These African American men embraced Islam to fight racial injustices in America during the civil rights movement

Louis Farrakhan

Louis Abdul Farrakhan, original name Louis Eugene Walcott, (born May 11, 1933, Bronx, New York, New York, U.S.). He is the leader of the Nation of Islam, an African American movement that combined elements of Islam with black nationalism since 1978.

Farrakhan was raised in Boston by his mother, Sarah Mae Manning, an immigrant from St. Kitts and Nevis. Deeply religious as a boy, he became active in the St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church in his Roxbury neighborhood. 

In 1955 he joined the Nation of Islam. Following the custom of the Nation, he replaced his surname with an “X,” a custom among Nation of Islam followers who considered their family names to have originated with white slaveholders. 

Louis X first proved himself at Temple No. 7 in Harlem, where he emerged as the protégé of Malcolm X, the minister of the temple and one of the most prominent members of the Nation of Islam. Louis X was given his Muslim name, Abdul Haleem Farrakhan, by Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. Farrakhan was appointed the head minister of Boston Temple No. 11, which Malcolm had established earlier.

Farrakhan became known to the American public through a series of controversies that began during the 1984 presidential campaign of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, whom Farrakhan supported.

In 1995 the Nation sponsored the Million Man March in Washington, D.C., to promote African American unity and family values.