ELIJAH MUHAMMAD
(Elijah
Poole; Oct.
10,1897,
Sandersville,GaFeb.25,1975,Chicago,Ill.)Leader
of the Nation of Islam.
Elijah Muhammad
represented
an important and continuing theme in African American culture, namely the idea
that the future of the Black community depended on it's own capacity to
determine it's own destiny. According
to Muhammad, Blacks were to accomplish this by separating from the control influences of white society.
Muhammad also altered this historic theme by rejecting the back-to-Africa
emphases of earlier African American separatists.
Separatism was to occur, instead, in the creation of a distinct black
nation on the territory of the United States.
Early
life.
Elijah Muhammad was born Elijah Poole in Sandersville, Ga., in 1897, one
of thirteen children of poor tenant farmers who had been slaves.
His formal education was limited, since he was required to spend much of
his childhood working in the fields. He
left Georgia at the age of sixteen and traveled randomly, finally settling in
Detroit in 1923. During the
depression of the thirties, he experienced a life-changing encounter when he met
and became a follower of Wallace Fard, The founder of the Nation of Islam. Fard encourage Poole to preach the Nation of Islam’s
doctrine, open new meetings, and alter his "slave" name. As a result of Fard's influence, Poole took the name Elijah
Muhammad, a name that symbolized his Muslim affiliation and rejection of white
culture. He was also appointed
supreme minister of the Nation of Islam.
Leadership
of the Nation of Islam.
Elijah Muhammad's Distinctive ideological emphasis emerged after Fard
mysteriously disappeared in 1934. Muhammad
not only claimed to be a messenger of ALLAH to the Nation of Islam, assuming
Fard's organizational leadership, but he also reinterpreted Fard.
He preached that Fard had been ALLAH in disguise and had shared with
Muhammad secrets known to no one else. Muhammad
thus presented himself as the sole custodian of Fard's revelation to the African
American community. This new-found
dominance over the religion's adherents, however, did not translate into broader
social acceptance. In,1934,
Muhammad was arrested for sending his children to a Nation of Islam school
rather than to public schools. He
lived as a fugitive from 1935 to 1942 and was convicted of encouraging
resistance to the draft in 1942; he subsequently spent three years in jail. The effect of Muhammad's absence on the Nation of Islam was
organizational disarray, and membership in the religion Plummeted.
Earlier levels of membership were not regained until Malcolm x offered
his leadership skills to the Nation of Islam and became Muhammad's most visible
and effective spokesperson in the 1950's and 1960's.
During this era, the Nation of Islam maintained a clear ideology and
espoused a workable program.
Belief in separatism.
Muhammad's leadership allowed adherents, commonly known called
"Black Muslims," to interpret the failures of structural assimilation
in American society. The perceived
impossibility of an integrated society was explained as both the negative works
of whites and a positive possibility for blacks. For Muhammad, separatism was not synonymous wit segregation;
it was not the result of an imposition by whites but a choice that blacks made
in order to preserve their identity. While
segregation was forced, separatism was the willed means by which the group could
determine it's own future.
This idea of a positive social divorce from the larger society can be traced
historically to the American Colonization Society in the early 1800's and,
later, to Marcus Garvey's back-to-Africa movement of the early twentieth
century. Garvey had a direct
influence on Muhammad's thought; Muhammad, however, significantly distinguished
between being separated and returning to Africa.
He refused to romanticize Africa; he interpreted Black Americans as an
Asiatic rather than an African race and developed a reparations scheme according
to which the United States government would offer several southern states to the
Nation of Islam as territory in which to form a separate geographic and
political entity. The practical
beginnings of this separatism can be found in the Nation of Islam's alternative
Institutions: a university, schools, farms, small businesses, and houses of
worship, all of which function as concrete evidences of the ideology of
separatism. Muhammad sought not only to alter historic separatist
worldviews abut also to establish institutions that would give practical force
to philosophy Muhammad's structures differed from many Black sects and cults in
that they economic and educational enterprises and offered Nation of Islam
followers a sense of community.
The ethics proclaimed by Muhammad were in stark contrast to his interpretation
of the white community's immoralities. The
collective "white man" was perceived as the devil and the incarnation
of evil; whites, Muhammad said, could not provide Blacks with any alternatives
to antagonism. This was not because
of special historical events, according to Muhammad, but because devils could
only offer a society that was racist by nature.
It was out of this structural racism that the exploitation and
denigration of the Black person occurred. Muhammad
particularly emphasized the practical results of this evil: perpetual
discrimination against Blacks provided the necessary labor for the functioning
of the white-directed economy. Only
whites could benefit from such a system, while Blacks had to separate from it if
they were to regain their identities and self-esteem.
In addition, Muhammad argued, separation from white immorality was a
necessity if Blacks were to function effectively as authentic humans.
The teachings of Elijah Muhammad gained wide exposure when Malcolm X was
interviewed on national television and his statements were discussed in the
white media. White society
perceived the Muslim antipathy toward it as a threat.
Many African Americans, however, were attracted by Muhammad's ideologies
and found them consistent with their interpretations of their own life
experiences. Some also found
Muhammad's demands for sacrifice, discipline, and self-denial appealing as a
means of addressing social frustration and of establishing an alternate
life-style. While the exact
membership for the Nation of Islam have always been kept secret, it is probable
that they were highest when Malcolm X was Muhammad's main spokesperson.
The influence of Muhammad's ideas has extended far beyond official
membership in Mosques; the themes of disjunction and separate group control have
been dispersed amongst groups not affiliated with the organization.
Legacy. Since Elijah Muhammad's death in 1975, his legacy has continued in two distinct ways. His son, Wallace Deen Muhammad (also known as Imam Wareet Deen Muhammad), established the American Muslim Mission, which between 135 and 145 local Mosques before it decentralized in 1985. The mission' theology was close to that of the world-wide Muslim faith, and it de-emphasized Elijah Muhammad's teachings that African Americans are a separate nation. It is through Minister Louis FARRAKHAN, who disassociated from Wallace Deen Muhammad, that the ideology of Elijah Muhammad is maintained. Farrakhan's reiteration of traditional Black Muslim Orthodoxies includes interpretations of collective white devilry and the nee for African Americans to control their destiny through separation.