Introduction Elijah Muhammad is one of the history makers that America has come to appreciate especially in the 20 th century. This is manly based on the fact that he mentored several senior people like Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan. His association with the Nation of Islam equally put him to the limelight, as he headed the movement from the year 1934 to 1975 when he died, leaving his legacy and philosophy enshrined in the history of America (Wright 47). This paper explores the life of Elijah Muhammad and his association with the Nation of Islam. To achieve this, the research paper will source relevant information from authentic academic sources. Elijah Muhammad Elijah Muhammad was born in 1897 in Sandersville, Georgia, to poor parents, who were sharecroppers. His father, William Poole was a preacher and had thirteen children with Mariah Hall, who was a homemaker (Halasa 23). Due to poverty, Elijah failed to complete his studies, and dropped out of school when he was in his fourth grade. He opted to help his parents as a sharecropper because of his tender age. At the age of sixteen, Elijah decided to look for employment in various factories and businesses, moving from city to city. During his early years, Elijah Muhammad witnessed a host of social injustices, which mainly targeted black people in America (Massaquoi 78). At the age of twenty-two years, Elijah married Clara Evans, with whom they had a total of eight children. With an aim of finding a better life for his parents and family, Elijah relocated to Detroit in 1923, where he secured a chance to work with an auto factory. It is believed that his relocation to Michigan was quite significant; that is where he met his mentor, Wallace Fard, who was the pioneer of the Nation of Islam, a separatist association. Elijah succeeded Fard in 1934 as the head of the movement and led it until the time of his death in 1975 (Halasa 82). Throughout his life as the president of the Nation of Islam, Elijah was well-known for his contentious preaching, criticizing social prejudices, and the bad economic state of the nation. His fame grew significantly, and gained supporters and followers like Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan. He was arrested and imprisoned in early 1940s, even though this did not deter him from advancing the ideologies of the Nation of Islam and reclaimed the leadership of the movement immediately after his release in 1946. Nation of Islam As mentioned before, Elijah met Wallace Fard in Chicago, and joined efforts in fighting for the rights of the Black Americans. Before taking the religious path, Fard had worked as a salesman and was now addressing numerous problems facing Americans through his radical sermons. For Elijah Poole to be effective, he changed his religion to become a Muslim and was named, Elijah Muhammad (Halasa 81). This step marked the beginning of a new life for Elijah as he got assimilated into the culture and ideology of the Nation of Islam. In fact, some of the principles proclaimed by Fard, like cosmology were never interpreted as they recognized black people as the original human race while whites were viewed as “devils” (Muhammad 11). Several teachings by the Nation attracted various blacks, including self-reliance, elimination of different forms of oppression, and clean living. Leade