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 Kenyatta's government "sought to project capitalism as an African ideology, and communism (or socialism) as alien and dangerous". Kenyatta was a flamboyant character, with an extroverted personality. According to Murray-Brown, he "liked being at the centre of life", and was always "a rebel at heart" who enjoyed "earthly pleasures". One of Kenyatta's fellow LSE students, Elspeth Huxley, referred to him as "a showman to his finger tips; jovial, a good companion, shrewd, fluent, quick, devious, subtle, [and] flesh-pot loving". Kenyatta liked to dress elaborately; throughout most of his adult life, he wore finger rings and while studying at university in