The Final Call

Dr. King, Land and Revolution

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The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us in How to Eat to Live that food can keep you here and food can take you away. Food is an essential ingredient for life, and Minister Farrakhan reiterates what the Messenger has long said: “Ownership of producing land is a prime and necessary part of freedom. A people cannot exist freely without land—and the so-called Negro in America is evidence of that.”

For the last 45 years we as a people have not sought after land but pursued instead a dream “… that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.” Each year they roll out Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, but they never introduce you to Dr. King after he woke up. They did not kill him because he had a “dream” in 1963, they killed him because by 1968 he had the support of the poor masses to force the government to consider giving Black people the “check” that they had been denied in “payment” for decades of discrimination and abuse.

This year was the 50th anniversary of that 1963 march, but the great spokesperson for freedom, justice and equality was not invited to the celebration. Commentator George Curry said it best in his article “D.C. Marches Inclusive—Up to a Point,” in which he wrote:

“Why was more emphasis placed on bringing in groups that were not part of the push for jobs and freedom in 1963 than assembling a broad coalition of Black leaders? To be even more direct: How can you justify excluding Minister Louis Farrakhan? After all, he managed to draw more Black men to the nation’s capital on Oct. 16, 1995 than the combined crowds at the 1963 March on Washington, the Sharpton-led march on Aug. 24 and the Aug. 28 commemorative march. In fact, the Million Man March at least doubled their combined attendance. … Of course, the reason Farrakhan was excluded is because he is anathema to Jews, who view him as a virulent anti-Semite.”

The leaders of the 2013 march were inviting people to honor Dr. King the “dreamer,” not the King that woke up after meeting with both Malcolm X and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.  On May 7, 1967, and almost one year away from his assassination, Dr. King appeared on NBC News’ “The Frank McGee Sunday Report: Martin Luther King Profile.” During the interview he dismissed the accusation that the Civil Rights Movement was “dead.” Dr. King argued that the movement was simply “moving to a new phase”—economic justice.

“Well now twelve years we struggled to end legal segregation and all of the humiliation surrounding legal segregation. So it was a struggle for decency. It was a struggle to get rid of extremist behavior toward Negroes. Now we are in a new phase and that is a phase where we are seeking genuine equality, where we are dealing with hard economic and social issues. And it means that the job is much more difficult. It’s much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee an annual income. It’s much easier to integrate a bus than it is to get a program that will force the government to put billions of dollars into ending slums.”

By December of 1967 Dr. King led the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to establish the Poor People’s Campaign. Dr. King’s vision was to bring thousands of poor people to Washington to use “civil disobedience” to disrupt traffic and force the government to give Black people their deserved “check.”

Dr. King used the theme of the importance of land to our freedom as a people, when he toured the country promoting the Poor People’s Campaign. 

One such stop was at a small church in Mississippi in 1968: “At the very same time that America refused to give the Negro any land, through an act of Congress, our government was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest, which meant that it was willing to undergird its White peasants from Europe with an economic floor. But not only did they give the land, they built land grant colleges with government money to teach them how to farm. Not only that, they provided county agents to further their expertise in farming. Not only that, they provided low interest rates in order that they could mechanize their farms. Not only that, today many of these people are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies not to farm and they are the very people telling the Black man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. This is what we are faced with and this is a reality. Now, when we come to Washington in this campaign, we’re coming to get our check.”

Where would Black America be today if Dr. King had been successful in his Poor People’s Campaign, instead of being shot down on April 4, 1968? Dr. King forcefully explained how White immigrants got wealthy while the government worked against Black farmers after slavery until right now. Let us look into this very powerful quote and shed more light on some of the facts that he brought to light. In the South, the federal government never followed through on General Sherman’s Civil War plan to divide up plantations and give each freed slave “40 acres and a mule” as reparations. Instead, it set up a series of “Homestead Acts” for Whites beginning in 1862. The 1862 Homestead Act gave away millions of acres of Indian Territory west of the Mississippi. Ultimately, 270 million acres, or 10 percent of the total land area of the United States, were taken from the Indian Nations and given—for free—to White “settlers.” Under the Homestead Act provisions, any citizen, or even a European immigrant who had initiated the citizenship process, could claim 160 acres of public land simply by paying a fee of $10. Of course, Black people in 1862 were not citizens and when the 1866 Homestead Act was passed, they made it legal—on paper, anyway—for Blacks to participate, but Blacks could not defend themselves in court if a White person seized their land. After slavery Black farmers had an advantage over White farmers because they had both the skills to farm and large families to help with the farm work. Because of the Black farmer’s advantageous position, the federal government set up land-grant colleges to develop “labor saving” equipment and chemicals to give the White farmer an advantage. Then it gave low-interest loans to White farmers to take advantage of the new agricultural technologies, while denying such loans to Black farmers.

Think about all the pain, suffering, poverty and self-doubt that have plagued the Black community because we never got that “check.” Dr. King was killed just 5 days after he repeated the same words quoted above at the National Cathedral, in Washington, D.C., on March 31, 1968, a speech that was published in the Congressional Record on April 9, 1968. The title of his speech was “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” In it he stated:

“And one of the great liabilities of life is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses, that the new situation demands. They end up sleeping through a revolution.”

Dr. King did not sleep through a “revolution;” he was killed to stop that revolution from ever happening. Now Minister Farrakhan has taken up where Dr. King left off to lead a new campaign to end poverty and want based on the “Economic Blueprint of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad.” Land acquisition is at the center of this campaign to guarantee healthy food and a solid base for independent economic development. This is why he called for a Black Farmers Conference to be a part of the 18th anniversary of the Million Man March in Tuskegee, Ala. Let us wake up from the “dream” that has become a “nightmare” and plan a future where we can all finally get our “check.”

(Dr. Ridgely A. Mu’min Muhammad, Agricultural Economist, National Student Minister of Agriculture, Manager of Muhammad Farms. He can be reached at [email protected].)