Louis Walcott Farrakhan was born in New York on 11th May, 1933. After attending Winston-Salem Teachers College he worked as calypso singer.
In 1955 Farrakhan joined the Nation of Islam (sometimes known as Black Muslims), a black nationalist and religious organization that had been founded by Wallace Fard.
Adopting the Arabic name, Farrakhan, he recorded a song, A White Man's Heaven is a Black Man's Hell, for the movement and wrote two plays that were performed in Black Muslim mosques.