Yusuf Bey
Encyclopedia
Yusuf Bey was a Black Muslim activist and charismatic leader.
After discovering the teachings of Elijah Muhammed in the 1960s, he adopted the name Yusuf Bey and moved to Oakland, California
, and then Santa Barbara, California
, where in 1968 he opened a bakery
. The bakery moved to Oakland by 1971. Renamed Your Black Muslim Bakery
, it became the center of a local Black nationalist community. Held out at the time as a model of African American
economic self-sufficiency, the business fell apart after Bey's death and a series of murders linked to criminal activities.
and then in the southern city of Santa Barbara, California
before going into the bakery business instead. Having converted to Islam in 1964, Bey founded the Islamic bakery in Santa Barbara in 1968. The group was not affiliated with Louis Farrakhan
's movement, the Nation of Islam
, though early connections and similarities were evident. Nation of Islam minister Keith Muhammad, of East Oakland's Muhammad Mosque #26, stated that the two organizations are distinct and separate.
The baked goods Bey sold were in accordance with strict Muslim diets, free of refined sugar, fats, and preservatives. He named the business Your Black Muslim Bakery on the personal recommendation of his spiritual guide, the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. In 1971, Bey moved the bakery to Oakland.
Together with Bey's brother, Minister Billy X, the two men received permission to establish a new congregation, Mosque No. 26B, in Oakland. Around that time the two Bey brothers associated with a single young woman named Capt. Felicia X, who was the head of a training program for women in the San Francisco mosque. Felicia X then defected to the brothers' new Mosque No. 26B. Minister Henry Majied, the leader of Mosque No. 26, then retaliated with charges against Felicia X, sparking a bitter rivalry between the two mosques.
Part of the rivalry stemmed from competition over selling of Muhammad Speaks
newspapers on the streets. Bey's group outsold the San Francisco group, but did it partly by selling to whites, violating the Nation's written policy to not sell where whites might buy it. Minister Henry retaliated by ordering his members to confiscate any copies of the newspaper if they saw any of Bey's group selling them downtown to whites. As a result, Elijah Muhammad expelled Minister Henry, for ordering Muslims to "attack" other Muslims.
After 1972, the Beys and the bakery split off from Mosque No. 26B, and from the Nation of Islam. Bey's brother, Minister Billy, returned to the Nation of Islam before the Million Man March
in 1995. Currently, he remains active with the movement where he lives in Las Vegas, Nevada
.
. The white man, Bey proclaimed, "is the Devil."
Primarily through lobbying and orchestrating by Nedir, who was the public face of the Bey organization, Yusuf Bey cultivated the patronage of Oakland's civic, political, and religious leaders. In 1994 he ran unsuccessfully for mayor against then-incumbent Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris
, gaining 5% of the vote.
journalist Chris Thompson
— accused Bey of cult
ism, corruption, and Antisemitism. Many accusations of physical and sexual abuse, including rape and incest, sustained by DNA evidence, were made against Bey, culminating in felony charges that were pending at the time of his death.http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/11/30/BEY.TMP
On September 19, 2002, Bey turned himself in when a warrant was issued for his arrest, charged with 27 counts in the alleged rapes of four girls under the age of 14. The cases were pending trial into the following year. The oldest allegation was that beginning twenty years earlier, he had serially raped through coercion and beatings a preteen girl who, as a ten-year-old, came under foster care of Bey and his wife Nora Bey. In her request for a temporary restraining order one month prior to the arrest, the woman claimed that Bey's wife also knew of the serial rapes, but did nothing. The girl gave birth to a child at age 13 in 1982. Oakland's district attorney's office claimed to have conclusive DNA
evidence identifying Bey as the father.
, indentured servitude, and physical and sexual abuse, all linked to Bey's son, Yusuf Bey IV
. As of 2007 the alleged victims are still pursuing legal action.
"60 Minutes," CBS TV shown 2-24-08: The Murder of Chauncey Bailey.
After discovering the teachings of Elijah Muhammed in the 1960s, he adopted the name Yusuf Bey and moved to Oakland, California
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
, and then Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara is the county seat of Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Situated on an east-west trending section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply-rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean...
, where in 1968 he opened a bakery
Bakery
A bakery is an establishment which produces and sells flour-based food baked in an oven such as bread, cakes, pastries and pies. Some retail bakeries are also cafés, serving coffee and tea to customers who wish to consume the baked goods on the premises.-See also:*Baker*Cake...
. The bakery moved to Oakland by 1971. Renamed Your Black Muslim Bakery
Your Black Muslim Bakery
Your Black Muslim Bakery was a bakery opened by Yusuf Bey in 1968 in Santa Barbara, California, and relocated to Oakland in 1971. A power broker at the center of a local community, it was held out as a model of African American economic self-sufficiency. However, it was later linked to widespread...
, it became the center of a local Black nationalist community. Held out at the time as a model of African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
economic self-sufficiency, the business fell apart after Bey's death and a series of murders linked to criminal activities.
Biography
Bey was raised in a small town in Texas. As a student in the early 1950s he moved with his family to Oakland, California, where he attended Oakland Technical High School, and then enlisted for four years in the U.S. Air Force. In his first business venture he obtained a cosmetology degree and ran beauty salons in neighboring Berkeley, CaliforniaBerkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
and then in the southern city of Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara is the county seat of Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Situated on an east-west trending section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply-rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean...
before going into the bakery business instead. Having converted to Islam in 1964, Bey founded the Islamic bakery in Santa Barbara in 1968. The group was not affiliated with Louis Farrakhan
Louis Farrakhan
Louis Farrakhan Muhammad, Sr. is the leader of the African-American religious movement the Nation of Islam . He served as the minister of major mosques in Boston and Harlem, and was appointed by the longtime NOI leader, Elijah Muhammad, before his death in 1975, as the National Representative of...
's movement, the Nation of Islam
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam is a mainly African-American new religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in July 1930 to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African-Americans in the United States of America. The movement teaches black pride and...
, though early connections and similarities were evident. Nation of Islam minister Keith Muhammad, of East Oakland's Muhammad Mosque #26, stated that the two organizations are distinct and separate.
The baked goods Bey sold were in accordance with strict Muslim diets, free of refined sugar, fats, and preservatives. He named the business Your Black Muslim Bakery on the personal recommendation of his spiritual guide, the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. In 1971, Bey moved the bakery to Oakland.
Black Muslim era
Although the bakery was not affiliated with the Nation of Islam, Yusuf Bey's activism originated with that group. After he came to Oakland in the early 1970s, Bey became a member of the 200-member Nation of Islam Mosque No. 26 in San Francisco, which had a strict fundamentalist reputation of strictly adhering to the edicts from the Nation's Chicago headquarters. At that time Bey went by the name, Capt. Joseph X.Together with Bey's brother, Minister Billy X, the two men received permission to establish a new congregation, Mosque No. 26B, in Oakland. Around that time the two Bey brothers associated with a single young woman named Capt. Felicia X, who was the head of a training program for women in the San Francisco mosque. Felicia X then defected to the brothers' new Mosque No. 26B. Minister Henry Majied, the leader of Mosque No. 26, then retaliated with charges against Felicia X, sparking a bitter rivalry between the two mosques.
Part of the rivalry stemmed from competition over selling of Muhammad Speaks
Muhammad Speaks
Muhammad Speaks now known as Muslim Journal was one of the most widely-read newspapers ever produced by an African American organization. Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad began the publication on May 1960. Its first issue bore the title Some of this Earth to Call Our Own or Else. A weekly...
newspapers on the streets. Bey's group outsold the San Francisco group, but did it partly by selling to whites, violating the Nation's written policy to not sell where whites might buy it. Minister Henry retaliated by ordering his members to confiscate any copies of the newspaper if they saw any of Bey's group selling them downtown to whites. As a result, Elijah Muhammad expelled Minister Henry, for ordering Muslims to "attack" other Muslims.
After 1972, the Beys and the bakery split off from Mosque No. 26B, and from the Nation of Islam. Bey's brother, Minister Billy, returned to the Nation of Islam before the Million Man March
Million Man March
The Million Man March was a gathering of social activists, en masse, held on and around the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on October 16, 1995...
in 1995. Currently, he remains active with the movement where he lives in Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
.
Soul Beat era
By the mid 1980s Bey appeared regularly on a local Oakland Soul Beat cable television lecture program, True Solutions, during which Bey broadcast his hour-long sermons every week on station KSBT. On the program Bey also promoted the bakery, and frequently expounded on the need for the economic self-reliance and "knowledge of self" of African-Americans, whom he lectured the audience as being the "Original Man", a racially-charged idea deriving from Nation of Islam doctrine. Bey repeated the NoI doctrine of Yakub, which proposed that the non-black races were the result of a 6,000 year old genetic experiment, in a mythic black utopia on the Arabian peninsula, which "peopled the world with "blue-eyed devils." Bey even went as far in his sermons as to proclaim repeatedly that the black man "is God," essentially avatars of AllahAllah
Allah is a word for God used in the context of Islam. In Arabic, the word means simply "God". It is used primarily by Muslims and Bahá'ís, and often, albeit not exclusively, used by Arabic-speaking Eastern Catholic Christians, Maltese Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Mizrahi Jews and...
. The white man, Bey proclaimed, "is the Devil."
Akbar Bey
In 1994, Yusuf's son Akbar Bey was shot four times and killed by a local drug dealer associate outside the old Omni nightclub near the corner of Shattuck Avenue and 50th Street. Court records showed the pathologist's conclusion that Akbar Bey was high on heroin or morphine at the time of his death. An Oakland police lieutenant described Akbar Bey as "a little street thug" once seen well-armed and wearing a bullet-proof vest in a blatant show of force to the police. Three months before his killing, Akbar Bey had been charged with felony counts of carrying a concealed weapon and evading the police, resulting in a car chase and crash at 44th Street and Market Street.Nedir and Abaz Bey
On March 4, 1994, followers and self-proclaimed "adopted" sons of Bey (they were never legally adopted), Nedir Bey and Abaz Bey were involved in the torture and beating of a Nigerian home-seller in an apartment on the 500 block of 24th Street in Oakland, involving a real estate deal. The complex served as a compound for the Bey organization. The two Beys and two other men were charged with felony counts of assault, robbery, and false imprisonment. A year later, following a plea deal, Nedir Bey served six months of home detention, and Abaz Bey got eight months home detention.Primarily through lobbying and orchestrating by Nedir, who was the public face of the Bey organization, Yusuf Bey cultivated the patronage of Oakland's civic, political, and religious leaders. In 1994 he ran unsuccessfully for mayor against then-incumbent Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris
Elihu Harris
Elihu Mason Harris is a former U.S. Democratic Party politician and college administrator. He served as the 46th mayor of Oakland, California from 1991 to until 1999. He served for 12 years as a member of the California State Assembly before his election as Oakland mayor...
, gaining 5% of the vote.
Felony Charges and Warrant
Yusuf Bey's detractors — notably East Bay ExpressEast Bay Express
The East Bay Express is an Oakland-based weekly newspaper serving the Berkeley, Oakland, and East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area...
journalist Chris Thompson
Chris Thompson
Chris Thompson, also known as Chris Hamlet Thompson is an English singer and guitarist known both for his work with Manfred Mann's Earth Band and for his solo accomplishments.- Biography :...
— accused Bey of cult
Cult
The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices...
ism, corruption, and Antisemitism. Many accusations of physical and sexual abuse, including rape and incest, sustained by DNA evidence, were made against Bey, culminating in felony charges that were pending at the time of his death.http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/11/30/BEY.TMP
On September 19, 2002, Bey turned himself in when a warrant was issued for his arrest, charged with 27 counts in the alleged rapes of four girls under the age of 14. The cases were pending trial into the following year. The oldest allegation was that beginning twenty years earlier, he had serially raped through coercion and beatings a preteen girl who, as a ten-year-old, came under foster care of Bey and his wife Nora Bey. In her request for a temporary restraining order one month prior to the arrest, the woman claimed that Bey's wife also knew of the serial rapes, but did nothing. The girl gave birth to a child at age 13 in 1982. Oakland's district attorney's office claimed to have conclusive DNA
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
evidence identifying Bey as the father.
Yusuf Bey IV
A series of civil claims, criminal investigations, and investigative reports in 2006 and 2007 uncovered claims of murder, widespread housing and welfare fraudWelfare fraud
Welfare fraud refers to various intentional misuses of state welfare systems by withholding information or giving false or inaccurate information. This may be done in small, uncoordinated efforts, or in larger, organized criminal rings...
, indentured servitude, and physical and sexual abuse, all linked to Bey's son, Yusuf Bey IV
Yusuf Bey IV
Yusuf Bey IV is a convicted murderer and the son of Daulet and Yusuf Bey, the latter of whom was the founder of the iconic Your Black Muslim Bakery, a purportedly halal bakery in Oakland, California. Bey IV was born in Oakland in 1986. His life was marred by arrests and accusations of serious crimes...
. As of 2007 the alleged victims are still pursuing legal action.
External links
- Your Black Muslim Bakery
- Obituary in the San Francisco ChronicleSan Francisco Chroniclethumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
, October 2, 2003 - Blood & Money: Endgame -- commentary in the East Bay Express, October 8, 2003
- Two men arrested in liquor store vandalism case -- San Francisco Chronicle, November 29, 2005
- 7 Arrested in Death of Oakland Newspaper Editor -- New York Times, August 4, 2007
- http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/22/60minutes/main3861939.shtml
"60 Minutes," CBS TV shown 2-24-08: The Murder of Chauncey Bailey.