and eventually became assistant minister to Wallace D. Fard, founder of the NOI. After a series of arrests, Fard relocated to Chicago and appointed Elijah Muhammad a minister of Islam. In 1934 when Fard mysteriously disappeared, Muhammad became leader of the organization but not without continued controversy and the threat of violence (Turner, Islam and African Americans, p. 257). Like many African Americans who survived social and economic hardships during the Great Depression (see annotation 89) Muhammad understood the impact that poverty and racism on self-respect. His own experiences with imprisonment enabled him to transform the lives of many incarcerated men and women through Islam. His most renowned student was Malcolm X.