Grand Sheik Frederick Turner-El SCLC FBI file records

In 2015, the FBI released online its file on the SCLC.

Surprisingly, the file contains a few references to MSTA leader Grand Sheik Frederick Turner-El, who was briefly investigated by the FBI in the mid-1960s after he called up the SCLC and expressed his concern over a 'great slur' being used on Martin Luther King, Jr. The short investigation reveals small details in Turner-El's interesting life. Perhaps the most important piece of new data in this document is the revelation that Turner-El may have possibly traveled with his missionary mother for eight years (1920- ca. 1927) in the Middle East.

I have collected the pages on GSFTE and put them online to download here.

My interview on New Books in Islamic Studies

http://newbooksnetwork.com/patrick-bowen-a-history-of-conversion-to-islam-in-the-united-states-vol-1-white-american-muslims-before-1975-brill-2015/

Mapping Memories of Madagascar

Wendy Wilson-Fall's new, important project. From the website:

Researcher: Wendy Wilson-Fall, Africana Studies
Project Description: This digital humanities project was born out of the realization that mapping would be a great way to document the geographic locations of the family narratives and plantations tied to planters who bought Malagasy slaves between 1719 and 1721, as discussed in my book, Memories of Madagascar and Slavery in the Black Atlantic (Ohio University Press, 2015). As I came to the end of that book project, I also realized that I could perhaps learn something more from a visualization of the human geography of the Malagasy migration experiences of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
For these reasons, I turned to Lafayette’s digital technology staff  at the Skillman Library.  Several discussions with the Director of Digital Technologies, Eric Luhrs, helped me to understand more about the digital humanities, and I was encouraged to work with a newly hired Digital GIS Visualization specialist, John Clark.  John and I spent many hours and had numerous meetings to discuss the possibilities that a digital humanities approach could bring to further exploring the subject of African American narratives about Malagasy ancestors.  We also spent a lot of time talking about and researching American trade in the Indian Ocean.  Eventually, we applied for a series of grants.
Through support from a Mellon Grant for Digital Humanities that was awarded to Lafayette, we joined other colleagues who had embarked on digital humanities projects. We organized a meeting with Reber Dunkel, formally a professor at  Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. Reber is well versed in local Virginia history and was instrumental in helping me to gather information from families in the Ashland-Hanover area. Second, I reached out to interested students, and in June 2015, two student assistants, Jethro Israel and Clara Randimbiarimanana ( a student from Madagascar), John Clark and I traveled to the Peabody Essex Museum library in Salem, Massachusetts to spend several days poring over ship logs, captains’ journals, and business notes from the sailing community of New England during its heyday of Indian Ocean trade. This effort led us to the current stage of the project: exploring the conditions and networks that would have made it possible for Malagasy sailors and merchants to travel with American ships to the United States between 1790 and 1850.
- See more at: http://digital.lafayette.edu/collections/madagascar

Detroit, 1953

NYT Article on Early Mosque in NYC

"Mosque Shows That Muslims Have Long Been a Part of New York" By DAVID W. DUNLAP DEC. 9, 2015

See also "Islam has long history downtown: Why the 'Ground Zero mosque' belongs in lower Manhattan"

Another Early 'White' Muslim Converted by the NOI

As I've delved deeper into the research for my forthcoming book A History of Conversion to Islam in the United States Volume 2: The African American Islamic Renaissance, I've discovered a few pieces of information that I wish I had found for my book on early white American Muslims.

The first is the story of a woman whose family all identified publicly as white, but she insisted she was Native American. She embraced Islam through the Nation of Islam in the 1940s and remained a member of the group for the next several decades.

Today I spotted another story. It is interesting that this person's conversion narrative, as you can see below, is similar in that the convert is claiming to possibly have a secret non-white family history. Interestingly, although the crossing of racial boundaries was not a widespread phenomenon among pre-1975 non-black converts to Islam, it does seem to have also existed somewhat, if only at a social level, for several whites and Latinos in non-NOI Muslim groups. And, based on my preliminary research, it appears to me that it was an increasing trend for converts after 1975. As I finish up HCTIUS Volume 2 and begin work on Volume 3, I believe the issue of racial border crossing through Islam will be an important topic on which I hope to shed much more light.

Washington, 1942

See also "Chicago, 1942"