In the course of what I am resuming I hope to make crystal clear the roots of why I see Minister Farrakhan as I do.

Seventy years ago on July 4^th, 1930, a man began knocking on the doors of Black people, in a section of Detroit, Michigan, known then as Paradise Valley. He was in a disguise. Part of His disguise was His appearance as a door-to-door sales-man selling made to measure clothing.

He was a Black man, whom white people thought was a Caucasian.

His real aim was to first reach the minds and eventually the hearts of Black people with that which He had in mind for their benefit. Generally, through them, and by other means, He intended to reach the entire population of the earth with what He had in His mind.

One day, fourteen months later, in the early fall of 1931, in that same city (Detroit) another Black man, heard that there was a man teaching that which he was told he ought to hear.

The first man was going under the name of Mr. W. D. Fard, or Mr. Wallace D. Fard. The second man was going under the name of Mr. Elijah Poole.

The first man knew Himself and the second man thoroughly. The second man did not. However, he had come to have an ever-increasing expectation of the appearance of a man whom the world had been looking for at least 2,000 years.

Among the things he heard that Mr. Fard was teaching was Islam. He would later say that he thought it was a "heathen religion." However, he was told enough to want to meet this Teacher and hear His teachings. Deep within himself he felt that there was a connection between what he had grown to expect and the little he had heard about this man and His teachings.

He was told that Mr. Fard was teaching a few people in a basement. So he rushed to the place but was told the man had left. He went to other meetings, held there and elsewhere, but continued to miss Him until the night of September 22nd.

As soon as he saw and heard Mr. W. D Fard, as he would tell the world later, he knew Him to be the One the world had been expecting for the last 2,000 years. He would later say that it came to him that the man he beheld, that night, was the very one expected by the prophets, and others, Who would come in, or under, many good names: Jesus included.

That which Mr. W. D. Fard said and did at that meeting convinced him of the truth of His identity. He would later say to his followers, and to the world, that the first thing that struck him about Mr. Fard was that His words and actions tallied with the Bible�s prophecy about what this One would say and do on His arrival.

Mr. Fard began speaking on the origin of things. He went on to teach of the measurements of the earth, its weight, the distances between the earth, the sun and the distances and the life on the other planets. He spoke of their rotation, measurements and so on.

Mr. W. D. Fard said much about the nature and history of Black and White people, and of the future, including the coming judgment of this world and of the new world to be established after this world�s power was broken.

Mr. Fard Muhammad went on to say that we were not in our own names, that we were in the names of white people, and that He had come to give us our own names; the names of God and our people. As he listened, Elijah said to himself: "This has got to be the man."

When the meeting was over he got in line with others to shake the Speaker�s hand. When his turn came, Elijah told Him "You are the One Whom the Bible�s prophets foresaw coming along about this time, about 2,000 years after Jesus, or the Son of Man."

Almost simultaneously Mr. Fard Muhammad looked around to see who else heard that, and at Elijah a little sternly. His smile followed the look. He bent His head close to him, put one hand on his shoulder, and the other on his forehead. Pressing His mouth against Elijah�s ear, He whispered:

"Yes, I am that One. But who else knows that but yourself?"

That meeting took place nearly seventy years ago during the month of September 1931, in Detroit, Michigan.

That meeting was related the following excerpt contained in a book titled "No Equal Justice" written by Mr. David Cole, a Caucasian. It was released last year to the public.

On page 3 of his introduction to his book he wrote: "As Justice Hugo Black wrote over forty years ago: "There can be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has." He might well have added, "or the color of his skin." Where race and class affect outcomes, we cannot maintain that the criminal law is just.

"Equality, however, is a difficult and elusive goal. In our nation, it has been the cause of a civil war, powerful political movements, and countless violent uprisings. Yet the gap between the rich and the poor is larger in the United States today than in any other Western industrialized nation, and has been steadily widening since 1968. In 1989, the wealthiest 1 percent of U.S. households owned nearly 40 percent of the nation's wealth. The wealthiest 20 percent owned more than 80 percent of the nation's wealth. That leaves precious little for the rest. The income and wealth gap correlates closely with race. Minorities' median net worth is less than 7 percent that of whites. None percent of white families had incomes below the poverty level in 1992, while more than 30 percent of black families and 26.5 percent of Hispanic families fell below that level. The consequences of the country's race and class divisions are felt in every aspect of American life, from infant mortality and unemployment, where black rates are double white rates; to public education, where the proportion of black children educated in segregated schools is increasing; to housing, where racial segregation is the norm, integration the rare exception. Racial inequality, which Alexis de Tocqueville long ago recognized as "the most formidable evil threatening the future of the United States," remains to this day the most formidable of our social problems.

"This inequality is in turn reflected in statistics on crime and the criminal justice system. The vast majority of those behind bars are poor; 40 percent of state prisoners can't even read; and 67 percent of prison inmates did not have full-time employment when they were arrested. The per capita incarceration rate among blacks is seven times that among whites. African Americans make up about 12 percent of the general population, but more than half of the prison population. They serve longer sentences, have higher arrest and conviction rates, face higher bail amounts, and are more often the victims of police use of deadly force than white citizens. In 1995, one in three young black men between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine was imprisoned or on parole or probation. If incarceration rates continue their current trends, one in four young black males born today will serve time in prison during his lifetime (meaning that he will be convicted and sentenced to more than one year of incarceration). Nationally, for every one black man who graduates from college, 100 are arrested.

"In addition, poor and minority citizens are disproportionately victimized by crime. Poorer and less educated persons are the victims of violent crime at significantly higher rates than wealthy and more educated persons. African Americans are victimized by robbery at a rate 150 percent higher than whites; they are the victims of rape, aggravated assault, and armed robbery 25 percent more often than whites. Homicide is the leading cause of death among young black men. Because we live in segregated communities, most crime is interracial; the more black crime there is, the more black victims there are. But at the same time, the more law enforcement resources we direct toward protecting the black community from crime, the more often black citizens, especially those living in the inner city, will find there friends, relatives, and neighbors behind bars."