Elijah Muhammad

• 1. Introduction

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  Elijah Muhammad, born Elijah Robert Poole, once said, "I seen enough of the white man's brutality to last me 26,000 years." He explained that before the age of 20 he had witnessed white people carry out the lynchings of three black men.

  The man who said it would go on to lead the Nation of Islam for more than four decades. During the civil rights era, his movement grew into a nationwide organization with tens of thousands of members. Its teachings made him a controversial figure, both inside and outside his own community.

  Several questions run through this story. How did the son of a Georgia sharecropper take over a small movement in Detroit and build it into a national force? What did he teach, and what did he build with it? Why did his most famous disciple turn against him, and what became of the Nation once he was gone?

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• 2. From Poole to Muhammad

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  Sandersville, Georgia, was the birthplace of Elijah Robert Poole, who was born on the 7th of October 1897. He was the seventh of thirteen children. His father, William Poole Sr., was a Baptist lay preacher and sharecropper. His mother, Mariah Hall, was a homemaker who also sharecropped.

  Fourth grade was where Elijah's schooling ended. He took jobs in sawmills and brickyards and worked beside his parents as a sharecropper. At 16 he left home and found work in factories and other businesses.

  On the 7th of March 1917, Elijah married Clara Evans. In 1923 the Pooles joined the First Great Migration, in which hundreds of thousands of black families left an oppressive and economically troubled South. They were looking for safety and jobs. Elijah settled his own family, his parents and his siblings in Hamtramck, Michigan.

  Steady work stayed out of reach through the 1920s and 1930s, as the economy suffered after the First World War and then in the Great Depression. In Detroit, Elijah and Clara had eight children, six boys and two girls. Poole also began taking part in various black nationalist movements around the city.

  August 1931 brought the turning point. Elijah Poole attended a speech on Islam and black empowerment by Wallace Fard Muhammad, also known as Wallace D. Fard. Afterward, Poole said, he asked Fard whether he was the "Mahdi," meaning the redeemer. Fard replied that he was, but that his time had not yet come.

  Fard's message was that black people were original Asiatics whose rich cultural history had been stolen from them during slavery. He said they could regain their freedom through self-independence and by cultivating their own culture and civilization. Poole had a strong awareness of race and class from his years in the South, and he quickly fell in step.

  Karriem was the Muslim surname Poole received first. Later, at Fard's behest, it became Muhammad. His wife and several of his brothers joined the movement too. Elijah took over the Nation's Temple No. 2 in Chicago. His younger brother Kalot Muhammad became the leader of the Fruit of Islam, the movement's self-defense arm.

  Fard handed the growing Detroit group to Elijah Muhammad, and the Allah Temple of Islam took the name Nation of Islam. The two men stayed in contact until 1934, when Fard disappeared. Muhammad succeeded him in Detroit and was named Minister of Islam. He then told followers that Allah had come in the flesh as Wallace Fard, bringing teachings that offered salvation.

  Final Call to Islam, launched in 1934, was the Nation's first newspaper. It was meant to educate readers and build membership. That same year the Muhammad University of Islam began teaching the children of members. Boards of education in Detroit and Chicago regarded those pupils as truants from the public schools.

  The dispute led to the jailing of several University of Islam board members and of Muhammad himself in 1934. It also led to violent confrontations with police. Muhammad was put on probation, and the school stayed open. Probation kept him free, but the fiercest threats to his leadership still lay ahead.

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• 3. Exile and Prison

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  Temple No. 1 in Detroit came under Muhammad's control only after battles with other would-be leaders, his own brother among them. In 1935 the fighting grew fiercer, and he left Detroit to settle his family in Chicago. Death threats still followed him.

  He left his family in Chicago and traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he founded Temple No. 3. He eventually reached Washington, D.C., and founded Temple No. 4 there. Much of his time in the capital went to reading 104 books that Wallace Fard had recommended, at the Library of Congress.

  The 8th of May 1942 brought his arrest in Washington for failing to register for the draft during the Second World War. After release on bail, he fled the city on the advice of his attorney, who feared a lynching. He returned to Chicago after an absence of seven years.

  In Chicago he was arrested again and charged with eight counts of sedition. The charges said he had told his followers not to register for the draft or to serve in the armed forces. A jury acquitted him of sedition but found him guilty of draft evasion.

  Muhammad served four years, from 1942 to 1946, at the Federal Correctional Institution in Milan, Michigan. Clara and trusted aides ran the organization during his absence. He sent his messages and directives to followers in letters.

  Fewer than 400 members remained when he walked out in 1946, because growth had stagnated while he was away. He rebuilt through converts among his fellow inmates and through renewed efforts outside prison. From then on he was firmly in charge, free to preach his own version of Islam.

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• 4. Doctrine and Appeal

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  Yakub was the name of the evil black scientist who, in Muhammad's teaching, created the white race. Muhammad taught that black people were the original human beings. He called white people "devils," an offshoot race destined to oppress black people for 6,000 years. His theology also held that there were multiple gods, each a black man named Allah, and that he was their messenger.

  The Autobiography of Malcolm X describes the moment its author first met this doctrine. Malcolm X later came to regret that he had ever believed it.

  Scholars have noticed parallels between some Nation of Islam teachings, symbols and rhetoric and elements associated with Freemasonry and other esoteric traditions. Muhammad published The Secrets of Freemasonry, which discussed Masonic symbolism, history and religious themes. Academic studies point to influences from esotericism, Black nationalist religious thought and symbolic initiation traditions. They generally separate those influences from any evidence that Muhammad was himself a Freemason.

  Muhammad's call for an independent nation for black people made him a controversial figure. He has been described both as a black nationalist and as a black supremacist. He preached that the Nation's goal was to return to black Americans the dominance he said whites had taken from them.

  Young, economically disadvantaged African-American men from Christian backgrounds responded most strongly. Traditionally such men stayed away from church, which did not address their needs. Muhammad's program of economic development drove much of the growth. He bought land and businesses to give these young men housing and jobs.

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• 5. Money and Strange Allies

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  Bakeries, barber shops, coffee shops, grocery stores, laundromats, night-clubs and a printing plant all belonged to the Nation of Islam by the 1970s. So did retail stores, numerous real estate holdings and a fleet of tractor trailers. The group also held farmland in Michigan, Alabama and Georgia.

  In 1972 the Nation took a controlling interest in a bank, the Guaranty Bank and Trust Co. That same year Muhammad told followers that the organization was worth $75 million. By 1974 its schools had spread to 47 cities across the country.

  Another account describes an empire across 46 cities, with banks, schools, restaurants and stores. It lists more than 15,000 acres of farmland and the group's own truck and air transport. It also names a publishing company that printed the country's largest black newspaper. One piece of that farmland was Temple Farms, now called Muhammad Farms, a 5,000 acre tract in Terrell County, Georgia.

  In 1961 Muhammad met leaders of the Ku Klux Klan to work toward buying farmland in the Deep South. Some observers believed his pro-separation views were compatible with those of certain white supremacist groups in the 1960s.

  For more than ten years, the Texas oil baron H. L. Hunt, a white supremacist, gave Muhammad major financial support. Hunt was drawn by Muhammad's belief in racial separation. The money helped Muhammad acquire opulent homes for himself and his family and establish overseas bank accounts.

  Others see black separatism as a consequence of historic social, political and financial disenfranchisement. Many also argue that a narrative of racial superiority, built to overturn white power, is inconsistent with history.

  George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, once called Muhammad "the Hitler of the black man." Rockwell addressed Nation members at the 1962 Saviours' Day celebration in Chicago. Many in the audience booed and heckled him and his men. Muhammad rebuked them for it in the April 1962 issue of Muhammad Speaks.

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• 6. Writings and Diet

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  Muslim Daily Prayers and the two volumes of The Supreme Wisdom appeared in 1957. Message to the Blackman in America followed in 1965. How to Eat to Live came out in two volumes, in 1967 and 1972. The Fall of America arrived in 1973, and Our Saviour Has Arrived and The Flag of Islam in 1974.

  How to Eat to Live promoted pseudoscientific views about diet and nutrition. Muhammad argued that people should eat no more than one meal a day. He claimed that if black people ate only one meal every three days, they would never get sick and might live for 1000 years. He also argued that eating pork produced the depraved behavior and culture of white westerners.

  Beef, lamb and camel were permitted but better avoided. "Allah forbids us to eat the flesh of swine or of fish weighing 50 pounds or more," he wrote. Among fowl, only baby pigeons counted as clean, and they should be taken straight from the nest.

  Peas and sweet potatoes were forbidden, and many white-colored foods were automatically bad for health. Muhammad said white people were trying to destroy black people by weakening their health with processed foods such as biscuits and white bread. Most fruits and vegetables were safe, "except collard greens and turnip salad."

  Navy beans were the only beans allowed. Lima beans were a poison that, Muhammad believed, made black men's stomachs explode. Rice and spinach were permitted in moderation. Garlic, onions and whole wheat bread carried no restrictions.

  Muhammad said he received all of this advice from "God in Person Master Fard Muhammad."

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• 7. Rifts and Rivals

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  Ernest 2X McGee was the Nation's first national secretary, until he was ousted in the late 1950s. He formed a Sunni Muslim sect and changed his name to Hamaas Abdul Khaalis. He attracted Lew Alcindor, whom he renamed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Abdul-Jabbar donated a house for the Hanafi Madh-Hab Center.

  Khaalis sent letters criticizing Muhammad and Fard to Muhammad, to his ministers and to the media. The letters said black people had been better off psychologically before Fard arrived. In his view Fard had weaned them from Christianity onto a fabricated form of Islam, and both were bad.

  The letters also claimed that Fard was really a man named John Walker of Gary, who came to America from Greece at 27. They alleged he served prison time and died in Chicago at 78. After the letters were sent, seven members of Khaalis's family were murdered at the center. Four men from NOI Mosque No. 12 were accused of the crime.

  On the 1st of December 1963, Malcolm X was asked to comment on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He said it was a case of "chickens coming home to roost." He added, "chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they've always made me glad." He also cited the murders of Patrice Lumumba and Medgar Evers and the bombing of the girls in a Birmingham church.

  The remarks prompted a widespread public outcry. The Nation had sent condolences to the Kennedy family and ordered its ministers not to comment. It publicly censured its former shining star. Malcolm X kept his post and rank as minister but was barred from public speaking for 90 days.

  Rumors were already circulating that Muhammad was having extramarital affairs with young Nation secretaries, which would violate the Nation's own teachings. Malcolm X first discounted them. He came to believe them after speaking with Muhammad's son Wallace and with the girls making the accusations.

  Muhammad confirmed the rumors in 1963 and tried to justify his behavior by pointing to the precedents of Biblical prophets. Over a series of national television interviews in 1964 and 1965, Malcolm X described his investigation. He reported corroboration and confirmation from Muhammad himself of multiple instances of child rape. He said seven of the eight girls had become pregnant by Muhammad.

  Malcolm X also spoke of an explosive device found in his car and of death threats he believed answered his exposure of Muhammad. Louis Farrakhan later defended Muhammad's relationships in lectures, citing Biblical and Quranic precedents. Farrakhan said one of the women who had a child with Muhammad, Evelyn, was a woman Malcolm had loved before Betty Shabazz, which deepened Malcolm's sense of betrayal.

  In March 1964, Malcolm X left the Nation to found his own organization, Muslim Mosque Inc. He was assassinated on the 21st of February 1965, after a year of death threats and attempts on his life. Many people suspected the Nation of Islam was responsible.

  Five days later, on the 26th of February, Muhammad spoke at the Nation's annual Saviours' Day. He said, "Malcolm got just what he preached." In the same speech he denied any involvement: "We didn't want to kill Malcolm and didn't try to kill him. We know such ignorant, foolish teaching would bring him to his own end." Ten years later, Muhammad himself would be dead.

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• 8. After Elijah

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  The 30th of January 1975 was the day Muhammad entered Mercy Hospital in Chicago, known as Insight Chicago. He was suffering from heart disease, diabetes, bronchitis and asthma. He died of congestive heart failure on the 25th of February, nearly a month later, at the age of 77. That was the day before Saviours' Day.

  Mount Glenwood Memory Gardens South in Glenwood, Illinois, is where he was buried alongside Clara. His survivors included two daughters and six sons by his wife. The best known of them was Wallace Delaney Muhammad, later called Warith Deen Mohammed, who succeeded him as head of the Nation.

  In 1976, Warith Deen disbanded the Nation of Islam and founded an orthodox mainstream Islamic organization. It came to be known as the American Society of Muslims. That organization later dissolved, changed names and reorganized many times.

  The year 1977 saw Louis Farrakhan resign from Warith Deen's reformed organization. He reinstituted the original Nation of Islam, built on the foundation laid by Wallace Fard Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad. Farrakhan regained many of its original properties, including the National Headquarters Mosque, Mosque Maryam, and the Muhammad University of Islam in Chicago.

  Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Louis Farrakhan and Warith Deen Mohammed were among those Muhammad mentored. Today the Nation is estimated to have between 20,000 and 50,000 members and 130 mosques that offer social programs.

  His family life was large and contested. Elijah fathered at least nine children outside his marriage, in addition to the eight with Clara. The estimate is 23 children in total, of whom 21 are documented. After his death, nineteen of his children sued the Nation's successor, the World Community of Islam, seeking status as his heirs. The court ruled against them.

  In 2002, the scholar Molefi Kete Asante included Elijah Muhammad on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. On screen, Al Freeman Jr. played him in Spike Lee's 1992 film Malcolm X. Albert Hall, who played the composite character Baines in that film, later played him in Michael Mann's 2001 film Ali. Clifton Davis portrayed him in the series Godfather of Harlem. The most recent portrayal is by Ron Cephas Jones in National Geographic's Genius: MLK/X.

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