The Honorable Elijah Muhammad warned Black people decades ago: If a man won’t treat you right, what would make you think he would teach you right?
Now, after decades of racism, on top of political threats to abolish the teaching of Black and Indigenous history, Black parents across the country are deciding to remove their children from America’s public school system.
Muslims in the Nation of Islam took their children out of the system at a time when it was illegal to do so, becoming early pioneers of independent education.
In the early 1930s, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam, was arrested in Detroit for telling the believing community to take their children out of public schools and enroll them in the newly formed Muhammad University of Islam, which is still up and running in cities across the country today.
“In the public schools, the enemy wants to make us better tools of service for him. When we took our children out of the public school, they came to the school and arrested the teachers.
Elijah Muhammad went to the jail and said, I am their teacher so if you’re going to arrest them, arrest me, too,” the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, recalled at the 23rd anniversary of the historic Million Man March and Holy Day of Atonement.
“Today, if you have an independent school, somebody paid a price. If you have Afrocentric education, somebody paid a price. If you know how to stand up for your beautiful Black self, somebody paid a price,” he said.
Dr. Khadijah Ali-Coleman, co-founder of Black Family Homeschool Educators and Scholars, noticed an influx of Black parents joining her Facebook group.
She shared concerns Black parents are having about the direction public school education is heading, talk of a tax credit for homeschooling families and the importance of Black parents paying attention to federal policy and legislation.
“We don’t want the oversight that will restrict and dictate what homeschooling should look like because one of the benefits of homeschooling is that it’s unique to your family,” she said to The Final Call.
She believes Black parents should be the “curator of their child’s learning journey,” regardless of school choice, especially in a time she described as “government oversight that is oftentimes not done for the benefit of children, but for the benefit of private organizations.”
“I really want Black parents to be more involved in the education of their children, regardless of whether or not they’re in school or they’re homeschooling them. Plain and simple. That’s what we should be doing,” she said.
She also spoke on the need for Black parents to cultivate a culture of learning in the home and to continuously engage with their children’s school.
For those looking to homeschool, resources have increased since the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of parents across the board opting into homeschooling rose during the pandemic.
Recent data from the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy’s Homeschool Research Lab shows that in the 2023-2024 school year, most of the states that reported homeschooling participation saw increases. Homeschooling and other school alternatives continue to grow amongst Black families.
“There has been a mass exodus in the last five years of Black families putting their children into these schools. They’re homeschooling their children, or they’re sending their children to faith-based schools that are run by Black people for Black children, because Black children have experienced a lot in this system,” Yolande Beckles, president of the National Association of African American Parents and Youth, said to The Final Call.
“If you were educated in this system and you know what you went through, you’re not going to want to put the love of your life that you brought into this planet through the same thing. So, parents are making really informed decisions about the kind of education they want for their children,” she said.
Longtime educator Talib ul Hikmah Karriem has served as Student Interim Director of Muhammad University of Islam in Chicago for over 12 years. He quoted Point No. 9 from the Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s
“What The Muslims Want,” part of The Muslim Program published on the inside back page of every Final Call newspaper, saying, “We want all Black children educated, taught and trained by their own teachers.”
“The Muslim teachers shall be left free to teach and train their people in the way of righteousness, decency and self-respect,” he further quoted.
He has noticed the dissatisfaction with both public and private education and called the threats to dismantle the Department of Education simply White people “correcting their own system.”
“The system is not broken. It’s their system, and that’s the part we have not come to terms with. The system was not designed for us, and we are trying to force a round peg into a square peg or vice versa,” he said.
“It’s not being dismantled. They are correcting their own system so it can continue to do what it was designed to do, to perpetuate their world and not ours.”
“We have to have independent education as the Minister has mentioned in previous lectures, everyone working in unity, different families and groups working in unity, opening independent schools that are free from the poison and the control of White supremacy,” he added.
Brother Talib ul Hikmah Karriem echoed the guidance Minister Farrakhan has given the Black community for years, which is that God is in control and is forcing Black people into independence.
“Yes, people are becoming dissatisfied, and according to our Teachings, dissatisfaction brings about a change. So yes, come on out. Set up independent schools. Stop begging them,” Brother ul Hikmah Karriem stated.
He laid out the practical steps of going independent: working together with like-minded and trusted people in the community and Black organizations, setting up small schools for Black children.
“Why is it that we are so dependent upon what other people can provide for us, and we can do it ourselves? We have all of the intellectual minds and the training. Why not unify and do it for ourselves?” he questioned.
“And the best model of that is what the Nation of Islam has done and is doing. But look at the quality of the students that we are producing, not just grade and academic wise, but as human beings with good moral character, good moral conduct.”
Ms. Beckles agreed on the need for Black organizations to step up.
“There are enough of us if we could all come together and we agree that we don’t agree on everything, but there are some very basic things that we do agree on, which is that we love our people, that we know systemic racism is impacting all of us.
That there is an anti-Blackness rhetoric that is heightened across the world and especially in America, and that the only people who can take care of that agenda within its community are us,” she said. “Can’t expect anybody else to do it for us.”
