[Editor’s note: The following article contains an edited excerpt from the message of the same name delivered by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan on Sunday, November 3, 1996, at Mosque Maryam in Chicago, Illinois.]
As I have stated throughout the years: Crack cocaine is from the government of the United States of America. And when I have said this, some of you thought I was paranoid. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, I went across this country asking you to stop killing yourself (“Stop The Killing” tour), because I knew that the government was making war on Black youth, Black men in particular.
Brothers and sisters, the Million Man March didn’t happen in a vacuum—I had been working on that 10 years prior! I crisscrossed this country saying to Black youth “the government has plotted against your life,” and I opened both Bible and Holy Qur’an to show you the conspiracy.
The Bible and Qur’an are not some silly Books of ancient people, these Books are real, and are filled with prophetic, symbolic pictures of things that happened yesterday to give you a picture of what is happening today.
In an eight-hour meeting one day, Brother Dr. Cornell West, a really brilliant brother, said to me, “Farrakhan, do you hold to some conspiracy theory?” I said, “It’s not a theory, it’s a fact!”
I said, “Dr. West, don’t you believe in the scriptures?” and he had to say “yes,” so I said, “Well let’s read together”—and read from Exodus 1:10 which states: “And Pharaoh said come let us deal wisely with them lest they multiply, join on to an enemy and come against us.” That is a conspiracy!
Now the question is: If that is a conspiracy, who are “the conspirators” and what is “the conspiracy”? Scientists of “population growth” saw the womb of the White woman not being blessed; and so, when she was becoming barren, they started developing fertility drugs for White women.
But for you, Black woman, they developed “birth control” that they knew would damage you and they have been working now for over 50 years to curtail your birth rate.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad wrote years ago that they were putting chemicals in the food, in the water, and in the atmosphere, and it is a fact today that the sperm count in the male (all males, but Black males particularly) is getting less and less and less. You with ovarian cancer, breast cancer, and us with prostate cancer: See, they are working to destroy a people.
The conspiracy was “kill all the boy children and spare the females.” Look at your women: They are in great pain because there is no man; it is males with sex organs, but the man that God intended for us to be is absent. Our women are filling the colleges and we are filling the jails.
Our women are filling the offices working downtown and we are filling the street corners. Our women are learning skills and we are selling drugs and buying guns, killing each other. One night as I was watching television, there was a story on “violence in America,” and I saw this Black woman just wailing, and it brought tears out of my eyes, and I immediately started to pray.
Because, these sisters, your mothers, are frightened and sad because they are burying their young sons and their young daughters, but mostly their young sons, through gang conflict and drugs wars that were started as a part of the conspiracy.
When I finished the “Stop The Killing” tour, I paused for a moment and then began again in several cities talking just to Black men (“Men Only” tour). But the moment I began talking to Black men, White people became crazy!
Tell me something: If you have a meeting of Catholic Priests, you won’t find a woman there—and there isn’t anyone outside picketing. If you have a meeting of rabbis, you won’t find a woman there, and there won’t be anybody picketing in the streets.
If the Boy Scouts meet, there will be no Girl Scouts there—but nobody will picket; and if the Girl Scouts meet, the boys are not picketing. But just let Farrakhan come to try to talk to Black men about what we have to do to escape the net of a fisherman whose plot is to destroy the Black male. …
‘Illegitimate’ government co-conspirators against Black life
I held a press conference in Washington, D.C. during the time that George H.W. Bush was in the White House, and I charged the government of the United States—this is on record—with declaring war on the Black community, and the Black man in particular.
Former President Bush knows: He, being the former head of the C.I.A., became vice-president under Ronald Reagan who privatized the security agencies of the government. [Ref. Executive Order 12333, “United States Intelligence Activities”]
This order did not originate in the C.I.A., and that is why they don’t have any records of this in the CIA; but C.I.A. operatives were involved. This order came directly out of the White House because the C.I.A. is not “Pharaoh”; “Pharaoh” is the head of government—and that is President Bush, President Reagan, and all of the bastards that lived before them. I used the unkind word “bastard,” because a bastard is an illegitimate child—and they are illegitimate heads of state and government.
And you who legitimize “bastards”: They have no right to rule you, but you allow them to rule you! For what? Stand up like a man, and tell them you will not rule me anymore! Don’t be afraid. … They have no power over you but the power you give them by obeying them.
When are you going to stand up and say no? Don’t just say “no” to drugs, say no to the enemy that is bringing the drugs! Say “no!” to a government that has entered into a conspiracy against the Black man!
They plan wars. You that are the soldiers: You fight for a country that doesn’t give a damn about you. When are you going to stop? I know some of you are in the Armed Forces, and they’ve offered you a job, and we thank them, but you’re going to have to find another employer because he’s getting you ready for the frying pan!
This government is making a killer out of you, and then bringing you back from (overseas), because they don’t need you over there anymore, and setting you in your own community; then, filling the community with drugs and guns. And since you are trained killers, then you kill each other—and that’s exactly what you have been doing! And you think it’s an accident.
…
No, it is by design. And because you don’t know yourself, and don’t know them, and don’t know the time and what must be done, you fall right into the plan and become agents of your own destruction.
