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Nation Women's Engagement and Resistance in the Muhammad Speaks Newspaper

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2014

DAWN-MARIE GIBSON
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Abstract

This paper examines Nation women's engagement and resistance in the Muhammad Speaks (MS) newspaper. MS was created as the official publication of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam (NOI) in 1960. The paper employed women as journalists and invited contributions from women who had registered with the group. Women's contributions to the paper's production and content reveal their readings of NOI mandates but they equally illuminate a gentle resistance to aspects of the organization. Elijah Muhammad's NOI implemented gender roles for men and women within the organization that were often inflexible. Women embraced the organization's gender roles and found ways to navigate the patriarchal dimensions of the movement. This paper argues that a careful analysis of women's writings for the MS newspaper reveals facets of their activism that have been overlooked in existing scholarly studies.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , February 2015 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2014 

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References

1 There are, however, a few exceptions. Taylor, Ula, “As-Salaam Alaikum, My Sister: The Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Women Who Followed Him” was published in Race and Society, 1, 2 (1998), 177–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Russell Rickford's biography of Malcolm's widow, Betty Shabazz, Surviving Malcolm X (Napervill, IL: Sourcebooks, 2005), provides some comments on Nation women but does not consider women beyond Betty's friendship circle. There are also a number of unpublished doctoral dissertations that examine women's lives in the NOI. These include Bayyinah Jeffries, “A Nation Can Rise No Higher than Its Women: The Critical Role of Black Muslim Women in the Development and Purveyance of Black Consciousness, 1945–1975” (Michigan State University, 2009); Kathy Muhammad, “Humble Warrioress: Women in the Nation of Islam. A Comparative Study 1930–1975 and 1978–2000” (Union Institute and University Cincinnati, Ohio, 2008); Ajile Rahman, “She Stood by His Side and at Times in His Stead: The Life and Legacy of Sister Clara Muhammad: First Lady of the Nation of Islam” (Clark-Atlanta University, 2000); and Cynthia West, “Nation Builders: Female Activism in the Nation of Islam 1960–1970” (Temple University, 1994). Collectively, these works make important interventions in extant scholarship and highlight the varied ways in which womanist scholars and historians are challenging conventional interpretations of women's experiences in Elijah Muhammad's NOI.

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