Founder
The Nuwaubian Nation was centered exclusively around the person of the founder, Malachi (Dwight) York, who legally changed his name several times besides using dozens of aliases. York was born on June 26, 1935 (also reported as 1945). His ministry began in the late 1960s, from 1967 preaching to the Nubians (viz. African Americans) in Brooklyn, and he founded numerous esoteric or quasi-religious fraternal orders under various names during the 1970s and 1980s, at first centered around pseudo-Islamic themes, later moving to a loose Ancient Egypt theme, eclectically mixing ideas taken from black nationalism, cryptozoological and UFO religions and popular conspiracy theory. During the 1980s, he was also active as a musician, as "Dr. York" publishing under the "Passion Records" label.
York published some 450 booklets (dubbed "scrolls") under numerous pseudonyms. During the late 1990s, he styled himself a messianic founder-prophet of his movement, sometimes claiming divine status or extraterrestrial origin, appearing on his Savior's Day celebrations at Tama-Re.
York was arrested in May 2002, and in 2004 convicted to a 135 year sentence for transporting minors across state lines in the course of sexually molesting them, racketeering, and financial reporting charges. York's case was reported as the largest prosecution for child molestation ever directed at a single person in the history of the United States, both in terms of number of victims and number of incidents. The case was described in the book Ungodly: A True Story of Unprecedented Evil (2007) by Bill Osinski, a reporter who had covered the Nuwaubians in Georgia during the late 1990s.
York is denounced by orthodox black Muslims as a fake Muslim, a "Mahdi pretender" and "blasphemer". But some factions of the black supremacist subculture in the United States appear to continue to support York, portraying his conviction as a conspiracy by the "White Power Structure". Malik Zulu Shabazz, chairman of the New Black Panther Party and York's lawyer, described York as "a great leader of our people victim of an open conspiracy by our enemy."
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