The Princess and the Prophet

How the circuses, dance halls, and midways of the Gilded Age provided the cultural ferment and freedom that led to the creation of the Black Muslim movement in America. The Princess and the Prophet tells the story of Timothy Drew, who renamed himself Noble Drew Ali, and found the predecessor of the Nation of Islam, the Moorish Science Temple. Timothy Drew, Dorman has been the first to discover, was originally called Walter Brister, and in the story of his origins in the South, years first as a child coronet player and later as a midway performer, the book reveals the hidden connections between Harry Houdini, Pawnee Bill, Hindu magicians, sexual revolutionaries, and the creation of African American Islam. The spur and backdrop to this era of religious creativity and defiance of social norms is the rise of lynching, Jim Crow segregation, and American overseas imperialism. Delving into new archives and uncovering compelling biographical narratives as well as secret rituals, sexual cults, and hidden identities, Jacob Dorman reframes the rise of twentieth century Black Muslims away from previous strained attempts to link them to enslaved antebellum African-born Muslims, and instead shows that Black Muslims used popular culture to reclaim orientalism, magic, and Islam as political critiques of the West in general and American racism in particular.