Elijah+Muhammad



Elijah Muhammad was born Robert Poole on October 7, 1897 around Sandersville, Georgia. He lived with his mother and father. Both of his parents were ex-slaves who became sharecroppers on a cotton plantation. In his younger years he worked in the fields and on the railroad. At the age of 16, he left home to travel and work odd jobs. He eventually arrived in Detroit in 1923 where he settled and he worked on a Chevrolet assembly line.

Robert Poole became early disciples of [|W.D. Fard], the founder of the [|Nation of Islam]. In 1930, Fard appeared in Detroit’s African American ghetto. He was selling goods and he told his black customers about ancestral “homeland” across the seas. Fard believed that nonwhites should emulate from whites by ways of both dress and diet. He believed that Islam was the correct race for African Americans and he was very bitter towards the white race. The movement also emphasized black self-help and education. The movement was quite strict in terms of its members’ diet, smoking & drinking, dress, and all personal behaviors. In the summer of 1934, Fard mysteriously disappeared and Poole became the leader of the most important faction of the movement.

Throughout the movement Poole changed his name to Elijah Muhammad due to the movement’s policy of dropping one’s “slave” name. He settled in Chicago away from the Detroit Muslim groups. Muhammad was believed to be the divinely-appointed prophet of Fard, who was believed to be the incarnation of Allah, or God. He advocated an independent nation for African Americans. In 1942, he was arrested on the charges of sedition, conspiracy, and violation of the draft laws. He spent 4 years in federal prison at Milan, Michigan due to his comment that blacks would reclaim their superiority over whites in the “Battle of Armageddon.” Also he had argued that all nonwhites are oppressed by whites. In the early 1960’s, Malcolm Xbegan to overshadow Muhammad and some members dropped out of the movement. Tensions between the two persons’ leadership arose. However Muhammad later suspended Malcolm X from the movement when he made a statement about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Elijah Muhammad died on February 25, 1975 passing on the leadership role of the movement to his son, [|Wallace (now Warith) Deen Muhammad]. Warith made the once radical movement more relaxed and therefore much more conventionally Islamic.

**__Works Cited__**

Gale Group, "Elijah Muhammad." 2001. Biography Resource  Center. 21 Feb 2009 < http://www.africawithin.com/bios/elijah_muhammad.htm>.