From The Final Call Newspaper

‘We’ll have to deal with this reality’: Military pilots testify of dangers, fear of UFO threats to America’s national security

By Nisa Islam Muhammad, Staff Writer
- October 26, 2021





WASHINGTON—Several Air Force veterans revealed their fears for America’s security during a recent press conference here at the National Press Club. Their anxiety, kept secret for decades, was driven by the existence of and the threat posed by Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) commonly called UFOs, and threats they experienced during their careers or saw with their own eyes.

Some shared how they saw UAPs soar through the sky and neutralize America’s nuclear weapons. Others experienced weapons systems taken offline as these crafts visited important military sites. Each of them was told by higher-ups to never speak about what they saw or went through. Finally, they have come forward to share their belief their country could be in danger and it’s time for the truth to come out.

The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad

“We are not alone,” said Dr. Robert Jacobs, former first lieutenant in the United States Air Force. “Their science can annihilate us, and we need to get Congress to listen.”

He detailed how on September 14, 1964, he was sent to the Big Sur in California to photograph early U.S. nuclear test missiles with high-speed instrumentation.



“We were testing to see if we could launch a nuclear warhead into orbit, slightly above the nuclear chaff, so the Russians would aim their anti-missile missiles at the chaff, and our little warhead would fly over and obliterate Moscow,” said Dr. Jacobs.

What he filmed amazed him. What shocked him more was his superior’s response. Testifying at the National Press Club on Oct. 19 via video link from Missouri, he said, “I was part of a U.S. Air Force cover-up. It was shaped like a flying saucer and was firing a beam of light at our warhead.”

Dr. Jacobs explained that while filming, he saw an object following the test missile, which was traveling at 8,000 mph. It got close and fired four beams of light at the nuclear warhead.

“Then it flew out of the frame the same way it had come in. At that point, the warhead tumbled out of space,” said Dr. Jacobs, now a Bradley University professor.

The next day after submitting his film he was called to the office of Major Florenze J. Mansmann, which included men whom Dr. Jacobs believes were members of the CIA, to explain what he shot.

It was during that meeting that Dr. Jacobs was told never to discuss what he saw and if he did, it would be a security breach. Dr. Jacobs said the major told him, “You are never to say that again. As far as you’re concerned that never happened.”

 


“What we are here today is to tell you, this is a real event, that it is the most important event in the history of mankind,” Dr. Jacobs said.

He stayed quiet, he followed orders but hiding the truth bothered him. He knew what he saw. He knew others needed to know what was out there and the UFOs’ abilities to disable U.S. nuclear missiles.

Dr. Jacobs was so concerned that he tried getting his story published. The only buyer was the National Enquirer which significantly diminished the value of his story. After it was published, he received death threats and he lost his job. Dr. Jacobs told the audience a paid CIA agent wrote a letter to the university where he worked citing the article as “quackery.”

What he didn’t know at the time was that there were others in the Air Force who also witnessed UFOs. Three former Air Force captains also spoke at the press conference, sharing their frightening experiences with UAP and how these crafts had disarmed nuclear weapons with ease.​ The group is calling for a congressional investigation and public hearings about their reports that UFOs have disabled nuclear weapons.

Former Air Force Capt. Robert Salas, now of the Paradigm Research Group, organized the press conference. He opened by stating, “We are all witnesses.”

“We’re not trying to prove anything. … It’s simply relaying the information that we have, the truth as we know it and those facts as we know them.”

His experience with a UFO was in March 1967 while an on-duty commander of an underground launch control facility at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. Mr. Salas told the audience about strange lights he saw over the base that disabled all 10 of the intercontinental ballistic missiles under his watch. The missiles suddenly became inoperable. That wasn’t the first time. Eight days earlier, on March 16, 1967, a similar incident occurred at another missile launch control facility.

Mr. Salas revealed this same story a decade ago in 2010 at the National Press Club but with little fanfare. “In the coming days and months, I think we’ll have to deal with this reality because there is abundant and sober evidence, past and present, for the reality of UAP,” said Mr. Salas, who has become a leading figure in the movement to make public more information about UFOs.

The press conference was the result of Mr. Salas’ work for years talking to other Air Force veterans, having them sign witness affidavits describing their own encounters decades ago.

 


These experiences can be traced as far back as 75 years ago to Roswell, New Mexico, when Jesse Marcel Jr., was an Air Force intelligence officer and reportedly was the first military officer to investigate the UFO crash site in early July 1947. After an initial report that a UFO had been recovered on a ranch near Roswell, the military issued a statement saying the debris was from a weather balloon.

Mr. Salas and some veterans have consistently for decades voiced their concerns about the threat to U.S. national security and the UFOs’ ability to render nuclear weapons inoperable. Others have been quiet.

“I waited 40 years before I opened my mouth, and that’s a long time,” said David Schindele, a retired captain who served as a nuclear missile launch control officer at Minot Air Base in North Dakota. “I had this terrible secret on my mind for all that time, and I felt such great relief to finally admit to my friends and close relatives what I experienced in the Air Force.”

Mr. Schindele explained that he and his commander visited a missile launch site near Minot, North Dakota, in September 1966. While there he saw UFOs disable 10 nuclear-tipped missiles, but the Pentagon leaders summarily buried the incident.
“The Air Force has not been honest with Congress or the American public,” Mr. Schindele said. “Congress and the intelligence community have a responsibility here, and others must be released from the burden of holding back the truth.”

During an appearance at the National Press Club, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan shared his 1985 more-than-a-vision experience and visit to the Mother Wheel taught about by the Hon. Elijah Muhammad. Admissions about the reality of these so-called UFOs continue to come out. Photo: Final Call archives

While America’s military may have first witnessed UAPs in the 1940s, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, eternal leader of the Nation of Islam, taught his followers about these objects in 1932. He referred to the crafts as “The Wheel,” or “The Mother Plane,” which contained 1,500 smaller Baby Planes. He said the purpose of The Wheel was to destroy the present world of evil and that visions of it had been seen thousands of years before it came into being.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad explained these so-called UFOs are the greatest military weapons ever developed in the annals of the history of Allah (God) and man in this universe.

 


Further, he taught, the weapon was made for the purpose of destroying the present world ruled by America and Caucasian people in a final battle with the forces of evil. The Mother Plane was described as a half a mile by a half a mile with 1,500 bombing planes that could destroy America in 12 hours.

In Muhammad Speaks newspaper, June 8, 1973, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad wrote an article titled “Ezekiel’s Wheel: The Battle in the Sky,” which stated in part: “I am so happy that Allah (God) has prepared this unmatchable weapon to save us, the Black People [of America]!”

His top student, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, has also taught extensively on The Mother Plane and Baby Planes.

“The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said that this Great Wheel was made for military purposes, for it was to engage in The Great ‘Battle in the Sky’ that would end this world and usher in that world that the prophets exclaimed would come at the end of the 6,000-year rule of the enemy of Allah (God) and the enemy of the Aboriginal People of the Earth,” Minister Farrakhan previously wrote in The Final Call.

During his Saviours’ Day 2020 message, “The Unraveling of a Great Nation,” he recounted his 1985 more-than-a-vision experience and described his personal connection to The Wheel.

“I represent the Most High God who sits in that Wheel that Ezekiel saw, a Wheel in the middle of a Wheel, and I visited that Wheel. He brought me to that Wheel like Allah brought Muhammad in a night vision to the inner sanctum of Himself,” said Min. Farrakhan.

After that experience Min. Farrakhan went before the world in a press conference at the National Press Club to share his encounter.

Growing verification of these encounters, including an Office of the Director of National Intelligence report of Navy encounters with UFOs released several months ago, have empowered Mr. Salas to do more in calling for a congressional investigation.

In 2004 and 2015 pilots gave eyewitness accounts of a ship that resembled a giant white “Tic Tac” flying without wings or propulsion systems, and a flying cube inside a clear sphere that passed between two fighter jets. The encounters by Navy pilots were initially revealed in 2017 and officially acknowledged by the Navy.

“Imagine a technology that can fly at 13,000 miles per hour, that can evade radar, that can fly through air, water and possibly space, that has no sign of propulsion, no wings, no control surfaces and yet can still defy the natural effects of earth’s gravity,” said former U.S. senior intelligence officer Luis Elizondo in a description of what Navy pilots and military personnel have been seeing for years.

Those sightings caused great concern in Congress and a report was ordered on what was known about UAPs. The preliminary assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, released in June, was inconclusive. It explained that not enough data exists to determine the nature or intent of UAPs but that they may present a national security risk. The report admitted, however, that the crafts exist.

While the report had what intelligence officials called a “limited amount of high-quality reporting on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP),” Mr. Salas still considers it an impressive admission. The veterans at the press conference see the report as a potential breakthrough.


“We hope to put enough pressure on people in the government to call for open hearings,” said Mr. Salas. “If we have open congressional hearings, we will know a lot more about the subject because there is a lot of documentation and credible witnesses out there who are reluctant to testify.”

Mr. Salas worked with others to raise over $13,000 on GoFundMe to finance the press conference and have extra money to spend on lobbying Congress.

Nation of Islam Student Minister Ilia Rashad Muhammad, author of the book “UFOs and The Nation of Islam: The Source, Proof, And Reality Of The Wheels,” told The Final Call that military personnel have been coming forward for over a decade.

“All of them describe the same thing. They described disc-shaped objects interfering with military sites, destabilizing their most advanced nuclear sites, disarming their warheads. What these Wheels have been doing is going around monitoring all these different military and nuclear sites just to prove that there is a superior power on scene. They have literally disarmed remotely, disarmed and shut entire nuclear sites down,” he said.

This is the fear the veterans warned about. It’s about the “possibility of our survival,” said Dr. Jacobs.

From The Final Call Newspaper

More than a memory: The importance of the Million Man March—then and now

By The Final Call
- October 19, 2021





by Michael Z. Muhammad, J.A. Salaam and Brian E. Muhammad

In 1995, the year of the Million Man March, the Black family, in particular, and the Black community, in general, were in trouble. The result of years of neglect, chemical warfare perpetrated against Black people in the form of crack cocaine, and the mass incarceration of Black men followed under the guise of the war on drugs.

Between 1984 and 1989, the homicide rate for Black males aged 14 to 17 more than doubled, and the homicide rate for Black males aged 18 to 24 increased nearly as much. During this period, the Black community also experienced a 20 percent to 100 percent increase in fetal death rates, low birth-weight babies, weapons arrests, and the number of children in foster care, according to statistical reports.

One in every four Black males aged 20 to 29 was either incarcerated or on probation or parole by 1989, contributing to the United States having the highest incarceration rate in the world. By 1995, that statistic had increased to nearly one in three.

Further exacerbating the trauma worldwide, the Black male was denigrated through negative racial stereotypes in American media and popular culture. There were negative images of Black men as savage, uncivilized, berserk beasts and Hollywood movies such as “Boyz in the Hood” and “Menace II Society” mass-marketed and spread the images worldwide.

In response to this distress, Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam issued a call for a million Black men to come to Washington, D.C. This would not be another march for jobs and justice, it would be a spiritual activity tied to greater productivity among Black people regardless of what government did or did not do. The theme was atonement, reconciliation and responsibility.

The organizing effort around the idea of uniting and calling Black men to action caught like wildfire, spreading from mosques to churches to Black businesses to union halls to masonic temples to college campuses to the streets of Black America and beyond.

“The Million Man March was a phenomenal, marvelous demonstration of love and unity,” said Student Minister Ishmael Muhammad, the national assistant to Minister Farrakhan based in Chicago.

“A day unprecedented and unparalleled in human history,” he added.

“Never has there been an occasion where one man called a million of his brothers and nearly a million more responded. They answered not for protest or a rally to petition a government for a redress of grievances.

They weren’t assembled to take up arms against an enemy or to conquer. The million men were called to atone, reconcile, and accept the responsibility that is on our shoulders for the change that we desire in our lives, and we want in our communities as a people,” said Student Minister Ishmael Muhammad.

“The message of atonement, reconciliation, and responsibility is what I see has not been lifted up enough in these now 26-years,” he continued. “But the message of that day is what we really need to go back to.”

“On that day the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan was guided and directed by Allah to deliver a message for us, but the whole world on the principle of Atonement.”

The message laid out an eight-step process by which wrongs can be corrected, differences can be reconciled, conflicts resolved and peace secured.

“A generation or so has passed in these 26 years and it is our failure in not carrying that message to a new generation, or to continue the momentum that the Million Man March produced, that has us, you can say, back to where we were prior to the Million Man March,” reflected Ishmael Muhammad.

 


Although there were Million Man March wins such as increased Black adoptions, more men getting involved with community life and starting organizations to make communities safe and decent places to live, the central theme of atonement, reconciliation, and responsibility must be engaged more to address many of the current problems today.

“In these 30 years, the enemy has been working among us internally and externally to break us apart and keep us regulated to the circumstances and conditions he has created for us,” observed Ishmael Muhammad. “There will never be peace … until the peacebreaker is removed from among us,” he added.

The impact of the March

Since the Million Man March, there were subsequent Nation of Islam gatherings with atonement, reconciliation, and responsibility as the underpinning message. Gatherings like the “Million Family March,” the “Millions More Movement” and “10-10-15” or “Justice or Else!” convened over the last 26 years.


From the 2015 gathering, Abdul Sharieff Muhammad, the student Southern Regional Minister for the Nation of Islam based in Atlanta, established the 10,000 Fearless of the South. The initiative was birthed from Minister Farrakhan calling for 10,000 fearless to stand in the gap between Blacks in conflict and make “our community a safe and decent place to live.”

Abdul Sharrieff Muhammad said the “atmosphere is right to separate” and “do for self.”

“We should be doing what the Minister (Farrakhan) told us to do … July 4, The Criterion … going to the land,” he said. “Allah is moving us toward separation, and we should be getting ready and preparing for that.” He pointed to food shortages striking America and the adverse effects of tornadoes, hurricanes, and drought.


The Million Man March spawned innumerable gatherings, like the Million Woman’s March, the Millions Youth March, the Million Mom March, the Million Marijuana March and other “Million”-themed gatherings worldwide in Africa and the Middle East.

Held on a Monday, rather than a weekend, the March created a need for commitment by taking off work, school and paying your way to D.C.

Unlike traditional marches, Blacks organized and paid for the Million Man March. There was no corporate sponsor support that usually comes with strings attached, influencing what can be said or who can participate. Speakers that day were free to say what they wanted.

Abdul Arif Muhammad, general counsel for the Nation of Islam, said differences are to be expected with such a diverse representation of Black thought, both present and absent from the table. Some came as late as the day of the gathering.

“The March was really an effort through the work of the Minister and other groups and organizations,” said Student Min. Arif Muhammad. “But everybody that came to the table had their particular interests or point of view about what it meant,” he said.

The day was declared a holy day and has been celebrated every year as the Holy Day of Atonement ever since.

Previous marches such as the 1963 “March on Washington” and subsequent gatherings were predominantly led by Christian pastors who primarily sought “jobs and justice” from the government, which has never been achieved.

Minister Farrakhan, in interviews, said although the Nation of Islam was not known for mass marches, the seed for a march was planted by his teacher, Elijah Muhammad, as they discussed the 1963 march. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad was critical of the spirit of frivolity and fun at the event and lack of the serious demeanor warranted for a march for jobs and justice.

He told Minister Farrakhan, “One day I’m going to lead a march, brother,” and “we won’t leave Washington until we get what we go for and that is justice.” Minister Farrakhan has said the comments were embedded in him.


But the Million Man March in Washington, D.C., wasn’t a walk in the park. Downtown businesses were shuttered, Congress shutdown, President Clinton, who left town the day of the March, joined others in trying to “separate the message from the messenger,” and force rejection of Min. Farrakhan. Neither the NAACP, nor the National Urban League endorsed the March. Some civil rights groups came on board shortly before the March, though their members and local chapters had already joined the effort. Police departments and National Guard units were at the ready if anything negative happened.

Nothing did. But attacks against the March never stopped. First, came the lie that Minister Farrakhan was a hater. After the March, naysayers tried to find fault with the most significant mass demonstration in the nation’s capital, and then came the effort to erase the event out of history. Now Oct. 16 comes and goes with little mention or skewed mention in mainstream media.

But that is to be expected.

Maulud Sadiq wrote a piece titled “The Million Man March Has Been Wiped From the History Books. Why?”

“Who benefits from Black people not building businesses, homes, hospitals, factories and entering into international trade? Who benefits from Black on Black crime and the separation of Black men and women? Who benefits when Black people don’t support their own?” he asked.

The Million Man March is among the largest gatherings of its kind in American history. Rather than rail against the government for all of its evils perpetrated against Black people, the March called for Black men to uplift themselves, their families, and their communities. And the call resonates today as the community continues to be beset by fratricide and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Soon after the very successful Million Man March, which saw a tremendous rise in voter registration, Black adoption and declines in violence and an explosion of community activism, came renewed attacks. Black pastors and churches were courted by Whites and told to shun Min. Farrakhan, who was roundly attacked in mainstream media, by politicians and acceptable Negroes who at the wishes of their White benefactors, often met with the Minister by night and repeated the slurs of the enemy during the day.

March lessons for today

But for many activists, the mantra of the Million Man March is needed more now than ever before. The message of Minister Farrakhan is required now more than ever before, they said.

The late great Dr. Conrad Worrill, who supported and worked hard for the March as leader of the National Black United Front, once said, “The Million Man March was one of the most historic organizing and mobilizing events in the history of Black people in the United States.”

“So today, whether you like it or not, God brought the idea through me,” said Minister Farrakhan in his October 16, 1995 message. “He didn’t bring it through me because my heart was dark with hatred and anti-Semitism, He didn’t bring it through me because my heart was dark, and I’m filled with hatred for White people and for the human family of the planet. If my heart were that dark, how is the message so bright, the message so clear, the response so magnificent.”

“We must accept the responsibility that God has put upon us, not only to be good husbands and fathers and builders of our community, but God is now calling upon the despised, and the rejected to become the cornerstone and the builders of a new world,” he said.

“And so we are gathered here today not to bash somebody else. We’re not gathered here to say all of the evils of this nation. But we are gathered here to collect ourselves for a responsibility that God is placing on our shoulders to move this nation toward a more perfect union.”

In the 26 years since the March, America has not moved toward a “more perfect union,” it has been turned on its head. There was the election of a Black president. Diversity was the word of the day, profound structural change was called for in education and policing, but political factionalism has grown more intense.

White America clapped back with the rise and election of President Donald Trump, who remains a potent, divisive force on the political scene. America is falling apart as Minister Farrakhan forecast during his historic 2020 Saviours’ Day address, “The Unraveling of a Great Nation.”

Yet, the model for Black progress remains in the aims and purpose of the Million Man March, argued Student Minister Rodney Muhammad, who heads the Nation of Islam Muhammad Mosque No. 12 in Philadelphia and leads the Delaware Valley Region.

“Coming out of the March, we saw very tangible domestic results. Maybe two million younger Black people registering to vote. It sparked a tremendous interest in Black adoptions, the sharp increase in the membership of Black organizations and churches, but what is rarely discussed is the international ramifications. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan’s follow-up was so colossal that it escaped many in America, the kind of global impact the Million Man March had. It began to link us with our people in other nations,” he commented.
Philadelphia brought a huge contingent of men to the 1995 March.

Fredrica Bey, who played a significant part in organizing the March in Newark, N.J., established a successful organization, Women in Support of the Million Man March (WISOMMM). “I said to Minister Farrakhan if you never do anything else in life, the March was so profound. It was organized, so, so, well,” she said.

“The March inspired us to purchase a $5 million property in downtown Newark where we taught many children and held many community events that impacted the community. Minister Farrakhan told me what to expect. He said, you are a black spot in the middle of white development, and they are coming after you. They’re going to come after you with a vengeance. And your only solace will be to wrap yourself in God, you and God, you and God.”

In terms of the legacy of the March and its application today, Ms. Bey pointed to atonement, reconciliation, and responsibility.

“The power of the title, you know going within. We know what the devil did. We know what he continues to do, but we don’t have to continue his legacy. We are the owners, the makers, the God of the universe,” she said.

Harry Spike Moss, a Minneapolis, Minnesota, activist served as the National Director for Cultural Affairs for the March. “The March sent a clear message that not all of us are in prison, not all of us are addicted, not all of us are laying around and trifling and lazy and not about nothing, that message was sent to the world,” he said.

“That was the first part of the message we sent. We’re still here. Good, strong Black men are still here. And then there’s the winning part. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan told us all to go home, do something to help people, do something to change the life of our people, do something to put them on the right course as a people. And so many Black men, I would dare say we went somewhere about two million or two and a half million men who were at the March. It was so powerful. So many men returned home and engaged.”

Also involved in the organization of the March was St. Louis-based activist Anthony Shahid. “The message remains the same as 26 years ago. We need to come together, atone for the things we did wrong, focus on family, think about economics. Most of all, to have God in our lives. The pledge we took should be taught in schools. The March was a glimpse of heaven. You can’t even go to a house party today without niggas fighting,” he said.

Mr. Shahid also pointed out one measure of success is that how the March name has been copied. The Million Man March has inspired liked named marches throughout the world, he noted. The worst of which was the Trump-inspired Million Maga March held in January in Washington D.C., where the true nature of White people was put on full display resulting in anarchy, destruction, and death, Mr. Shahid added.

During the 2014 uprising in Ferguson, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis, Mr. Shahid was there in the aftermath of the police killing of unarmed Black teen Mike Brown. He has been a leading figure in the movement for justice that came out of that explosion. In 2015, he was in Washington, D.C., for the March anniversary that focused on families who lost loved ones to police violence and a demanded justice.

“The intentional planning that went into making that day possible is in my opinion certainly relevant for Black men to rise up, mentally, spiritually, socially and economically,” commented Carolyn Seward, founder of Family Workforce Centers of America.

“We are seeing what collaborations for a common goal and cause can do. Yet, we must continue the journey that we are on, we can’t stop fighting.”

Steve Conley, CEO of We Care Worldwide, was over 2,700 miles away in Seattle, Washington, and was not able to make it to the March. “I was so inspired by what I saw on television, and the stories that were shared from the many men I knew that did attend. But when the tenth anniversary happened, the ‘Millions More Movement,’ I took my youngest son with me and it was a great bonding experience for both of us, and we both agreed that we would be a lifetime participant of this movement,” he said.

“I have been listening to Minister Louis Farrakhan since I was a teenager, almost 45 years. I have traveled to many places around the world, while living in three different countries. And the work I have seen the Nation of Islam do in developing Black men and women is second to none. And it has been a constant source of inspiration in my entire adult life.”

“The Million Man March showed Black men in a whole other light. It was peaceful, spiritual and uplifting. It was powerful and I know those that hate us and desire to keep us down, hated to see that day happen. Now the use of drugs and sex is being pushed on us so much that it has become a major distraction, and we are being lured back to sleep,” said Mr. Conley.

“I personally saw the impact that March had on Black men. It was like nothing else in U.S. history. And they saw it too. Brothers are still fighting hard to maintain their sanity against the odds and forces against them. Black men are stepping up as fathers, many times without mothers. This is a movement to make real change among our people. Minister Farrakhan is a beacon of light not just for us, but to the world. He represents Black people like no other. His messages wake you up and makes you want to change your life for the better.”

Ron Gregory, the brother of late comedian and activist Dick Gregory, told The Final Call, “What we saw was what is called critical mass, we saw the force of that day, that resulted in Obama being elected and consecutive movements and marches across the country ever since the Million Man March. It was like a buzzing, humming sound that was created from that moment in time that went out into the universe.

And there’s no way to stop the impact of it. The Million Man March set the stage of how a gathering should take place. And it was even compared to what happen on January 6, 2021. But what they did with smaller numbers has disrupted a whole nation and that’s exactly what happened when the two million men came together. That disrupted the country’s power over us. We will never be the same!” declared Mr. Gregory.

Anthony and Angela Muhammad of the Nation of Islam mosque in Washington, D.C., produced a documentary, “The Million Man March: The Untold Stories.” They stressed the importance of Black people documenting their history, and creating accurate narratives.

“What our documentary does is bust the myths concerning the March, that Black women were not behind the March, the Black church did not support the March,” said Angela Muhammad.

The documentary discusses with Minister Farrakhan his thinking behind organizing and his post-March World Friendship Tour.

“The documentary will allow us to celebrate and study the March 360 days a year rather than only on Oct. 16, in the actual voices of those who participated,” said Angela Muhammad. Her documentary was part of a program and discussion on the March anniversary date and can be seen on KweliTV online.

Perhaps the most precise assessment of the March and its aftermath was observed by entrepreneur, author, political analyst, and social commentator Dr. Boyce Watkins. “The Million Man March is probably one of the greatest events and achievements in the history of Black people in this country and around the world. It only further solidified that the Nation of Islam is the premier model of Blackness, aspirational Blackness in the 21st and 22nd centuries,” he said.

“It’s the benchmark against which any and all other events is compared in our community. You can’t name anything that’s happened since 1995 that matches the Million Man March.”

“The March was ahead of its time. It’s just something that I think the world has yet to fully digest the magnitude of the ideas presented at this event,” Mr. Watkins continued. “It makes perfect sense that the enemy would want to marginalize the Million Man March because it wasn’t about integration or these loosely defined concepts, like equality.

It was about building the Black man and the Black woman up to be a competitor in this world. It’s not (White America’s) job to celebrate the March on their media outlets and teach it in their schools; it’s our job to do that. And I believe that we are up for that job.”

 


A critical aspect of the nuts and bolts organizational aspect of the March was establishing the Local Organizing Committees (LOC), Regional Organizing Committees (ROC) and National Organizing Committees (NOC) throughout the country. Min. Farrakhan crisscrossed the country meeting with community leaders, religious leaders, business leaders, activists and political leaders.

Among those organizing, leading, working and supporting the March were Maulana Karenga, founder of Kwanzaa and the organization Us; Haki Madhubuti of the Black Arts Movement and Third World Press; Dr. Benjamin Chavis, March national director; academic Dr. Cornel West; Dr. Conrad Worrill; and women like Dr. Dorothy Height, a civil rights legend; broadcaster Bev Smith; Atty. E. Faye Williams; Barbara Skinner, community and political activist; Cora Masters Barry, first lady of the District of Columbia;

Mayor Marion Barry of Washington, D.C.; George Curry, of the NNPA Black Press of America; Rev. James Bevel, strategist for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Leonard F. Muhammad; Claudette Marie Muhammad; Final Call editor James G. Muhammad; Supreme Captain Abdul Sharrieff Muhammad; Student Minister Ishmael Muhammad and Nation of Islam officials and ministers and Believers.

“It is particularly important that we not only remember it but do our very best to revive the spirit of the Million Man March when you consider we were able to do the impossible of bringing together all of the various segments of our community,” said the Rev. Willie Wilson, in a previous interview. He was co-chair of the Washington, D.C. Local Organizing Committee.

(Final Call staff contributed to this report.)

From The Final Call Newspaper

 A MAN AND MISSION FOR YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW

By The Final Call
- October 12, 2021

by Nisa Islam Muhammad and J.A. Salaam

The Final Call @TheFinalCall

On September 22, 1931, a very special event happened that changed the course of history. It was the day when Elijah Poole met his teacher W.F. Muhammad for the first time in Detroit, Mich.

Their meeting was a match made in heaven. Master Fard Muhammad taught Elijah day and night for three years and four months before he mysteriously disappeared in 1934.

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He left his student with a mission to teach and guide the children of former slaves in America out of their mentally dead condition. After Master Fard Muhammad left, Elijah Muhammad began to teach that his teacher was in fact God in Person, and he had been made his Messenger and representative.

Elijah Muhammad later moved his family to Chicago where he worked tirelessly for 40 years to establish the Lost-Found Nation of Islam in the West.

Elijah Muhammad was born the seventh child of 13 children on October 7, 1897, in the small Southern town of Sandersville, Ga. He was raised in a Christian family of sharecroppers and his father was a Baptist preacher. The teachings he received from his father as a child would become a spiritual catalyst that prepared him for his eventual mission impacting the world.

He would fulfill what is written in the book of Malachi in the Bible, that Elijah would come to turn the hearts of the children to the fathers before the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

During his dedicated service, Messenger Muhammad impacted millions and raised a legion of followers that would raise others from their graves of ignorance. His economic program, independent schools, network of temples, Muhammad Speaks newspaper, thousands of acres of farmland and international trade and commerce have not been duplicated to the degree of his success.

He raised powerful students—Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Imam W.D. Mohammed, his son—and his top student, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan restored his name, his program, his wisdom and made a once-deliberately-miscast-forgotten man and his program a force to be reckoned with. Powerful forces, including the U.S. government, and others conspired to destroy the Nation of Islam during the 1970s but Min. Farrakhan’s faith, fierce determination and Allah’s (God’s) blessings have brought the Nation and its eternal leader back on the scene.

Recent documentaries and movies have focused on the students, Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, while trying to place a veil or shed negative light on the powerful one who brought light, life and power by Allah’s (God’s) permission.

The world will have to come to grips with a man whose work is nearly 100 years old in America, remains invaluable—and keeps moving forward.

 


Brother Ben X is a 27-year-old social media influencer, helper and follower of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad through Min. Farrakhan. With modern technology he reaches hundreds of thousands sharing wisdom, words and a way of life.

“The Teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad aligned with my nature; with me having the entrepreneurship spirit, and me already running my business. Also understanding that we as Black people needed a solution and to hear all the things that he talked about,” said Ben X. “Like separation, growing our own food, building our own schools and teaching our own children. It just seemed like the answer we needed, especially since we have been oppressed and not receiving the best treatment from others. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad brought us a solution to overcome those things.”

“In 1974 The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said we cannot sit down, we cannot lay down, we must get up and go to work. When he said, ‘ye are all gods and every time I look at a Black man I am looking at God.’ What is that?”

“God is a being with force and power. We cannot just talk about God and sit around. We have to start exercising some power. So if we see a problem it is on us to provide a solution. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, our unity is more powerful than an atomic bomb. So although I am a god, I am not the Supreme Being, so I have to find and unite with my brothers and sisters who have more superior knowledge than me in other fields,” he continued. “So, when we unite and find a solution, we can solve the problem that we have in our world today. That’s doing something for self in every aspect.”

“We know heaven and hell is two conditions of the mind. Just like our young people follow athletics and drug dealers. They look at what the entertainers are doing because they are looking for something,” he pointed out. “They are looking for that heaven that is in our nature, if they see something whether it is the luxury life, money, and good friendships in all walks of life as we were taught, they will follow it.”



“However, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad also said you should never have to condemn a dirty glass, just put a clean one next to it. Meaning, when examples are in front of them our people will rise up to be better examples too. So, I think we will see our youth following that clean glass versus that dirty glass.”

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s mantra of “Do for Self or Suffer the Consequences” was translated into every aspect of life, spiritual, educational, social and economic.

This focus fostered factories, grocery stores, bakeries, restaurants, import export exchanges, barber shops, beauty salons, farms, banks, dry cleaners, a newspaper printing plant, dress shops, and delivery trucks that fueled the Nation of Islam with meaningful jobs and empowered families.

Grammy Award winning rapper, activist, and Atlanta entrepreneur Killer Mike told The Final Call, “I just recently found out that Frederick Douglass was actually a real estate developer. He owned real estate, but beyond learning that fact, the only two leaders that have been effective and progressive with an economic cornerstone are the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Honorable Marcus Garvey.”

“The people who went beyond philosophy and actually did that in the real world were the Honorable Marcus Garvy and the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Many of the businesses that have been in my community as I was a child growing up were owned by the Nation of Islam members,” he pointed out.

He has continued in that vein, meeting with Min. Farrakhan and pushing his efforts to support and build economic ventures and build Black financial empowerment and wealth. One of his major ventures is Greenwood Bank, which was created to build wealth and the generational transfer of wealth in the Black and Latino community. The mobile banking platform also supports feeding people, HBCU’s and other activity that strengthens communities.

It was “inspired by the early 1900’s Greenwood District, where recirculation of Black wealth occurred all day, every day, and where Black businesses thrived. Today’s Greenwood is a Black owned banking system developed by us, for us. This is our time.” The banking services are provided by Coastal Community Bank.

A life giving teaching

The executive director of the Black Reality Think Tank in Milwaukee, Wisc., Dr. William G. Rogers, shared his thoughts about the value of the work of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Nation. He recalled the first time he heard the Teachings and how it changed his life. “My introduction to the Nation of Islam and the work of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad took place the spring of 1963.

When Minister Malcolm X debated Attorney Floyd McKissick at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. I attended that debate with a high school classmate who was a member of the Durham, N.C., mosque. Being an 18-year old Black boy from the South raised in a devout Christian home, I had never heard a Black man talk with such fire and power in the midst of White folks. My soul shook and my heart was beating fast,” he said.

“The Whites in the audience were getting upset and I admit fear did come upon me too. Minister Malcolm kept talking about his teacher and guide. Even though this was over 50 years ago I remember it like it was yesterday.”

“After that day it activated a thirst to learn more about Minister Malcolm’s teacher and guide. Who was he, what was a Nation of Islam and why had I not heard of it before? My sojourn to New York City June of 1963 was the beginning of my quest to know more about the Nation,” he added.

“Then I met brother Leonard 16X, the owner of a gift shop who was the catalyst that drove me deeper into the Teachings. He loaned me a book called the ‘Supreme Wisdom’. After reading that book and my Jesus teachings by my parents confused me. It was not until I heard a sermon by Minister Farrakhan called ‘Why I Preach Jesus’ that things became a little clearer.”

He also came to “realize and understand this organization and its teachings was the foundational philosophy and practice that would resurrect and rescue the lost Black nation.” He uses that knowledge in his leadership development work and ministry.

In 2021, the teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad still have a great influence in the way of young Black men and their callings. John C. Muhammad is alderman of the 21st Ward in the city of St. Louis. He is an up and coming progressive political leader. He started with grassroots activism after the 2014 police killing of Mike Brown, a Black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., and unrest that followed.

“The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the most important figure in the fight for liberation for the Black man and woman in America because it was his voice and his words that transcended the term Black liberation and evolved it into Black excellence,” John Muhammad said.

“Black excellence as taught and exemplified by the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the true ideology of what makes Black people so magnificent in our purest nature. Black excellence is more than a catchy hashtag or words written across the front of a hooded sweatshirt. Black excellence is in fact, our ancestor’s and forefather’s wildest dreams. It is our divinity. The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad represents that Black excellence which represents God. He is of God, sent by God, to guide the people of God, back to God.”

“People are just coming to grips with the genius of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad,” Dr. Aminah Al Deen, Islamic Studies professor emeritus of DePaul University in Chicago, told The Final Call. “How do you bring people who had been for generations in slavery, into humanness?”

 


“People are just figuring out how much was needed to accomplish all he did. They are still trying to understand the discipline that’s required, from teaching personal hygiene, to being able to work in your own best interest, to learning what you didn’t know, so that you can open your heads to learn more and learning the necessity of community.”

The Hon. Elijah Muhammad gave his people Islam in a manner and way that best suited for their condition. No one has been more successful in spreading Islam among Black people and affecting America.

“His impact is really immeasurable,” said Imam Abdul Jalil Muhammad, president of the Deen Intensive Academy.

“He was a man of destiny and it really needs to be studied because Islam was so important for the development of Black people in America. He was the person in the vanguard position for that. Just like you can’t measure someone’s faith and measure the truth of Islam. You really can’t measure the work that he put in to bring Islam to North America and in America. We thank him for all of his work,” he said. “The Muslims in America really need to echo my sentiments with respect to that.”


Muslims in America and millions of people around the world have been touched by the work of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad or his star students, such Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Imam Warith Deen, his son, and Minister Farrakhan.

Most often the mainstream media, naysayers and slanderers laud the students but disregard the teacher. Not everyone, however, is fooled. “His impact is undeniable for me in two big things at this moment,” commented Vicki Dillard, an online radio host and activist told The Final Call. “He identified for us who the devil is, who Satan is, and who the opposer is. Secondly, this notion of separation. I think that everything that we’re seeing happening now hinges on those two very powerful revelations that he gave to us. From the tricknology of our enemy related to this covid scandal, police reform, economic disparity, and it just doesn’t stop.”

“I think that the manifestation of this plague, as the Minister says it so eloquently, is forcing us to do exactly what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, separate. Unfortunately, too many of our people are hardheaded and love Babylon.”

“The times are forcing us to do what we should do on our own. Whether it’s teaching our own babies, homeschooling, to having ideas to start home businesses to have more income. Folks are under this mandate where they literally are going to be fired if they don’t take the shots. In every area of our lives we’re forced to look at what’s going on. I think the more that this happens, the more it’s going to force us to separate.”

The Honorable Elijah Muhamad was strategic in spreading his message across America. In the late 1950s and early 1960s what was the best way to tell his people about Islam and this way of life? He started a column in the Black Press.

The Amsterdam News, the Pittsburgh Courier, and The Westchester Observer featured hundreds of weekly columns from 1956 to 1962. The Pittsburgh Courier’s “Mr. Muhammad Speaks” column, started in the summer of 1956 and ran nonstop until 1959. The column increased the paper’s circulation.

Later, the Nation’s own newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, would be a major weekly publication and largest Black weekly newspaper in the United States.

“The Pittsburgh Courier was distributed by the FOI (Fruit of Islam),” former Muhammad Speaks Editor Askia Muhammad explained. “The brothers told me they would get the newspaper and fold it just so that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s column would appear. That’s how they sold it.”

Their distribution network rivaled the distribution of the Chicago Defender distributed by the Pullman Porters at the same time.

In the summer of 1957, the New York Amsterdam News started a column variously called “The Islam World” and “The Islamic World,” written by the Hon. Elijah Muhammad and printed until August 1958.

The Westchester Observer, in Westchester, N.Y., ran an unnamed column by the Hon. Elijah Muhammad from 1960 to 1962.

Those columns developed into to the Muhammad Speaks newspaper in 1960. It’s first headline: Some of this Earth to Call Our Own or Else. “The Muhammad Speaks was the Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s number one minister,” said Askia Muhammad, who was the first Muslim editor. “It was not only carrying his word, but his representatives. The FOI were in essence ministering to the people, representing him and the newspaper to the public.”

The Muhammad Speaks included talented journalists: Daniel Burley wrote for Johnson Publications, the Pittsburgh Courier and wrote the forward for “Message to the Blackman,” the visionary book by Elijah Muhammad. Richard Durham was the next editor. The paper was reaching more than 150,000 readers a month in mid-1962, and Mr. Durham became editor after Mr. Burley’s unexpected death.

Within a year the paper reached almost 300,000 readers a week.

Next came John Woodford as editor, then Leon Forrest, and Askia Muhammad, who has had a long career in journalism and is a senior editor for The Final Call.

“These were topflight journalists, brave enough to work for Mr. Muhammad,” Askia Muhammad explained. “They were not just somebody from a garage who took a class. These were topflight journalists.”

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad accomplished all he did with only a fourth grade education but was guided and taught by the prophesized Messiah of the Christians and Madhi, or Self-Guided One, of the Muslims. Learning and obtaining knowledge was a critical element of what he preached to his followers.


“The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us that becoming literate is a way of mastering the universe,” author Rabiah Muhammad, who holds a PhD. in English and who helped write and edit a book about his educational paradigm, told The Final Call. “He teaches, first and foremost, that what we need is a knowledge of self and a knowledge of God … . Why is knowledge of self and knowledge of God important? It allows us to survey the universe for the realities of things that exist. Take astronomy, for example. We tell our students to say to themselves, ‘I am astronomy,’ as we absorb the tenets of the science of astronomy.”

“Looking at literacy through the Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s lens shows us how to apply the knowledge and wisdom that we’ve acquired through the survey of our surroundings and beyond to apply them in a practical sense.”

From education to institution building and farming, the Rev. Dr. Al Sampson is deeply connected to Elijah Muhammad. Rev. Sampson is pastor of Fernwood United Methodist Church in Chicago and one of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s disciples. He has enjoyed a long relationship with Min. Farrakhan and accompanied the Minister on a World Friendship Tour after the 1995 Million Man March.

“The Honorable Elijah Muhammad took the power of religion and developed an economic liberation program for our people,” Rev. Sampson said. “There was a meeting, as you know, between Dr. King and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He had an economic strategy for our people.”


“That’s part of the reason why I’m working with Black farmers down South. Because we not only have How to Eat to Live, but we have to continue to work growing our own food. I call it the soul food vegetables. I’m the only preacher in Black America that has a Department of Agriculture in my church. My program is in memory of George Washington Carver at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo. It grows out of the church, the mosque, the temple with Prince Asiel and the Hebrew Israelites.”

He continued, “Frantz Fanon wrote ‘Black Skins, White Masks.’ He said that we adopt the values and attitudes of the master. What the Honorable Elijah Muhammad did for us was to bring us into a deep seated understanding that we are the sons and daughters of God that ought to be treated as queens and kings.”

In “The Promise of Patriarchy,” author Ula Yvette Taylor explains how Elijah Muhammad offered Black women something at the time that no other organization could, “the prospect of finding a provider and a protector among the organization’s men, who were fiercely committed to these masculine roles.”


Her book tells the story of how Nation of Islam women were given the opportunity to stay home and care for their children instead of caring for White people’s children or cleaning their homes. It freed them from the degrading experiences of working class Black women and allowed them to rear their families in racially affirming environments.

“Telling the stories of women like Clara Poole (wife of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad) and Sis. Ruby, Dr. Taylor offers a compelling narrative that explains how their decision to join a homegrown, male-controlled Islamic movement was a complicated act of self-preservation and self-love in Jim Crow America,” the book reads.

But these Muslim women were also educators, laying the groundwork for the Nation’s heralded Muhammad University of Islam independent school system and staffing the schools. They were also administrators, clerks, cooks, seamstresses, writers, office workers, ministers, nurses, business owners and were able to play other critical roles. When the Hon. Elijah Muhammad and the men of the Nation were arrested and jailed during WWII, it was courageous women who kept the Nation together.

That tradition continues today with Muslim women like Dr. Ava Muhammad, who is a sought after Muslim minister, speaker and National Spokesperson for Min. Farrakhan; National MGT-GCC Capt. Naeemah Muhammad, who leads the NOI women, as well as doctors, entrepreneurs, artists, journalists and welcomed to go as high as their gifts can take them.

From The Final Call Newspaper

The Obama Presidential Library brings excitement, but concern Blacks will be pushed out

By Tariqah Shakir-Muhammad, Staff Writer
- October 5, 2021





CHICAGO—Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama are promising to bring an “enriching” experience to the South Side of Chicago with the establishment of the Obama Presidential Center, estimated to be completed in 2025.

The $830 million, 19.3-acre, 235-feet tall project will encompass a library, museum, park and activity center, walkway, garden and children’s park. It will be located in Jackson Park, on former public land, and near the Black neighborhoods of Woodlawn, Kenwood, South Shore, more racially mixed and affluent Hyde Park and the sprawling University of Chicago. The Obama Foundation, created by the former president and others, is the force behind the library project. The foundation has said the center will create jobs, increase economic opportunity, “unlock the potential that has always existed on the South Side” and “celebrate our first African American president and First Lady.”

During a groundbreaking event in late September, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker showed their support by joining the former president and first lady digging symbolic shovels into dirt as part of the ceremony.

But for some South Side residents, a presidential center sounds nice but they wonder “where will I live and sleep now?”

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The Obama Community Benefits Agreement Coalition, which includes the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO), organizing group STOP Chicago, UChicago For CBA, the West Side Health Authority, Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, the Poor Peoples’ Campaign, and Black Youth Project 100, are concerned that a presidential center might result in disastrous replacement and displacement of residents in the predominantly Black area. The coalition has been fighting against gentrification and for other guarantees residents will be able to stay and enjoy any positive changes in their neighborhoods. They have been fighting for five years.

During a press conference shortly before the Sept. 28 groundbreaking ceremony, KOCO and STOP Chicago joined residents in demanding affordable housing protections for Blacks who don’t want to be pushed, priced or driven out. Mayor Lightfoot, they said, needs to follow through on promises to protect affordable housing in the Woodlawn neighborhood. Others said South Shore, within walking distance, is even worse off because it has no affordable housing commitments from anyone.

“We say, ‘Yes to Obama; No to displacement,’ ” said Shannon Bennett, executive director of KOCO. There is great love for the former president, but there must be something done about making sure people do not lose their residency over higher taxes and rent raises, he said.

Former President Barack Obama, left, and former first lady Michelle Obama toss shovels of dirt during a groundbreaking ceremony for the Obama Presidential Center Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2021, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Michele Williams, 79, lives near South Stony Island Avenue, which runs along one side of the Obama Center construction site. She is tired of seeing Blacks pushed out with no place to go as the South Side becomes more desirable and as developers come in. She foresees the same thing happening with the construction of the Obama Center, unless something changes. She believes the building she lives in will be demolished and rebuilt for higher paying tenants or owners. “Why isn’t the mayor with us? I appreciate what he (Mr. Obama) did, but he has to remember where he came from. He has to do it!” she said.

“They already out asking people to sell their property. That’s not right!” she continued.

Blacks in the city already have displacement, eviction and housing problems, documented in a 2017 study by the Urban Displacement Project. The group found:

42 percent of Chicago neighborhoods experienced a rapid increase in housing costs.

More than 200,000 low-income Chicago households (18 percent of all low-income households) live in low-income neighborhoods at risk of, or already experiencing, gentrification and/or displacement, especially in the southern and western parts of the city.

As of 2017, 59 percent of Chicago’s moderate-to-high-income neighborhoods demonstrated risk of or ongoing exclusion of lower-income households, a pattern especially prevalent in the northern part of the city and across its northern and western suburbs. One-third of Chicago’s low-income households, or about 400,000 low-income households, live in these potentially or currently exclusive neighborhoods.

22 percent of lower-income neighborhoods in Chicago were at risk of gentrification in 2017, and 16 percent were undergoing displacement of low-income households without gentrification.

KOCO member Parrish Brown told The Final Call he was concerned that the groundbreaking ceremony was only limited to officials and some media outlets. “The fact that there’s a ribbon cutting event and no community members present, usually when I see a ribbon cutting, it’s a whole bunch of people who are being in the plans and talking about how this development is going to support us,” he said.

Savannah Brown of STOP Chicago emphasized work Mayor Lightfoot could do to help the organizations and communities threatened by displacement.

“If we’re not in the conversations and the plan is already developed, and then you’re cutting a groundbreaking and we see all these signs and it’s a few people? What does that tell us in our own community?”

“There’s a misstep by the mayor and the city. They haven’t yet given us what we want. Obviously, we need her to give us the most affordable units as possible,” said the community organizer. Her group supports increased affordable housing along certain major streets to expand and strengthen protections for places where people live and want to live.

The Obama Foundation and mayor’s press office did not respond to The Final Call’s request for comment.

Just another displacement problem?

According to the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing, Blacks are four times more likely to be evicted from their homes than their White counterparts. According to the University of Chicago Press Journals and National Library of Medicine, low-income or “urban” tenants are typically limited to substandard housing in high-crime, poor neighborhoods.

With these statistics in mind and the long history of displacement within Black communities, some believe that the presidential center is just another part of the problem.

Maze Jackson, host of the online Maze Jackson Show, said it is not a matter of if but when the presidential center will cause Blacks to lose their residency especially as you approach the South Shore neighborhood, a few blocks south of the center.

“I don’t think that’s going to be a question,” said Maze Jackson. “I think that it provides a cover to continue to push people out of that area. … It used to be Roosevelt, then 22nd, now you’re seeing Bronzeville being taken over. When you think of UC (University of Chicago), connecting the dots between Washington Park and the Obama Center on 63rd, where’s the Black people? I would expect that you’re going to see very nice townhomes, single homes.”

He noted that the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam who teaches the program of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad of doing for self is the solution. He said it starts with residents owning where they live and not bending to pressure to sell.

“Realistically, we’ve got to encourage people not to sell, to stay in their homes, to appreciate the value of their homes,” he continued. “We have to circle the wagons and stop looking on the outside,” he continued. “The Minister’s answer of self-reliance is really the answer to all of our issues.”

Bob Israel, executive director of the Save Our Community Coalition, agreed: “You got to hold onto that land. It’s a master plan they got. … I know the University of Chicago is behind it, they split the atom over there. We got to bring attention to it; agitate, agitate, agitate! It’s been a constant battle with the University of Chicago.

“When they say ‘affordable housing,’ affordable for who? It’s a diabolical plan against us; I agree with the majority of what the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan says. They know a lot of our people are blind,” he continued.

Mr. Israel’s coalition helps to alleviate homelessness and poverty by providing educational opportunities and social services. He also argued an educational program on owning and maintaining property is desperately needed in the Black community, especially Chicago.

(This is the first in an occasional series of articles about the Obama Presidential Center and neighboring Black communities.)