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

The post 40 years of warning! Minister Farrakhan’s More-Than-A-Vision Experience and the U.S. government’s war on Black youth appeared first on Final Call News.

Usually a social and cultural hub of university life, the quad instead became a place of remembrance as hundreds gathered to honor the life of Pierre Damas Bel. The school’s Student Government Association joined other student leaders and campus organizations to stage the memorial, held on Sept. 8.

Pierre Damas Bel was a 20-year-old Haitian immigrant who had just begun his freshman year at the university. He wanted to study neuroscience and had plans to attend medical school.

His circumstances changed dramatically after the Trump administration terminated Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which had provided eligible Haitians protection from deportation and authorization to work in the United States. Pierre also had a pending asylum case. His next asylum hearing was scheduled for October, according to The Washington Post.

Pierre legally entered the U.S. in 2024 and settled in Springfield, Ohio, to live with his family. He attended Springfield High School, where he played varsity soccer and participated in the Marine Corps Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC). He graduated high school with honors.

On July 29, two days after the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) fitted Pierre with a GPS ankle monitor. Pierre posted about his experience.

“I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone. Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience,” Pierre wrote in an Instagram post on July 30.

“I came here to study, to build my future and to live a better [life], not to be treated like [a] criminal. So now, how am I supposed [to] play college sports with a GPS monitor on my leg?”

After being fitted with the monitor, Pierre could not play college soccer, according to his family. He was also the only person in his college ROTC program who did not receive a uniform. Pierre’s father said Pierre believed the ankle monitor was the reason.

The U.S. Army Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. told CNN that Pierre wasn’t eligible to become a cadet in the ROTC program because of his immigration status and that he was taking the class as an elective.

When Wright State began fall semester classes, Pierre attended one week of classes before he died on Aug. 31. His family believes he died by suicide after experiencing bullying.

At a Sept. 1 press conference, Pastor Carl Ruby with Central Christian Church in Springfield read a statement prepared by Pierre’s father, Pierre Ronal Bel. Pierre felt like he was being treated like an animal, and he pleaded twice with ICE officers to remove the monitor, Pierre’s father shared.

“This morning (Aug. 31), he left the house at 8 am. He called me at 8:03 on a video call and he said dad, ‘I’m not feeling ok. I’m not thinking right because of the bullies.’ And I told him come, come home so that we can talk.

I had my youngest to take to school, so I took him to school. Around 11:00, police showed up at my door to report that my son had thrown himself under a truck,” Pierre’s father said.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol said Pierre parked his car on the side of the road and walked into traffic, where he was hit by a tractor-trailer. The patrol is still investigating his death.

When Landy Joseph, a 19-year-old computer science major at Wittenberg University in Springfield, saw Pierre’s Instagram post, she texted him that she was there for him and that he could always count on her. She knew Pierre for two years, throughout junior and senior year of high school. She is also Haitian.

She was part of the same JROTC program as Pierre, and the two students did everything in the program together. “Pierre was really a good leader, somebody that you can count on,” she said. “We were always in the same team, leading.”

She issued the following message to other young Haitians who may be going through something similar: “I know it’s hard, but I don’t think this has to be the solution to these problems. We can still fight. We should not give up. And yes, it’s hard to live like this, but it’s not the end yet, and we can still do great things.” 

A grieving community

For James Fleurijean, an administrative assistant with the Haitian Community Help and Support Center in Springfield, out of everything that has happened to Haitians in the city, Pierre’s death hurts most.

“That’s one thing that really hurt me, because he was in my office just like you [The Final Call staff] are. He was sitting over there one or two weeks before that,” Mr. Fleurijean said to The Final Call. He recalled getting a knock on his door from Pierre’s father and two brothers. 

“Even before they went to see the body, that’s where they came. They were exactly in this room here, sitting and telling us the story, and I received it in the morning just like that, and I was so shocked until now. And the first thing I did is that I went out … I went out to cry, and then I came back to talk to the dad. And the same night, I stay with them till 11 p.m.,” he said.

Pierre’s death also shook longtime Black residents of Springfield and surrounding areas. Reverend Michael Young, pastor of Springfield’s Zion Hill Baptist Church and president of the Interdenominational Ministerial Fellowship, shared with The Final Call that the community is grieving.

“He was an asset, not a liability, to his community, to society, but he was treated as though he was a liability,” he said. He has grandchildren who are Pierre’s age and shared how blessed he has been to watch them grow up and become assets to society.

“But his parents will not get that opportunity to see the outcome and the fruitfulness of their commitment and the nurturing and caring and rearing of their son,” he said. “They have been denied that.”

Do ankle monitors matter? Just ask Pierre’s parents, the truck driver, the law enforcement officers who showed up to the scene, the people on the interstate who were stopped in traffic, he said. “For those who say it doesn’t matter, this young man let everybody know: yes, it did matter.”

As of Sept. 8, a funeral had not been held for Pierre. Mr. Fleurijean shared that Pierre’s father is still deciding on whether to have the funeral in Springfield or in Haiti and desires to receive the final police report and final investigation findings first.

Solidarity among students

Before the memorial began, four young Black women representing Wright State’s chapter of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority Inc. stood in a circle—Armoni Collins, Jayla Gordon, Aleese Walker and DeAsia Green-Brown.

Toward the end of the memorial, they huddled together, holding small candles with lit flames. As the two flags—American and Haitian—blew in the wind, a five-minute silence stretched across the quad and among the group of four. 

They attended the memorial as a show of unity and love, they said to The Final Call.

Ms. Collins, a third-year psychology major, does not believe Pierre deserved what happened to him. “It’s really not fair, and I genuinely just feel so bad that he was only here for so long.

He couldn’t even get the real college experience or let alone figure out who he was because he was politically treated differently, and it’s not fair to nobody who’s even going through this situation,” she said. “We shouldn’t be scared to be in our skin and have to feel like we’re walking on eggshells in the place that we live.”

“It’s just another life lost to racism,” Ms. Green-Brown, a fourth-year social work major, said. “I am tired of it, and it’s sad to say that it’s probably going to keep happening, but we just gotta stick together, come together and keep doing this, be a community.”

As part of the memorial’s program, student leaders, many of whom were of marginalized communities themselves, spoke on the true meaning of solidarity. 

Eimaan Virani, Student Government Association president and a junior public health major, said the memorial was organized by students who knew Pierre, students who knew of Pierre, students who are immigrants or children of immigrants.

Students who know what it means to live in fear and students whose hearts were touched by Pierre’s life and passing. She described the “unimaginable level of public dehumanization” Haitians are enduring.

“We stand here tonight as a testament to the fact that rhetoric can, in fact, enter our schools, our workplaces, our communities, shaping how we learn to treat people. And we must also be honest about what happened to Pierre within our own walls. The humiliation, harassment and cruelty he experienced was wrong,” she said.

She urged attendees to take on the responsibility of standing beside one’s neighbor even if it is uncomfortable. To The Final Call, she acknowledged her identity as a Muslim woman wearing a hijab.

“I know what it feels like to be feared just for what you look like,” she said. She shared that the memorial was motivated by seeing the grief of Pierre’s parents.

“Pierre was pre-med. I’m pre-med. Pierre was 20. I’m 20,” she said. “I did not know him, but it’s likely that we would have crossed paths. There’s just so much shared humanity that we had, and I think understanding that and being able to build from that was the motivation behind this event and this memorial.”

Jesús Carachure Jacobo, a junior international business student, was born in the U.S. but grew up in Mexico. He called the ankle monitor a “tool of oppression.”

“I saw myself in him. And when I heard that he died in the tragic way that he died, I felt like a part of me died, and I felt like someone else in my family could have been that person,” he said to attendees. He is the only person in his family who is a U.S. citizen. He shared with The Final Call the fear in his parents, uncles and aunts.

“Quite truthfully, it’s a very dire situation. I believe that it’s going to be like this for a little while, and all we have to do and really can do is just support each other and have each other’s backs when it comes to these very dangerous institutions,” he said.

“The only thing we can do is resist and try to find the best ways we know how. In my opinion, that is just talking to each other, staying connected, knowing what’s happening to whose neighbor, in what community, showing up there as fast as possible to support.”

Tracey Gray attended the memorial with her son, who is a junior at Wright State. “It touched me as a mom just to hear of another young Black male who had promise.

It just crushed something in me as a mother, and I wanted to come to honor his memory,” she said to The Final Call. She said her son is about the same age as Pierre and is also an honor student. “I couldn’t help but see him through my son,” she said.

Johnny Holloway graduated from Wright State in 2022. He attended the memorial to show students they have a support system. “I can empathize with Pierre because I am a Black man in America.

And I have been through some things, especially with the police and things of that nature, and it just hurts my heart to know that he felt that was the only way to end the suffering that he was going through,” he said.

“I think a lot of times, we just see the condition or we just see the monitor and we kind of forget that he is a human at the end of the day.”

“Yes, he was from a different country, but he was still a human, and he was just here to get a better opportunity for his family and for himself,” he added.

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, call on Allah (God ) and pray with them or refer them to a trusted spiritual guide, or if all else fails, then please call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

(Contributing Editor James G. Muhammad contributed to this report.)

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Atlanta has become one of the hubs for Black-owned businesses, as it leads the country with Black-owned firms making up more than 10% of all businesses across the city. The National Business League held the conference in Atlanta for the fourth consecutive year.

The 2026 conference operated under the theme, “Booker T. Washington and the Sacred AI Codes to Economic Sovereignty.” It was hosted by the National Alliance for Black Business, a unified coalition including The National Business League led by president and CEO Dr. Ken Harris;

The World Conference of Mayors, founded by Tuskegee Councilman and former Tuskegee, Ala. Mayor Johnny Ford; the National Black Chamber of Commerce, led by executive director Charles H. DeBow III; and The Black Business School, founded by educator and businessman Dr. Boyce Watkins.

The spirit of Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Ala., and the National Negro Business League, dwelled in the conference rooms of Hilton Atlanta throughout the weekend. Booker T. Washington held the first National Negro Business League conference in Boston, Massachusetts, on August 23, 1900.

The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam, who taught Black people to unite, do for self, to own land and to open and to support businesses, admired Booker T. Washington and the principles he established among Black people.

“We must revisit and engrain those principles into our very being, and teach them, and pass them on to our children and unborn generations in the future,” the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, said in Part 38 of his 2013 weekly lecture series, “The Time and What Must be Done.”

“The principles, if followed, upon which Dr. Booker T. Washington founded Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, are immutable principles that any and every human being of every race, creed or color—any people who are down.

And in the mud of civilization, or nonproductive, could become producers for self and producers of a great community, and become a people that produce a great civilization.,” Minister Farrakhan said.

“Dr. Washington was interested not just in farming and agriculture and animal husbandry; he was interested in our growth into Science and Civilization: the manners and behavior of a civilized people,” he continued.

The 2026 National Business League Conference began where it all started, in Tuskegee. During a citywide tour, attendees viewed Booker T. Washington’s home, the Tuskegee University Historic Campus District, George Washington Carver Museum, George Washington Carver National Monument and other historical sites.

On the following day, Aug. 20, several summits ran concurrently. During the World Conference of Mayors summit, Tuskegee Councilman Johnny Ford, mayor emeritus of Tuskegee, declared a proclamation for the Nation of Islam’s upcoming Holy Day of Atonement, which will be in Atlanta, Oct. 10-11.

“As you know, Tuskegee hosted a Holy Day of Atonement, and so we intend to support it.  And I’m so proud of the Holy Day of Atonement, and we commend the [Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan] for continuing to have it,” Mayor Emeritus Ford said to The Final Call.

The Nation of Islam convened the Holy Day of Atonement, commemorating the 18th anniversary of the historic Million Man March in Tuskegee in 2013.

At a welcome reception Aug. 20, evening, Booker T. Washington’s great-great-granddaughter, Dr. Erica Washington McDonald, shared words with attendees.

“On behalf of the family of Booker T. Washington, we want to thank you all for coming out again, for keeping his legacy alive and continuing with business, to continue to show us what Black excellence looks like,” she said.

Artificial intelligence and Black businesses

The conference’s main sessions began Aug. 21, when Dr. Harris and other presenters introduced and launched “Project 2035,” a national economic sovereignty think tank to assist in forming a national economic agenda for Black people.

“We got Project 2035, which is our plan towards national economic sovereignty. We launched a pilot this weekend with an unbelievable technology app that allows for us to collect the thoughts of the community and allow the community to come forward with the types of things that’s necessary as we rebuild over the next 10 years towards an economic sovereignty agenda,” Dr. Harris said to The Final Call.

As part of the project’s working sessions, panelists tackled artificial intelligence, digitalization and digital infrastructure.

“As a Black community, that digital divide is real. It has always been. We have missed so many movements, cultural movements, technology movements, etc. throughout history. We missed the agricultural revolution because we were the ones picking the cotton, not being able to participate, not being able to own the land in a way that allowed for us to be a part of the economy.

We missed the Renaissance movement. We missed the Civil Rights Movement because it did not have economics attached to it,” Dr. Harris said. “So, 62 years later, post the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Black people are at the bottom of every major economic indicator and quality of life, and we do not want to miss the technology boom, but most importantly, the artificial intelligence boom.

We want to be a part of it, and we just don’t want to participate or be included anymore. We want to own and control the technological advances of the future because we believe … that this will lead to freedom, liberation, emancipation, and most importantly, economic sovereignty.”

Conference keynote presenter Dr. Talitha Washington, executive director of the Center for Applied Data Science and Analytics at Howard University, defined A.I. as “a system that performs tasks normally requiring human intelligence, including reasoning, perception and judgment.”

It can include machine learning (systems that improve by learning patterns from data), generative A.I. (models that produce new content such as text, images, code and audio) and agentic A.I. (systems that plan, use tools and take multi-step actions toward a goal with limited human supervision).

Panelists discussed how A.I. could change the landscape for Black business owners and entrepreneurs. A.I. can help break down barriers to building capacity and scaling, they shared. But it must be tied with unity, collaboration and the will to do the work.

“One thing about A.I. that’s really interesting to me is I have found that it is a fascinating place to generate ideas and create plans to execute those ideas. What the A.I. won’t do for you, though, is do the actual legwork required to make that idea into a real thing. It’s not going to replace the work necessary for you to take that thing all the way to the finish line,” panelist Dr. Boyce Watkins said.

News analysis, surveys and research have presented A.I. as both a major opportunity for Black entrepreneurs but also as a new way to possibly reproduce longstanding racial disparities, if Black people fail to keep up. There are concerns that the data and information that is fed into A.I. is discriminatory toward non-Whites. For example, there are studies that show A.I. algorithms used in healthcare are racially biased.

But as big tech companies increasingly build their massive A.I. data centers, the engines that train and run A.I. systems, in or near Black communities or other cultural landmarks, such as historic Black cemeteries, creating harmful environmental impacts, the question becomes, how can Black people adopt A.I. responsibly? 

“We don’t want to do things in a way that’s harmful to our people and harmful to the community, and so we must bring stakeholders together,” Dr. Harris said. White House representatives from the Department of Agriculture and the government’s A.I. center presented at the conference, along with the Democratic and Republican candidates for Georgia governor.

“We need to be in the middle to figure out how do we solve potential problems but at the same time not lose out on the opportunities,” Dr. Harris added.

“Regardless of who’s in office, Black businesses are at the table, and it’s not about parties anymore. It’s about how do we advocate properly for our communities so that we are a part of the process, that we’re at the table and not just on the menu.”

During her talk, Dr. Washington brought up zero net water usage and the use of renewable energy like solar in order to power data centers. She also encouraged transparency around data centers.

Mayor Emeritus Ford shared with The Final Call that it is the responsibility of mayors to ensure data centers are built in areas where they do not become detriments to the community.

“Our environment is important. Being able to get electrical services at a reasonable rate is important for our citizens, and we’re not going to have that threatened by a data center.

So, mayors are intelligent enough to make sure that before we approve a data center for our area, for our cities, we go through all the necessary things to make sure it’s a benefit, not a detriment, to make sure it doesn’t take up all the electrical power,” he said.

There are serious concerns about the use of A.I. an its impact on Black people and communities which The Final Call has covered in several editions. (See The Final Call, Vol. 44 No. 16 and Vol. 45 No. 35)

Conference takeaways

Other topics addressed at the conference on Aug. 21 and 22 included buyer supplier readiness, the role of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and turning prospects into clients.

The U.S. Africa Trade Desk hosted the Pan-American Global Business, Investment and Trade Summit. During the session, Dr. Alveda King, niece of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., emphasized the need for Black land ownership.

“Your land is one of the most valuable things you could hold on to,” she said.

The conference ended with the Booker T. Washington National Awards Gala.

Mayor Emeritus Ford emphasized to The Final Call that the conference is not about talk but about action.

“We go to a lot of conferences, and people come together and hear a lot of speeches. They have a lot of receptions and meeting other people, but that’s it. This is a working session. This is a business session,” he said.

“We are concerned about action and getting things done. So, we want people to take away from this conference the ability to understand the A.I. process and have the ability to take what they learn here back and put it into effect.”

As next steps, the partners in the National Alliance for Black Business are continuing to form relationships overseas. The World Conference of Mayors is focused on building bridges with countries in South America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia.

“We live in a global world,” Mayor Emeritus Ford said. “Mayors now must be global. They must be international. They must be able to deal with the whole world.”

The long-term goal for Black business and economics? Dr. Harris voiced the following concluding words to The Final Call: “We want all people of Black descent all over the world to own and control their own destinies, to build enterprise, develop enterprise, and most importantly, as Booker T. Washington would say, become captains of industry.” The question is however, is A.I. the way to achieve this?

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According to several media outlets, Ms. Michel spent six months in jail on misdemeanor charges that were ultimately dismissed. She was then immediately taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Transported more than 20 miles from her community and released alone in Pittsburgh despite mental-health challenges and language barriers. She subsequently spent at least a day at a bus shelter in subfreezing temperatures and died of hypothermia.

Though the homicide classification does not establish criminal responsibility, Ms. Michel’s family and immigration advocates have raised questions about whether the actions of government authorities contributed to a death that could have been prevented.

The Haitian Bridge Alliance, an organization focused on issues related to Black immigrants, released a statement in March urging Congress, the Department of Justice and independent watchdog bodies to investigate Ms. Michel’s death and the role of ICE supervision programs, review detention conditions and medical care in ICE facilities and increase transparency and reporting regarding deaths in immigration custody.

“Too many immigrants—including Haitian nationals—have died in the custody or supervision of federal immigration authorities,” Guerline Jozef, the organization’s executive director, said in the statement.

“We are calling for a transparent, independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding Daphy Michel’s death. Migrants seeking protection should never face neglect, abandonment, or preventable harm while under government supervision.”

U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) released a statement in June following the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s homicide designation.

“Daphy Michel was a human being. She happened to be born on the other side of a border, but she was no less worthy of care, safety, and dignity. That should not have been a death sentence.

Daphy’s death was preventable and is the result of a violent system that cages people, surveils them, abandons them, dehumanizes them in life, and smears them in death to escape accountability. She deserved care, shelter, language access, and medical support,” Rep. Lee said. 

“ICE and every agency that failed her must answer for this. And now, as more people die in and around ICE custody, their answer is not transparency, accountability, or care, but to stop reporting the deaths of recently released detainees altogether,” she added. “We must abolish ICE and build systems rooted in equity and basic human dignity.”

In early June, about three months after Ms. Michel’s death, acting ICE director David Venturella rescinded a 2021 Biden-era policy requiring ICE to report and investigate deaths occurring within 30 days of a detainee’s release.

Ms. Michel was born in Aquin, Haiti, and entered the U.S. in 2022. According to Atty. Murphy, she was granted humanitarian parole and had a pending asylum case, The Associated Press reported. She lived in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, more than 20 miles south of Pittsburgh. 

Ms. Michel was arrested in September 2025 following what witnesses described as a mental-health crisis. She faced misdemeanor charges related to allegedly threatening people while experiencing psychiatric problems.

Atty. Murphy shared that she spent six months in Washington County Jail while awaiting a preliminary hearing and underwent multiple psychiatric evaluations, according to the AP. In late February, a judge dismissed the criminal charges. 

Rather than returning home after the charges were dismissed, Ms. Michel was taken into ICE custody. ICE officials placed an electronic ankle monitor on her and transported her to Pittsburgh. Her family reportedly expected to be contacted upon her release to arrange for someone to pick her up, but that call never came. 

Instead, she ended up at a Pittsburgh bus shelter, where surveillance footage from Pittsburgh Regional Transit, obtained by Pittsburgh’s Public Source, a local news outlet, showed her spending at least 24 hours in largely subfreezing temperatures. She was found unresponsive on March 2 and later pronounced dead at a hospital.

Her family and their attorney said she was wearing clothing appropriate for September and was inadequately dressed for winter weather. Temperatures were in the low 20s on the morning of March 2.

The Allegheny County Medical Examiner described Ms. Michel as a vulnerable adult with untreated severe mental-health problems and a significant language barrier when she was released. The medical examiner’s office determined her cause of death was hypothermia and classified the manner of death as homicide, meaning her death was caused by the actions of another individual.

On social media, immigration advocates accused ICE of contributing to Ms. Michel’s death. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) responded in a post on X: “ICE had NOTHING to do with this woman’s death. She passed away THREE days after ICE encountered her.”

The DHS stated that Ms. Michel was released on Feb. 27 “with all of her belongings, including a fully charged phone, in sunny weather in the middle of Pittsburgh, where public transport is readily available.”  

The family attorney disputes elements of the government’s account, noting that although Ms. Michel had a cellphone, its service expired during the six months she was incarcerated.

Ms. Michel leaves behind her parents, three sisters and two brothers. She died before she could attend her immigration hearing, which had been scheduled two weeks after her death. 

In addition to the family’s lawsuit, Pittsburgh detectives are investigating Ms. Michel’s death.

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Americans’ financial well-being was broadly stable in 2025, but the financial well-being of Black adults deteriorated from 2024 to 2025, according to a report published earlier this year by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Overall, while 73% of adults reported they were doing okay financially or living comfortably, Black financial well-being fell from 65% to 60%.

The report pointed to rising layoffs and financial harms from inflation as evidence of worsening financial circumstances. It also documented disparities in difficulty paying bills, food insecurity, banking, credit, debt and homeownership.

The report details:

• 64% of Black adults considered price increases a major concern, up six percentage points from 2024 to 2025;
• 13% experienced a layoff, up three percentage points from 10% in 2024;
• 32% did not pay all their bills in full in the month prior to the survey, more than three times the rate of White adults and twice the national rate;
• 15% said their families sometimes or often did not have enough to eat, up three percentage points from 2024;
• 13% were unbanked, and of those who had bank accounts, 25% paid an overdraft fee during the previous year;
• 54% of Black credit applicants were denied or received less credit than requested, more than twice the rate for White applicants;
• 72% of Black credit-card holders carried a balance at least once during the previous year;
• 28% had outstanding student loans, and Black adults were twice as likely as White adults to have student-loan debt; and only 44% owned their homes.

Black wealth and economics in the U.S. has always been a complicated story intertwined with discriminatory systems designed to work against Black people. However, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam, pinpointed the way out of this economic and financial hardship.

In His book, “Message to the Blackman in America,” published in 1965, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad outlined an economic program for Black people.

The program, found on pages 195-196, explains Black wage earners to save just five cents a day to go into a national treasury. From there, Black people, collectively, could buy farmland and produce their own food, He wrote.

“You can raise enough cattle, sheep, cows and chickens by the thousands if you try our program. We could cut down on our clothing bills,” he added. “Purchase real estate, buy farm and timberland. Convert the timber into lumber and build homes for yourselves as the White man is doing.”

He advised Black people to get clay land and start making their own bricks. Then, build brick homes “and sell them to your people at a very reasonable price.” Take the cotton to the mills and convert it to lint, and take the lint to the mills and convert it to cloth, he said.

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, has since urged Black people to take another look at the program of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

“At a time of great crisis, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad outlined in the Muhammad Speaks newspaper a ‘Plan’  that sought to address the economic plight of Black people in the United States.

It was presented at that time as an ‘Economic Savings Program,’ or a ‘3-Year Savings Plan’—and it was the greatest effort in the history of Black people in America to:  1) break our harmful spending habits; 2) pool our earnings; and 3) redirect our wealth in ways that would lead to self-sufficiency in America,” Minister Farrakhan said in Part 30 of his 2013 lecture series, “The Time and What Must be Done,” titled, “Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint: Ending Poverty & Want.”

“The Program called on not only Muslims, but all Black wage earners—the poor, the middle class, and the wealthy—to make affordable contributions, on a regular basis, into a single national treasury,” he added.

“But why did the Honorable Elijah Muhammad give us this Plan 48 [now 61] years ago? He warned us that 100% inflation would come to America, totally destroying the value of the dollar. 

He wrote that a financial crash was on the way more severe than The Stock Market Crash of 1929 (a.k.a. ‘Black Tuesday’).  And, He wrote that America would experience a loss of wealth so severe that it would force the descendants of slaves to finally get up and do something for themselves economically.”

Minister Farrakhan then went into the statistics on the dire condition of Black life in America, including foreclosure rates, unemployment rates, incarceration rates, homicide rates, high school dropout rates and poverty rates. 

Minister Farrakhan concluded with words from His teacher from pages 56-57 of “Message to the Blackman”: “As a people, we must become producers and not remain consumers and employees. We must be able to extract raw materials from the earth and manufacture them into something useful for ourselves! This would create jobs in production.

We must remember that without land there is no production; [and] the surplus of what we produce we would sell. This would [help] develop a field of commerce and trade as other free and independent people whose population is less than that of [our] so-called Negroes who are dependent in America.”

“The future is in our hands,” the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan said. “You don’t have to beat up on other people, you just have to do right by yourself!”

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Xandria Harris, a 30-year-old mother of four, was charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and child endangerment for her alleged role in a December 2021 incident that left one police officer dead and another severely wounded.

Her then-boyfriend, Darius Sullivan, allegedly fatally shot Bradley, Ill., Police Sergeant Marlene Rittmanic and severely wounded Sergeant Tyler Bailey during a confrontation in a hotel room.

Prosecutors shared that the incident began after a Comfort Inn employee called police about dogs left inside a vehicle in freezing temperatures, according to local news outlets. After responding, officers determined Mr. Sullivan was wanted on outstanding warrants.

They knocked on the door of the hotel room occupied by Ms. Harris and Mr. Sullivan. According to prosecutors, while Ms. Harris spoke to the officers at the hotel room door, her boyfriend came from around the room and reportedly shot Sgt. Bailey, local news outlets reported. He then reportedly chased Sgt. Rittmanic down the hallway, and allegedly disarmed her and fatally shot her.

Prosecutors accused Ms. Harris of aiding and abetting the crime, alleging that she delayed opening the hotel-room door while Mr. Sullivan prepared his weapon, assisted him during his struggle with Sgt. Rittmanic and later attempted to help him escape.

However, Ms. Harris’ attorney, Cierra Norris, argued that Mr. Sullivan “controlled and conditioned” her and that she lacked criminal intent, local news outlets reported.

Civil rights activist John C. Barnett, founder of the organization True Healing Under God, held a news conference in support of Ms. Harris on Aug. 7. During the news conference, he highlighted the case’s complexities, including concerns about jury selection.

The length of time between the incident and the trial and other issues reported attempts of silencing of Ms. Harris’ mother and attorney. On the opening day of the trial, prosecutors accused Atty. Norris of potentially violating a judge’s gag order by discussing the case with others.

Several of Ms. Harris’ family, friends and supporters spoke at the news conference.

“She’s a loving mother, a mother of four kids that needs to come home,” Anne Boyd, Ms. Harris’ aunt, said.

“I feel like I shouldn’t be here because I know my daughter’s innocent from the beginning. I knew my daughter was innocent, and I feel like I shouldn’t be here. And I feel like it’s unfair what she’s going through,” Gloria Harris-Boyd, Ms. Harris’ mother, said.

“And for me to be her mother, and for them to kick me out the court, who don’t want their mother there? I’m there to support my daughter, so I have to sit outside the courtroom and just pray for my daughter because I can’t be in there.”

Ms. Harris-Boyd also described to ABC7 Chicago how the case has affected Ms. Harris’ children. “They miss their mom. And it’s very hard because she’s trying to do the best she can over the phone to like make sure they do their homework, calling them. It’s very hard because she has not had no physical contact with them,” she said.

Mr. Sullivan was convicted of murder and attempted murder in September 2024 and was later sentenced to mandatory life in prison, along with an additional 80 years.

Ms. Harris could also face a lengthy prison sentence if convicted. The trial is expected to conclude on Aug. 21. Mr. Barnett told The Final Call that he is preparing for another rally outside the Kankakee County Courthouse on Aug. 20, one day before the trial’s expected conclusion.

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His student, helper and National Representative, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, has continued warning America to repent lest she faces the Wrath of Allah (God).

“God will take America down in 12 hours by the clock. You have no power with The God I serve.  See if you can stop the tornadoes; they’re coming more and more … .

Rain coming like you’ve never seen it before. All of a sudden a flash flood, and people, you see their cars going down under water,” the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan said in a May 2016 interview on The Breakfast Club. 

“You’ve got hail coming out of the sky the size of a baseball; and soon, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, you’ll see them coming out of the sky like blocks of ice. 

You’ve got fire going on North of our border in Canada, 1,600-and-some-odd square miles burning. They’ve never seen a fire like that,” Minister Farrakhan added. “You are dealing with a God and The Forces of Nature … . You can’t stop that.”

Several Western states are either battling wildfires or recovering from them amid dangerous heat, low humidity, gusty winds and ongoing drought. An unusually active wildfire season intensified across states stretching from Washington to Colorado.

Three fires in Spokane, Washington, burned more than 10,000 acres and damaged more than 900 homes and structures. More than 60,000 people were forced to evacuate. 

“This is by far and large the worst one we’ve ever been on,” Steve Moyer, a firefighter with the Moses Lake Fire Department in Washington state, said to Seattle’s NPR station. “I mean, you’re in a neighborhood right now and there isn’t a single house standing.”

“It’s apocalyptic,” he added. Authorities said all three fires were believed to be caused by humans, though only one had been identified as deliberately set.  Aaron Farinacci, 37, was arrested and charged with first-degree arson for deliberately starting one of the Spokane fires.

Even as firefighters from across the country worked to contain the fires, officials warned that another round of hot, windy weather could reignite active fire behavior.

“More dry, windy weather is going to make things harder for our firefighters this weekend. Everyone in Washington needs to be smart and safe. Don’t be the spark that sets off another catastrophe,” Dave Upthegrove, Washington’s Commissioner of Public Lands, said in a social media post.

Oregon was another fire hotspot. Several fires raged simultaneously across the state, leading to evacuations and unhealthy air quality, according to local news outlets. Officials closed one of the state’s highways because of the Grasshopper Fire, which burned more than 43,000 acres and remained at 23% containment on Aug. 7.

Another fire, the Wrights Spring Fire, which started Aug. 5, grew to nearly 9,000 acres by Aug. 7 and remained at 0% containment.

The Big Grass Fire grew into one of the largest wildfires in Oregon’s history. Flames scorched more than 442,000 acres and crossed into Idaho. By Aug. 7 afternoon, the fire was 39% contained. NASA satellite imagery showed widespread smoke stretching across Oregon, Washington and into British Columbia. 

In Utah, the Widemouth 2 Fire became one of the state’s largest fires this fire season. It burned more than 106,000 acres and was 19% contained on Aug. 7.  A firefighting helicopter crashed while working the fire, and the blaze continued growing despite hundreds of firefighters working to suppress it. So far in the 2026 fire season, 794 fires have burned nearly half a million acres in the state.

North Dakota Governor Kelly Armstrong declared a statewide fire emergency on Aug. 7, as moderate and extreme drought spread across the state amid hot and dry conditions.

“In just a few months we’ve seen ground conditions shift from lush green to tinder dry across large portions of our state, and we need to be prepared for a potentially intense wildfire season this fall,” Gov. Armstrong said.

Northern California’s Gann Fire was another major fire. The fire rapidly spread through dry grass and brush, burning more than 10,000 acres. The fire injured a firefighter and destroyed 18 structures. One person was found dead in a home destroyed by the fire. Residents received evacuation orders and warnings, and schools closed due to the smoke. More than 3,000 personnel were assigned.

Herbert Wayne Smith, 65, was arrested on suspicion of recklessly causing the fire by operating spark-producing equipment without clearing nearby flammable vegetation as required.

Fires expanded near the Pioneer Mountains in Montana, and fire watches were issued for parts of Montana and Wyoming. Though few fires were reported in Wyoming, parts of the state did experience heavy smoke from fires in the Pacific Northwest, reducing visibility and degrading air quality.

Mandatory evacuation orders were issued near Lake City, Colorado, as firefighters battled the Elk Fire.

On Aug. 6, firefighters were actively working to contain 95 large fires across the country, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. More than 30,000 personnel were assigned to incidents nationwide. Up to that point in 2026, firefighters had responded to 45,502 wildfires burning more than 5.6 million acres.

The center predicted that a “hot, dry and unstable air mass” would continue to build across the West. Year-to-date wildfire activity remained above the recent 10-year average for both fire numbers and acres burned, according to the fire center.

Forecasters warned that extreme heat and strong winds will keep much of the West at elevated wildfire risk even as heavy rain and flooding threaten parts of the eastern U.S. Parts of the eastern and central United States have experienced repeated rounds of thunderstorms, including localized flash flooding and heavy rainfall.

These weather events are prophesied to continue.

“God is destroying America by degrees with The Forces of Nature, which you have no power against,” the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan warned in his 2016 message. “The Death Angel is in America as we speak—these natural disasters are going to increase.”

But, he said, there’s a way out for America. “Let the Black man go and give us justice, and these things that are whipping you today will start diminishing, and you will get a longer period of time,” he said to America’s political leaders.

“Let us go and give us some of this territory that we can call our own; and give us the billions of dollars that we can get started with land and with tractors and the things that will make us an independent nation. You could do that, if you would.  You don’t have a lot of time. And if you think I’m crazy, keep going the way you’re going and watch what God does.”

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Gain-of-function research refers to experiments that intentionally alter an organism or pathogen to give it new or enhanced biological properties.

Dr. Fauci served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 1984 to 2022 and as President Biden’s chief medical advisor from 2021 to 2022.

According to multiple sources, including Worldometers.info, approximately 1.2 million Americans died from the virus during the pandemic. Dr. Fauci was pressed for answers during the hearings.

Republican senators, led by Committee Chair Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), grilled Dr. Fauci on his research in Wuhan and his response to COVID-19. They accused him of funding research that they alleged may have led to a laboratory origin of COVID-19, improperly handling federal records and resources and concealing information about vaccine-related adverse effects.

Dr. Fauci refused to answer all questions posed by the Senate during the nearly three-hour hearing, stating that on the advice of his attorneys, he was exercising his constitutional rights under the Fifth Amendment, which protects people against self-incrimination.

Senate Republicans criticized his refusal to testify. Senate Democrats argued that the hearing was a political exercise, stating that Dr. Fauci had already testified before Congress numerous times. One of Dr. Fauci’s attorneys attempted to intervene during questions, leading Sen. Paul to order security to remove the attorney from the room.

Sen. Paul also announced plans for the committee to consider holding Dr. Fauci in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions.

Questions asked during the hearing directed to Dr. Fauci pertained to: gain-of-function research; Dr. Fauci’s private communications and federal recordkeeping; why NIH-funded research involved the Wuhan Institute of Virology; laboratory safety oversight and NIH oversight of Chinese laboratories; vaccine safety and suppression of alternative COVID-19 treatments.

Regarding vaccine-related injuries and adverse effects, the senators brought up more than 1.6 million submitted reports from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (published weekly on page 8 of The Final Call), including more than 39,000 reports involving deaths. They also referenced individuals who reported suffering serious injuries after receiving COVID-19 vaccines.

In his July 4, 2020, message, titled “The Criterion,” the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, warned Black people not to take the vaccine. Regardless of the physical origins of COVID-19, he described the virus as a “pestilence from heaven.”

“Don’t take the vaccines. There are 14 therapies that are in the world today that we can use to fight against the COVID virus. America, you won’t solve it. The scientists of the world, you won’t solve it,” he said. “I want to tell you what will solve it. This virus is a pestilence from heaven so scholarship from hell can’t deal with a pestilence that came from heaven.”

—Anisah Muhammad, Staff Writer

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Mexican national Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, was driving to a construction job with his brother and two others on July 7 in Houston when ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents in unmarked vehicles pursued his car. They pulled him over and fatally shot him through a passenger window.

Just six days later, on July 13, an ICE agent fatally shot Colombian immigrant Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, 25, in Biddeford, Maine, while attempting to stop his vehicle.

Neither man was an intended target of the immigration operations. Protesters connected the shootings to the January deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, two U.S. citizens who were fatally shot during a federal immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.

Mr. Araujo, who lived and worked in the U.S. for 35 years, was a husband and the father of three children who are U.S. citizens. His sons have been outspoken in the weeks following his death.

During a congressional forum on July 24, his son Salgado Araujo Jr. asked listeners to put themselves in his and his brother’s shoes.

“I want you in your mind to think of a loved one—your brother, your father, your cousin, a beloved coworker. Picture their face and silently say their first and last name. Picture that loved one’s face pinned to the ground in pain and yelling out in desperate need of help.

Picture the anger and helplessness of watching that person bleed out through a video on your phone,” he said. “What would you do after? How would you cope with the feeling of losing your protector, your role model, your mother’s loving partner, your grandmother’s little boy?”

His other son, Ronaldo Salgado, delivered a statement to the Houston City Council on July 28 demanding a full, independent and transparent investigation and justice for his father.

In a wave of protests in cities across the country, including a nationwide day of action on July 25, activists and organizers demanded independent investigations, release of video evidence, identification of the officers involved, greater disclosure of disciplinary records, restrictions on immigration-based vehicle stops and an end to local police cooperation with ICE. 

In Portland, Maine, a road sign was hacked to display the message, “No More ICE Killings.” Three “ICE Out of Maine” laws went into effect on July 29.

The two deaths resemble a pattern that has become all too familiar: agents, sometimes in unmarked cars, approach or box in a vehicle; the driver attempts to move or escape, and DHS (Department of Homeland Security) claims the vehicle posed a deadly threat.

In some previous cases, video or witness accounts have contradicted the government’s initial description. In the Houston and Maine cases, federal authorities have not publicly released evidence indicating that either driver posed an imminent threat.

Advocates also condemned the death of Juan Jairo Coronilla Durán, 28, a Mexican man who visited the U.S. on a valid tourist visa. He was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer while running from federal immigration officers in Florida on July 14. He leaves behind a wife and two young children.

In a July 14 statement, Mexico’s government announced plans to take legal action in response to the deaths of Mexican nationals in ICE custody or immigration-enforcement operations.

The statement said the Mexican Embassy would submit complaints to the U.S. Justice Department and relevant state prosecutors and that the government had begun sending what it called cease-and-desist letters to detention facilities where Mexican nationals had died.

After the two July shootings, administration officials reportedly ordered ICE to suspend most vehicle stops. President Donald Trump then publicly reversed course and said the stops must continue. 

The two shootings came amid rapid ICE expansion. In June, ICE arrested more than 43,000 people, the highest monthly total of President Trump’s second term, according to ICE data analyzed by The Guardian. The detained population reached more than 65,700 by July 11. 

Congress provided approximately $70 billion in additional funding for ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, including money for enforcement, detention, staffing and related operations.

News reports, lawmakers and former officials have raised concerns that ICE’s rapid hiring campaign comes at the expense of sufficient background checks and training. 

Mr. Guerrero was a husband and the father of a young daughter. The Maine Attorney General’s Office is conducting a state investigation. The Colombian Embassy is also monitoring the case.

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The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, has pointed out that the current public school system in America is not beneficial for Black children.

“Elijah Muhammad taught us if a man won’t treat you right, what would make you think that man would teach you right? In the public schools, the enemy wants to make us better tools of service for him,” Minister Farrakhan said during his Holy Day of Atonement 2018 address in Detroit.

In his book, “A Torchlight for America,” published in 1993, he further stated, “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said that education is the torchlight of civilization. If the educational system is declining, this is a sign that the whole of the civilization will follow into a state of decline.”

More than 30 years after his book was published, public schools in the U.S. are in a crisis. Nearly 1,200 public schools closed during the 2025-2026 school year, according to newly released data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). This was the fourth consecutive annual increase in school closures. In comparison, 755 public schools closed in 2021-2022.

While the number of majority-Black public schools that closed has not been calculated, researchers have documented that majority-Black public schools are disproportionately likely to close compared with schools serving other student populations.

Racial inequities in public school closures

In a 2023 study, researchers Dr. Danielle Greene-Bell and Dr. Francis Alvin Pearman examined racial inequity in school-closure patterns in California and across the country.

They looked at public school closures from 2000 through 2018 and found that majority-Black schools represented about 10% of U.S. public schools but were more than three times as likely to close as schools with other racial compositions. Differences in enrollment, achievement, school size, poverty, location and other measurable characteristics did not fully explain the gap. 

Dr. Greene-Bell, chief engagement officer at Richmond Public Schools, started her research into public school closures at a majority-Black high school in Oakland, California, where she noticed anxiety around the school possibly closing.

“People, when I would ask about it, would say, ‘Well, you know, we’re one of the only majority-Black schools. You know they love to close down Black schools,” she said to The Final Call.

From there, she pulled data from the NCES and worked with her professor at the time, Dr. Pearman of Stanford University, to demonstrate scientifically that “majority-Black schools across the nation are more likely to be closed.”

“If you have two schools that are essentially identical, and the only difference is one is majority-Black and one is any other racialized composition, the majority-Black school will be the one that is more likely to be closed,” she said.

In the paper, the researchers argue against those who attempt to dismiss anti-Black racism as one of the reasons for Black public school closures.

“What I say instead is while I can’t say for certain, scientifically, that it’s anti-Black racism, we also can’t say that it’s not,” Dr. Greene-Bell said. She gave the example of a school that was closed in Virginia because it was built on a landfill.

“The reason people will say, ‘It’s not because the kids there are Black. It’s because it was built on the landfill, and it is toxic to the children. It’s actually better for the Black children that their school gets closed.’

But actually, when you think about it, why would a school be allowed to have been built on a landfill, and would a school have been able to be built on a landfill if it had been built for any other children other than those who are Black?” she questioned.  

A March 2026 analysis added another layer to Black school closures: the language used to justify closures. It argues that districts often frame decisions through technical terms such as “right-sizing,” “portfolio management,” or “efficiency optimization,” while failing to acknowledge priorities expressed by Black residents.

Black communities in different parts of the country are currently being challenged with school closures. In metro-Atlanta, the DeKalb County School District announced in February its consideration of closing 27 schools, citing a decline in student enrollment. DeKalb County is 51% Black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

A local news outlet in San Jose, California, reported in February that the local school district’s “choice to close up to nine elementary schools this year will disproportionately impact Black and Latino students.”

East Arcadia School, a majority-Black school in North Carolina, had its last day of classes on June 4 before being closed for good. Board members cited declining enrollment, financial issues and staffing challenges, according to The Assembly, a media outlet in North Carolina.

The outlet reported that 11 public schools with majority-Black student populations closed in North Carolina this year and that 73% of the state’s traditional public schools that closed between 2011 and 2025 disproportionately impacted non-White students.

In July, parents in Pittsburgh filed a civil rights complaint alleging that approved school closures discriminated against Black students. On May 27, the Pittsburgh Public Schools Board of Directors approved a plan to permanently close nine school buildings and 12 schools, reconfigure 10 schools and terminate magnet programs.

“The Plan disproportionately burdens Black students by causing them to lose the unique educational resources provided at their schools, failing to explain how those resources will be provided at reassigned schools, and disproportionately requiring Black students to absorb the disruption, transportation, and academic costs of transitioning to a new school,” the complaint says.

What happens to Black communities when majority-Black schools close? Dr. Greene-Bell said the neighborhood is more likely to be gentrified.

“In some places, schools are community hubs. They provide community resources. They provide grounding. They offer historicity to the area,” she said. “People talk about those schools as if they are part of their identity.”

“For the children inside of those schools, you have to think about what it means to be moved from your norm, a place where maybe you have strong relationships with your teachers, strong relationships with your friends, and school might be the only consistent thing for you in your life,” she added. 

Taking control of our own education

As public schools close, advocates of homeschooling and independent Black education said they have seen upticks in Black parents looking to other options. In fact, that may be one of the reasons for declining enrollment in public schools, they said.

“What we’re finding is that there are a lot of students that are leaving public schools for charter schools, for private schools. Homeschooling has also taken a surge in the last 20 years or so, but certainly since COVID, and so a lot of people are pulling their children out of public school,” Baye Kemit, president of the Council of Independent Black Institutions, said to The Final Call. 

Joyce Burges, co-founder of the National Black Home Educators, said more Black people are choosing to homeschool their children for a variety of reasons, including family togetherness, spending one-on-one time teaching their children, tending to children with developmental challenges and keeping their children safe and secure.

“Children learn better face-to-face. You can’t beat one-on-one instruction,” she said to The Final Call. “A parent can pour into a child academically, because that child is right there, and they’re giving that child one-on-one attention.

Especially a parent who really desires for their children to learn to read, learn to do basic mathematics, on and on, how to write, a parent can spend that time one-on-one with that child and know that that child is getting exactly what they need.” 

She started homeschooling her children in 1990. Now, her children are homeschooling their children. “When I look at the children and how they are raising their kids, I see that homeschooling benefited our family greatly. That is proof to me that homeschooling worked for our family,” she said.

Mr. Kemit and his wife founded two Black/African-centered schools in Trenton, New Jersey, and Atlanta. 

“Independent Black schools protect the Black child. Independent Black schools are created as a complement to the Black family,” he said. Mr. Kemit said their goal is to look at how this type of education is going to better our families, our communities and our people.

“We’re not just necessarily trying to have our children pass a test. We’re not necessarily trying to make them good workers for someone else’s corporation. We’re trying to make them think in a way that is going to create a nation of self-sufficiency for Black people,” he added.

He shared that historically, as early as the 1790s, from abolitionist Prince Hall in Boston to the Nation of Islam, Black people have always sought to educate their own children in the U.S., recognizing education as essential to freedom and self-determination. 

“The first thing that we talked about when we came out of enslavement is that we need land, we need families and we need schooling,” he said. “It was always this push for education all throughout all of our movements, through our challenges here in America.

We are not in any situation today that we have not ever been in. We’ve been in the same situation for [400] years in this country. And until Black people understand that the government, that the state, is not going to educate your children in the way that is going to save our families, then we’re going to continue to have the problems that we have.”

Today, Black independent schools stand on the shoulders of those who suffered, like the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the early pioneers of the Nation of Islam, who were arrested in Detroit for taking their children out of the public schools to teach and educate them in their own school.

“When we took our children out of the public school, they came to the school and arrested the teachers. Elijah Muhammad went to the jail and said, ‘I am their teacher so if you’re going to arrest them, arrest me too,’” the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan said in his 2018 Holy Day of Atonement address.

“Today if you have an independent school, somebody paid a price. If you have Afrocentric education, somebody paid a price. If you know how to stand up for your beautiful Black self, somebody paid a price.”

In a 2012 interview with Cliff Kelley on Chicago’s WVON 1690AM radio station, Minister Farrakhan said Black people need to “scrap” that which has proven to be unworthy.

“I know that our children are being given an inferior education; and those who want to control the minds and hearts of the American people have purposely dumbed down the American people. We must change the education in the public schools,” he said. “We have to be concerned about education, the right kind of education, for all American children: Black, Brown, Red, Yellow and White!

“America’s education system has failed—but we, The Nation of Islam, have a System that would not only be good for Black people, it would be good for White people! It would be good for all people, because everyone needs a Superior Education in order to master the circumstances that Life presents,” he added.

“While the education model we have is not yet perfect, and we are perfecting our model, we are still a long way from the madness that we see in our public schools.”

He shared the desire for American educators to allow the Nation of Islam to help teach Black students who attend public schools. “We’re not there to teach them hatred of any people, but to get them to fall in love with themselves!” he said. 

“And the more you teach them the richness of their history and The Nature of God that sits deep within them—and the power that they have once they are ‘turned on’: We’ll never have to beg another people again.”

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