Wright’s Tune Has a Familiar Ring
By Floyd and Mary Beth Brown
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…”
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