Prayer and Pan-Africanism: Black Muslim Political Visions in 20th-Century New York City

During the 1930s and 40s, Black American Sunni Muslim communities emerged in urban centers around the US, primarily in the Northeastern and midwestern regions of the country. This development was part of the broader phenomenon of the proliferation of Judith Weisenfeld has termed “religio-racial” movements – religious communities that promoted alternative racial and ethnic identity constructs for Black people in the US. While many of these religious movements crafted alternative histories for people of African descent that were far more affirming than the demeaning, ahistorical narratives that undergirded American racial hierarchies, Black Sunni Muslim communities were unique in that they were largely fostered by, and helped to facilitate, Black American engagements with contemporary African communities. This paper traces the histories of encounters between Black American Sunni Muslims in the New York City and some of the African Muslims who influenced them over the course of the twentieth century. It examines the role of Pan-Africanism in shaping how Black American Sunni Muslims understood and practiced Islam. This paper further considers how Muslim Pan-Africanists on both sides of the Atlantic utilized Islam to actualize their visions of Pan-African political and cultural solidarity and to construct transnational, Black Muslim communities. This paper considers encounters that span the twentieth century from collaborations between Afro-Caribbean American Sunni Muslims and West African artists during the 1930s to the emergence of Black American Muslim congregations affiliated with West African Sufi communities during the 1970s and 80s.