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The Encyclopaedia Britannica calls the Nation of Islam "a religious and cultural community that evolved in the twentieth century in the United States out of various quasi-religious black nationalist organizations." In the group's own words, the Nation of Islam seeks to "to teach the downtrodden and defenseless Black people a thorough Knowledge of God and of themselves, and to put them on the road to Self-Independence with a superior culture and higher civilization than they had previously experienced." The community's early leader was Elijah Muhammad and its most famous spokesperson was Malcolm X (although he broke with the group before his death). In the 1970s, the group changed direction under the leadership of Muhammad's son and successor Warith Deen Muhammad (Wallace D. Muhammad), who renamed the organization the American Muslim Mission and moved it toward Sunni Islamic practice and away from his father's doctrine of racial separatism. Upset with the changes, Harlem minister Louis Farrakhan broke with the organization in 1977 and founded the "Original Nation of Islam," now simply known as the "Nation of Islam," which adheres to a revised version of Elijah Muhammad's black nationalist teachings.
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