The reason I chose to research the life of Elijah Muhammad is because my dad had
done research on Malcolm X for a class in college, and I wanted to find out about his
teacher. I have found, in the process of this of this research, some startling information
that I definitely had not expected. As you read this report, I hope you see what I mean.
Elijah Poole was born in Sandersburg, Georgia on Oct. 7, 1897, to William and
Mariah Poole, who had 12 other children. His parents were former slaves, and he had to
quit school after third grade in order to earn enough money as a share cropper to help
support his family. Just before the 1920s he married Clara Evans, with whom he fathered
eight children. In 1923 he moved his family from Macon, Georgia, to Detroit, Michigan.
In 1930, Poole met Fard Muhammad, who believed that it was time for the blacks to
return to Islam, supposedly the religion of their ancestors. He became devoted to the
religion, and, in 1934, was given the title "Supreme Minister."1 In 1942, he was jailed for
evading the draft. The draft called for all males between the ages of 18 and 44 to join, and
he refused, on claims that he was 45 and that his religion forbid it. Muhammad was
released at the end of the war, and found a likeness of himself in Malcolm X, one of the
young new Muslims who had joined the Nation of Islam after the war. In the 1950s
Muhammad claimed X as his best disciple. Then, in 1964, X was assassinated, and
Muhammad accused the American government of being behind it. In 1975, Elijah
His formal education ended in in 1906 when he was 9 years old. He was forced to
quit school because his family needed more support. However, this did not stop him from
publishing several newspapers in which he tried to persuade blacks to convert to the way
...