Modern Slavery - America's Prison Industrial Complex

By The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan | Last updated: Aug 28, 2018 - 11:42:44 AM

[Editor’s note: The following article an excerpt from an hour-long message delivered by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan as Part 21 of his 52-week Lecture Series “The Time and What Must Be Done.” This message originally aired on Saturday, June 1, 2013. To order this message in its entirety on MP3, DVD and CD call 1.866.602.1230, ext. 200 or visit store.finalcall.com.]

How White Folks Got So Rich written by The Historical Research Department of The Nation of Islam discusses the Prison Industrial complex. On pages 63-67, study the sections titled “Prison Industry” and “War on Black Drug Users” as we examine the Prison Industrial Complex to see the wicked Plan of Satan to reinstitute “slavery” and involuntary servitude, especially among Blacks, Hispanics and poor Whites.

Under “Prison Industry,” they write: “Most indigenous Black and Indian cultures had no terms or words such as ‘jail’ or ‘prison,’ and crime was virtually unknown. European colonization is notable for both its introduction of new diseases and its imposition of alien systems of government, crime, and punishment.” Well, let’s come all the way forward to “2013” in “The Land of The Free”: This land now boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world; it’s right here in the United States of America. … Did you know that inmates are contracted out to private industries to do telemarketing, manufacturing, agriculture and bill collection?

“… The privatization of prisons has generated immense profits for White people and has coincided with Black-imprisonment campaigns with names like ‘Three Strikes,’ ‘Tough on Crime,’ and ‘Truth in Sentencing...”

In the section “War on Black Drug Users,” we learn that with this “War on Drugs,” some scholars, White and Black, are saying it is “a war on the Black man and woman of America to feed the lucrative prison industry.” We can look at our prisons today, and see that prisons are on the “Stock Exchange.” The corporate owners of a private prison management company proposed to prison officials in 48 states that they take over the prisons—the one thing that they insisted was that the prisons be “90 percent filled” (occupancy rate) for at least 20 years. This is leading us to the question, if a prison has to be “90 percent filled”: Who is going to fill it?

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Let’s look at “The Emancipation Proclamation,” because I ask you: Do you really think that Abraham Lincoln “loved you so much” that he wanted to set you free?

Consider the following: On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued “The Emancipation Proclamation,” which would take effect on January 1, 1863. At the same time The Proclamation was made, but not yet taking effect, the president offered money to the so-called slave states if they would not be in rebellion against the United States. President Lincoln also offered the slave states the right to continue to colonize persons of African descent; and finally, The Proclamation offered to the citizens who remained loyal to the United States, within those states who may have succeeded, to be compensated for the loss of their slaves. It was only after the slave states in the South remained in rebellion, and rejected President Lincoln’s offer, that on January 1, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln “emancipated” the slaves in the South.

Now most of you, my dear and beloved brothers and sisters, who are trying so hard to be a “citizen”: I want you to study the language of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments of the United States Constitution. The 13th Amendment “abolished slavery”—of course, except if you commit a crime. Think about that! And after slavery was “abolished,” in the 14th Amendment it defines “citizenship.”

But why did the 14th Amendment come into existence? It is because after the 13th Amendment was passed, the South and other states began enacting what are called “The Black Codes”—which were efforts to re-enslave Blacks. “Black Codes” existed in the South, as well as the North; and some of the states were Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina, Indiana, Ohio and Illinois.

And then there is the 15th Amendment that came into existence, prohibiting the denial of “suffrage,” or “the right to vote” based on race, color or previous condition of servitude. Now look, brothers and sisters, in 2013 many Black leaders said by June, the Supreme Court would “strike down” Section 5 of “The Voting Rights Bill” (which requires states with a history of discrimination to submit any changes to their voting laws to the Justice Department for a determination of whether they are discriminatory). So the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to The Constitution have been on the law books now since 1865-1870—and we are now still unprotected in America! Can’t you see that you are only a “citizen” “in name,” but not in fact?

‘February 26, 1877’: Two significant events
affecting the lives of Blacks in America

The Compromise of 1877 is arguably the most devastating single government action in the History of Blacks in America. That is when a group of politicians convened at The Wormley Hotel in Washington, D.C. to attempt to resolve the deadlocked presidential election of 1876 between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden. They agreed that if Hayes were awarded the presidency, he would remove government protection of the Black ex-slaves in the South, and allow the former Southern slave-holding class to return to power. And in their return to power, we would be turned back to the plantation in a new form of slavery.

This is the exact point in history when American Whites collectively decided that “Black emancipation” was a mistake; and from that point forward, Blacks would never have freedom, justice or equality in American society. In 14 years, from 1863 to 1877, look at the progress that Black people made attempting to be “free”: Blacks made great strides achieving political offices, developing private businesses, even setting up dozens of “all-Black towns”! But White terrorists targeted them for destruction, as in Rosewood, Florida, and Tulsa, Oklahoma … The first bombs that ever fell in America fell on “Black Wall Street” in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and many other lesser-known places. Blacks lost billions in investment dollars to Whites through these acts of terror.

But the most ironic and profound feature of this episode is that on the same day that White American politicians decided to end “Black Progress”—forever, The Founder of the powerfully progressive Nation of Islam, Master Fard Muhammad, was born in Holy City of Mecca, Arabia.

Both events, the most significant in the History of Black America, happened on February 26, 1877.

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