[Editor’s Note: The following article contains excerpts from a message delivered by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan as Part 49 of his 52-week Lecture Series “The Time and What Must Be Done.” This message originally aired on December 14, 2013 and is now available in its entirety on MP3, DVD and CD at store.finalcall.com or call 1-866-602-1230, ext. 200.]
In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
President Abraham Lincoln, in his June 26, 1857 “Speech on the Dred Scott Decision,” stated: “I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation. … The enterprise is a difficult one; but ‘when there is a will there is a way’; and what colonization needs most is a hearty will. ‘Will’ springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest.”
Here Lincoln, the 16th president, is linked to “the moral sense” of the 3rd president Thomas Jefferson, who proposed in his writings (from Notes on the State of Virginia in 1785):
“[Blacks] should be colonized to such place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper, sending them out with arms, implements of household and of the handicraft arts, seeds, pairs of the useful domestic animals, etc. to declare them a free and independent people, and extend to them our alliance and protection, till they shall have acquired strength.”
In President Jefferson’s mind, it was “morally correct” to send the slaves out and let them go free; and it is in “our self-interest,” Lincoln said, to do that: “… Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and, at the same time, favorable to, or, at least, not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be. …”
But here are two presidents that were overridden by a majority opinion: Thomas Jefferson couldn’t get the Founding Fathers to agree with the morality of what he was saying, and they couldn’t see their self-interest, and the long range good to their children, in the morality of what he was saying. Neither could the people in the time of Abraham Lincoln see the moral sense and the self-interest of “separating the Black from the White.” …
Lincoln also said, “Party operations, at present, only favor or retard colonization, incidentally…” in other words they don’t favor it fully, but “incidentally” and “incrementally.”
This is why members of the Jewish community could influence the politicians for “separate, but equal”—it’s a form of colonization. Blacks are in a separate area, but that area is controlled from Whites outside of their area.
The definition of “colonize” means: “to send a group of settlers to a place and establish control over it; come to settle and establish political control over the indigenous people of an area; to appropriate a place or domain for one’s own use.” Is it an accident that everywhere you find Black people in America, you find us living in an area appropriated to us by that which has the power to do so?
We have been effectively “colonized,” without being given anything like Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln desired for us to have.
We live in an appropriated area under the control of the Whites through Black preachers, politicians and businesspeople that White people control.
They gerrymander us, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. accused them of doing. And what is “gerrymandering”? In politics, it is “the dividing of a state, a county, into election districts so as to give one political party a majority in many districts, while concentrating the voting strength of the other into as few districts as possible.” That’s part of our incremental, incidental colonization: They redraw districts to take power from, and give power to.
As it teaches in the 16th Chapter of the Book of Ezekiel, verses 1-6, you are still like “a baby” cast out in the open field, with no one to cut the umbilical cord, so you are not washed and cleaned and you are absolutely not clothed or covered. But, you are polluted in “the blood,”—or life—meaning you are directed by a colonial, or slave, mentality. It is a worldwide “colonization” of the Darker People of our planet.
That is why the Message of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is so vital, so necessary, for the Darker People, the Aboriginal People of the world: To wake them up to make them see that they have been neo-colonized.
Some of the Gentiles would have wanted to let us go, and send us off to another place somewhere, but still under their domination, so-called protection, and “care.” But some members of the Jewish community did not want the Gentiles to win that argument of methodology of dealing with us. These members of the Jewish community wanted us to stay in the South, under “The Slave Codes” and “The Black Codes”; and they wanted us to farm the land as sharecroppers. The Jewish influence in the South politically, through cotton, is what kept us tied down; but also, by their influence they also guided the Gentiles as well. We must help our people to see and fulfill this prophecy found in the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 60, verses 1-4 (KJV): “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.”
“Lift up thine eyes round about, and see: all they gather themselves together, they come to thee: thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side.”
In Point No. 4 of The Muslim Program, which appears on the back page of each edition of The Final Call newspaper, it says: We should separate; that America should look after us “in a separate state or territory for the next 20 to 25 years, until we are able to produce our own needs.”
“Take The Muslim Program before Congress”: Now regardless to what you may think of the “politics” of the situation, it was the Honorable Elijah Muhammad that advised us to “take his Program and put it before the Congress of the United States”:
“… Your program—the one I have given you which is carried in the first part of this chapter—should be put before Congress. The Civil Rights Bill and integration will not stand and can never bring independence to you and your people, no matter who is President. The wisest and surest way to success is to unite behind me. I assure you that, with the help of Allah, you will accomplish your goals—money, good homes, and friendships in all walks of life.” (Message To The Blackman in America, chapter “Program and Position,” pages 172-173).
Ultimately, we are going to be such a troublesome species of property that the Congress itself is going to have to rule on something like this.
Every one of us who came to see that economic advancement was good for us, was opposed. … If the members of the Jewish community who are following the Babylonian Talmud know the value of the land, then their desire has been to take us away from the land; that we would forever be dependent on those who know the value of what they’re turning us away from. So, you can see that we have been turned away from the land so that those who loved and know the value of land could increase their power and wealth on the land. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said “the greatest brain washing” was to take us away from knowing and appreciating the value of the ownership of land.
They had to fight Lincoln and The Freedman’s Bank, The Freedman’s Bureau, and The Morrill Act of 1890. Sen. Justin S. Morrill, a Republican, wanted to give land to Black institutions of learning, to train us in agriculture, engineering, and military science so that one day we would be able to go for our self; and this is why Booker T. Washington was a threat to them, more so than Frederick Douglass. And although Mr. Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois were a threat, they were a threat in breaking down laws and customs that would forbid us from entering White society on an “equal basis.” But both Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois became serious threats, particularly Mr. DuBois, when they recognized “the value of land” and “Africa.”
Booker T. Washington was a greater threat, along with Marcus Garvey, along with Elijah Muhammad, or Noble Drew Ali. … Anyone who would take us back to the land would be “a threat” to those who did not want us to know the value of land.
Study the “Program and Position” of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad in Message To The Blackman in America. He teaches: “We should be free to teach our people.” “And then allow them the freedom to vote on whether they wish to separate.”
We, in The Nation of Islam, must be free to teach our people that kind of freedom that we must have to go for self. And you, America, should help us, by affording us time to reach our people, and the means to reach our people, to give them “The Time and What Must Be Done”—and the reason or “separation”; and then, the circumstances. Then let our people have a vote as to whether they wish to form a nation of their own.
Now, “What Must Be Done” by government? You have a responsibility in this. You promised us the “40 acres”—but you never delivered. You said that if we had it, along with the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendment, the country would be in a better state today. But we don’t have it, and now, the “red states” [those states perceived as Republican and/or conservative] are definitely trying to take away any enforcement of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. So if you take that away, you really want “separation”! Otherwise, the continued oppression will lead to bloodshed. Must it get to that point, where Allah has to intervene now to kill you for killing us? For we don’t have any power to kill you with the little pop guns you put in our neighborhoods to give us a little “flyswatter” for each other. But you would never give us what it would take to wage war with you. … So, Allah (God), then, will have to intervene on our behalf.
The Government of the United States of America: You have a responsibility now, because this condition is not going to get better. So will you “accept the responsibility,” as Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln said? Black people of America: Will we accept the guidance of Booker T. Washington, the Honorable Marcus Garvey and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, along with our liberal arts, to help us to develop and grow into independence? If you agree to do this, Almighty God Allah will extend to you His Mercy, and give you an extension of time.
Dear Black people, a Warning to you: The Nixon administration came to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and offered him “a dollar for every dollar of wealth” that the Nation of Islam had created under Elijah Muhammad’s dynamic leadership. Some say our wealth was $40 million; some say $80 million. But the government offered to match us “dollar for dollar.” But guess what? The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said when he read what they offered, he told me: “There were too many strings attached. …” So he rejected it.
I am saying this to all of you who stand with me: They will not be able to turn me. But they will be working to turn those of you who come after me. And if they offer you anything, look carefully into it, lest the Nation will no longer be tied to the principles that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad desired for us: To make us an independent nation on some of this Earth that we can call our own.
