The Final Call

Separation Town Hall meeting was filled to capacity on Feb. 22.

DETROIT—The Shrine of the Black Madonna quickly filled to standing room only for the 20th stop on the Project Separation Tour: The Black Man and Woman MUST Consider Separation, during the Saviours’ Day 2020 Convention as Student Minister Jamil Muhammad of Prince Georges County, Md. opened the meeting.

Detroit native, educator and talk show host Rev. Dr. Joann Watson, moderated the Feb. 22 town hall. Dr. Watson educated attendees on the significance of the event location, along with her personal history with the Nation of Islam. Dr. Watson’s introductory words illuminated the impact of integration on the Black community. “When I was born in Detroit there were 19 Black hospitals and now there are zero. It’s a disgrace before God to go from 19 to zero,” she said.

Establishing the backdrop for the event, Student Minister Ava Muhammad, national spokesperson for the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, shared an overview of the history of the meeting of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad with his teacher, Master Fard Muhammad in the city of Detroit and how that very first meeting has ultimately led to the purpose of the town hall meetings.

“When Master Fard Muhammad met that young man, Elijah Poole, our destiny was sealed; prophecy was fulfilled. Master Fard Muhammad came here to declare to us, the descendants of kidnapped slaves, that the time of the Caucasian rule was up and that the original people had redeemed themselves and work to be restored and are to be restored to our natural place—the maker, the owner, the cream of the planet earth, the god of the universe,” said Student Minister Ava Muhammad.

Crowd applauds during Separation Town Hall meeting, held at Shrine of the Black Madonna in Detroit during the Nation of Islam’s Saviours’ Day convention.

She shared how the town hall meetings began in June 2018 at the direction of Minister Farrakhan and he will conduct a vote among the 40-60 million in a choice to stay or separate from White people. She directed the audience’s attention to Point No. 4 of the Muslim Program printed in The Final Call newspaper, in which the Hon. Elijah Muhammad lays out the case for separation and calls for a vote among Black people to choose to stay or separate from their former slavemasters, “In the Muslim program, which the Hon. Elijah Muhammad published because of the numerous questions he was being asked by White and Black in the early 1970s, ‘what do the Muslims want, what do the Muslims believe?’ No. 1, we want freedom—a full and complete freedom; No. 2 - justice; no. 3 – equality. I ask you, have you gotten any? So, he was ready with a plan for the solution for that problem, point no. 4,” she stated.

Student Minister Ava Muhammad shared how Minister Farrakhan defined reparations in one word—land. “We don’t want a check, we don’t want free lunch, we don’t want before school and after school programs—we want land. He has already stated on the 16th of November, 2017, to the United States Government and its chief executive officer, Donald J. Trump, we will take eight states. And so we began these town hall meetings and they have culminated right here in the Blackest city in America, Detroit, Michigan.”

Panelists came from around the country where they had participated in Separation Town Hall meetings in their respective cities.

Patrick Alexander, executive director of the Black Liberation Movement in Coldwater, Miss. shared an account of how he was touched by Minister Farrakhan in Tchula, Miss., 17 years ago, when the Minister told him, “Out of oppression change comes and out of the most oppression the most change comes.”

“He said the Black man and woman in Mississippi have suffered greatly and I am looking for something very special to come out of Mississippi. We are here!” exclaimed Mr. Alexander.

He shared how Mississippi is the Blackest state in the U.S., while directing the audience to look at the reality of separation starting in that state. “Can we feed ourselves? Guess where the best place is to find that out at? In the fertile grounds of Mississippi. If we are talking about control, let’s start talking about how we’re going to feed ourselves and how that’s going to look. Let’s start talking about tilling the soil and running a food-based economy and how that’s going to look. Let’s start talking about how that’s going to look. Let’s start talking about developing our lands to manufacture and filtrate our own water like how we’re doing right now in Mississippi,” Mr. Alexander concluded.

Dr. Ava Muhammad, national spokesperson for Min. Farrakhan.

Dr. Cheryl Mango, a history professor at Virginia State University in Richmond, Va. expressed to the audience why she felt the question of separation was such a critical one. “The reason why this is a critical question in African-American history is because of the history of African-Americans and our inability to be self-determining. Our inability to ask ourselves questions, our inability to determine our life path, determine our names, determine our gods. So, this question of separation deals with one, our ability to be self-determining and two, it deals with the oppression we have faced,” said Dr. Mango.

“It seems very likely that the question of separation is going to be extremely front and center of, not just the Nation, but the entire African-American community and thereafter the entire American populace,” she added.

Dr. Aaron Smith known to his Temple University students in Philadelphia as the “Rappin’ Professor,” grabbed the attention of the audience by painting a picture of the need for separation through his unique style of speaking, often interspersed with rap. “Now when they say separation, I say nobody ever asked whether they can separate from us. Matter of fact, nobody ever asked if we wanted to be integrated when we were in Africa in the first place. It’s tantamount to a toxic abusive relationship,” he stated.

“Somebody has told you over and over again, ‘I don’t want to date you, I don’t want to be around you, I got a restraining order out, I done blocked the last three numbers you texted to and you talking about ‘uh-uh, I just want to talk about where we are? You been broken up with. It’s called 240 years of chattel slavery. I don’t like you! Eighty plus years of convict leasing. I don’t like you. Jim Crow. Jane Crow. 100 years of lynching. I don’t like you! Strange fruit. I don’t like you! Forced sterilization. I don’t like you. Cointelpro, neutralization, discredited. I don’t like you! Mass incarceration, police brutality, crack cocaine. I don’t like you! And some of us sitting here talking about but didn’t we just give 400 years to this relationship. You don’t have a relationship in the first place!” continued Dr. Smith.

“You’ve been separated from already and they talking, wondering, ‘what should we do? It ain’t no we, it’s just us! We need to take that question mark of that thing the for the next go round. [referring to the title of the previous Town Hall Meetings, which were entitled, “Should Blacks Consider Separation,” before Minister Farrakhan recently changed the title to “The Black Man and Woman MUST consider separation.” So, all we really need to do is get free and we will be fine,” he said. Dr. Smith reminded the audience that the Hon. Elijah Muhammad has already laid out an Economic Blueprint that just needs to be followed.

Many participants were especially moved by the youngest panelist, Bahiyyah Muhammad, 16, of Mosque Maryam in Chicago who stated, “I started loving the Minister in my mother’s womb. She taught me to love original people—Black, Brown, every original nation in this world. I am committed to these Separation Town Hall meetings. I believe separation is the best for our people, if we stay around White people, we will not grow and we cannot grow and if we grow, we are in a stunted stage and if we are stunted, there is death,” Bahiyyah Muhammad said.

The audience then posed questions on the process of separation, which included what the process of separation will look like and how to advance it, will there be a different medium of exchange, will Blacks be able to self-govern and how young people can work to accomplish do for self, when they have limited resources and life experience?

Attendee Diallo Muhammad, a French speaking Muslim from France in the Nation of Islam stated that the spirit of separation was also permeating the minds of Black people in Europe, with many desirous of now returning to Africa. “These brothers and sisters that are looking to go back to Africa, they don’t know what kind of separation they are looking for and what they need. The only true separation is not…it cannot be a symbolism, make us want to go back to Africa,” he said. He explained that separation in Europe can look the same as in America, Black people separating from White people where they are.

Stephannie Kirby, Springfield, Mass., said “Everyone that was listening today now has to take in how can they contribute to this. One they asked for the call of action, as in signing the petition [for separation], but then it’s also how do we go back to our community and start to continue to help. For me, it’s my continuance of helping individuals who are thinking about ownership and building business, so that’s where I’m going to continue to take it but also, delivering kind of the message that I heard today as well.”

Barney Warren, stated “If you can’t free your mind to the fact that, regardless…and look at this current climate in the political spectrum and how childish they’re acting and if you don’t want to prepare some type of future for your babies other than what you see going on, then you don’t have no future.”

For more information and to sign the petition to vote for separation visit www.projectseparation.com