— “Fall of America,” Chapter 50, titled “Lull Before The Storm,” by the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad

On February 28, 2026, President Donald J. Trump, at the insistence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, launched an unprovoked attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran, an attack both leaders expected to last several weeks, but one that now is in its seventh month.

The attack was anticipated to resolve two main goals—first, is Israel’s desire to neutralize Iran’s military power, the main threat to Israel’s regional prowess.

The second goal, according to the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, was started years ago. In part 14 of his 2013 lecture series, “The Time and What Must Be Done,” Minister Farrakhan stated, “ Four-star U.S. army general Wesley Clark said that 10 years before 9/11, Paul Wolfowitz.

The neocon architect of Bush’s war on Iraq, told General Clark of plans to ‘clean out The Middle East,’ and take over those Muslim nations. Just 10 days after 9/11, Clark was shown a Pentagon memo that describes how they planned to ‘take out seven countries in five years,’ starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”

On September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center in New York and Pentagon in Washington D.C. were attacked.

As the country prepares to observe the 25th anniversary of that tragic day, the advice, warning and guidance given by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan regarding that attack—and the trajectory it has set this country on—should be revisited and reconsidered.

Following the 9/11 attack that killed more than 2,500 people, the country shifted into a mood for retaliation. The alleged attackers were identified, nations and organizations involved implicated, and revenge topped the public discourse.

The nation launched a “war on terror.” The Department of Homeland Security was created, the Patriot Act was passed, all resulting in attacks on civil liberties of American citizens and creating fear among certain communities and ethnicities.

Out of the rubble continued a plan to “target” seven Islamic nations within five years for destruction or destabilization, a plan revealed by General Wesley Clark in 2003 in his book “Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism, and the American Empire.”

Those nations included Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. Though it has been more than five years, all of those nations have successfully been neutralized—except Iran.

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has consistently warned every president that their desires to start wars against Islamic nations will lead to an even bigger war—Armageddon. That war, he has said, will involve all nations and end America’s power.

The question to consider today: Is Minister Farrakhan correct in his warning? If so, is the war in Iran opening the door to that great battle?

As recently as July 25 of this year, Minister Farrakhan warned President Donald Trump: “An aggressor is a loser. Because God is never with those who are aggressors, oppressors, tyrants, bullies, who love to make people afraid.  … Yes, you’ve got an armada. Yes, you’ve got ships. Yes, you’ve got armies. Yes, you’ve got ballistic missiles.

“Yes … but you don’t have God. And if you don’t have God, you don’t have the forces of nature! And God is unleashing the forces of nature now! Don’t try Him. Don’t try Him, please. If you want to live, put the gun down, put the bomb down.”

A warning is a blessing

Minister Farrakhan’s warning contained aspects of the warning he gave to then-President George W. Bush in two letters to the former president after the 9/11 attacks—that he might “run into something he did not expect” in the Middle East.

“You may threaten Iran. Iran has something to fight back. My Teacher (the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad) told me that this war was going to start with conventional weapons and it will end with nuclear weapons. I say this as warning before the war gets hot. Stop and think,” the Minister said to President Trump.

In warnings to Mr. Bush that fit circumstances today, Minister Farrakhan said, “Mr. President, I plead with you that this war that you intend could trigger that war that all the scientists of religion and of war have desired to escape.

The war that would end all wars, the War of Armageddon. The scriptures teach that, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, this is a sign of the end of this present system of things.”

Similarities of the political and social environment prior to 9/11 reflect those environments today. The World Trade Center attacks occurred during a time of intense division among the American public.

A Pew Research Center/Council of Foreign Relations survey at the time found that weapons of mass destruction and terrorism were among top concerns of the leadership and the public. But the so-called “spread of radical Islam” was viewed by political and influential leaders as a greater threat to U.S. interests than the emergence of China as a world power.

President Bush’s approval rating prior to 9/11 was around 50% and dropping, according to a Zogby poll at that time. The 9/11 attacks unified the nation and sent the president’s approval rating soaring.

One by one, the targeted nations succumbed to U.S. intervention or outright attacks by the U.S. military. Iraq fell to a U.S. invasion in 2003 under the false pretext that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction.

Economic sanctions and U.S.-provoked civil wars created chaos and instability in Syria and the Sudan. U.S. interference and support for aggressions by neighboring countries into Somalia has sparked persistent civil unrest.

Libya’s leader Muammar Gadhafi was killed by a U.S.-inspired uprising by rebel forces in 2011. Sanctions and Israeli attacks on Hezbollah are aimed at neutralizing Lebanon.

Reckless attacks today by Israel on Lebanon, Gaza and neighboring nations and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s open call for a “Greater Israel” is increasing the appetite for war and security, even as many Gulf nations are losing confidence in the U.S. military’s ability to protect them. Israel reportedly is setting its eye on Türkiye as the next target for conflict.

Ukraine, already at war with Russia, struck an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea; Iran vowed revenge. Saudi Arabia is exchanging fire with Ansar Allah (Houthi) forces in Yemen; a seaport in Egypt has been struck.

A vision-like experience

President Trump’s recent announcement to increase the stranglehold on Iran’s economy and threats of economic sanctions to any country that trades with Iran has created wariness among nations, including China, Iran’s largest trade partner.

“China has already stated many times that it firmly opposes illegal unilateral sanctions. China will take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard its own rights and interests,” a spokesperson for Beijing told reporters, according to The Guardian newspaper.

President Trump can benefit from the advice Minister Farrakhan gave in his second letter to President Bush: “If the President of the United States seems to show no respect for world opinion or for the thoughts of the members of the Security Council of the United Nations, then, your actions will turn the nations of the world against you and against America,” he offered in an October 2002 letter.

Ultimately, the warnings delivered by Minister Farrakhan to U.S. presidents is rooted in a vision-like experience he had on Sept. 17, 1985, where he was told by the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad on the Wheel (so-called UFOs) of a so-called meeting then President Ronald Reagan had with his Joint Chiefs of Staff to plan a war against an Islamic nation.

Minister Farrakhan publicly revealed his experience and said he came to believe the war was on Libya’s Muammar Gadhafi. He went to Libya to warn Brother Gadhafi, prior to a U.S. attack on the leader’s home.

But Minister Farrakhan said he also came to realize the war is on two fronts—Islamic nations in the Middle East and the Nation of Islam in the West, with a particular focus on Black youth.

He has said that everything he has done since that vision-like experience has been to warn Black America of the government’s plan, as well as to warn America of the consequences of her plan and get America to atone and, perhaps, extend her time as a power in the world. That was the main call of the 1995 Million Man March and the establishment of the observance of October 16 as a Day of Atonement.

Farrakhan’s consistent warnings

The Holy Qur’an, the Islamic book of scripture, says the duty of a messenger is to deliver the message. Minister Farrakhan’s words have shown him to be a friend and faithful warner to America and the nations:

“Whenever a nation becomes great and powerful by God’s Permission, as America has; whenever a nation becomes the undisputed ruler of the world, as America has, by Allah’s Permission; when a nation becomes the only remaining superpower, having the power to destroy other nations and people by the tens of thousands and millions.

As Allah has permitted America the power to do, and that nation then has a spiritual lapse and begins to sink into moral decline, the Qur’an teaches that Allah (God) raises a messenger, but he raises that messenger from among the poor and the abject to guide and to warn the great and the powerful.” Minister Farrakhan said during a press conference at Mosque Maryam on Sept. 16, 2001.

“I am trying to help America face the error of her ways and see the enmity she is sparking across the globe alongside a growing loss of friendship. This is not good for America, nor the world and only marches us steadily to acrimony, conflict and the final war of Armageddon spoken of in the Bible.

America can no longer act unilaterally in the world and be successful. Success can only come from righting old wrongs and purposing just and progressive policies,” he said in a 2018 statement from Tehran regarding his trip to the Muslim nation.

“I must lift up my voice and cry out, not just as one crying in the wilderness, but as one out of love who wants to see this nation avoid the pitfalls that have destroyed the great nations of the past,” he said in the first of two letters of counsel and concern to then President George W. Bush, who was contemplating a U.S. response to the Trade Centers attack. Is America listening today?

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“When the call was made for all males between 18 and 44, I refused (NOT EVADING) on the grounds that, first, I was a Muslim and would not take part in war and especially not on the side with the infidels. Second, I was 45 years of age and was NOT according to the law required to register.”

Many other male members of the Nation of Islam at that time were themselves imprisoned as conscientious objectors (CO) to World War II.

That status is today being claimed by hundreds of active-duty soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines across every branch of the U.S. military, as conscientious objectors.

Since the United States and Israel launched military strikes on Iran on Feb. 28 of this year, veterans’ groups and legal counselors say they have fielded a wave of active-duty service members asking how to become conscientious objectors—including officers.

The Center on Conscience and War (CCW), which has advised troops on their rights since 1940, says applications have increased six-fold since the war began, with roughly 140 applicants taken on so far, compared with about 50 in a typical year.

CCW Executive Director Mike Prysner said many current applicants have served more than a decade, span ranks up to major, and in some cases attended military service academies.

“The Iran War was really the breaking point for them when they realized that they had to take action to make sure that they did not participate in something that they were going to regret for the rest of their lives,” said Mr. Prysner to MS NOW in an August 26 interview.

Quaker House’s GI Rights Hotline reported a parallel spike of 429 inquiries in March and 440 in April, with elevated demand persisting since then. The group reported that it is working with about 30 people actively pursuing CO applications, compared with five to 10 before the war.

“The number of those who actually decide to apply does not reflect the complete number of people who have expressed hesitations,” said Lenore Yarger, a longtime peace activist and resource counselor with the GI Rights Hotline.

Operating through Quaker House in Fayetteville, North Carolina, according to the IBTimes UK and The New American. She cited the Minab girl’s school bombing in Iran and “concern about the leadership” as the most common reasons callers gave.

Mr. Prysner said the highest-ranking service member to seek CCW’s help held an O-4 pay grade—equivalent to a major or a Navy lieutenant commander.

According to Mr. Prysner, most of the currently serving soldiers who joined roughly 500 veterans, active-duty troops and military families marching in Philadelphia on July 4—the largest such protest since Vietnam—were born after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

“They became adults as the Afghanistan War, which spanned their entire lives, ended in defeat,” he said. “They have grown up with those wars and their lessons: total disasters that turned out to be for nothing, with a devastating humanitarian toll, kept alive endlessly by the lies of those in charge,” he stated.

The Feb. 28, 2026, strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab is cited by multiple sources as a specific catalyst driving objections.

Addressing the Nation of Islam’s 31st Annual National Training Conference on July 25, Minister Farrakhan issued a divine, stern warning:

“You’ve got bloodsuckers of the poor. You’ve got eaters of the dead. See, when you don’t know how to work for what you get, or are waiting for somebody to die to see what you can get, think about it, those sisters, those brothers, taught us this lesson: An aggressor is a loser.

“I am saying this to the president: An aggressor is a loser. Because God is never with those who are aggressors, oppressors, tyrants, bullies, who love to make people afraid. During the demonstrations, there was a brother moving around, but the poor man lost the stick (knocked out of his hands).

“Those brothers were mean out there! And if you are an aggressive fool, looking at what you saw, then the lesson is: Don’t be a bully. Find a better way to solve a problem! Yes, you’ve got an armada. Yes, you’ve got ships. Yes, you’ve got armies.

Yes, you’ve got ballistic missiles. Yes …  But you don’t have God. And if you don’t have God, you don’t have the forces of nature! And God is unleashing the forces of nature now! Don’t try Him. Don’t try Him, please. If you want to live, put the gun down, put the bomb down,” Minister Farrakhan said.

He continued, “You can threaten Iran. Iran has a little something to fight back. But my Teacher told me that this war was going to start with conventional weapons and it will end with nuclear weapons. You heard it first from the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

“I say this as warning before the war gets hot. Stop, and think. Precious lives are on those ships, but God can maneuver the water in such a way, which you will see, and sink your ship. See, nothing can stand against the force of nature when it is unleashed.

“Please … I am from God, whether you know it or not! Damn it, if you haven’t seen it yet, you are blind as hell! But I am telling you, I am from God! And what I say, you’re going to meet it again if you think you’re going to destroy people with your bombs, with your weapons! You will be destroyed!”

Dr. Ronald Beavers, founder of the Positive Imagery Foundation, told The Final Call that conscientious objection is nothing new. He ties the current unrest to what he called the Cloward-Piven strategy, a theory of social disruption he said ultimately serves those already in power. The war cannot be sustained, he stated.

“People are leaving the military because folks, just like in Vietnam, are saying it’s not for freedom and justice; it’s for money,” said Dr. Beavers. He said public debate often overlooks the toll already inflicted on those who served, describing some veterans as moving through daily life without recognizing how deeply they’ve been affected: “You see a shell,” he said.

Barry Ladendorf is a Vietnam-era Navy veteran, retired California deputy attorney general and former national president of Veterans for Peace, now president of Veterans for Peace’s San Diego chapter.

He said what he hears from counselors matches CCW and Quaker House’s numbers, and that the Minab strike was a turning point for many service members: “The idea of killing a school full of girls was just, for some of them, too much.”

He also said service members have also raised concerns about Gaza. “They want no part of it. They think the United States should not be giving weapons to Israel to do that. And I agree with it. In fact, doing that is a violation of U.S. law.

We have laws on the books that we’re not following that says the United States cannot give weapons to any nation that is engaged in genocide. And so, when we do that, we’re violating our own laws,” he told The Final Call.

The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad refused the World War II draft in 1942 and was unjustly imprisoned for it along with other men of the Nation of Islam. Muhammad Ali refused induction in 1967, refusing to fight a people in another poor nation and was therefore stripped of his heavyweight boxing title.

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?

No, I am not going ten thousand miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end,” he said in part.

Minister Farrakhan has issued repeated warnings over several decades against war and aggression.

Today CCW and Quaker House report hundreds of active-duty service members seeking conscientious objector status or contacting GI rights hotlines since the war on Iran began.

“I think the solution is to get out of these unnecessary wars. We don’t need to be involved in every conflict around the world. There was absolutely no reason to go into Iran,” Mr. Ladendorf said.

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The theme said it plainly: “This Land Holds Our Stories: Celebrating America 250 and 100 Years of Negro History Week, We’re Still Making America Whole.”

The gathering convened at a tense moment. Across the nation, efforts to restrict and rewrite Black history have grown louder. The people in these rooms answered with resolve. They shared strategies. They traded ideas. They reminded one another that survival has always been the work.

Board Chairman Tamar Smithers-Diakhi did not soften the year’s difficulties. During the closing plenary session she reported, “This has not been an easy year for any of us,” she told the room.

“We have navigated transitions, faced difficult decisions, and experienced moments that tested our leadership and our capacity. And we have done so at a time when there are deliberate efforts to rewrite, restrict, and in some cases erase our history.”

Then she offered a perspective. “But our history reminds us that we’ve been here before. We know how to endure. We know how to build. We know how to move forward together.”

Ms. Smithers-Diakhi framed the mission in words that echoed through the entire conference. “Black history is not adjacent to the American story. It is essential to it. This land holds our stories, and our institutions ensure those stories endure.”

The numbers backed her confidence. AAAM has grown from just under 350 members in 2018 to roughly 1,350 today—nearly 290% growth. Of those, 423 are students and emerging museum professionals.

“The next generation is not simply on the way,” she said. “They are already here. And it is our responsibility to invest in them.”

She added, “Leadership begins with us. We cannot ask our members, funders, and partners to believe in this organization if we are not demonstrating that belief ourselves.”

She pointed toward AAAM’s coming 50th anniversary as both a milestone and a mandate. “It is an opportunity to honor those who built AAAM, while setting a bold vision for the next 50 years and beyond.”

The ‘United States of Amnesia’

Scholar and cultural critic Dr. Michael Eric Dyson delivered one of the conference’s sharpest addresses during a panel on preserving Black history. “We are living in what Gore Vidal called the United States of Amnesia,” he said.

“The attempt by tyrannical, demagogic forces to dictate the terms of history is the clearest example of racialized authoritarian terror—an effort to rewrite our narrative and erase our story.”

For Dr. Dyson, museums are more than buildings. “They articulate the collective memory of a people who have been despised, marginalized, and yet have risen against every odd to become memory warriors.”

He found curation everywhere—even in Black homes. “Think about your grandmother’s front room, the one you weren’t allowed to sit in,” he said. “That was curation.”

He closed his remarks with a personal charge. “Curate your identity. Keep a journal. Record your story. Our uncles, our aunts, our grandparents—they may not have had degrees on the wall, but they had a degree of insight that universities cannot manufacture.”

Pennsylvania State Senator Vincent Hughes, who sat on the same panel, brought the fight down to a local level. He spoke about the President’s House in Philadelphia and the ongoing battle to protect it. He helped secure $3 million in state funding for the project.

“We’ve been here before,” he said. “Like the phoenix, we rise.”

His challenge to residents was direct. “Go into your basement. Go through those boxes. That history you’ve been stepping over for 15 years—it belongs to the world.”

Senator Hughes urged attendees to build “micro-museums across every one of our communities while we fight the larger battles.” His verdict: “It is doable. And it is necessary.”

He also spoke about the campaign to save the John Coltrane House. “John Coltrane is John Coltrane,” he said. “He is Beethoven. He is Mozart. He is all of that, wrapped into one extraordinary creative force that still speaks to us today.”

And he pressed organizers to think bigger, pointing to the National Black Caucus of State Legislators’ upcoming Philadelphia conference. “An organized, multi-state effort changes the dynamic,” he said.

‘A sacred space’

For attendees, the conference was part strategy session, part homecoming. Lisa Ross, newly appointed President and CEO of the African American Museum in Dallas, called it sacred ground. “It allows us to be in a sacred space,” she said to The Final Call. “A space of healing, support, encouragement, and inspiration—to be with like-minded people who are the stewards of this work.”

Ms. Ross sees museums as central to education itself. “Museums and libraries are the future of education in this country. If we don’t do it, who will? We have to fight. And we have to fight for our children.”

On funding, she called for a return to community roots. “We have to go back to grassroots. Go back to what we know. Even if you have $5, that matters. We may not have come over here on the same ship, but we were in the same boat. That kind of thinking has to come back.”

Reaching young people, she said, starts at home. “We can no longer depend on school systems to make that message clear. Our museum is the cultural center of Dallas. We have to provide programming that young people understand—so they know this is home.”

The conference looked forward as much as back. New tools drew serious attention.

Tellicia Mitchell, a digital archivist with Florida A&M University Black Archives in Tallahassee, was struck by the possibilities. “It’s really amazing to be around this many Black people in one space, doing amazing things,” she told The Final Call. One message stayed with her: “LaShaun Moore said, ‘Your Black is welcome.’ There are so many types of Blackness that can be expressed.”

Para Agboga, of the George Washington Carver Museum in Austin, found her most powerful moment at the Barnes Foundation reception, watching young people dream aloud about future exhibits. “I thought: this is what the founders (of AAAM) saw,” she said. “They saw young people continuing to tell these stories.”

Naming the threats

Asking attendees what endangers Black museums, and the answers came fast—and varied. For poet James B. Golden who is affiliated with an upcoming museum honoring the Reverend Jesse Jackson in South Carolina, the threat is plain. “White supremacy. We literally built America,” he said in part.

Ms. Agboga pointed to the responsibility of Black people to support Black museums. “Nobody’s coming to save us.”

For Alisha Rashid, a docent at the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the risk is silence. “The single biggest threat is not being able to tell those stories fully and completely,” she said. “You can have different opinions, but you can’t have different facts.”

Her account of the nation’s founding pulled no punches. “When they created this United States of America, we weren’t included, even though we were making solid contributions. This country was built successfully off the backs of people they enslaved.”

Everyone an archivist

A theme ran through nearly every conversation during the conference: preservation begins at home. Clarissa West-White, an archivist at Bethune-Cookman University, put it simply. “It’s really important for people to understand that they are their own best archivists. Keep the important documents together. Keep them safeguarded. Every family can do that.”

Build from there, she explained. “It doesn’t have to start with a massive building. It really just starts at home.”

Andrea Wright, of the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, tied the work to legacy. “We ask ourselves: what kind of ancestor will we be?” she said. She called the movement “important, relevant, needed. Now more than ever.”

Reflecting on the centennial of Negro History Week, Ms. Wright had the vision from that idea stretching across a century. “A hundred years ago, there was someone with the vision, the forethought to say, ‘We need to do this.’ We are almost like a human time capsule. What can we do so that, a hundred years from now, they’ll be talking about us?”

The stakes, in plain terms

AAAM board member Jeff May, chief administrative officer of the San Antonio African American Community Archive and Museum, summed up the spirit at the conference to The Final Call. “This is a conference of people who still care about how our story is being written, spoken about, and presented,” he said. “It matters who’s telling the story. It matters that it’s the whole story.”

Many attendees, he noted, paid their own way. “A lot of people attending this conference came out of their own pockets because their professional development funds have dried up. The people here are taking it personal.”

His advice for the road ahead was practical. “The threats are real. The funding is fragile. The work is hard. But the resolve is harder. This land holds their stories. And these are the people who will keep them.”

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Rapid investigations, a lack of transparency and disputes over conclusions ruling the deaths suicide is at best insensitive to America’s history of racial terrorism and at worst a return to the pre-civil rights era of lynching, activists claim. 

At Final Call presstime, at least 16 people of various ages, male and female, were found hanged and whose deaths were ruled suicide or to date remain under investigation, Black Lives Matter Georgia said on their website.

The group noted that between “March 2025 to August 2026, at least 25 Black people have died across the United States under circumstances their  families, communities, and civil rights organizations consider suspicious, insufficiently investigated, or prematurely classified.”

Regarding the 16 hanging deaths, Black Lives Matter Georgia said the latest included an unidentified man whose body was discovered hung in a wooded area along Goose Creek Trail at the Tom Sawyer Park in Louisville, Kentucky, August 29.

“The investigation is ongoing—one week after Demetrius Fleming was found hanging in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, and two weeks after a Black man was found hanging in downtown Raleigh,” their statement said.

Among the grievances listed by family members seeking answers, the advocacy group said a pattern of “rapid suicide rulings” where cases are quickly closed—“often before autopsies are completed, before camera footage is reviewed and before families are notified,” is a point of contention leaving more questions than answers.

Black Lives Matter Georgia said the hangings and other questionable deaths, have occurred in at least 18 states and that “Black people found hanging from trees in public spaces across the American South and beyond—echoing a history this country has never fully confronted,” must be investigated to the fullest extent of the law.

Say their names

Some of the cases that have been reported include:

•  Charlotte, North Carolina – Mario Kaiser Jr., a 30-year-old trucking business owner, was found dead approximately 50 feet from his apartment complex with a noose around his neck, hanging from a tree on April 29, 2025. Death ruled suicide.

• Albany, New York – Earl D. Smith, a 58-year-old husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, was found hanging from a tree in a public area of downtown Albany on June 11, 2025. Death ruled suicide.

• Oakland, California – Unidentified man, a 36-year-old Black man was found unresponsive hanging from a tree just off the Bridgeview Trail in Dimond Canyon on June 30, 2025. Death ruled suicide.

• Cleveland, Mississippi – Demartravion “Trey” Reed, a 21-year-old computer science major and first-generation college student from Grenada, Mississippi, was found hanging from a tree near the pickleball courts on the Delta State University campus on September 15, 2025. Death ruled suicide.

•  Albuquerque, New Mexico – Jayvon Givan, a 29-year-old from Kansas City, was found hanging by a metal chain from a stucco pillar outside a vacant business closed for renovations on September 17, 2024. He had left Kansas City to backpack across America. His body was cremated before his family knew he was dead. Death ruled suicide.

• Brookfield, Wisconsin – Tory Medley, a 39-year-old Black man from Milwaukee, was found hanging from a tree at Brookfield Hills Golf Course on November 13, 2025. He was hanging by a strap around his neck attached to a tree branch. Death ruled suicide.

•  Marietta, Georgia – Kyle Bassinga, a 21-year-old Georgia State University student, was reported missing on February 14 (Valentine’s Day). Four days later, on February 18, a 911 caller reported a dead person in the same wooded area. Death ruled suicide.

• Charlotte, North Carolina – Juliana Umba Nzita, a 16-year-old originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, was reported missing on April 28, 2026. On May 8, a community volunteer found her body hanging from a tree on church property on West Sugar Creek Road. Death ruled suicide.

• Harrisburg, North Carolina – Cedric Longanga Tayuhe, a 36-year-old Black man originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, was found dead at Harris Depot Park in Harrisburg, North Carolina. Death under investigation.

• Miami, Florida – Tonea Nicole Miller, a 27-year-old Black woman from Flint, Michigan, was found hanging from a tree in Gwen Cherry Park in the Gladeview neighborhood of Miami-Dade County on June 18, 2026. Death ruled suicide.

• Albany, Georgia – Justice Kai James, 29, was found hanging outside the cafeteria of the Turner Job Corps Center in Albany, Georgia, on June 21, 2026. Death under investigation.

• Rothbury, Michigan – Jerard “Jay” Jackson, a 28-year-old Black man from Illinois who drove friends to the Electric Forest music festival in Rothbury, Michigan, was reported missing on June 29, 2026. Hours before he vanished, he had called state troopers to report an alleged incident involving a friend—investigators concluded the incident had not occurred. Death ruled suicide.

• Greenville, Mississippi – Robert Elliot, a 37-year-old Black man whose body was found burned and wrapped in a tarp in Greenville, on July 21. According to media reports, in Leland, Miss., less than 10 miles from Greenville, listed his death date as July 19, two days before his body was found. More than a month passed between the discovery of his body and the police’s statement publicly identifying him. Death under investigation.

• Jackson, Mississippi – Tasia Fortune, a Black, 29-year-old mother of four, was found hanging from a tree behind a vacant home in the 500 block of Road of Remembrance, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Jackson, Mississippi, on August 3, 2026. Neighbors discovered her body and called police. Death under investigation.

• Raleigh, North Carolina – The body of an unidentified Black man was found hanging from a tree in a back parking lot near downtown Raleigh on August 15, 2026. Death ruled suicide.

• Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina – Demetrius Eugene Fleming, a 38-year-old Black man, was found deceased and connected to a ligature in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, on August 22, 2026. Death under investigation.

• Louisville, Kentucky – Unidentified man, on the evening of August 29, 2026, Louisville law enforcement responded to E.P. Tom Sawyer State Park after receiving a report at approximately 6:59 PM of a man found hanging in a wooded area near the Goose Creek Trail. Death under investigation.

Calls for action

Shena Medley is the oldest sibling of Tory Medley,  whose body was found hanging from a tree near a golf course in the Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield, Wisconsin, November 13, 2025. (See The Final Call Vol. 45 No. 13). She told The Final Call that short of a confession or witnesses, little can be done to challenge the official narrative of suicide—although for her, many facts surrounding her brother’s death still do not add up.

“There’s evidence they could have pursued, like trying to find (his) cell phone or pinging the cell phone tower,” she said. Ms. Medley said there was a rideshare driver, “who swears she dropped him off near the hotel, and they (police) said according to the Flock camera, she was nowhere nearby.”

“His phone had to be somewhere,” she recalled, noting that to date her brother’s phone remains missing. Ms. Medley also said the ratchet strap, from which his body hanged, was never tested for forensic evidence and that his backpack was supposedly found in a mall parking lot over a mile away.

Longtime Mississippi community activist Marquell Bridges told The Final Call that too many hangings are quickly ruled suicide-related, often with little investigation or adequate forensic analysis.

“Every single family says the same thing,” Mr. Bridges said. “They definitely understand and know that suicide, depression and all of these things are real, but all of them say the same thing, that ‘Black people don’t hang themselves from trees.’ Their loved one would never have done it that way, done it period,” he argued.

National groups are also raising questions about these cases. 

“The NAACP Legal Defense Fund Inc. (‘LDF’) writes with grave concern about a series of deaths of Black individuals across the country under suspicious and questionable circumstances over the past decade or more,” LDF said in a written petition to Congress on August 24.

“Equally concerning is the apparent indifference of state and local authorities, as well as the federal government, to investigate the causes of these deaths.

LDF, therefore, urgently requests that Congress take immediate action by creating a congressional commission to conduct a thorough and unbiased investigation into these deaths,” their letter to the leadership of both the House and Senate said in part.

In a second letter, submitted to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, the LDF appealed to the UN to bring international attention to the plight of Black people in the United States through a human rights perspective.

“In a new report, the nonprofit JULIAN identifies 70 cases, between 2000 and 2025, of what is described as ‘modern-day lynchings.’  These deaths occurred in Mississippi, Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee, and Alabama—parts of the country that have a tragic legacy of racially-charged lynchings,” the LDF letter said in part.

JULIAN is a civil rights organization started by attorney Jill Collen Jefferson in 2020 that investigates suspected modern-day lynchings and suspicious deaths of Black people in the U.S.

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CommonDreams.org

Environmental groups are celebrating on Sept. 1 after a federal panel halted construction of what would be the first artificial intelligence data center to be built on U.S. public lands.

The Interior Board of Land Appeals, an appellate body within the U.S Department of the Interior, put a temporary stay on the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) approval of the proposed 80-acre Townsite Data Center near Boulder City, Nevada, which environmental groups warned would jack up electricity demand and water usage, and threaten local species.

The board sided with the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), and the local government of Boulder City, which argued that the BLM had not conducted the legally required review of the plan’s environmental impacts.

The BLM had approved the site based on a review of a proposed solar power plant, but had not reevaluated the impacts of a data center.

The board said that the environmental groups were “likely to prevail” in their case that the BLM had acted illegally “because the two projects are not ‘substantially the same.’”

It also ruled that continuing the project without a proper review was likely to cause “irreparable harm” to the landscape—including soil disruption, habitat loss for species like the Mojave desert tortoise, and construction activities that pollute the air.

The temporary stay blocks the data center project from continuing while the board considers the environmental groups’ appeal.

While it was not a final ruling on whether the project will be built at all, Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the CBD, said the group was “thrilled that this data center has been stopped dead in its tracks.”

Townsite has been described as a test case as BLM considers approving other data center proposals on federal lands, including in Nevada, where 80% of the land is federally managed.

Building data centers on federal lands is a major priority of the Trump administration’s “AI Action Plan,” which was published by the White House in 2025 and directs U.S. agencies to identify public lands “well-situated for large-scale data centers.”

Under the plan, the U.S. Department of Energy announced in July 2025 that it had identified at least four other sites around the country for potential development, including the Idaho National Laboratory, the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky, and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

Donnelly said the Sept. 1 ruling had shown BLM would not be able to approve these and other sites without conducting the appropriate environmental reviews.

“The Trump administration is pulling out all the stops to let tech companies build massive data centers on our public lands,” he said. “This tremendous victory proves communities have the power to fight back and win.”

Boulder City is one of many locales around the country where plans for large data centers have received public backlash. For months, the project faced protests at City Hall from residents who raised concerns about energy and water use, light pollution, and impacts on the local desert habitat.

Public anger ultimately led the Boulder City Planning Commission to turn against the project, voting in May against adding data centers to the city’s land management process. To bypass the city, BLM approved the same project on adjacent federal lands. Boulder City responded by joining environmental groups’ appeal against the project.

“The BLM essentially, sweepingly, approved a new land use without following processes in federal law, which include a meaningful engagement process with the city,” City Attorney Brittany Walker told the Nevada Current in July, after the City Council unanimously voted to appeal.

Olivia Tanager, director of the Sierra Club Toiyabe chapter, called the Sept. 1 ruling “a victory for democracy, public participation, and the principle that our public lands should serve the public.”

“The people of Boulder City have made clear that they do not want a data center on public lands, and this ruling gives their voices the weight they deserve,” she said. “Data centers do not belong on public lands, and we will continue to fight unfettered data center development.”

Townsite is just one of several data center proposals being considered on federal lands in Nevada. In June, BLM officials told local leaders that it had received four applications for data centers on public lands around Silver Springs, a small community east of Reno in Lyon County, which has eight facilities planned in total, according to the U.S. Data Center Map.

The sudden explosion of data center planning in the area has led many residents to push for a moratorium on new data center approvals.

Brynn deLorimier, a Boulder City resident who joined the appeal, said she hopes her city’s victory will help to protect neighboring communities from unaccountable data center growth.

“We love our community and our desert, and we’re so grateful to our friends and neighbors for working hard to protect both,” she said. “We’re also grateful to the Interior Board of Land Appeals for recognizing that this case matters far beyond Boulder City and could set an important precedent for public lands in Nevada and across the country.”

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MEMPHIS—Residents of Memphisare continuing to recover in the aftermath of power outages resulting from severe storms. “We had no idea a storm of this magnitude was coming,” said Memphis Light, Gas & Water (MLGW) CEO and President Doug McGowen, during an Aug. 23 press conference in conjunction with newly re-elected Mayor Paul Young.

What began as a severe thunderstorm in Arkansas on the evening of Aug. 22, unexpectedly intensified into a “bow echo” storm over the Mississippi River as it blew into Memphis from a westerly direction, producing hurricane-like straight line winds in excess of over 80 miles per hour and torrential rain.

A bow echo storm is so named because it resembles an archer’s bow on a radar and produces fast-moving winds that generally cause severe damage. Though only about 45 minutes in duration, the intensity of the storm caused flash flooding, uprooted trees and downed power lines, leaving over 140,000 without power amid a potent heat advisory.

In this writer’s home, the power loss resulted in an internal temperature of 90 degrees within hours of the power outage.

MLGW, the sole provider of utilities and waste removal services to the city, quickly issued a notice to prepare for a multi-day recovery period. Additional electrical crews and tree workers were brought in from surrounding areas to aid in the clean-up and restoration efforts.

The city is also working to provide relief for those who needed safe spaces to go and loss of groceries due to the ongoing outages.

Mr. McGowen encouraged residents to temporarily lower their water consumption as water treatment facilities were also affected, and while they were back in operation by Aug. 23, time was still needed for the reservoirs and wells to recover.

On Aug. 26, outgoing Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, declared a state of emergency. Memphis is located in Shelby County.  Schools were slated to re-open Aug 27.

During the press conference Mayor Young was questioned about the utilization of the National Guard, already in Memphis, as a result of the President Donald Trump appointed Safe Task Force last September, in the recovery efforts.

According to the National Guard’s official website, a description of one of their primary functions is “When disaster strikes in the homeland, the National Guard stands ready to deploy and serve at a moment’s notice to protect life and property in our communities.”

In response, Mayor Young stated that recovery was “an all-hands on deck effort” and said that assistance would be requested, however, as of Aug. 27, the Tennessee National Guard Facebook page shows no mention of the storm or relief efforts in Memphis, but highlights, instead, training efforts from the previous week to “Strengthen(ing) communication and building trust will ensure our teams are ready to respond quickly when Tennesseans need us most.”

The Memphis Safe Task Force does not have an official website page; updates are given through the City of Memphis website. National Guard involvement in recovery efforts has not been reflected there either. As of Aug. 27, MLGW said a little over 1,500 customers were still without power.

These increasing weather-related disasters are not happening in a vacuum.

Over 50 years ago, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam, warned of the danger of such times in His book, “The Fall of America.”

In Chapter 36, he wrote, “To be plagued with too much rain will destroy property and lives. It swells the rivers and creeks. Too much rain floods cities and towns. … Rain makes the atmosphere too heavy with moisture causing sickness.

Wind with rain can bring destruction to towns and cities, bringing various germs, causing sickness to the people. It produces unclean water by the swelling of streams and destroying reservoirs of pure drinking water used for the health of the people. Rain is a destructive army within itself. Hail stones are also a property and life destroyer.”

For years, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, has continued to issue the warning, “watch the weather.”

In Part 8 of “The Time and What Must Be Done” lecture series delivered by Min. Farrakhan in 2013, he explains the extreme weather in relationship to America’s historical actions.

 “Let us see how ‘The Law of Justice’ is working in America: Have not you, America, destroyed the cities and the towns, and the people, of other nations? Well, look at your own cities and towns, America: Some will be ravaged by fire; others, by water.

Towns destroyed by tornadoes, hurricanes and floods. And soon, great earthquakes will be tearing down cities. The Chastisement of God has begun. The Grace Period is over,” Minister Farrakhan said.

“Can’t you see what is happening to America,” he implored in part two of the series. “One-third of the American people say they believe that the change in the weather is fulfilling Biblical prophecy of ‘end times.’ So, America, you must—if you are to survive: You must make a serious change to give America hope for an ‘extension of time,’ and even a ‘future.’”

At Final Call press time, thousands were still without power, as temperatures continue to hover above 90 degrees with heat indices forecasted to reach up to 104, and isolated thunderstorms to come.

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Besides the money, which will be paid out over a decade, Meta has agreed to strengthen its age estimates to keep kids under 13 off its platforms and teens in age-appropriate accounts, enact a hard limit of two hours a day for users under 18, block kids from the apps from midnight to 6 a.m., and hide “like” counts, among other changes.

Meta said the new safeguards will only apply in the United States, with most in place for 10 years.

While acknowledging the changes go further than Meta has ever gone when it comes to child safety, critics and children’s advocates cautioned it will not solve its myriad problems overnight.

Arturo Béjar, a former Meta engineering director, said the settlement is a “significant milestone,” but parents should not see Instagram as suddenly safe for children.

“The agreement has a big problem in that it allows Meta to define harm,” Béjar said in an interview Aug. 26. “It’s one thing to say, ‘Yeah, you only get like two hours of alcohol or two hours of cigarettes a day,’ but it’s still as bad for you because of what’s getting delivered.”

Béjar, the first witness to testify during the federal trial cut short by the settlement, would like to see Meta address the effect of content recommendations to teens, which he says can prove addictive. While teens might put their phone down when they hit the two-hour limit, they can be distressed about it because the way the platform is designed leaves them craving more.

Meta said people over 18 also can adopt versions of the new controls individually, such as daily time-limit reminders, but there will not be an option for them to opt into the overall settings for what teens experience on the platform.

Stronger age checks

To protect kids, first Meta has to know who they are. While the company has already been using artificial intelligence to determine if kids are lying about their age—either to sign up if they are under 13, which is not allowed, or to use adult accounts when they are 13 to 17—it did not always work.

Under the proposed settlement, Meta agreed to strengthen its technology to check kids’ ages, using its own as well as third-party tools, with regular outside audits on how well it is working. The agreement also includes specific goals around false positive rates—that is, minors who are identified as over 18. And if a user is identified as under 13 and kicked off the platforms, Meta will check the ages of their friends, too.

“The age assurance section is reasonably good because it has measurement, has independent testing, has goals,” Béjar said. “Because I think Meta should be measured on effectiveness, not effort.”

Meta requires users to be at least 13 years old to create an account, in line with federal child privacy law.

In his testimony last week, Béjar said Meta took a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach on kids under 13 on its platforms.

“Meta has one of the most sophisticated infrastructures in the world to detect fake accounts,” he said. But despite that, he added, there were “no goals, no metrics” to detect and check kids’ ages who were suspected to be under 13.

Some safety features will be on by default

Critics have faulted Meta over many of its safety features that users have to manually turn on, or opt into themselves.

Of the host of safeguards listed in the settlement, many are on as a default. This includes the two-hour time limit, which can only be turned off with a parent’s permission, as well as the night mode that blocks use between midnight and 6 a.m.

Still, under the agreement other features, such as turning off video autoplay or showing posts in chronological order rather than having algorithms decide what to show kids scrolling through their feeds, will be opt-in.

Josh Golin, executive director of online safety nonprofit Fairplay, said the deal appeared to be too focused on offering tools to parents rather than restricting harmful features altogether.

“We are disappointed that the settlement does not turn off by default recommendation algorithms that connect kids to predators and send young people down dangerous rabbit holes,” Golin said.

Questions around default settings came up at the trial earlier this week when a lawyer for the states suing Meta pressed Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, on the low adoption rate among teens for the “take a break” feature, which prompts users to step away if they have been scrolling a while.

Very few teens used the feature when Instagram first introduced it, but since launching separate teen accounts in 2024, Meta has made it the default setting for teenage users. Still, if a teen didn’t want to take a break, they could simply swipe away the notification.

It may take time to see the results

Some researchers have found that many past protections Meta has rolled out are ineffective or don’t work as advertised.

“It is a little premature, unfortunately, to tell if exactly all the changes we want to see are going to happen,” said Yaël Eisenstat, director of policy and impact for the Cybersafety Research Center, which recently audited dozens of safety tools offered by both Meta and other social media companies and said most fell short.

Still, Eisenstat said, the Aug. 26 settlement is monumental in showing that alternative approaches are possible.

For years, Meta “decided to go against the advice of some of their own internal employees and continue to ignore the fact that these design features were unsafe in search of profit,” said Eisenstat, who also previously worked at Meta, then Facebook, before leaving the company in 2019.

The measures outlined August 26 at the very least show that there are technically-feasible options that can make the platform safer, she said—something whistleblowers and others have already “been saying very loudly.”

Like others, Eisenstat stressed that there was a lot of work left to be done—and that it will require a combination of technical solutions, market forces and government regulation.

“There’s no singular silver bullet for fixing all of this,” she said. “I’m just glad that at least we are catching up a little bit now.”

The settlement, which also includes the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, must still be approved by a judge. (AP)

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CommonDreams.org

Canada announced Aug. 25 that it will impose roughly $20 billion in retaliatory tariffs on American imports in response to President Donald Trump’s 50% tariff on many of its goods after bilateral negotiations collapsed amid what Ottawa said were last-minute concessions that damaged the Canadian economy and intruded on its sovereignty.

The government of center-left Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said its countermeasures will cover roughly C$27.6 billion ($20 billion) worth of American products, with tariffs ranging from 15% to 50% on hundreds of categories including steel, aluminum, appliances, clothing, seafood, electronics, furniture, and dairy.

The measures are scheduled to take effect September 8. Ottawa also unveiled billions of dollars in assistance for workers and businesses expected to be hurt by the conflict.

“Canada must respond, and today we are, in a proportionate, targeted, and strategic way,” Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said during a press conference in Ottawa. “Today I’m announcing that Canada will match the United States tariffs dollar for dollar, rate for rate.”

“Canada’s counter-tariffs are designed primarily to provide protection for Canadian industry impacted by U.S. tariffs and allow them to compete against U.S. products in the Canadian market,” he added. “It’s all about fairness, it’s all about a level playing field, it’s all about supporting Canadian workers and Canadian businesses.”

It’s also apparently about political calculation ahead of November’s midterm elections, in which the congressional balance of power—and therefore Trump’s ability to pursue his agenda—is at stake.

The administration’s trade war with Canada is hitting industries concentrated in states where Republicans are fighting to defend vulnerable U.S. Senate seats, including Maine’s lobster industry and Michigan’s auto sector, while Ohio and other Midwestern states face exposure via cross-border manufacturing and supply chains.

On Aug. 24, Trump told Canadian leaders to “fall in line” or face “far WORSE” consequences than the new tariffs. Carney retorted that Canadians are not “going to accept” an “attitude at the negotiation table that Canada is a subsidiary of the United States.”

Canadian anger toward Trump has surged as the U.S. president has repeatedly threatened Canada’s sovereignty, including his frequent talk of making Canada the “51st state.” Canadian political leaders and labor organizations have largely rallied behind a tougher response, while a growing grassroots boycott of U.S. products has become a symbol of national resistance.

“Canadians understand that maintaining our sovereignty and independence will entail consequences and sacrifices,” Calgary-based commentator Jen Gerson wrote Aug. 25 in The Guardian.

“We did not bring this trade war on ourselves; we have merely refused to comply in advance to the unreasonable demands of a bad-faith actor. We will be punished for it. We have accepted this.”

“If nothing else, let the [United States’] retaliation be a warning to the rest of the Western alliance,” Gerson added. “Run, run. Protect yourselves. Move faster.”

Trump—the self-proclaimed “peace president” who has attacked more countries than any other U.S. leader in modern history—has menaced a string of allies. He’s threatened to retake the Panama Canal, launch armed attacks on Colombia and Mexico, “bomb the sh**” out of Oman, and take over Greenland.

Longtime U.S. allies have taken notice—and action. Just as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spooked Sweden and Finland into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Trump’s erratic aggression has pushed other countries in directions once thought highly unlikely. 

European Union membership for Iceland, long a politically moribund proposition, is now politically plausible amid developments including Trump’s Arctic saber-rattling. U.S. tariff pressure on India is even incentivizing India to seek closer economic ties with China, a traditional adversary.

Trump’s increasingly aggressive and condescending rhetoric has left many Canadians feeling like their relationship with their southern neighbor has irreparably changed.

“America has changed, and … we will not return to our old relationship,” Carney said after Trump announced the 50% tariffs over the weekend.

“You’re at war when you get attacked,” the prime minister also said. “We got attacked.”

Such rhetoric was once the realm of comedy, like the 1995 satirical film Canadian Bacon, directed by Michael Moore and starring John Candy and Dan Aykroyd, about a struggling U.S. president who manufactures a shooting war with Canada, invasion and all, in hopes of rallying Americans around a foreign enemy.

The premise was absurd because the notion of Washington deliberately provoking its peaceful northern neighbor into war seemed preposterous. Many critics have noted that under Trump, absurdity has become the new normal.

On Aug. 25, Trump said he’s considering changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” because, as one Bluesky account noted, “Trump likes to slap the name of America on everything.”

“Gulf of Mexico? Gulf of America. Strait of Hormuz? Strait of America. Lake Ontario? Lake America,” the account quipped, adding one more suggestion: “Epstein Island? America Island.”

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Rev. Ch. 12 (Bible) prophesies of America under the worst names that could be given to a human being: serpent, snake, Satan, devil, and the deceiver of the people of the earth. Therefore, the Black man is warned in Rev. 18:4, “… Come out of her, my people…” This scripture warns the Black man to give up Babylon, which is a symbolic name, meaning America. America has tormented the Black Man. Now a tormentor is after her. The Divine Tormentor says that we should not be partakers of the divine torment coming against America from Allah (God) Who came in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad, to Whom praises are due forever. This means, “separation.” We must separate ourselves from America so that we will be saved from the stroke of the Master Who Is God Himself. Allah (God) is whipping America with all kinds of calamities.

I have been writing for many years that America must be punished for her evil done to her Black once- slaves, who are so-called free-slaves now, and who continue to suffer the same, or worse, punishment under the children of the White slave master, than their White fathers imposed upon our Black fathers under servitude-slavery.

America has not only lost and is still losing friendship all over Asia and Africa, … but she is now losing friendship right here with her next-door neighbors, Central and South America.

The manner–the ill-treatment and dislike with which they received the President’s Fact-Finding Committee–made it seem as though they should have been on the other side of the earth. Steps had to be taken to protect their physical self in a country which is right next-door to America.

However, the scripture must be fulfilled; they shall eat America’s bread and burn her body with fire.

I quote from Rev. 17:16, “And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore … and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire!” The ‘horns’ here are a symbolic reference to Central and South America (America’s satellites).

This means that America’s gifts and what-not will be accepted, but this does not mean that America has bought their sincere friendship. They will take all the gifts which America offers, but still this does not mean that America has their heart.

America is careful not to give any help to her Black once-slave for four hundred years to do something for themselves. America wants to keep her Black slave tied while she watches their movements.

If we go to her asking America for a territory so that we can live to ourselves, she turns a deaf ear to us. We helped America for four hundred years, in every respect as though we were one -half owners of the country. We have gotten nothing in return but beatings, cheatings and shootings down on the highway.

If we think that there is a God of Mercy (and there is One)…should we not think that He will sympathize with the poor Black slave to receive justice from his master?

The Black slave helped to make America rich. Would Allah, (God) be silent forever? Being the God of Righteousness and Justice, would He not take to Himself the work of aiding the poor Black people against their evil oppressors?

America wants everyone to help her bemoan all of her set-backs; but when she causes others to fall…breaks up the countries of other peoples and destroys their independence and freedom, she laughs and prides herself as doing a great thing. She puts her feet upon their economic neck and destroys their independence as a nation.

All this now returns to America. The little nations are now awake. They had looked for true friendship from America but instead America deceived them.

Again, I repeat, the Bible prophecy…”As thou has done, it shall be done unto thee.” There is no friend for America. Also it is written in the Bible, “In the day of thy fall, none shall help thee …”

Why? Because you, America, have been and are an aide of the destruction and fall of other peoples. So who should help you in the day of your fall? This is what Allah (God) wants to bring home to America through His prophets.

The Holy Qur’an refers to America in this kind of prophecy: “When her doom comes there will come one calamity after another.” As soon as she thinks she is getting over the sore made by a previous calamity, another will attack her.

America is undergoing all that is prophesied against her. It is nothing new. It is well -known.

We have been eating the bread of affliction and suffering the poisonous bites of our White slave master. It has caused actual death of our proper mental way of thinking. The natural brain of the Black slave is poisoned and cannot think for itself.

So Allah (God) is asking us to separate from White America. But the mentally dead do not want to go from her for they have not yet gotten the knowledge of truth of our God, Allah and His Mercy for them.

The Black slave children are victimized by the White slavemaster, because of the condition the White slave-master brought our Black slave-fathers up in. They do not readily hear the right answer to the problem. Regardless, to how I cry in their midst, they are poisoned and mentally dead.

(Reprinted from “The Fall Of America,” 1973.)

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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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