Background

Elijah Muhammad was born Elijah (or Robert) Poole on October 7, 1897, near Sandersville, Georgia. 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.

Education

Elijah's education ended at the third grade to work in sawmills and brickyards.

Career

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 1923, working on a Chevrolet assembly line. Poole and his two brothers became early disciples of W. D. Fard, the founder of the Nation of Islam. Fard, of mysterious background, appeared in Detroit in 1930, 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. Soon Fard announced the opening of the Temple of Islam. It featured much antiwhite invective and embodied an unorthodox form of Islam, but the movement also emphasized African American self-help and education. Fard disappeared, as mysteriously as he had arrived, in the summer of 1934. 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. The movement had long had a policy of requiring members to drop their "slave" names. 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 1942 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. He had, indeed, argued that all nonwhites are oppressed by whites, and that it made no sense for African Americans to fight those who were victims of white racism as much as they themselves were. Muhammad was certainly no pacifist, but he argued that the only war in which African Americans should participate would be the coming "Battle of Armageddon, " in which blacks would reassert their rightful superiority. For his words and actions Muhammad spent four years, from 1942 to 1946, in federal prison at Milan, Michigan. Factions occasionally withdrew from Muhammad's movement. In the early 1960s Muhammad came to be overshadowed by the charismatic Malcolm X, leader of the New York Temple. Tensions between Malcolm X and Muhammad's leadership grew; finally, after Malcolm X commented that John F. Kennedy's assassination was a case of "the chickens coming home to roost, " Muhammad suspended him. Shortly thereafter, in 1964, Malcolm X founded his own movement, which moved toward a more orthodox form of Islam. However, Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965. Elijah Muhammad died on February 25, 1975. After his death the leadership of his movement passed to his son, Wallace (now Warith) Deen Muhammad. The younger Muhammad renamed the movement the World Community of Al-Islam in the West, and then the American Muslim Mission; he also began to call blacks "Bilalians, " after Bilal, who was said to have been an African follower of the prophet Muhammad. Warith Muhammad relaxed the strict dress code, abandoned resistance to military service, encouraged members to vote and to salute the flag, and even opened the movement to whites. In general, he made the movement much more conventionally Islamic. Many members were disturbed at the movement's new, moderate direction and withdrew to form more traditionalist splinter groups. The most important of them retained the old name, the Nation of Islam, and was led by Louis Farrakhan (born Louis Eugene Walcott of British West Indian parents in 1934). Farrakhan generally retained Elijah Muhammad's ideas and practices, including the strict behavioral rules. He achieved prominence when he became a major adviser to Jesse Jackson during the latter's presidential campaign in 1984. At that time Farrakhan aroused controversy, particularly for his reported death threats directed at Jackson's Jewish critics.

Achievements

• During his time as leader of The Nation of Islam, Muhammad had developed the Nation of Islam from a small movement in Detroit to an empire consisting of banks, schools, restaurants and stores across 46 cities in America. The Nation also owned over 15, 000 acres of farmland, their own truck- and air- transport systems, as well as a publishing company that printed the country's largest Black newspaper. As a leader, Muhammad served as mentor to many notable members, such as Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Louis Farrakhan and his son Warith Deen Mohammed. The Nation of Islam is estimated to have between 20, 000 and 50, 000 members, and 130 mosques offering numerous social programs. Upon his death, his son Warith Deen Mohammed succeeded him. Warith disbanded the Nation of Islam in 1976 and founded an orthodox mainstream Islamic organization, that came to be known as the American Society of Muslims. The organization would dissolve, change names and reorganize many times. In 1977, Louis Farrakhan resigned from Warith Deen's reformed organization and reinstituted the original Nation of Islam upon the foundation established by Wallace Fard Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad. Farrakhan regained many of the Nation of Islam's original properties including the National Headquarters Mosque #2 (Mosque Maryam) and Muhammad University of Islam in Chicago, IL.
  
  In the early 1990s the city of Detroit co-named Linwood Avenue "Elijah Muhammad Boulevard. "
  
  In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Elijah Muhammad on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

Works

More photos

• book

  • How to Eat to Live, Book 1

    (How To Eat To Live, Book 1 By Elijah Muhammad For more th...)

  • How To Eat To Live, Book 2

    (For more than 30 years, messenger Elijah Muhammad has bee...)

  • The Mother Plane

    (The Mother Plane Elijah Muhammad's Analysis Of Ezekiel's ...)

  • Message to the Blackman in America

    (Message To The Blackman In America By Elijah Muhammad Acc...)

  • THE FALL OF AMERICA

    (The Fall Of America By Elijah Muhammad This title deals w...)

  • The Theology of Time: The Secret of Time

    (The Theology Of Time (The Secret Of Time) Direct Unabridg...)

  • The Secrets Of Freemasonry

    (This is a powerful and easy to read insight into one of t...)

  • The God-Science Of Black Power

    (An Elijah Muhammad Speech During The Second Day of The Na...)

  • Yakub (Jacob): The Father Of Mankind

    (Yakub is a Black Scientist introduced to the public by El...)

Views

Quotations: "There are three signs of a hypocrite: when he speaks he speaks lies, when he makes a promise he breaks it, and when he is trusted he betrays his trust. "

"First, my people must be taught the knowledge of self. Then and only then will they be able to under-stand others and that which surrounds them. Anyone who does not have a knowledge of self is considered a victim of either amnesia or unconsciousness and is not very competent. The lack of knowledge of self is a prevailing condition among my people here in America. Gaining the knowledge of self makes us unite into a great unity. Knowledge of self makes you take on the great virtue of learning. "

"The Negro wants to be everything but himself. .. He wants to integrate with the white man, but he cannot integrate with himself or with his own kind. The Negro wants to lose his identity because he does not know his own identity. "

"Acquire knowledge. It enables its possessor to distinguish right from wrong; it lights the way to Heaven; it is our friend in the desert, our society in solitude, our companion when friendless; it guides us to happiness; it sustains us in misery; it is an ornament among our friends and an armor against enemies. "

"Love of self comes first. The one who loves everybody is the one who does not love anyone. "

Connections

Poole married Clara Evans on March 7, 1917 with whom he had eight children. Elijah also had three children with Lucille Rosary Muhammad, one child with Evelyn Muhammad, and four children with Tynnetta Muhammad; he also fathered several children from other relationships. In total, it is estimated that he had 21 children.

Father:

William Poole, Sr.

Mother:

Mariah Hall

Spouse:

Clara Muhammad

child:

Wallace Delaney Muhammad

child:

Emmanuel Muhammad

child:

Warith Deen Mohammed

child:

Jabir Herbert Muhammad

child:

Nathaniel Muhammad

child:

Akbar Muhammad

References

• The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad
• Understanding the Bible and Holy Qur'an As taught by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad
• An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad