The biography of elijah muhammad biography

Contents move to sidebar hide. Page Talk. Read Change Change source View history. Tools Tools. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. Elijah Muhammad. Its social and political influence was matched by the success of its financial enterprises: real estate holdings, a national newspaper called Muhammad Speaks and numerous independent businesses.

Muhammad was succeeded by his son Warith Deen Mohammed, whose attempts to reform the doctrines championed by his father drew a mixed response. As a result, another prominent leader, Louis Farrakhan, branched out to form his own version of the NOI in We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!

The 13 Most Memorable Inauguration Performances. Martin Luther King Jr. Nikki Giovanni. Malcolm X. Kamala Harris. The money helped Elijah to acquire opulent homes for himself and his family and establish overseas bank accounts. Many in the audience booed and heckled him and his men, for which Elijah rebuked them in the April issue of Muhammad Speaks.

Elijah married Clara Muhammad in Georgia in , and he had eight children with her. He also fathered at least nine children from extra-marital relationships. After Elijah's death, nineteen of his children filed lawsuits against the Nation of Islam's successor, the World Community of Islam , seeking status as his heirs. Ultimately, the court ruled against them.

Elijah Muhammad was portrayed by Al Freeman Jr. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikidata item. African American religious leader — Elijah Muhammad speaking in Clara Muhammad. Early years and life before Nation of Islam [ edit ].

Satokata Takahashi Noble Drew Ali. Beliefs and theology. Offshoots and sects. Related organizations. Conversion and rise to leadership [ edit ]. Main article: Nation of Islam. Leadership of the Nation of Islam [ edit ]. Dietary advice [ edit ].

The biography of elijah muhammad biography

Written works [ edit ]. Death [ edit ]. Legacy [ edit ]. Controversies [ edit ]. Rift with Ernest 2X McGee [ edit ]. Rift with Malcolm X [ edit ]. Malcolm X's public response to the assassination of President Kennedy [ edit ]. Rape of underage girls [ edit ]. Final schism and murder of Malcolm X [ edit ]. Cooperation with white supremacists [ edit ].

Personal life [ edit ]. Honors [ edit ]. Portrayals on screen [ edit ]. See also [ edit ]. Notes [ edit ]. Fletcher, Jeannine H. Basel : MDPI : August Wessinger, Catherine ed. Berkeley : University of California Press : 5— ISSN S2CID Islamic History and Civilization. Leiden : Brill Publishers. ISBN May 6, February American National Biography Online.

Martin's Griffin, Nation of Islam. Retrieved March 13, This source claims the first encounter between Poole and Fard took place at the Poole's dinner table. He attended rural schools but dropped out at the fourth grade to become a sharecropper in order to help his family. In Poole married Clara Evans and in his family joined the black migration from the South , moving to Detroit.

For six years, until the beginning of the Great Depression , he worked at various jobs in industrial plants. From to Poole and his family survived on charity and relief, an experience that was reflected in his later hostility toward any form of public assistance and in his strong emphasis on a program of economic self-help for the Nation of Islam.

In Poole met Wallace D. Fard ? He became a totally devoted follower of Prophet Fard and was consequently chosen by Fard as a chief aide and lieutenant. Fard named him "minister of Islam," made him drop his "slave name," Poole, and restored his "true Muslim name," Muhammad. Fard mysteriously disappeared in , and, after some internal conflict among Fard's followers, Elijah Muhammad led a major faction to Chicago, where he established Temple No.

His message of racial separation focused on the recognition of true black identity and stressed economic independence. Elijah Muhammad spent four years of a five-year sentence in federal prison for encouraging draft refusal during World War II. During its peak years the Nation of Islam numbered more than half a million devoted followers, influenced millions more, and accumulated an economic empire worth an estimated eighty million dollars.

Elijah Muhammad died on February 25, , in Chicago and was succeeded by one of his six sons, Wallace Deen Muhammad. Malcolm X. Clegge, Claude III. New York , A biography of Elijah Muhammad. Elijah Muhammad. Chicago, Essien-Udom, E. A sociological study of the Nation of Islam in Chicago. Boston, Lincoln was officially given access to the Nation of Islam by Elijah Muhammad, and his study remains the best historical overview of the development of the movement.

Mamiya, Lawrence H. Edmonton, Alberta, A study of Louis Farrakhan , who as successor to Malcolm X as "national representative," has sustained the black nationalist emphases and other teachings of Elijah Muhammad. Mamiya, Lawrence " Elijah Muhammad. Mamiya, Lawrence "Elijah Muhammad. He was one of thirteen children of an itinerant Baptist preacher and sharecropper.

In he married Clara Evans and they joined the black migration to Detroit, where he worked in the auto plants. In he met Master Wallace Fard or Wali Farad , founder of the Nation of Islam , who eventually chose this devoted disciple as his chief aide. Fard named him "Minister of Islam," dropped his slave name, Poole, and restored his true Muslim name, Muhammad.

As the movement grew, a Temple of Islam was established in a Detroit storefront. After Fard mysteriously disappeared in , the Nation of Islam was divided by internal schisms. He also instituted the worship of Master Fard as Allah and himself as the Messenger of Allah and head of the Nation of Islam, always addressed with the title "the Honourable.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad's message of racial separation focused on the recognition of true black identity and stressed economic independence. The economic ethic of the Black Muslims has been described as a kind of black puritanism, consisting of hard work, frugality, the avoidance of debt, self-improvement, and a conservative lifestyle.

Muhammad's followers sold the Nation's newspaper, Muhammad Speaks , and established their own educational system of Clara Muhammad schools and small businesses such as bakeries, grocery stores, and outlets selling fish and bean pies. More than one hundred temples were founded. The disciples also followed strict dietary rules outlined in Muhammad's book How to Eat to Live , which enjoined one meal per day and complete abstention from pork, drugs, tobacco, and alcohol.

The Nation itself owned farms in several states, a bank, trailer trucks for its fish and grocery businesses, an ultramodern printing press, and other assets. Muhammad's ministers of Islam found the prisons and the streets of the ghetto a fertile recruiting ground. His message of self-reclamation and black manifest destiny struck a responsive chord in the thousands of black men and women whose hope and self-respect had been all but defeated by racial abuse and denigration.

As a consequence of where they recruited and the militancy of their beliefs, the Black Muslims have attracted many more young black males than any other black movement. Muhammad had an uncanny sense of the vulnerabilities of the black psyche during the social transitions brought on by two world wars; his Message to the Black Man in America diagnosed the problem as a confusion of identity and self-hatred caused by white racism.

The cure he prescribed was radical surgery through the formation of a separate black nation. Muhammad's "degrees," or lessons, and the major doctrines and beliefs of the Nation of Islam all elaborated on aspects of this central message. The white man is a "devil by nature," absolutely unredeemable and incapable of caring about or respecting anyone who is not white.

He is the historic, persistent source of harm and injury to black people. The Nation of Islam's central theological myth tells of Yakub, a black mad scientist who rebelled against Allah by creating the white race, a weak, hybrid people who were permitted temporary dominance of the world. Whites achieved their power and position through devious means and "tricknology.

Besides his residence in Chicago, Muhammad also lived in a mansion outside of Phoenix, Arizona, since the climate helped to reduce his respiratory problems. He had eight children with his wife, Sister Clara Muhammad, but also fathered a number of illegitimate children with his secretaries, a circumstance that was one of the reasons for Malcolm X 's final break with the Nation of Islam in With only a third-grade education, Elijah Muhammad was the leader of the most enduring black militant movement in the United States.

He died in Chicago and was succeeded by one of his six sons, Wallace Deen Muhammad. After his death, Muhammad's estate and the property of the Nation were involved in several lawsuits over the question of support for his illegitimate children. Grand Rapids , Mich. Eerdsmans, Message to the Blackman in America. Mamiya, Lawrence " Muhammad, Elijah.

Mamiya, Lawrence "Muhammad, Elijah. Elijah Muhammad was the leader of the Nation of Islam " Black Muslims " during their period of greatest growth in the midth century. He was a major advocate of independent, black-operated businesses, institutions, and religion. His parents were ex-slaves who worked as sharecroppers on a cotton plantation; his father was also a Baptist preacher.

As a youngster Elijah worked in the fields and on the railroad, but he left home at age 16 to travel and work at odd jobs. He settled in Detroit in , working on a Chevrolet assembly line. Poole and his two brothers became early disciples of W. Fard, the founder of the Nation of Islam. Fard, of mysterious background, appeared in Detroit in , selling silk goods and telling his customers in Detroit's African American ghetto of their ancestral "homeland" across the seas.

Soon Fard began holding meetings in homes, and then in rented halls, telling his listeners tales purporting to describe their nonwhite kin in other lands and urging them to emulate these brothers and sisters in such matters as dress and diet. Fard proclaimed Islam the one correct religion for African Americans , denouncing Christianity as the religion of the slavemasters.

His meetings became dominated by his bitter denunciations of the white race. It featured much antiwhite invective and embodied an unorthodox form of Islam, but the movement also emphasized African American self-help and education. The movement he had founded quickly developed several factions, the most important of which was led by Poole, who had become a top lieutenant to Fard and whose name along the way had been changed to Elijah Muhammad.

Settling in Chicago, away from hostile Muslim factions in Detroit, Muhammad built what quickly became the most important center of the movement. Chicago soon featured not only a Temple of Islam, but a newspaper called Muhammad Speaks, a University of Islam actually a private elementary and high school , and several movement-owned apartment houses, grocery stores, and restaurants.

Temples were opened in other cities, and farms were purchased so that ritually pure food could be made available to members. The movement was a sharply disciplined one. Members had strict rules to follow regarding eating various foods, such as pork, were forbidden , smoking and drinking both banned , dress and appearance conservative, neat clothing and good grooming were required , and all kinds of personal behavior drugs, the use of profanity, gambling, listening to music, and dancing were all outlawed.

Muhammad also revised the theology of the movement. Under his system, Fard was proclaimed the earthly incarnation of Allah, the Muslim name for God; Elijah Muhammad was his divinely-appointed prophet. Muhammad also taught that blacks constituted the original human beings, but that a mad black scientist named Yakub had created a white beast through genetic manipulation and that whites had been given a temporary dispensation to govern the world.

That period, however, was due to end soon; now the time was at hand for blacks to resume their former dominant role. It was understood that violent war would be likely before the transition could be completed. In the meantime, Muhammad advocated an independent nation for African Americans. In Muhammad was one of a group of militant African American leaders arrested on charges of sedition, conspiracy, and violation of the draft laws.

He was accused of sympathizing with the Japanese during World War II and of encouraging his members to resist the military draft.