Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas

by Michael A. Gomez

• ISBN13: 9780521600798
• ISBN10: 0521600790
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-04-04
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Beginning with Latin America in the fifteenth century, this book is a social history of the experiences of African Muslims and their descendants throughout the Americas, including the Caribbean. The record under slavery is examined, as is the post-slavery period into the twentieth century. The experiences vary, arguably due to some extent to the Old World context. Muslim revolts in Brazil are also discussed, especially in 1835, by way of a nuanced analysis. The second part of the book looks at the emergence of Islam among the African-descended in the United States in the twentieth century, with successive chapters on Noble Drew Ali, Elijah Muhammad, and Malcolm X, with a view to explaining how orthodoxy arose from varied unorthodox roots.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Prologue	ix
PART ONE
Ladinos, Gelofes, and Mandingas	3	(44)
Caribbean Crescent	47	(44)
Brazilian Sambas	91	(37)
Muslims in New York	128	(15)
Founding Mothers and Fathers of a Different Sort: African Muslims in the Early North American South	143	(60)
Interlude: Into a Glass Darkly -- Elisive Communities	185	(18)
PART TWO
Breaking Away: Noble Drew Ali and the Foundations of Contemporary Islam in African America	203	(73)
The Nation	276	(55)
Malcolm	331	(40)
Epilogue	371	(6)
Index	377