MASTER LOUIS FARRAKHAN

2nd Messiah / Arch Angel Michael

Louis Eugene Wolcott was born in the Bronx, New York City, on May 11, 1933. This was around the same time that Master Fard Muhammad was departing America. His St. Kitts-born Caribbean mother raised him and his older brother. His Garveyite father was a light-skinned handsome man from Jamaica, whom he never knew. When young Louis was three, his mother moved them to the Roxbury section of Boston, where he grew up. His mother, a beautiful, darkskinned, Episcopalian church-going woman was on the fringe of the Garvey movement and would give her children the NAACP’s Crisis magazine to read about the evil atrocities that whites committed on Blacks. He always pained over the circumstances that Black people were subjected to and would often cry himself to sleep at night as he listened to his mother and friends discuss the plight of Black people. He would later recall how he would lay on the ground looking up in the sky asking God why he would send help to other people but not to Black people in America? He even challenged his Sunday school teacher to answer this question. Chronology of Nation of Islam History

“Highlights of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan & the Nation of Islam from 1977-1996”

One day, at the young age of l l-years-old, young Louis visited his uncle in New York City and saw the picture of a strong Black man hung on his uncle’s wall. “Who is this man?” asked the inquisitive youth. “This is the man who came to lead and unite Black people,” answered his uncle. His uncle helped him up into a chair that he may get a better look at the man. After studying the man and taking in his features, he asked his uncle, “Where is this man?” His uncle told him that the man was dead. Upon hearing this terrible news, Louis began to cry because he thought he had finally found the man he was looking for that could help Black people, but the man was gone. The man the youth cried over was the Honorable Marcus Garvey. His mother sacrificed and took on extra sewing jobs so the two boys could learn musical instruments. Louis began playing the violin at age five and by the age of thirteen, he was good enough to win a competition on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour. After graduating from high school, he traveled down south, for the first time, to attend Winston-Salem Teacher’s College in North Carolina. It was there he experienced the blatant racism he often read about first hand. He left in 1953, after his junior year to marry his childhood sweetheart, Betsy Jean and support their newly developing family. Show business was his livelihood. Louis achieved success and popularity in the Boston area as a vocalist, calypso singer and dancer, and a wonderful violinist. In February of 1955 he became a headliner in a club on Chicago’s Rush street called “Calypso Follies.” This same year he was invited by an old friend from Boston to attend the annual Nation of Islam’s National Saviours’ Day Convention. It was being held at the newly purchased Temple at 5335 South Greenwood Avenue. By this time, his uncle had joined the Nation. As the Hon. Elijah Muhammad addressed the audience, Louis Wolcott was seated in the balcony thinking to himself that the Hon. Elijah Muhammad was not an eloquent speaker. Chronology of Nation of Islam History

“Highlights of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan & the Nation of Islam from 1977-1996”

The entertainer was an excellent student of English and was criticizing the Messenger’s use of the English language. The next event shocked Mr. Wolcott who could not have possibly been prepared for what was to happen next. As the thoughts of the Messengers use of language crossed his mind, Elijah Muhammad looked up in the balcony, directly at him and said, “Don’t pay attention to how I say it, pay attention to what I say. Then you take it and put it into that fine language that you know. I didn’t have the chance to go to school like you. When I got to school the door was closed.” Little did the shocked musician know, but he was being given his first set of orders that he is still carrying out to the day of this writing. He sat in the balcony frightened that this man was obviously reading his mind, but before he left he and his wife accepted what they heard from the Hon. Elijah Muhammad to be the truth and good for Black people. Actually, his wife of two years known as Betsy Ross at the time was walking down the aisle to join before Louis had made his mind up. Louis X was not in the Temple 30 days before an order came from the Hon. Elijah Muhammad that all musicians would either have to stop playing music or leave the Temple. While many of the musicians left, Brother Louis quickly made his mind up that, although the only thing he was good at and loved was music, Islam and the salvation of his people was more important than being recognized as the “Charmer,” which was his stage name. He became a dedicated, faithful follower of the Messenger. In his first talk to the men during a F.O.1. class, he promised to help take the teachings of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad to the ends of the earth. He later, in the early sixties would produce plays, “Orgena” (a negro spelled backwards) and “The Trial” and produced several songs including; “White Man’s Heaven is Black Man’s Hell,” “Look at My Chains,” Let Us Go,” “We Need Chronology of Nation of Islam History

“Highlights of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan & the Nation of Islam from 1977-1996”

Somebody,” “The Messenger,” “Go Down Elijah,” It is no Secret,” Let Us Unite,” and “Elijah is Leading Us.” Brother Louis was extremely dedicated, humble and disciplined. This attitude allowed him to quickly rise through the ranks of the Temple in Boston. He served under Malcolm X in New York briefly before Malcolm recommended that he become the Minister in Boston. Min. Farrakhan held the post of lieutenant, captain, assistant minister, and then minister from 1956-1965. In May of 1965, three months after the assassination of Malcolm X, the Hon. Elijah Muhammad appointed Min. Farrakhan as Minister of Temple No.7. By 1967, he was known for his truthful, articulate, fiery lectures and was appointed National Representative to the Hon. Elijah Muhammad. He would speak on behalf of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad on radio, talk shows, and various places. In the spring of 1972, under the leadership of Min. Farrakhan, the police attempted to attack the Temple in New York, but were unsuccessful because of a strong defense launched by the Muslims who viewed the police as intruders who entered the Temple “as a criminal and we went after him as an offender of our religious house of worship,” said Min. Farrakhan. “We apprehended him and brought him down to the ground.” In an official statement to the press, Min. Farrakhan made four demands: • We demand an apology from the Police Commissioner and Mayor • We demand that the charges be dropped against our innocent brothers • We are asking that all white policemen be taken out of our area • We want them replaced with Black officers under Black commanders Chronology of Nation of Islam History

“Highlights of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan & the Nation of Islam from 1977-1996”

The Minister’s respect grew when he spoke against the police attack on the New York mosque in April of 1972. “They came in as brute beasts … and we met them,” said Minister Farrakhan as quoted in the Muhammad Speaks newspaper. On May 31, 1974, Min. Farrakhan addressed 70,000 people at the Black Family Day celebration held on Randall’s Island in New York. With Min. Farrakhan as the minister, New York flourished. They opened 17 businesses, 3 schools, 5 major Temples and a host of satellite temples all over the five boroughs. Min. Farrakhan’s enthusiastic, consistent and cheerful work for the Hon. Elijah Muhammad brought him well calculated and meaningful praise from his teacher. For example: “I want you to remember today that I have one of my greatest teachers here,” said the Hon. Elijah Muhammad as he turned into the direction of the ministers who was seated to his right during his Theology of Time lecture series. He looked beyond them all and said to Min. Farrakhan, “What are you hiding around the sycamore tree for, brother? Come on out here so they can see you. We have with us today our great national preacher, the preacher who doesn’t mind going into Harlem, New York, one of the most worst towns in our nation’s cities. It is our Brother in Detroit or Chicago or New York. But I want you to remember every week, he is on the air helping me to reach my people that I can’t get out of my house to reach like he. I want you to pay good attention to his preaching. His preaching is a bearing of witness to me and what God has revealed to me. This is one of the strongest national preachers that I have in the bounds of North America. Everywhere you hear him, listen to him. Everywhere you see him, look at him. Everywhere he advises you to go, go! Everywhere he advises you to stay from, stay from! So we are thankful to Allah for this great helper of mine, Minister Farrakhan. And I say, continue to hear our Minister Farrakhan. Minister Louis Farrakhan is the man that would get the Nation safely across the river on his shoulders. And when he gets you safely to the other shore, he won’t say ‘look what I have done,’ but ‘look at what Allah has done,’ for he is a very humble brother,” said the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad July 30, 1972. The Hon. Elijah Muhammad prayed for a helper who could speak his message in such a way that he would recognize it as his own when he heard it again. In a most revealing discussion that the Hon. Elijah Muhammad had with Min. Farrakhan, the messenger told him that he had waited 38 years for him. There was a time when the Hon. Elijah Muhammad told Min. Farrakhan that, “I am going away to study. I will be gone for approximately three years. What I have given you is just a wake-up message. Don’t change the teachings while I’m gone. If you are faithful, I will reveal the new teachings through you on my return.” There are still many living witnesses aware of various conversations that the Hon. Elijah Muhammad had with and about Min. Louis Farrakhan during the 1960s. Many of them occurred in the 1960s as the Messenger prepared for his departure. The following are some of the words the Hon. Elijah Muhammad said concerning Minister Louis Farrakhan: “As Allah made me to take HIS place among the people, I am making you to a take my place,” said the Messenger of Allah. He also said that Minister Farrakhan would reach the pinnacle of success and honor in this world’s life.” On yet another occasion, he told his minister, I want your mind.” Concerning the value that Min. Farrakhan had to the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, he once told him, “Brother, you are more valuable to me than a truckload of diamonds and gold.“Brother, you are more valuable to me than a thousand airplanes with a thousand head of sheep on every plane. Brother, you are more valuable to me than all the wealth that is in the earth, because the wealth of the earth I met when I came here and I shall leave it when I’m gone. But through you, I will get all my people,” said the Messenger who was made by Allah not to speak an idle word. “You can sit over the Nation as the father when I’m gone.” On another occasion, roughly around 1968-69, the Hon. Elijah Muhammad said these words to the Minister Louis Farrakhan: “I did not make you brother,” said the Hon. Elijah Muhammad. “Oh yes you did, Dear Holy Apostle, Yes you did,” responded a humble Minister Louis Farrakhan. “Be quiet and listen. I did not make you. I taught you like I taught the rest. But only Allah made you able to put the teachings together in the unique way that you have of putting the teachings together. Allah prepared you for me,” said Hon. Elijah Muhammad. At the last meeting that the Hon. Elijah Muhammad had with all his ministers, which was in December of 1974, the Messenger said that Min. Farrakhan was the best minister he ever had.