ELIJAH MUHAMMAD (1897–1975), major leader of the American Black Muslim movement, the Nation of Islam, for forty-one years. Born Robert Elijah Poole on October 10, 1897, near Sandersville, Georgia, he was one of thirteen children of an itinerant Baptist preacher. He attended rural schools but dropped out at the fourth grade to become a sharecropper in order to help his family. In 1919 Poole married Clara Evans and in 1923 his family joined the black migration from the South, moving to Detroit. For six years, until the beginning of the Great Depression, he worked at various jobs in industrial plants. From 1929 to 1931 Poole and his family survived on charity and relief, an experience that was reflected in his later hostility toward any form of public assistance and in his strong emphasis on a program of economic self-help for the Nation of Islam. "Do for self" became his rallying cry.

In 1931 Poole...