[Section Editor’s Note: The following article contains edited excerpts of the hour-long message delivered by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan as Part 38 of his 58-week Lecture Series “The Time and What Must Be Done,” which originally aired on Saturday, September 28, 2013. This message was originally published in The Final Call under the title, “Wicked Policy and America’s National Interest, Part 2.”]
We ended last week’s broadcast discussing wicked science that is being used in the genetic engineering of foods, along with social engineering through feeding the American people food that has been unnaturally ripened with color additives and other chemicals to preserve the food. We also discussed social engineering through the use of hormones, “sex hormones”; and, antibiotics to fatten cows, chickens, sheep and pigs that the American people are eating, which causes diseases in adults, and in children; and also it causes early puberty.
But, with the titillation of the sexual drive in the human being, by the way sex is being advertised and promoted through all means of media, it creates sexual experimentation, sexual abuse, child pornography, and using children across the world for sexual purposes—and this is going on at an extremely alarming rate. In America generally, and in inner cities in particular, the Black community has become a “food desert” that is filled with fast food restaurants that proliferate our community, and with this denatured and hormonally- and chemically-based processed foods.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, in his monumental book How To Eat To Live, Book I, warns us of the danger of “commercialized food,” and the need for us to take the time to “properly prepare our own foods.” In the Chapter titled “Vegetables”: In the section “Bread” on page 6 he writes: “…You know, as well as I, that there is a commercializing interest in those who rule the food industry.
›They do not worry about the lives they jeopardize so long as the dollar is safe. You might find yourself eating death, if you follow them.” In the section “Prepare Your Own Foods” on page 7 he writes: “Take time and prepare your own foods. Do not kill yourselves by running to the store buying processed foods to eat. We plan to install health food departments in our bakeries, grocery store, and restaurant soon. …
In fact, [The Enemy] is experimenting with all foods. They do not care what they eat as long as it does not kill them instantly”—and then he writes, “Beware!—For good health, we should raise and prepare our own food. As I said in this book, the enemy is a commercializing people by nature. It is the almighty dollar they are after, not long life.”
And in the section “Food God Suggests” on page 10 he writes: “We must prepare and grow our own food, because of this highly-commercialized world. They graft a lot of food, and some of this food is not good for our stomachs.”
Also, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, in his timeless book Message to the Blackman In America, discusses the historic condition of land ownership of Blacks, and the actions of The Enemy to discourage our desire to farm. In “What The So-Called Negro Must Do For Himself,” on page 37 he writes:
“Robert H. Kinzer and Edward Sagarin, in their book, ‘The Negro in American Business’ (page 81), states that the history of America would be different today if the slaves freed from bondage had been given, in addition to the three amendments to the Constitution, the famous ‘forty acres and a mule.’ ”
Between the years of 1860-1870, the Black population was 4,880,009, rounded to a “4.9 million”; and if each person were granted “40 acres,” it would equal 196 million acres! And remember, during my Saviours’ Day Keynote Address “Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint:
Ending Poverty & Want” (which aired as Part 31 of this Lecture Series), I stated that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said we need “100 million acres for a start”; and, that “100 million acres” equals the land mass that is now called “California.”
When you add to that “96 million” more acres—and add “4.9 million mules”—boy, we would be in good shape! But the slaves, instead, started not only without land and the money to purchase it, but with few avenues open to earn and save money.
Ownership of producing land is a prime and a necessary part of freedom. A people cannot exist freely without land—and the so-called Negro in America is evidence of that fact. The slave-master passed laws limiting the so-called Negro in land ownership, or limiting the areas in which such purchases or even rentals could be made.
Brothers and sisters: Are you not left restricted to the poorer sections the slave master is abandoning throughout America? Continuing on page 38 of Message To The Blackman, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad writes:
“Again, Mr. Kinzer and Mr. Sagarin gave a hint in their book of the great psychological strategy of the slave-master on his slave—that is the original brainwash. On page 84, the authors state that the land sold to the ex-slave was of poor quality and in an inferior location.
They state the so-called Negro faced pressure against his becoming a farm owner and pressure from the White community that he remain a tenant. We encountered credit difficulties, hardships of repayment of loans and hardship with White executives from whom the loans must be asked.
All of this is part of the clever plan to discourage my people from wanting to own producing land for themselves and to cause a great dislike within them for having anything to do with tilling, cultivating, extracting and producing for themselves”—from the land—“as other free and independent people [do]. It is a shame! This shows you and I what White America is to us and just why we have not been able to do anything worthwhile for self.
They want us to be helpless so they can mistreat us as always. We must come together and unite. It is”—absolutely— “time.” Yet with all these difficulties, within 45 years after the Emancipation Proclamation we amassed 16 million acres of land in America, particularly in the South. And now, given all the schemes to keep us helpless, we are down to a little less than 4 million acres of land.
These powerful words from the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teach us that we will never be successful economically, even politically and health wise, if we don’t own land and begin creating from that land agri-business and all types of businesses that can create jobs for our people as a foundation for the building of real wealth! And this will take our people up out of The Valley of Poverty and Want.
›