Minister Louis Farrakhan

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan Speaks At N'Cobra Reparations Conference in Detroit Part 1

By The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan | Last updated: Jun 24, 2019 - 11:43:15 PM

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[Editor’s Note: The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan delivered the keynote address during the 30th annual conference for the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America June 22, 2019 in Detroit. Below is an edited transcript of his address, but to order this message in its entirety on MP3, CD or DVD, visit store.finalcall.com, or call 1-866-602-1230, ext. 200. Introducing Min. Farrakhan, Dr. Conrad Worrill, a longtime activist and reparations advocate, shared how he and members of the nationalist movement, reparations movement and other groups could always count on Min. Farrakhan for organizational and financial support as they pursued their struggles. Dr. Worrill also thanked the Minister for his support of his personal well-being as he paid tribute to Min. Farrakhan as an unselfish, consistent leader and servant in the struggle for the liberation of Black people. This is part one of a two-part article.]

IN THE NAME OF ALLAH, THE BENEFICENT, THE MERCIFUL.

I bear witness to the oneness of God and to the oneness of His people. Though the Qur’an says He created us into many tribes and families that we may know one another. But all of us come from one source and that source is the Creator Himself. 

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As the Original People of our planet there were no Brown, Red, Yellow or White people in the beginning. In the beginning it was us and from us came all the others.

So, the Bible says, “from one blood came all nations.” And that one blood is your blood and my blood and our blood.  

In this late hour of confusion, death and destruction, the resurrection of the Black man and woman of America and those all over our planet is a necessity. Because until we are resurrected—meaning brought back to our Original State and place—the nations of the earth will not find order. 

Order comes from justice. And, in the Book of Revelations there was an angel riding on a horse, a Black horse, and it was justice. Until we rise and until we are returned to our Original State the earth will be in convulsion. But when we are purified from our 400-year sojourn under an enemy, then we can purify everything else that came from us. Then it will be one world again and peace will reign because the Black man is awake, is resurrected, is restored, is repaired and is back on his post as the Original Man, the Cream of the Planet, and the absolute God of the Universe.

I greet all of you, my dear brothers and sisters, with the greeting words of peace.  We say it in the Arabic language: As-Salaam Alaikum. I want to thank my dear, dear brother, friend and companion in struggle, Dr. Conrad Worrill, the leadership of  N’Cobra, Dr. Nkechi Taifah, Dr. Greg Carr, Dr. Joanne Watson and to all of the brothers and sisters of  N’Cobra.  

I personally want to thank you for keeping the idea of reparations and reparatory justice front and center for 30 years. I want to thank you for enduring what our people put on us when they don’t understand who they are, don’t understand what is rightfully theirs. And, when you try to point it out to them, unfortunately, some of us become our worst enemies and we break the spirit of those who want to try and lead us in a better way.  

But I thank God for N’Cobra, I thank God for the movement of Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism. I thank God for all of us who struggle under different names. But every organization has value and only tribalism will keep us from seeing the value of one another. So looking at what Dr. Worrill said of the Minister in secret and in the open supporting everybody who struggles to give justice to the Black man and woman of America: “Why do you do that when their philosophy is not religious or they are not Muslims or they are not this or that?”  

It does not matter.  

What does matter is that we are a suffering people and we cannot afford the luxury any longer of feeding the divisions, the tribal manifestations of slavery and neocolonialism and colonialism.  

We have to see all of us who struggle as one nation, one people with one great objective—total liberation of every Black man, woman and child on our planet.  

One of the things that my teacher, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, said to me was think for the whole, speak for the whole. Don’t just think for those who are Muslims. Don’t just think for those who are Nationalists. Don’t just think for those who are Civil Righters. Think for the whole no matter who they are; no matter what they are; no matter where they are. Think for them, stand for them, work for them, live for them and when you can’t live anymore, die on behalf of your people.

To the members of the Nation of Islam, we wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the Nationalists that came to my side and our side when we started our rebuilding efforts. We wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the African American Patrolman League and the Black police who had nationally organized. 
Before there was an FOI (Fruit of Islam), they guarded me in every city into which we went to bring back the Nation of Islam.  

We can’t think just for Muslims because there were Christian pastors who stood with me and stood with us. We have to be for all or be for nothing at all. Because we will always be behind until and unless we act and think for the whole of our people.  

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Now having said that, I just returned from the holy cities of Mecca and Madinah in the Arab and Muslim World where we were very warmly received, highly respected, because the Muslim World does not have a champion. Practically everybody has been co-opted. But there’s a free Black man in America who is un-bought, has not and will not bow to the forces that control this world. So, I have been a consistent Black man on this battlefield ever since I became conscious 64 years ago.  

I don’t know how many of you have been on the battle front for over 60 years or nearly 70 years, but I have and I’m no way tired. There’s a verse in the Qur’an that says Allah is the only reality, everything else is an illusion. We come and we go like a ripple on a stream. Only a few are remembered beyond their times. It’s because each of us does have a time. And, that’s the time when life is a part of your being; you’re alive. This is your time; this is our time. The question is what do we do with our time? Because there’s another generation depending on what we do with our time that we can pass them the baton of time so that the struggle will continue until victory is ours. It is only vanity that makes us think that victory should come in the time of our lives.

It is knowledge that allows us to see that when you have a problem as deep and complex as the problems that we have, it took years to put us in this condition. It is going to take years to get us up out of it. But each one of us has a work to perform during our lifetime. And if we are true to the gift that God has given us; if we are true to the principle of love, then we will adore the ancestors who laid the foundation that we stand on today. And, when we speak in our time, we speak for the dead that are gone and for the unborn generations yet to come so there must be no weakness in our speech—no cowardice in our wisdom and explanation of our wisdom.

Dr. Imari Obadele, Queen Mother Audley Moore, all of those who have struggled for the ideas of Nationalism and Pan-Africanism. I hope that God will give me words that will live longer than I; that will guide our steps going forward because the division among us is our worst enemy. Vanity among us, the ego killing, ambitions and struggles of the ego to override what is in the best interest of us and we. Because the ego always wants to express itself to the destruction of the group.  

Love is the only force that will put errant ego to rest. Love is the only force that will cause us to see how much of nothing I and we are as individuals. 

But how great we are when we can put our ego into submission to what is in the best interest of the whole. So, I want to start from the back page of The Final Call and I want to go over something in hopes that we can agree on, not religion, but universal principles that apply to every human being that walks on this planet.  

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad in the early 1960s came up with a program that he said was in accord with universal law and principles that is backed by the teachings of God and the prophets and the sages and wise people that have come up in every generation among every people.  

He put something out called “What the Muslims Want.” He used the definite article “the.” He was implying that old Islam had served its purpose. It was dominated by non-original people. They did the best they could because Islam is not a religion; Islam is the nature of God and the nature in which He created the human being. Every dog barks no matter what species because barking is a natural response for dogs. Every creature makes a sound that identifies it and with that sound that creature communicates with its own and some makes sounds that communicate to other species not necessarily their own. 

So when the lion roars all species understand it ain’t my language, but that lion is talking to me and I better understand what the lion is saying because in it is a warning. No wonder the Bible says, “there’s a lion asleep in Judah who is going to wake him?” So those of us that are in the lodge or in the Masonic order, the lion’s paw is the only thing that could raise the master architect from death.  

We are the lions of civilization. That is memorialized in the desert of Egypt with the head of a Black man on the body of a lion called Abu L’hawl, “the Father of Everything.” But the face of the lion is the face of a Black human being. Napoleon was so upset with that nose that only we Africans of a certain type have that kind of nose. That’s telling you something about who we are. The rest of the Black family is awaiting our rise.  

So when we went to Mecca we didn’t go there to bow to another man’s way of civilization because before they were, we are. Islam is not a religion that came with Prophet Muhammad 1,400 years ago. The latest expression of it came 1,400 years ago. It didn’t even have a name prior to 1,400 years ago because it was, and it is the nature of God and the nature in which He created the human being.  

You didn’t have what they call religion. You exercised the nature of your being and the nature of your being is to be upright. Not to be a thief, a liar. You were under thieves and liars for over 400 years and they made us into themselves. So, when you look at Black people, you’re looking at a creature made in America, made devils because that’s what the enemy is, and he could not make you righteous because righteousness is not a part of his nature. We have been under them so long they have made us into themselves.

So, we are thieves today; we are liars today. We are murderers today. We are fornicators and adulterers today. We are freaks today. We are lesbians. We are homosexuals, we are transgender, we are queer. Whatever the White man is that’s what we are because he can only make us what he is. So, you can’t say you want reparations and think it’s money. What will a devil do with money? What will a White man’s nigger do with money and no love for himself or his own people?  

And if reparations does not repair our broken minds, our corrupted souls and bring us anew again, we can say we’re engaged in reparation masturbation. I’m not trying to be vulgar, but our expressions are vulgar—if it only is for a few. We all have to be made anew; not half made—made anew. Our lives have to be transformed so the reparation has to start where the original creature started. 

“Well wait a minute Farrakhan do I have to accept your religion?” Accept your own religion. But most of us don’t know what that is. Accept the nature of yourself, which is righteousness.  Start practicing the doing of what is right—loving for your brother and your sister what you love for yourself; doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. Otherwise, we’ll always be these niggers struggling with concepts that we can’t figure out.  

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I have to speak straight words. That’s the luxury of being old. I know the young ones always ask the elders, “do I have permission to speak?”  And, we’ll say only if you got something to say. Because some of the elders need to shut up if they don’t know what to say.  …

Righteousness is our nature; righteousness is the power of your being. You do not have power being wrong. You rob yourself of power when you think like a thief.  We raise money and put it in the hands of somebody and they are trying to find a way to take it. I’m not casting aspersions on anybody, but I’ve lived long enough to know that everybody can’t handle everybody’s money.  

All our organizations will fail if the love of the Creator is not at the root of it.  Because any gift that you have, you didn’t give it to yourself. Any gift that you discover that you have, you ought to know that somebody that loved you more than you loved yourself gave you that gift. But no matter what gift you have, you have to know how to use it in accord with the nature of God and the nature of your being. Then your gift will bring fruit and multiply good.

Those of us who have the gift of oratory; some of us think that if you can speak well you can lead, not if you do well, but if you speak well. So, most of us are like showman playing for applause not to lift the level of consciousness of our audiences with our oratorical skill. God is the only reality. He’s alive in every generation yet He’s so old we can’t fathom his beginning. But there’s not a generation that lives that doesn’t talk about the Originator of the Heavens and the Earth. Some of us have been at this thing a long time and we’re tired now, and time has passed us by. And time will pass us all by if you don’t pass time with the God of time who gave you your assignment.

Listen to what I’m saying. Everybody gets old except God. As I said last night, I’m in an embrace with 90 years of age; we’re at a distance you know. I’m holding that pretty girl at a distance you know but she’s trying to tell me come a little closer.  When you get to these ages you got to think about mortality. What am I going to leave behind for another generation? Some of us are so envious of young people that if we see that they have something to offer, instead of helping them up, we try to crush them. Those are sick elders that need to either change or die. … 

I’m not upset over young people. I’m happy to see a young vessel that is maybe a quarter full that I can pour something into that vessel as I leave the planet knowing that time marches, God marches with time. And if you march with God and with time, you’ll always be relevant no matter how old you are.  

I have a lot of young people around me. When I can look in organizations and see the bald and the gray and the toothless, and I don’t see the young people in the organization then the organization will die when we die. If you’re not attractive to young people check yourself. Young people know that old people get old. And if they don’t know all they got to do is just keep breathing. And as the saying goes, you’ll understand it better by and by.  

Young people will follow us if they know that we are for their success and we are willing to share with them the knowledge of our life experience so that they won’t make the mistakes that we have made starting from scratch. Church is dying.  Don’t tell me you’re the UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association started by the Hon. Marcus Garvey) and you don’t have young people. Mr. Garvey is alive, if we are alive with him. He didn’t come with an old philosophy. He came with a living teaching.  

So, the next time you go to church or go to the mosque or go to your organizational meetings look and see who you’re talking to. Some toothless person whose breath is not too nice to smell—I’m sorry—I’m trying to tell us that youth should be all around us that’s the way the reparations movement will never die.