Elijah Muhammad was an American religious leader who led the Nation of Islam from 1933 until his death in 1975. Under Elijah Muhammad's leadership, the Nation of Islam grew from a small Detroit-based movement into a nationwide organization with tens of thousands of members in the United States during the civil rights movement, promoting black nationalism and a distinctive theology that white people are a race of "devils" created by an evil black Meccan scientist named Yakub, and that there are multiple gods, each a black man named Allah, whom he is the messenger of.