If Black people came together
anywhere in America, there is nothing that we could not have if
we wanted it. The unity of 30 million of us in America would
guarantee our survival. In fact, the unity of one million of us
in America would guarantee survival for all of our people. To
achieve survival, however, there are things that each of us must
sacrifice. There is no way to survive unless we come into unity,
and there is no way to have unity unless we give up the things
that keep us from having unity. Survival starts with you and me.
Don�t look to big government plans. Look to yourself and ask
yourself, "Am I as an individual willing to struggle, to
exert myself to the fullest to ensure that I outlast what is
coming upon this world?" If you make the commitment and say
yes, then there is a job that you have to do right now as an
individual.
Don�t tell me you want to survive and you are smoking a
cigarette. If you don�t have the will to stop smoking a
cigarette that contains 19 deadly poisons, stifling your lungs,
poisoning your bloodstream, interfering with your ability to
think and see clearly, then let�s not talk about the greater
problem because we have already failed the test on the simple
problem. For how can we talk about survival and engage in that
which kills self.
Deal With Self First
You may say, "I thought you were getting us ready to deal
with white folk!" Brothers and sisters, if we deal
effectively with ourselves, we have already dealt with them.
There is no way that they can come against us except through the
weakness of self. So, if we make the effort to clean up and
correct our internal weaknesses, then our enemies have no door
through which to come to weaken our effort to survive.
How much do you want to survive? The greater our desire for
survival, the greater should be our will to strengthen
ourselves. We must also understand that eating the wrong foods,
and even eating too much of the best foods, is not good for our
health if we want to survive. During the plague in Europe, the
Jews survived. And many of the ignorant, seeing the Jews
surviving the plague, began to kill the Jews thinking that they
had brought the plague about. But they later found out that what
caused the Jews to survive was their diet: they were eating
day-old bread or bread that had molded, and in that mold was
penicillin and that penicillin caused them to survive that
plague.
Eating To Survive
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad has taught us how to
eat to live. The dietary laws that He gave us are not foolish.
If those of you who once followed those dietary laws just look
at yourselves in the mirror and see how your skin looks and how
you look since you stopped eating the way He taught us to eat,
you will bear me witness that there is a great difference in
your skin and in your health. The Hon. Elijah Muhammad was
easing us away from eating meats. He knew that eating meat is
not good for us. So, the first meat He stopped us from eating
was pork. He said we must stop eating pork as of yesterday! I
know that pork meat tastes sweet to you, but we must begin to
eat food that gives health and strength to ourselves and our
community. We should study about pork. Go to our libraries and
read about it and the trichina worm that it carries. If we put
the right gas in our cars, why would we put the wrong food in
our stomachs when food is the gas that runs our machine?
Please don�t tell me that you don�t need anyone to tell
you what to do. For every day of our lives someone is telling us
what to do and they make us love it. Every maker of a product
gives you directions on how to use that product and if we are
intelligent we follow those directions to get the best use out
of that product. Every sister that cooks prides herself on her
ability to follow recipes to get the right results. Every
seamstress has to follow a pattern in order to make the garment
properly. Every sick person must follow the prescription of the
doctor properly in order to restore health. Allah (God) created
this body; should not we follow the wise directions of the
Creator, the Best Knower, and let Him teach us how best to use
this body and this life?
In the Bible, those old worthies
of God lived 700, 800, 900, nearly 1,000 years. If a tree that
grows out of the earth can live a thousand years, and some
animals can live 100, 200, 300 years, why is it that we, the
greatest of God�s creation are here on this earth just a few
days, and are cut off at 50 or 60, few of us hardly making 3
score and 10 (70 years). At 55 and 60, nearly all of our teeth
have fallen out. The hair is gone. The health is gone. This is
no way to survive. You might as well say that you are killing
yourself every day by eating the wrong kinds of foods and
drinking the wrong kind of drinks. Mr. Muhammad warned us that
we are digging our graves with our teeth.
Self Extinction
Some of you will go and light up your marijuana�s,
or get a little cocaine. How can we talk about the survival of
the Black man yet engage in the Black man�s extinction. Some
of you are so greedy for money that you left religion and went
to selling dope. Some so-called "Christians" and
"Hebrews" are doing this. If we want to survive, we
must stop doing those things which contribute to our
destruction. If we want to survive, we must stop promoting
banners or ideologies and denying the principles that support
those banners or ideologies.
Living Our Principles
If I tell you I am promoting Islam, and my life is a
denial of the principles of Islam, then I have lied. If you tell
me you are a Christian, don�t promote your banner, live your
principles. If we promote and live our principles as Christians
and Muslims and Hebrews, then we will find out that all of the
principles of the great revealed religions are the same. For
they come from the Principal Teacher, Allah (God), and He is
One.
In this auditorium, there are Nationalists, Marxists, Pan
Africanists, Christians, Hebrews, Muslims and many different
denominations of Christianity, and some different sects of
Islam. Although we represent many factions or fractions, there
is a common denominator that can unify us all. We learned in the
sixth grade that if we want to bring a fraction to a whole
number, we must reduce the fraction to its lowest terms, find
the least common denominator, then we can solve the fraction by
making it a whole number. The Black man in America and the world
has already been reduced to our lowest terms. Now, we have to
find the least common denominator, and we can become whole
again.
The Common Denominator
If you say you are Christian, you are telling me that
you have been crystallized into oneness with God through Christ.
You are telling me that you have submitted your will to do the
will of God through Christ. If you tell me that you are a
Hebrew, you are telling me that you have crossed over from a
life of rebellion to God, a life that caused man to fall, and
you now have crossed over into a life of obedience to God�s
will through Moses and the prophets. If a Hebrew follows the
laws and principles given by Moses, how can you be different
from a Christian? If the Muslim follows the law taught by
Prophet Muhammad from the Holy Qur�an, how can you be
different from the Christians and Hebrews? If a Christian loves
God with all his heart, soul and mind, and loves his neighbor as
himself, and does nothing unto anyone that he would not like to
have done unto himself, and the Muslims love Allah and worship
no God but Allah, and love for our brother what we love for
ourselves, if we carry out these principles, how can we as
Christians and Muslims meet each other and start fighting?
Righteousness plus righteousness equals righteousness!
You say, "I don�t believe in religion, I�m a
Nationalist!" Every Nationalist recognizes that in order
for the Black man to have a nation and develop institutions that
answer our critical needs, there has to be certain moral guides,
ethical rules of conduct and right principles that we must
follow. Those principles are the same whether in God or not.
What is important if we must achieve unity is that the
principles must be exalted. This will stop ideological argument.
How many of us want to see institutions built that answer our
own needs, will you raise your hands? It seems as though all of
us do. How can we build these kinds of institutions if we are
going to be thieves and rob the treasures that will build these
institutions. A Nationalist robber, a Christian robber, a
Hebrew, Muslim or Marxist robber, can not be tolerated. Stealing
has got to be stamped out among us as a people! You say, "I
only steal from white folks, I don�t steal from Black
folks." Stop lying! If you steal from anyone, you�ll
steal from everyone! A crook does not know how to be
discriminate.
Principles for Survival
If we want to survive, we have got to give up
stealing. If we want to survive, we have to give up lying. For
anytime we lie, we undermine our own character development. No
matter how bad the situation seems, if we tell the truth, we
begin building our character, and when we build character, we
create trust in each other, we build confidence in each other.
How can any institution that we build survive, if we don�t
have any trust or confidence in one another? And none of us can
have confidence in a liar.
We must strive to make our word bond. That is a principle of
survival. Can we have unity, if we are gossiping about each
other? Can we create brotherhood spying on one another,
back-biting one another? Once we are prone to gossip, and doing
dirty things behind each other�s backs, the enemy of our unity
see this. He has his electronic devices on us night and day. And
once he finds us weak in character, he uses this to destroy our
organizations and discredit us. So, each one of us has to police
ourselves. The program of survival starts with you and me. If we
would just stop doing the negative things that we do to each
other, we would be 50% on the road to survival.
