Beyond Borders: Black Women’s Anti-Imperialist Discourse in Muhammad Speaks (Part 2)

Refresher from Part 1

Part 2 of 2

In Part 1, Beyond Borders looked at how Muhammad Speaks became a progressive platform for Black liberation in the 1960s and 1970s. The newspaper, which served as the official organ of the Nation of Islam, achieved a remarkable weekly circulation of over 500,000, surpassing even established Black publications. Beyond Borders looked at how women writers, both staff columnists and guest contributors, used Muhammad Speaks to shape anti-imperialist discourse. They linked the Black freedom struggle in the US to anti-colonial movements worldwide, including those in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Part 1 highlighted how these women writers, including both religious NOI members and secular columnists, portrayed African women as revolutionary agents central to liberation struggles. They redefined Western narratives of heroism, placing African women at the moral center of world revolution and framing racial liberation as inseparable from global decolonization. Their transnational lens revealed a sophisticated understanding of power, race, and empire that anticipated later Black feminist and decolonial frameworks.

Part 2 now examines the specific contributions of key figures whose writing and activism built transnational solidarity networks and challenged American imperialism on the world stage.

Global Activism and Transnational Networks

Committed to the well-being of people of color across the diaspora, women of the NOI intensified their efforts to dismantle white supremacy everywhere. Key movement figures such as Harriett Muhammad, Tynnetta Deanar, Christine Johnson, and Bayyinah Sharrieff traveled extensively throughout Europe and Africa for this purpose. Their contributions, particularly in their writings and travels, enhanced the NOI’s credibility as an institution that recognized and honored the rights, independence, and leadership of African women in the broader fight for self-determination.

Harriett Muhammad: Critiquing American Imperialism

Harriett Muhammad, a West Coast correspondent and columnist, frequently traveled abroad, conducting interviews with diplomats and citizens and exchanging perspectives on pressing political and social issues. In her conversations with women in Africa, Muhammad emphasized the need for cooperation.  She also openly criticized US foreign policy in Korea and Vietnam, suggesting that imperialism was another manifestation of white supremacy. “The US only helps oppressed people when the end product will be a help to self. This constant overemphasis of self-interest goals is at the very root of the problems of Western societies….When you will stoop to anything to get what you are after, you are truly sick, and America, as is all of Europe, is sick. So, since self-interests are gods to the West, anything that is against self-interests or stands in its way, of course does not count (in the eyes of the white power structure),” wrote Harriett Muhammad.

The women who wrote for Muhammad Speaks also criticized what they saw as the hypocrisy of the American government, which purported to defend the oppressed and dismantle fascism abroad while simultaneously persecuting Black citizens at home. In their view, interventions in the developing world were motivated by a drive to exploit resources there. Bayyinah Sharrieff, for example, who lived in Sudan for over two years, strongly opposed US involvement in Sudan’s affairs and supported protests aimed at ending “American imperialism.” She advocated for a “universal change” that amounted to a transfer of power.

Christine Johnson: Pioneering Anti-Neocolonialism

In 1965, the NOI was among the earliest Black organizations to use the term “neocolonialism”—originally coined by the Ghanaian activist and politician Kwame Nkrumah in Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Muhammad Speaks columnist Christine Johnson adopted the term in 1966, when she wrote an article for The African Communist, a quarterly magazine published by the South African Communist Party from 1959 to 1967. Christine Johnson, also director of the Nation of Islam school, the University of Islam, actively linked Black American movements with global struggles for African independence and peace. In Africa, she hosted international students and co-founded the Afro-American Heritage Association (AAHA), a radical educational group promoting anti-imperialism, socialism, and solidarity with decolonizing nations. Under her leadership, the AAHA protested the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as well as apartheid, explicitly connecting these issues to racial violence in the US. Johnson stood out as one of the few Black women involved in early anti-nuclear activism and represented the AAHA at the 1962 “World Without the Bomb” assembly in Ghana.

 

 

   Christine Johnson with Ghana minister of defense, Muhammad Speaks, August 15, 1962.

 

Ethel Minor: Pan-Africanism and Palestinian Solidarity

Ethel Minor, a Pan-Africanist who spent some years in Colombia, was one of the few women to write about Black struggles in Latin America, drawing parallels with the struggles faced by African Americans back home. Influenced by Malcolm X, she joined the Nation of Islam in 1962 and later served as secretary and office manager for his Organization of Afro-American Unity. After his assassination in 1965, she worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She became the editor of the SNCC Newsletter and was interested in the Palestinian cause. One of her famous writings about the issue was in 1967 under the title “Third World Roundup: The Palestinian Problem: Test Your Knowledge.” In the newsletter, she portrayed the Israeli-Arab conflict as a continuation of the worldwide trend of white imperialist forces dominating people of color. Though she left Muhammad Speaks in 1964, she returned in 1969 to write about Pan-Africanist activism, covering Stokely Carmichael’s travels to Africa and his support for Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah.

 

 

Journalism as Activism

Through their writing, these women also redefined what constituted political participation. Publishing articles and editorials allowed them to speak with authority in a world that often ignored their voices. Their words connected everyday struggles at home with the larger fight against racism and empire abroad. In doing so, they turned journalism into a tool of resistance and made clear that telling one’s own story was a powerful form of activism.

Conclusion: A Legacy of Radical Vision

The women of the Nation of Islam played a vital yet often overlooked role in shaping the political vision of Muhammad Speaks. Their writing challenged the narrow confines of domestic civil rights discourse by insisting that racism, colonialism, and imperialism were interconnected forces of oppression. For these women, the only adequate response was global racial solidarity. Their brave, militant journalism connected the Black freedom movement in the U.S. to other revolutions around the world, leaving behind a strong record of radical thought and action. In doing so, they anticipated later Black feminist and decolonial frameworks that situated gender oppression within racial capitalism and empire. Long before the term “intersectionality,” these women articulated a vision of liberation that was at once racial, spiritual, and geopolitical.