Noble Drew Ali

He was born Timothy Drew on the eighth of January 1886 in North Carolina. The particulars of his origins are uncertain, for reliable record early gave way to reverent legend among his followers. Some accounts hold him the orphaned child of formerly enslaved parents; others say he was raised among the Cherokee; still others tell of a Moroccan father and a Cherokee mother. What is sure is that he rose from the rural South of the Reconstruction era's long shadow to become one of the most consequential religious founders of the African American twentieth century.

In his young manhood he laboured as a merchant seaman and railway expressman before turning to the work that would define him. In 1913, living in Newark, New Jersey, he founded the Canaanite Temple, the seed of the movement he would later gather under the name the Moorish Science Temple of America. Teaching that African Americans were descendants of the ancient Moabites and thus "Moorish" by nationality and Islamic by faith, he offered a people stripped of history a name, a heritage, and a dignity of their own.

He carried his message westward through Philadelphia, Washington, and Detroit, settling in Chicago by the mid-1920s. There the movement flourished, drawing thousands of converts across numerous temples. He composed the Circle Seven Koran as its sacred text and issued nationality cards to his members, giving concrete form to a reclaimed identity. His organization is widely regarded as the first enduring institution of its kind for African American Islamic life.

In 1929, amid factional strife, he was arrested in connection with the killing of a rival leader, though he was never charged. He died on the twentieth of July 1929, shortly after his release, at the age of forty-three. His teachings would echo forward through the movements that followed him. We honor Noble Drew Ali, who gave a scattered people a name to stand upon and a horizon to walk toward.