Elijah Muhammad’s Life is Worth Some Note-Taking
And if you believe in numerology, Elijah Muhammad has those 7s all over him. He was born in Sandersville, Georgia, which is about an hour east of Macon (and about two hours from Savannah). He was born on October 7, 1897 as the 7th of 13 children. His parents were sharecroppers, and, as was the case for most sharecroppers and their children, Elijah had to stop school early to help the family make money.
He married Clara Evans on March 7, 1917 then joined the Great Migration.
Like everybody leaving, they hoped for a better life up north. He witnessed his parents work from sunup to sundown, only to still be in poverty. And he was headed down the same path. On top of that, before he hit 20 years old, he’d already witnessed three Black men get lynched. He said, “I seen enough of the white man’s brutality to last me 26,000 years.”
He took his parents and some of his siblings to Michigan with him. It was slap in the middle of the Great Depression and racism still existed in the North, so finding work was hard. And he and wife had eight children together, which is a lot of mouths to feed.
Elijah Muhammad was introduced to Black nationalism in Detroit.
These organizations talked about being Black and proud and lifting ourselves up from our misery. He later attended an Islam meeting and blown away by the leader, Wallace Fard Muhammad. Around this time is when his name changed from Elijah Poole to Elijah Muhammad. He also became leader of Chicago’s Islam temple. Then Wallace Fard Muhammad to leave the scene for his safety. This put Elijah Muhammad in the top leadership position.
He expanded the organization, creating more temples in different cities. But membership paused after his four-year incarceration for refusing to register for the military draft and encouraging his followers to refuse as well. This didn’t stop the mission though. He ended converting many men while in prison, and that train never stopped! To this day, thousands of Black men are still converting to Islam while in prison.
That’s because the religion is so different than what so many of us grew up with. The discipline is second to none. From the diet to the workouts and self-defense classes, prayer five times a day, collective fasts, and requirement to visit Mecca at least once in your life. The food banks and the internal court proceedings to hold folk accountable for their wrongdoings. It goes beyond spirituality and brings emphasis to the present and what’s happening right now.
The uplifting of Black folk was something serious for the Nation of Islam.
Finances included. The Nation of Islam put folk to work! Elijah Muhammad, for instance, claimed that at one point the Nation’s net worth exceeded $75M. Some of my elders who attended Temple No 7 in Harlem, are still passionate in their remembering how many drug addicts and drug dealers were transformed as a result of Islam. Still excited to list all the businesses the Nation owned and how many brothers and sisters bought those businesses when the Nation sold them off. Schools too! Clara, Elijah’s wife, homeschooled their children in an era where that was unheard of. So the Nation opened schools.
As Queen Darlene said, “Malcolm is mentioned plenty during Black history month, but they never talk about Elijah Muhammad and they should. They really should.”
He died at 77 years old, on February 25, 1975.
Every Black organization that made a real difference in the minds and lives of Black folk in the 1950s and ’60s was intruded on by COINTELPRO’s covert and illegal operations. Two of their key tactics was planting spies and instigating beef between members of the organization with forged letters and such. The same thing happened to the Nation as well.
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