An African American separatist movement founded in the 1930's beginning with the teaching of W. D. Fard (disappeared 1934), and institutionalized by Elijah Muhammad, who identified Fard as God and claimed to be his Messenger. Elijah Muhammad taught that "the white devils" had been created by a genetic manipulation of the original black race, and had been allowed to reign for 6000 years, which period would expire at the end of the 400 period of slavery begun in 1555 when the first slaves were shipped from Africa. In anticipation of the end of white supremacy, he promoted the establishment of independent black economic and educational systems.
When Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, he was succeeded by his son Wallace D. Muhammad (known as Warith Deen Muhammad), who denied the divinity of W. D. Fard and the Prophethood of his father, softened the Nation's separatism, dropped its racism, dismantled its separate economic and security infrastructure, and transformed it into an orthodox Sunni Muslim organization called the American Muslim Mission.
In 1977 Louis Farrakhan began to reestablish the Nation of Islam along its original lines, claiming that Elijah Muhammad was not dead, but was the Messiah, and that he himself, Louis Farrakhan, had seen him in a vision and was his Messenger. He has renewed Elijah Muhammad's separatism and attempted to rebuild his black economic infrastructure. The current Nation of Islam has reinterpreted the Qur'an on the basis of the number 19, thus finding it to support the Nation's teachings, and has introduced the Islamic rituals of prayer and fasting alongside the church-like meetings that characterized the earlier Nation.