It was founded in 1978 as an offshoot of the Nation of Islam by Royall Jenkins, who continued to be the group's leader until he died in September 2021 of complications resulting from COVID-19.
Royall Jenkins was born in 1942 in South Carolina and grew up in eastern Maryland, later moving to New York and then Chicago, while working as a long-distance truck driver delivering publications of the Nation of Islam (NOI).
[1] Public records show Jenkins working as a truck driver and living mostly with friends as he tried to recruit followers, including his daughter Maureen, who joined him in 1985 in a house in Waldorf, Maryland.
While believing that Allah came in the person of Wallace Fard Muhammad, founder of the NOI, Jenkins claims that he himself is Allah in his own person who is more powerful and who is given the task of coercing the submission of all things and perfecting everything used to magnify Him, after which men [specifically males] will all be God,[3] or gods.
[7][8] Jenkins also claims that the current NOI has been led astray by its leader Louis Farrakhan, whom he asserts is the most "formidable enemy to Allah,"[9] and that Farrakhan uses tricks and deceptive tactics to "silence anyone else's voice" and "prepare the masses to fight for him," through appearing "to be against the Whiteman [sic] and his government.
The UNOI also offers classes and has a Web site that provides extensive writings by Jenkins and recordings of his TV appearances.
[14][15] Commendations extended to the Wyandotte County government donating several additional (vacant) buildings to UNOI.
[13] The UNOI has also overstated its success—on one occasion stating that the Kansas City site is free of all crime, in the same month as a gunman fired twenty shots at a UNOI-run gas station.
[17] In 2003, the UNOI stated that Moreen Jenkins was "operating out of vengeance, scorn, anger, desire and treachery" and proposed that she seduced reporters with "the guise of a scoop."
In the same statement, Royall Jenkins is quoted as announcing "the time when those who conspire against the rise of the Blackman —including Black women—will no longer be tolerated.
In the episode, former members talk about their allegations of human trafficking, neglect and abuse, and unpaid labor of children in the group.
[20] In September 2024, six former high ranking members of the cult were convicted of conspiracy to commit forced labor by a Kansas federal court.