An Original Man the life and times of Elijah Muhammad  By Claude Andrew Clegg III.     Elijah Muhammad the founding father of the Nation of Islam and the forbear to Louis Farrakhan, has emerged as one of the most significant black leaders of this century. Claude examines Muhammad’s life from birth in 1897 in Georgia, to his forming of the American Nation of Islam, to his final split with Malcolm X. Through this brilliant biography we are finally able to understand the origins of Islam and black Nationalism that has helped form the consciousness of African American society for the last half century.