"Considered the "Prophet" by his followers and a threat to national security by J. Edgar Hoover, Elijah Muhammad (ne Poole) was a semiliterate refugee of the savage Jim Crow era who became the leader of one of the twentieth century's most controversial movements. In this explosive biography, investigative journalist Karl Evanzz recounts the multidimensional life of a sharecropping preacher's son from Georgia who emerged as the extraordinarily influential founder of the Nation of Islam." "While his belief that white people were "blue-eyed devils" went against orthodox Islamic doctrine, Elijah Muhammad moved four million African Americans to convert. His teaching inspired the likes of Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Jesse Jackson, and Louis Farrakhan. But then Muhammad's insatiable hunger for power ultimately led him to betray his own teachings and his devoted believers as he womanized, fathered thirteen illegitimate children, and abetted in the murders of those who criticized him, not least of whom his chief disciple, Malcolm X." "Drawing on recently declassified FBI files as well as interviews with some of Elijah Muhammad's children and former apostles, Karl Evanzz renders an astonishing portrait of a man whose ideologies forever changed the African American experience. Book jacket."--BOOK JACKET.