Births on June 26

Dwight York, American singer

Dwight D. York (born June 26, 1935), also known as Malachi Z. York, Issa al-Haadi al-Mahdi, et alii, is an American, musician, and writer best known as the founding leader of several Black Muslim groups in New York, most notably the Nuwaubian Nation, a new religious movement that has existed in some form since the 1960s. He is a convicted child molester.York began founding several Black Muslim groups 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 religious movements under various names between the 1960s 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, cryptozoology, Christianity, UFO religions, New Age, and popular conspiracy theories. He last called his group the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, Nuwaubian Nation, or Nuwabians.Around 1990, York and the Nuwaubian Nation relocated to rural Putnam County, Georgia, where they built a large complex. They came under scrutiny in the early 1990s, after they built Tama-Re, an Egyptian-themed "city" for about a hundred of his followers in Putnam County. 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. He and his group were originally based in Brooklyn, New York and some of them relocated to Athens, Georgia after his arrest. 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 and his wife, Kathy Johnson, were arrested in May 2002. In 2004, he was convicted on federal charges of transporting minors across state lines for the purposes of child 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.