Elijah Muhammad’s greatest social empha-
ses included the need for the community to
become socially and economically self-sufficient
and independent of the cycle of post–Civil War
urban and rural poverty, drugs, and violence, as
well as dependence on government welfare that
he felt was leaching the strength and motive force
from the community. He implemented strong
directives throughout the NOI (which had a great
impact on nonmembers in the African-American
community as well) to adopt a healthful lifestyle
through a change in diet and nutrition, which he
advocated in his two-volume How to Eat to Live.
This book taught the virtues of abandoning the
nutritional habits of “soul food,” which had its
origins among blacks in the American South and
was associated with the culture of black rural
poverty. Muhammad’s health agenda included
prohibiting alcohol, smoking, and drugs (for
their economic and health consequences, as well
as the traditional Islamic one, that person cannot
be spiritual aware, ritually prepared, or morally
responsible if she or he is impaired by alcohol or
drugs). Followers were expected to follow these
standards in their conduct, as well as dress and
comport themselves in public and private in a
way that bolstered self-respect and respect for
the community by nonmembers, white or black.
Male community members still follow the dress
code and style established by the founder in the
1930s—the blue or gray business suit, white
shirt with red bow-tie. Female members model
themselves on the modified veil and long full
dress worn by the founder’s wife, “Sister” Clara
Muhammad (d. 1972). Elijah Muhammad further
advocated that the community achieve economic
self-sufficiency and independence from white
business and government aid through his phi-
losophy of “buy Black”: be self- or community-
employed, create and foster NOI product lines
(such as household, health-care, and hygiene
products; homemade food products; and the
community newspaper, Muhammad Speaks), and
support local black business (which had been rig-
orously discouraged or eliminated by large-scale
white competition in the 1930s), keeping black
dollars inside the black community. The last and,
perhaps, most important item in his social/reli-
gious agenda was the founding of a NOI school
system as an alternative to the U.S. K–12 public
system. Such school systems taught basic literacy
and history of the world and of the Blackman
according to NOI cosmology discussed above.
The community came to its greatest public
and media notice during the civil rights era of
the 1960s, when m
alcolm
X served as chief lieu-
tenant for Elijah Muhammad and as public rela-
tions spokesperson for the NOI. His charismatic
speaking style carried the message of the NOI to
universities across America as well as in media
interviews with famous journalists and television
personalities of the day, such as Mike Wallace’s
1959 documentary The Hate That Hate Produced.
The NOI charted a more verbally militant and
aggressive stance in relation to white America
than the parallel Christian civil rights leader, Mar-
tin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68), and it came under
much negative public, media, government/law
enforcement attention. It is now well documented
in recently declassified FBI documents that the
then director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, pursued
a long-standing campaign of harassment and
media disinformation against the NOI in order
to discredit the organization and, if possible, to
disband it. One of the issues the NOI has pursued
throughout its history until the present day is a
strong prison outreach and conversion ministry,
tied to rehabilitation in the NOI community upon
release. As seen in Malcolm X’s own
aUtobiogra
-
phy
, this activity has had a significant impact on
prison populations and improved their constitu-
tional religious rights to freedom of worship.
Both a sex scandal associated with Elijah
Muhammad’s behavior within the community
and Malcolm’s public remarks on the death of
President John F. Kennedy in 1963 about “chick-
ens coming home to roost” caused Malcolm X
to be censured. In 1964 he broke away from the
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