Elijah Muhammad - I

Elijah Muhammad (Oct. 7, 1897 - Feb. 25, 1975), leader and minister of the Black-Muslim-Nationalist organization, the Nation of Islam from 1934 to his death in 1975; born Elija Poole in Sandersville, Georgia, the seventh of thirteen children. In 1919 he married Clara Evans, and in 1923, he, Clara, and their two young children moved to Detroit, joining a mass of African Americans who migrated north seeking jobs and fleeing the oppressive economic and social conditions in the South after World War I. Like most African Americans in the 1920's, Elija had heard of the Black Nationalist teachings of Marcus Garvey, in which Garvey preached a Pan-African (world-wide black), unity, solidarity, and racial identity, as well as Black economic and political independence. Elija traveled to Chicago to hear Garvey speak and was greatly moved by his words. Poole joined Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and became a corporal in the Chicago UNIA. Poole's fascination with the UNIA was largely rooted in the organization's wide international involvement, as well as by the organization's central aim to mold a black global identity. This fascination, however, was short-lived. After Garvey's deportation from the United States in 1927, a void of Pan-African ideologues and organizations grew. This void was quickly filled by the Nation of Islam in the 1930's. Elijah's fascination with the Nation of Islam was largely rooted in its Pan-African and African Asiatic doctrine, which states that Black peoples were the original human beings and whose descendants were the creators of the many Asian and African civilizations, including the Nile Valley and the holy city of Mecca. Much like Garvey's UNIA, the Nation of Islam called for a global black identity and unity amongst all Blacks and Black Muslims in the United States and around the world. Elijah made sure to emphasize the Nation's African Asiatic roots throughout his tenure in the Nation, and would frequently voice a passive support for struggles against American and European domination in various parts of Africa and Asia."In July of 1959 Elijah Muhammad began a trip to Africa, the Middle East, and Pakistan. Part of his aim was to gain recognition as an authentic Muslim leader and mute criticism of the Nation of Islam by orthodox Muslims in the United States. His fulfillment of the obligation to make a pilgrimage to Mecca during this trip meant that he was accepted as an authentic, albeit heterodox, Muslim [Source: Notable Black American Men. Gale Research, 1998]." In his 1959 travels, Muhammad visited Turkey, Beirut, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. His visit to these African and Asian countries was at the same time validating and disillusioning. As mentioned above, his faith was authenticated by a Muslim orthodoxy for having completed his pilgrimage, or Hajj. However, prior to his visit, Elijah had preached of an Africa and Asia that was a paradise, in which equity amongst all peoples was assumed and ethnic strife was almost unheard of. What he encountered was a range of societies in which economic inequity was as striking as the inequity he was so familiar with in the U.S. and ethnic strife was a modern problem that created political, social , and religious instability. Some authors argue that, after his return to the U.S., Elijah began to de-emphasize his African-Asian unity and would rarely encourage his followers to visit the paradise of Africa and Asia as he had once done so vehemently.