Louis Farrakhan: Million Man March Pledge

About the Author

Louis Abdul Farrakhan, originally named Louis Eugene Walcott, was born on May 11, 1933, in the Bronx, New York, and later raised in Boston. He graduated with honors from the prestigious Boston English High School. After dropping out of college in 1953, he earned the title of “the Charmer” because he performed professionally on the Boston nightclub circuit as a violinist, dancer, and singer of calypso and country songs. In 1955 he joined the Nation of Islam after being invited to attend a local convention in Chicago, Illinois, thereby choosing to give up music for a life dedicated to the teachings of Elijah Muhammad. He changed his name to Louis X, which was a custom followed by members of the Nation of Islam, who believed their family names originated with white slaveholders. He worked closely with Malcolm X in Harlem and was later given the name Abdul Haleem Farrakhan by Elijah Muhammad.

After Malcolm X’s assassination in 1965, Farrakhan was given the job of head minister at Harlem’s Temple No.7 in New York City and became the second in command of the organization. When Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, the Nation of Islam fragmented, and Elijah’s son, Warith Deen Muhammad, emerged as its new leader with the goal of steering the focus of the organization away from radical black nationalism and separatist teachings. Farrakhan’s disappointment over not being selected as the group’s leader led him to break away in 1975 to form a splinter group, still called the Nation of Islam, which preserved the original teachings of Elijah Muhammad. Farrakhan is credited with rebuilding the Nation of Islam throughout the 1980s according to its militant, black nationalist roots but at the same time helping it to gain acceptance in a nation built on a Christian tradition.

Although Farrakhan was a prominent leader within the Nation of Islam, it was not until the 1984 presidential campaign that mainstream America was introduced to his rhetoric. A series of controversies over Farrakhan’s praise of Adolf Hitler and his use of anti-Semitic statements arose during the campaign of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who was vying for the Democratic nomination for U.S. president in 1984. Farrakhan played on the perceived exploitation of blacks by American Jews, resulting in the alienation of a significant number of moderate Democrats who had shown early support for Jackson. Farrakhan’s utterance during the campaign that Judaism was a “gutter religion” further fueled his critics. According to Dennis Walker in Islam and the Search for African-American Nationhood: Elijah Muhammad, Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, many Jackson supporters on the secular Left believed that Farrakhan was “using the presidential primaries as a ‘step up for the Nation of Islam’ more than as a way to mobilize blacks to vote for Jesse.” Farrakhan eventually withdrew his support for the Jackson campaign. Despite these controversies, between 1983 and 1985 Farrakhan gained momentum as a national black leader who reached across America’s divide to attract followers from all corners of the black community.

In 1993 Farrakhan battled prostate cancer and the resulting conflicts within the Nation of Islam over his possible successor. That same year, the acclaimed black filmmaker Spike Lee’s Malcolm X revived the accusation that Farrakhan might be responsible for Malcolm’s death. In the film, Lee portrays Elijah Muhammad and his inner circle in the Nation of Islam as secretly plotting the assassination of Malcolm X. In the last year of his life, Malcolm broke ties with the Nation of Islam, journeyed to Mecca, and rejected the philosophy of black separatism. After embracing the idea of an interracial solution to the civil rights crisis in America, Malcolm was viewed as a turncoat by the leaders of the Nation of Islam. Two months before the assassination, Farrakhan voiced his displeasure with Malcolm’s rebirth as an integrationist, writing in the Nation’s newspaper, “The die is set, and Malcolm shall not escape.… Such a man as Malcolm is worthy of death.”

Dr. Betty Shabazz, Malcolm’s widow, stated publicly that she felt Farrakhan was somehow involved in the murder of her husband. Farrakhan, however, has repeatedly refuted any connections to Malcolm’s assassins. In 2000 he was interviewed by the 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace, and an account of that interview states that Farrakhan “denied ordering the assassination but later admitted to having ‘helped create the atmosphere’ that led to it.” Farrakhan found himself at the center of another assassination plot in 1994, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation implicated one of the daughters of Malcolm X, Qubilah Shabazz, in the hiring of a hit man to kill Farrakhan. The charges against Shabazz were later dropped.

Since the mid-1990s, Farrakhan has been most recognized nationally and internationally as the primary organizer of the Million Man March of October 16, 1995, which led to subsequent marches over the next ten years. The Million Woman March, staged on October 25, 1997, drew over one million women to the streets of Philadelphia to promote solidarity for black women and to address such issues as human rights abuses against blacks and the crack cocaine trade in black neighborhoods. In 2000, the Million Family March focused on family unity and racial and religious harmony; African American men, women, and children, along with members of all races, were invited to convene in Washington, D.C., to discuss important social and political issues such as abortion, health care, education, welfare, and substance abuse. Five years later, on the tenth anniversary of the Million Man March, the Millions More March was held to unite black men, women, and children. The Millions More March suggested a need to end divisiveness among blacks and black organizations and called for the pooling of financial and intellectual resources to work toward the common goal of uplifting the African American community.

Following a near-death experience in 2000 resulting from complications of prostate cancer, Farrakhan toned down his racial rhetoric and attempted to reach out to other minorities, including Native Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. As of 2010, he continued to lead the Nation of Islam, traveling extensively throughout the United States and the rest of the world, to promote black nationalism and his vision for unity and world peace.