It turns out that a number of Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary and racist comments are not new, and are traceable to leaders of the Black Muslim Movement. As it turns out, Wright’s radical ranting is an echo.
A glance back at history reveals an eerie connection between black separatists, the Nation of Islam (NOI) and Barack Obama’s pastor. Although both NOI and Wright excel at racist and anti-American rhetoric, it now appears that they read from the same hymnal.
For starters, Wright is known for calling white Americans “blue-eyed devils.” However, for all his originality, he is not the creator of that curse. Wallace Fard, the founder of the Black Muslim Movement, actually coined it.
In 1930, Fard, an Islamic black man, began stirring up the black community in Detroit about civil rights, poverty, slavery and white supremacists. Joblessness and hunger during the Great Depression swept the slums of Detroit, and Fard soon had a hate-filled following.
Another conviction shared by Pastor Wright and the Nation of Islam comes as well from Fard. Instead of “God Bless America,” Wright is singing, “God ---- America,” in harmony with Fard, who taught that Black Muslims did not owe allegiance to America or the American flag, but rather that they should disdain and hate both.
In 1934, Fard mysteriously disappeared and one of his protégées, Elijah Poole, assumed command. Poole, as was customary with the group, took a new last name, and became Elijah Muhammad. Some in the Black Muslim movement took Islamic names, others took just “X.”
One whose last name became “X” was Elijah Muhammad’s right-hand man, the former Malcolm Little, who became Malcolm X. “Mr. Muhammad’s powerful spiritual message opened” my eyes and “enabled me to see [white people] as a race of devils,” Malcolm X said, describing the moment of his revelation. “Elijah Muhammad’s statement, ‘the white man is the devil,’ it just clicked.’”
Malcolm X wrote in his autobiography, “The Muslims’ ‘X’ symbolized the true African family name that he never could know. For me, my ‘X’ replaced the white slave master name of ‘Little’ which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed on my parental forebears…”
In an interview, Malcolm X explained his views, “What I want to know is how the white man, with the blood of black people dripping off his fingers, can have the audacity to be asking black people, ‘do they hate him?’ That takes a lot of nerve.” When asked why he called it “good news” that 120 white Atlantans had died in an airplane crash, Malcolm X replied, “Sir, as I see the law of justice, it says as you sow, so shall you reap… We Muslims believe that the white race, which is guilty of having oppressed and exploited and enslaved our people here in America, should and will be the victims of God’s divine wrath.”
Last month Rev. Jeremiah Wright reaffirmed that 9/11 was America’s fault. “We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki… and we never batted an eye….We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff that we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”
Is the tune beginning to sound familiar?
Wright was actually quoting Malcolm X, who said two weeks after President Kennedy’s assassination that the president’s death was a case of “chickens coming home to roost.”
Less surprising than would have been previously thought, Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s words echo the chorus of Black Muslim/Nation of Islam leaders Fard, Muhammad, “X” and Farrakhan. In December, Wright’s church gave Louis Farrakhan a lifetime achievement award – the same Farrakhan who has repeatedly filled the airwaves with hate toward “blue-eyed devils” (whites), America and “bloodsuckers” (Jews).
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