Royall Jenkins (Left, image: YouTube screenshot)/ Dr. Malachi York (image: YouTube screenshot)
It’s no surprise that Black Americans are religious people. Black Americans are more likely to pray, say grace, and attend church than other racial groups, found one study. According to new Deseret News/Marist Poll research, nearly half of African Americans say they attend church at least weekly, and two-thirds pray every day. Three-quarters of African Americans believe in God as described in the Bible, compared to just half of whites and Latinos. And in looking to connect with spiritual organizations, sometimes Black Americans may fall into cults, such as the ones led by Royall Jenkins and Dr. Malachi York. Both were major cultural leaders in the 1990s.
Here are seven things to know about history.
Dwight D. York, or Malachi Z. York, has a long line of adjectives behind his name. But what he is most known for is being the creator and leader of the Black Power group United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, or Nuwaubians. Some have referred to the group as a cult due to its religious teachings, but it was also called a Black empowerment organization.
York began his ministry in the late 1960s. In 1967, he was preaching to the “Ansaaru Allah” (African Americans) in Brooklyn, New York, in the midst of the Black Power movement. His teachings were based on pseudo-Islamic themes and Judaism (Nubian Islamic Hebrews). Later he developed a focus centered around “Ancient Egypt,” combining ideas drawn from Black nationalism, cryptozoological and UFO religions, and popular conspiracy theory.
Royall Jenkins was a trucker and former member of the Nation of Islam. After the death of Elijah Muhammad, Jenkins was in disagreement with the new leadership of Minister Louis Farrakhan. He broke away and formed his own group in 1978.
Jenkins told his followers that he was Allah or God. He also claimed he was abducted by angels who taught him how to rule the Earth, Fox 4 Kansas City reported.
At first, his group was called the Value Creators. It then became the United Nation of Islam (UNOI).
The organization was originally based in Maryland, but the headquarters were later moved to Kansas City, Kan., in 1990, where it attracted hundreds of members. He apparently died of covid-19 complications in September 2021.
When Moreen Jenkins told Pitch that when she was 11 years old, her father, Royall Jenkins, told her he was God.
“He said he toured the whole universe within two-and-a-half hours,” Moreen recalls. “And he went into the sun as well, in a specially created ship. He said it was beautiful, and the ship, as soon as he boarded, he thought that it had to take off, but they were already in space — that’s how smooth it was. And when they went into the sun, it was like going into a thick ocean of pure energy. And he said the scientists never spoke to him from the tongue — it was through the mind, and they filled his mind with a lot of knowledge.”
He revealed his plan to the family, she said.
“His teaching was that war was going to be imminent and that the scientists, or the angels, the 24 elders who are written about in the Bible, are going to use their spacecrafts to help in the Final Destruction and bring about the change,” she says. “He said that white people were made specifically to house ‘negative,’ to express ‘negative,’ to bear witness that the first god had a problem in his creation, and then at the end of time, white people would be destroyed, and it would just be basically black people that would be inheriting the universe.
One of the reasons Black people gravitated to these two cults is because both claimed to have the key to salvation for the Black community.
Jenkins told his followers that he was the one that would help Black people rise up from oppression.
“Royall Jenkins preached that he had been taken on a tour around the universe by scientists,” a follower told A&E, which did an investigative story on the UNOI.
York promised to build Tama-Re, an Egyptian-themed “city.” He taught self-sufficiency and that Black people could be their own rulers.
During a 2015 interview in Chicago that was posted on the TheValueCreators YouTube channel, Jenkins spoke of his dislike for NOI’s Farrakhan, and accused the minister of having a dictatorship like control over the Nation of Islam and its members. He said Farrakhan uses “scare tactics” to keep members in line.
“You know, this whole town it’s operates like the Mafia,” Jenkins said of the Windy City and added that Farrakhan is “doing the same thing, so before they (members) like speak the truth concerning him, they don’t know how much…they have to protect themselves from saying those different things or coming up against that.”
The government accused the UNOI of separating children from their parents and forcing them into unpaid labor. The charges were made in 2021 but the feds say this has been going on for over a decade. Children, some as young as eight years old, would be sent to cities across the country to work up to 16-hour days at restaurants, gas stations and factories. They were not paid for the work or allowed to go to school, The Washington Post reported.
UNOI leaders allegedly controlled what youths ate, read or viewed, and how they dressed. Some underwent routine weight checks and colonics performed by adults, a federal complaint first reported by the Daily Beast.
Prosecutors charged eight UNOI leaders with conspiracy and forced labor in connection with the alleged abuse that took place from 2000 to 2012, according to an indictment.
In 2018, a federal judge issued a warrant for Jenkins’s arrest, but he died in 2021.
In 2004, York was convicted of child molestation and violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. York is serving a 135-year sentence at the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado. His sentence was based on the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) for alleged racketeering, the Mann Act, for allegedly transporting minors in interstate commerce for purposes of engaging in unlawful sexual activity; and cash structuring to avoid cash transaction reporting, Digital Journal reported.
Royall Jenkins (Left, image: YouTube screenshot, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN5wuhht4hQ)/ Dr. Malachi York (image: YouTube screenshot, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r5siBkdSM8)
