new info on the "Mullah of San Quentin"

In my recent article on Lucius Lehman, I discuss his short stint as a "speaking in tongues" translator for the Azusa Street Revival in its early days. I gave all the information I had at the time of my writing of the article.

Just today, however, I finally obtained a copy of a national Holiness newspaper from the period--The Pentecostal Herald--that contained a little bit of new data on Lucius. The relevant excerpt from October 3, 1906 is as follows:

"Expert linguists have gone among them [the Pentecostals] to 'expose the fallacy [of speaking in tongues],' and have been confounded to hear languages and dialects from maidens and young women whom they knew, and who confessed they did not themselves know what they were speaking, but the linguist knew, and was pricked to the heart. And one, sent by the Los Angeles Examiner was converted from Mohammedanism to Christianity as a consequence of what one woman said to him in a language which, perhaps, no one in Los Angeles knew but himself, and which she herself had no idea as to what it was she said to him. And when she asked him what she had said, he said: 'Then if you do not know, only God and I shall ever know a part of what you have said to me.' He afterwards said that she had warned him of a sin in his life and the consequent judgment before God if not forgiven, and that this warning had been the cause of his conversion. He never wrote the 'expose' for the Examiner, but when he offered to write the truth concerning it they declined and turned him away."

This article is the first to explicitly state that Lucius rejected Islam in favor of Christianity at the time (previously, all that was stated was that he had joined the movement). Unfortunately, we don't  know how long he continued to claim a Christian affiliation.  We do know, however, that Lucius left Azusa Street in less than a month, and by 1917 was openly professing his faith in and training in Islam. This new article at least adds a new, if small piece to Lucius' religious biography.

The article is important for 2 other reasons as well. It suggests that Lucius may have felt guilty for a previous crime--perhaps the rape of his stepdaughter for which he was convicted? It also indicates that Lucius may have written pieces for LA's newspapers. Hopefully future researchers will be able to find out if these exist.

See the full article here:  http://www.academia.edu/3731536/The_Colored_Genius_Lucius_Lehman_and_the_Californian_Roots_of_Modern_African-American_Islam

2 new articles: U.S. Latina/o Muslims and Lucius Lehman, the "Mullah of San Quentin"

Over the past 5 years, I have been researching conversion to Islam in the U.S. from a variety of perspectives. Although I have written several essays on U.S. converts from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds, recently my work has focused on early African-American conversions, and when I originally started out on this path I spent a lot of time studying U.S. Latina/o Muslims--both of which are subjects I hope to continue to stay with in the years to come.

The first of these essays, 'U.S. Latina/o Muslims Since 1920: From “Moors” to “Latino Muslims”' is a product of my earliest historical research. Drawing from my previous work on the topic as well as an interview with Ibrahim Gonzalez, an important early Latina/o Muslim leader, this article provides an overview of the history of Latina/o Muslim converts in the U.S. It discusses their early years in African-American-majority organizations, the growing frequency of encounters with immigrant Muslims, and the increased desire to form a "latino Muslim" identity to address the community's unique social needs.

The article can be accessed here: http://0-onlinelibrary.wiley.com.bianca.penlib.du.edu/doi/10.1111/1467-9809.12026/abstract

UPDATE: I just learned that Ibrahim Gonzalez, who graciously agreed to do a several-hour long interview over two days with me in late 2010, passed away on June 3. Mr. Gonzalez played a key role in the development of the U.S. Latina/o Muslim community and, through his many socially-minded and musical activities, made numerous  other contributions to the improvement of society. Please visit his online memorial.

The second paper is "‘The Colored Genius’: Lucius Lehman and the Californian Roots of Modern African-American Islam". This article came about after looking through 1920s' issues of the UNIA's "Negro World" newspaper and coming across an interesting article written by--as the newspaper called him--the "Mullah of San Quentin." I found this title very interesting as there has long been a rumor that Wallace Fard, the founder of the Nation of Islam, had bee incarcerated in San Quentin Prison in the 1920s, where he went by the name of Wallace or Wallie Ford. As it turns out, this Mullah, who went by the name Lucius, had left San Quentin a few years before Ford's arrival. But, as I delved further into his background, I learned that not only was Lucius himself an interesting figure whose life deserved at least an article-length treatment, he was a black nationalist Muslim connected to the Garvey movement at the same time that Islam and Garveyism were uniting in other parts of the country, and so his connections to the movement may provide insight into the Islamic Black Nationalism that was emerging across the country in the 1920s.

You can read the article here: http://cultandculture.org/culture/index.php/issues/25-culture-82-spring-2013/89-the-colored-genius-lucius-lehman-and-the-californian-roots-of-modern-african-american-islam.html

and you can download a pdf here: http://www.academia.edu/3731536/The_Colored_Genius_Lucius_Lehman_and_the_Californian_Roots_of_Modern_African-American_Islam

New Paper: Notes on the MSTA Schisms in Detroit and Pittsburgh, 1928-29

I wrote this paper back in February for the ALI'S MEN-sponsored East Coast Moorish Men’s Brotherhood Summit that was held in March. As the title indicates, I examine known documents concerning the schisms that took place in the Detroit and Pittsburgh MSTA temples in 1928-29. I chose these two temples because they are particularly important for the history of Islam in America. 

*click to enlarge* This is a photo from the MSTA convention in 1928, and in this front row of people are MSTA leaders from that time. Noble Drew Ali is standing and wearing a white turban and robe. Lomax/Ezaldeen is the man standing to the right of Drew Ali and Crumby Bey is one of these men--perhaps the man seated to the immediate left of Drew Ali. [UPDATED 9/22/14 based on info from anonymous commenter. I had originally based my description off of an old newspaper article that listed these men's names in the photo caption but was vague about who was who.]

The schism in Detroit was directed by the temple's first leader, James Lomax, who formed what may have been called the "Mohammedan Church Temple." Noble Drew Ali reportedly personally came to Detroit to remove Lomax from his position and accused him of grafting funds from the temple, though at his trial a month later, Lomax was found innocent of the charge. The schism, though, still resulted in violence, including a shootout with police, six months before Ira Johnson's in Chicago. 

Ultimately, the Detroit temple schism had major implications for the future of Islam in America. Fearing for his life, Lomax fled from Detroit and ended up in, first, Turkey, where he struggled to start a colony for African American Muslims, and then Egypt where he was trained by an important emerging Sunni organization. Now going as Muhammad Ezaldeen, he returned to the U.S. in late 1936 and became, with Sheik Daoud Faisal, one of the leading African-American Sunni leaders in the 1930s to 1950s, organizing and uniting Muslims all along the East Coast (from New York to Florida) and as far west as Detroit. His group, the AAUAA, which still exists today, even developed connections to Malcolm X.

The 1929 schism also resulted in Detroit's MSTA community falling into great disunity, which allowed for a Wallace Fard to bring many former MSTA members together in 1930 with a new, but similar teaching--the doctrines of the Nation of Islam.

Photo of Pittsburgh MSTA temple after bombing in November 1929

The Pittsburgh temple's schism may be no less important in terms of its impact on Islam in America. The schism ultimately led to Walter Smith Bey, who most likely was a leader in the temple, leaving the MSTA and joining Qadiani Ahmadiyya Islam under Muhammad Yusuf Khan and Sufi Bengalee. Khan made Smith Bey--now known as Nasir Ahmad--the first African-American Ahmadi sheik in the Ohio River Valley region. Khan and Ahmad, who retained as followers several former MSTA members, led the impressive spread of Ahmadi Islam in the region (and out to Philadelphia) in the early 1930s. In the mid-1930s, when the black Ahmadi community began rejecting Qadiani leadership in favor of Lahori and Sunni teachers, it became the core base of African-American "Sunnis" in the U.S. When Lomax returned to the U.S., he connected with Ahmad (who was one of the first members of the AAUAA) and used the Ohio-Pennsylvania Sunnis as his base community for spreading Sunni Islam to other parts of the country.

You can download this paper at my Academia.edu website: http://www.academia.edu/3672537/Notes_on_the_MSTA_Schisms_in_Detroit_and_Pittsburgh_1928-29