Muhammad rose to speak. Most of that long, rambling lecture follows.
It is a full statement of Black Muslim doctrine replete with attacks
on Negro leaders--Negro preachers in particular. Herein we will find
a detailed account of how the evil black scientist Yakub created the
white world; we learn why the white race has endured for so long; but
most of all Elijah used the Atlanta Speech to make an impassioned
plea to Negroes to become “fearless.” [Observers feel that Muhammad’s
repetitious urging that Negroes cease to fear white people is one of
his strongest attractions for the Negro masses.]_
_Of particular interest, at least to me, is the Paulinean stance Elijah
Muhammad assumes in this speech. He begins by offering greetings of
peace and the good life; then he goes on to thank his local minister,
Jeremiah X, for having arranged this meeting. This done, Muhammad links
the Black Muslims with the “725 million more brothers and sisters in
the World of Islam,” and issues a special note of thanks to those of
his followers who have come from as far away as California._
_Finally, I wish to underscore the closing of this speech: “I am God’s
last Messenger to you. You must accept Allah as God.” This is the only
time I have encountered the doctrine of Elijah as the last Messenger.
But it bolsters my suggestion that when he dies, Muhammad will still
be “The Messenger” and that the new leader of the movement will be
a younger man, a titular head, while strong men like Malcolm X and
Raymond Sharrieff carry the load._
AS-SALAAM-ALAIKUM: In the name of Allah, the most Merciful God, to whom
all holy praises are due, the Lord of all the worlds; the most Merciful
Finder (of) and Lifegiver to the Lost-found, mentally dead so-called
Negroes here in the Wilderness of North America.
* * * * *
My Beloved Brothers and Sisters:
I am more than honored by your presence here this afternoon and your
sincere welcome to me and to my followers here in this great city of
Atlanta.
I thank Allah for Minister Jeremiah, my faithful minister here whose
tireless efforts in Atlanta and throughout the South have made this
great gathering here today possible. The work that Minister Jeremiah
has been doing here in the South has pleased Allah, and it has pleased
me too.
Year after year I receive letters from many converts here in Atlanta,
and I know that the Word of Allah is spreading rapidly among our people
here in the South because of the ever increasing volume of your letters
to me.
And, my beloved people, I want you to know that those of you here in
Atlanta and in other parts of the South who accept Islam, which is the
true religion of Almighty God, are not alone. Not only do you have a
fast-growing number of brothers and sisters in all of the Northern
cities, but you have 725 million more brothers and sisters in the World
of Islam.
I am also thankful to my followers who have traveled here to Atlanta
to be with me today from my various temples throughout America, and
especially the caravan of young Muslims who motored over 2,000 miles
all the way from Los Angeles, California, to be here on this grand
occasion.
My followers are with me wherever I go, and it is wonderful to have
such sincere people who will follow you all around the country like
this because it shows unity, and it also shows there is no religion
that can produce unity like the unity produced by Islam. Yes, today
the Muslims are in all the major cities of America, and if you look
around in the smaller cities you will find us there also. Just walk
around saying, “As-Salaam-Alaikum,” and pretty soon someone will reply,
“Wa-Alaikum-Salaam.”
Beloved brothers and sisters, again I must thank Allah for permitting
me to be in your presence here in Atlanta this afternoon. I am thankful
also to the Atlanta Police Department for the courtesies they have
shown us here in this city, and I want everyone to know we are a people
who are grateful to anyone who is nice to us, and peaceful toward us.
We are a people of peace. We are seeking to spread brotherly love
among the so-called Negroes for it is they who have been deprived of
brotherly love. We (Muslims) have come through the same trials and
tribulations as they have, and now we want them to see and share the
brotherhood that Islam has given us.
Islam is not a new religion. Islam is not a religion that has been
organized by the white man. Islam is the religion of God Himself, and
Islam is the religion of all the prophets of God, from Adam to Muhammad
(the last). Islam was the religion of Moses, Noah, Abraham, and
Jesus. Islam will be the last of the three great religions (Buddhism,
Christianity, and Islam) that now dominate the earth.
Islam must be the last of these three great religions because God
Himself is the Author of Islam, and Islam is to bring peace and
contentment after this war and trouble-making world which you now know
has been destroyed ... and you can see that this trouble-making world
is already on its way out.
Islam has not made great progress for the past 6,000 years because this
is the religion that God Himself would spread in the “last days.” If
Islam had been forced upon all the people of the earth during the past
6,000 years there would not have been any “World of Christianity,”
there would not have been any “World of Buddhism” ... and there would
never have been anything like the “Caucasian World.” Islam would have
prevented their progress. God Himself has held Islam “in check” to give
these other “worlds” free reign during the past 6,000 years.
But, Islam was the religion of the black people who lived before Adam
was made, as far back as 66 trillion years ago when the earth and the
moon were together and formed one and the same planet ... and which at
that time was called “moon” instead of earth.
According to the word of Allah to me, one of our wise black scientists
was upset over the dialect the people were speaking, and he wanted to
change the language and make all of the people speak the same dialect.
He became angry because he could not get the others to go along with
him, and when he saw that he could not accomplish what he wanted, he
drilled a huge shaft into this planet for about four or five thousand
miles deep, and filling that hole with high explosives he set it off,
with the intention of destroying all civilization. He thought he would
get rid of us.
That part of the planet which we call “moon” today was blasted 12,000
miles from its original pocket that it had been rotating in at the time
of the explosion, and this part that we call “earth” today dropped
36,000 miles from that pocket and found another pocket and started
rotating again ... (it all happened in the twinkling of an eye) ... and
that part (moon) that was blasted away dropped all of its water upon
this part (earth), and this is why three-fourths of the earth’s surface
today is covered by water, and also why there is no life on the moon.
We are the people who devised that great destruction of our planet.
That part (moon) that you see up there in the sky shining at night was
once joined with this part (earth) that we now five on. Before the
explosion the entire planet was then called “moon.” (Not really by
the word “moon” that we use today, but by a word in Arabic that means
practically the same thing.) We will have another great destruction,
and we will provide that one too. We ourselves (the black nation) are a
people who can never be destroyed. There never was a time when we (the
black nation) didn’t exist. We don’t have any birth record of the black
nation. We have no beginning and we have no ending. So don’t talk
about getting rid of the Black Man, because you cannot do it.
Again I say, we are happy to be in Atlanta today, the capital of
Georgia ... my birth state. I was born in this state, and grew up in
this state. I was a grown man, married and the father of children even
before I left this state. So don’t try and make me acquainted with
Georgia. I am already acquainted with Georgia.
This great city of Atlanta with its five colleges, institutions of
learning, is one of America’s most important cities, and is even the
gateway to the South. We thank the city for permitting us to enter it,
and the courtesy of the police department, and the mayor of this great
city, and the governor of the state. We are happy to be called one of
your own state-borned sons.
My beloved people, I am one of your brothers; I am not a foreigner, but
I have a Divine Message from the Lord of the Worlds that sounds foreign
to you because you have not heard it before.
I want you to know that we so-called Negroes are the people who have
been on this planet for trillions of years. I say so-called Negro
because you are not a Negro. You are members of the Asiatic Nation,
from the Tribe of Shabazz. There is no such thing as a race of Negroes.
This is a false name given you during slavery by your slave master,
who, after robbing you completely of your knowledge of your homeland,
your parents, and your culture, called you “Negro” or Nigger because
that word means something that is “NEUTER” or “NEUTRAL.” Therefore you
are now a little group of people on this earth who stand out because
you have become neutralized by ignorance of yourself and your own kind,
and of your enemy. You are “neutral” ... not united with yourselves,
among yourselves, nor are you united with your own people of your own
world.
Since ignorance of self and hatred of self makes you reluctant to
unite with your own kind, and despite your love and worship of your
slave master he will not let you unite with him ... thus you are in
the middle, standing alone, neutralized by your own lack of knowledge,
unacceptable to either friend or foe ... NEGROES!!!
This is why you are called NEGRO. The slave master gave you this name
because he understood the meaning of it, although Webster has cunningly
kept you away from the true meaning of it by saying it refers to black
people ... and especially the black African who has no education or
independence.
My dear brothers and sisters, and distinguished educators of Atlanta,
you have often wondered why you had to call yourselves by this name
“Negro.” It has been due to the fact that you didn’t know its origin
and you didn’t know your origin. You have been asleep. You don’t know
whom you are from, where you are from, where you are going, how you
should stand, how you should sit ... you know nothing at all but what
your slave master chooses to tell you, and since he tells you only that
which will benefit himself and his own kind, you have been made into a
NEUTRAL person ... a shiftless, helpless NEGRO.
If the white man says to you, “Johnny, go back home, I have no work for
you today,” you go back home and sit down and wait for the white man
to send for you (when he sees fit) to come back and work on his job.
You don’t try to create a job for yourself. You are shiftless because
the lack of “proper” education and self-knowledge has left you lifeless
(mentally, economically, and otherwise).
I am not making fun of you. I am trying to lead you to the point where
you can see the basic cause of your condition. I am one of you. I came
through the same trials and tribulation and the same hell that you
did. What I say about you I am also saying it about myself. I am your
brother; I am here, if necessary, to give my life to save yours. I am
not running from death. I am running to save your life. So take me for
a friend and not an enemy.
You must learn to make jobs for yourselves so that the next time “boss”
tells you he does not have any work for you, you can tell him that you
are going to do some work for yourself.
Three hundred years under the persecution of your slave master has made
you into a blind, deaf, and dumb ... and an absolutely “dead” people.
He has taught you to eat the rotten and worse type of foods, even the
flesh of that poisonous animal, the swine (pork) ... filling your
stomach with this poison meat (pork) has deteriorated you physically,
mentally as well as morally. The Arab word for the pig is “Khainsuer.”
(“khain” means “I see,” and “suer” means “very foul.”) This word
thus means “I see something that is very foul, filthy, diseased” ...
something that is not fit to be eaten by intelligent, civilized people.
Your slave master reared you on this poisonous meat, which has dulled
your brains, and you ceased to think about your past history, and then
you were deprived easily of the knowledge of your own God and your own
religion. Thus it became easy for the slave master to deprive you also
of the knowledge of your own kind, and the knowledge of his kind. Now
you don’t know the way back to your own kind, and his kind won’t accept
you ... so they call you Nigger or Negro, which means deaf, dumb, and
blind ... neutral, dead, lifeless.
We, the Nation of Islam, who believe in freedom, justice and equality
stand not only before you today, but before the entire world as we
declare this truth about the American so-called Negroes. The nations
of earth are faced today with a worse problem than has ever presented
itself in the history of mankind, and the primary ingredient of
this great “world problem” involves the condition and position of
the so-called Negro here in America ... 20 million ex-slaves who
have become a nation within a nation and who are now crying out for
something that they can call their own. This is creating a problem
not only for America, but for the entire world, and that problem is:
how to give you a knowledge and understanding of yourself, teach you
the knowledge of your own God and your own religion, and to teach you
the knowledge of your own nation so that you can make a stand for
yourselves as other nations are making for themselves.
This problem is so delicate and complicated that only God Himself can
solve it. I am not a man who has grabbed a suitcase with a bible in
it upon my own impulses. No! I stand before you as a man who has been
chosen for you by God Himself. I did not choose myself. This must be
made clear! The Divine Revelation which I have received and which I am
preaching to you and to the entire world came to me from the Mouth of
God.
I did not see Him in a vision and receive my mission in a vision as
others before me received theirs. I was in the Presence of God for over
three years, and I received what I am teaching you directly from His
Mouth.
Let the infidels curse and swear at me. Let the infidels go on the
warpath of propaganda against Elijah, but I warn you: “You better
listen today to him who has received his instructions directly from the
Mouth of Almighty God.” I did not receive this gospel from a paper, nor
a book, nor from a vision, nor from an angel, but directly from the
Mouth of Almighty God Himself.
My beloved people: I know your problems and your burdens; I know your
problems and your burdens; I know what you go through; you don’t have
to tell me ... for I have the ABSOLUTE CURE for all your problems and
ailments. All you have to do is listen to what I say, and then jump up
on your feet and follow me.
I don’t want you to be too proud, as others were in former times;
they were too proud to follow the words of the prophets. I don’t want
you to be like that. I want you to place more value on your life than
they did. Think something of your future, and your children, and your
people. Accept Allah and His religion and follow me and I will lead you
to Him and to a heaven right here on this earth. Come and follow me,
and you will not have to wait until after you die to see God, nor will
you have to wait until after you die to enjoy a heaven somewhere up in
the sky.
Beloved brothers and sisters: after receiving this Divine Revelation
that I am teaching you from the Mouth of God, I have not stopped one
day for the last twenty-nine years. I have been standing, preaching
to you throughout these past twenty-nine years, while I was free and
even while I was in bondage. I spent three and one-half years in
the federal penitentiary and also over a year in the city jail for
teaching this truth. I was also deprived of a father’s love for his
family for seven long years while I was running from hypocrites and
other enemies of this word and revelation of God, and which will give
life to you and put you on the same level with all other civilized and
independent nations of this earth ... and this is the greatest desire
of Almighty God Allah and Elijah Muhammad. This afternoon I want to
teach the so-called American Negroes the true knowledge of themselves
that will lift them from the bottom and place them back at the top of
civilization.
I know how you feel. I know how you think. You think as Ezekiel says of
you. Ezekiel says, “This whole House of Israel, they say their hope was
lost and they were cut off from their fathers.” You are a people who
are all hopeless because you think there is no hope for you. You think
that because you have been cut off from your own people for so long
there is no chance of you ever uniting or of ever becoming anything
but what you now are. I say you are wrong. The God of your Fathers,
whose proper name is Allah, will strengthen you and cause you to stand
upon your own feet as an independent people in the eyes of other people
on this earth.
This Truth that I am teaching will raise you up from the grave, not out
of the earthly grave, but out of the “grave of ignorance.” You just
need the knowledge of yourself, your own God and your own religion. God
has missioned me to give you this Truth: freedom, justice, and equality.
These are the things I must teach you about: freedom first, because
you have never been free here in America. You know nothing about
the pleasures or happiness of a free person. You know nothing about
justice. You know nothing about equality, or being equal with other
civilized nations of earth.
I know you and your thoughts about me and what I teach. Inwardly,
some of you are with me 100 per cent, but outwardly you are not. Why?
Because you have the greatest enemy over you a man can have, and that
is “FEAR.” Fear is your greatest enemy. You were filled with fear of
your slave master when you were little babies, over 400 years ago when
our fathers were brought in chains to the Western Hemisphere on a slave
ship that was named “The Good Ship Jesus.” The captain of that ship was
an English Christian named John Hawkins.
The American white people had come to this country from Europe and had
already begun to subdue the Indians. We were brought here to a people
who could not speak our language nor could we speak theirs. Thus the
language of our forefathers was soon destroyed, and you know nothing
about it today. The language of the slave master was forced upon our
foreparents, and they were brought up also wearing the names of the
slave masters. Today, you are still speaking their language and
wearing their names.
During 300 long years of slavery you were deprived of the privilege
of even going to church, and there were no such things as schools for
you in those days. Besides depriving you of education the slave master
did not teach you about God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost that he is now
teaching you about today. You were never allowed to sit with them in
their churches until just a few years ago.
Beloved brothers and sisters, think over this: for over 400 years you
had no knowledge of yourselves, no knowledge of your own religion, and
no knowledge of the biblical prophecies and predictions pertaining to
the “lost people” who would be on this planet until the last days,
and whom God Himself would have to search for and then save them from
the clutches of their enemies. You have never been given a knowledge
of that because your slave master knew those prophecies were speaking
about you (the American so-called Negroes).
For less than 100 years now a little bit of the Christian religion has
been taught to you in a diluted form, but never the full text of it.
You have never learned the prophetic fate of Christianity, nor do you
know anything about the Caucasian people who have translated the bible
into their language. Yet, you are a people who think you know all about
the bible, and all about Christianity, and you are even foolish enough
to believe that nothing is right but Christianity.
Your slave master tampered with the words of the bible; he “translated”
it; he “revised” it; he fixed the reading of it to make you a worse
slave than your foreparents were. The slave master is the “god” who
“sent” some of your fellow slaves to preach to you. Their favorite text
was, “Servant, obey your master.” But he didn’t really have to preach
that because the lashes of the whip upon the backs of your parents for
300 years had beaten them into obedient submission.
But, my beloved brothers and sisters, the Christian religion you now
are believing in so strongly came down to you from your slave masters.
They kept that religion and its secrets guarded from your parents’ ears
for 300 years. What was then so sacred in Christianity? What was so
sacred in the bible which they kept locked away from the slaves? What
was so sacred about these things that the slave master did not want his
slaves to read or even hear preached? If it was so good, why didn’t he
want his slave to hear this good then? Why didn’t he want his slave to
believe in God then?
First of all, the slave master did not want the slaves to know the
truth about God nor about His true religion, fearing that the slave
would then begin looking for his God to deliver him from his white
oppressors.
I know some of you are afraid to listen to this truth but I am going to
preach it to you until you are free of that fear. A man told me a few
years ago that I would be wasting my time to come to Georgia. He said
that the Negroes in Georgia were more afraid of white people than you
will find anywhere else on this earth. I told him that I myself was
born in Georgia and did not see why they should be afraid of the white
man. I told him that I was a grown man, married and with two children
when I left Georgia. I also told him that they need not fear the white
man; the only thing they need to fear is the fear within themselves.
I say to you that your fear of the white man is THE GREAT EVIL. Fear
is of such nature that it will make you deprive yourself of your
own salvation. Fear is the enemy that will make you stoop and bring
yourself to disgrace before the world. Fear is the real enemy that you
and I should throw into the garbage can.
My beloved brothers and sisters, how could you accept of God, Jesus and
the Holy Ghost. How do you know? I am not asking you to answer these
questions, because God has missioned me to answer them for you. You
don’t know the answers. All you know is what you have heard your slave
master say.
You say Christianity is the right religion and that you believe in God
the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. You believe that this
Jesus is God’s son, and that He gave His son to save you. You say that
the Holy Ghost “overpowered” a virgin girl named Mary, yet you don’t
call the child the son of the Holy Ghost, you call the child “the son
of God.” You charge God with being the father of this virgin girl’s
child.
My beloved brothers and sisters, how could you accept a religion that
teaches you to believe the God of Righteousness was responsible for
making a virgin girl in Palestine pregnant with a child 2,000 years
ago, called this child his “son,” and let this “son” die for the sins
of the wicked world?
When a man is not married to a woman and he commits such a sinful act
it is called adultery. God is not married to a woman, and if He commits
such a sinful act that produces a child out of wedlock, which actually
opens the gateway of adultery to the entire world, then it is a shame
to ask me to believe in that god.
We in Islam do not ascribe “sonship” to Almighty God, because He has
no son. All of us are His “spiritual” children, but He has no physical
son. To say that God has produced a physical son out of wedlock
(without being married to the mother of that son), and then placed this
son before our eyes and said, “This is my beloved son; all who believe
in him and follow him shall be saved,” actually opens the gateway for
all kinds of adultery and other indecent acts.
God had already told His prophet Moses that the people should be stoned
to death for adultery. Now if God had come 2,000 years after giving the
law against adultery to Moses, and after “courting” or “overpowering”
Mary, and she was a virgin girl who had never been touched by any man,
and yet she became pregnant with His child, and that child is the flesh
and blood “son” of God ... then the Christians are charging God Himself
with having committed adultery with Mary.
This just could not have been done if God was a spirit. If He was a
spirit He could not father a flesh and blood son. He would have to
have a son like Himself. If He was a spirit, then His son would have
to be a spirit too. And, if He did beget a son by Mary, then all other
women would be justified in producing sons that same way, by committing
adultery and then blaming it on the “spirit.”