By Jada Ingleton
Credit: Courtesy photo
When Washingtonian playwright Carole Mumin celebrated the launch of The Clara on MLK in March 2024 — named after First Lady of the Nation of Islam Clara Muhammad — she recognized a duty to ensure the building’s namesake would be revered beyond the walls of the Ward 8 apartment complex, which sits on the very grounds once home to America’s Islamic Heritage Museum and the Clara Muhammad School.
“We sat outside and looked up at the edifice that’s now The Clara, that was to house some 80 families…and they would be moving into a building and not even know who Clara is or was,” Mumin told The Informer. “That had a lot to do with [the decision] to see what we could do to share her history with the neighborhood and with the residents of this new building.”
Roughly a year later, that mission deems itself in a one-woman show coming to Arena Stage in Southwest D.C., June 30-July 1, where the legacy of the American Muslim pioneer, and wife of Honorable Elijah Muhammad, takes center stage with the help of co-playwrights and executive producers Cheryl Hawkins, Carole and Imam Mumin, and lead actress T. Rafiah Jones.
While sharing performance insights and pivotal parallels, the leading women behind “Sister Clara at the Heaven’s Gate” touted the production to the tune of humanity, descending influence and interfaith communion — what Hawkins considers a foundation of Clara Muhammad’s storied impact.
“I am so not naive enough to believe that we won’t get some criticism for what we’re doing here with this story, and what we’re choosing to tell and what we’re choosing not to tell,” Hawkins said, “but I think we’re ready to embrace whatever it is because we’re standing on a principle of what we believe was at the the core of who Sister Clara Muhammad was.”
A Leading Lady Beyond the Nation of Islam
Dazzled with musical performances and historic references, “Sister Clara at Heaven’s Gate” aims to revitalize the unsung heroine whose impact in American history exceeds the bounds of Muslim teachings.
Originally born in the Jim Crow South, and raised with Christian values, Clara Muhammad emerged as the paradigmatic leading woman in the early-to-mid 1900s, dedicating decades of service to youth development and challenging societal limitations with a humanistic yearn for equity.
Co-playwright Mumin lauded the opportunity to share “the love that I was able to grow as a member of the Nation of Islam,” having converted to a first resurrection Muslim amid Clara Muhammad’s leadership, which she added began with Elijah Muhammad’s four-year incarceration for draft evasion in the 1940s.
“She was actually running the organization,” said Mumin, highlighting the wife’s courage in delivering messages to and from ministers of NOI while her husband was imprisoned. “And she was the one who devised the method [for] women to write surahs (Arabic word for chapters) and mail them to their husbands in the prison, who then began to share those surahs from the Quran.”
By the 1950s and ’60s, the membership of the Muslim community witnessed an unprecedented rise, with notable Muslim figures like civil rights leader Malcolm X and championship boxer Muhammad Ali joining the ranks of the first resurrection period, which lasted through 1975.
Among Sister Clara Muhammad’s revered efforts in this era includes directing the educational arm of the Nation, established as the University of Islam in the 1930s. With the guiding principles of the first resurrection, African American scholars — ranging from 3 years old to the end of secondary school — attended the University of Islam Schools (later renamed the Clara Muhammad Schools) to re-socialize the “slave mindset” and obtain a more positive outlook on Blackness and sufficiency, both individually and collectively.
Mumin credited the leader’s “quiet,” yet courageous efforts that made room for Black Muslim recognition on a national scale, including in the District. She noted how the new age of African American prosperity was particularly pertinent among women, and evidently, played a role in her conversion from Catholicism.
“[Clara] wouldn’t let us get separated through class and education. She recognized that the more we would be educated, the more that we would rise as a people,” Mumin explained, “and she saw women as key to us being successful as African Americans.”
The native Washingtonian spoke of her own upbringing in a moment where “everything that was better was white,” fueling a common misconception that communities of color needed to integrate into “white systems” in order to overcome the struggle.
Thus, when Mumin served in the Carter administration as the first person of Muslim faith to work directly under a sitting president, she dawned a renewed sense of self thanks to an adequate education and the teachings of the late educator and leader.
“I understood clearly who we were as a people. [Being in the White House] just made me more Black,” said Mumin. “In the end, what she was able to share, [also through her son, Imam Warith Deen Mohammed] is that ‘we’re all pure, it’s just one human family. Don’t let them divide us like that.’”
Sister Clara’s Legacy Inspires Generations of Unity Across Faith, Womanhood
Hawkins said the play nods to the generational impact Clara Muhammad established as a proponent of education and interfaith relations, one that was preserved in the lens of W.D. Mohammed, who led the NOI following the death of his father, Elijah Muhammad, in 1975.
In addition to revering his mother through the renamed Clara Muhammad Schools, Hawkins noted testimonies of Mohammed advocating for an interfaith embrace “to the fullest,” something she hopes will resonate with modern audiences during times of religious divisiveness.
“All three religions – Islam, Christianity, Judaism – they all have the same prophets. Those same people that you’re reading about in the Bible, there they are in the Torah, there they are in the Quran,” Hawkins said. “However you choose to come to the understanding of the Creator…there’s got to be something in all of that that says we’re all one.”
Beyond a spiritual alignment, Jones emphasized Sister Clara Muhammad’s legacy as an exemplar of the classic trope of Black women serving at the backbone of various communities.
The lead actress noted some of her character’s earliest inspirations in life, such as Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell and Ida B. Wells – all integral in the realms of Black liberation. Further, she touted the play’s namesake as one who was “very clear what her rights and what her needs were” to advance as a human being, a lesson of empowerment for future leaders of any faith.
“These women, at the time, were not setting out to make history. They were setting out to make their lives better for themselves, for their children and family, and their people,” she pointed out. “The more [Black women keep] telling our story, the more we’ll see, ‘Oh, my God…look what they did. I can do that. I’m doing that.’’
While reflecting on the process to channel her on-stage persona, Jones gave a shout out to the “humble” co-playwrights who embody principles of leadership, commitment, and remind her to trust in the Creator. Moreover, she boosted a sense of pride to uphold “the honor and responsibility” of Sister Clara Muhammad’s story while in the face of the “amazing Black women” bringing it to life.
Meanwhile, Mumin emphasized the show’s purpose as an opportunity to walk in the footsteps of Clara Muhammad’s method of resilience, and said she hopes youth in particular will seek inspiration against modern attempts to divide and disrupt the social progress of America.
“[Trump’s] saying ‘Make America Great Again’ and I think what we’re showing is that we were always making it greater,” Mumin told The Informer. “If he would look at it maybe on a wider lens, he could see that this is a beautiful story – the African American story, the Italian story or the Hispanic story. I’m hoping that [those watching] can see [to] just keep going, it’s going to be all right.”
