The Muslim Experience in Minnesota project aims to capture and convey the Muslim experience in Minnesota through oral interviews and photographic portraits. This Minnesota Historical Society funded project documented 40 Minnesota Muslims chosen carefully to represent a diverse collection of experiences.

Continuing in the series of interviews from the Muslim Experience in Minnesota project, in this entry, I feature Clara Nakumbe, a resident of North Minneapolis and a retired day care provider.

Transcript of Clara Nakumbe Interview:

My name is Clara Nakumbe. I was born in Memphis, Tennessee. My mom moved here when I was age of fourteen, so I pretty much grew up in North Minneapolis, went to school here, Franklin Junior High. I went to high school at Vocational, which is no longer, it was downtown it was a school you took sewing and different things so that's how I come about being here. I was a daycare provider for twenty-eight years. I serviced infants to school age. I retired last year. I was brought up as a Christian. My mom, my parents, my grandparents, and all of my people on, you know, both sides of the family are Christians, they still are. I am the only one that converted to Islam. I came to Islam under Elijah Muhammad, the Nation of Islam. Eventually when his son Warith Deen became the leadership, took the leadership role in I think it was 1975 and he brought what I call the Orthodox Islam to us at that time. The Qur'an—I always had the Qur'an in the Nation, but I never read it—but when his son became into the leadership role in 1975, that's when we began, he began to, you know, tell us to read, you know, get the Qur'an, study Arabic. But that's when I began to really understand the religion, was through his teaching. He brought out a lot of things that—about religion that I was not aware of. To me, Islam is all—I—we had a close, it's a close community in terms of the community itself. People in the community kind of look out for each other; that was the, that's been—and I think that was a big part of it. Then when I began to read about, you know, Prophet Muhammad, his life, and the things that he went through, and how he did things, that was—made me more aware of what the religion is about. One of the biggest things that I find is, I'm asked often how as you, a woman in Islam, because they have a conception that I have no voice, I'm just, you know, some man controls everything, and that's not true. It's true in cultures, but not in the religion of Islam. In the religion, the Qur'an says that I have the right to own property, I have the right to get divorced, although its not something that… it's frowned upon, but I don't have to stay in a relationship that's not good for me. So I get asked that all the time about women and, you know, I'm not gonna come into that and not have a right. One of the things, if following the Qur'an, we have a right to be maintained. Whatever money we make is our money. We don't even have to pay anything for the upkeep of the home or anything else. That is primarily the man's responsibility. You know, we can have, we can do, but if whatever I make or do, that's mine. I don't have to share it and help him pay any expense. So that's one of the misconceptions that people don't understand about the religion is the treatment of women. And I guess it goes back a long way. The Nation of Islam, it—the thing that attracted me to it was the beginning to respect and love self—the love of who I was as a black person was what brought me to the Nation of Islam. All this time, we were thought of as, you know, not as a people, and that was the key to me, when I went to the meeting and they talked about, you know, coming together as a people and being respected as a people, and that was the first level for me. I gravitated toward that because we, as a people, we hadn't had that. It was a sense of empowerment of saying, you know what, okay, so you don't want me to be at certain places? Well, I don't want to be there. So I'm going to make my own place and you can't come in my place because at that time, they could not come to our place of worship. It was only later that they were able to come. No whites were allowed in the place. So it kind of, I mean, it kind of—you saying you don't want me there? Okay, good. Then I'm going to go over here and leave you be But after I was blessed to make Hajj and, like I said, come into Islam under Imam Warith Al-Deen Muhammad, began to see that Islam was bigger than that. It was—when I went and made Hajj, I mean, I met people from every part of the world that could be there. Every color, every ethnic, and it was a really beautiful sight to see that many people in one place. I mean, it was just overwhelming for me. It really made me know that Islam was just, it was just, it's a universal religion, really; it's not just a little piece of something. And my understanding to me is the way that I see Islam is, Islam is the final piece to what was before. The Christians, the Jews and Islam is the final piece. My Qur'an is the final piece to what came before me. I see when I read Qur'an, I look at Qur'an and look in that and looking and reading it as the piece that fits into whatever has come before. And it's just huge. Once we had a masjid over North, I mean over South, and we finally moved from that place and we got this place here became available, someone got it and we started to be a part of that, and that's how I got to be a part of it. We renovated it a few years ago, about ten, twelve years ago; we did a fundraising to renovate it. It was originally, it was a restaurant and we renovated about ten years ago and did what we did and we fundraised to do that. So it's, to me, I would be lost without my place of worship. That's what—in fact, my place of worship and my religion is what keeps me focused with all the things that are around me today and what I'm saying in the outer world and the craziness is, I know that regardless of what's going on, there is someone higher than all of that and, you know, man can, you know, have his whatever, but eventually it'll come down to what it needs to be. That's my love. I've been on the board at least—I'm trying to remember—I know at least ten, twelve years I worked on the board. I've been with the fundraising of that community. I just—to me, I've helped out when they had the Saturday schools. I've cooked. It's just, it's just, it's my place of worship and I would feel lost, you know, if it wasn't there. All of my neighbors are Christians or some other faith or no faith or whatever. But I know pretty much all of my neighbors. The people who, next door here, we've been neighbors for about twenty seven years. Neighbor across the street, about fifteen years. The man behind me, twenty something years, a couple of houses behind me. So some of the other people, we've known each other for twenty or more years. My grandchildren grew up with some of their children. I go to their things. They invite me, I go. And they come to stuff that we've had at my place of worship. And one of the things that we look at is the common denominator. We're all trying to serve God in different ways. We call him different names, but he's One and that's been the biggest—that's key for all of us. During my time in daycare, I had my daycare in the lower level in my duplex, and I'm known in the neighborhood of the children, in the daycare children, as Grandma Clare. I had my own grandchildren there, so they would hear them call me Grandma Clare, and so I became Grandma Clare. And today I see young people out that they are mothers and fathers themselves and I'm still Grandma Clare. And it's, like I said, it's twenty eight years I did daycare. And a lot of the people I did daycare for, they still, you know, live in Minneapolis, in this community and I see them at the stores that I frequently, so it's a wonderful experience to be able to see that happen. A lot of times, I go over there and introduce myself and say to them, you know, I'm over here if you need me. And I think that's the biggest thing with people. We have this fear because we don't know people and we don't become to know people and so, you know, that's one of the things I think people got to get past. And I guess that's one of the things, too. I think growing up down South and also growing up when I first moved to Minneapolis here was just a small group of Afro-American families here, so we knew everybody and every family here. It was just a few of us here. So we, it was kind of like, you know, a sense of family. And one of the things that we as Afro-American culture would do is what they a say a village. We were at one time, that's exactly what we did. We looked out for each other. We looked out for each other's children. We didn't necessarily have to have a blood relationship. I've had two of my friends who passed a few years ago, we were friends like, forty years. They to me, I never had a sister, but they were like sisters to me. We want to look at, you know, things that's happening. And I know with me still, it's—even personally now, I try to be very openly, and have open mind about things, but I have to admit, I still, I have some prejudice about certain things. One of the things that, you know, I'm still bothered about, and I still have a problem with, is we as Afro-Americans, you know, were brought here against our will, culture, everything taken, and now I see that our country will take other people in from other places now and respect them and give them the help and things that they didn't allow to us. We didn't have that help. You know, it was our people themselves who had to help each other, and I have to feel, and I do, I express this to my children at times, I have a problem with that. I really do. I don't think it's fair. You know, the system, I mean, nobody helps Afro-Americans to do all this. Nobody gave us the forty acres and a mule, nobody did that. When you see black people who have aspired to have something it's because they worked their butts off to get there. Nobody gave it to them. I'm very close to my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren. The biggest thing that I would hope and I think that the key to everything is education. We—I think the more that people know, understand, get a true history of what history is all about, not the history that is out there today, because a lot of that about one culture did everything is not true. I think we need—all children need to get the real history of what was—who invented what, who did what, who did it, and I think that in itself will make for a better world. When people get the idea that one people made everything and nobody else did anything, so education to me is one of the priorities. Secondly, there are countries that are smaller than us, who have healthcare for free. I definitely think that we as a country can afford to have healthcare for people. I think we can do that, and people should not have to be sick and not have money to go to the hospital. I would hope that my children will one day recognize that we have the right to live where ever we want to live. I choose to live in North Minneapolis. I could live in a suburb if I want to, but I love here. I grew up here, I love it. I like going downtown, I like walking to the stores, I like walking to, you know, I'm not a suburb person who wanna drive all the time. I like this. I think when you give, and you do, something comes back to you in different forms, you know. And so this was it. So I think this it was my parents and my grandparents were really big role models. At the time, I did go to Catholic school, which was—down South at the time, Catholic school was the only school that you really got a, you know, got a good education in. And my mom, you know, made sure that my brother and I went to Catholic school. I had never went to a public school until I moved to Minneapolis and I was I think in the eighth or ninth grade. So I was brought up with nuns in the Catholic faith and stuff like that. That was a big piece. And that, too, was a part of the modesty teaching also, you know. My experiences, like I said, it's been pretty good. There is some discrimination in terms of I guess the fact sometime people who don't understand and you say you're Muslim, they might jump to the conclusion it's terrorist, you know, activities. But I think that's people who really haven't—don't have understanding about the religion. I remember so vividly I think, and when I think about that, when Keith was running for office and a lot of the people were, you know, really having a problem with him because he was, you know, a Muslim. And they were, just didn't, you know, "I'm not going to vote for him," and so… And I think after he got in office, they found out that he's for people. He's about Minnesota, he's about his government. He cares about what's going on. And I think, other than that, basically, you know, we still have some lot of educating to do, like we're doing now. Educating people, 'cause I, you know, going to the schools, going to places, but I think we've come a long way, you know, in bringing Islam out to people. I think 9/11 was a big setback, but I think stuff— things are coming out now that people can see that we just, you know, hey, misunderstanding. Like I said, education, I think, is the key for all of that. But as a whole, I mean, I'm comfortable with where I'm at. I think our community, and I think as a community at Masjid An-Nur, we've done a lot of outreach in terms of the food shelf where people come and they come inside the masjid and they see that it's just a place of worship like every place else. One of the things that Masjid An-Nur does, we have a food shelf that we distribute food every third Saturday in the month to anybody, to people in the community. They can come and we have volunteers to do it. They come and they give, you know, food away, have bags packed up. And people see us out there, you know, doing different things. It's open to the public. We have like, a little bake sales and different things like that. And the grounds is open for people to come and, you know, participate. And I think—I really think, like I said, I think, our community, Masjid An-Nur, it's really one of the most open communities that there is as Muslim communities. I really think that. I mean, we got masjids all over but, I think our masjid is really more open and people can really see how we as Muslim does. And I think—and we have a diverse community there. In fact, I think ours is one of the most diverse communities because we have Africans, we have Palestinians, we have a diverse, you know, Afro-Americans, and I think when you come there, you're going to see a diversity. You're not going to just see one ethnic group; you're going to see a diversity of people worshipping at our masjid. And we've had people say to us, they come to our masjid because they feel comfortable there. They feel comfortable, you know. A lot of the times when people are born in a religion, they don't understand it. And I think this is a lot of the things today that we have been dealing with is people are born with Islam in these countries and stuff, but they don't really understand it. They don't even bother to study the religion itself. It's just like, okay, it's here, but you never open it up. And I think that was one of the big things that we as Muslims from America who were not born into it, we studied it more, we began to look at things, and we began to really see the depths of how beautiful this religion really is and how we brought it to the forefront. And we have a lot of young ministers, including Makram is one of them, who studied under Imam Muhammad and they are carrying his work on. I mean, they can speak—you hear them speak Arabic you would think they was from the place. And they can take the Qur'an and just break it down, tell you about it. It's just beautiful to see that there are people who's carrying on his work. You know, that thirty, forty year group.