MUSLIMS IN GEORGIA was compiled to serve as a repository of important facts and events related to the presence of Muslims/Islam in the United States - more specifically the State of Georgia. Included are events and occurrences that have affected American lives in Georgia and other localities. It contains dates of significant events, recollections of persons involved in those events, biographical sketches and research links. Islam and Muslims have been maligned and often misrepresented in the United States in part due to a lack of information, it is hoped this volume will prove valuable to researchers, students and the general public with a greater insight and a better understanding of the life and times endured by God-fearing believers in Islam. Elijah Muhammad was admittedly not the first to teach or to practice Islam in these United States, his efforts provoked enormous interest, not only in his personal brand of Black Nationalism, but moreover in Al-Islam as revealed to Prophet Muhammad of fourteen hundred years ago (Peace and Blessings be upon him) and the community he established has transformed into the largest and most active community of Muslims in the Western Hemisphere. This book is not an attempt to write history; it is merely a compilation of events. As editors, we have attempted to identify all sources of material; however, donated materials and photographs have come to us without complete or proper citations.
About the Author: Wali Akbar Muhammad is a story-teller and historian in the true tradition of the West African Griot. His consummate career and contributions have established him as one of America's quintessential journalists and photographers. For more than forty years, he has researched, documented and creatively captured the struggle of African Americans, and their unique experience in the West. Muhammad's photographs are moving, meaningful memories that personify the phrase, "a picture is worth a thousand words." Equally as dynamic is the rich prose Muhammad has penned for countless publications on a variety of subjects over the past 27 years. Grandson of a slave, and product of D.C. public schools, Muhammad was one of the first twenty students to desegregate public schools following the Supreme Court's historic (1954) Brown v. Board of Education decision. A convert to Islam in the early 1960s; Muhammad began his media career as a photo-journalist in 1968. Since then he has worked with distinction for Muhammad Speaks Newspaper, the Chicago Defender, the Atlanta Voice, and frequently freelanced for the Associated Press and United Press International. He is founder of the Brandon Institute, an organization designed to research, publish and celebrate the contributions of African-Americans in the western hemisphere. Muhammad has filed stories of international significance from the Middle East, Africa, Arabia, Europe and the Caribbean. He is the only photographer granted permission and directed by Elijah Muhammad to travel from temple to temple in the 1970s and document the progress of "The Nation." In fact, Muhammad's professionalism is so highly regarded that during the time of Pilgrimage to Mecca in 1980, he was granted permission to make a photo documentary of that glorious occasion.