The Final Call

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan Speaks at N'Cobra reparations conference in Detroit: PART 2

By The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan | Last updated: Jul 2, 2019 - 11:22:51 AM

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I want to start from the back page of The Final Call and 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.  

The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad

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. 

Mr. Muhammad said, “We want freedom; a full and complete freedom.” N’Cobra don’t you want that? The NAACP don’t you want that? The Shrine of The Black Madonna don’t you want that? Whatever church you belong to don’t you want a “full and complete freedom?” Let’s unpack it then.  

What is a full and complete freedom? If you look at nature, freedom allows the creature to grow to its fullest, reproduce itself and die. We have never been allowed to grow to the fullest manifestation of who we are. There’s always a Caucasian reality and a wicked system that is at the head of your desire to rise.  

When you get to a certain point, they don’t want you to go any further. The system operates on you, on me. Some of us are tired of bucking a wall, a ceiling, knocking at a door that doesn’t seem to open for us until we get tired and our children look at us: “Mama, you still there saying the same old thing, doing the same old thing; not making changes to satisfy the desire for growth and development? Mommy what’s wrong? Daddy what’s wrong?”  

“What’s wrong is I lost the zeal to fight. So, when the enemy put the ceiling up, I didn’t develop what it takes to break the ceiling. I stayed in a system that broke me. So, I died without fully realizing who I am and who God made me to be because I’m not yet free.”  

Nina Simone Photo: MGN Online

Nina Simone said, “I wish that I knew what it means to be free.” Here’s a woman that had great skill, great talent, a classical pianist that couldn’t play in classical concert halls because she was too Black, hair too nappy. So, they told her, “sing nigger and play the piano.” But nobody sang like Nina. Lord she could take a word and make that word live. But most of our great female artists die broken because the men in their lives didn’t understand the value of that woman, always fighting with her man because he wasn’t no damn man at all.

So my Nina died. She did the best she could. But she died unfulfilled, so did Sarah Vaughn, so did Dinah Washington, so did Whitney Houston. We don’t know how to handle women with greatness. We want to be big men, but we’re frightened by intelligent women.  

We want to be free. We want a full and complete freedom. Is that what you want? Well why the hell are you limiting others from their freedom—because that’s your wife, that’s your children, that’s your coworker—with your envy and your jealousy and your self-hatred?  

We want a full and complete freedom, don’t we? Can we all agree that that’s what we really want? Why should you die unfulfilled? Why should you know you have this talent, this wonderful gift and you die without developing it to its fullest and giving it back to God for His glory in feeding human beings with your gift?  

We want justice. We want equal justice under the law. In all our organizations, we have rules, we have laws. You want equal justice, but do you get it? Do you give it to the people working under your leadership? Do you make people bow down to you or do you encourage yourself and them to bow down to the Creator and free themselves so that they can rise like cream to the top?  

We want justice applied equally to all regardless of creed or class or color. That’s The Muslim Program. So if somebody comes and they say they aren’t a Muslim, are you going to deny them? That’s not what your teacher said. If they come with a color that you don’t like but they’re willing to bow to your leadership, you’re going to deny them because of their color?

Among us we have a color problem. Either you’re too light or you’re too Black. Look in the Nation of Islam, you got Farrakhan, you got Ishmael Muhammad, you got Nuri Muhammad. People saying, “damn all these yellow people in the leadership.” You wouldn’t care if those yellow people in leadership were truly those that love justice. Because your color does not define you, it’s your actions. It is the mind that you bring to the endeavor.  

We want equality of opportunity. We want equal membership in society with the best in civilized society. That’s what we want. A question, a serious question: do you think America—as she is presently constructed politically, socially, economically, religiously—do you think America wants you to have that kind of freedom?

Now don’t be quick with your answer because some of you are believers in this crap. You believe these bastards are going to change, every generation sentenced to that same system because we don’t want to abandon it. Can this system give us equal justice? How do you know? We been here 464 years. You should know by now. What the hell is wrong with you that you still hope that this enemy will give you what they’ve never given you? 

Do you think under this system you’ll get equality of opportunity? Is “no” your answer? Are you sure? Do you really believe that they won’t change; they don’t want to change; they don’t have the will to change and you don’t have the power to force the change.  

Have you ever been in a relationship? How many of you have had failed marriages? Can I see your hands please? I have my beautiful wife right here with me. Stand up Khadijah. I acted a fool too, but I had a beautiful wife. I was trying to be a man. Brother Malcolm was my teacher. I couldn’t have had a better one for my beginning, but I was trying to be a man but didn’t know how. I saw Brother Malcolm; he was the only man that I saw in my life. He touched me very deeply and I thought in order to be a man, you got to be able to order your wife.  

I soon found out that’s not the way. You can be a soldier, but you can’t make her your private. Wait, did I say something wrong? I mean you know how they treat privates in the armed forces. My wife wasn’t made for me to order her. My teacher was not teaching her to accept orders from a fool. She would accept my orders if they were given with love and they were intelligent. We have been married 66 years.  

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan

I live under a different system than the system of this world. My wife was trained by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad to respect me as I was not yet a man but be patient with me because the enemy’s destruction of us as men has been nearly 100 percent complete.  

So, if our women are impatient with our development, they’ll fall in love because we’re handsome, so we think. They’ll fall in love because we stay in the gym and develop muscles and silly women like muscles. But when that’s all you got; muscle is in trouble.  

The woman that we have is our best friend. Dr. Leonard Jeffries is here. His beautiful wife is here, they’ve been together a long time. That’s an example for us. We’ve come up under the White man and he’s made us really into him. So as he is not giving us justice, we have a problem being fair to ourselves and being fair to those under our charge.  

So, a complete transformation is needed. Now I’m going to ask another question.  Do you think the White man can repair the damage that he has done? You sure? Many of us graduated from fine universities but the universities we graduated from can’t repair us. When we talk about repair, reparatory justice, you’re looking to the wrong source for repair. The enemy broke us and remade us in his image. 

The Bible says, “we’re born in sin and shaped in iniquity.” We have to be broken again. We have to be completely made over again. The Bible asks the question: “How can they know except they have a teacher? And how can they have a teacher except he be sent?” The enemy is not going to send you a teacher to repair the damage that he did. So, who do you have to look to? Where do we look?  

The repair of us has to come from the God who created us, by whatever name you call him. The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. You are looking at a Black man living in America under the tyranny of White people. But whenever my brother Conrad Worrill came and needed something, I was not like a Negro nor was I like a bank asking for collateral.  

When the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was dead in the water, the leader of SCLC came, he said, “our place is going to close down, we can’t do it; we don’t have the money.” I wrote him a check for $10,000 and he said it saved his organization. How could I do that if I didn’t have support?

Some of you think that the Minister has sold out to the Church of Scientology. “He done sold out, Scientology gave him so many million dollars.” You can’t believe that a man that talks like me doesn’t have to bother nobody for nothing because the people that I serve love me enough that they support me that I can support others. If I were paid for by others, they would have a string over me. You don’t see any strings. The string that you can’t see is the string that God has on me. 

But I owe nobody nothing. I don’t borrow money, I don’t steal, I don’t lie. If I tell you I’m going to do something, I try my best to do it because I’m a new Black man. Look at your brother, he doesn’t look tired or old. I have no wrinkles that I need to worry about. I go to sleep at night without worrying because I did nobody wrong during the day. I can sleep good at night. I’m what you’re looking for. I’m a fully repaired Black man.  

The government doesn’t like me, but Elijah Muhammad made me and the God that made him also participated in my making. I’m a well-made man. You know how they say in the ’hood when you’re a “made man” by the gangsters that are in power, you walk with the power of those who made you. God made me. Elijah Muhammad taught me and shaped me. I don’t have any other makers.

I learned from Brother Malcolm. I learned from Dr. Martin Luther King. I learned from Baba Dudley Thompson. I learned from Michael Manley. I learned from young and old, but I always kept my mooring. I don’t use drugs but I’m high all the time. Don’t you want to try that yourself?  

Brother can tell you I don’t worry about what White folk think about me. They are planning right now to take my life. I laugh at them. You can only have my life if God allows you to; but hell, I ain’t running from you. …  

Now look, since we can’t get it (freedom, justice and equality) under this system:  How many of you have been divorced from your former love? See, you can’t stand being divorced from White people. You don’t think you can live without them. So, you have a husband that’s beating the hell out of you. Your friends say, “leave him.” You say, “I can’t leave him. I do love him so much.” “But he’s beating you all the time.” “Yes. I know.” Then finally you get the message and you end up in prison because you killed him. Because when somebody molests you, beats you and mistreats you, there is only so much you can take. And, when you can’t take anymore then you explode. Most of us in prison have murdered somebody close to us. We, Muslims in the Nation of Islam, don’t carry weapons yet we walk in the valley of the shadow of death and we don’t fear any evil. Our gangbanging family respects us because we respect them.  

We’ve fought people with guns. Some of us died but they died too. When you’re willing to die, people leave you alone. Only cowards run from death. So the Qur’an wanted to stop you from running. It says, you can run into the deepest cave, death will find you there. You can scale the highest mountain, but death will find you because everybody has to taste of death once they’ve come to birth and experienced life.

The fear of dying troubles us. The unreality of death: I’m going to meet my mother. I love my mother, but I know I’m not going to meet her. I believe in resurrection; we believe in resurrection, but we believe in mental resurrection not in physical resurrection. Anybody that we put down in the grave you can think that you’re going to see them again. But how many people have lost a loved one and people been dying on this planet for hundreds of millions and billions of years? If they all came back one day, it’s only 57,255,000 square miles of earth. All the people that died, if they came back and they took some form of earth and bones and water, you’d be in space.

You have to stop thinking spooky. You must think reality. Death is real. Why would God give the man sperm and the female an egg if He didn’t want you to reproduce your kind? Once you reproduce that’s you going on in another generation. 

What would grandma do if she came back? She is talking to her granddaughter; her granddaughter like this (consumed with a cell phone). Her head bent in a 45-degree angle. She says, “granddaughter stand up straight.” “Oh, grandma I’m just talking to my friend,” says the granddaughter. “But I’m trying to talk to you,” says grandma. “You can talk. I can do two things at the same time,” says the child. Grandma couldn’t handle that.  

They have flying cars now. I know I’m getting old. I have to live in a world and see cars flying? When I came to birth in this world, they had horses coming up and down the street and they had cars that they had to crank to start. I saw the time when we had radio, that was a breakthrough. Then we had telephones, but everybody couldn’t afford one. Somebody back there said “party line.” When you have a party line, you pick up the phone. You think it’s for you and it’s for somebody else that’s on your line.  

Then T.V. came along. We had a little black and white T.V. me and Khadijah. Nat Cole was on. We only had a few stations and then you put a little plastic up in front of the T.V. and then you had color T.V.  

With the operations that I have had, I’m so glad that I didn’t live in the time when they had to put a piece of wood in your mouth and tell you to bite down.  

Today with the coca leaf and morphine, they put me out. I was out for 14 hours.  When I woke, I think I was a little high. I said no wonder people like drugs.  

I’m saying that to say time moves on. Time brought us in; time takes us. But time moves with life. Your sperm they’re trying to kill so that you don’t produce like our old folks used to. We really need to be separated from this enemy. That’s a hard decision that we’re going to have to make. All of you that feel you can change him, do it. But there are those of us who know better because we know the nature of the people that we’ve been living under because God has revealed it to us. They owe us big time. …

There was a man from Alabama who helped the Messenger to buy land in Green County in Alabama. One day he called me to the side. He said, “Farrakhan we can take Alabama. We can take Alabama if those who once lived here came back home and those who live here got the right to vote, we could take the state.”  

Imari Obadele and the Republic of New Africa went South, and he claimed five southern states. He understood what justice looks like. Don’t ask the White man for money and a White woman. This is a $20 bill with Andrew Jackson on the front of it. White people love their own image. Look at the fight they came up with because they wanted to put Harriett Tubman on a $20 bill. They said, “not my twenty-dollar bill.” See if you were separated in your own nation, you wouldn’t have to ask anybody’s permission. If you were in your own nation, you could educate your children the way they should be educated.

The education of White America is poison to the Black, the Brown and the Red and even the poor White. Why do you want to stay under that kind of system?  Now they’re telling you they’re going to vaccinate and if you don’t accept vaccination, you can’t go to school. What a blessing. Don’t you realize the sister from Georgia, Stacy Abrams, almost became a governor? It was very close. They probably robbed her. The brother in Florida, Andrew Gillum, almost became governor.

Just imagine: why do you think they fight so hard for us to use the right to vote?  You fought for it, you suffered for it, you died for it. Let’s use it to our advantage.  I’m saying to those who love reparations, to those who love justice, let’s mark out some states. It may take us 50 years. But if we become the power in all those states, we have enough lawyers to make judges. We have enough intelligent Black people to run the state legislatures, become appellate court justices, state Supreme Court justices. When you run the state politically then you have a chance to run it economically. The federal government has to give us some money.  

Reparations can come back to us like this: We aren’t paying taxes anymore. We have to get the government to agree. But when you’re running your state, you can say, “we want the tax dollars of Black people put in a treasury for our use.” When we begin to master it politically then you begin mastering it economically. It’s all about land and the ownership of land. Not dollars, these are weak today in case you haven’t noticed. …   

In a few days the dollar may crash. It’s land that you need, your own agriculture. While money has power, we need to unite the dollars and buy as much land as possible. You just have to have a vision. After a while if they don’t like us, we become state, national guard, we become the police. We have over 500,000 in the military. We can negotiate.  

Negotiate with what? If you have five states with an outlet to the sea with fertile and minerally rich land like the Delta and Mississippi that’s where they got theirs. Just have a vision and work toward it. Stop singing songs talking about reparations, let’s plan it. Let’s do it. That’s what the Mormons did. They own Utah. They had a strange religious philosophy, but they made their White brothers like it.  

You’re going to have to be bold. Sitting around begging the White man to be better. You can make him better with the power of who you are. But you’ll never have that power unless you allow yourself to be made a made man. Farrakhan is a made man and I don’t think you got too many out there made like me. But the way I’m made is the way you can be made because I’m not better than you. I’m not stronger than you. I may be a little wiser at the moment, but I want to share whatever my teacher taught me with you so that the mind of God that’s in me will be in you.

Paul said, “Let this mind be in you the same that was in Christ Jesus.” Jesus was offering you God’s mind. When you have God’s mind you stop singing … we shall overcome. You stop singing, we ain’t going let nobody turn me around, turn me down. I ain’t going let nobody turn me round … walking up the freedom trail. It’s all in your hands. Take charge of your post. When we meet again let’s talk about what we’ve accomplished. I have to say this H.R. 40 (House legislation that would establish a commission to study reparations for Blacks) was great, but it was only to get White folk to study reparations. You still want him to study? We aren’t going to study any more. They’re going to pay you, but you have to be yourself and in unity to make them pay. But talking about it, singing about it and not working it, all of us will be dead and our children will say, “well I’ll be a Democrat, I’ll be a Republican.”  

I thank you N’Cobra. I thank all of you for taking time to listen to your brother. I hope that something I said inspires you in some way, but this is not all of it. Thank you for listening. As-Salaam Alaikum.