have been far and away better Christians than this slave-master who taught you his
Christianity!
"You have sweated blood to help him build a country so rich that he can today afford to give away
millions-even to his enemies! And when those enemies have gotten enough from him to then
be able to attack him, you have been his brave soldiers, dying for him. And you have been always
his most faithful servant during the so-called 'peaceful' times-
"And, still, this Christian American white man has not got it in him to find the human decency,
and enough sense of justice, to recognize us, and accept us, the black people who have done
so much for him, as fellow human beings!"
"YAH, Man!".. ."Um-huh!" "Teach, Messenger!".. ."Yah!".. ."Tell 'em!".. ."You
right!".. ."Take your time up there, little Messenger!".. ."Oh, yes!"
Others besides the Muslims would be shouting now. We Muslims were less extroverted than
Christian Negroes. It would sound now like an old-fashioned camp meeting.
"So let us, the black people, separate ourselves from this white man slavemaster, who
despises us so much! You are out here begging him for some so-called 'integration!' But what
is this slavemaster white, rapist, going about saying! He is saying he won't integrate because
black blood willmongrelize his race! He says that-and look at us! Turn around in your
seats and look at each other! This slavemaster white man already has 'integrated' us until you
can hardly find among us today any more than a very few who are the black color of our
foreparents!"
"God-a-mighty, the man's right!".. ."'Teach, Messenger-" "Hear him! Hear him!"
"He has left such a little black in us," Mr. Muhammad would go on, "that now he despises us so
bad-meaning he despises himself, for what he has done to us-that he tells us that legally if
we have got one drop of black blood in us, that means you are all-black as far as his laws are
concerned! Well, if that's all we've got left, we want to reclaim that one drop!"
Mr. Muhammad's frail strength could be seen to be waning. But he would teach on:
"So let us separate from this white man, and for the same reason he says-in time to save
ourselves from any more 'integration! '
"Why shouldn't this white man who likes to think and call himself so good, and so generous,
this white man who finances even his enemies-why shouldn't he subsidize a separate state, a
separate territory, for we black people who have been such faithful slaves and servants? A
separate territory on which we can lift ourselves out of these white man's slums for us, and
his breadlines for us. And even for those he is complaining that we cost him too much! We
can do something for ourselves! We never have done what we could-because we have been
brainwashed so well by the slavemaster white man that we must come to him, begging him, for
everything we want, and need-"
After perhaps ninety minutes, behind Mr. Muhammad, every minister would have to restrain
himself from bolting up to his side, to urge him that it was enough. He would be pressing his
hands tightly against the edges of the speaker's stand, to support himself.
"We black people don't know what we can do. You never can know what anything can do-
until it is set free, to act by itself! If you have a cat in your house that you pamper and pet, you
have to free that cat, set it on its own, in the woods, before you can see that the cat had it in
him to shelter and feed itself!
"We, the black people here in America, we never have been free to find out what we really