The Nation of Islam (NOI) promoted black nationalism and racial separatism beginning in the 1930s. Led by Elijah Muhammad, the NOI emphasized economic self-sufficiency, cultural pride, and moral propriety as keys to black liberation. It established businesses and temples that gave the NOI great influence in urban black communities. The NOI's message of racial pride and its focus on incarcerated black men made it appealing. Through the NOI, black nationalism became an important strategy within the broader black freedom struggle.

1. Black Nationalism and
the Nation of Islam

2. Review: Strategies vs. Tactics
Activists must determine the strategies (long-term plans) they will use
to achieve their goals and the tactics (tools) by which they will advance
their chosen strategies.
Proponents of black freedom have historically had to address these
questions:
How do you know when you are free?
What does freedom look like?

3. Review
•How did groups like the SCLC and SNCC define
“freedom”?
•What strategies did they use?
•What tactics did they employ to advance their chosen
strategies?

4. Black Nationalism as a Strategy for Black Freedom
Three Dimensions:
•Economic—self-sufficiency through economic
empowerment and separate institutions
•Cultural—racial pride as an antidote to
assimilationist views of racial difference and
“politics of respectability”
•Political—political separatism (definitions and
tactics have varied widely)

5. Early 20th c. Black Nationalism
Marcus Garvey and the United
Negro Improvement Association
(UNIA) advocated Black economic
independence and Black pride,
urging Black Americans to “return to
Africa” during the 1920s and early
1930s. The UNIA was among the
most popular mass movements of
the 20th century.

6. Founded in 1930, the Nation of Islam, which
draws on the teachings and beliefs of both
Islam and Black nationalism, sought to create
an independent Black nation on land in the
U.S. South. As leader of the NOI, Elijah
Muhammad emphasized economic self-
determination and moral propriety as keys to
Black liberation. The NOI had great social and
economic influence and was particularly
effective in reaching and mobilizing poor and
underserved Black communities in Northern
cities like Chicago, Detroit, New York, and
Boston.
The Nation of Islam (NOI)

7. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad
(1897-1975)
• Born in rural Georgia to sharecroppers in 1897;
attended school only through fourth grade.
• Reported witnessing three lynchings as a child.
• Migrated with his family to Detroit in 1923.
• Battled alcoholism and depression during long periods
of unemployment.
• Struggled to provide for his growing family and
therefore relied on public assistance during the Great
Depression.
• Was attracted to the message of Black nationalism;
converted to Islam and assumed leadership of the NOI
after its founder disappeared in 1934.
• Convicted of draft resistance in 1942; served five years
in prison.
• Realized political and social potential of incarcerated
Black men and sought to reach them with NOI’s
message.
Self-proclaimed Messenger of
Allah, Muhammad led the NOI
from 1934 until his death in 1975.

8. Nation of Islam Racial Theology
• Positioned Black Muslims as Allah’s “original” chosen people.
• Asserted the ancestral origins of Black Americans to be “Asiatic” rather than
“African.”
• Sought to explain the state of the modern world through the story of Yakub, a
mad Black scientist who had grafted the white race from the Black race as an
evil trick.
• Taught that heaven and hell coexisted on earth: the “white devil” used
“tricknology” to subordinate members of the Black race through slavery,
sharecropping, and lynching but also through such vices as gambling, alcohol,
drugs, fornication, adultery, and poor diet.
• This message was especially powerful in reaching poor and working class
Black men, particularly Southern migrants living in Northern cities, as it made
sense of their lived realities in a society ruled by white supremacy.

9. Nation of Islam Racial Theology (cont’d)
• Goal of white society: to encourage poverty, ignorance, and subservience
among Black people.
• Central precept of NOI theology: Black oppression by white society would last
for 6,000 years. Promised that Allah would overturn white rule at a
predetermined time in the near future.
• Muhammad therefore deemed political participation or political activism futile
and explicitly prohibited the NOI faithful from voting or otherwise
participating in U.S. electoral politics.
• Racial separation, not integration, was the key to Black liberation.

10. Life (31 May 1963)

11. Muhammad’s Message to the Blackman in America (1965)
“We must stop relying upon the white man to care for us. We must become an independent people. So-
called Negroes should:
1. Separate yourselves from the slave-master.
2. Pool your resources, education and qualifications for independence.
3. Stop forcing yourselves into places where you are not wanted.
4. Make your own neighborhood a decent place to live.
5. Rid yourselves of the lust of wine and drink and learn to love self and your kind before loving others.
6. Unite to create a future for yourself.
7. Build your own homes, schools, hospitals, and factories.
8. Do not seek to mix your blood through racial integration.
9. Stop buying expensive cars, fine clothes and shoes before being able to live in a fine home.
10. Spend your money among yourselves.
11. Build an economic system among yourselves.
12. Protect your women.”
(Chapter 76, “A Program for Self-Development”)

12. The television documentary The Hate That Hate Produced (1959) offered millions of white Americans their first look at
the Nation of Islam, which by that point already had about 30,000 members. In it, white journalist Mike Wallace
characterized the organization as “Black supremacists” preaching a “gospel of hate.” The sensational film catapulted
Malcolm X, the NOI’s chief spokesperson, to national fame and won the attention and admiration of many Black
Americans previously unaware of the Nation’s existence. Its membership quickly grew. Historian Garrett Felber writes of
the documentary, “Its cautionary message to a largely white audience was that white racism would inevitably produce its
black variant.”
The Hate That Hate Produced (1959)

13. Here, Elijah Muhammad speaks with Malcolm X at a 1961 rally in
Harlem. Malcolm X was the national spokesperson and the most
influential minister of the Nation until his expulsion from the
organization and conversion to Sunni Islam in 1964.

14. Q: Why was the message of
the Nation of Islam so
effective in reaching
incarcerated Black men in
America?

15. The Appeal of the Nation’s Message
“The thinking American Negro realizes that only Elijah Muhammad offers him a
solid, united front. He is tired of the unfulfilled promises of the lethargic, so-
called Negro leaders who have been so thoroughly brainwashed by the American
whites. ‘Have patience,’ they say, ‘everything is going to be all right.’
…The black man in this country has been sitting on the hot stove for nearly 400
years. And no matter how fast the brainwashers and the brainwashed think they
are helping him advance, it’s still too slow for the man whose behind is burning
on that hot stove!”
--Malcolm X to photographer Gordon Parks, 1963
Source: Gordon Parks, “‘What Their Cry Means to Me’—A Negro’s Own Evaluation,” Life
Magazine (31 May 1963), pg. 31.

16. Economic Self-Sufficiency
NOI business enterprises catered to
NOI members and spread the NOI
message to non-believers while creating
jobs and generating wealth within
Black communities. In 1972, Elijah
Muhammad estimated the NOI’s net
worth at $75 million.

17. Malcolm X was a visible presence at NOI
businesses in Harlem.

18. Cultural Nationalism
Muhammad’s emphasis on racial pride, self-respect, communal
discipline, and Black righteousness offered an antidote to
assimilationist views that implicitly prized white values and norms.

19. (1963)

20. Self-defense class (Chicago, 1963).

21. The Fruit of Islam (FOI) was the paramilitary arm of the NOI that
offered protection to NOI leadership and members. Pictured here in
1966 is the FOI, including Muhammad Ali, who converted to the
Nation of Islam in 1964.

22. How to Eat to Live, Muhammad’s primer on
the prescribed diet of the Nation of Islam, was
published in two volumes (1967, 1972). In it,
Muhammad explained his prohibition of pork
(“grafted from rat, cat, and dog”), but also
many common elements of “soul food,”
Southern cuisine brought North during the
Great Migration which was increasingly
celebrated in the 1960s. He rejected soul food
as remnants of the “slave diet,” constructed
from scraps and the cheapest cuts of meat,
accessible to enslaved Black people only
because white enslavers did not want them.
Muhammad expressly forbade consumption of
items like cornbread, turnips, black-eyed peas,
and sweet potatoes, and emphasized the
dangers of processed foods. In this way, he
linked dietary transformations with spiritual
ones while denouncing the significance of
Black foodways.

23. (April 1962)
(July 1969)
Political Nationalism
Muhammad made vague rhetorical
demands for land to establish a Black
state in the U.S. South, but never
forcefully followed up on those
demands. Instead, he worked to
purchase farmland (esp. in Georgia
and Michigan) for the NOI, which it
used to provision its many food
enterprises.

24. NOI rally in Harlem, led by Malcolm X, 1963.

25. FBI monograph on Nation of Islam - Map of Temples of Islam (1965)

26. Significance of the NOI to the Black Freedom Struggle
• Black nationalism and self-determination.
• Rhetoric of defensive violence.
• Language of Black pride and self-love.
• Focused efforts to speak to Black poor and working
classes, particularly those in prison.