Muhammad, Elijah (1897–1975)

Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam, was born Elijah Poole in Sandersville, Georgia, in October 1897. He had a rough beginning, leaving school after the third grade; he worked several jobs before moving to Detroit in 1919, where he worked at the Chevrolet Auto Plant for 6 years. He was introduced to Islam through Wallace Fard. He admired Wallace Fard's explicit discussion of the psychological damage that slavery had done to black Americans. Fard appointed Poole his minister in 1933. At that point, Poole changed his name to Muhammad and asked black converts to change their surnames to X to eradicate their slave names. He had considerable success in converting blacks into Islam. Muhammad took over the leadership of the Nation of Islam (NOI) in 1934 when Wallace Fard disappeared, and Muhammad gave the blacks the leadership the group needed. He opened temples in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Washington, D.C., and other places. Muhammad moved to Chicago and restructured the NOI. He turned it into what many saw as a racist and separatist movement with anti-white slogans. He believed and taught that blacks were superior to white people.

Muhammad helped black Americans to understand who they were and how white people perceived them. He gave blacks new identity and encouraged them to be independent. For Black Muslims, he wanted freedom, equal opportunity, and an end to police brutality and mob attacks against blacks, as well as equal education and equal justice.

Muhammad was jailed from 1942 to 1946 for draft evasion. He continued to lead his followers from prison through his wife and his ministers. On his release, he devoted his attention to the economic development of the NOI. He purchased 140 acres of farmland in Michigan and invested greatly in farm products. A few years later, the NOI established groceries, clothing stores, restaurants, trucking companies, schools, and bakeries. He provided jobs for his followers and taught them to be respectful of their families.

The success of Elijah Muhammad can be attributed to his emphasis on economic self-sufficiency and his embrace of Western and modern technology, especially the new tools of communication—radio, television, and other news media—which he used effectively to reach and persuade many people to his cause. He encouraged education and hard work for men and women.

Despite his great accomplishments, his teaching of Islam had many flaws, such as teaching the supremacy of blacks over whites, when Islam actually preaches equality of all humans before God. He also taught that Wallace Fard was God incarnated, and this contradicts the Islamic declaration of faith, which asserts that only Allah is God. Muhammad worked [Page 986]hard for the NOI before he died in February 1975. He is remembered for bringing Islam to the American public and for helping blacks to win their dignity as human beings. He wrote some books and a number of pamphlets in which he presented his ideology.