PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas (FinalCall.com) – A lot of work went into making the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan’s appearance at Prairie View A&M University successful.
In unity, different campus organizations as well as different college campuses came together to hold a series of events aimed at raising the awareness and consciousness of their peers.
After landing in Houston, Minister Farrakhan was whisked away in a caravan, which took him to the prestigious St. Regis Hotel. There the Minister sat down for a 35-minute joint interview with Tamesha Brown from Texas Southern University Television and Ryan Rudd, editor-in-chief of the Prairie View Panther newspaper, for a segment titled “Unity on the Yard” produced by State of The Game media.
Immediately following the interview, Minister Farrakhan met with Frank Jackson, mayor of Prairie View. Mayor Jackson–who attended the Million Man March–gave the Minister an update regarding the future of Prairie View including plans for the 1,500 acres of land on which Prairie View A&M sits.
After a series of meetings at the St. Regis Hotel accompanied by Student Regional Minister Robert Muhammad, who leads Houston’s Muhammad Mosque No. 45, it was off to the campus for the lecture.
According to organizers, when Minister Farrakhan arrived on campus for the speech, they had just concluded five straight days of intense publicity related to his appearance.
Over 5,000 flyers were distributed across the campus and there were posters advertising Minister Farrakhan’s appearance in every campus building. There are 7,000 students at the university. Additionally, 500 free promotional CDs with conscious hip hop songs mixed in with clips of historic lectures by Minister Farrakhan were distributed throughout the campus and could be heard blaring from cars in the school’s lot. Copies of Minister Farrakhan’s books “A Torchlight for America” and “Justifiable Homicide” were given to student leaders prior to the Nov. 9 event. There were also dozens of Twitter and Facebook postings.
Organizers said an advertising class professor assigned students to develop an advertising campaign as if they were heads of a firm hired to market the event.
Following the Minister’s message, it was clear the entire campus–students and administrators–were impacted.
Calling Minister Farrakhan’s message “awesome” and “wonderful” Carol Campbell, protocol officer for Prairie View A&M’s president, told The Final Call the Minister’s message was needed by everyone present that night.
“The students had the vision to invite him,” said Ms. Campbell. “Not only did the students have the vision to invite him, but the president had the vision also to say ‘yes,’ and that tells you what Prairie View A&M University is all about,” she added.
Isis McCraw, program coordinator for the S.P.I.T. Knowledge Cultural Lecture Series at Prairie View A&M, was impressed by the order, discipline and organizational efficiency of the Nation of Islam. The Minister’s message really hit home, and all the hard work paid off for the school and its students, she said.
“It was so on point!” said Ms. McCraw, a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. “I’m in agreement with basically everything I heard and I believe the students were receptive to it also listening at the feedback we’ve had.”
“Everything he laid down was perfect for this audience,” said Ishmael Muhammad, Minister Farrakhan’s assistant at Mosque Maryam in Chicago. “The students went away with a focus. He gave them something on every subject, male/female relationships, health, diet, education, spirituality, politics, President Obama, it was great.”
Twenty-six-year-old Jelani Muhammad, a second year law student at Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall Law School, brought 15 law students with him to see and hear Minister Farrakhan for themselves. As an added surprise, the students got a chance to personally meet Min. Farrakhan.
“Just meeting him and touching him, they just were elated. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for each of them. They were stunned and speechless,” said Mr. Muhammad. “I wanted them to have the opportunity to see the Jesus in our midst,” he said.
