Born: 1944
Title: Supreme Grand Director of Education (S.G.D.E.)
Temple: Temple No. 1 — Chicago, Illinois
- One of the longest-serving and longest-living members in the Moorish Science Temple of America’s recorded history
- Present inside the Temple by the age of three — a living thread back to Noble Drew Ali’s founding generation
- Supreme Grand Director of Education, Temple No. 1, Chicago — decades transmitting the Prophet’s Holy Instructions to the group of members
- She opened the door that brought E. Braswell Bey into Temple #1 — and into the office of Supreme Grand Sheik and Chairman
If you have spent your life feeling severed from your ancient identity — knowing something was stripped from your people but unable to name what — her story is proof that the knowledge was not lost, but kept alive inside the temple by those who refused to let it die.
A Household Built on Drew Ali’s Word
Sister Diane O’Neal Bey did not discover the Moorish Science Temple of America. She was carried into it. By the age of three, she was already inside the Temple — present at meetings, absorbing the rhythm of Moorish American life the way children absorb language, through repetition and proximity and the unspoken authority of those who raised her.
She joined formally at approximately 12 years of age, around 1956–1957. But the formation had begun a decade earlier.
She and her sisters (including Sister P. Newton El) were raised in the suburbs of Chicago by her aunt, Sister Pearl Leftwich El — whom she called “Mama” and who was, by every measure that matters, the architect of her spiritual life.
Sister Pearl Leftwich El had not been born into the teachings of Noble Drew Ali.
She found out about Noble Drew Ali at her cafeteria on the west side of Chicago, where Moorish Americans in fezes and turbans told her that Noble Drew Ali had come and taught their people who they truly were. She had never heard his name. The moment she did, something in her broke open.
“You mean there was a prophet and I didn’t know about it?”
She walked into her first meeting that week. She joined on the spot. And she carried every word of it home — the prayer, the Koran, the standard of love — and pressed it into the walls of her household like mortar.
Sister O’Neal Bey did not receive the faith as doctrine.
She absorbed it as atmosphere.
The Moorish American prayer opened every morning before school — no exceptions, no shortcuts.
Each evening, the children in the household took turns reading instructions aloud from the Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple of America to Sister Pearl Leftwich El, one by one.
Certain language had no place in that home…
For example: “hate” was a word Sister Pearl Leftwich El would not permit — not as a rule posted on a wall, but as an instinct she modeled every day. Noble Drew Ali’s words were not suggestions. They were the law of the house.
Inside the “The Guardian” House
With no car, Sister O’Neal Bey rode the bus from the suburbs into Chicago alongside her mother and sisters — a journey that ended at 4813 South Langley, the home of Sister Dealia Mealy El, widow of Supreme Grand Sheik and Chairman E. Mealy El.
Sister Dealia Mealy El was the custodian of Noble Drew Ali’s original records — his personal letters, his correspondence, the founding documents of the movement — and she protected them with everything she had.
Sister O’Neal Bey came of age inside that history — the small, tightly held group of members, the closed meetings, the safe in the closet, no child dared approach. She did not need it explained to her. She felt the weight of it.
What Sister Dealia Mealy El protected was the same knowledge that had been stripped from their people for generations. Watching her hold it made an impression that time has not erased.
Faith Without Peers
The suburbs offered no community of believers for Sis. Oneal Bey and her household. Her neighbors were Christians. Her classmates had never heard of Noble Drew Ali.
Outside the city, Temple and the annual MSTA picnics, Moslems simply did not exist in her world. That absence could have worn her down.
Instead it sharpened her.
She did not need peers to confirm what Sister Pearl Leftwich El had already made unshakeable.
The Encounter That Shaped Temple No. 1
Sister O’Neal Bey built her professional life at Chicago State University — and it was there, through the ordinary machinery of a workday, that one of the most consequential moments in Temple No. 1’s post-prophetic history found her.
A strange man she had never seen began appearing at her office…
He left messages with her coworkers: her brother had stopped by. She assumed it was her blood brother calling from Michigan — until the day the stranger arrived while she was at her desk. He told her he was a Moorish American and a member of Temple No. 1. She knew every face in the authorized Temple.
He was not one of them.
That man was Brother E. Braswell Bey.
She did not turn him away. She brought him and his family to an MSTA picnic — an act of discernment that would quietly reshape the movement’s future. Other members of Temple No. 1 spoke with him.
They recognized what he carried — a deep hunger for more of Noble Drew Ali’s teachings. His integration into the authorized Temple followed, and with it his eventual ascension to Supreme Grand Sheik and Chairman in November 1997 — an office he holds to this day.
The door that changed everything was opened by Sister Diane O’Neal Bey.
A Life in Service
Her title — Supreme Grand Director of Education — is not ceremonial.
It is a record of decades spent transmitting Noble Drew Ali’s Holy Instructions directly to the group of members. A video documenting her instructional work at Temple No. 1 captured her mid-teaching — precise, deliberate, anchored in the text.
Sister Diane O’Neal Bey has been a Moorish American Moslem, by Drew Ali’s own definition, for her entire conscious life. She did not drift toward it or discover it late. It was the first thing she knew and a way of life that stayed with her until this very day…
If you are only now beginning to reclaim the ancient identity that was stripped from your people — Diane O’Neal Bey is evidence that the truth about who you are, your history, and your ancestral roots, was never surrendered by those inside the Temple who carried it forward until it could be returned to you…
The question now is will you take advantage of this unique opportunity?