In 1923, the Poole family was among hundreds of thousands of black families forming the First Great Migration leaving the oppressive and economically troubled South in search of safety and employment.
When he was sixteen years old, he left home and began working in factories and at other businesses.Įlijah married Clara Evans (1899–1972) on March 7, 1917. To support the family, he worked with his parents as a sharecropper. (1868–1942), a Baptist lay preacher and sharecropper, and Mariah Hall (1873–1958), a homemaker and sharecropper.Įlijah's education ended at the fourth grade, after which he went to work in sawmills and brickyards. Elijah Muhammad was born Elijah Robert Poole in Sandersville, Georgia, the seventh of thirteen children of William Poole Sr.
