02/27/1977
IWDM Study Library
Survival Day

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Speaker 1:
Mrs. Rosie Swilly, Assistant Vice President Banker, Mr. John Durham, Executive in S and L business and I believe brothers and sisters that completes our list. Let us give all of our distinguished guests applause. Again, we want to thank you for coming. And now brothers and sisters, the moment has arrived that we all have come here this afternoon to witness. The one whom Almighty G-d have given the mission to revive Islam. And it is my pleasure at this time without any further delay. It is an honor and it is a pleasure to bring before you, Imam Wallace D Mohammed, spiritual head of the World Community of Islam in the West. Brothers and sisters, Honorable Wallace D Mohammed.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Thank so much. Thank you. To our honorable and distinguished guests, members of the press, Muslims, people, brothers and sisters, all of you. We greet you with the greetings of all the Prophets. The greetings of G-d's peace, Asalaam Alaikum. In the name of G-d Most Gracious, most merciful. I bear witness that nothing is worthy of worship of except G-d. And I bear witness that Muhammad is His slave servant and His Messenger. Dear beloved people. I feel very victorious today. Many things that we hoped for and prayed for today, we are seeing those things before our eyes. Very happy that some of our brothers from the prison communities could come out here with us today. We thank the prison authorities for permitting them to be present with us.
We have a tremendous propagation work going on behind prison walls. Many of the institutions have Jumu'ah prayer regularly. They conduct regular Jumu'ah prayer and some of them have large attendance, as large as the average Mosque community on the outside. And most of you who have been with us for some years, you know that many of our Mosques that are established now were established by brothers who were converted to Islam from prison life and who came out and got busy and called their brothers and sisters to Islam and immediately set up a Mosque so that they would have a place to worship. The film that you saw I witnessed it too behind closed doors there. And I'm telling you, I don't usually enjoy watching any performance or any activities that focus on me, but I'm telling you, I got so tied up and so hung up in that movie I can't wait to see it again. I want see it again. I told the secretary, correspondent Secretary Jafer, I said, seeing that I'm looking at somebody else. I said, that man's talking there he must be somebody else because I'm enjoying watching him and listening to him.
All praise is due to Allah. Very proud of our community. We have really been blessed to do miracles just in two years time. In two years we have performed miracles by the help of Almighty G-d and we don't intend to stop. We're going to keep working as if we hadn't done anything and Allah is with us and we are going to be more successful in the years to come than we've been in the years behind us. Now I really don't have the spirit to really preach or talk to you a long time. So I'm going to make it short and I hope it will be sweet and short.
I'm going to make it short. I promised to talk on black and white, so I'll keep the promise, but we'll just go right to the point, make them and go to leave this Mosque and go to centers where we'll meet in homes where we'll meet and socialize. This is really a happy occasion for us. Cause actually to me it's the biggest holiday for the community because we have traditionally celebrated February 26th to respect the coming and the works of the comings to America of Master Fard Muhammad and his great work in America and the works of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. So we still have this conventional annual convention and we have decided among ourselves, I suggested it and the staff said, well, we were wondering when that was going to come. So I suggested something that they had been anticipating a long time. So I suggested that the Savior's Day be named Survival Day. And someone asked me, they said, "Brother Imam, why did you change the name from Savior's Day to Survival Day?" I said, sister, haven't you realized yet that you are saved?
So we are getting busy now rolling up our sleeves, we're going to make sure we survive. That's a big job, believe me, that's a big job. That's an everyday job. You know, I've talked to real racist, real racist people and I think they talked to me because they thought I was just as real as they were. In those days you know we had a reputation and I met real hard to the core racists and we had discussed race problems. And I was very curious to know if people really believed the things that I heard they believed in. So I would ask them once I felt safe, it was safe, just what they thought the real difference was or is between black and white. And I got different answers. I learned from the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the technique of making people relax and be themselves. So I got a lot of interesting, well theories from different races that I talked to. And believe it or not, I talked to a black racist once who identified himself as a white man.
No, he was as black as anybody in this Mosque right now. He had straight hair, slightly sharp features, but his lips were heavy as mine or heavier, but he had slightly sharp features and he just kept referring to himself as a Caucasian, as non-black, a member of the Caucasian people. So I kept listening, listening and wondering how can I shock this man back into his senses? So I said, look, I said, how come they call me black and you not black? So he looked and looked like he said, where are you coming from now? He was styling, his face had changed. So I told him, I said, if black is black, I said, then you are black and I'm brown. He didn't like that at all.
He said, my blackness came from the sun. He said, your blackness is your blackness. You never were any other color. Your blackness is your own blackness. He said, I'm not really black. He said the sun made him black. So I told him, I said, well, I said, you look black. So he said, do you know? Now look now, he told me my blackness was my blackness, but his blackness came from the sun. He said, do you know the G-d Rama? I said, no. He said, the G-d Rama cursed the black people your forefathers. I said, he did? He said, yes.
I said, that must be the story, the interpretation of the Ham story I've heard from some American white supremist. So he said, I don't know. He said, I doubt it. He said, this is ancient, very ancient in our scriptures. He said, we are told that the G-d Rama got angry with your people because they wouldn't obey him. And he took the sun disk and he flung it over the head of Africa, of the African people. And when he flung it over their head, say the sun came so close to him that it burnt them black and shriveled up their hair. So I told him, I said, well then what did G-d Rama do in southern India to make you so black? I said, how come your face got so burnt and your hair didn't shrivel?
Actually our color consciousness, this racist color consciousness that we have black and so-called whites, or so-called blacks and so-called whites, we inherited this really from religion and we don't know what we are talking about. Long ago people got off the track, they got into the wrong translation or interpretation of the meaning of black and white for society, for the religious society that presented the world with these terms.
Actually black meant darkness, spiritual darkness, the absence of understanding. When one is without understanding he's in the dark, mentally in the dark. So ancient people of scripture, they use the term darkness to represent the absence of understanding. You see? And later, because these people who didn't have religious understanding were people without guidance, without religious guidance, they came to be called sinners you see, the sinners. And sinners began to receive the stigma black too. So in theology, the Satan is the black, the Satan is called the black angel. The black angel. So this black and white terminology to really clear it up and get our minds free of black and white color consciousness we should go back to religion, to ancient religion, to theology and see how these terms came down to us, to our present generation. In our colors, black, white, brown, whatever your color may be, there is nothing at all unless your mind begin to be influenced by some idea you have received. Now you've got people who actually think that their white skin is divine. They think that almighty G-d marked them with whiteness to identify them as excellent, supreme, superior people. And then you have some black people too who have taken on the idea of black supremacy or black divinity who feel the same way about their blackness. But you know when we actually study ourselves and admit the truth that we see in ourselves and know of ourselves, we know that there is no definite superiority in any color.
Certain people because of their social history, because of the way they have lived, the kind of things they've had to do physically, the geographic locations or makeup, the conditions that they had to come up and live under for generations and generations, conditioned them or trained them to withstand climatical conditions that people who weren't raised up in that climatical area are not conditioned for. So you find that black people can stand more sun, more heat of the sun than most Caucasians, but also we find that the Caucasian, he has the superiority that his environment that his native environment gave him, because most of us can't stand the degree of cold that the Caucasians can stand. And racist have come up with all kind of crazy explanations. Now, I'm not saying that there's absolutely no difference between the colors. Certainly there's some differences. You are black and man is pale, you see? So there is a difference. And you came up differently so you are different. But take the same colors and put those colors in the same environment and raise them up together and you'll see that the children will begin to lose the distinct superiorities or so called superiorities that they had before. And that is because the human being like animals, plants, adapt to the environment and if you live in an environment long enough, your nature prepare you to live comfortably, reasonably comfortable in that environment.
I made a trip to Guyana in 1967, no, pardon me, it was 1970 and believe me, I thought I could stand the sun. I had never had any problem with the sun in the United States. I have been on the beaches all day long. I've been outside playing ball, working all day long in the sun, in the hot summer. When I went to Guyana, that sun taught me some respect. I'm telling you. I frightened my wife when I came back home. She said, you look funny, you don't look like yourself. That's how dark I had gotten. My eyes are kind of brown, they're not dark, they're kind of brown, medium brown. Sometimes they look light brown when the sun is hitting them. And she said, your eyes look so funny, all the black skin, funny looking eyes sitting there. So I said, well, this is good. I said, maybe I can convince some of these people around here now that the sun is the black paintbrush and if you want a good black and you can sure get it, if you get in the right spot on the earth where the sun is beaming directly, those rays, I'm telling you, they are terrific.
I used to say as a young man, look at those Caucasians trying to get a tan like us. They can't get a tan. They have to put all the oils on and do this and do that. Look how they peel, skin peel. They have to apply those oils to keep their skin. Do you know I peeled? I am telling you I thought my whole head was going to change. Believe me, I started scraping the comb to see if the skin under the hair was coming off. I actually peeled, the skin just peeled off. That's how bad I was burned. Now there were Guyanese brothers down there that weren't bothered at all. And Indians, they weren't bothered by it. It didn't bother them at all. They were used to it. But me, I got burned up down there. I've never been burned like that before.
I was in Arabia once and the sun was very hot there, but it didn't make me peel, and I'm telling you the sun is very hot in Saudi Arabia too. Very hot. But I don't know, there's something about Guyana. That area down there is different. Now in order for us to really get free where we can really make progress, our sisters don't have much problems. Very few sisters have a color problem. It's mostly the brothers. Our brothers are going to have to stop thinking of themselves as animals. See, that was a trick of the Caucasian slave master.
They wanted us to think of ourselves as animals. They had already introduced us to their society as animals. When they brought our people over here from so-called Africa into slavery, they introduced us as a brute beast. "Be careful of these things. They are Gorillas, they'll tear your head off. And they exaggerated our sexual powers. I wish they really knew the truth. They'd stopped making all this fuss you know. I hear, I watch TV program sometimes. Some crazy racist bigot on TV talking about the well, the Negro he is, he's like an animal. He's like the ape. He has unusual sex powers. What is the man talking about? I'm eating all these wheat germs and stuff around here.
You have to explain something to me. I don't know, what happened to me? And I find that my black brothers, they're not necessarily super, super spooked either when it comes to sexual potency. I've worked with them, the deepest hues, black hues. I've seen them complaining. In fact, they've asked me on the job say, look, I've been taking this here. What do you take? So we have to really save ourselves and to save ourselves, we have to come out of this animal mentality that slavery produced in many of us and stop thinking of ourselves as physical things, physical people, and think of ourselves as human beings.
Your color is just an accident. You could have been any color, but what you are inside is more important because you have to live with that. You can't change that. Your mind is your mind and if you don't do something about it, it's going to destroy you. But your color can't do anything. It can't harm you. You can live with your color. The Holy Qur'an says that G-d made us nations, tribes and families, nations and tribes from a male, a pair, a single pair, a male and a female. The Bible teaches us too that all people descended from one ancestry, male and a female. So the Qur'an and Bible tells us that people are one nation, one race really. Holy Qur'an says the people were one nation or one people until they became divided and separated and became tribes, nations and tribes.
So if we understand the wisdom in the Qur'an, we will grow stronger as intelligent beings, intelligent people. The Holy Qur'an is telling us that these distinguishing features make it possible for us to identify each other. When you see a blackface man with woolly hair, you know he didn't come from Europe, you know he came from so-called Africa, right? So we can know each other and identify or recognize each other by the features, and that's the importance of that. The Holy Qur'an says that G-d made us nations and tribes so that we may know each other, not that we should despise each other. So if we study the blackness and the whiteness of the people, we'll see that each has his own superiority, each has his own superiority. And each man should be proud of his own identity. Almighty G-d, He willed that we come up in a climate and a climate in a part of the world that affected or contributed this makeup to us.
So we should be proud and thankful to G-d for what He has made us. And we are only inferior if we think we are inferior. And racist people want the race that they are contending with to think they're inferior. And the Caucasian racist, they're so clever. When they see you getting away from racism, then they'll start even praising you for your racism. They'll start respecting you. Say, yes sir, we are like you because you are like us. You believe in what we believe in, that G-d made people different and black people and white people are different by nature and they shouldn't marry and shouldn't do this and do that.
Don't you know those are nothing but hypocrites. They know those people are not ignorant. They know that all this talk of the fear of having black blood, so-called white blood mixed, has really contributed to the mixing of the races. It has made Caucasian women curious. They want to know "What is so different about these people?" They have made Bilalian men curious. They want to know "What is so different about the white woman? So they want just from experience to have each other. Now who have excited this curiosity? The racist. People normally don't care too much about leaving their own race to mix with any other people. Races have been on earth for thousands and thousands in fact millions of years and they haven't been too much concerned about mixing in with other races. The African people are happy in Africa being Africans as they're called, and the Europeans were happy in Europe being Europeans as they're called. But when this false idea of color classification and a superiority just in your color, physical makeup, when that false idea reached the minds of the people with religion, giving it some real divine or scriptural support, it just drove people crazy.
I have had Christians tell me, Caucasian Christian woman, she told me, she said, "Well your people were cursed. Says Ham the son of Noah was cursed. Says the curse didn't fall on him, it fell on Canaan. They were made black and G-d punished them to be servants of the people. She said, why don't you admit? She said, I'm a school teacher and most of your people they don't want to do anything but play. She said, your people are not really human like we are. She told me this. And I led on and prepared her to have that kind of nerve, you see? And she was telling me, and she actually believed it, that we were cursed by G-d. She pretended that she believed it if she didn't, that we were actually cursed by G-d and that G-d has decreed by divine decree we have to be servants and we don't have it in our nature to be scientists. We don't have it in our nature to be bankers, successful bankers to be engineers. We don't have that in our nature. She said, most of your people are good at art, drawing, art, drum beating, dance.
Now as long as we carry blindly or unconsciously these racist ideas that are self-destructive in us, I mean destructive to our own self in us, we are going always be inferior. Now here is the shocking truth and that is that we are actually inferior. I know it hurts to hear that, but it's the truth. We are not inferior as a race by nature, by our natural makeup, but we are inferior as a race in our mental makeup. You see. There's nothing wrong with our natural makeup, but there's something wrong with our mental makeup. We are inferior. You can take a thousand so-called Bilalians and lead them from an employment office that they have already guaranteed them a job. Ain't none of 'em got no job now, but tell 'em, say look, say "There's a party across the street, man out of sight." And you'll have most of the Bilalians leaving that position in the line. Take chances on maybe getting a job tomorrow just to run and see what's happening at the party.
The scripture says, my people are destroyed by music and songs. Now those people that had that scripture, were our slave master. And they read that and they said, well this is good G-d gave us something else to use to destroy these people. I'm telling you the truth. I'm not joking. In scripture, they found ways to destroy the slave and make it impossible for the slave to ever become a natural man. They found ways right in the Jewish scripture because the Jews had all kinds of tricks, all kind of schemes that were used against society. The Jews recorded it in their scriptures you see. So it said my people are destroyed with music and song. And we have been destroyed with music and song. See Bilalian people, the so-called African people coming from the hot continent of Africa were people who were allowed a lot of free time because of the hot climate.
But the Caucasians, they come from a very cold climate. Europe, and if you've been listening to what they're saying about the coming of another ice age and they're talking like they're very serious about it, you are hearing them tell you that Europe hasn't been a country enjoying climatical conditions long enough to really establish any great period of what we call civilization. Civilization for Europe have been short span, but in Africa and Asia, civilization has been long span by comparison. They say they find that the so-called African and so-called Asian people have long, very long periods for millions of years maybe where in a period of a million of years that they enjoyed what you call tolerable climate. But they're saying telling us that in Europe they weren't able to enjoy it for long, long time.
That the civilization is just completely wiped out and they have to start all back over again, all back over again. Now people who come from a long, long history like that of having to battle constantly the forces of their environment to survive by nature are strugglers or fighters, people who are active and aggressive. But people who have enjoyed long periods of relaxed comfortable climate, they are by nature inclined to take rest, to take life easy, to not to get too excited. And you know this is our nature. Most of us, it take a lot to excite us. We don't get too excited. And the Honorable Eijah Muhammad once said, he used to make a lot of jokes too. He said, we are the original man.
He said, look how we just go along peacefully. He said, roof can be falling off the house, said the house can catch a fire. Said as long as the fire ain't under us, say we just sit just as quiet and contented. He say, we must be the original man. Now he had talked for some time, I can't give you all his talk, but he had described even the lion, certain animals that how because they had been so long ruling their kingdom, they just take everything for granted. So he was saying that we've done everything so things don't excite us. Said well, we have had great civilization. The things that they're doing we have done already. So those things don't excite us. I believe there's a lot of truth to that. I actually believe there's a lot of truth to that. See because well 17th century, even the 18th century Bilalian people in Africa had great Muslim kingdoms. You see? So it hasn't been that long since we enjoyed wearing king robes, queen garments, sitting on thrones having people serve us. So it hasn't been too long. So we still inclined to sit on the throne even though it's not there and just have somebody in serve us.
And I've seen documentaries and I've did a lot of reading too on African tribes where a lot of 'em walk around, I mean they're still living in the days of aristocracy you see. Tribal leader, he got about 200 men and women don't do no work walking around like an elephant with elephantitis. I'm telling you the truth what I saw in the film. Big old heavy king and meat dropping off, hanging all off him like slabs. He don't do nothing. He just walk a little distance, they bring him, no kidding, about a dozen strong men. They bring him and they sit him down. And he finally rolled himself up and he went like this, pulling all that fat, had his, what do you call it? His staff, chief staff. And he made his little talk and looked around to see if they got all his wives together and made it home.
I've seen that same thing here in Chicago. I'm not joking people, I'm not joking. I've seen that same thing here in Chicago. I visit with a brother and he come wobbling out the bedroom in his, the slippers were as golden as he could get 'em. And his big old silky looking robe, big diamond ring on his finger. Looked like a diamond. I think it was glass. Yeah, I'm going to tell you why I think I think it was glass. His process didn't look right, looked like one of them homemade processes. He sat down, talked to me, introduced me to his family. They came out and he sat back and reared back in his chair, called one of his little girls. She ran up there, pulled his slippers off for him. Yeah, I mean he was styling brother, big fat king you see. If you haven't observed it, start noticing our people, look at each other and watch how you act. Most of us act like we got a kingdom somewhere. Yeah, we got a kingdom somewhere and a whole lot of money and servants.
We have to get out of that mind. Instead of slavery making us hard and making us hate idleness, it just worked to worsen the condition that was already in us when we were brought over here. See already we used to a lot of leisure, laying out in the sun, beating on bongos and drums and whatnot, eating nuts and fruit, right? That's right. Yams and whatnot and singing and dancing and shaking. We just had a whole lot of time. Wasn't nothing due, wasn't no winter coming, wasn't no winter threatening us you see. If you didn't have no house, you could sleep right out there on the bush or under the bush or on a rock or something. So you wasn't forced to have to do anything. Caucasian brought us here and made us hate work because they used work as a punishment on us.
"Nigger, get up, plow that ground. And don't you fall out until the mule fall out." Alright. So look, doing that over three centuries really killed everything in you brother. That is killed all your desire to want to work the land and build up a country. You had no desire to do that. You hate work. Man talking about go to work. "Work? What he talking about? I thought I was free. What kind of work? You got anything clean?" "What do you mean?" "Office boy, errand boy, something carrying letters or mail messages." "Nah, all we got is a job shoveling coal."
I ain't going to shovel no coal man. Well we got a field of watermelons to bring in. Oh hell, I ain't going to do that old slave work. My people did that man. They paid that price. I ain't never going that way again. Yeah. We walk down the street and see something looking too nice. We got to walk over and pull on it, see if it'll come down. Yeah. Pass by a car looking too clean. We'll find some way to spit on it you know.
Look, that's what slavery has put into us. A dislike for beautiful, well cared for civilization. We don't want that. We ain't satisfied until we knock out the window. Chip the paint off. Got to deface it a little bit because we hate this white man's material successes. In our subconscious we are really trying to tear down the white man's material successes. Yeah, white so and so and so. You made my people do it, but I'm free. I'm going to tear this stuff up. They had to build it up. I'm going to tear it up. That's what we are quietly saying in the subconscious. So these people have put this in our nature, put this in our mind and it has become part of our nature. Don't think you can't change nature. Nature is formed by over a long period of time practicing or doing a certain thing. If you practice or do a certain thing a certain way over a long period of time in time it becomes your nature. You see? So you can make people in any nature you want if they will submit and follow what you suggest for them. So they suggested it for us an animal life, a destructive self-destructive animal life so that if we ever got an opportunity to be free, we will say we can't make it. Please take us slave master, please take us back master. We can't manage by ourselves.
 All right, what do you have to do? You have to stop buying anything that they sold you of a racist nature. And they sold us black. You are black and I'm white. You are not black. Your skin is black. How come you are black just because your skin is black? I know some of you love black so much, you want to jump up right now and disrupt and interrupt this meeting here and tell me you black. And prove and run your blackness down to me. Well I'm going to run something down to you right now. You are going to die one of these days. I don't know how soon it's going to be, and your skin is going to start rotting first. And it is all going to rot off your bones and you going to be white there laying in your grave.
I see so many wonderful hints in the Qur'anic language. There was a verse that says, what if G-d had made the night perpetual? Just made it stay night all the time. Or the days perpetual. Just stay day all the time. Now see, when we are bragging about some extreme that we've taken on, we have to study what we are talking about. Study what we are saying. Study the kind of mind that we are growing into. Who wants to be all black? What would you think in the morning if you woke up and went to the mirror to brush your teeth your teeth were black, your tongue black. You look in the mirror, the white of your eye done turned black. Ain't nothing on you but black.
You don't want all that black do you? See G-d made us to have some balance in our life. There has to be some balance. He ain't made no man all black. He made him black with some white teeth or yellow teeth, white eyes or red eyes. But it's not all black. He's a combination of black, white or yellow pink and different colors, right? Alright, so when you look at him you can stand to look at him because he's not all black. But if he was all black you wouldn't want to look at that. Who want to look at just plain blackness?
The only time you want to look at plain blackness is when you want to go to sleep. When you want to go to sleep, you want plain blackness, you don't want anything but black. And you go to sleep. And most of the time you can't have all black then. You see some little colors in the blackness, right? Yeah, the black is black. Got some colors in it. Seem to be anyway, I'm not playing down blackness. We can say the same thing for the Caucasian, for the so-called whites. What white person want to be all white? White eyes, white hair, white eyeball, white pupil. He looked in the mirror and saw nothing but white he'd be frightened to death.
But thanks be to the creator. He has balanced this thing so that we have color with some other colors given a little contrast you see? And the Holy Qur'an so beautiful tells us to observe how G-d has put black and white in the mountaintop. Not just black, black and white, not white alone. Black and white. And the green and the other colors in the mountaintop. You see? Mountaintop stands for government. So the Holy Qur'an is telling us that see G-d, he made those proud mountains of many colors, of various colors. How come your proud government can't admit the various colors? You see, long before we came to this terrible extent of racism, discrimination and whatnot, almighty G-d had put it in the Holy Qur'an in the symbolic picture of the mountain, we have G-d telling us that your government should be like the mountain top. In the top of your government the colors of the people should be represented, you see?
And He goes before that, G-d most high tells us that there are various colors, various colors in the plant life, in the mountain top. That is in the organic life or matter. Says and similarly in yourselves. So what is almighty G-d telling us? He's telling us that our colors come naturally, that we get our colors just like the plants get their color, just like the stones and the other minerals get their colors. You have gotten your color, your color come from the sun. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad before he passed away from us, he said some things that helped bring you to the truth of his own teaching. He said the sun is, pardon me, the colors come from the sun.
He told us that the colors come from the sun. So your colors come from the sun. The pale comes from the sun, the white come from the sun, brown, black, whatever color, green. All these colors come from the sun because in the sun there is the light and in light is all the colors. And you know if a plant grow in the dark, it gets no color. But if it grows in the light, it gets color. Have you ever accidentally left something on your grass and you come back, the grass is yellow under that piece that you put on the grass. Leave it long enough, you pick it up white. So what does that mean? No more color. And black, what does that mean? No more color. So actually science tells us that black and white are not even colors.
They're not colors. White is a reflection of color. Black is the absorption of color. All colors coming in neutralizing each other. We see black. Then all colors being reflected and canceling out each other we see white. So what we got to boast of in our colors? Nothing. But if we go to religion, to the true religion, to the Holy Qur'an and if we look at the wisdom in the Holy Qur'an, we will get a good message and we will come into the right kind of color understanding that will really contribute something to our social uplift. The Holy Qur'an points our attention to the signs of G-d and shows us that in day and night there's a message for minds that are open to G-d's guidance.
Day comes after night and night comes after day. And they both work together to support life. Life can't live by day alone. It has to have day and night you see. We get tired, we want night, we want to rest. We want to close our eyes. When we are rested we want the light of day. The light of day make us energetic. We like the sunlight, makes us energetic. But when we have used up our energy, we want to replenish. So we don't want to see no light. The light hurt us then, right? "Oh man, turn that so and so light out." But as we get rested, we rush out to the sun. We are happy. It's got us all excited you see. So almighty G-d has put darkness and light into our lives in the proper balance. We need both. Are you saying that we need white women and black women? That we all ought to get together and mix up? No, stay on the right track.
Look, the real meaning of color for human beings should be a spiritual or social meaning, not a physical or biological meaning. If it can't be applied spiritually or socially to human life or the social life or spiritual life, then we should reject it. It means nothing unless we are picking grapes and we know that black grape has a certain taste and so we like the black grape, we pick the black grape. So here black now is a way of identifying a certain quality or a certain taste of grape, right? But does it run true throughout? No. You'll pick up something black and you'll spit it out before you get in your mouth good. Say good G-d almighty, this black tricked me this time.
So it is with white. Certain things we like white the best. You taste it "Oh I prefer the white one." But if somebody say, do you want all white now from now on in your diet? You say no, what kind of fool are you? Cause you'll get something white that you won't want in your mouth, right? Alright, so there is no way of establishing superiority in colors. We have to establish it somewhere else. Now wouldn't G-d have been a petty and weak G-d if He had established superiority in color? I wouldn't have to study any deeper than your skin to find your superiority, but because G-d is so wise and great, I can't even get to know you until I reach you inside.
I have to reach your mind, reach your feelings and your heart, your thinking before I can get to know you. I can look at your blackness, I can study it, I can put it under the test tube slide and work with it for a million years. But if I didn't get a chance to relate to you as internal beings one to another, I never got a chance to know you. Right? Alright, so dear beloved people, in talking on black and white today, I wanted to say to you that there are natural powers in so-called black people that are characteristic of their own power.
We as you know, are usually stronger physically than Caucasians. Now we can meet a Caucasian once every now and then you meet one, I'm telling you he's just two gorillas in one. But generally the black man is physically stronger than the Caucasian, but the Caucasian it has been proven holds up longer under long, steady grind. Why? It's because you haven't been conditioned for that. You can condition yourself for anything if you have enough time. The marathon races, who win 'em? Caucasian. The short dashes who win 'em? Bilalians. See, they have been conditioned to go a long time.
They got something worthwhile following for a long time. The things that interest us brother, they're short term things and they're within reasonably short distance. The Caucasian, he's had the freedom to go a long, long ways. So he runs to another city. I remember the time if you ran out of the neighborhood you might be lynched. See? So it's going to take generations before we come into a kind of physical freedom and get a desire, our own desire, a natural desire to just go all over the world physically. We walk a little bit. "Oh, I'm tired, man, let's stop." We can do something quick and get it over. Don't have patience, right? How come you don't have patience? Nothing came through in 300 years. Why should you keep waiting for something? Yeah, I'm showing you brother, how slavery worked in you to destroy your natural human makeup and you're going to have to get it back, but you can't wait for nobody to give it to you. You're going to have to take it. And how do you take it? You take it by getting a new mind and forcing your body to obey that new mind.
You know flesh ain't over mind. Mind is over flesh. Tell yourself look, I've been having a lot of bad habits from slavery, from the slave days, Wallace, you're going to put those habits down or I'm going to knock you down. Look here, I'm the boss of this thing here. What you see here, the boss is standing in the kingdom. That's right. And that's what all we all are going to have to do. We are just going to have to take our places as bosses in our own makeup, be the boss in your own physical body and get rid of those old crazy slave habits. Stop thinking about next month.
Start thinking about next year. The average one of us just think 30 days in the future. That's next rent, next utility bill. How many of us got a plan for next year or two years from now? I know you got it, I know many of you got it, but I'm just drawing attention to the problem. Most of us, we don't have no plans for that long. You know may say, well that is the same way for most deprived people. You are wrong. Within the last 10 years in America, especially in the big cities, non- Caucasians like the Latinos, they have started to take on our slave inherited mentality.
And it's because the future is dark, even the Caucasians can't see which way to go. Life has become so confused in America, people don't know what America is all about. There was a time when most Caucasians, they knew what America was, but now they don't know what America is. Most of 'em don't even know what America is you see. So the minority races or the ethnic group, they too are in a state of confusion and they don't have direction now. But I remember 15 years or 20 years ago, the average member of a minority race, even us, we were much better off than we are. But the average member of a minority race they had planned, they were planning next year, next year. Man probably wasn't making nothing but $30, but that Latin American was putting something up for next year.
He was scuffling, had his sons and nieces, uncles, aunties, all staying in the three room apartment with him. About four families paying one rent. And they were averaging maybe 40 or $50 a week, most of 'em working. They were saving that money. And in three or four years that Puerto Rican or Mexican family had a business of their own. This was traditional for them. They were conditioned by their mothers and fathers to don't give up just because you don't have what the other man has. Take whatever you got and make it count, you see? And pretty soon they pulled themselves out of the rut. But poor brother, making almost as much on his job as the Puerto Rican tribe that was staying in that three room apartment was making all together. Whole tribe, aunts, uncles, nephews, everybody together wasn't making hardly anymore. And the one brother, he working two jobs, one for International Harvesters, another one for Pullman.
Sometimes you come home with almost a thousand dollars for one week pay. I'm telling you what I know. One week, almost a thousand dollars. But that man is paying his bills monthly. He ain't talking no further then a month. Every once in a while he'll talk next year. And you know what he say? "Next year I'm going to get me a Rolls Royce." Now I'm going to close out now. I didn't intend to talk to you this long. Do you know how come our minds are like that? You know how come we can't work for too far in the future? Hope have been killed by three centuries of enslavement. We don't have the natural hope in us that human beings should have. We don't even believe we'll have a chance. "Oh man, circumstances are so uncertain. Conditions are so unpredictable. I can't plan for no two years from now. These white folks may have us back in slavery man." This is reality I'm giving you. I know black people right now who think that maybe next year we'll be back in chains.
"See if this thing don't go right man and these... Look we ain't made it nowhere. Shoot, Carter's in there now. Next election Carter can change man. They put too much pressure on Carter he'll have to go along with the establishment man. And look here brother. They already got the camps ready man."
Speaker 1:
So how can we plan for the future with this kind of dim, sad outlook on the future thinking that maybe next year we'll be in chains again. Now those that speak these things outwardly are the brothers who just, I'm telling you, they really been carried through it. They've been through it. They've seen so much trouble until they shell shocked from social interactions.
But you've got many who don't say these things. They feel 'em in their hearts. They don't feel secured in America. Get out of that. Get out of this old black white thing. Stop thinking of yourself as black people. Stop thinking of yourself as slaves, ex-slaves. You ain't no ex-slaves. Somebody else was an ex-slave, they were an ex- slave when they took the chain off them. You free. You've never been a slave unless you let somebody make you a slave. You understand what I'm saying? Alright. You have to think of yourself as an American. You are an American. You are a citizen of America.
"How? I don't have the right." That's because you won't accept in your mind that you due the right. We can't go on like this, thinking of ourselves as people who were given permission to live in America. No, no. You have a right to live in America. A right equal to anybody else's right to live in America. Nobody give you permission to live here. You got a right to live here. Homesteaders mentality. That's right. The government gave the homesteader a house and gave him some privileges, some exemptions until he could establish himself. Now suppose that homesteader had kept that homesteader mentality until now. He'd be in the condition we are in, thinking that he's not in a legitimate America. "Well after all, I didn't have my own land. The government gave me a house and excused me from paying normal taxes and normal payments until I got established." There are a lot of Europeans and others who came here and they were given privileges, they were protected. The government encouraged people to migrate here and gave them privileges, gave them acres of land. I think it was about 60 acres of land, wasn't it? Homesteads, 60 acres of land and a lot of privileges. Now suppose they would have carried an inferiority complex because they didn't come over here with Columbus and get out and say, this is mine.
Most of the Americans here had no claim until somebody gave him a claim. All right, I'm an American, I'm a citizen of the United States claiming all the rights of citizenship. And I will fight and die defending my claim. And until you get that kind of mind, you ain't going to make no progress in this country. How can you make progress in a country when your mind is conditioned against even moving?
Alright, I don't know if I'll be successful or not, but I'm going to tell you what I'm going to ask our leaders to do because our condition is just this bad. I'm going to meet with our leaders. They already got together and discussed it. We're going to send letters out to 'em. Herbert Muhammad is here right now. He's already reached a great number of outstanding leaders, Bilalians and Non Bilalians, and they've already given their support. And we are going to call another meeting asking religious leaders, civil rights leaders, community leaders come together with us. We want to plan a way out of this. We going to do it.
Imam WD Mohammed:
You know after the war was won they had a period of reconstruction, didn't they? After slavery, you didn't have a period of reconstruction. We haven't yet gotten together to scientifically study the effects of slavery in our present generation and to see what must be done to free us from slave mentality, from slave behavior. We haven't studied it. We haven't examined the effects of 300 years enslavement here in our lives. We haven't identified scientifically the behavior that we have that's against our own future. So let us come together and do it. I'm going to ask the leaders, they're ready. They already told me they're ready. I'm going to send them a message. We're going to get together and we are going to set up so many seminars throughout these United States until they're going to be more plentiful than churches used to be on State Street. And you know how many churches they used to have on State Street?
Going to organize people and have 'em just crusade all over the country. You're talking about a mission. This is going to be a mission, going to have 'em go all over the ghettos, the big populations of the city, sitting up here and talk for a week. Teach these people what economics is, what politics is. Teach them from the ground on up to the Presidency and let 'em see that this world is a real world. This world ain't put together by dreams and spooks. Put together by intelligence and delicate steel fingers, sharp pencils and good working pens and a lot of other complicated fine tools. So we are going explain this thing and going to give our people a right picture of what citizenship is. We can't really take advantage of our rights of citizenship here in this country because we haven't yet understood what citizenship is.
We can't participate as we should in elections, in voting and whatnot because we don't even understand what it's all about. Now it's the duty of the leadership of our people, not only our people, the deprived people of America to set up seminars and preach knowledge, preach political orientation, preach societal knowledge, the knowledge of how to put society together in the right pattern. Preach this knowledge as hard as we preach Jesus died for your sin and preach it as often and as many places as we preached. Jesus died for your sin and I guarantee you in a year we'll be on the way brothers. Asalaam Alaikum
Speaker 1:
Now brothers and sisters, we want you to hold it just for a few minutes. We have few announcements to make and after which you can leave. We don't want anyone to leave right now because we have very important announcements to make. And this of course is to all of the Mosque officials and believers across the country. It won't take just a very, very few minutes to make this announcement. Dear brothers and sisters in Islam, as indicated to you earlier by the Honorable Wallace D Mohammed, an oral test is to be given to those believers who are seeking certification by the Honorable Wallace D Mohammed as Imams, student Imams or ministers. This notice is to serve as a reminder to all those interested in functioning as Imams, whether entering into such functions for the first time or already functioning in that position.
The test for certification we anticipate will be given by the Honorable WD Mohammed on national telephone hookup. The date presently established unless notification comes otherwise is Wednesday night, March 9th at 7:00 PM. Each mosque can begin now identifying trustworthy persons who will be responsible for collecting and mailing the sealed envelopes. Test scores will be returned to those taking the test within 10 days or two weeks. The scores will be graded according to Imam qualification, student Imam or minister qualification or not acceptable in any of these positions. Be certain to write or print legibly your name and address. In preparation for this test we recommend that you study closely the following areas. A, the prayer service for Jumu'ah. That is the Jumu'ah prayer. B, that is Jumu’ah congregational service. B, the new organizational structure and the Chief Imam's position on various matters.
C, the principles or pillars of Islam and all their applications. D, the general meaning of the words used by the Honorable WD Mohammed in their scriptural sense. The language of WD Mohammed E. Review the terms devil, shaitan, Iblis and Jinn as they're used by the Honorable WD Mohammed. A list of qualified Imams, which is to be made available to the people, will be sent to all Mosques after the tests are completed and scored. Elections for qualified Imams can be held by the Mosque membership, keeping in mind the qualifications that have already been sent out that must be met by those persons voting. Now you've already been sent these guidelines. All Mosque elections are to be held no later than April 6th, 1977. They can be held before that if a Mosque feels it is ready but no later. This election is for the Imams of the Mosque in those areas where the Imam has not been recently elected or given a vote of confidence by the people.
 All the other Mosque positions that have been designated for election should also have been completed by that time, such as treasurer, complaint officer, certain consensus board members and so forth. You'll further find coming from Chicago at the request of the Honorable WD Mohammed, a document clearly spelling out the positions taken by him on various issues. Most of you should have already seen such material. This next document is to be signed by the Imam so as to ascertain that he understands and agrees to abide by the guidelines established by the Honorable Wallace Mohammed for continuing membership in the World Community of Islam in the West. In closing, we can say that we are indeed blessed to have such a leader as the Honorable Wallace D Mohammed.
His recent decision to forego largely administrative matters is not to be taken to mean that we should not continue to seek from him or to expect to be leaderless in our continuing search for truth. In that light, you may still expect to find guidelines and recommendations coming from us here in Chicago if and when he so directs us. It will be up to you to accept them or reject them. Asalaam Alaikum. Also, I would like to add that the Chief Imam made a tape explaining his position in regards and his relationship to the World Community of Islam. He is our spiritual guide. Now a lot of administrative duties that he once handled, which kept him tied up and kept him and prevented him from doing his religious duties, the things that he wants to help in the religious circumstance. Well he is resigning from those positions or rather from those problems that he has been receiving in the past that have tied him up and have kept him from doing the other duties that he need to be about. And so we are going to send this tape to all of the Mosque so that you will hear it and you will understand the Imam's position in regard to the World Community of Islam and the other things that he has in mind to do.
Now, do we have any who are here visiting with us for the first time? If so let me see your hand. Now I believe you were given a white card like this. This is an acceptance card. If you believe in what the World Community under the leadership of Iman Wallace D Mohammed is doing, and you would like to become a part, if you would like to get involved in this, we want you to fill out this card and return it to the Mosque. Now, at this time, we would like to have another donation after which we're going to say the prayer. Would you please bring the charity buckets?

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