mainly in the South doing sharecropping, land-renting or even in bonded slavery. Some migrated to the North to seek improvement as janitors, porters, maids, cooks, mammies, mail carriers, street cleaners and to face even more slavery, suffering and death, as the brothers in the South.

   No relief to their cries or prayers for justice until about 1930, when a man --A Saviour-Master W.D. Fard, began teaching and searching among Blacks in Detroit, Michigan for a man of the Black condition and experience to LEAD and TEACH the Black man in America and put him on the road to Freedom, Justice, and Equality.

 

Elijah's Coming Foretold in the Bible!

 

    It was written of and foretold by God in Deuteronomy 18:18:

  "I will raise them up a Prophet from among their   brotheren, like unto thee and I will put my words in his mouth and he shall   speak unto them all that I shall command him."

 

    As it was prophesied, now it was fulfilled and true.

    In Malachi 4:2

  "Behold I will send you ELIJAH - The Prophet - just   before the coming of the Great and Dreadful day of the Lord, and he shall   turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and children's hearts to their   father less I smite the Earth with a curse."

 

   Our Leader and Teacher, The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, The Last and Greatest Messenger of Allah, Who came in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad was born the second week of October, 1897 to William and Marie, who went in the name of their former slavemaster-Poole. They lived in an area near Sandersville, Georgia and Desoto, Georgia, which is about five miles into the woods, in a community known as Bold Springs, GA. Bold Springs was a 100 militia district of Washington County, Georgia.

    The Messenger's father, at that time, was a Baptist preacher  and taught sometimes in his church. He sharecropped to earn money for his family, as a farmer.

    The parents loved their children --eight sons and five daughters. But one son --ELIJAH-- even as a child was unusually different. He had a yearn for learning. He studied ways of nature. He would study the Bible and would practice on his Brothers and Sisters as a preacher. He was destined for the future.

   In the back of the church his father preached in, is a family cemetery.

    The family of Messenger Elijah Muhammad moved to Cordell, Georgia about the time when he was about six years old. There, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad worked in the fields, along with his brothers and sisters, planting and plowing behind a mule; reaping and harvesting, picking, planting and chopping crop.

    Schooling was not a required thing for Elijah and the other Blacks in the South, only work, day and night -- night and day.

    The family  of our Leader and Teacher, moved to Cordell in the early 1900's, in an area known as Winona, about five miles south of Cordell.

    The Messenger's family was very poor. They lived across the road from the train depot, where one train a day passed through, which they called: 'The shoe-fly:.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   At all of his jobs, his co-workers, themselves, chose him to be their spokesman or his employer chose him to supervise others.

   Blacks were poor and suffering with no jobs or jobs with very little pay. The beatings, lynchings and tortures of Black people was a frequent and seemingly legal affair.

    Segregation was a way of life. Some Blacks tried to escape by changing their color, using bleaching cream on their skin to lighten it and using lye, other chemicals and hot combs to straighten their hair.

   Our Leader, Messenger Elijah Muhammad moved to Detroit, Michigan. There he worked at American Canning Factory, and Chevrolet and other places. Almost always being chosen by his co-workers or employers as a Leader of men -- to be foreman or supervisor.

    He was always kind and considerate and concerned for his fellow brothers.

   Blacks were still suffering all over America.

    The Poole family, as our leader did not, yet, have the knowledge of his self, nor God, and was yet going in the slavemaster's name. They were living at 8474 Manhattan Street in Hamtramck, an area surrounded by Detroit, Michigan with an outside toilet.

The Messenger meets The Saviour

   In Detroit one day in the latter part of 1931, our leader met with Master W.D. Fard --THE SAVIOUR--Who was Teaching among Blacks at 3208 Hasting Street.

    Our Leader immediately recognized the POWER of THE MESSAGE and THE MAN (MASTER W.D. FARD) Who said that He was God in Person.

    Our Leader, right away, accepted the Truth of the Message and the giver of the Message, seeking more insight, more wisdom, knowledge and more understanding.

   Our Leader's family was poor and suffering. The children; Emmanuel, now 10, Ethel, Nathaniel and Lottie, had little clothing, mostly wearing clothes given to Sister Clara by the people she worked for.

    Emmanuel, remembering said, "They did not know the original color of the clothes as they had so many patches."

   Their shoes were reinforced with cardboard and their father could not afford shoe repair.

    No toys for the children. Only an old tricycle, which their grandfather found and gave to Emmanuel. Ethel had an old rag doll and Emmanuel would wear his mother's shoes to school, only to take them off at the railroad crossing to hide them before continuing on to school, barefooted.

    Meat was on the table about twice a month. Elijah was too poor even to by the poison meat -- The Pig--or pork. Their meat purchases were chicken feet, clipping the toenails before cooking. Sometimes they were able to buy and kill chickens and saved the feathers to make pillows and mattresses. Sour spoiled bean soup was sprinkled with vinegar to kill the taste and odor for eating, but never thrown away.

    Emmanuel would pick thrown away vegetable leaves to feed the family and picked coals along the railroad tracks to burn in the stove for cooking.

   This was the condition then and yet today the Black man in America, to which our Leader and Teacher sought relief had now had a solution.

    Immediately upon accepting the Message of our Saviour, MASTER W.D. FARD, the condition of our Leader and Teacher, who was now called Elijah Karriem, began to be improved. He moved into a home at 3050 Yeamen Street in Detroit, which was owned by Mr. & Mrs. Butler, where Master W.D. Fard paid the first months rent.

    Later he (Messenger Elijah Muhammad) moved to 283, E Hancock Street, in a 2-family home where his brother Kalat and family lived on the first floor.

    The Temple of Islam was located at Chene and Chestnut Street, now a vacant lot. Then 3408 Hastings Street and later at Adams and St. Antione Street.

    In 1931, Sister Clara Muhammad wrote and told her mother that they had met A SAVIOUR. Sister Muhammad's mother did not want to believe her, but Sister Muhammad was very stanch in her belief.

    Always interested to reach the, then 17,000,000 of our Black people, in the wilderness of North America, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad started up a weekly newspaper called the Final Call to Islam, to give the message of his mission a larger audience.

    On September 5, 1934, Messenger Elijah Muhammad and his family took up residence in Chicago, Illinois at 5830 South Wabash Avenue. Later they moved to 3735 South Giles.

    In the late 1930's they moved to 5308 they moved South Wabash.

   In he meantime, as the Messenger was chased by enemies to be killed, his family and followers held fast to the handle of Islam. The men, known as the Fruit of Islam, worked. Their wives an daughters stayed home to cook, sew, and take care of their home and raise their children.

    Sister Clara Muhammad, the one and only wife of the Messenger, carried out instructions of her husband, assigning work duties to the children, requiring that they completed their work; keeping a close discipline, loving family at the accepted ridicule for attending the Muslim school classes in homes and for even being clean and self-respecting and wearing long dresses and covering their heads.