ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION Malcolm X and, more recently, Louis Farrakhan and the Million Man March are three of the more visible signs of Islam’s influence in the lives and culture of African Americans. Yet, “Islam in the African-American Experience” shows, the involvement of Black Americans with Islam reaches back to the earliest days of the African presence in North America. Part I of the paper explores these roots in West Africa and antebellum America. Part II tells the story of the “Prophets of the City”—the leaders of the new urban-based AfricanAmerican Muslim movements in the twentieth century. My work places the study of Islam in a historical context of racial, ethical, and political relations that influenced the reception of successive and varied presentations of Islam, including the West African Islam of African-American slaves, the multiracial Islam of the Ahmadiyya Movement from India, the orthodox Sunni practice of later immigrants, and the racial-separatist Nation of Islam and Moorish Science Temple of America.
