Volume 5, Number
7
December 17, 2001
The Farmer
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Cooperation verses Individualism
by Dr. Ridgely Abdul Mu’min Muhammad
According to the AP article, "Peculiar Land Swaps Leave Blacks With Little of Their
Ancestors’ Georgia Island", on Sapelo Island back in the early 50’s the largest employer, R.
J. Reynolds, Jr., worked cooperatively with Mr.Tom Popell, the county sheriff, to engage in
fancy legal footwork at the court house that deprived many Blacks of their land.
In the article "Alabama Pushed Black Family Off Its Land", the attorney general in 1906
sued a black family for land on behalf of the state, claiming that the land was swampland and that
they had no deed. The black family never knew about this suit until 1964. The family took the deed
and other documents to a lawyer for help. The lawyer never did anything and the courthouse housing
the records had a fire and supposedly the records did not survive. So the past attorney general, the
federal government, local lawyers, the State Lands Division, the state director of conservation and
a fire starter worked cooperatively to deprive this family of their land.
In "Landownership Made Blacks Targets of Violence and Murder", the Associated Press
documented "57 violent land takings – more than half of the 107 land takings found in an
18-month investigation of black land loss in America." The Tuskegee Institute and the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People have documented more than 3,000 lynchings between
1865 and 1965, and believe there were more. Many of those lynched were property owners, said Ray
Winbush, director of Fisk University’s Race Relations Institute.
”If you are looking for stolen black land,” he said, ”just follow the lynching trail.”
So it seems that white men’s lust for the Black man’s land instead of the Black man’s lust
for the white man’s woman may be at the root of the "lynching trail". And the media,
until this AP series, has worked cooperatively with the lynchers and state officials to point
to sex instead of greed and envy as the reason for the outbreak of "terrorism" in the
southern countryside in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.
In "Taking Away the Vote – and a Black Man’s Land" the article talks about the events
of November 1, 1875 in Mississippi and reads:
"At the time, Lowndes County had 3,800 registered black voters, nearly all of them Republicans,
as was Gleed. There were only 1,250 whites registered, nearly all as Democrats,
the Columbus Press reported at the time.
As the mob of torch-carrying whites surged through town on election eve, fires broke out.
Whites invaded Gleed’s house, shot up his furniture, shredded his wife’s clothing. The
next day, Gleed’s opponent, a white Democrat, was elected sheriff. Gleed fled to Paris,
Texas, leaving behind his house, his general store and its stock, his city lots and farmland."
It is pointed out in the article, "Developers and Lawyers Use a Legal Maneuver to Strip
Black Families of Land", that the state legislators have set up laws to allow for
"partition sales" of land. According to the article this is how it works: "Whenever a
landowner dies without a will, the heirs – usually spouse and children – inherit the estate…
Anyone can buy an interest in one of these family estates; all it takes is a single heir willing to
sell… And anyone who owns a share, no matter how small, can go to a judge and request that the
entire property be sold at auction."
If you will notice, most of your state and national legislators are lawyers. They work cooperatively
to make such laws, then you as an individual go to one of them to seek justice among a cooperating
pack of thieves. Read my article "Snake in the Reparations’ Grass" in "The
Farmer Newsletter" to see what happened to the Black farmers in their lawsuit against the
USDA.
And when a Black man tries to defend his land and his family as an individual they may
wind up like Mr. Dinning is the AP article, "A Man Is Jailed for Defending His Land." The
whites came to his house shooting. He ran up stairs and got his gun and fired back. Unfortunately,
he was a better shot than they. After he turned himself in for shooting one of the white assailants,
they returned to "terrorize" his wife and family.
What happened to "rugged individualism"? Why don’t white people treat everyone as an
individual and work to better themselves individually? Why do white people team up in gangs and mobs
when they attack Blacks, but teach individual "salvation" after you die to Blacks? Why is
it so hard for Blacks to work cooperatively while observing the very whites, that they want to
integrate with, sticking together to keep Blacks out of their white neighborhoods, white churches
and "white folks’ business"?
Is the lack of cooperation among Black people in America just because they were never taught a
better way? No! The Honorable Elijah Muhammad through his newspaper, "Muhammad Speaks" and
from his books such as "Message to the Black Man", has presented "an economic
blueprint" which until now the "integrationists" have spurned. The blueprint reads:
1. Recognize the necessity for unity and group operation (activities).
2. Pool your resources, physically as well as financially.
3. Stop wanton criticisms of everything that is black-owned and black-operated.
4. Keep in mind — jealousy destroys from within.
5. Observe the operations of the white man. He is successful. He makes no excuses for his
failures. He works hard in a collective manner. You do the same."
So why have Blacks not followed his admonition and advice? Answer: FEAR! Four hundred years of
terrorism as described in this article and the "Torn
from the Land" series, have produced a traumatized people.
After the "9/11" incident a friend of mine called me on the phone, all upset. She
realized that whenever white folk feel pain they take it out on Black folk. I argued that we should
ask for reparations, get some land, work together and build our own reality. She said, "But if
we get our own land, then they can bomb us." Somehow we still believe that being close to
so-called white folk can shield us from their venom when they decide to strike. However, it was the
white’s next door that worked cooperatively,
sometimes behind closed doors, sometimes from behind white sheets and burning crosses, bringing up
false charges and making up false documents to tear Black people "… from the Land".
And the cities are no safer, because "they can bomb us" as
they did in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921. The local whites in conjunction with the military killed 3,000
Blacks and destroyed 600 businesses in a 36 block area of the Greenwood District known as
"Black Wall Street". And more recently, the police in Philadelphia dropped a bomb on MOVE
headquarters in May of 1985 killing innocent men, women and children. In each case so-called white
folk blew up Black folk’s attempts at "cooperation". This is
"terrorism" at its best or should I say at its "devilest".
Peace, Doc