Muhammad Kenyatta Muhammad Kenyatta Muhammad I. Kenyatta, born Donald Brooks Jackson (March 3, 1944 – January 6, 1992), was an American professor, civil rights leader and international human rights advocate. Jackson changed his name in the early 1970s to Muhammad Kenyatta to honor Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam and Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya. In the 1960s, he worked for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which challenged the denial of voting rights to African-Americans in Mississippi. In 1969 he was elected national Vice-President of the Black Economic Development Conference and President of the Greater Philadelphia branch of
Jomo Kenyatta London took to wearing a fez and cloak and carrying a silver-topped black cane. He adopted his surname, "Kenyatta", after the name of a beaded belt he often wore in early life. As President he collected a variety of expensive cars. Murray-Brown noted that Kenyatta had the ability to "appear all things to all men", also displaying a "consummate ability to keep his true purposes and abilities to himself", for instance concealing his connections with communists and the Soviet Union from both members of the British Labour Party and Kikuyu figures at home. This deviousness was sometimes interpreted as dishonesty