In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
As-Salaam Alaikum. (Peace Be Unto You)
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Million Man March and I recently re-read the words that Allah (God) gave me on October 16, 1995. As a student of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, I marveled at what God gave me to give to the nearly 2 million Black men present on the National Mall and to the world watching via television.
This was unlike any event ever before in the United States of America or in the nations of the earth, especially those countries that have been under the victimization of the Satanic mind that rules this present world.
No nation has assembled this number of men to make Atonement to God, to others we may have offended, to reconcile differences in our families, differences in our communities and to accept responsibility for our actions that have sown division, hurt and pain among us.
October 16 was the beginning of a process of healing. The day represented a high point in our development achieved through the Guidance of God and the fellowship of men and women, brothers and sisters from many different walks of life. We came with different ideologies, religious beliefs, and political aspirations.
We achieved something that set a standard on that day. It fulfilled an ideal and showed the value of the idea behind that day, a day never seen before or since religious leaders gathered in Rankin Chapel at Howard University to anoint a Holy Day. Not a holiday, but a Holy Day where we would make it a Day of Absence from work and school, a Day of Absence from sport and play, a Day of Prayer and Fasting and petitioning the Creator to hear our pain.
The Rev. Willie Wilson of Union Temple Baptist Church and Archbishop G. Augustus Stallings of Imani Temple African American Catholic Congregation led the march of Black religious leaders of different denominations into the chapel carrying the banners of their religious affiliations. There was no feeling of religious division. We saw and shared nothing but love for one another and the religious leaders showed their love for Louis Farrakhan, the man God used to call for the Million Man March and Day of Atonement.
Men at the March took a pledge to be better fathers, better men, community and world builders, respecters and protectors of their women and children and non-violent with one another, except in self-defense.
We registered people to vote and studies found an additional 1.7 million Black men participated in 1996 national elections and decided the outcome of that election. They were motivated and inspired by the Million Man March. Black organizations, churches, mosques and synagogues increased membership as I asked the men to go home and join an organization involved in our struggle and a house of worship of their choice. I thought for the whole, acted for the whole of our people and everyone benefitted. In my suite, I was asked by the bishop of the AME Church whether I was going to proselytize my faith. I gave that bishop my word that every church would benefit, every mosque would benefit, every organization would benefit. SCLC had to hire staff because of the increased number of people joining. But the SCLC, the NAACP, the National Urban League, the All African People’s Revolutionary Party, the Nation of Islam and the World Community of Al-Islam under Imam W.D. Muhammad and other groups benefitted.
I thank Allah (God) for the medical students and doctors from Howard University Hospital, who came out under the direction of Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad and attended to those who needed assistance.
Though it was a gathering of men, never has an event taken place that honored women as women were honored on the day of the Million Man March. Look at those women that were on the rostrum. Look at those women who spoke. Look at the woman who was the mother of that March, Dr. Dorothy Height, a legendary leader in the civil rights struggle. Mrs. Rosa Parks, Dr. Betty Shabazz and daughter Ilyasah Shabazz, humanist and poet Maya Angelou, Cora Masters Barry, Atty. E. Faye Williams, Mother Khadijah Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, Mother Tynnetta Muhammad, wife of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, Mrs. Jesse Jackson, Jr., Rev. Barbara Skinner, C. Delores Tucker, Black nationalist matriarch Queen Mother Moore and Dr. Delois Blakeley and then 10-year-old Tiffany Mayo participated or spoke at the Million Man March. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, Rep. Cardiss Collins, and Rep. Barbara Rose Collins were among political leaders at the March.
The day was so magnetic, it brought to Washington the top Black politicians in the country, the top preachers in the country, the top artists and the top sports figures. All came with the same mind seeking the rise of our people from a condition 400 years under our enemy had produced.
No one was limited who spoke that day. The Rev. Jackson asked me: “How much time can you give me?” I said to him, “I cannot give you a time limit. Go and speak until you are finished.”
The speeches of others were stopped as the men on the Mall chanted that they wanted to hear Farrakhan.
Some of my words October 16, 1995 were mocked by some. I said the Washington Monument is 555 feet tall and the obelisk is a 1. It represents 1555, marking the time of our entry into this country. All those things I mentioned, using numbers, symbols, scriptures and prophecy, look at them then now. My message is pregnant with even more significance today.
Allah (God) guided me. We closed in prayer and we had our Christian family close in prayer. A brother sang the song, “To God Be the Glory.” He asked me if he should sing a part where it says, “with his blood he has saved me.” I said, “don’t miss a word.” The words in that song refer to Jesus and I knew it was talking about my Father, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
People were also moved by my words, words from a man the enemy called a hate teacher. The man they called an anti-Semite. The man they said ugly and false things about was the man that Allah (God) guided to give us the greatest day in our history. I never spoke negatively of any group. I lifted us a people, regardless to our differences, or sexual preferences. This was a day when all of us were lifted.
The Satanic mind was around us but we gave it no quarter. They were ineffective. They were working, but they were ineffective.
But after the March was over, the opposition intensified. Many Black pastors who allowed me in their churches building up to the March, when I wanted to come back to their churches and thank them, they would not let me in. The word was out that the Minister was the anti-Christ.
The enemy was now focused on me. It’s 25 years later. I am older, I was poisoned, I was at death’s door three times, but the enemy did not get me. They have had 25 years to do what they wanted to do, to destroy my name, my reputation and attack everything that I tried to do of good to link us to our struggling people in the world.
The enemy said I went “grubbing from money” when I went on a World Friendship Tour after the March. I never asked anyone for money, but I was treated like a Head of State during my travel. The people of the world had seen what they had never seen before. The late Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi wanted me to join the Mathaba, which was the revolutionary unit of the Libyan government and people. Brother Gadhafi told his people to leave me alone and that I already had an agenda and didn’t need to be given one.
I had told him from my lips, “I am a revolutionary, but not that kind. I will produce a revolution in America with the Bible and the Qur’an, not with a gun.”
Brother Gaddafi saw the March; he was glued to the television the whole day. He found me in the evening, called me, and offered us a billion dollars to support our rise. Do you think Satan was happy over that? He saw a man that loved his people.
The day was perfect in a spirit exemplified by those present, showing what we could bring into existence as everyday behavior for us as a people. That day frightened our enemies to the degree that Mayor Marion Barry, not out of fright but out of love and his wife and those with him, closed D.C. government down.
Congress, both sides of the aisle, took the day off.
They closed the doors of the Supreme Court and the president left the city.
So, on October 16, 1995, the capital of the greatest nation on earth and in the history of the last 6,000 years became the capital of Black America and Black people in the world. It was a day of tranquility, peace and contentment of mind never before seen in America. No crime was reported in the city of Washington that day. And if they checked, crime was down all over the country because Black men were not in the streets. They were at home in front of the television watching their brothers standing strong on the National Mall. That day frightened the enemies of our unity and the enemies of our rise. But it fulfilled the desire of Black men and women to see a day like we had never seen before. It was also a clear sign to those with the mind and mission of the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover that the Messiah their Counterintelligence Program was designed to prevent from appearing evidently had appeared, has appeared, and is present. His presence and the spirit of God permeated the crowd.
The federal government spent millions of dollars to prevent the rise of a “Black Messiah,” who could unite the Black nationalist element and movement. They feared the nationalist element, not so much the civil rights groups, but all were present on that day.
That day in Washington, D.C. affected the world and was a sign from God that the One that the world has been looking for is present.
So, the government didn’t have to wonder about who to focus their attention on to destroy. After October 16, 1995, it sharpened its attack on the Nation of Islam, its leadership, Black people in general, and Black Muslims in particular.
The words that God inspired me to say have more value today than 25 years ago, when those words were spoken. They have more meaning, carry more power and more life today because practicing the principles that God brought through us that day will lead to a new and better people, a new and better America, a new and better world. It started from the capital of the United States of America on the Mall where we were once sold as slaves.
Four-hundred years later, we were on that Mall offering the highest level of civilization to our people, to America and the world.
The enemy’s aim is to make sure a day like that never happens again. Not to think of such spirit and behavior becoming the modus operandi for all of us every day of our lives. They don’t want to see that again. They said the message was great, but the Messenger was not the right Messenger. Allah (God) says in the Qur’an that He knows best where to place His message. He placed that message in me on that day as a guiding principle to go forward in that spirit. That’s why the cry went out, “Long, live the spirit of the Million Man March!” I thank all who helped make that day possible because it wasn’t made by one man or two men or 10 men. It was made by many who came together to prove that if we could do it for one day, we could do it for one year. We could do it for the rest of our lives without the interference of the Satanic mind. And even though the Satanic mind was looking for an opening that day, the Mind and Spirit of God ruled that day.
As long as we stay in the spirit of Atonement, Reconciliation, and Responsibility, the mind of Satan will die a natural death among us.
I thank Allah (God) for allowing me to live to see a day when what He gave me to speak 25-years-ago would reinvigorate a people who have been beset by Satan on all sides that such a day and such a spirit would never happen again. But not only will it happen again, it will be the order of the day, the week, the year. Not only for us, but for people all over the Earth moved by the Word that God gave me for all human beings.
I didn’t get to experience the Million Man March. I was in a room in the U.S. Capitol as the others spoke. As I came down the stairs to the call of my son Mustapha who introduced me, I felt like a leaf being blown by the wind not knowing where it would land. I was being carried by a spirit and a power so much bigger than me.
I thank those who are honoring that day because they are honoring the best of ourselves. I was motivated by concern about movies that had portrayed Black youth in a very savage state throughout the cinemas of the world so that if and when government attacks came against us, or a genocidal plot was unleashed against us, no one would care. We were being cast as the Achilles’ Heel of a great nation.
I wanted to do something to show Black youth were not what Hollywood said we were. God blessed us to show Black America was not what we had been made out to be on the silver screen.
So, I thank all those who wanted to do something to celebrate the silver anniversary of the Million Man March. I thank Melody Spann Cooper and TV One and who decided to replay the video of that day and all who decided to host events, documentary screenings, activities and meetings to discuss and bring that day back to us. Many people made that day successful and all of us shared in the victory.
I asked the people not to bring weapons on the Mall. I never paid for one Black person to make it to Washington. I said this was a Day of Sacrifice and we had to pay our own way to show God we were sincere in our desire for atonement.
It is a day to celebrate, a day to honor what the children of slaves did for that one day. It is a sign of what we will do every day in the future.
