UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Noble Drew Ali and the Moorish Science Temple

167 Pages·2014·1.1 MB·English

UC Riverside
UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
Noble Drew Ali and the Moorish Science Temple: A Study in Race, Gender, and African
American Religion, 1913-1930
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6jz222xw
Author
Wilms, Stephanie Ann
Publication Date
2014

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
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University of California
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
RIVERSIDE

Noble Drew Ali and the Moorish Science Temple:
A Study in Race, Gender, and African American Religion, 1913-1930

A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction
of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in

History

by

Stephanie Ann Wilms

August 2014

Dissertation Committee:
Dr. V.P. Franklin, Chairperson
Dr. Rebecca Kugel
Dr. Dylan Rodriguez
Copyright by
Stephanie Ann Wilms
2014
This Dissertation of Stephanie Ann Wilms is approved:

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

__________________________________________
Committee Chairperson

University of California, Riverside
Acknowledgements

This dissertation was made possible by the generous support of V.P. Franklin,
Emory University’s Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Books Library, and the University of
California Center for New Racial Studies. There were also many professors and graduate
student colleagues who constantly provided me with necessary insights into my work and
the community needed to complete a project of this magnitude; you know who you are,
thank you. I would also like to acknowledge the support of my family, who gave me the
love, support, and refuge I needed to make it through this process.

iv
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Noble Drew Ali and the Moorish Science Temple:
A Study in Race, Gender, and African American Religion, 1913-1930

by

Stephanie Ann Wilms

Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in History
University of California, Riverside, August 2014
Dr. V.P. Franklin, Chairperson

“Noble Drew Ali and The Moorish Science Temple: A Study of Race, Gender, and
African American Religion, 1913-1930” examines the historical roots of the 20th century
proto-Islamic phenomenon, arguing that the group’s seemingly quirky identity formation
was not random and in fact is supported by a number of historical contingencies that
when explored reveal Moorish Science as a sophisticated response to a violent racial
caste system in American society. Through the use of a number of newly unearthed
historical documents, photographs, newspapers, and scholarly secondary material, this
dissertation presents a portrait of the development of Moorish Science that contends with
previous analysis of the group as marginal and explains their theology as a hodge-podge
of esoteric religious formations randomly thrown together. Instead, it shows the very
deliberate conglomeration of seemingly disparate beliefs as something well intentioned
and fashioned according to the cultural material available to Noble Drew Ali in early
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twentieth century America. It shows that there was a larger web of cultural connectivity
available to Americans during this early period that allowed for a greater rate of
syncretism, exchange, and fluidity than has previously been discussed. It takes into
account the influence Marcus Mosiah Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement
Association (UNIA) had on Moorish Science, the impact of freemasonry and
photography in the success and spread of Moorish Science, and the role of women within
the early Temple.

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Table of Contents

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….1
Chapter 1: In the Beginning: Origin Stories of Noble Drew Ali……..……………..…...17
Chapter 2: “One God, One Aim, One Destiny”: Garveyism and the Formation of African
American Islam …………………………………….…………………………….……...47
Chapter 3: Women in the Formation and Development of the Moorish Science Temple of
America…………………………………………………………………………….….....77
Chapter 4: Symbolism and Science: African American Freemasonry and Photography in
Moorish Science Temple of America…………………………………….…………….101
Chapter 5: The Final Days of Noble Drew Ali.……………………...…………………128
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...145
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………152

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List of Figures

Figure 1.1………………………………………………………………………………...32
Figure 1.2………………………………………………………………………………...35
Figure 2.1………………………………………………………………………………...67
Figure 4.1……………………………………………………………………………….107
Figure 4.2……………………………………………………………………………….111
Figure 4.3……………………………………………………………………………….118
Figure 4.4……………………………………………………………………………….120
Figure 4.5……………………………………………………………………………….120
Figure 4.6……………………………………………………………………………….121
Figure 4.7……………………………………………………………………………….122
Figure 4.8……………………………………………………………………………….123

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Introduction
In the 1920s and 1930s the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA), under
the leadership of Noble Drew Ali, popularized a unique version of Islam among African
Americans in the United States. Historians and social scientists have noted the
importance of the movement in the development of Islam in African American
communities. Anthropologist Arthur Huff Fauset acknowledged that, “The Black
Muslims are directly descended from the Moorish Science Temple…. The tenuous
thread, woven by Noble Drew Ali in long-ago tiny missions in Detroit, Chicago, and
Newark, has penetrated the labyrinthine political maze all the way to the Black
Panthers.”1 Moorish Science, therefore, has been an important element in the
development of African American Islam in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Historian Aminah Beverly McCloud acknowledged that “Islamic belief in the Moorish
community focused on central Qur’anic concepts such as justice, a purposeful creation of
mankind, freedom of will, and humankind as the generator of personal action (both good
and bad).”2 Historians Yvonne Y. Haddad and Jane Idleman Smith suggested that,
“Noble Drew Ali was perhaps the first African-American Islamic sectarian leader to
invoke basic Islamic symbols to unite Americans of African descent… He understood
that in order for a people to have any sense of its own worth, it was necessary for it to
have an identity, a name, a land.”3
Historian of religion Richard Brent Turner argued that, “The Moorish Science
Temple of America was the first mass religious movement in the history of Islam in
America.”4 The significance of this group as the progenitor of Islam in the American
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