After lying low and avoiding controversy for most of this year, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan emerged July 20 to embark on a 51-city tour to promote the second anniversary of the Million Man March.
His first stop was Milwaukee’s Cooley Auditorium. There, as in the other cities he visited over the following 10 weeks, Farrakhan called for a day of absence on Oct. 16.
“Our children won’t go to school that day,” said Farrakhan, interviewed shortly before the cross-country tour that concluded in Des Moines on Oct. 5.
“We intend to close the schools, close the businesses. No sport. No play. Fasting, prayer, study and reconciling differences in the family.”
The Holy Day of Atonement, as Farrakhan called it, arrived Thursday without much fanfare.
This Farrakhan effort was much more ambitious than the widely publicized Million Man March in 1995, when black men gathered on the Washington Mall, answering Farrakhan’s call to reclaim their place in the black family. Nevertheless, atonement Farrakhan-style is being used as a barometer by some to measure his influence nationwide. And it may serve to help others determine whether he himself has atoned for offending people in the past.
It does not appear that a substantial number of African-Americans took the day off from school or work or refrained from spending money in white-owned businesses. An informal check found people walking in and out of stores on State Street and Michigan Avenue just as they would on any other Thursday.
Nor did black professional athletes participate in the day of absence. Thursday night, players for the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Diego Chargers went ahead with their game.
For Farrakhan’s critics, such evidence shows that he is not a major leader among African-Americans, no matter how many of them may approve of his stances and his rhetoric. It also confirms, critics are saying, what some religious and civil rights leaders have argued: Even though many African-American men participated in the Washington march without their blessing, the marchers did so to demonstrate unity, not to endorse Farrakhan.
“I don’t think it (the Day of Atonement) was a great idea on his part,” said David Bositas, a senior research associate for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington. “I don’t think people even noticed that he made the call.
“Many think his atonement notion is crackpot,” Bositas said. “I’ve heard many of them ask: `What the hell do we have to atone for?’ “
Nation of Islam officials and supporters, however, insist that last week’s commemoration was never meant to overshadow the Million Man March. They say it served its purpose.
Not only did people gather at rallies all across the country– with an estimated 7,000 in the Pavilion at the University of Illinois at Chicago on Thursday night to hear Farrakhan speak– but the fruits of their effort were evident before Thursday.
The Million Man March, they say, is the reason behind the reported reduction of crime in most American cities. It is the reason 1.7 million additional black men voted in the 1996 presidential election than in the 1992 election, according to Farrakhan’s supporters . And it is why other groups, like the Promise Keepers, have organized major events calling on participants to recommit to spiritual values.
For his part, Farrakhan appeared unfazed by last week’s low participation. He spent most of the day trying to be a model of atonement, visiting prisoners at Cook County Jail and students at King High School. But his goodwill efforts were undermined when he engaged in verbal jabbing with some Jewish leaders who accused Farrakhan of stealing the atonement concept from Jews.
Farrakhan used the first part of his marathon speech Thursday night to swing back, noting that the Jews had no exclusive rights to atonement.
Before the latest spat, Farrakhan had been insisting he is not the same man he was before Allah gave him the vision for the Million Man March. He has atoned to his family and others, including Jews and whites, he said.
In fact, he has purposely toned down his rhetoric. The man who once referred to whites as the devil and who wanted to establish a separate nation for blacks, says he now wants to appeal to a broader audience.
“For 42 years, my focus has been the black community,” said Farrakhan, sitting at the head of a long table in his palatial South Kenwood home. “Therefore, the black community understands Farrakhan by and large, but when the words I speak to blacks are heard by whites, sometimes it evokes fear and anger.”
Farrakhan said he has not changed his message, but frames it differently.
“So you can then cut across racial and cultural lines and make the message more universally acceptable,” he said.
Those who know Farrakhan say he is a changed man.
Probably Farrakhan’s No. 1 promoter is Jude Wanniski, a Morristown, N.J., businessman, who advised former President Ronald Reagan. For almost two years, he has been arranging meetings between Farrakhan and powerful whites, including former Republican vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp, CBS newsman Mike Wallace and Edgar Bronfman, the head of the World Jewish Congress.
Wanniski, who is white, said he neither has seen nor heard signs of anti-Semitism or bigotry from Farrakhan, whom he has known for several years. “If anti-Semitism means you have a racist view of Jews and agree with Hitler, I say there is not an anti-Semitic bone in Farrakhan’s body,” Wanniski asserted.
In more subtle ways, Farrakhan has been on a campaign to reach beyond his traditional followers, Nation members and die-hard black nationalists. Advisers have encouraged Farrakhan to show a softer side in public and to take a more active role in issues in his own back yard.
This year, Farrakhan visited the bedside of 13-year-old assault victim Lenard Clark and called for racial understanding. He spoke in both a Protestant and a Catholic church against injustice. He organized two meetings at his home to mediate peace between feuding factions of rap artists.
And on only a week’s notice in April, he responded to a request by the mayor of Philadelphia–who is Jewish–to calm racial tensions in that city.
The biggest surprise to many, though, was his support for former U.S. Rep. Mel Reynolds. Farrakhan often was present at the federal trial and he said he even paid for Reynolds’ attorney, William Hooks.
“Mel thought he was one of the boys,” Farrakhan said, who said he was brought to tears while observing the “unfair” prosecution. “And so the lesson that Mel is learning is purifying him for greater service. God is not through with him.”
Indeed, Farrakhan has a history of extending a hand to prominent blacks who have been discredited by their own misdeeds, especially those who characterize their fall from grace as an act of racial injustice.
When Washington Mayor Marion Barry’s political career was nearly shattered in 1990 after the world saw a videotape of an FBI sting operation that caught him smoking crack cocaine and seducing a woman, Farrakhan came to his aid.
“He said, `I am here to be supportive and I’m praying for you,’ ” recalled Barry, who since has regained the mayoral post. “It was a great uplift for me.”
And when the NAACP fired former executive director Benjamin Chavis in 1994 for allegedly misusing funds to settle a sexual harassment complaint, Farrakhan helped him rebound emotionally and financially. In February, Chavis, a longtime minister in the United Church of Christ, joined the Nation of Islam.
The evolution of Farrakhan is winning over some people.
“I believe that he is a dedicated man of God, and that he has come to be a bridge-builder to all religions, races and cultures,” said Susan Williamson, a white parishioner at St. Sabina Catholic Church, after hearing a Farrakhan speech in the church entitled, “Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: Praise his Holy Name.”
Skeptics argue that the new Farrakhan persona is merely a pale attempt to reposition himself as a leader, especially after the euphoria from the Million Man March subsided. His efforts to build a black political movement have faltered, and his trips last year to Libya and other anti-American regimes around the world garnered little domestic support. Moreover, his recent appeal to mainstream Muslims in America to accept him as a true Muslim appear to have backfired.
According to a recent poll by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, black Americans give higher approval ratings to President Clinton, Jesse Jackson and Gen. Colin Powell than to Farrakhan.
One thoughtful doubter is Manning Marable, a history professor and director of the Institute of Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York. Marable, who is African-American, said Farrakhan comes across as a radical, but behind the scenes his ideology mirrors that of conservative Republicans. He opposes abortion, gay rights and welfare.
In a recent interview, Farrakhan acknowledged that other reasons have encouraged him to reshape his image.
One is his health. The 64-year-old Farrakhan said he recently battled prostate cancer and is now in remission.
A backlash against his rhetoric also has hurt the Nation financially.
The government canceled the multimillion-dollar contracts that allowed the Nation of Islam to provide unarmed security at public housing sites, Farrakhan said. College presidents at predominantly black schools have banned him and his followers from speaking on their campuses because of charges of anti-Semitism.
The $5 million loan he got from Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in 1985 to launch a line of cosmetics was deposited in a black-owned bank, but bank officials soon asked him to remove the money, Farrakhan said. They feared repercussions.
In fact, Farrakhan said he was forced to select a white-owned manufacturing company after a black-owned firm rebuffed him. “They said if they made my cosmetics, their own would be taken off the shelves,” he said.
When describing such things, Farrakhan seems reluctant to turn the other cheek. He has put himself on the line for disgraced and beleaguered public figures, yet the favor is rarely reciprocated, he said. He described some of those who do return the favor as “midnight supporters,” because they call late at night.
Regardless of such travails or the apparent failure of the Day of Atonement, Farrakhan said he feels “blessed.”
“If there is love in the hearts of black people for Louis Farrakhan, I did not put it there. God put it there. So I consider myself to be loved.”
