When the Word is Given... / A Report on Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and the Black Muslim World

by Louis E. Lomax

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.