The Final Call | Minister Louis Farrakhan

Black Youth: What Must Be Done

By The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan | Last updated: Jun 20, 2017 - 1:59:21 PM

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The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan greets young man in Chicago while leading the F.O.I. into the community.

[Editor’s note: The following text is excerpted from a message delivered by the Honorable Louis Farrakhan at The Final Call Administration Building in Chicago, Ill. on Sept. 30, 1992. The speech was the first message delivered by Minister Farrakhan at The Final Call since the re-acquisition of The National Center, headquarters of the Nation of Islam.]

I would like to speak tonight on the subject of the attack on Black youth, especially the attack on young Black men. Why is there an apparent conspiracy to destroy Black youth? What is so different about our youth that they could become the object of a conspiracy from the highest levels of power? Why have they become a generation marked to be destroyed?

If you were in power in the United States of America, it would be your duty not only to govern according to the Constitution of the United States, but it would be your duty to plan against the enemies that you see that might endanger your status, your power, your privilege.

There has always been a fear among the White rulers of this nation that one day Black people would rise to do unto them as they have delighted in doing unto us. It is this fear on the part of ruling Whites and on the part of White males, in particular, that causes them to make examples of Black men who get “out of line.”

Min. Farrakhan greets young sisters during the 10,000 Fearless Day of Action and Community Service event in Atlanta, Ga., during the Holy Day of Atonement 2016 weekend, Oct. 14-16, 2016.

This is why most of our Black leaders have been the object of a propaganda campaign that has either led to the imprisonment, assassination, or to the discrediting of that leader and his ideas.

Ideas are the real power behind any man and any movement. There is no great man in history that has ever been great without an underlying idea that is the source of his greatness. Most great men draw strength, guidance, and vision from their ideas. And when they spread their ideas, they spread their vision and give hope to people based upon the people’s acceptance of that leader’s ideas. When you kill the leader, you must also destroy the idea that gives the leader leadership and acceptance among the people. When you kill the idea, you kill the vision so that the people cannot and will not make progress.

Min. Farrakhan with powerful young brothers of the Delta Iota Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc. at Rutgers University.

Every great leader was a great visionary and every great visionary had an idea out of which the vision was born. When that leader was destroyed by those in power, those in power set their sight on destroying the idea, thus nullifying the vision so that the people would remain consistently blind and dependent on White people.

Now there is a problem with our youth and a conspiracy against them. At the root of this conspiracy is fear, fear that our youth are not afraid. Fear that there is nothing the enemy has devised that can control Black youth. Fear because the enemy understands the nature of the youth, the nature of the time, and what time has prepared in our youth.

What is the nature of our young people that makes them the object of a conspiracy and the object of fear? You could be 14, 15, or 16 years old, but when you are stopped by the police, they do not treat you as a child. The enemy’s fear of Black youth is so intense that the enemy will kill our young people either on the streets or in police stations. The enemy feels that they have to get rid of Black youths because if they don’t one day Black youths will get rid of them. But what is the nature of our youth?

Min. Farrakhan greets Alaia Muhammad, daughter of Marcus Muhammad (hip hop artist Yung Bruh) and Angie Muhammad.

The Bible and the Holy Qur’an teaches us that if you look at the history of Moses, who is the great liberator of the Old Testament, he was born from among a slave people with the idea to liberate his people.

Leaders like Moses are so endowed by the Creator with such a strong love for their people and a will to overcome their enemies that God uses their heart. He uses their mind. He uses their spirit and He uses their will. He deposits His word in them and riding on that will, riding on that determination, riding on that spirit and that love that they are born with for their people, God uses them as instruments for the total liberation. But that liberator has to have helpers who share His own spirit.

There is a scripture in the Qur’an that says Moses sent Joshua to spy out the land that God had promised. But when he went to spy out the land, the land was filled with giants. When the report came back that the land was filled with giants, the children of Israel did not want to go and take the land, even if God were with them. They didn’t have the heart to stand up against the giants.

But the children were more of the mind and spirit and determination to challenge whatever was in their way. Allah (God) can’t use people who are weak in faith because God is going to ride in on your faith in Him. He wants to prove to the world that I (God) am with you. So if I (God) take children and send them against the giants and the children overcome the giants, what else can the world say but Allah (God) was with those children?

If you take that scripture and bring it up to the present day, we can see what is happening because today our own fathers who believed in Noble Drew Ali, who believed in Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, who believed in the great teachers of the past, they were not strong enough in faith to carry the vision on when the leader was not among them.

So this becomes a personality cult where we adore a certain man and make him a hero. But that’s not the purpose. The purpose is to become imbued with the vision and the idea that made the man who he was that you may become the great man of today and tomorrow.

Our fearless Black youth are ready to move for liberation. It is not necessarily that they have to move the giants or Caucasian people who have become like a mountain in the eyes of Black people, but, like Jesus said, “If you have faith the grain of a mustard seed, you could say to the mountain, be removed.” What Jesus was talking about is the mountain that you have erected or that Allah (God) has allowed to be erected as a powerful symbol in front of you. God wants you to go, and if you had faith the grain of a mustard seed, you could say to the mountain, “be removed.” And that’s the difference with our youth today.

Our youth have the basic quality to say to any mountain, “be removed,” and they are willing to go over the mountain, under the mountain, through the mountain, around the mountain or remove the mountain. That is what creates the terrible fear in government—that the right man, coming with the right message, connecting with that kind of spirit in the youth, liberation will never have to be a dream anymore. We don’t ever have to sing “We Shall Overcome” with young people today with God’s idea at the root of their brain. We will have already overcome.

The fearlessness of youth, the anger of youth, is being turned into a self-destructive modality. It isn’t that Black people want to kill one another, but business is being removed from the Black community and we, as the elders, have not supplied or created jobs for our own young people. Since we have failed in our duty and government is failing in its duty and jobs are being removed, the young people have no place to go.

Now the spirit to organize is in our youth. We’ve always had what they call youth gangs, but never like today. You say, “it’s terrible, this gang problem.” But there is a positive side to it. What you see as terrible is the fact that our people are coming together, but they are coming together for negative purposes. That’s because the vision and the idea that they are required by the time to get involved in is not yet in their head. But what you see is the most powerful sign of the awakening of the masses. They are coming together. They have their own symbols, hand signs. … You say that’s madness? Well ask the Masons is it madness. Don’t you have your hand signals? Don’t your fraternities and sororities have handshakes?

So all the gangs have done is brought it out into the open; but with their spirit, their fearlessness and their willingness to die as well as to kill, they become a force of fear now. The mothers are crying out: “For God’s sake, let’s get rid of the gangs.” No, mother, don’t cry out to get rid of the gang. Cry out that the gang gets the right idea so that they become protectors of the community. What I am suggesting is that what we want to do is turn a negative thing into a positive force, not destroy what God Himself is allowing to be created.

You have to recognize the time and what must be done. What time is it? It’s the end of a 6,000-year period of rule given to the idea of White Supremacy, and it’s the beginning of the time of the rise of the darker people of the earth. If it’s the time of the end of White Supremacy, you can’t go to White people begging them for a job because they don’t have it to give you anymore. Allah (God) is taking their jobs from them so you won’t depend on them anymore. It’s time for us to create jobs. It’s time for us to do something for ourselves. It’s time for us not to go to the White man for his education. It’s time for us to educate ourselves because the Caucasians are going to educate you in a way to serve them and your time of being their servant is over. It’s time for you to come back and serve Allah (God) and serve yourself.

You must join onto your own kind and stop trying to join onto somebody else. The same way you would get together in what is called a gang because you have certain things in common, what is more common than the fact that we are Black people. What is more common than the fact that we are the children of slaves, and what is more common than the fact that Allah (God) is at the root of our existence.

We are normally and naturally brothers and sisters, flesh of each other’s flesh, blood of each other’s blood, and bone of each other’s bone. If there is going to be any integration let it be from a position of strength. You can’t integrate with somebody stronger than you; you will get taken over. But if you integrate with yourself and we become strong, then whomever we want to sit down with and form an alliance with, it will be from a position of strength for progress.