THE MINISTER SPEAKS
At the end of the day, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan had the massive
crowd to himself. In a thundering speech that compared the suffering of blacks to
that of Job and offered a counterpunch to President Clinton's morning address in
Austin, Farrakhan held forth for more than two hours on the racial divide in
America. "I respectfully suggest to the President he did not dig deep enough at
the malady that divides black and white in order to affect a solution to the
problem," he said. "The thinking of the Founding Fathers was that this was to be
a nation by white people for white people." Shrugging off criticism that the
peaceful message of the rally could not be separated from a messenger accused of
racism and anti-Semitism, Farrakhan compared himself to the Old Testament
prophets who were also flawed human beings: "Today, whether you like it or not,
God brought the idea through me and he didn't bring it through me because my
heart was dark with hatred and anti-Semitism. He didn't bring it through me
because my heart is filled with hatred of white people. If my heart were that
dark, how is the message so bright, the message so clear and the response so
magnificent?"
Text of Farrakhan's
Speech
Million Man March
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