Khadijah Farrakhan Helped Lead Movement

Khadijah Farrakhan, the wife of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, has died. She was 90 and died on Saturday, the Nation of Islam has announced. "Mother Khadijah" worked alongside her provocative and charismatic husband for decades, helping lead their religious and sociopolitical movement, which espouses Black self-reliance, the AP reports. Its home base was Mosque Maryam on the south side of Chicago, where the pair lived. Mosque Maryam remembered her as "a devoted follower" with "a precious soul, a sweet heart." In a post on Facebook, R&B artist ZaRio Son Rise recalled her as "a true queen, a righteous woman, and one of the greatest examples of dignity, faith, loyalty, and grace our generation has ever witnessed."

Born Betsy Ross, Khadijah Farrakhan married her husband, then named Louis Walcott, in Boston in 1953. The two had nine children. Khadijah Farrakhan converted to Islam in 1955, the same year that her husband joined the Chicago-based movement after being heavily influenced by Malcolm X, his friend from Boston. The couple changed their names around that time. Louis Farrakhan stepped into the organization's leadership vacuum shortly after Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965. Among his most significant accomplishments was the Million Man March on Washington in 1995. Two years later, Khadijah Farrakhan spoke to a gathering of America's Black women in Philadelphia dubbed the Million Woman March. "A nation can rise no higher than its women," she told the crowd. "We focus on women but cannot lose sight that we must rise as a family—men, women and children."