September 17, 2026, marks 41 years since the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan’s More-Than-A-Vision Experience on The Wheel in 1985.
This year also marks 40 years since U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 into law, which established federal mandatory minimum prison sentences for specified drug-trafficking offenses and created the notorious 100-to-1 crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity that disproportionately harmed Black people.
How does Minister Farrakhan’s experience relate to moves and policies of the U.S. government toward Black people?
Before the crack epidemic of the mid-1980s, powder cocaine was frequently associated in popular culture with wealth, celebrities and nightlife. But with the emergence of crack cocaine, a shift happened, as television drug coverage increasingly linked crack cocaine to poor urban communities.
A 1994 study examined 270 television news reports broadcast between 1981 and 1988 and described the resulting coverage as a broader “cocaine narrative” shaped by race, class, gender and age.
The association between crack cocaine and Black people developed alongside the U.S. government’s escalating so-called “War on Drugs” and tough-on-crime policies, whose enforcement, sentencing and incarceration consequences decimated Black communities.
Forty years later, mass incarceration continues to disproportionately affect Black people; Black youth remain disproportionately exposed to exclusionary school discipline policies, and law enforcement continues to be militarized.
These 40 years of government programs, policies and actions harming Black people did not arise in a vacuum. In fact, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
Received forewarning of the government’s plans for Black people and in particular, Black youth, on Sept. 17, 1985, in his More-Than-A-Vision Experience, where he heard directly from his teacher. What Minister Farrakhan received from his teacher on September 17, 1985, is unfolding today.
The Announcement
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan delivered a press conference at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 24, 1989, detailing his experience on The Wheel (so-called UFO) and the plans of the U.S. government toward himself, the Nation of Islam, Black people and Black youth.
“As The Wheel lifted off from the side of the mountain, moving at a terrific speed, I knew I was being transported to the Mother Wheel, which is a human-built planet, a half-mile by a half-mile that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad had taught us of for nearly 60 years,” Minister Farrakhan shared.
After the pilot docked into a tunnel on the Mother Wheel, Minister Farrakhan was escorted to a door and admitted into a room. While in the room, Minister Farrakhan heard the voice of his teacher, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, from a speaker on the ceiling.
“He said, ‘President Reagan has met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to plan a war. I want you to hold a press conference in Washington, D. C., and announce their plan and say to the world that you got the information from me, Elijah Muhammad, on The Wheel,’” Minister Farrakhan recounted.
As events began to unfold across 1985 and 1986, it began to dawn on Minister Farrakhan that the “war” his teacher told him of was against Muammar Gadhafi and the people of Libya.
He shared his Vision-Like Experience for the first time during a trip to Tripoli, Libya, on March 16, 1986, where he spoke to representatives of approximately 80 nations. One year later, in 1987, major publications verified what the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad told him.
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution ran an article where “the exact words that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad spoke to me on The Wheel were found; that the President had met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and planned a war against Libya in the early part of September 1985,” Minister Farrakhan said.
But all the while, as the U.S. planned to wage war against Libya, the U.S. government simultaneously planned a war against Black people in America.
“The reason that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad did not tell me who the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff had planned the war against was because Muammar Gadhafi, the Muslim Revolutionary leader, and the small nation of Libya, was only to serve as a sign of an even more significant and consequential war, which would come several years later,” Minister Farrakhan said.
He then announced that “President Bush has met with his Joint Chiefs of Staff, under the direction of General Colin Powell, to plan a war against the Black people of America, the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan, with particular emphasis on our Black youth, under the guise of a war against drug sellers, drug users, gangs and violence, all under the heading of extremely urgent national security.”
Minister Farrakhan laid out the F.B.I.’s campaign to destroy Black leadership, the “dirty tactics” used against those who fight for justice, the illegal surveillance and wiretapping of Black leaders and the agents planted in Black organizations, including the Nation of Islam. He also shared how the American press had been “feeding the public the image of Black youth on a rampage.”
“The image the American public gets is that when it comes to gangs, violence and drugs, that the gang leaders are Black; the violence is Black; the drug sellers are Black and the majority of drug users are Black. Our youth are being portrayed as the perpetrators of violence,” Minister Farrakhan said.
He brought up desires by police to carryheavier weapons and to have backup from the National Guard and other federal troops. He also warned that certain areas of the country had been targeted to test those “new weapons” and “certain kinds of gases.”
“This is being planned to be executed against Black youth in several major cities in the country, one of which is Washington, D.C.,” he warned. He accused “outside forces from within the White community,” including White police officers, of fomenting and manipulating gang activity to justify the government’s plans against the Black community.
“All of this has been planned and is now being carried out under the pretext of national security and to maintain, preserve and protect an increasingly corrupt and unjust social and political order,” Minister Farrakhan said.
Actions, programs and policies of the U.S. government, 1986-1989
In the years between Minister’s Farrakhan’s More-Than-A-Vision Experience in 1985 and his announcement detailing the plans of the U.S. government in 1989, President Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986;
The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, which imposed a five-year mandatory minimum for a first offender’s possession of more than five grams of crack cocaine; and, as part of the 1988 law, the Public Housing Drug Elimination Act of 1988, which authorized federal grants to eliminate drug-related crime in public housing.
In September 1989, in his first major televised address, President George H.W. Bush called drugs “the gravest domestic threat facing our nation today.” His administration then designated five initial “High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas,” and concentrated additional federal drug-enforcement resources in those areas.
Mainstream media reinforced the U.S. government’s so-called “War on Drugs” by painting Black people and Black youth in a negative light. In a December 1986 Time magazine story, young Black men were referred to as a “lost generation” that America feared. The story opened with graphic descriptions linking young Black men to guns, gang membership, robbery and cocaine dealing.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, terms and narratives such as “the underclass,” the “crack mother,” the “welfare queen” and the “crack baby” began to proliferate in news accounts.
White middle-class cocaine-using pregnant women were described as psychologically addicted, guilt-ridden and motivated to seek treatment, while poor Black women were accused of being mindlessly addicted.
Knowingly exposing their fetuses to crack and unwilling to enter treatment, according to a 1998 study by Drew Humphries, a former professor of criminal justice at Rutgers University.
The 1988 presidential campaign further nationalized the image of the “dangerous Black criminal” through the Willie Horton controversy. Mr. Horton was a Black convicted felon who committed kidnapping, armed robbery and rape.
An independent political action committee supporting George H.W. Bush aired the infamous advertisement featuring his mugshot, while Bush’s campaign separately made the incident a major campaign issue.
And in 1989, media outlets described the Central Park Five, four Black teenagers and one Latino teenager who were wrongfully convicted in connection with the assault and rape of a White jogger, as a “wolf pack,” participating in “wilding.”
These events provided a context for Minister Farrakhan’s words in 1989. But the program of the U.S. government against Black youth continued long after.
The continued war on Black youth
After Minister Farrakhan’s announcement, beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s, federal law expanded the National Guard’s role in drug interdiction and counterdrug operations and broadened authorizations related to transferring military equipment and vehicles to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.
The George H.W. Bush administration created Operation Weed and Seed in 1991, which targeted illegal drug use and trafficking among “high-risk youth in drug and crime-ridden neighborhoods,” with the promise of also funding prevention, treatment and neighborhood revitalization.
The year 1994 was shaped by the 1994 Crime Bill that expanded policing and introduced the federal “three strikes and you’re out” provision that critics and researchers have linked to aiding in mass incarceration and the destruction of the Black family;
And the Gun-Free Schools Act that required states receiving federal education funds to implement a minimum one-year expulsion for students bringing a firearm to school, contributing to the broader zero-tolerance disciplinary environment later associated with the school-to-prison pipeline.
Also in the early 1990s, states enacted laws making it easier to try juveniles as adults. By 1997, some states allowed transfer to adult court at young ages.
All the while, the American press continued to feed the narrative of Black youth as “menaces to society.” Following the 1994 Crime Bill, Princeton political scientist John DiIulio introduced the term: “superpredator” in a 1995 Weekly Standard article.
One year later, former First Lady Hillary Clinton picked up the word while discussing youth crime. The Marshall Project later examined nearly 300 uses of “superpredator” in 40 leading newspapers and magazines from 1995–2000.
The late 1990s were marked by the continued “War on Drugs,” continued militarization efforts related to the National Guard and military equipment and vehicles, the expansion of law enforcement officers in schools and major police-corruption scandals.
These themes—the “War on Drugs,” the school-to-prison pipeline, and militarization—have continued throughout the 2000s, 2010s, and up to the present day.
In 2017, reminiscent of the Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) era, the F.B.I. Counterterrorism Division produced an intelligence assessment titled: “Black Identity Extremists Likely Motivated to Target Law Enforcement Officers,” which raised concerns about the government’s targeting of Black activists.
With expanded policing and the militarization of America’s cities, what the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan warned about in his 1989 announcement, based on his More-Than-A-Vision-Like Experience in 1985, has continued to unfold and come to pass.
Most recently, between January 2025 and August 2026, President Donald Trump rescinded former President Joseph Biden administration-era restrictions on the federal military-equipment program for police, directed the Departments of Justice and Defense to increase the provision of military equipment to state and local law enforcement.
Federalized at least 2,000 California National Guard personnel in Los Angeles following protests over federal immigration enforcement. The Trump administration also mobilized the National Guard in Washington, D.C., and directed the National Guard in Memphis, Tennessee, a majority-Black city, to support local law enforcement operations.
As of August 2026, roughly 4,500 National Guard troops remained deployed in Washington, D.C., according to Reuters, alongside hundreds of federal agents functioning in roles resembling ordinary local policing. The deployment has now been extended through January 2029.
As the U.S. government’s war against Black people and Black youth expands and continues, the reality of what Minister Farrakhan received on The Wheel from the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad continues to be manifest, showing and proving that he is Allah’s (God’s) Anointed Servant and a Divine Warner to Black people and the world.
Minister Farrakhan offered final words of warning at his 1989 press conference, saying if he is “in your mind” a hater, an anti-Semite or a wild-eyed radical, then “you have nothing to fear from my presence.” But if he is, in reality, “an extension of the Divine Warnings given to you from the Honorable Elijah Muhamma.
Then be instructed that you would do well to leave me alone; to leave the Nation of Islam alone; and to cease and desist from your evil planning against the future of the Black people of America and the world. For the Black people of America, though despised and rejected, have now become the people of God, and He has declared that He will fight you for their liberation.”
He warned America’s president and government that he is “backed by the Power of Allah (God) and His Christ and the Power of that Wheel in which I received this Announcement. The moment you attempt or lay your hands on me the fullness of Allah’s (God’s) Wrath will descend upon you and upon America.”
Minister Farrakhan concluded the Announcement stating: “Before you will be able to establish your mockery of me (if that is what you wish to do) for what was revealed to me in The Wheel, you will see these wheels, or what you call UFOs, in abundance over the major cities of America.
And the calamities that America is presently experiencing will increase in number and in intensity that you might humble yourselves to the Warning contained in this Announcement. This is a final warning to you.
The ball is now in your court. You may do with it, with me, and with us as you see fit. Thank you for your attention, and may Allah bless each of you with the light of understanding, as I greet you in peace: As-Salaam Alaikum.”
The Final Call encourages its readers and supporters to revisit, review and study The Announcement by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and the reality of The Wheel. For more information, visit store.finalcall.com
