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Cornerstone Readings: “Nation of Islam;” Southern Poverty Law Center
Reading 2: “Nation of Islam” Published by the Southern Poverty Law Center
This text provides a background about the Nation of Islam, supplementing what students learned from Eyes on the Prize during the introductory lesson. Please note that there is additional text in this article (accessible through the website located at the bottom of this reading) that explains why the Southern Poverty Law Center believes the Nation of Islam to be a hate group. As an optional extension, students may read the rest of the article and explain how the group has transformed into its current state of existence.
For what would become one of the largest and best-organized groups in the history of black America, the Nation of Islam (NOI) had a relatively obscure beginning. Founded by a mysterious clothing salesman in the ghettoes of Detroit in 1930, NOI was considered an insignificant, if highly media-worthy, “‘voodoo sect” throughout much of the 1930s and 1940s.
Founder Wallace D. Fard (alternately, Farad Muhammad) and his “messenger” and successor Elijah Muhammad preached a hybrid creed with its own myths and doctrines. These held that over 6,000 years ago, the black race lived in a paradise on earth that was destroyed by the evil wizard Yacub, who created the white “devil” through a scientific process called “grafting.” Fard and his disciple preached of a coming apocalyptic overthrow of white domination, insisting that the dominion of evil was to end with God’s appearance on earth in the person of Fard. Following this, NOI predicts an epic struggle in which the Nation of Islam will play a key role in preparing and educating the Original People, who ruled the earth in peace and prosperity until Yacub’s “blue-eyed devils” came along to gum things up. The Nation of Islam teaches that intermarriage or race mixing should be prohibited. This is point 10 of the official platform, “What the Muslims Want” published 1965.
NOI’s connection to Islam is through its founder Fard. NOI believes, like other Muslims, that there is no other God but Allah, but they redefine “Allah” by saying that he “came in the person of W. D. Fard.”
Despite the initial group’s small size and early setbacks, Fard and his disciple laid the groundwork for what the group was to become in the 1950s and 1960s. From the start, NOI was tightly organized, a fact most clearly seen in its creation of the elite “Fruit of Islam,” a group envisioned by Fard as a paramilitary wing to defend NOI against police attacks. In the 1940s, “messenger” Elijah Muhammad also began constructing what would later be considered the Nation’s “empire,” purchasing the group’s first bit of Michigan farmland in 1945 and founding businesses and educational ventures in several states that a decade later were valued in the millions.
NOI’s real boom came during the 1950s, however, when the advent of the civil rights movement and the violent reactions it provoked converged to make NOI’s depiction of the “white devil” pertinent to a much larger sector of black America. New members, including Malcolm X and heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay before joining NOI), added visibility to the group and, in the case of the former, contributed directly to a meteoric membership increase.
Appointed to the prestigious leadership of Harlem’s Temple No. 7 in New York City just two years after his 1952 release from prison, Malcolm X was wildly popular and his years as a prominent member of NOI (1952-1964) saw membership skyrocket from around 400 to between 100,000 and 300,000. But the Nation’s vituperative language and its advocacy of self-defense in place of nonviolence alienated it from mainstream civil rights groups. By 1959, Martin Luther King was warning of “a hate group arising in our midst that would preach the doctrine of black supremacy.”
Nevertheless, the mid-1960s saw a second membership surge at NOI as a new and more militant generation of black leaders began focusing on the residual racial problems of the North. As urban riots rocked the nation, NOI’s message that black elevation could only come through a radical separation from the structures of white oppression continued to resonate for many. Although NOI remained frustratingly conservative in many ways (indeed, Malcolm X “liberated” himself from this conservatism in 1964), its radical rhetoric continued to attract recruits.
Following Malcolm X’s 1964 split from his erstwhile mentor, Elijah Muhammad, a rising star in the Nation was appointed to replace him at Temple No. 7. Louis Farrakhan had been working as a cabaret singer until he met Malcolm X and joined NOI in 1955. Ascending rapidly through the ranks, he had proved to be a superb speaker and organizer, managing to win over the congregation left behind by his charismatic predecessor. He faced a firestorm after Malcolm X’s 1965 assassination, for which many blamed NOI. Talmadge Hayer, an NOI member, was arrested on the scene. Eyewitnesses identified two more suspects, Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson, also members of NOI. All three were charged in the case. At first Hayer denied involvement, but during the trial he confessed to having fired shots at Malcolm X (In the months before he was murdered, meanwhile, Malcolm X had a complete change of heart, denouncing the “sickness and madness” of the NOI’s racism and turning to Sunni Islam.) Hayer testified that Butler and Johnson were not present and were not involved in the assassination, but he declined to name the men who had joined him in the shooting. All three men were convicted. Butler, now known as Muhammad Abdul Aziz, was paroled in 1985. He became the head of the Nation of Islam’s Harlem mosque in New York in 1998.
Farrakhan weathered the storm of Malcolm X’s assassination and managed to create a powerful base within the Nation, ascending to the position of national spokesman in 1967.
When Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, Farrakhan initially remained faithful to his son, Wallace Deen Muhammad (later Imam Warithuddin Muhammad) who succeeded him. But the younger Muhammad’s dismantling of the Nation’s material empire and his attempts to bring NOI into the fold of mainstream Islam ultimately alienated Farrakhan. In 1977, a rebellious Farrakhan, backed by a powerful enough base to pull it off, rejected the younger Muhammad and declared the creation of a “resurrected” NOI based on the original ideology of Elijah Muhammad.
What are the major principles from which the Nation of Islam was founded? What is their mission?
What is one major difference between the Nation of Islam and Islam? Use both texts to respond to this question.
Explain Elijah Muhammad’s role in the early development of the Nation of Islam.
Who were prominent members of the Nation of Islam?
How did the Nation of Islam differ from other mainstream civil rights groups?
How did new members of the Nation of Islam shift the direction of the organization?
What are the key details in this paragraph?
How did Wallace Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan differ in their approaches to leading the Nation of Islam?
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