Louis Farrakhan (born Louis Eugene Walcott, later Louis X; May 11, 1933) is an American religious leader who has been the head of the Nation of Islam since 1981, a new religious movement which combines black nationalism and Islamic terminology. Prior to the Nation of Islam, Farrakhan was a calypso singer who used the stage name Calypso Gene from 1950 to 1955 and a violinist from 1939 to 1955. The longest-serving Nation of Islam leader, he also served as minister of several mosques in Boston and Harlem in the 1950s under the leadership of Elijah Muhammad.
After the death of Elijah Muhammad, his son Warith Deen Mohammed reorganized the original NOI into the orthodox Sunni Islamic group American Society of Muslims. Farrakhan began to rebuild the NOI as "Final Call". In 1981, he officially adopted the name "Nation of Islam", reviving the group and establishing its headquarters at Mosque Maryam. In October 1995, Farrakhan organized and led the Million Man March in Washington, D.C. Due to health issues, he reduced his responsibilities with the NOI in 2007. However, Farrakhan has continued to deliver sermons and speak at NOI events. In 2015, he led the 20th Anniversary of the Million Man March: Justice or Else.
Farrakhan has made many statements that have been condemned as antisemitic, homophobic or racist against white people, and he has been a controversial figure for such remarks. His antisemitic statements and views have been condemned by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL),* and other organizations. Farrakhan has also been criticized for being homophobic and sexist. He has denied assertions that he is antisemitic, racist, sexist, or anti-gay. Farrakhan was banned from Facebook in 2019 along with other public figures Meta considered to be political or religious extremists, and the official Nation of Islam YouTube channel was removed for "hate speech" in 2020.
Early life and education Farrakhan, who is Black, was born Louis Eugene Walcott on May 11, 1933 in the Bronx, New York City. He is the younger of two sons of Sarah Mae Manning (1900–1988) and Percival Clark, immigrants from the Anglo-Caribbean islands. His mother was born in Saint Kitts, while his father was Jamaican. The couple separated before their second son was born, and Walcott says he never knew his biological father. Walcott was named after Louis Walcott, a man with whom his mother had a relationship after becoming separated from Percival Clark. In a 1996 interview with Henry Louis Gates Jr., Walcott speculated that Percival Clark, "a light-skinned man with straight hair from Jamaica", may have been Jewish.
After Walcott's stepfather died in 1936, the Walcott family moved to Boston, where they settled in the largely African-American neighborhood of Roxbury.
Walcott received his first violin at the age of five. By the time he was 12 years old, he had been on tour with the Boston College Orchestra. A year later, he participated in national competitions and won them. In 1946, he was one of the first black performers to appear on the Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour, where he also won an award. Walcott and his family were active members of the Episcopal St. Cyprian's Church in Roxbury.
Walcott attended the Boston Latin School, and later attended and graduated from the English High School. He completed three years at Winston-Salem Teachers College, where he had a track scholarship.
In 1953, Walcott married Betsy Ross, later known as Khadijah Farrakhan, while he was in college. Due to complications from his new wife's first pregnancy, Walcott dropped out after completing his junior year of college to devote time to his wife and their child.
Music career In the 1950s, Walcott began his professional music career as a singer billed as "The Charmer". It was during a tour in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, that he took this nickname. At this point, earning $500 a week, Walcott was touring the northeastern and midwestern United States, sometimes also using the nickname "Calypso Gene".
In 1953–1954, preceding Harry Belafonte's success with his album Calypso (released in 1956), he recorded and released a dozen cheeky, funny tunes as "The Charmer" in a mixed mento/calypso style, including "Ugly Woman", "Stone Cold Man" and calypso standards like "Zombie Jamboree", "Hol 'Em Joe", "Mary Ann" and "Brown Skin Girl". Some were reissued: "Don't Touch Me Nylon" has mild, explicit sexual lyrics as well as "Female Boxer", which contains some sexist overtones and "Is She Is, Or Is She Ain't" (inspired by Christine Jorgensen's sex change operation).Farrakhan's Is She Is, Or Is She Ain't and Don’t Touch Me Nylon calypso tunes (as The Charmer) were reissued here:
When Farrakhan joined the NOI, he was asked by Elijah Muhammad to put aside his musical career as a calypso singer. After many years, Farrakhan decided to take up the violin once more primarily due to the urging of prominent classical musician Sylvia Olden Lee.
On April 17, 1993, Farrakhan made his return concert debut with performances of the Violin Concerto in E Minor by Felix Mendelssohn. Farrakhan intimated that his performance of a concerto by a Jewish composer was, in part, an effort to heal a rift between him and the Jewish community. (Mendelssohn's family converted to Christianity). The New York Times music critic Bernard Holland reported that Farrakhan's performance was somewhat flawed due to years of neglect, but "nonetheless Mr. Farrakhan's sound is that of the authentic player. It is wide, deep and full of the energy that makes the violin gleam."'
In 2021, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, Farrakhan performed Violin Concerto in D Major Op. 61 with the New World Symphony.
Nation of Islam
In February 1955, Walcott was headlining a show in Chicago, Illinois, called Calypso Follies. There he first came in contact with the teachings of the Nation of Islam (NOI) through Rodney Smith, a friend and saxophonist from Boston. Walcott and his wife Betsy were invited to the Nation of Islam's annual Saviours' Day address by Elijah Muhammad. Prior to going to Saviours' Day, due to then-Minister Malcolm X's media presence, Walcott had never heard of Elijah Muhammad, and like many outside of the Nation of Islam, he thought that Malcolm X was the leader of the Nation of Islam.
In 1955, Walcott fulfilled the requirements to be a registered Muslim/registered believer/registered laborer. He memorized and recited verbatim the 10 questions and answers of the NOI's Student Enrollment. He then wrote a Saviour's Letter that must be sent to the NOI's headquarters in Chicago. The Saviour's Letter must be copied verbatim, and have the identical handwriting of the Nation of Islam's founder, Wallace Fard Muhammad.
After having the Saviour's Letter reviewed and approved by the NOI's headquarters in Chicago in July 1955, Walcott received a letter of approval from the Nation of Islam acknowledging his official membership as a registered Muslim/registered believer/registered laborer in the NOI. As a result, he received his "X." The "X" was considered a placeholder, used to indicate that Nation of Islam members' original African family names had been lost. They acknowledged that European surnames were slave names, assigned by the slaveowners in order to mark their ownership. Members of the NOI used the "X" while they were waiting for their Islamic names, which some NOI members received later in their conversions.
Hence, Louis Walcott became Louis X. Elijah Muhammad then replaced his "X" with the "holy name" Farrakhan, which is a corruption of the Arabic word فرقان furqan, which means "The Criterion". On a very different tone from his calypso songs, he recorded two tunes as Louis X, criticizing racism in A White Man's Heaven Is a Black Man's Hell, a record album which was issued on Boston's A Moslem Sings label in 1960.Farrakhan's A White Man's Heaven Is a Black Man's Hell activist song as Louis X was reissued here. The summer after Farrakhan's conversion, Elijah Muhammad stated that all musicians in the NOI had to choose between music and the Nation of Islam.
Early ministry roles (1956–1980) After nine months of being a registered Muslim in the NOI and a member of Muhammad's Temple of Islam in Boston, where Malcolm X was the minister, Farrakhan became his assistant minister. Eventually he became the official minister after Elijah Muhammad transferred Malcolm X to Muhammad's Temple of Islam No. 7 on West 116th St. in Harlem, New York City. Louis X wrote in the Dec. 4, 1964, issue of Muhammad Speaks, the organization's newspaper: "The dye is set and Malcolm shall not escape. Such a man is worthy of death."
After Malcolm X's assassination in 1965, Elijah Muhammad appointed Farrakhan to two prominent positions that Malcolm held before being dismissed from the NOI. Farrakhan became the national spokesman/representative of the NOI and was appointed minister of the influential Harlem Mosque, where he served until 1975. Warith Deen Mohammed, the seventh son of Elijah and Clara Muhammad, was declared the new leader of the Nation of Islam at the annual Saviours' Day Convention in February 1975, a day after his father died. He made substantial changes in the organization in the late 1970s, taking most of its members into a closer relationship with orthodox Islam, and renaming the group "World Community of Islam in the West".
Eventually, Warith Deen Mohammed renamed the group the American Society of Muslims. He rejected the deification of the Nation of Islam's founder Wallace D. Fard, the Mahdi of the Holy Qur'an, and the messiah of the Bible. Mohammed also welcomed white people—who were once considered devils and enemies by the NOI—as equal brothers, sisters, and friends. Mohammed gave some white people X's, and he extended efforts at inter-religious cooperation and outreach to Christians and Jews.
Farrakhan joined Mohammed's movement and served as a Sunni Imam under him for years from 1975 to 1978. In 1978, Farrakhan distanced himself from Mohammed's movement. According to The New York Times, Farrakhan "could not embrace its new philosophy. In particular, Mr. Farrakhan opposed the concept of working with whites to solve the problems of blacks".
In 1979, Farrakhan's group founded a weekly newspaper entitled The Final Call, which was intended to be similar to the original Muhammad Speaks newspaper that Malcolm X claimed to have started.
Assassination of Malcolm X and aftermath
The day that Malcolm X was assassinated in Harlem, Farrakhan happened to be in Newark, New Jersey, on rotation, 45 minutes away from the scene of the assassination.
Farrakhan made numerous incendiary statements about Malcolm X, contributing to what was called a "climate of vilification". Three men from a Newark NOI mosque—Thomas Hagan, Muhammad Abdul Aziz (aka Norman 3X Butler) and Kahlil Islam (aka Thomas 15X Johnson)—were convicted of the killing and served prison sentences. Only Hagan ever admitted his role.
Many, including Malcolm X's family, have accused Farrakhan of being involved in the plot to assassinate Malcolm X. For many years, Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, harbored resentment toward the Nation of Islam—and Farrakhan in particular—for what she felt was their role in the assassination of her husband.Rickford, pp. 436–439, 492–495. In a 1993 speech, Farrakhan seemed to confirm that the Nation of Islam was responsible for the assassination: