Elijah Mohammad Essay, Research Paper

Elijah Muhammad was born on or about Oct. 7, 1897 in Sandersville, Georgia. The exact date of his birth remains unknown because record keeping in rural Georgia for the descendants of slaves was not kept current, according to historians and family members. He was born Elijah Poole, the son of a minister, and whose parents, William (later named Wali) and Marie Poole, had 12 other children. He had to quit school after barely finishing the third grade to work in the fields as a sharecropper so his family could eat. Just before the roaring twenties came in, Elijah Poole married the former Clara Evans, also of Georgia. They had eight children, Emmanuel, Ethel, Lottie, Nathaniel, Herbert, Elijah, Jr., Wallace and Akbar. In April 1923, Elijah Poole moved his young family from Macon, Georgia, where he worked for the Southern Railroad Company and the Cherokee Brick Company to Detroit, Mich. Black families, like the Pooles, were leaving the south, at that time, in search of better economic and social circumstances. Detroit was a bustling upwardly mobile city with its burgeoning auto industry.

On July 4, 1930, W. Fard Muhammad, appeared in this city. He announced and preached that God is One, and it is now time for Blacks to return to the religion of their ancestors, Islam. News spread all over the city of Detroit of the preachings of Fard Muhammed. Elijah Poole’s wife first learned of the Temple of Islam and wanted to attend to see what the commotion was all about, but instead, her husband advised her that he would go and see for himself. In 1931, after hearing his first lecture at the Temple of Islam, Elijah Poole was overwhelmed by the message and immediately accepted it. Soon thereafter, Elijah Poole invited and convinced his entire family to accept the religion of Islam. The Founder of the Nation of Islam gave him the name “Karriem” and made him a minister. Later he was promoted to the position of “Supreme Minister” and his name was changed to Muhammad. Muhammad establishes a newspaper, “The Final Call to Islam,” in 1934. This would be the first of many publications he would produce.

Meanwhile, Muhammad helped establish schools for the proper education of his children and the community. By 1934, the Michigan State Board of Education disagreed with the Muslim’s right to pursue their own educational agenda, and the Muslim Teachers and Temple Secretary were jailed on the false charge of contributing to the delinquency of minors. Muhammad said he committed himself to jail after learning what had happened. Ultimately, the charges were later dropped, and the officials were freed and Mr. Muhammad received six months’ probation to take the Muslim children out of the Islamic school and put them under white Christian teachers.

He moved to the city of Chicago in September of that same year. Fard had instructed him to go to Washington, D.C. to visit the Library of Congress in order to research 104 books on the religion of Islam, among other subjects. Also, after assuming the leadership of the Temple of Islam by the order of the Founder of the Muhammad, while in Washington, D.C. Was arrested on May 8, 1942, for allegedly evading the draft After World War II ended, Muhammad won his release from prison and returned to Chicago. From Chicago, the central point of the Nation of Islam, Muhammad expanded his membership drive to new heights. Among the many new members enrolled in the ranks of Islam included Brother Malcolm X and his family.

During the 1950s, Muhammad promoted Malcolm X to the post of National Spokesman, and began to syndicate his weekly newspaper column, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” in Black newspapers across the country. Membership was increasing when, in 1955, Louis Farrakhan, then Louis Walcott, an entertainer, enrolled in the Nation of Islam after hearing Muhammad deliver a speech in Chicago. Persecution of the Muslims continued. Members and mosques continued to be attacked by whites in Monroe, La., Los Angeles, Calif., and Flint, Mich., among others. Publicity in the white owned and operated media began to circulate anti-Nation of Islam propaganda on a large scale. By the early 1960s, the Readers Digest magazine described Muhammad as the most powerful Black man in America.

In Washington, D.C., Muhammad delivered his Uline Arena address and was afforded presidential treatment, receiving a personal police escort.

At the same time, white political leaders such as Senator Al Gore Sr., began to denounce the Nation of Islam and hold hearings on alleged “un-American” activities. Louis Farrakhan and the ministers of Islam defended Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam against these attacks in mass media in their public speeches, written editorials and other public relations thrusts.

Muhammad slowly built up the membership of the Black Muslims through assiduous recruitment in the postwar decades. His program called for the establishment of a separate nation for black Americans and the adoption of a religion based on the worship of Allah and on the belief that blacks are his chosen people. Muhammad became known especially for his flamboyant rhetoric directed at white people, whom he called blue-eyed devils. In his later years, however, he moderated his antiwhite tone and stressed self-help among blacks rather than confrontation between the races. Because of Muhammad’s separatist views

However, by 1964, Malcolm X decided to separate from the Nation of Islam and formed his own religious and political organization. His very public defection from the Nation of Islam was based on his misinterpretation of the domestic life of Elijah Muhammad. After the assassination of Malcolm X, the New York mosque was fire bombed and the Muslim community was reeling. Mr. Muhammad then dispatched Louis Farrakhan to New York City to take over the mosque there and begin the rebuilding effort. In 1965, the Elijah Muhammad promoted Minister Louis Farrakhan to the post of National Representative.

By the mid-sixties, Muhammad’s ever-growing Islamic movement extended itself to more than 60 cities and settlements abroad in Ghana, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America among others places, according to the Muhammad Speaks newspaper, the religion’s chief information apparatus. A host of Islamic and African governments all over the world received him and donated generously to his mission. He made Hajj, (holy pilgrimage) to Mecca on more than one occasion and advocated worldwide brotherhood and sisterhood. In 1972, the Elijah Muhammad opened a $2 million mosque and school in Chicago. In 1975, the year of his death, Farrakhan split with the Nation of Islam.

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