The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X

Payne gives the background of several key figures that led to the NOI as Malcolm would find it.

First, Timothy Drew was a North Carolina man who rejected black inferiority and the white preference he saw in Christianity. The details of Drew’s introduction to Islam are unclear, but it impressed him. He viewed Islam as the best tool for black unity and founded the Moorish Science Temple (using the term “moors” because he preached that Morocco was the true homeland of every dark-skinned person). He adapted orthodox Islam into a system he thought was well suited to black people in America. He anointed himself “Prophet Noble Drew Ali” (239) in 1913. Drew combined UNIA with Islam. He encouraged followers to drop their surnames and replace them with “El” or “bey.” Ali built temples in twelve cities and placed his headquarters in Chicago. He eschewed attacks on whites as he appropriated rituals and customs from the Masons and the Shriners. In 1929, police arrested him for the murder Claude Green-bey, the temple’s money manager. After being found innocent, he died later that year from pneumonia.

W.D. Fard created the Nation of Islam (NOI). It was almost identical to the Moorish Science Temple and overlapped philosophically with UNIA.