Knowing Otherwise: Self-Determination in U.S. Black Muslima Thought

This paper offers an intellectual history of Black Muslim thought that centers the distinctly feminist epistemologies of Black nationalist organizers Louise Little (1894-1989), Betty Shabazz (1934-1997), and Safiya Bukhari (1950-2003). Through archival research and close reading of posthumously published works, I trace the psychic, intuitive knowledge that Grenadian-born Garveyite activist Louise Little seeded in her son, Malcolm X; Betty Shabazz's use of channeling to refuse the secularization of Black nationalist thought post-1965 and frame Islam as a spiritual turn toward African indigeneity; and Safiya Bukhari’s reliance on co-conspiracy with the divine to liberate herself and her fellow Black Panther comrades from U.S. prisons. I argue that adding self-centered, felt, sensed, and intuited knowledge—alongside the read, ritualized, and revealed—complicates the standard narrative of Black Islam and Black Nationalism, as popularized by Malcolm X, and its equation with masculinist, top-down notions of religious authority and knowledge.