[Editor’s note: The following article contains a portion of edited excerpts of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan’s live telephone interview on Columbus, Mississippi’s WTWG 1050AM Karriem & Co. radio show with co-hosts Kabir Karriem, Kamal Karriem, Ahmad Karriem and Abdullah Yasin Muhammad on February 9, 2011.]
KARRIEM & CO.: Brother Minister, for the benefit of so many of us who are looking forward to knowing what we should do in Mississippi, what is the importance of Mississippi as it relates to our people and Black people across the country and even the world?
HMLF: Well, it is Mississippi, and the great Mississippi Delta and the cotton picked by the hands of Black men, women and children owned by the owners of plantations in the Delta.
The Delta was the largest area producing cotton in the world. And in the 17th, 18th Century, cotton was to America what oil is to the world today. And because of the cotton that was picked in the Delta, an agrarian economy developed in the South that fueled the Industrial Revolution of the North.
It also sent the cotton by way of the Atlantic Ocean to Britain; and members of the Jewish community in Britain—in Manchester and Leeds and other places—turned the cotton into lint and cloth, and sold it all over the world.
And members of the Jewish community in New York took the cotton from their brethren in the South, and they were masters of the needle trades. Lehman Brothers started in Alabama as a owner of cotton plantations. Then they moved to New York, and went into banking.
I am telling you, dear beloved people of Mississippi: All the wealth of America, most of it, was produced by you! And much of it even today is being produced by you under “starvation wages” on these plantations throughout Mississippi and the South.
What is the future of Mississippi, and the Blacks in Mississippi? Well, I can tell you that the greater the suffering and the greater the oppression, the greater the Leadership that God will produce for you out of that suffering.
Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas: Oh, you all are the bedrock of Black suffering. Therefore, you will produce the leaders—and you have!—that will lead us up out of this condition.
And I pray that the people of Mississippi will lose their fear of man, and fear God, because God is Present, and He is working for the Deliverance not only of our people in Mississippi, but it is written in the Book of Isaiah: “Shall the lawful captive be delivered, and the prey be taken from the mighty.”
You are a lawful captive, meaning that by law you have been made “citizens,” but you’re still captives, and God is fighting for your freedom! And that’s why Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free,” because you are yet fully free!
There’s knowledge that you must have! So the scripture teaches, “My people are destroyed for the lack of knowledge.” What “knowledge” is it that you need to become a free, industrious and independent people?
You need the Knowledge of God, the Knowledge of Your Self, the Knowledge of your History, the Knowledge of the Time and What Must Be Done, the Knowledge of the True Religion of God!
And when you have this knowledge, you will jump up out of your condition, and unite and make a future for your self and your people.
KARRIEM & CO: As you were talking, I was thinking about the book “Message To The Blackman in America” by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. On pages 172 and 173 he talks about Muslims being put in Congress. What are your thoughts on that?
HMLF: Well, we do have some Muslim brothers that are now in Congress. But the Honorable Elijah Muhammad wanted The Program that God had guided him to give to us that appeared, since 1962, on the back page of the Muhammad Speaks newspaper, and now, on the back page of The Final Call newspaper. He wanted that Program to be put before Congress.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad warned us over 30 years ago, that the government of America would not be able to supply enough jobs for their millions of unemployed, and ours as well.
He warned us of a time when the factories would be closed and locked; and we would be in lines looking for a job. And he was encouraging us: “Unite! Pool your resources! Go back to the earth!”
Look at all the farmland that we owned in Mississippi and Alabama, and in other parts of the South! And we let that farmland go! We were tricked by smart, crooked deceivers through tax schemes to take the land from us!
But land, dear brothers and sisters, is the basis of all economic development. And so putting a Program before Congress that would not give us our “right to vote,” but give us land to help us become an independent people.
“Separate us onto a land of our own”—that still is the solution to the problem between Black and White. And as you are watching, the hatred between Black and White is increasing on the lower level. It looks “good” on the level of those of us with learning; that we can fit in their society.
But the little man in the ghettos of the large and small cities of America that are being beaten by police, shot down in the streets, hung sometimes from trees by Whites who just hate our presence: This is going to get worse and worse as economic conditions worsen.
You will not find jobs! And if we don’t unite to make jobs for ourselves, then it increases the rise of rebellion and anarchy, and people fighting for the few little crumbs that exist. So the National Guard will be called out, and blood will be in the streets! This is not a time for us to be running around begging somebody to do something for us! This is a time for us to unite and pool our resources, and do something for ourselves!
Look at the Black farmers: If we in the cities engaged our Black farmers to produce the things that we need to consume, then we can set up channels between the cities and the farms in the South, and bring produce up to the North.
We have to begin to go back to the earth! We need to take our learned people, our rich Black professionals, our rich entertainers [and] our rich musicians, and pool those resources and buy millions of acres of land to begin to free ourselves from the kitchen of our Enemy!
And as long as The Enemy produces the food that feeds us, and poisons the earth with these vicious pesticides, and gives us genetically-modified food that is increasing the rate of cancer and debilitating diseases among our people, then we are at the mercy of these Merchants of Death. So we must begin to provide food, clothing and shelter, and education, for ourselves!
Don’t you dare think that it can’t be done! There is nothing that we can’t do if we put our minds to it and unite, and pool our resources intellectually and financially, we can make a way out of no way, with the Help of Almighty God and His Christ!