by Master Elijah Muhammad

        I know you’re not too good a Christian nor a Muslim. You know my father he was a
Baptist preacher, I use to chase him after he preached to question him on his sermon, so I’m
still doing that. Let us have a special meeting for special things, not an open meeting saying
what we are going to do and do nothing. Let’s go get in a room, sit down face to face and tell
each other what we can do and what we must do right away. This is the way to get business
started. You can’t start business by hailing each other across the street. We got to get in a
room someplace and look each other in the eye and tell each other what each can do and
what each can’t do. If we can’t do the things that we want done, we go out and look for that
fellow.

          Fine, highly educated people don’t have work to do, their work is shutting off fast. The
devil has unemployment in your office. He doesn’t know what to do with his own unemployed
professional people. This is why they’re having so much trouble in the school. They want
something to do when they get their diplomas and their degrees, but where are you going to
get that something if you don’t make it for yourself? You got to make it for yourselves. If you
don’t make it for yourselves, who is going to make it for you when America is faced with the
worst problem she ever had; that is, unemployment from her armed forces. When they come
back home, what is she going to give them to do? This means a war then at home. They’re
going to start fighting for something and America knows that she’s in trouble. She will be
sending these unemployed soldiers back home to do nothing. She’s in trouble, but she doesn’t
know what to do with these people.

          We’ve got to work in order to keep pace with our enemies. You have the most schooling
of the enemies’ educational system, I say come and I’ll show you how to use it, if you don’t
know how. The only thing that we want is togetherness and agreement on what we do and we
don’t stop until we do it.

         Why should we continue to dislike each other when we are brothers? While the white
man likes the American white man. He likes the European white man. He likes the Australian
white man. He likes the white people all over the Earth. Well, why shouldn’t we like Black
people all over the Earth. We are hard to agree with self, not to mention the heartless,
merciless, blue-eyed devils. We want to please them first, then if you have any pleasing left,
you’ll take it over to self. “But I first must please my white enemies,” this is the way you
work. I say friend, we are Muslims. We are not scared of the devil nor are we scared of his
hell. I will take the blame. I don’t have to take it, come on and follow me and I will take the
blame.

         What can you do? Plenty. With the help of my God and others, I can do plenty and are
doing plenty. You are so afraid, that you’re going to go hungry, or lose your prestige among
white people. You will never get no place like that. Look at that small Japanese people,
very small people; nevertheless, they have sense enough to unite with his own.
He was yelling over there before the last war, “Asia for the Asiatic. Asiatic is for Asia,”
until they give them a deaf ear; then, the enemy all but run them out of Asia. Now he sings
that song and he got plenty who are ready now to unite with him and say Asia is for Asia. He
laid hold on his big brother the other day, China. China laid hold to his little brother Japan.

        Now here we are a little people here numbering somewhere around 30 million and see how
we are destroying ourselves. Let us unite. If you see a root cracking the Earth in your midst
that looks to you like it will bear fruit, why don’t you come on and let’s cultivate that little
old root there and let us bear fruit.

         It’s a shame for me to stand here before you professional people and talk of getting
together and building an “up from slavery people,” united into a nation of progress and
success for self. You should be standing up here where I am, telling us what to do. But, you
got a little, uneducated man that God looked at. These are the words that He said to me, He
said, “Will you come and help put my people on top of civilization?” I said, “Yes sir, if you

back me up and guide me, yes sir.” So, as it’s written, the sound, the Bible said, went
throughout the earth. A great people rose up and God pointed the Messenger out to them. He
said, “See, they all will come to thee. They all will bow down to thee.” That’s in your Bible
and this is true. I have people out there in the street waiting to get a chance to talk to this
little boy. Highly learned Scientists have heard of me. They’re coming up every day or two,
wanting to see the little man that you call Elijah Muhammad.

         Africa is mine. This is no joke – it’s mine. They open their doors for me anywhere over
there to build Africa. “If I had sent thee to a strange nation, foreign language, they would
have heard,” this is the Bible. “But, I sent you to the rebellious house of Israel, The
rebellious house of the black man of America.” That’s who it’s talking about, not Israel, but
it’s you. They would have heard you and that’s easy to prove today. From the shores of Texas
down through the little Islands falling off at your feet around to the Gate of Good Hope, you
have brothers. They’re just like that, just so happy to fall in the circle with Muhammad.

         We can’t build the Black man of America up by letting him carry his bottle of hard corn
and rye whiskey; he’ll never be anything carrying that kind of fire water. We must get
together and stop him from drinking. When he gets under the Crescent, he’s willing to stop.
He feels too dignified to make a fool out of himself, but under the cross, he don’t care. Let
us get together and make our people a number one people who the whole world will respect.
Let’s take our woman out of the world and put her in her own world to learn and make
something out of her. We can do it. You see a sketch of the work that I’m doing. They’re
falling for it; they’re not turning it down. They’re accepting it.

[Excerpt from Theology of Time lecture series]