FCNNEWSSOURCE
This is the second installment of the interview I conducted with the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan on October 9, 2005 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Minister Farrakhan: I went back to New York and, with the help of Brother Akbar (who was then Brother Larry 4X) and others, we called together the learned Black people of New York. We hired six Eastern Airline jets and they paid their own way to come to Chicago to help the Honorable Elijah Muhammad save the Nation.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad gave them a speech and let them go. Needless to say, I was somewhat disappointed. I thought he was going to take them into a room, talk to them about the problems of the Nation and organize their talents in the areas where the Nation was in need, or insufficient, so that he could save what he had invested of the poor people’s money.
But I didn’t have the courage to ask him, “Why did you ask me to do that and then you didn’t let them do that?” Because I didn’t have the courage to ask him, and he had asked me to do something that he deliberately didn’t act on, he knew that that would stay in my mind. And it did. It stayed in my mind as an unresolved question.
So while thinking–I don’t know what triggered it–I said, “Oh, my goodness! This is what he was doing. He was giving me a dry run of something that I would be asked to do many years later.” But not to save a Nation that he had already told us was going to fall and it would rise and never fall again; he couldn’t have brought those people out there to say that. But what he brought them out there to see, and what he dealt with in that lecture on The Theology of Time, is what God had blessed him to do with the poor people’s money and with those on the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.
He gave us a model of what the unity of our dollars, behind his guidance and program, would allow us to do when we were properly united on the proper vehicle. Then, I remembered something that he said to me. He said, “Brother, when the learned of my people understand my program, they will take it and put it over overnight.”
Then, I called the learned in New York, because I was very popular as a young Minister in New York. Now, God has blessed me to be popular throughout America and in many parts of the world. So what is popularity? Is it a vanity badge? What is it? It is to be used to make change. It is to be used to make advancement for the people.
Then, the idea crystallized: “You are to call the learned of our people together and present them with the program of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad; then, get them to agree with this program; then, mobilize the people to accept their leadership with regard to that program. As that program solves the problems for a few of us, it can be used to solve the problem of all of us.”
That’s the time that we’re living in now. That’s the underlying motivation of the Millions More Movement. That is the underlying motivation for the call to the learned scholars. This is what makes it necessary for us to clearly present to them the program of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
Once the learned understand that program and agree to work that program, then the repair, the making whole and wholesome, the healing of our people, can and will begin.
Brother Jabril: Might this lead to the presentation of the program to Congress?
Minister Farrakhan: Yes, it could. It could. What has to happen now is, of course, the implementation of such a program that will bring the best out of us and the worst out of our enemies. Of course, if the enemy is angered by our sincere commitment to ease the horror of what 300 years of chattel slavery, 100 years of Jim Crow and lynching and 50 years of governmental abuse of our organizations and leaders has done, then this would clearly show that they are our open enemies.
Only when the open enemy is completely manifested and exposed, then the idea of separation from them becomes clearer, more palpable and more realistic if our sincere efforts to do for self are opposed. This will lead to clashes. It will have to, because if you would oppose us to do something for self, then we have to fight. We have no other alternative. You are strangling us with the economic situation that we’re under. When we try to relieve ourselves of that burden, you further want to strangle us.
So then, we are in a life or death struggle. We’re already dead. So you will die, too, and we will die. Then, out of the bloodletting, the idea would come up: “What can we do to end the bloodletting?”
Then, Congress can be brought in and the program put before Congress. But that’s going to take what I just said to bring it about.
Brother Jabril: Thank you, sir.
***
So, I turned off the tape recorder. But, there is more to this interview, as we’ll see.
***
In response to a question in The Final Call interview (Volume 24, Number 50), Minister Farrakhan said, “A Sister called me and told me of a dream where she saw the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He was holding small meetings with select people. He said to her, ‘Tell the Minister that there is much that he sees and there is much that he does not see, but I see what he sees and I see all that he does not see. Tell him about this Millions More Movement, on that day, I will be completely in charge. Then, he said, I want to see him and my son Wallace, because I want my family to know that I am alive.’”
Consider the following:
“Eighty-nine percent of Blacks believe the federal government should offer a combination of cash payments, debt forgiveness and social welfare programs to compensate for the devastating effects of slavery and racial segregation, according to a new survey released Tuesday.”
Kevin Herrera wrote this of the Reparations Research and Advocacy Group’s ongoing poll, which was started by David Horne, Ph.D., in April 2002 while teaching Pan African Studies at California State University at Northridge.
Barnar Muhammad said, “During Minister Farrakhan’s October 15th speech, he made a reference that we should have a poll on the question of ‘How many believe that Black people should be compensated for 400 years of free labor?’”
He continued: “Fifteen minutes after the Minister raised the question, I was able to put together a quick online poll that ran on the MillionsMoreMovement.com website that asked viewers to respond.”
The immediate result was that 3,040 of 4,201 (or 72 percent) voted “yes” to: “Do you believe that Black people should receive reparations for 400 years of free labor?”
The percentage has gone up since then.
More on all of this, next issue, Allah willing.
