04/13/1986
IWDM Study Library
Jacob Javits Center
Pt.3
By Imam W. Deen Mohammed

0:00:00 Imam W. Deen Mohammed: That while doing this, it is important for us to look at something else. And in this book, it is brought out that the deteriorated condition of the African-American social life, his family, should not be taken as an indication that all of us are given to such situations. That there has been, and there's still, there still is, still is African-American Christians who hold to the Protestant work ethics; they're not lost. Their families are not lost. They still have disciplined children, healthy children, solid-looking children, children that are not filling up the jail cells; they're successful. And they represent the strength, and maybe even the future, of the many, many others that have left the better foundation of life. He goes on to say, and this was at a time, before my time, before I came into the leadership, he goes onto say, that also having similar credits, are black Muslims who could not find that in the churches, who could not find that in Christianity.

0:01:43 IWDM: They were unfortunate, they were the unfortunate ones. They were not blessed to have that Christian work ethic, and that Christian principle of fine performance in life imparted to them. So they left disappointed, turned their backs from Christianity in disappointment and followed the loud call of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad to a new way of life, to a new concept, to a new future, to a new self image. And he says that they latched onto that, and now after research, this man did research on the followers of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He says, "Now after research, we find that the black Muslim from the low poverty strata were able to achieve that same work ethic, were able to perform... "


0:02:45 IWDM: That's what this man said, even before me, before I came along. So what does that tell us? That if we don't have it from Christianity, and most of us don't, I'm talking about like, 97 and eight-tenths percent don't. Okay? We need something different. It's the same old thing, and you'll get it. "And what is Wallace talking about? So what is that man named? What does he call himself now? Warith Deen? So what is the Imam talking about?" I ain't no Imam. I'm Imam. But that's okay, they don't know. What is Imam talking about? 


0:03:37 IWDM: "That's that old A-rab stuff, A-rab. I liked his father, then I like him. See, he's talking that A-rab religion and stuff". When you can't pronounce the name, that should tell you something, too. Maybe you shouldn't talk so much against something that you don't even know. Investigate. I believe with all of my heart, with every fiber of my being, that G'd has blessed us as a people, by putting us into this situation. Encyclopedia Britannica, just to... Go back and tighten the thread a little bit.

0:04:30 IWDM: In the Encyclopedia Britannica, I studied the history of slavery in the Encyclopedia Britannica. That's no ordinary Britannica, that's no ordinary encyclopedia. And one chapter of that book, dealing with what is called the peculiar slave system, America's slave system, that it had, in those days, in the South. It tells us that it was unlike any other condition of slavery that existed for man in history. In its nature, in its attitude toward the enslaved, it was more different, drastically different, from any other slave system in the history of man. Who experienced that? The genes that are in me right now, the genes that are in me right now, the genes that represent the core of my genetic life right now. Don't think of your ancestors always, as back in 1800's, back then in the 1700s.

0:06:02 IWDM: Understand that man has upgraded his understanding of human genetic life. And those people are buried and gone, but the genes of those people are in us right now. That's why, long time after the man is gone, the man is gone, some people read about that man will say to another man, say, "Hey, he got traits just like that man. He got traits just like that man." A man dead and gone over 50 years ago. But they knew him. They read about him or something. "Hey, he just got traits just like that man." That's why many people believe in reincarnation. It ain't no reincarnation. The sperm puts it there. They don't have to come back.

0:06:52 IWDM: Does that make sense? It's as clear as crystal.

[chuckle]

0:06:58 IWDM: Yes. I've got the genes of Clara Muhammad in me right now; my mother. I got the genes of Elijah Muhammad in me right now; my father. I got the genes of Willie Poole, called Willie Muhammad later; my grandfather, in me right now. Quartus Evans, my grandfather on my mother's side, I got his genes in me right now. [chuckle] I got all the people's genes in me right now. The same for you. I've got Adam in me right now. I've got the genes of Adam in me right now. It didn't go nowhere. It's just been passed on. His genes, just as his genes were made by G'd, just exactly as his genes were made by G'd, in me right now, in you right now. That's how come you can put a man in the dark, but you can't keep him there if he got the spirit from his better ancestors. If he responds to the genes in the better spirit of his ancestors, you can't keep him in the dark. You come in there and find him with a light. You say, "hell, how did you get a light? There's no way out in this place. How in the hell did you get a light?" G'd is the one who lights from within.


0:08:17 IWDM: My critics, and those who are too weak to follow me, through rough ground, after I talk, they go behind my back, and they try to laugh down the importance of what I'm saying to you. They say, "Did you hear what he said? Man, I got a headache. They gave me a headache. Saying, "He's really spaced out you see. He was way out today." Now, somebody that small should be discounted. Alright. Now, let me continue. Because I've already spent a lot of time here.


0:09:20 IWDM: There are many things peculiar in our situation as a people. The situation of our enslavement, the nature and degree of cruelty we experienced while we were enslaved, is peculiar in the experience of human beings on this Earth. But that's not all. We have to look at. When we're looking at peculiarities, we have to also look at our own behavior. We are a people who have a peculiar behavior. And our peculiar behavior is in the main, I believe, the results of or the effects of, I should say, the effects of the peculiar experience behind us. More so than it is owing to any other things. Though, the present... as I said, the present environment, cultural environment that works against the natural functions of human life contribute much to our peculiar behavior as a people and as individuals. But I believe it's owing even more so to that peculiar past experience behind us. The ugly pages of history. The enslavement of the Black man, of the African-American man.

0:11:03 IWDM: This odd way of behaving is seen also in our choices, our choices as a people. Where in the history of a people have you read of treatment like we received, coming to a people by their superiors and when they get free, they walk arm and arm with the people that did that to them; join their religion, accept their concept of G'd, even though their concept of G'd does not admit their race.

0:11:50 IWDM: But they accept their concept of G'd, walk in to their religious houses, accept their concept of G'd. Bow and pray and kneel before the images that they have in their religion, that the master's religion has, that doesn't admit my image, that doesn't admit my ethnicity. It doesn't admit my race. I see no African-Americans in their image. I see no African-American in their heaven. The heaven is filled with Caucasian angels, European-American or European angels. The image is in their own image.

0:12:32 IWDM: But they invited me to it. I went right into it. I joined their religion. I raised up their image over my black lot, my black suffering lot. I lift up their image. I said, "This is Savior. This is the Lord. This is Jesus. This is the Lord." I'm not mocking Jesus. Jesus never saw the damn pictures they paint.

0:13:01 IWDM: So forgive me, forgive me if I seem harsh.


0:13:18 IWDM: You know, I was reading a book on English once, English composition; and the author of the book, he was trying to help the new writer, the would-be new writers, learn how to write. And he said something there that caught my attention he said, "Quality means a lot." He said, "But the best writers who really are true writers, they will tell you that if you're faced with a dilemma, and you have to choose between quality and substance, choose substance and forget about quality."

0:13:54 IWDM: I'd much rather have somebody talk to me about substance than to talk to me in a lot of flowery language, academic language, overly exaggerated language, eloquence about BS. Can I get away with this today? I hope so. Yes, he talked to me about for hours and a half and saying nothing, but just left me with a whole encyclopedia of words, nothing but master rhetoric...not knocking education. I study the dictionary all the time, and always try to improve my vocabulary at least by one word a week.

0:14:50 IWDM: So I think it's very peculiar in the behavior of the African-American, that he has gone all the way for everything that his oppressor has established for him. Now, you may say, "Well, they're not oppressing us now." That's right. But they will respect us more now if we establish more independence in terms of making choices for ourselves, by ourselves. They will respect us more now if we have the courage to follow our ancestral spirit, the best of our past and grow into something more uniquely ourselves. They will have more respect for us now if we were more a legitimate ethnic pattern. Are you following me? Do I make sense? Am I a clear voice? If I'm not let me know, I'll be working at it some more. I am not going to give up.

0:16:20 IWDM: I think it's very strange, especially for those generations who'll read our history 50 years, 100 years from today. It's very strange that we came from Africa. Before it was named Africa, we were there. Scipio Africanus, Julius Africanus, it was named, that whole continent was named from white explorers, it was named for white explorers and white conquerors, Africa. And perhaps, every state over there, there's a foreigner's name. These are the facts.

0:17:04 IWDM: So what I'm talking about is not only a situation that we have to address, even our motherland has to address it one day or another. And there are some people who go around explaining the low-spirit and low state of the African-American man and his descendants, and they charged that the condition of us is because of the White Man's dominance. No, no, no, that's only a part of it. The condition in us is because of our confused sensitivities, confused sensitivities.

0:17:47 IWDM: We need to work for home life, home life for the race, home life for the families, home life for the individual, where there's a context, a spiritual context, a spiritual context, a set of principles, a set of sensitivity, a network of sensitivity, shared by all of us to make us a people, to give wholeness to our life. We need to do some philosophical thinking. We need to go back to what DuBois said, "The extent to which we will progress in the future, depends on the extent that we will go in teaching our children to think, think for themselves."


0:18:30 IWDM: Now I think it's very strange, it's peculiar that coming from Africa, coming from an Islamic past, say, "Oh, yeah, but the Muslims sold us into slavery." If that's true, which it is not. Muslims didn't sell us into slavery. Many of us were captured by marauders who raided the coastlines and the small villages, and took us from our land by force. And they were not natives of Africa, they were marauders from Europe. This is a fact. Alright. Now, not only that, many of us were sold into slavery by non-Muslims who wanted to get rid of their unruly population. So they sold their unruly population to slave traders. Not only that, I could go on naming the incidents, the conditions and incidents that contributed to so many numbers, millions of us being brought to this land and put into slavery. No matter what happened on that side, look at our judgment. If I don't want to be an Arab, a Muslim, I don't want to associate with Arab, I don't want to be close to Arabs because they had a hand or they sold me into slavery, then let's use the same rule, let's use the same measuring stick.

0:20:11 IWDM: How can you tolerate integration and love and intermarriage with a people that after getting you into their hands, did a much worse job on you than they did on you sending you over here? That's a fact. So, hey, be level-handed. If you don't want to associate with our religion because Arabs are in it, then you shouldn't want to associate with Christianity because white people are in it.

0:20:55 IWDM: Does that make sense? Perfect sense. Would that heal the mind of the African-American as a race? Oh, yes, buddy. That's healing salve. That's healing salve. That's what we need. And those who fear to say these things, they don't have G'd's backing. Those who fear to say these things, those who fear to address the whole life of the African-American person and deal with his problems, his deficiencies, his weaknesses in every aspect of his life, even his spirit, even his sense of worth, if they're not willing to go into the deepest quarters and recesses of the black man's life and experience to prepare him for core success and progress in this world, they're not ready, they're not qualified, they ought to just sit back and wait until we do the job. They're cowards. They're still foster home children. And they talk tough talk and call me passive and sheepish. But my moral courage makes them look like cowards.

0:22:15 IWDM: Now, what am I leading up to, my dear beloved people? And I don't say that to woo you, I say that because it's in my spirit, in my soul to say it. I love my people. Now, it says to us that this peculiar experience behind us we call the plantation life, or slavery in the West or the New World, slavery in the new world, they call it, that peculiar experience set us back, so far back that none of the ordinary remedies will work for us. It set us so far back I repeat, that none of the ordinary remedies will work for us. The socialist theories of Marx won't work for us. The capitalist theories of the west or the democratic theories of the west, won't work for us. We look at it and we can't get the benefit from it. The man looked at it and it sent him jutting into, forward into the future, made him a great industrial nation, a powerful leader among the nations of the world. His fathers wrote that for him. It's beautiful. It's profound. It can help us a lot.

0:24:01 IWDM: But it falls short of getting us home. I repeat, the circumstances behind us that are peculiar in the history of man; they set us so far back that we need something more than the ordinary remedies. So what is that? Or if you will believe the Qur'an is enough. We can just take the Qur'an and do the job, if you will believe. But you can never get the general community to believe in a holy book. Do you think it ever happened? It never happened. In the days of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, he had a core of excellent believers, and they were the ones that established the life, brought in the system, brought in the environment, and imposed that environment on the dumb ones who couldn't see beyond the tip of their nose. That's a fact; and not only a fact for Muhammad, the prophet, the peace and the blessings be upon the prophets, not only a fact for him, but the fact for every liberator. He had to have a core of people who had the sensitivities, sensitivities first, you could be also smart, but if you are sensitized in a way to be adversed, you're going to be adversed.

0:25:21 IWDM: He has to have a core of people with the sensitivity to respond first to the importance of the issues, and have the courage to join him and be his staunch supporter. Then he can make progress, then in time the strength of the people, because people with that sensitivity, they represent the strength of their people. They will be able to foster in, to forge forward that concept, that life, that theory and ideology, and those structures that will house the life of the people, they will be able to accomplish that, and in time change the whole life of the whole mass. But it takes time. It takes courage. It takes love, love for what's right.

0:26:15 IWDM: So I say again, it's peculiar that coming from Islamic experience. Then they want to play up primitive experience in our African past. I'm talking about the so-called educators. They've make a point of trying to clear the primitive experience in the African man's past. What would the Germans do if we or anybody would search their past? They were some of the most superstitious and savage people the earth have ever birthed, the Germans. But they met the torch of enlightenment; they found the torch of enlightenment. And they grew out of their superstitions. And they began the history of civilization for the German man. Now, suppose somebody had the power, now suppose that Russia and America that now rule in Germany. Suppose they would impose an idea on the Germans and make them think that their past, the best that they've done in the past, was done during their time of wild man's backwoods dark region superstitions. Eh? 

0:27:30 IWDM: That would be awfully cruel, wouldn't it? Where you all on the college campuses, you students on the college campuses, African-American students on the college campuses, on the university campuses, on these high school campuses, the playground, etcetera, etcetera, you have been duped, you are being fooled, you are being told that your past in Africa is primitive religion, ancestral spirit worship, animal-ism or animism, animism, etcetera, etcetera, and they don't want to tell you that you had centuries of a history as scientists even before Prophet Muhammad.

0:28:11 IWDM: But it didn't last too long, it was only a small quarter of the African continent, and then Prophet Muhammad came, and with the religion that brought about a renaissance, a revival, a renewal of the interest in science. He didn't only awaken and quicken the intellect of the West or Europe, but he also touched the black man's mind in Africa, and brought him back to his scientific pursuits. And the result was Mali, Mali, Timbuktu, Ghana, etcetera, etcetera. That's the glorious past of us here, Islam! Africa-Islam! 

0:28:56 IWDM: Who can challenge that? Ain't nobody on earth that can challenge that. And you know it. I'm talking to the learned ones here today, and you know it. So, join me and stop fooling our people. Join me in correcting this mis-education that's designed to just send our people away from the thing that will best help them. And because it's Islam, something that will make them different in America, something that will give them a different distinction in America. There are people, bad elements in the American society, bad elements in the American government, bad elements in the halls of academia that don't want to see us come into that because they take pride in us being their children. They take pride in us being their adopted daughters and sons. They take pride in having us in their foster homes and looking at us as a foster home generation. They take pride in that and they know if we become Muslim, we'll break out of their damn foster homes. We'll be our own man. They don't want us to be our own man.


0:30:07 IWDM: That's all it is, sick love, sick jealousy, on the part of arrogant white man. Don't love us too much, white man, your love is cruel. When you love us so much you don't want us to come into our own, that love is cruel. That's jealousy. He's the great savior. He's the great redeemer of fallen civilizations. He's the civilized of backward nations. He is the civilizer. So, his subjects here must follow him. They must not take the dress of a different culture. They must not take the dress of a different religion, because these are my boys, I'm their daddy. Me and my fathers raised them, and they better stick to the life that we choose for them. They better imitate daddy, or they'll have no life at all. "Give me liberty or give me death." And that came from your fathers. And I mean it. You think I'm joking? I'm more serious than AIDS.


0:31:43 IWDM: And as much as I like to be in the gathering with you like that, if somebody were to come up to me and tell me that, "The test came back with it, man, you got AIDS." I would say, "As Salaam Alaikum"


0:31:54 IWDM: I'd be going to a doctor right away, although they say there's not much hope.

0:32:12 IWDM: Praise be to Allah. Now, if we want to normalize the spirit and behavior of the African-American as a people, we're going to have to have the courage to follow the call of those leaders that address the whole need, the traditional need, in the life of our people. And it ain't many of them around anymore, we had quite few of them, but most of them are gone. Now, dear beloved people, it's strange that the European comes over here to America, and he becomes an American, his generations Americans, but he has the religion of his homeland. The Asians come over here, he becomes an American, but he has the religion of his homeland. The new immigrants from Africa come over here, they're black, they're brown, a few Africans are even white, like the Libyans or like the Algerians; they come over here, the Syrians, they're white, but they're African. They come over here whether they're white or black or brown or red, they come over here and they build their home, and in it they have a sanctuary for their traditional religion.

0:34:08 IWDM: We were cut off too abruptly and cut off too thoroughly to have that kind of sensitivity. We were just setting in the cast upon a new planet in the galaxy with no recollection of how we got there and how we should get out, or whether we should stay or not. So, we had to take all of our signals from the new environment, from the new situation that offered us little or nothing from the past. Ah! Except negative things, except negative things. Tarzan, a savage white man, not even a civilized white man, Tarzan, half-naked savage white man, can't even talk, he has to holler. "Jane, move quick!" He can't even talk! "Jane, move quick! Tarzan, cheetah, go, go, let's go!" But he is the lord over the black people of Africa. That's the kind of pictures, that's the kind of cartoon, that's the kind of movie they showed to your young children two and three and four generations back. I saw it. To condition our minds to believe that my cheapest white man is lord among your ancestors.

0:35:55 IWDM: So when there came an opportunity for Muhammad Ali to be made a mythological hero for us, and there was interest in him being that mythological hero, in fiction, they fought it, and given a little break, played a little bit of it and took it out. Huh? 


0:36:15 IWDM: Because those who love us as their field animals, their domestic pets, and their foster home children, they cannot separate from us, and if they see a trend that's going to take us out on our own and establish us in our own manhood, in our own dignity as a people, they fight it, though they know it's against their better principles of civilization. They fight it because they're too weak in their sentiments, they're too much attached to their old property called "Uncle Tom", "Black Boy", et cetera, et cetera. Too attached to their property.

0:36:53 IWDM: We know this in psychology, we know this in sociology, that a person can become too attached to their own children, so attached that they become a cruel task master, a cruel task master, a domineering restraint on the potential of their own children, holding their children back from dignity and progress because they love them too much. Their love is coming from a dependency in them. It's coming from a weakness in them. It's coming from an insecurity in them, and they're coming from that weak situation, loving their children, and sending their children right to inferiority, behind inferiority. And that's the same thing the white man's supervision of us does for us, same thing. I don't want his supervision anymore. Let us walk together as men. Let me carry the light of education and enlightenment and destiny and future and philosophy. Let me carry it for myself. I don't want you carrying it for me anymore.


0:38:06 IWDM: Now if I may, I would like to go on and on and on, but I know we have to cut short. But if I may go a little bit further, and cover one more section of this material that I wanted to bring to you today. Whether we have lived in the old world or a new world, the third world or the world of the superpowers, we're going to find ourselves in environmental situations where the very nature of man challenges man. The dynamism of man himself challenges him. And you are going to find bright children and slow children. You're going to find those that will become unruly, and you will judge their unruliness wrongly because of your short-sightedness. You will think that your own children are your own subjects in that environment, wherever it is, are really against you, resent you, don't appreciate you, and they try to overthrow you.

0:39:18 IWDM: But it might be because they are so out of touch with what you really represent. For some reason, they have been separated from what you really represent, from your traditional strand, your traditional life, your traditional progress; they have been separated from you, from it. You've let them be left by the wayside and you didn't bring them along with you, so now they have become a factor for undermining you. Also, it can happen if you neglect to see that there's some bright ones among you who have insights and vision that will take your society much further than you can take it yourself because you don't have that. You'll be in the ruling position, but you won't have the insight, you don't have the genius that has emerged in your subjects.

0:40:01 IWDM: So because you see an unruliness in them and a tendency in them to undermine, you will then go against them and many times destroy your best people; you destroy your best people; you destroy your best future in ignorance. We look at our American society now, the African-Americans. We look at these big cities and we see our teenagers, we see our youth in these youth gangs, and they have a code; they have a code of ethics, they have laws. They have a code that they live by. And they really exercise more respect for each other, and more loyalty to each other than we exercise in our so-called legitimate societies.

0:40:46 IWDM: I'm talking about these gangs. They are more committed to each other. They care more about each other. They have loyalties. They have bands of unity. They have much more in terms of social evolution or social growth and development, and that sense of society than we have in the so-called legitimate public, in the so-called legitimate public. Our homes, we don't have that kind of bond. We don't have that kind of commitment to principles. We don't have those loyalties. We are just turned against each other, ignoring each other, walking away from each other, dying and going into dope and wine and prostitution and everything, going into death. Being recruited by gang leaders, and we're just letting it happen. We're looking at all that happening. And some time the terrible destiny that G'd allows to happen is better than the situation that we have for our children at home. That's pitiful. But we're going to do something about it.


0:41:46 IWDM: Oh yes, we're going to do something about it. So we can become ignorant and become the oppressors in our home. We can become the very forces that suppress, besiege our potential, and suppress the spirit in that potential. Now, we have to understand the complexity of life. The complexity of society whether it's in 1986 or in 1786, or earlier. We must understand that there are competing forces and competing systems. And there are always personal needs. And many times, these competing forces and competing systems can become misguided and wrong. And an environment will be created that is insane. Then the urge in human potential will begin to emerge, and with that spirit, that energy from that human potential will come personalities, who as individuals will address the wrongs of the environment. And begin to recommend remedy, then set remedies for correcting the problems of the environment.

0:43:00 IWDM: If we are too caught up in our own traditional ways, if we are too fascinated, too charmed, too excited over our own achievements, we wont be prepared for the factor of liberation that is emerging in the new individual. We won't be prepared for it. Now, dear beloved people, let me tell or relate to you a little something to you that happened to me about five days ago. I was shopping near one of the better high schools in Chicago, south side. Also, in that vicinity is a very nice candy store. The name of that school is, I think it's Kenwood High School. It's known to be one of the better schools there. I thought of going into the candy store for a rainbow sherbet cone. Now, some of you all, maybe you don't do those things no more. But I like to get a little piece of penny candy every now and then; ice cream cone, a rainbow sherbet cone. I like that.


0:45:04 IWDM: Okay. Now, so I thought to go into that little store for a rainbow sherbet cone. Students were leaving, students of Kenwood, I believe, because that is the high school right near there, within one block almost of that store. And I'm sure that they were students of Kenwood. They were very bright youngsters. They were leaving as I was leaving. I overheard one bright girl say, "In the USSR, basic necessities are free. Russians don't have to pay for education, for housing." And I was listening. I was walking right along with them. So, moving along slowly with them, stepping in front of them I turned my head to them and I said, "the Libyans, they don't have to pay for basic necessities either."


0:46:30 IWDM: Now, it's not a general freedom. It's not a general freedom that Muslims and American citizens share in common. It's not a general freedom. It is a special freedom; a freedom that emerges, born in the very deepest recesses of the soul of man. In the phenomenal spirit of man that ties us to one and the same personal and environmental human concern, that's special freedom. So being myself there by that special freedom, I understood something; and understanding it, I said to the young student that were there passing, walking along, returning to their classes, I said, " You know, there's something and some things that I like to pay for myself." And a young male this time, he turned, he looked at me, he said, "What kind of things you like to pay for yourself?" And I was praying for that kind of response.

0:48:34 IWDM: And it came just like that. I said, "I, my own self, like to pay for my freedom." I told him, "I, my own self, like to pay for my own freedom." When we start to respond more to the urgency within, deep within, instead of acting to the rhetoric, statistics, research data, etcetera, of our preacher politicians and demagogue leaders, we will have that same sense and same influence driving us to move our excessive dependency on others, and other circumstances controlled, under the controls of others, into more personal responsibility and community responsibility, or racial responsibility for our own circumstances, for our own vision.

0:50:40 IWDM: Setbacks occurring in the cultural process, processes of life are sometimes so devastating that nothing short of a genesis by which man, by which man, nature and social purpose unite, or can be united, can move the people out of that devastating situation into a better life and a better future. For the path of successful living, the African-American people must have this kind of genesis. It was attempted by many before us as I've said it earlier. It is seen in the social reform work of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, not in his racist talk. His racist talk was only a reaction to White man's racism and White man's traditional religious-based racist ideas. See many of us will forget that the belief that Blacks were created inferior, inherently inferiors, receive support also from the ignorant church people and church leaders who said that we were Ham's children. And Ham was cursed for laughing at his father's nakedness, and the curse fell on his children.

0:52:25 IWDM: And they were cursed Black. Having experienced cultural setback to the extent of social devastation in the life of African-American, we must dwell here, on this particular concern, on the concerns that I have expressed here today that point to the establishment of a philosophy, a philosophy for the African-American people; a philosophy of life. A philosophy of group behavior for the African-American people. We must dwell here in this sacred unity until the hope is had by us, as it has been had by other liberated people or by people who are now liberated. And we are still writhing and struggling in the spirit for that time of liberation in the African-American life. Ironic it may seem, that coming so far from slave and prison camp condition, with more rights put on the books, the law books, than ever in the history of people struggling for rights. And in a land that still attracts the desperate to its offers of free spirit, free market, free competition, our group spirit is detained outside, not yet liberated.

0:54:09 IWDM: Screaming Cubans have stopped yelling, they seem to be doing alright in Florida. Crying Haitians are going into the sunshine and drying their tears. The new arrivals, also new citizens from the Far East, are putting new blood into the business life of America; by answering a need in their own lives, they are strengthening this nation. Let us have again a movement out of excessive dependency. The reconstruction theory that put us in a situation to be rubbed into the wounds of the white settler as salt. We were put in a situation to be used by the northerners, to attract southern rage away from their northern white brothers who had defeated them to attract that rage and direct it on the Black man, the African-American man, that southern White man had enslaved. So behind that came a wave of cruelty unmatched even by the plantation cruelty.

0:55:54 IWDM: A hundred years of nature, lynching, KKK terror, etcetera, etcetera, that lasted even up to the time I was a young man in Chicago, there was a lynching in Cicero, a community not so far from us when we were living on the south side. Where they brutalized a black young male because he was walking alone in their streets during the quiet hours of the day. He was over there doing work, doing work for white people. But they didn't believe him. They thought he was just an intruder, a bold nigger that was over there walking in their neighborhood. So they brutalized him and lynched him something terrible. That happened when I was a young man in Chicago. Emmet Till, perhaps, you remember that, how they brutalized him, a handsome young boy from Chicago. He went to Mississippi, and he wasn't prepared for racial shock. And there, he displayed mannerisms that the white man of Mississippi of that day could not tolerate. So they cruelly lynched that boy and threw weight on his body and dropped him into the river.

0:57:08 IWDM: So we find that behind slavery came even the manifestation of greater cruelties against us. That's not to be charged to the southerners. That's not to be charged to the KKK. That's to be charged to the scheme, the scheme of the northern establishment that had to protect itself from the rage, and bitterness, and vengeance, bitterness, and vengeance of the conquered South; they had to find something to put as a buffer between the north and the south. So they put the African-American man down there, they gave him authority, they gave him power right after the southerners' defeat. They imposed martial law and put Blacks over those conquered Whites, and made them have to take orders from Blacks that had just recently been freed.
0:58:11 IWDM: That's humiliating, especially when the Black that's put in that position, he had not even been educated himself to the psychological fact, in that cruelty, and in that situation. So he's not prepared to deal with the psychological factors, then he goes ignorantly trying to do the best he can, and he create, he allows himself to be used in a situation that creates for him more resentment, more bitterness, more resentment for his race and for his people, and the result was a hundred years of lynching, a hundred years of terrible cruelty, insane cruelty against my people, your people, our ancestors.

0:58:52 IWDM: So we have to lead ourselves. Who will tell us that? Who would have the courage to tell us that? What social scientist is telling us that? What theorist? What analyst is telling us that? You should understand that this man here is the son of Elijah Muhammad, he is dead and gone, but he was a tremendous man; he was a powerful man, he did a lot of wrong in ignorance, but he had a great spirit for liberating his people, for socializing his people, for reforming his people socially, for giving them dignity and equality, and he didn't want to do it walking hand in hand with white people. He wanted to do it walking hand in hand with brave men and women, courageous men, brave women, courageous women of his own people. And now out of his loins comes a son, a son of his that actually have no credit from formal school, except a high school diploma; in fact, a GED, I got a diploma from the state, and three hours in English. But it is out of a person like me that comes the vision, the insight, the direction for the people that can't find it otherwise. And I challenge you, the PhD degree will not give you the answers you have gotten today.
1:00:22 IWDM: I challenge all of you. I challenge all of you. Your PhD will not give you what I have presented today. Why? Because your PhD have no provision from the peculiar situation in the African-Americans' intellect.
1:00:46 IWDM: But G'd provides for all.
