[Editor’s note: The following article contains excerpts from the address delivered by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan at the 1st Annual Collegiate Black United Summit International (B.U.S.I.) Conference, themed ‘The Platform To Free Our Schools,’ on Friday, November 2, 2012, in the Gentry Complex on the campus of HBCU Tennessee State University.”]
In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.
To the wonderful students of HET-H.E.R.U. Sorority; to the students of the Nation of Islam Student Association; to those who spoke before me … . And to Brother Samuel X, who went out of his way to provide what he could that we might be able to meet tonight.
That shows his love for you; and most importantly, it shows his love for the message that you are about to hear, that he knows will make a difference in your lives. My thanks to each of you who had anything to give.
My thanks to some of the professors who gave money that this event might be held. We thank the administrators of the school for whatever assistance they gave. And even those who tried to make it very difficult, we thank you, too.
Because ignorance causes us to do many silly things, and the man Jesus that I know, he would not approve of our returning evil for evil, but he would rather that we return good for evil.
And I am sure that those who would not allow me to stand behind a Tennessee State University podium, and provide chairs for the platform guests, I am sure that after you hear the message, you’ll kind of be in a spirit of repentance. And we accept your repentance.
Understand the value of our people, the value of truth
Now, regardless of what came in those buckets, I will raise the necessary money so that Brother Samuel’s debt [associated with hosting the event] will be paid.
Because students, you are so precious. You are so exceedingly valuable to God, that there is no sacrifice too great to get truth to you even at the cost of our lives.
You know, Jesus was a master teacher; and he was not a natural man, because he did not want his followers to be “natural,” meaning that if somebody did what was done to us tonight, you do not respond in the same way.
Our people are very ignorant. And it’s not your fault, for the scripture teaches, “My people are destroyed,” not because they are Black, they are destroyed “for the lack of knowledge.” When ignorant people behave ignorantly, what would you expect from ignorance? So, if we who know God and know Jesus and know Muhammad, and know the truth, get down in the same low valley as the ignorant, then we can never redeem them from their ignorance.
Jesus said, “Bless them that curse you.” (Now, you try it sometime, see how difficult that is.) He said, “Pray for those who despitefully use you.” (Now, you know you don’t do that! Anybody comes up using you, you will “pray” for them alright, that something like Hurricane Sandy will get them!) He said, “Love them that hate you.”
Jesus wasn’t talking about the “Black-White relationship,” he was talking about when you go forward to teach a people that the scriptures call the “lost sheep,” lost from their native land and people; “lost” meaning they are incorrigible, irreconcilable, irredeemable, hopeless, and lost.
This is the way the prophets saw the condition of Black people in America and the Western hemisphere after coming across the Atlantic Ocean, not trying to look at the Statue of Liberty and say, “I have arrived,” but we left liberty when our fathers got on board those ships.
For 300 years we were sold like chattel property; and for the last 150 years since so-called Emancipation Proclamation, we have been the victims of sharecropping schemes, Jim Crow, lynching, injustice, segregation—where some of your ancestors died just to be able to go to toilet, right here, in Nashville!
But we fought in all the wars, for freedom that we don’t enjoy to this very minute. We helped to keep America free and strong, and so, because of that, Mr. [Mitt] Romney: I think his father was born in Mexico, and he just got here a few years ago; and some of the other immigrants came in the last 100 years to “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
But we have been here! Before the Mayflower came, we were here. We chopped down the fields. We picked the cotton that made the agrarian revolution in the South profitable for every man that owned a plantation and every slave owner!
We built the mansions in the South. White folk didn’t build these mansions, we did. We were on loan to Washington, D.C. to build the Congress, and the White House. And then they told us they found us swinging in trees with bones in our nose? …
So, when somebody tells us that this is not ours: No. Our blood soaks the land of Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas! Our blood soaks the soil of America, so our blood has paid for this!
So, we should not allow any Johnny-Come-Lately to claim our house, and that we don’t have a right to guide the house that our slave labor built and our lives have been shed to keep America strong and free! This is our house!
When you talk to our people and they behave in an ignorant way, you be kind to them. I can’t tell you, if they smack you on your cheek, “Now, turn the other.” That’s taking that a little bit too far, don’t you think? But it means you can take an insult and not return an insult.
Jesus The Redeemer. Jesus The Reconciler, of man with God: He needed people in his army that understood the value of the people that he had come to redeem. So, he didn’t want us to be “natural,” he wanted us to be supernatural.
And that’s why today his name is remembered by over a billion people, and he will be honored way, way, way into the future because he redeemed lost humanity back to God.
“I thought you were a Muslim. And I thought you Muslims didn’t believe in Jesus.” Well, I’d like to destroy lies from the beginning. There is not one Muslim on this Earth (and there are 1.6 billion Muslims) who does not believe in Jesus.
Did you hear me? But how many of you that are Christian know about Muhammad? You don’t know him, but we know Jesus. Not only do we know Jesus, you will find us trying to live the life that Jesus lived.
Why was Jesus hated for his good works?
I am hated without a cause, like Jesus was. What did I do for people to hate me? Why, some of these beautiful students that I met yesterday said, “Man, I’ve got to ask forgiveness, because I really had a very bad impression about you, Farra-can!” (Smile) But so did most of you!
Somebody told you, “I wouldn’t go out there today to hear that man. He’s a hater.” “He’s an anti-Semite.” “He’s anti-American.” “He’s a racist.” Boy! Did they lay it on y’all thick? I want to defeat lies tonight to show you why they talk like that.
Study the New Testament. Jesus had the scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Sanhedrin—all of them were his enemies. Many of the Jews of that day didn’t like Jesus even though they said Jesus was a Jew. What was wrong with Jesus, that they didn’t like him?
They’re on President [Barack] Obama for his “Obamacare.” Well, here is Jesus; check this out: He sees a blind man, and he heals the blind. He didn’t say, “Now look, you got any insurance?
I ain’t healing you unless you come up with something.” Jesus did all of these miracles and never asked the people for anything, just to give the honor and the praise to God.
Jesus was a master teacher, but he was not from the colleges and universities of his day. Isn’t that something? So, while you are getting your letters, “B.S.,” “B.A.,” “M.S.,” “M.A.,” “J.D.,” “Ph.D.,” “D.D.”—these are letters. And naturally, when somebody comes, that’s what they present, “Oh yes, this is So-and-So and So-and-So.
He has his B.S. degree; he matriculated from Tennessee State University,” as though that means he should be listened to. But Jesus didn’t have none of that! The scripture teaches that they asked.
“How come this man having not letters is learned?” Because when you are taught of God, that which you call “wisdom” looks like foolishness to a man or woman who is taught of God.
I am not saying that what you have learned, and are learning, is foolishness. But if you don’t use it to carve out a future for yourself and your people, then you have been made a fool of for paying for an education that you cannot use to free yourself and your people.
That’s almost like robbery: Make you pay for something that you won’t be able to use. It came over the news this morning that 50 percent of the students that graduated last year can’t find a job.
Think about that! Twenty-four million Americans underemployed and unemployed, and here you are, getting an education, to do what? To go out and get a job? You know, the last time there was full employment was during slavery.
Every slave had a job—you just wasn’t getting paid. And I’m sure the little jobs that you get, it’s almost like getting no pay, because if you miss one paycheck, my “middle-class” brothers and sisters, you’re in the ranks of the poor.
Understand the value of having land, the value of self-respect
What is the aim of knowledge? What is the purpose for learning? If learning and the motivation for obtaining it is only to make money so that you can drive a nice car, live in a nice neighborhood, you’ve missed the whole purpose for education.
Education is more than a privilege. Education is a human right. For the only thing that separates man and woman from the lower animals is our ability to receive knowledge, reason with knowledge, plan and act upon knowledge to provide a future for ourselves and our children.
What happened to us, that we are educated, but non-productive in terms of supplying what we need? What happened to us, that we can come to college and get a degree and put it on our walls, but there are no businesses in our community to create employment for our young people? We, their elders, have dropped the ball.
Did you know that right in Tennessee, when we were under segregation, we had our own motels, hotels, bus company, insurance company, drug stores, insurance companies; we owned real estate.
Did you know that when we were put out of slavery under the so-called Emancipation Proclamation, that it was like going to the circus if you saw a white man with a hammer in his hand? Because massa didn’t do any building.
The building was done by us. And in 12 years, coming out of slavery in 1865, Black men and women built 60 towns in America. We had over 16 million acres of land—which White folk did not allow us to own land during slavery, but right after slavery, 16 million acres of land.
We knew the value of having some of this Earth that we could call our own! You’re a college graduate today, but no land. And on these “land grant colleges,” you don’t know anything about agriculture. And you have no respect for farmers.
I mean, think about you: Some of you are going to be doctors; some of you, lawyers; some of you, teachers; some of you, scientists. But all of you have got to eat.
I’m going to say it again: Lawyer, doctor, engineer, but at the end of a work day you’re looking for some food. As I was driving up to the campus, just right at the edge of the campus, I saw a Wendy’s. I said, “Damn!
The poor students just get their little money from home, and Wendy’s is there to offer them a burger probably filled with pink slime.” And you wonder why obesity is in our community.
Did you know that in the ‘60s, Black people were the healthiest minority in the country? Fifty years later, you are the sickest, most diseased community of so-called Americans. What happened in 50 years? Is this an accident, or are you sick by design?
And if you are sick by design, who is designing our disease, our sickness and our death, where the scriptures say we are walking, now, in the very valley of the shadow of death?
In 1960, demographers started looking at your birth rate. Blacks were having babies. White women were not having as many; their birth rate going down, our birth rate going up. Healthy people! Then, a polio vaccine introduced in the ‘60s.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said to us, “Don’t take that vaccine.” We didn’t take it. But later it was discovered, and Dick Gregory was one of those who blew the whistle, that the polio vaccine was a polio vaccine contaminated with SV40, which later was determined to be cancer. So now who leads in cancer in America?
Before, when I was growing up, cancer was a White man’s disease. Now we own it. Every form of cancer that there is, we lead in that affliction. Is that accidental? I don’t think so.
We were in Zimbabwe; and in the capital, Harare, the No. 1 business was coffin making. Five thousand people dying a week; 20,000 a month. What was their illness? AIDS. Today, they say the Black female is the No. 1 carrier of HIV/AIDS.
How did you get to be the carrier of this? Well, sometimes if you listen to the Maury Povich Show: Poor sister comes out, “He’s the father! That one, right there!” The man is asked, “Are you willing to take the test?” “Yes, I am… It ain’t mine, I’m telling ya!”
The woman is told, “I’m sorry, miss. He’s not the daddy.” She comes back four or five times, with four or five different men, and every test shows that the one that she thought was the daddy is not.
That woman was busy, wasn’t she? But how many of you, sisters, are busy destroying yourself because of a biological need? You don’t know the value of yourself as a woman. And if you really understood your value, you would never let any man play with you.
Today, our youngsters are being herded into prison. It’s social engineering, prison—but it starts in the public school system. Something is wrong with the educational system, that our children are so out of discipline, but yet can sit in front of a game at the computer; and mother can go on and take care of her business and the child will be there for hours, playing games.
Now, what is it about a game that captures the mind of a child, and teachers can’t capture the mind of a student whose nature is curious and wants to know? So today, our babies, when they are restless in school, they will take them out and tell the mother, “This baby needs Ritalin.”
Ritalin is a small dose of cocaine. Ritalin is a baby dose of cocaine. Now, they are drugging our babies so that they can be in school like zombies. Their elders are on the corner, nodding.
The babies in the school, nodding. And what’s mama doing? Mama, you’re in front of the TV, looking at “As The World Turns,” “General Hospital,” “All My Children.” They really keep you busy.
Go look in the funeral parlors in Nashville. See how many young Black men are in every funeral parlor in every city and town in America; from 18 to 45 years of age, we are filling the funeral parlors! Tell me something: Is this a plan? Is it really a plan, that grandmothers are burying their grandchildren rather than the opposite way?
Did you know that the young brothers in the Bronx, New York started rap? At that time, rap was “edutainment,” because the rappers were putting messages in the rap, and young Black people were moving, grooving, and learning. Public Enemy, KRS-1, Big Daddy Kane, all of them teaching, see?
I read recently, they had a meeting in California, in 1970—record executives and some strange men were in the meeting. It was a secret meeting. And what was discussed in the meeting was that these men that were not record executives, they were now privatizing prisons… Prisons are, now, on the stock market.
People don’t buy stock in prisons if you don’t expect high rates of occupancy. Who do you think is going to fill the prisons? Well, in that meeting they were deciding in California to change rap from conscious rap to gangsta rap, and then feeding filth and degenerate lifestyles from the rap artists.
Once they changed the nature of rap to gangsta rap, they started glorifying the gun, glorifying drugs, glorifying cheap low life, and the mistreatment of our women. They started glorifying calling our women by the “b” name, or “prostitutes.”
And you could hear it on the record (“You so-and-so ‘b’!” “You ‘m-f’!” And when you turn on your television now to “Def Comedy Jam,” listen to what people are saying. I watch us laughing at the most filthy expressions.
“It’s funny!” Is it really? You are being lowered into the depth of hell and loving it.
Now, here I am, fighting just to get to your ears, and last week at homecoming y’all paid $40,000 for a rapper to come here and entertain you. I’m not against rappers making money; that’s not my point.
My point is that a college treasury is used to pacify you with that which keeps you going in that mode of filth and degeneracy while you are supposed to be a college student learning that which will cause you to be uplifted so you can leave here and uplift your people!
Realizing God’s Promise and Our Destiny through educational pursuits
God promised you and me a Promised Land “flowing with milk and honey,” which means fertility and productivity. This land is our land. God wants to give us some of it that we can call our own. We should claim it. … I just need us to recognize the value of what’s under your foot.
I close with a picture of your future. Before Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, he told his disciples, “Go and you will see an ass tied, and a young colt tied with her. Untie them and bring them to me.
And if any man asks you, ‘What are you doing?’ Tell him, ‘The master has come and he has need of these’.” Now, Jesus was not a thief, but if the ass and the colt were tied, somebody had ownership of them, but was not using them properly. So Jesus told the disciples, “Untie them.”
See, the ass represents the unlearned masses of the people. But the colt is a young horse, and the horse is the most intelligent of all the beasts of the field—and that’s the young college students. But you’re all tied up to your former slave masters, and he has nothing more for you to do! But without that colt, the kingdom couldn’t be built.
That’s how important the young college students are! And that’s why they don’t want a man like Farrakhan on the campus, so I can tell you what your future is and help to prepare you for your destiny!
Now you are here: What should you be studying? Challenge yourself! We need engineers of every kind. Mechanical engineers, civil engineers, electrical engineers. You name it, we need it.
We need architects, people that know how to build. We need scientists, biologists, chemists, physicists, (-ist), with a love for their race, and wanna see their people free.
Here you are, in college: Settle down; stop partying so much! And begin focusing on why your parents sent you here in the first place. They sent you here to get a quality education. Don’t fail them!
Don’t you come out of here thinking that they got a job for you. Come out being ready to put your people to work and make jobs for themselves. That’s your destiny.
Black college students, you are the natural leaders of your people. Don’t let them bring you here or to Vanderbilt or to Howard, or to other colleges, and then separate you from your people as though you are better and they are less, and they are not worthy of you!
Recognize that you are the natural leaders of our people! Those brothers and sisters out there, the gangbangers, the hustlers: Your job is to take their hands and put their hands to work on projects and plans that you come up with that will build a future for our people. That’s your destiny!