Researching Dwight York

He and his group were based in Brooklyn, New York. Around 1990 the community relocated to rural Putnam County, Georgia, where they built a large complex. York was convicted in 2004 of child molestation and violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. He is serving a 135-year sentence.

York began his ministry in the late 1960s. In 1967 he was preaching to the "Ansaaru Allah" (viz. African Americans) in Brooklyn, New York, during the period of the Black Power movement. He founded numerous orders under various names during the 1970s and 1980s. These were at first based on pseudo-Islamic themes and Judaism (Nubian Islamic Hebrews). Later he developed a theme derived from "Ancient Egypt," mixing ideas taken from black nationalism, cryptozoological and UFO religions, and popular conspiracy theory. He last called his group the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, or Nuwabians.

York and the Nuwaubians came under scrutiny in the early 1990s, after they built Tama-Re, an Egyptian-themed "city" for about a hundred of his followers, in rural Putnam County, Georgia. Before York's trial, the community had been joined directly and in the area by hundreds of other followers from out of state, while alienating both black and white local residents. The community was intensively investigated after numerous reports that York had molested numerous children of his followers.

York was arrested in May 2002. In 2004 he was convicted on federal charges of transporting minors across state lines for the purposes of sexual molestation, as well as racketeering and financial reporting violations. York's case was reported as the largest prosecution for child molestation ever directed at a single person in the history of the United States, both in terms of number of victims and number of incidents.