Elijah Muhammad
Elijah Muhammad (-1896-1975).
Religious leader; born Elijah Poole in Sandersville, Ga. One of 13 children of tenant farmers who were former slaves, Muhammad worked in the fields at an early age out of necessity, thus severely limiting his formal education.At 16 he left home and began a nomadic life. In 1923 Muhammad settled in Detroit Mich.. and worked for a time in an automobile factory.
Early in the 1930s during a time of extreme economic distress, he became acquainted with W. D, Fard (Wali Farad, Master Farad Muhammad), and this meeting proved to be the turning point of his life. Fard. then working as a peddler, had already established the first Temple of Islam in Detroit. He is generally credited with having founded the Nation of Islam, or Muslim faith, among blacks in the United States.
Upon Fard's disappearance in 1934, Elijah Muhammad (the name conferred on him by Fard) claimed the role of Fard's successor and the custodian of the latter's revelation, and eventually became known as Messenger of Allah or Supreme Minister of the Nation of Islam.
Though his policies of strict racial separation were modified somewhat in his later years, and still more in the hands of others after his death, Muhammad's goal of separate self-sufficiency for African-Americans set the course of the Muslims outside the mainstream (integration) of the civil rights movement.
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