Beyond Borders: Black Women’s Anti-Imperialist Discourse in Muhammad Speaks (Part 1)

Part 1 of 2

Introduction

This article looks at the important but often ignored role that Black women played in shaping anti-imperialist discourse through Muhammad Speaks, the Nation of Islam’s official newspaper. Published from 1960 to 1975, Muhammad Speaks became one of the most widely read Black newspapers in America, with a weekly circulation of over 500,000. Through their columns and reporting, women writers connected the Black freedom struggle in the United States to global anti-colonial movements, creating a transnational framework for understanding racial oppression that anticipated later Black feminist and decolonial scholarship.

This article is presented in two parts. Part 1 explores the emergence of Muhammad Speaks as a progressive platform and examines how women columnists used the newspaper to advocate for global racial solidarity. Part 2, which follows next week, focuses on the specific contributions of key figures and the lasting impact of their anti-imperialist activism.

Muhammad Speaks: A Radical Platform for Black Liberation

During the 1960s and 1970s, Muhammad Speaks became one of the most widely read newspapers—and possibly the first—to support anti-colonial movements and Pan-African activism actively. Published from 1960 to 1975, it served as the official organ of the Nation of Islam (NOI). The paper gained significant popularity in the 1960s and early 1970s, with circulation surpassing 500,000 weekly copies—outpacing even long-established Black publications such as the Pittsburgh Courier. Unlike mainstream Black media at that period, it combined investigative journalism, militant ideology, and religious commentary to expose systemic injustice and promote Black liberation, both domestically and globally.

Muhammad Speaks emerged to fill a gap in radical coverage of the Black liberation movement, appealing to those disillusioned with the civil rights mainstream. It offered editors a platform to address social justice issues freely, outside of traditional integrationist narratives. From 1961 to 1973, secular editors ran the paper, moving it further left while keeping a unique mix of mostly secular content and religious themes. The paper developed a distinctly radical voice, covering issues often ignored by the mainstream: political prisoners, police brutality, labor strikes, antiwar protests, and decolonization movements across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Its strong editorial stance and global outlook attracted not only NOI members but also a broad audience of non-Muslim Black readers and civil rights advocates. Muhammad Speaks also had a significant international reach. Readers from Latin America, Africa, and Asia regularly wrote to the paper, and according to editor John Woodford, nearly all major leaders of liberation movements and progressive governments in the global South subscribed to it. This global recognition underscored the newspaper’s role as a vital platform for Black and anti-colonial political thought on an international scale.

 

Women’s Voices in Muhammad Speaks

The paper had a major influence on Black readers’ understanding of international affairs, emphasizing movements for national independence in Africa, global injustices, and the experiences of Black women across the diaspora. From its first year in 1960 until 1975, under secular and Muslim editors, Muhammad Speaks featured a significant presence of women. The majority of women—though not all—were regular columnists and members of the Nation of Islam. Indeed, Muhammad Speaks‘ female columnists can be divided into two groups: staff writers and guest contributors. Staff writers such as Tynnetta Deanar, Anna Karriem, Harriett Muhammad, Bayyinah Sharrieff, Margary Hassain, and Christine Johnson were regular contributors who maintained their own columns and wrote extensively over long periods. Nearly all regular columnists were members of the Nation of Islam and, by extension, practicing Muslims. Through their columns, the female staff writers addressed vital political, social, cultural, and identity issues. While religion played an essential role in the writings of some of these women, not all regular writers wrote about it. 

Figures such as Harriett Muhammad, Christine Johnson, and Ethel Minor were notably secular in their militancy and rarely mentioned religion in their work. The columnist Jocelyn Osborne also wrote secular, primarily political pieces. In her column, “Women in the United Nations,” Osborne, as the United Nations correspondent, discussed the vital role that African women, members of the United Nations, played in elevating their status and their struggle to overcome colonialism and neocolonialism. Guest writers, by contrast, contributed only occasionally and were not always affiliated with the Nation of Islam. Given how frequently their names changed, female guest writers seem to have been freelance journalists who were neither members of the organization nor Muslims. These secular female columnists provided Muhammad Speaks readers with up-to-date information on global current events. They covered a wide range of topics, including women’s rights and status in non-White nations, as well as colonialism and neo-colonialism. Whether religious or secular, these women played a key role in shaping the paper’s tone and contributed meaningfully to the radical militancy of Black nationalism and the Black Power movements of the era. They used the newspaper as a platform to advocate for their people’s rights and advance their political positions, without necessarily participating in protests, rallies, sit-ins, or elections.

Transnational Anti-Imperialism

In the pages of Muhammad Speaks, women considered the challenges and possibilities of physical, social, and intellectual liberation from whites, rather than political rights like voting and public desegregation. They opposed colonialism and imperialism and actively supported global liberation movements. Muhammad Speaks’ female columnists celebrated the central role of African women in national liberation movements, portraying them not as mere helpmeets but as revolutionary agents essential to both the struggle for independence and the reconstruction of postcolonial Africa. They drew attention to the global role of women of color in both economic reconstruction and political activism, and they called for unity in confronting racism and imperialism, aiming ultimately for Africa’s complete emancipation. As Ann Tanyana wrote in a January 1966 issue of the paper:

In the struggle for human rights and dignity it is not only men who have a right to them, but their partners as well.…. This revolution is not a male affair in the interests of maledom, but the overall desire of our people to put an end to imperialist exploitation and thereby to ensure the economic emancipation of our people. The African women having struggled for independence, must be constantly on their guard against those forces which are at work to prevent the economic emancipation of the people. No progressive society can permit the subordination of women merely because of their biological function and be regarded as a separate part divided off from the labor force.

African women who fought for their rights were portrayed as forgotten heroes, whose activism was seen as more courageous and meaningful than that of white heroines like Molly Pitcher and Joan of Arc. “The incredible struggle waged by Black women in Africa for the liberation of their people from still-existing slavery, makes the deeds of such European and American heroines as Joan D’Arc or Molly Pitcher appear to be pale and dangerless performances,” wrote one of the journalists. This inversion of Western heroism reveals how Muhammad Speaks’ female columnists redefined the symbolic geography of courage, placing African women at the moral center of world revolution rather than the margins of Western progress narratives.

Women of the Nation of Islam viewed the struggle for Black rights in the United States as part of a wider battle against racism, colonialism, and imperialism. Writing during a revolutionary period marked by Black radical protest at home and decolonization abroad, they used Muhammad Speaks and international travel to build alliances with other people of color worldwide. These women consistently positioned white colonizers as the common enemy of the oppressed, framing African independence movements as signs of a coming global liberation. Their writing connected the Black freedom movement in the U.S. to broader campaigns for self-determination across the global South.

All people of the earth who are moving towards independence are thinking in terms of improving self and kind. The progress of world events forces us to bear witness that it is time for such a course in the history of the Black man to be manifested. The so-called negroes must become aware of the fact that they, too, are a part of this changing history.

This transnational lens was more than rhetorical—it was ideological. By aligning their struggle with anticolonial movements abroad, Muhammad Speaks’ women writers framed racial liberation as inseparable from global decolonization. Their columns turned the newspaper into an intellectual bridge between Harlem, Accra, and Cairo, where the oppression of Black Americans mirrored that of colonized peoples. This global consciousness rejected the narrow nationalism often attributed to the Nation of Islam, revealing instead a sophisticated understanding of power, race, and empire that resonated with broader Third World feminist discourses.

Part 2 of this article will explore the specific contributions of key figures, including Harriett Muhammad, Christine Johnson, Ethel Minor, and others, examining how their writing and activism challenged American imperialism and built transnational solidarity networks.