Nation Women's Engagement and Resistance in the Muhammad Speaks Newspaper

This paper examines Nation women's engagement and resistance in the Muhammad Speaks (MS) newspaper. MS was created as the official publication of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam (NOI) in 1960. The paper employed women as journalists and invited contributions from women who had registered with the group. Women's contributions to the paper's production and content reveal their readings of NOI mandates but they equally illuminate a gentle resistance to aspects of the organization. Elijah Muhammad's NOI implemented gender roles for men and women within the organization that were often inflexible. Women embraced the organization's gender roles and found ways to navigate the patriarchal dimensions of the movement. This paper argues that a careful analysis of women's writings for the MS newspaper reveals facets of their activism that have been overlooked in existing scholarly studies.