Researching the Universities of Islam: Experiences of a Novice Historian

• In Event: How Historians Think: Researching African American Education, Thought, and Activism

Abstract

Objective
The purpose of this paper is to examine the actual and projected methods in use for a research project, to probe the reasoning behind the steps taken in the research project, and to reflect on the challenges encountered by the researcher in conducting the project. The research project in question is a study of formal education in the Nation of Islam (NOI), a black nationalist Muslim group founded in the 1930s and still in existence today. Education has been a central feature of the group’s religious program since its earliest days, with men, women, and children participating in classes purposed to teach the essentials of each NOI member’s gendered role in the organization.[7] The NOI has also from its earliest days engaged in formal primary and secondary schooling, with the first University of Islam being founded in Detroit in 1932 and the second in Chicago in 1934.[8] These schools, their curricula, and their purpose according to the leadership of the NOI, are the subject of this research project.

Perspective
This paper examines a case study of a research project in its beginning stages, focusing on the process of gathering information about a rarely-investigated aspect of African American educational history, the racially separate primary schools run by the Nation of Islam.

Methods
Archival research; oral history.

Data Sources
Sources include Muhammad Speaks, the Nation of Islam’s long-running and nationally distributed newspaper; other NOI publications such as Elijah Muhammad’s Message to the Blackman in America and Christine Claybourne Johnson’s Muhammad's Children: A First Grade Reader; FBI files on the Nation of Islam and NOI head Elijah Muhammad; and (auto)biographical works on NOI members, such as Claude Andrew Clegg III’s An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad, and Sonsyrea Tate’s Little X: Growing Up in the Nation of Islam; oral history interviews with NOI-affiliated individuals; and NOI-related artifacts.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions
The text-based sources accessed to date clearly indicate that the purpose of the Universities of Islam was to provide an identity-affirming education to African American children who would encounter only prejudice and misinformation about blacks in public schools.[9] Oral history interviews and access to additional archival materials will shed more light on the specific mechanisms by which the Nation of Islam schools hoped to inculcate an appreciation of African American heritage and history in black children.

Scholarly significance
This paper is intended to explicitly address the historical methods planned, attempted, and/or discarded during the beginning stages of a research project. This is significant because it offers an opportunity to discuss how new historians, through deliberation, experience, and reflection, decide how to approach their chosen historical subject.

Author

• Lindsey Elizabeth Jones, University of Virginia