HISTORIX Vintage 1964 Elijah Muhammad Photo Print - Old Photo of Elijah Muhammad Addressing an Assembly of Muslim Followers Wall Art Poster

Elijah Muhammad founded the Nation of Islam in the 1930s to promote Black pride, power, and economic development in a period of significant growth during America's progression towards the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. Muhammad would go on to become an influential political leader and mentor to other luminaries such as Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, Muhammad Ali, and his son, Warith Deen Muhammad, who would go on to lead the Nation of Islam. Muhammad was a self-proclaimed messenger of Allah and was among hundreds of thousands of Black southern Americans who formed the first Great Migration to the north during the early portions of the twentieth century.

Upon his family's arrival in Michigan, Muhammad struggled to find employment during the Great Depression. He attended numerous Black Nationalist meetings, which influenced his worldview and political ideology before he eventually converted to Islam under the tutelage of Wallace Fard Muhammad, who would remain an influential figure in Muhammad's early development. Muhammad's experience in his home state of Georgia informed his racial and class consciousness, leading him to advocate for Black American separatist movements that promoted economic independence and keeping communities isolated from groups that took advantage of them. 

This iconic photograph captures Muhammad addressing hundreds of followers in 1964 at the height of the Civil Rights movement as the historic Brown vs. Board of Education ruled segregation unconstitutional only ten years prior. This is an essential piece of American photographic history that transports the viewer back in time.