‘‘Returning Home to Our Rightful Place’’: The Nation of Islam and Muhammad Farms

This paper demonstrates how the Nation of Islam (NOI), a well known black nationalist organization, is utilizing notions of community to promote the activities and goals of its farm to other black people. The NOI ownsMuhammad Farms in rural southern Georgia, USA. Its stated purpose is to feed all black people in the United States. Historically, theNOI has occupied a radical space in the black community by promoting black separatism. I argue thatwhile its stance on separatismhas not changed, discourse aboutMuhammad Farms appeals tomore generalized notions of community uplift and self-determination, key components of black community nationalism. The NOI employs these discursive strategies to rally other black people around their message. I utilize archival and textual research along with critical discourse analysis to unpack this dialectical relationship between black racial identity and the farm. I claim that the NOI utilizes and creates black information networks in part to control knowledge disseminated about the farm. They are retelling black agrarianhistory in away thatmixes fact, fiction and shock value. Validation fromothers,mainlywhite people is antithetical to the NOI’s black nationalist principles. Ultimately the organization seeks to recreate the farm as a landscape of liberation that includes tragedy, triumph and hope for the future. The NOI presents Muhammad Farms as a symbol and example of the possibilities if black people return to the farm. Muhammad Farms also serves as a living memorial to black agrarian history. 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The only revolution based on loving your enemy is the Negro revolution. That’s no revolution. Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality (Malcolm X, 1965, 4).