Nation women remain an invisible cohort in scholarly treatments of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam (NOI).Footnote 1 Further, feminist critiques of the NOI often portray Nation women as silent and suppressed partners in the organization. Such critiques overlook Nation women's writings and resistance to NOI mandates as illustrated in the Muhammad Speaks (MS) newspaper. Nation women made their own judgements about the NOI based on their interactions with NOI members and their readings of the MS newspaper. Nation women's written testimonies and oral history narratives reveal that many women joined the organization independently of men. Former NOI member Frances X, for example, noted in one issue of the MS newspaper,
Islam was first introduced to me through Muhammad Speaks … When I first heard of Islam, I knew my long search had ended … I was at home. When I speak of home, I do not mean a house, but an environment where we are united as one, where a woman is given her proper place to fulfil her role as a wife and mother …Footnote 2
Similarly, in an oral-history interview, former NOI member Bayyinah Abdul Aleem remarked, “I was a college student and I used to purchase the newspaper, Muhammad Speaks … I would read it on my way to school and that's how I became informed about it.”Footnote 3 Nation women were drawn to the NOI primarily as a result of its efforts to address socioeconomic grievances in African American communities. Once registered as members of the organization, Nation women contributed to building the internal structures of the NOI and propagating its religious and racial philosophies. Nation women's concerns and work were not confined to the domestic sphere, as illustrated by their contributions to MS. Nation women contributed to and featured in every issue of the MS newspaper from its founding in 1960 up until its transformation in 1975 under the guidance of Imam W. D. Mohammed. Indeed, in 1975 former MS columnist Anna Karriem became the paper's editor-in-chief.Footnote 4
This essay argues that Nation women embraced the MS newspaper as a tool for propagation but that they also found room within the paper to negotiate and resist NOI mandates. Thus, like their sisters in the civil rights movement, Nation women found ways to express subtle resistance to the patriarchal dimensions of their movement. The MS newspaper employed Nation women as journalists and secretaries. Nation women, including Tynetta Deanar, Margary Hassain, Harriett Muhammad and Anna Karriem, wrote regular features for the paper. The newspaper invited Nation women to share their testimonies and stories of personal transformation in a section of the paper titled “What Islam Has Done For Me.” MS also included an advice section for women in the early 1960s titled “For and About You,” which was overseen by Harriett Muhammad. Women's writings in the paper reveal an unflinching commitment to Elijah Muhammad, but they also illuminate the extent to which women contested aspects of the organization. Nation women utilized the paper to present themselves to the larger public and correct what they construed to be an erroneous understanding of the organization and its treatment of women in the national media. The MS newspaper was undoubtedly a controlled publication in that much of the content was approved by Elijah Muhammad and the newspaper's editor. Women's subtle defiance of NOI mandates in the paper is likely to have been missed by Muhammad and the newspaper's editor when reviewing selected papers primarily because many of the women who wrote for the paper were well regarded by the organization. MS columnist Tynetta Deanar, for example, was one of several personal secretaries employed directly by Muhammad. She later became involved in a sexual relationship with Muhammad while he was married to his wife, Clara Muhammad. Similarly, Harriett Muhammad was married to Elijah Muhammad's son. Anna Karriem likewise was employed as a personal secretary to Muhammad in Chicago. There can be little doubt that Muhammad invested a measure of trust in these women. Indeed, according to the newspaper's former editor, Askia Muhammad, Elijah would often ask these women for their advice about his own writings in the paper.Footnote 5 Thus one might reasonably conclude that Muhammad felt it unnecessary to sign off on their every contribution to the paper, especially given the fact that much of his time was devoted to personally overseeing the organization's plethora of small businesses. This essay examines the multifaceted ways in which Nation women contributed to the MS newspaper. It suggests that Nation women, like their counterparts in the civil rights movement, resisted and negotiated the patriarchal and misogynistic dynamics of their movement. This paper contributes to an emerging body of scholarship on women's experiences and work in Elijah Muhammad's NOI.
THE NATION OF ISLAM AND THE MEDIA
The Nation of Islam (NOI) remained largely unknown outside Chicago and New York until July 1959 when WNTA-TV aired a five-part series on the group titled, The Hate That Hate Produced. Nation women were visible in the documentary for no more than a few seconds. WNTA-TV presenter Mike Wallace and journalist Louis Lomax edited the documentary to highlight the more controversial aspects of the NOI, including its castigation of Caucasians as “blue-eyed devils” and its unorthodox theology. Elijah Muhammad inherited the belief that Caucasians were blue-eyed devils from the Nation's founder, W. D. Fard Muhammad. Fard Muhammad remains an important but largely unknown figure in the history of African American Islam. He established the NOI in Detroit in 1930 after deserting his common-law wife, Hazel Barton, and infant son, Wallace Max Ford, in Los Angeles.Footnote 6 According to political scientist E. U. Essien-Udom and historian Manning Marable, Fard synchronized the black nationalism and “anti-white views” of the Marcus Garvey Movement with the teachings of an early Islamic sect led by Noble Drew Ali.Footnote 7 Fard taught his followers that Garvey and Ali had failed in their respective missions because “neither had fully grasped the true nature of whites.”Footnote 8 Fard attracted thousands of members in Detroit within the first two years of his ministry. Sociologist Erdmann Beynon attended numerous early NOI meetings and concluded that the majority of its members were recent migrant from Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.Footnote 9 In the urban North, migrants encountered entrenched racism and the promise of economic opportunity that had attracted them thwarted by the economic depression. Thus, as Beynon suggests, when these individuals heard Fard speak in Detroit they were receptive to his message.Footnote 10 Fard taught his followers that Heaven and Hell were realities to be faced on Earth and that Caucasians had been created by an evil scientist, Yakub, on the island of Patmos 66,000 years ago. Fard's scathing attacks on whites intrigued his listeners but, as historian Peniel Joseph notes, it was the NOI's message of “personal dignity, economic self-determination, and organizational discipline” that attracted African Americans to the organization.Footnote 11 Fard Muhammad's career in Detroit proved short. In 1933 the Police Department ordered him to leave Detroit on account of their fears that his followers exhibited “insane hatred” of Caucasians.Footnote 12 In the aftermath of Fard's mysterious departure from Detroit, his successor, Elijah Muhammad, distanced the Nation further from its orthodox counterparts by propagating the notion that Fard was Allah incarnate.Footnote 13 Wallace and Lomax focussed firmly on the Nation's theology and critique of the US racial hierarchy while conducting research for The Hate That Hate Produced. In the aftermath of the documentary, Sunni Muslims, Christian Clergy and civil rights organizations rushed to the national press to disassociate their beliefs and goals from those of the NOI. The Amsterdam News, for example, reported that Sunni Muslims had wired WNTA “demanding that their views be presented.”Footnote 14 Likewise, the National Urban League executive director, Lester Grange, noted, “We do not consider it representative of negro thinking … We believe it is a perfect example of how justifiable resentment can be channeled into unproductive and harmful channels.”Footnote 15 And emerging civil rights activist Reverend Gardner Taylor noted that the documentary exposed the “very real and deep dangers to our society represented by such ‘hate’ movements.”Footnote 16The Hate That Hate Produced had a number of important effects on the NOI and the larger civil rights movement. First, as Joseph notes, it turned the “group and its spokesman into national celebrities.”Footnote 17 Second, it provided leaders with greater leverage to demand civil rights in order to stem the growth of the NOI and delegitimate its critiques of race relations in the US. Indeed, throughout its long history, the NOI helped shape the civil rights movement by revealing to its leaders, and to Dr King in particular, the full extent of African American despair and poverty in the urban North.Footnote 18 Marable, for example, notes that Malcolm X believed that the NOI had “made the whole civil rights movement become … more acceptable to the white power structure.”Footnote 19 Lastly, the media interest that followed the documentary led the NOI to create their first national newspaper in 1960. MS succeeded a number of short-lived and expensive NOI publications, including Messenger Magazine and Supreme Wisdom. Alongside these publications, Muhammad and Malcolm X also wrote irregular columns for the Pittsburgh Courier, the Los-Angeles Herald Dispatch and the Afro-American.Footnote 20 The new paper was published at the Nation's headquarters in Chicago from Mosque Number 2 and outlined the Nation's mandate and beliefs in sections of the paper titled “What the Muslims Want” and “What the Muslims Believe.” The newspaper was intended to fulfil a fourfold purpose: first, to serve as a corrective to the organization's negative portrayal in the national media; second, to promote Elijah Muhammad and his teachings; third, to connect Nation members scattered throughout the US; and last, to contribute to the Nation's overarching goal of economic autarky.
EXPLICATING THE GENDER IDEOLOGY: FEMALE STAFF WRITERS
Elijah Muhammad's gender ideology was informed largely by the belief that African American women required the protection and control of black men. In his 1965 publication, Message to the Blackman in America, he noted, “There is no nation on earth that has less respect for and as little control of their women as we so-called Negroes here in America.”Footnote 21 Muhammad considered the protection and control of women to be a prerequisite to the restoration of black men as providers and patriarchs in their family and community circles. This belief may well have been shaped, in some measure, by Muhammad's own experiences of unemployment and his wife's struggle to sustain their family while in search of work as a domestic in 1930s Detroit. Muhammad's gender ideology adhered to strict notions of separate spheres and the performance of traditional gender roles. Indeed, he often noted his preference for his female followers to be, first and foremost, wives and mothers. Nation women were expected to adhere to a rigid dress code, cover their hair, and be model homemakers and wives. In addition, they were required to attend NOI events and Muslim Girls Training (MGT) classes no less than three times per week. Likewise, their male counterparts were required to attend NOI events during the week, to assume the role of family provider and in their spare time to sell copies of the MS newspaper. Nation women were instructed in domestic science and NOI protocols during MGT classes, while their male counterparts attended classes on self-defence in a paramilitary division of the Nation known as the Fruit of Islam (FOI). Feminist scholars often highlight control as the cornerstone of Muhammad's gender ideology. Indeed, some have gone as far as to suggest a causal link between fundamentalist Islamic thought and Muhammad's attitudes toward women.Footnote 22 Such suggestions are based on a limited engagement with Muhammad's writings. Further, scholar of Islamic studies Herbert Berg rightly notes that Muhammad's gender ideology was not influenced to any considerable extent by the Quran.Footnote 23 The notion that Nation women were subjugated is a popular one but it is not based on a consideration of how women themselves understood and navigated the NOI. Indeed, even Marable's limited research on Nation women for his biography of Malcolm X led him to conclude that “temple women during those years rarely perceived themselves as being subjugated.”Footnote 24 Nation women reiterated and reinforced Muhammad's gender ideology in numerous editions of the MS newspaper. Their articles, however, lent themselves to the more endearing features of Muhammad's gender ideology, most notably the belief that black women were the “Mothers of Civilization” and the “most beautiful” of all women. Importantly, however, their articles also highlighted a gentle resistance and at times deviation from numerous NOI mandates.
Tynetta Deanar began writing for the MS newspaper in 1960 under the guidance of the paper's first editor, Dan Burley. Her column “The Woman in Islam” was maintained in the paper by a succession of editors including Leon Forrest and Askia Muhammad.Footnote 25 As the 1960s progressed, however, Deanar began to share the column space with another writer, Margary Hassain. Deanar was employed by the Nation in 1959 as a secretary to Elijah Muhammad. Her articles reinforced the Nation's gender ideology but they also illuminated a positive interpretation of the ideology. In one of her early contributions to the paper in 1962, titled “Muslim Woman Is Model Personality,” she noted,
Negro women are by nature creative, always seeking the unusual, the unique, the original, whether in domestic affairs, social, intellectual, educational or professional. It is said that the woman is the underlying secret of any Nation's success. Actually, it isn't a secret, for her extraordinary talents are known; and without her, man would be eating out of crude pots, perhaps even with their fingers, sitting on stone benches and sleeping on hard wooden floors. But the woman being a creation of beauty and charm inspires the creation of a beautiful civilization …Footnote 26
Deanar's observations illuminate Nation women's pro-womanist readings of Muhammad's gender ideology. Her comments highlight the fact that Nation women generally did not construe mandates about traditional gender roles as confining them to the domestic sphere or restricting their interests to domestic science and child rearing. Hassain's writings for the column also reveal a more positive interpretation of the gender ideology and served as a reminder that the Nation's conservative mandates required male members to cherish, respect and honour women.Footnote 27
Deanar and Hassain utilized the column to encourage women to wear modest clothing and to commit themselves to the Nation's values. Research by historian Ajile Rahman indicates that the dress code for Nation women was standardized in 1967.Footnote 28 Modest attire was prescribed for all women who entered the Nation's temples and conventions. Indeed, former MS contributor Bayyinah Shareef noted in one article that women who arrived at a convention in 1968 wearing miniskirts were turned away and that some of them “were so anxious to hear the message … that they pulled the hems out of their skirts, loosened their skirts from the waist … so that their dresses would be a respectable length to be admitted inside.”Footnote 29 Not all Nation women embraced the MGT uniform and thus alternative, yet nonetheless modest, clothing was designed by Nation women and sold from the organization's clothing factory in Chicago. Deanar often chided women for mimicking the fashions of white women and for wearing makeup, which she described as a “slander” to the character and “natural” beauty of back women.Footnote 30
Deanar's articles were not confined solely to explicating Muhammad's gender ideology. In later editions of the paper, she also discussed international events and offered perspectives that contrasted with Elijah Muhammad's. In the March 1968 edition of the paper, for example, she noted,
What do our women in America expect to gain by actively supporting and participating in public demonstrations which claim to be in the interest of the black people's struggle for civil rights? Has it not occurred to us that we have not yet secured the recognition of human rights before the white citizenry of the United States? Furthermore, in their eyes, we will never secure either full recognition of our human rights or civil rights to the satisfaction of both parties involved.Footnote 31
Here Deanar offers a reading of the civil rights movement that is surprisingly far removed from Elijah Muhammad's. Indeed, if anything, her analysis appears to reinforce Malcolm X's, post-NOI, critique of the civil rights movement, which is even more surprising given the very public dispute between Muhammad and Malcolm regarding the former's relationships with secretaries, including Deanar.Footnote 32 The notion that the race problem resulted from the denial of human rights was not one shared by Elijah Muhammad. In Message to the Blackman in America he noted that the root of the race problem concerned economic inequality and efforts by misguided blacks to “force themselves” on their white counterparts.Footnote 33 It is rather unlikely that Deanar was unaware of the stark differences between how Muhammad and his former protégé interpreted the race problem in the United States. Indeed, explicating the NOI's critique of race relations and the civil rights movement in particular was a regular feature of Muhammad's public lectures and published articles in MS. Deanar's deviance from the NOI's official statements about the civil rights movement is something that was more than likely missed by Muhammad and the newspaper editor. Deanar was involved romantically with Muhammad throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, the two had four children together.Footnote 34 Deanar's writings on women's issues in particular reveal a thorough knowledge of NOI mandates. Importantly, these mandates were also taught and reinforced through MGT classes. Her deviance here reveals that despite her closeness and commitment to Muhammad, she did offer readers opinions that were independent of official statements.
Deanar was not alone in deviating from or resisting the organization's beliefs and customs. Margary Hassain's and Harriett Muhammad's regular articles for the paper also reveal a gentle resistance to numerous NOI mandates. Margary Hassain's articles for the paper undoubtedly display a giddy affection for Elijah Muhammad. She never failed to shower praises on him. Phrases such as “The Woman in Islam gives eternal praises to Allah (God) Master Fard Muhammad for our Divine Teacher, Messenger Muhammad” are found in almost every article that she wrote for the paper. Yet embedded within her articles were also statements that gently resisted Nation mandates, particularly with regard to marriage. Numerous scholars have suggested that African American women joined the Nation in the hope of securing an industrious husband.Footnote 35 Marriage was considered the ideal within the Nation. Indeed, some former Nation women have gone as far as to claim that being unmarried within the Nation was “unacceptable.”Footnote 36 Elijah Muhammad's NOI followed a strict courting procedure which women were introduced to through mandatory training sessions run by the MGT. In the MGT handbook, for example, women were instructed not to “date or have boyfriends” and that “if we are interested in a brother we ask our sister captain to begin the courting process.”Footnote 37 Unmarried men and women were not permitted to be alone together and thus men were instructed to express interest in a female via an FOI captain who would in turn relay the news to the woman's MGT captain. News of a potential suitor thus reached women via MGT captains. Any courting that may have resulted from this took place under the watchful eye of both captains and carried with it the expectation that the outcome would be marriage. Hassain's articles on marriage highlight a keen awareness of the flaws in this process. In her frequent articles for the paper Hassain reinforced Muhammad's ruling that his female followers must marry within the organization.Footnote 38 However, she also cautioned women to find a partner with whom they had something in common.Footnote 39 Similarly, in a later issue of the paper, she noted, “BLACK BELIEVING sisters, when thinking of marriage to a believing Black brother, be sure to study and learn his children before taking on the responsibility for loving, caring and raising his children, by a former marriage.”Footnote 40 Hassain's advice may not initially appear to resist NOI mandates, but by encouraging Nation women to take responsibility for researching a potential suitor and his children she challenged an important NOI tradition. Former Nation women often comment that marriage was expected following a short period of courtship and that the only thing they were required to have in common was NOI membership. Here, however, we can see that Hassain is not only cautioning women, thus usurping the role of an MGT captain, but also empowering them to decline a potential suitor. Marriage was not forced upon women in the NOI but many women did experience pressure from their peers and MGT captains to marry. In Women of the Nation: Between Black Protest and Sunni Islam, for example, one former Nation woman notes,
The NOI attempted to partner me with this man in the community and I wiggled my way out of it by going back to Atlanta. It wasn't so easy in Atlanta. There was a process – the male would express interest in you to the captain and then the female lieutenant would approach you … it was a little like being in the army. The captain would come and talk to you and say this brother is interested in you … I was feeling pressure from the organization because they would say “you should be married” … and they would say “what's wrong with this brother?”Footnote 41
Nation women were made aware of NOI protocols with regard to dating and marriage via their compulsory MGT classes. Moreover, the organization's literature, and in particular the MGT handbook, made explicitly clear to women the role that MGT captains were to play in the process. Hassain's advice here thus appears as blatant resistance and as an example of when her desire to address the concerns of Nation women trumped her commitment to official protocols.
No female staff writer reinforced Muhammad's teachings more forcefully than the paper's agony aunt, Harriett Muhammad. Her column “For and About You” appeared irregularly in the paper throughout its ten-year history. Little is known of Harriett Muhammad's background prior to 1960. She married Elijah Muhammad's son, Akbar, in 1960 and thereafter the couple relocated to Cairo, Egypt. The marriage, however, proved short-lived and the pair divorced in October 1963. Harriett Muhammad returned to the US and married an alleged bigamist, which according to the bureau was “hardly the best qualifications for her new job” at the MS newspaper.Footnote 42 Harriett Muhammad was notoriously tough on the women who wrote to her for advice. In response to an anonymous lady who claimed that her husband bullied her and her son, she noted, “Don't feel your problem is an isolated case. It is created by the circumstances under which we live. We, as women, must do our part to see that our men feel like men.”Footnote 43 Similarly, when responding to another anonymous woman who claimed that her friend had been “playing up” to her husband, Muhammad responded,
Don't be so quick to pin the blame for this situation on your supposedly unsuspecting husband. What about YOUR reasoning? … Do you think you married some kind of saint who is beyond temptation? … IT COULD be that he's wondering what kind of wife he has that would allow this to continue without intervening in any way.Footnote 44
Such articles display Muhammad's efforts to reinforce the patriarchal ethos of the Nation and to encourage women to submit to their husbands. Yet even Harriett Muhammad occasionally resisted some of the Nation's mandates and customs, particularly those relating to dietary laws and marriage. Elijah Muhammad published detailed dietary laws for his followers in numerous editions of the MS newspaper.Footnote 45 He encouraged his followers to eat no more than one meal per day and to abstain from foods that had made up part of the slave diet. Nation women were instructed in the NOI's dietary laws during weekly MGT classes. In response to Muhammad's dietary laws women also published recipes in every issue of MS. Dietary laws were also outlined in Nation women's literature, including the MGT handbook, which stated, “Weighing properly is one of the requirements for the MGT.” Yet many women struggled to adhere to strict dietary laws. In an article from a woman claiming to be unable to “control” her “eating habits,” Harriett Muhammad replied, “Consult with a physician … Your best weight may be as much as 10% under or 20% over the calculated standard for your height and age … The best way to keep from becoming overweight is to eat SENSIBLY, exercise reasonably and live happily.”Footnote 46 In her response Harriett Muhammad challenged customs about what may constitute an ideal weight. Similarly, in another article relating to marriage, she denied knowledge of Elijah Muhammad's preference for men to be seven years older than their wives.Footnote 47 In her reply to the lady who enquired about advice from her friends that a husband should be seven years older than his wife, Harriett Muhammad noted, “I think your friends are a bit confused. I know of no society or nation with such marriage conditions.”Footnote 48 Again, here it seems unlikely that Harriett Muhammad was unaware that within certain sections of the Nation this practice was indeed advocated. Given her closeness and position within the Royal Family of the NOI it seems that Harriett Muhammad must have had some knowledge of, or at least have encountered, this practice.
Deanar, Hassain and Muhammad's occasional defiance of NOI mandates and customs reveals that they were more than conduits through which Elijah Muhammad's directives were conveyed. Their resistance, however minor, reveals that they independently assessed and balanced their concerns for Nation women with their overarching goal of reinforcing Elijah Muhammad's directives.
WHAT ISLAM HAS DONE FOR ME
Nation women exist in the popular imagination as prisoners of the domestic sphere and victims of male oppression. This sentiment gained momentum as a result of Malcolm X's widely publicized comments about Muhammad's domestic life and Spike Lee's 1992 portrayal of Nation women in his biopic of Malcolm X. Interestingly, Malcolm's revelations had little impact on Nation women, who dismissed them as being fabricated by Malcolm to curry favour with the media.Footnote 49 The notion that Nation women concerned themselves exclusively with domestic science and child rearing is misinformed but it also reveals a failure to sufficiently address the context in which Nation women operated. Nation women read the NOI's gender ideology through the lens of their unique race and gender concerns, as evidenced by their testimonies in the MS newspaper. Moreover, many read the discouragement to work not as oppressive but as a relief from the problems they encountered in domestic service and other forms of menial labor. Elijah Muhammad often gloated that Nation women were not required to work.Footnote 50 Yet the NOI did offer employment opportunities to women. Advertisements for “factory help” and “secretaries wanted” were among the most common employment opportunities advertised in MS. Footnote 51 Women who contributed to the paper also offered advice to those Nation women who were employed outside the organization. For example, in an article titled “Sisters in the Workplace,” Ida Bell advised Nation women not to engage in “small talk conversations” and to “not be ashamed of practicing what Messenger Muhammad instructs” when at work.Footnote 52
Women's testimonies in the paper were included in a regular column titled “What Islam Has Done for Me.” The content of their testimonies tells us much about how they interpreted the organization's race and gender ideologies and how they understood their own agency within the group. Nation women's testimonies in the MS newspaper confirm C. Eric Lincoln and Essien-Udom's belief that African American women were attracted to the group, in part, by the alleged respect and protection it offered them. Former member Shirley Morton, for example, noted that the organization's dress code “makes me respect myself better but it also makes other people respect me. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that we, black women are the most beautiful of all women.”Footnote 53 Similarly, in a later issue of the paper, Edna Mae 2X remarked, “Now I no longer feel ashamed when I walk the streets of this wielded society, from my head to my ankles are covered.”Footnote 54 Edna's sentiments were also shared by former NOI member Rita Moore, who noted in the paper,
I used to spend a fortune on white fashion magazines to see what the new “in” look would be … I would follow along with the styles … All along I felt embarrassed, ashamed and self-conscious of my appearance … All praise is due to Allah … for he has taken me out of “hot pants” … and has covered me with the garments of dignity, decency and respect.Footnote 55
The NOI's rhetoric on black women's natural beauty equipped many to resist popular notions of hegemonic white beauty. Bessie X, for example, noted in one edition of the paper, “Black is beautiful and every Black man, woman and child should be proud to be black – proud to be counted among those who are striving for the cause of Islam.”Footnote 56 This sense of empowerment was also mentioned by another member, Lynice X, in 1967: “Perhaps, best, Islam has instilled in me a sense of pride and dignity. I remember when I was younger that older children would tease me because of my skin color.”Footnote 57
Nation women's testimonies in the MS newspaper reveal that they were attracted to the group not because of its skewed theology but because it diagnosed the race problem and offered prescriptions that were meaningful to women. Importantly, the Nation's promise of unity and collective endeavours to improve the lives of women and their communities is a theme women touch upon in numerous editions of “What Islam Has Done for Me.” Former Nation member Neethy X noted in one such testimony, “I had experienced enough injustice on my job and the knowledge of this injustice to my people was sufficient evidence in my mind to corroborate the fact that the Minister was telling the truth when he said the white man was the real devil.”Footnote 58 Similarly, in other testimonies, women like Ruby Thompson noted that despite gaining her nursing degree her employer treated her as a “maid” and “kitchen help” but that in the Nation she found unity and acceptance.Footnote 59 Other women used the column to highlight how the Nation had equipped them to develop their skills. Women like Elizabeth Hassan, who migrated from South Carolina to Chicago in 1927 in search of work, remarked,
Before accepting Islam I used to try to sew when I came home from work but my efforts were always half-hearted. In Islam there is a class where the women are taught to cook and sew. Here I developed my skills as a seamstress. I sell cosmetics during the day now and use this opportunity to invite all of my customers to judge Islam for themselves …Footnote 60
Nation women's testimonies highlight that for them the Nation was about acceptance of self, empowerment and unity. They credited the organization with transforming their lives and utilized their space in the paper to convey their stories of transformation.
BEYOND THE DOMESTIC SPHERE
Research carried out on the NOI during the early 1960s reveals that the overwhelming majority of their members were working-class and drawn to the organization by what Lincoln defined as its “group solidarity” and “exaggerated sense of consciousness-of-kind.”Footnote 61 The majority of Nation women were undoubtedly lured to the Nation from the working-class communities where the group operated, but a significant number of women were also college-educated professionals.Footnote 62 According to Askia Muhammad, the number of college-educated men and women joining the Nation increased in the early 1970s.Footnote 63 Indeed, MS staff writers Anna Karriem and Harriett Muhammad were both college graduates. The MS newspaper celebrated the successes of women in education and championed women's businesses in the paper. Contributions to the paper by college-educated women and female entrepreneurs illustrate that, for these women, shared experiences of racial discrimination trumped differences in class or educational status. Such features in the paper, however, also contest popular notions that Nation women were dissuaded from pursuing interests beyond the domestic sphere.
Anna Karriem worked as a personal secretary to Elijah Muhammad. Her column, “Islam in Tuskegee,” appeared in the MS newspaper until 1975, when she replaced Askia Muhammad as the paper's editor. Anna joined the Nation in Ohio after working with the Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC) in Tuskegee.Footnote 64 Anna's experiences in Tuskegee and the civil rights movement more broadly drew her to the NOI. She disliked the integration that occurred in SNCC and was left devastated by the horrors she experienced while attempting to register voters in Tuskegee:
The so-called Civil Rights Movement was the cornerstone of my efforts to help improve the conditions of my people here in America. When the devil killed some of my co-workers in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (S.N.C. C) and injured or maimed others, I witnessed cowardness among some of those who shouted “Black Power” the loudest. When some started serving jail sentences because of our confrontations with the devil, again some of my Brothers began pleading for mercy from the devil (that is, those who had not already left town with their devil women) … This is when I became disenchanted because everything I had believed in was crumbling under my feet.Footnote 65
Anna joined the NOI after leaving SNCC but she continued to pursue her education in Tuskegee. Upon her graduation she relocated to Chicago to work for Muhammad and the newspaper.Footnote 66 Anna's articles in the paper often highlighted the problems she encountered within the civil rights movement, but they also reflected her pride in the economic achievements of the Nation. In one article, for example, she noted, “The Nation's ultra-modern printing plant and proposed hospital are prime examples of his [Muhammad's] tireless efforts to put into practice what he has been teaching us.”Footnote 67 In her articles Anna often recalled that the horrors, injustice and involvement of white women in the SNCC left her disillusioned.Footnote 68 Indeed, the fact that she dedicated many of her articles to this topic suggests that her experiences in SNCC left her deeply scarred. Former civil rights activists who joined the NOI noted in their occasional writings for the paper that the de facto racism they experienced shattered any illusions they may have nurtured about integration.Footnote 69 Early histories of the NOI and the civil rights movement portrayed both movements as ideologically far removed from one another. Revisionist work on the civil rights–black power movement challenges this notion and reveals that both movements shared many similarities. Women who left the civil rights movement for the NOI found the gender ideologies governing both movements to be very similar.Footnote 70 Indeed, women in both movements often privately admired the work of their counterparts. Political scientist Jeanne Theoharis, for example, describes Rosa Parks's affection for Malcolm X, noting that she described him as a “brilliant man” and her personal “hero.”Footnote 71
College-educated women were encouraged to inform the newspaper of their academic achievements. Importantly, the stories shared by these women indicate that they understood education not as a means of personal upward social mobility but as a potential way to uplift their communities. Themes of unity and race uplift are prominent in such stories, as indicated in the extract below:
In evaluating her ambitions, sister Portia, who is a candidate for Alpha Psi Omega national honor society of drama said: “My first aspiration is to strive to be a valuable and worthy asset to our Muslim society under the leadership of Mr. Muhammad. Secondly, I would like to teach science, foreign languages or mathematics to our young Muslim boys and girls; finally I would like to continue my studies in foreign languages in order that I may travel and learn more about other cultures and societies. This would enable me to share my experiences and inform my Muslim brothers and sisters”.Footnote 72
Nation women with college degrees were encouraged to take up paid positions in the Nation's schools, which, according to Bayyinah Jeffries, had become operational in several cities.Footnote 73MS ran regular advertisements calling for qualified teachers to apply for positions at Muhammad University of Islam schools where they would find “opportunities unlimited” and “leadership advancement.”Footnote 74 In numerous editions of the paper, the school's female principals were championed and lauded by parents as ideal educators.Footnote 75
Elijah Muhammad actively encouraged his followers to take on the task of creating their own businesses. His economic blueprint for the Nation was composed of four central tenets: unity, pooling resources, observation of “the white man” in business and patronage of black stores.Footnote 76 Nation members did operate their own businesses and many were advertised regularly in MS. Nation women contributed to the organization's model of black entrepreneurship by establishing businesses which in many instances were operated either out of the local temple or from home. Such businesses were featured in every issue of the paper. Among the most common businesses advertised were Hettie's Shoe Store and Sister's Restaurant. Hettie's Shoe Store was operated by Sister Hettie and her husband, Laurence 13X, in Brooklyn, New York. Although advertised as a shoe store, the couple also sold ladies dresses and skirts.Footnote 77 Sister's Restaurant likewise was a family-run business located on Kinney Street, Newark.Footnote 78 Family-run businesses were common in the Nation but so were businesses operated solely by women. Sister D'Vonya's Ice Cream Parlor and Sister Julie's Beauty Salon in Los Angeles were also featured in the paper.Footnote 79 Such businesses are likely to have been relatively small; nevertheless they were encouraged by the Nation and provided Elijah Muhammad with evidence of women's achievements in the organization. Indeed, in interviews with Essien-Udom, Muhammad spoke proudly of how the Nation had assisted entrepreneurial women with the tools they needed to establish their own businesses.Footnote 80 Muhammad exhorted his followers to “pool” their resources and work with one another to establish businesses. In his writings he encouraged NOI members to purchase their clothes and food from fellow Muslims, noting, “A true Muslim would never boycott the place of business of his fellow Muslim … A true Muslim is proud of the success of his black sisters and brothers. He recognizes that their success is his success.”Footnote 81 Nation members benefitted notably from the assistance the organization provided them in establishing and managing their businesses. Indeed, Lawrence Mamiya concluded that the NOI's work ethic and morality turned a largely working-class movement into middle-class one by the time of Imam W. D. Mohammed's succession in 1975.Footnote 82
CONCLUSION
Nation women were not silent bystanders in Elijah Muhammad's NOI. Their contributions to the Muhammad Speaks newspaper indicate that many of them joined the organization independently of men and that they found ways to navigate the patriarchal dimensions of their movement. The celebrations of women's successes in the newspaper contest the notion that women were dissuaded from pursuing interests beyond the domestic sphere. The newspaper's female staff writers undoubtedly reinforced Muhammad's conservative gender ideology, but they also resisted Nation mandates and offered advice that cautioned Nation women to use their own judgement. The content of women's writings for the MS newspaper illustrates that they arrived at the black nationalist organization disillusioned with the cause of the civil rights movement and in search of alternative strategies to improve the lives of their families and communities. Muhammad's gender ideology was read by these women not as oppressive but as sensitive to their realities as black women.
