Oral History Interview with Sabreen Sharrief on October 13, 2020
Oral history interview with Sabreen Sharrief conducted by Zainab Yousif-Ahmad on October 13, 2020. Interview written by Dr. Alisa Perkins (Research Director) and Zainab Yousif-Ahmad. Sabreen Sharrief was born in 1948 in the metro Detroit city of Inkster, Michigan, into a family that originally hailed from Jackson, Mississippi. Sharrief’s great-grandfather was an early educator for enslaved African-American children, teaching at an institution that would later become Jackson’s Tougaloo College. In 1947, Sharrief’s father established Big Four Black and White Cabs Co in Inkster, which is currently in its fourth generation of family ownership. After graduating from Inkster High School, Sharrief began attending nursing school. Sharrief reverted from Christianity to Islam in 1972 and began attending Temple No. 1. Several years later, she transitioned to Sunni Islam under the leadership of Imam Warith Deen Mohammed. In 2010, Sharrief retired from a fifty-year-long career in nursing and moved back to her familial home in Mississippi. There, she serves on the governing board of her mosque, and, for more than ten years, has volunteered with the mosque’s prison outreach, ministering to female inmates in Mississippi. Additionally, Sharrief volunteers at the International Museum of Muslim Cultures in Jackson, Mississippi. In the interview, Sharrief fondly remembers growing up in Inkster, reflecting on the city’s close-knit African-American community and Black-owned businesses. She elaborates on how she encourages the incarcerated women she works with to gain strength and self-esteem through religious study and self-love. Further, Sharrief discusses her work as a tour guide for the International Museum of Muslim cultures, which allows her to offer public education about historically under-represented societies.
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