Final answer:
Elijah Muhammad led the Nation of Islam, which advocated for racial separation and grew significantly with Malcolm X. Detroit and Chicago were symbolically called 'Mecca' and 'Medina' by the NOI. Howard University's nickname shifted to 'The Mecca' during the civil rights movement.
Step-by-step explanation:
Elijah Muhammad was the leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI), an organization he helped to expand among African Americans. The Nation of Islam was a religious sect that preached the separation of races due to the belief that African Americans could not prosper in a society dominated by white racism. Elijah Muhammad advocated for these ideas well into the 1960s, with Malcolm X becoming the most famous member of the NOI during that period.
Members of the NOI referred to Detroit as "Mecca" and Chicago as "Medina" as a symbolic gesture, likening the cities to the holy cities of Islam in Saudi Arabia, revered as the birthplace and nurturing ground of the Islamic faith, respectively. As for Howard University, it shifted its unofficial nickname from "The Capstone of Negro Education" to "The Mecca" sometime during the civil rights movement. This nickname change was due to the university's prominence as a center of African American culture and intellectual thought.