Slide 1: Introduction
Title: Understanding the Reclassification of Moorish Americans
Central Question: How were Indigenous Moors in North America reclassified into terms such as Negro, Black, Colored, African American, Indian, and BIPOC?
Importance: This misclassification has legal, historical, cultural, and spiritual consequences.
Objective: To trace the timeline and mechanisms of this transformation.
Purpose: To restore Moorish identity and sovereignty through truth, law, and scholarship.
Slide 2: Original Identification of Moors in North America
Title: Early Acknowledgment of Moors in Colonial Records
Historical Moors: Originally North African peoples, some of whom came to the Americas before and during European colonization.
Early Designations: The term “Moor” was used in U.S. Census records and county documents (e.g., in South Carolina, North Carolina).
Indigenous Communities: Tribes like the Lumbee, Croatan, and Melungeon were often referred to as Moors — distinct from Negroes or enslaved Africans.
Early European views recognized Moors as sovereigns and skilled builders, astronomers, and scholars.
Slide 3: Legal and Linguistic Warfare
Title: How Language Became a Weapon of Colonization
Colonial law codified identity: Legal status depended on racial labels.
1874 Chambers Etymological Dictionary defined Moors distinctly from Negroes — evidence of a linguistic divergence that was later erased.
Misnomering through forced semantics: Terms like “Negro,” “Colored,” “Indian,” and later “African-American” replaced national designations like Moor.
Language manipulation served political and economic agendas.
Slide 4: The Naturalization Act of 1790
Title: Excluding Moors Through Law
Limited citizenship to “free white persons.”\n
Moors were neither classified as white nor as citizens — effectively rendering them stateless unless they adopted imposed racial categories.
This exclusion disempowered Moors from accessing rights, land, and self-determination.
It forced many to adopt Eurocentric identities to survive economically and socially.
Slide 5: The Racial Integrity Act of 1924
Title: Institutionalized Erasure in the Jim Crow Era
Enforced the “one-drop rule,” collapsing complex genealogies into a single label: Negro.
Indigenous Moors and other non-white free persons were reclassified by force.
Vital records were altered. Marriages, land deeds, and tribal rolls were rewritten or destroyed.
This law criminalized accurate self-identification and disqualified many from land claims or treaty protections.
Slide 6: The 1930 U.S. Census Overhaul
Title: Bureaucratic Mass Reclassification
Census categories like “Moor,” “Mulatto,” and “Free People of Color” were erased.
Federal policy homogenized all dark-skinned people under “Negro.”
This erasure reinforced systemic amnesia and further buried Moorish heritage.
Families who had held non-Negro status for generations were suddenly relabeled with no recourse.
Slide 7: Why This Reclassification Was Enforced
Title: Political and Economic Motivations
Land theft: By destroying national identity, the state nullified tribal sovereignty and property claims.
Enslavement: Labeling Moors as Negroes made it legal to enslave them in the 1600s–1800s.
Disenfranchisement: Without recognized national identity, Moors were excluded from courts, contracts, and citizenship.
Labor control: Negro classification funneled Moors into low-wage labor pools under Jim Crow.
Slide 8: Cultural and Psychological Warfare
Title: Colonization of the Mind
The destruction of Moorish identity also broke:
Oral tradition
Spiritual practices
Indigenous language and names
Maleek Thee Moor🇲🇦, [8/16/2025 8:02 AM]
Replacement identities like “Black” or “African-American” disconnected Moors from land, law, and ancestry.
Media, schools, and churches reinforced this false racial construct for generations.
Slide 9: The Moorish American Response
Title: Reclaiming Identity Through Law and Faith
Noble Drew Ali founded the Moorish Science Temple of America in the early 1900s to restore Moorish nationality.
Nation of Islam (NOI) under Elijah Muhammad and The Five Percenters extended this work.
Strategies used:\n
Legal name correction (El, Bey, Ali)
Cultural re-education
Study of treaties, law, and Qur’anic foundation
Asserting “Moorish American” on legal documents, court filings, and birth records.
Slide 10: Conclusion and Call to Action
Title: From Misnomer to Sovereign Moor
Truth is the Foundation of Law: Recognizing misclassification is essential to restoring justice.
We must educate our families and communities about:\n
The colonial roots of terms like “Black” and “African-American”\n
The legal rights of Moorish Americans under national and international law\n
Our divine and national creed as Moors\n
Call to Action:\n
Correct your classification on paper and in spirit\n
Unite the Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, and the Five Percenters around common truth\n
Teach our youth who they truly are: descendants of sovereign, civilized, divine Moorish Nation
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