He was born Elijah Poole on a cotton plantation in Sandersville, Georgia, one of thirteen children of former slaves. But he became famous as Elijah Muhammad (1897–1975), the leader of the Nation of Islam, a religion that attracted hundreds of thousands of African American followers in the twentieth century with its message of racial pride and self-sufficiency.
Raised in a Baptist home, Poole dropped out of school at age nine and worked at a sawmill, in the cotton fields, and on a railroad track gang. He eventually joined the migration of blacks from the Deep South to the industrial North and began working at a General Motors plant in Detroit.
In 1930, after losing his job during the Great Depression, Poole met a silk salesman named Wali Farad, who claimed that he was Allah and had started a temple in Detroit named the Nation of Islam. Farad eventually converted Poole, who then dropped his “slave name” and adopted his Islamic moniker. He took over Farad’s organization after the preacher’s mysterious disappearance in 1934 and moved its headquarters to Chicago.
The theology of the Nation of Islam, as articulated by Elijah Muhammad, bears only a loose resemblance to mainstream Islam. Like most Muslims, members of the Nation of Islam are expected to avoid drugs, alcohol, and pork. Unlike most Muslims, Muhammad’s followers believed that whites were “devils by nature” who had been created by a mad scientist named Yakub and had taken power through “tricknology.”
Elijah Muhammad was jailed during World War II for refusing to register for the draft, and he converted many new followers in prison. The group continued to grow in the 1950s, and a young convert named Malcolm X (1925–1965) became Muhammad’s top lieutenant. (Malcolm X eventually abandoned the Nation of Islam, converted to mainstream Islam, and was assassinated the next year; although suspected of being linked to the shooting, Muhammad was never implicated in the crime.)
At the time of Muhammad’s death, his organization claimed a growing membership of thousands of worshippers in dozens of temples across the United States.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- One of Muhammad’s most famous converts was boxer Muhammad Ali (formerly Cassius Clay, 1942–), who announced that he had joined the Nation of Islam.
- Muhammad’s followers used the term the honorable before his name, a tradition that was continued for black Muslim leaders after his death.
- In the name of self-sufficiency, the Nation of Islam founded its own bakeries, grocery stores, and banks and started a newspaper called Muhammad Speaks.
