All posts by mfarmsadmin

Krist-May17-2004





Volume 1

Volume 1, Number
3                                                        
May 17, 2004

K.R.I.S.T. Newsletter

———————————————————————–

Albany, GA: "The Egypt of America"

by Dr. Ridgely Abdul Mu’min Muhammad

On Easter Sunday, April 11, 2004 The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan burned the note on the
Nation’s 1600 acre farm in "Terrible" Terrell County Georgia. The Nation of Islam
acquired the farm in December of 1994 as a result of contributions from the Three Year Economic
Savings Program. I was put on post as the Farm Manager in February of 1995.

After struggling here for a while and interacting with both the local Blacks and whites, I began
to wonder why Minister Farrakhan would want us to purchase a farm in this "God forsaken part of
America"? I say "God forsaken" because of the excessive heat, the swarms of gnats and
mosquitoes, worn out soil, uncontrollable weeds, and most distressing, the worn out people.

I ran into so many Black people that would just as soon tell you a lie than give you a kind
greeting. I really was looking for a way to gracefully bow out of the daunting task of trying to
farm. Almost every worker that I hired had a parole officer and stayed in and out of the county jail
where their slave labor was used to fix the county’s dirt roads and make the county look
"civilized" in case visitors passed through.

I was so intrigued about the level of "spiritual" destruction of the Black people in
the county that in 1997 I asked the Terrell High School principle why did the Blacks lie so much. He
said that Terrell County was once the home of the worst slave owners in Georgia. They were crooks
and liars and taught their slaves to be the same.

This intrigued me to do more research which produced some eye opening roots of the present
problem in this area of Southwest Georgia. W. E. B. Dubois wrote of Albany, GA and Dougherty County
in his "Souls of Black Folk". Terrell County borders western Dougherty County. Muhammad
Farms sits about 19 miles from Albany. Here are some exerts from Dubois:

"At Albany, in the heart of the Black Belt, we stop. Two hundred miles south of Atlanta, two
hundred miles west of the Atlantic, and one hundred miles north of the Great Gulf lies Dougherty
County, with ten thousand Negroes and two thousand whites…

For a radius of a hundred miles about Albany, stretched a great fertile land, luxuriant with
forests of pine, oak, ash, hickory, and poplar; hot with the sun and damp with the rich black
swamp-land; and here the corner-stone of the Cotton Kingdom was laid…

Dougherty County is the west end of the Black Belt, and men once called it the Egypt of the
Confederacy…

Day after day the clank of chained feet marching from Virginia and Carolina to Georgia was heard
in these rich swamp lands. Day after day the songs of the callous, the wail of the motherless, and
the muttered curses of the wretched echoed from the Flint to the Chickasaw- hatchee, until by 1860
there had risen in West Dougherty perhaps the richest slave kingdom the modern world ever knew. A
hundred and fifty barons commanded the labor of nearly six thousand Negroes, held sway over farms
with ninety thousand acres tilled land, valued even in times of cheap soil at three millions of
dollars. Twenty thousand bales of ginned cotton went yearly to England, New and Old; and men that
came there bankrupt made money and grew rich. In a single decade the cotton output increased
four-fold and the value of lands was tripled. It was the heyday of the nouveau riche, and a life of
careless extravagance among the masters…

‘This land was a little Hell,’ said a ragged, brown, and grave- faced man to me. We were
seated near a roadside blacksmith shop, and behind was the bare ruin of some master’s home. ‘I’ve
seen niggers drop dead in the furrow, but they were kicked aside, and the plough never stopped. Down
in the guard-house, there’s where the blood ran…’

With such foundations a kingdom must in time sway and fall. The masters moved to Macon and
Augusta, and left only the irresponsible overseers on the land…

This was indeed the Egypt of the Confederacy,–the rich granary whence potatoes and corn and
cotton poured out to the famished and ragged Confederate troops as they battled for a cause lost
long before 1861. Sheltered and secure, it became the place of refuge for families, wealth, and
slaves."

Further research revealed that even up to 1909 Albany was not only called the "Egypt of the
Confederacy" but also the "Egypt of America" (Glancing Backwards: Albany, Georgia
1836-1986).. Therefore this area continues to boast of its similarity to the Biblical Egypt with her
legacy of brutal slavery.

Minister Louis Farrakhan in a speech entitled "Out of Egypt have I called my son" given
in Atlanta, Ga. on April 25, 2004 taught us that the story of the slavery of the Children of Israel
in Egypt was not history but "allegory". He said that the real Egyptian people don’t
know anything about such a history. However, since the Bible and Holy Qur’an both mention this
story, there must be something important in it that we need to study.

So if the story of the enslavement of the Children of Israel is not history then it must be
prophesy. Who then fulfills such a prophesy? The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said that the Black
people of America are indeed the real Children of Israel and America is both the Egypt and
"Mystery Babylon" of the Bible. Our 400 hundred year enslavement and affliction fulfills
the prophesy of the seed Abraham as written in Genesis. Black people of America and not the
so-called Jews are the "Chosen People".

"13 And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land
that is not theirs, and shall serve them, and they shall afflict them four hundred years;

14 And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out
with great substance. (Genesis, 15:13-14)"

But I here you saying, "But the Bible says that the Jews were enslaved in Egypt." In
our next article we shall show you that even according to the Bible, the Jews were neither in Egypt
for 400 years, nor were they afflicted for 400 years. We will use your Bible to prove this. We will
also show you why the Supreme Court decision on "Brown vs the Board of Education" came
about on May 17, 1954.

The evil slave masters of Dougherty, Terrell and the other counties surrounding Albany have
unwittingly fulfilled the prophesies in the Bible and now it is time for those so afflicted to unite
and come out with "great substance." With the burning of the mortgage, the light of Islam
and the "Spirit of Truth" has gained a firm foothold in Southwest Georgia, the "Egypt
of America".

Krist-Mar18-2003





New Page 1

(Note:  Below is an article that I
initially wrote back in March, just a day before Bush declared war on Iraq.  I posted the
article briefly, but took it down based on Min. Farrakhan’s orders to all of the Nation of Islam
members to keep our mouths shut about this war.  However since the "war" has been
"officially" designated as over, and we can see the signs of America moving against Saudi
Arabia, I felt that this article would be appropriate at this time.  Peace, Doc)

Volume 2, Number 1                                            
March 18, 2003

K.R.I.S.T. Newsletter

———————————————————————–

Egypt is the Prize

by Dr. Ridgely Abdul Mu’min Muhammad

"Grand strategy for the Middle East

— Iraq is the tactical pivot

— Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot

Egypt the prize"

This above quotation was taken from a document prepared by a consultant from the Rand Corporation
and presented to members of President George W. Bush’s cabinet in August of 2002.

The present world crisis and the seeming insanity of President Bush’s determination to go to
war in the Middle East lets me know that the time is at hand. Many analysts and especially Black
people think that Bush and other so-called white people are motivated only by greed and power.
"Iraq is the tactical pivot", why? In 2001 Iraq is estimated as having the second largest
known oil reserves in the world. "Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot", why? Saudi Arabia has
the largest known oil reserves. "Egypt the prize", why? Egypt is NOT among the top ten
countries in terms of oil reserves. What does Egypt have that America would boldly, illegally and
blindly walk through two other countries to get?

Another serious issue in the Middle East is the war between Israel and the Palestinians. What is
that all about? Let’s look at these four countries, Israel, Iraq, Arabia and Egypt from a
historical point of view. These countries are squarely in the center of what is called the
"cradle of civilization". There is great debate over whether "civilization"
started in Iraq or Egypt. All of the three major western religions claim their birth place in this
area. Jerusalem is sacred to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The Sacred Ka’aba is in Arabia, but
the major Islamic universities were set up in Egypt and Iraq.

According to the Bible and Holy Quran, Moses left Egypt carrying with him the wisdom of that
civilization; Jesus was raised and educated in Egypt but taught in Palestine. However, the Bible and
Holy Quran seem to give Egypt a very bad reputation, yet there is something about Egypt that
requires would-be world Emperors to come and sit on her throne to be crowned with legitimacy.

The Persian conquerors in the time of Darius and Xerxes set on the throne of Kemet (Land of the
Blacks) and called themselves "Pharaoh". Later the Greeks led by Alexander set on the
throne of Kemet and called themselves "Pharaoh". Then the Romans set on the throne and
called themselves "Caesar" coming from the word "Ausar" (Osiris, the founder of
civilization in Kemet). After being raised up by Islam, the Arabs conquered Egypt, learned how to
read, write and count and became the purveyors of science to the western world thanks to her
libraries. Napoleon came to sit on the throne of Egypt and was highly upset with the broad flat nose
of the Sphinx and tried to blow her nose off. Just recently at the dawn of a new millennium, a group
of "enlightened ones", intellectually fed by what Napoleon stole from there, tried
unsuccessfully to put a capstone on the Great Pyramid to claim the new millennium for the
"great white race."

The secret societies in the western world whether they call themselves Masons, Shriners,
Rosicrucians, Skull and Bones or Illuminati, all try to claim Egypt as the mother and Imhotep the
father of their illegitimate wisdom. I say illegitimate because they acquired it through theft and
yet try to hide this knowledge from the masses of people who need enlightenment. At the same time
that these Caucasians, albinos, have been trying to both claim and unlock Egypt, the poor African
people have been all but stripped of the whole country with geo-politicians labeling Egypt as a part
of the "Middle East" instead of Africa. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by
Arabs because he dared to bring Egypt back into Africa, himself being both Arab and Nubian.

Sadat also told the so-called Jews of Israel that they did NOT help build the pyramids and were
NEVER enslaved in Egypt. He upset both the Arabs and the Zionists in Israel by saying that "the
Arabs and Jews were cousins fighting over territory that historically belonged to the Africans"
and not them. Now if that was to get out to the America public, I wonder if Israel would continue to
get the lion’s share of foreign aid which helps them secure their claim over Palestine which NEVER
belonged to them in the first place. Egypt has always frighten those who would lay claim to
Palestine.

So to make a long story short, "Egypt is the Prize" because as the Honorable Elijah
Muhammad has taught us, "if you want to see the remnants of when the Black man and woman were
the God of this planet, then go to Egypt." Egypt or Kemet was the seat of a world empire when
Black people ruled the world and the new comers, who call themselves the "white race", can
never claim supremacy until they get back into the Holy Land (Garden of Eden), from which they were
kicked out of 6,000 years ago, and sit their illegitimate behinds on the "Seat of Isis".

This land of Egypt was chosen to be the seat of the world empire thousands of years ago because
of its location connecting two continents, Asia and Africa. The Suez Canal is now one of the most
valuable pieces of real estate in the world in terms of commercial trade and military sea power.

Wars are fought to subjugate the minds and wills of people. Resources are used to buy support,
while weapons are used to intimidate nations into submitting to economic slavery. Rulers are
concerned with what people think and do everyday including what they bow down to. Human energy is
more valuable than oil. Truth increases the power of the mind, while lies cripple the mind’s
potential allowing it to be dominated by those with knowledge. Words can produce spiritual energy or
spiritual death.

The secret true identity of the Black man has been kept from the minds of the people, so that the
impostor can continue his rule over them. Over the past decade too many Black people from America
have visited Egypt, seen those wide noses on the Kings and Queens of Kemet and have become more
difficult to handle by the impostor. The impostor’s rule is just about over and the "stone
that the builders rejected" is about to be the "headstone of the corner."

"Egypt is the prize", because today the control of trade and information is the key to
world domination. The most valuable piece of information is the knowledge of self and others. The
Honorable Elijah Muhammad and now the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan have been teaching the
knowledge of self and others since the 1930s. When will we learn our lessons and act accordingly?
Maybe "Pharaoh" Bush can help us understand the value of what we rejected, as he charges
after the "Prize" that we think so little of, "the Knowledge of Self."

 

 

KRIST-Feb6-2006





The Spiritual Pyramid

Volume 3, Number
2                                            
February 6, 2006

K.R.I.S.T. Newsletter

———————————————————————–
The Spiritual Pyramid & The Physical Pyramid

by Bro Dewayne Muhammad

On the night of November 22, 1910, a small group of surrogates of the most powerful bankers of the World met,
under the veil of utmost secrecy, at specific little-used tracks of the railway station in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Each of these secret banking agents had his own private railway car with new servants who would not
recognize the identity of these men. The men traveled in silence to their secret destination, the elitist resort
island off the coast of Georgia named Jekyll Island. Over the next few weeks these men would perpetrate,
under the orders of their masters (men such as the Rothschild, Rockefeller and Morgan bankers) perhaps the
most colossal and devastating fraud ever inflicted upon the American People. 

The two pictures are one in the same, one physical the other spiritual. Charleston South
Carolina sits on the 33 rd parallel where you will find the first Masonic Temple. if you
slice a horizontal line all the way across the lower end of the state it will give you a 
capstone, like the missing cap on the back of the dollar bill. On the pyramid you flip the
state upside down. The base becomes what we call the upstate taking a piece of North
Carolina to make a perfect base, the tip point of the capstone is Georgia a few miles
across the border we can find Jekyl island where the federal reserve was founded 1886.
Remember
The movie National Treasury they kept saying the secret ls with Charlotte, for the
movie sake it was the name of a sunken ship. The clue would be found to finding the
National Treasury.

The white man calls the people from the Sea Islands of the Carolinas and the Georgia. 
“Geechie” they call themselves the Gullah people.
They do a play in Beaufort, SC the Gullah Geechie Coalition.
Where they portray the slaves worshiping the one God Allah one can easily say. The
slaves couldn’t spell they were trying to say, that they are Allah’s people

Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina Black people have the nature closer to the
continent
of Africa. I believe we have work to do to create this spiritual pyramid to awaken the
sleeping masses
of our people, they must return and visit the South
to regain what they lost here.

KRIST-Feb16-2005





Volume 2

Volume 2, Number
3                                 
February 16, 2005

K.R.I.S.T. Newsletter

———————————————————————–

And There were Two in the Womb

By Dr. Ridgely Abdul Mu’min Muhammad

Many times I have wondered why did Master Fard Muhammad come and declare our independence on July
4, 1930? Why did he choose the day of the signing of America’s Declaration of Independence to make
himself known and his mission to liberate Black people in America? I can not claim that I know the
complete answer to these questions, however in my research I have stumbled upon some interesting
food for thought.

Did you know that at the dawn of America’s birth that there were two in the womb? Let’s go
back to a similar story found in the Bible book of Genesis. Rebecca the wife of Isaac had twins in
her womb described as two nations, two manner of people. The first to see the light of day was Esau,
but his brother Jacob grabbed the heel of Esau as to pull him back and take his place. Jacob with
the help of his mother did finally prevail in tricking Isaac into giving the birthright and
inheritance to Jacob instead of the first born, Esau.

America declared her independence from Britain in 1776 using glorious phrases such as "We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…" After learning that
most of its signers were slave owners, I wondered how they could fix their minds to produce such
eloquence yet not see the humanity in their captives from Africa. I know now that it was not their
minds that created the idea of freedom, but they fed off of the Black man and woman’s yearning to
be free as motivation and strength to stand up against all odds. They saw even after their complete
domination, murder, castration, rape and torture of Black people that they could not completely put
out the light of humanity in them. They treated their slaves as dogs, but their slaves never
completely accepted their fate nor believed in their inferiority.

In 1772 a Black man who was a slave in Virginia was taken to England by his master. He ran away
and was recaptured and bound for Jamaica. The Black man, James Somersett sued for his freedom and in
a ruling by Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, he was freed in June and the
institution of slavery was declared unlawful. By January of 1773 not only had Blacks in America
heard about this ruling but many sued for their own freedom in the court of Massachusetts in Boston
which was still under British law.

On January 6, 1773 slaves under the pseudo name of "Felix" filed a petition for freedom
which was the first "Declaration of Independence" in America. They were denied by the
court but other petitions followed. By September slave owners in Virginia were afraid that their
slaves would run to the British to seek their freedom.

After reading the "Felix" petition, I realized how eloquent and wise my captive
ancestors were. The petitions were denied but it seems that this idea of the right of every man to
freedom was so eloquently and forcefully expressed that it seeped into the scalps of the
"Founding Fathers" and was used as a justification for their decision to cease the King’s
land and declare themselves free.

The "Founding Fathers" of which many were Masons, were superstitious and turned to
astrology to pick the right date for the birth of the nation so that the "gods" would
insure the success of their new endeavor. They chose July 4, 1776 because four lunar months prior
was the spring equinox on March 16th. Their astrologers had told them that they were in
the dawn of a new age where the vernal equinox moved from Pisces to Aquarius. So after this four
month gestation period they would spring forth from the womb at high noon in the middle of summer
like ripe corn.

They chose July 4th also because they thought that they would be born in the middle of
the Zodiacal house of Cancer which in Ancient Egypt was represented by a scarab, beetle, which
represented Khepera, the Creator God. You see as they were enslaving and dehumanizing the sons and
daughters of Africa they were studying Ancient Egypt in secret to steal her wisdom as they had stole
her children. The children of the man from where god "el" was called Ra or Israel were
asleep in Zion, but yearning to be delivered.

When one steals something, say like an expensive car, one must get the owner’s manual. This
takes us back to the story of Hiram Abiff, the master architect, who was hit upside the head and
buried in the northwest corner of the temple. His murderers wanted him to reveal some type of
secret. Some say that the secret was the name of God. However, since the Masons teach that the name
of God is Allah, they were and still are looking for another name, the name of the Messiah that was
to come and liberate the slaves.

The Babylonians had stolen the knowledge of astronomy and developed a set of superstitions by
which they thought that they could foretell the future, Astrology. The Wise Men from Babylon, the
magi, based on what they had learned from Daniel, thought that Jesus was the one because of the
time, 400 years after the last prophet of Israel, Malachi. They also saw a sign, a Star, in the West
which they felt proclaimed his birth. They immediately went to Herod, the warden for Rome, to tell
him that a Messiah for the Children of Israel was born. Herod thanked the gentlemen for their
"intelligence" and proceeded to kill all the male children age two and under. But of
course Jesus had escaped to Egypt, the home of his mother, Mary.

Jesus was later killed but he prophesied of another to come after him, called the Comforter or
Spirit of Truth. Well the old soothsayers and magi realized they had better put a guard on post to
watch for the next Messiah. So the secret societies of Mason, Rosicrucian, Illuminati, Club of Rome,
Knights Templar, Skull and Bones, all are awaiting the long awaited Messiah so that they can kill
him. They have enlisted new agencies like the FBI to track him down. They took the Astrological
Zodiac, as codified by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C., as the tool to know the time and beat God at his
own game.

Well it seems that the old boys forgot to receive instructions on when and how to make the
necessary timing adjustments in their stolen artificial clock. The real clock, the astronomical
stars were fixed but the place of the sun within the background of these stars had shifted by about
30 degrees over the 1800 years interval from 46 BC to 1776 AD. Therefore, when the astrologers would
say that your sign at birth was Aquarius, more than likely the sun would actually be in Capricorn
and so forth. Therefore, when they thought they were setting America up in Cancer, the sun was
actually in Gemini. So instead of America being in the womb of creation by herself, there was
another.

Master Fard Muhammad came and made himself known on July 4, 1930. On July 4th the sun
was still in Gemini along with the newly discovered planet of Pluto, which was discovered on
February 18, 1930. So it is indeed fitting that the Nation of Islam should celebrate July 4th
as our Independence Day, because Master Fard Muhammad heralded by a new star, Pluto, found that
other Nation that was in the womb of America, that she has held back from freedom, justice and
equality. "What goes around comes around" and it seems that the story of Jacob and Esau
must be restudied to learn the lessons of the present tense for the Nation of Islam. Another way to
put it is that we must better understand why the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said that he was
"Jacob" or "Yakub" in reverse.

Krist-Feb13-2004





Volume 1

Volume 1, Number 2                                               
February 13, 2004

K.R.I.S.T. Newsletter

———————————————————————–

The Messenger was "Right and Exact"

by Dr. Ridgely Abdul Mu’min Muhammad

"We should more so study what He taught and come into the science of what He taught so that
we will be motivated to obey his direction, not just because he said so, but because we now know he
was right and exact in what he taught us." (The Black Nation’s Condition; Final Call, Jan. 20,
2004)

Many of our people are not familiar with the Teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. But for
those of us who are, the "possibility" of the Messenger being who he says he is and his
Teachings being "right and exact" drops a great responsibility in our lap to help those
who may not know what time it is. When the Messenger first started teaching in the early 1930’s,
many of our people were illiterate and most were blind, deaf and dumb not only to the knowledge of
self, but lacked basic scientific, geographic and historical knowledge. His teachings sounded
strange but there was not much scientific opposition because there was no other body of knowledge to
compete with his.

Much of what He taught was even further ahead than even the science of the white people in the
early 1930’s. For instance there was no knowledge of genetics, nutrition, ozone depletion or
greenhouse effect. Therefore when Elijah said that the white race was made through a process of
"grafting", all one could say was that he was a "racist", a "bigot", a
"hate teacher", but no one could scientifically confirm or reject his Teachings because
the science of genetics had not been discovered.

When the Messenger taught us "How to eat to live", the science of nutrition did not
exist. It was not until 1940 that the National Research Council authorized the development of
dietary standards. (see "What’s in your pantry today?" at www.muhammadfarms.com/The%20Farmer%20Newsletter.htm)

When he warned about sudden climatic changes that would curtail America on her borders, there was
no knowledge of the "greenhouse effect." And even though the Pentagon is preparing for the
worse in case of sudden climatic changes, leaders like President Bush are running around with their
heads in the sand telling others not to overreact to these reports of "doom".

In the 1973 book called the "Fall of America" the Honorable Elijah Muhammad wrote:
"Large bodies of water at the ocean shore lines will be made to swell with unusually high
waves, dumping billions of tons of water over the now seashore line." (p.157)

Now in a January 26, 2004 article from Fortune called "Climate Collapse: The Pentagon’s
Weather Nightmare", David Stipp writes:

"Like the terrorists, though, the seemingly remote climate risk may hit home sooner and
harder than we ever imagined. In fact, the prospect has become so real that the Pentagon’s
strategic planners are grappling with it.

The threat that has riveted their attention is this: Global warming, rather than causing
gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to a tipping point. Growing
evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world’s climate can lurch from one
state to another in less than a decade—like a canoe that’s gradually tilted until suddenly it
flips over. Scientists don’t know how close the system is to a critical threshold. But abrupt
climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant future. If it does, the need to rapidly adapt
may overwhelm many societies—thereby upsetting the geopolitical balance of power."

So how long must we wait before we take the Messenger’s Teachings more seriously and thereby
avoid great losses? Then to add insult to injury our open enemy will mock us by saying, "You
should have followed the Messenger".

The Messenger taught us that we must be able to "speak the language" of the people.
Today much of that language is embellished with half understood pseudo-scientific terminologies that
make the white mind seem superior. We must obey the guidance of Minister Farrakhan by coming
"into the science of what He taught."

The Messenger’s Teachings are strange but can be studied and translated into the modern
language of science and mathematics, because we are taught that "Islam is mathematics and
mathematics is Islam." I took a step in this direction in my recently published book, "I
will not Apologize: The Resurrection of the Master Architect
." This book describes how
ancient Blacks built the pyramids using "hydraulics". It exposes some of the technologies
that the Messenger said that ancient Blacks hid beneath the sands in Egypt. It reveals how
monumental buildings of stone were used to describe history 6,000 years in advance. It describes how
ancient rivers were built and fertile land was made.

My book is just a start and only scratches the surface of the new sciences that the Messenger’s
Teachings unveil and inspire. However, some of the categories of future study based on the
Messenger’s unique perspectives could be:

1. The making of the moon and continental drift,

2. The pre-atomic origins of creation,

3. The making of different "races" through genetic manipulations,

4. The science behind "How to eat to live",

5. The sociological effects of the "Restrictive Laws" of Nation of Islam,

6. The economic blueprint for the Black Nation,

7. The mathematical theology of language,

8. The role of militancy and discipline in social development,

9. The climatic future of America,

10. The relationship between Islam and mathematics,

11. The sophistication of Ancient African technologies,

12. The role of free-will and pre-destination in the light of pre-history,

13. The possibilities in recovering genetic memory,

14. The physics behind the "Mother Plane",

15. The meaning of "repair" in "Reparations" for the fallen family of
God,

16. Theocracy as a system of governance for a future Nation of gods,

17. The science of civilization building,

18. The brown germ’s effect on human behavior.

These are a just a few of the directions that a body of scientists can take as we take the
Messenger’s Teachings more seriously and thus prove to the world that he was "right and
exact" before it is too late.

KRIST-Aug10-2004





Volume 1

Volume 1, Number
4                                            
August 10, 2004

K.R.I.S.T. Newsletter

———————————————————————–

Is "Egypt sin"?

by Dr. Ridgely Abdul Mu’min Muhammad

On Sunday, August 8, 2004 we sponsored a Townhall Meeting in Americus, Ga on the subject of
"Slavery, Prison or the Draft: Which one will you be forced to choose?" To promote the
event we passed out flyers on the street and at churches. One church we went to was already in
service when we got there, so we quietly peeped into the sanctuary where we were amazed to see a
white woman in the pulpit.

We cracked the door to listen because we heard the word "slavery" and for a moment we
thought that she was talking about slavery in America. Well, this would be interesting to see that
white people were finally talking about the enslavement of Black people in America which they want
everyone including Black people to forget. However, we were wrong in our assumption because she went
immediately to her point, "Egypt is sin." She said that when you hear of Joseph going down
into Egypt, that means that he went "down into sin, because Egypt is sin." I immediately
turned to my friend and asked, "Where is that in the Bible?" He shrugged his shoulder.

After we held our event, I was anxious to get to my computer and do a Google search on the term
"Egypt is sin". I found only a few direct references to that term. One reference pointed
to Albert the Great in a commentary on Psalms 136. So I went to my King James Version of the Bible
and read. There was no "Egypt is sin" line in the entire Psalm. However, there was mention
of Egypt in verses 10 and 11:

"10 To him that smote Egypt in their firstborn: for his mercy endureth for ever:

11 And brought out Israel from among them: for his mercy endureth for ever:"

I was not able to get a hold of any writings from "Albert the Great" to see how he
supposedly got "Egypt is sin" from these verses.

I found another reference on the website http://www.jesusrevolution.ch/godman.htm. This website
called "Jesus Revolution" has subtitle "Equipping the Saints for the Final
Harvest" and reminds me of the "End Times" theology underpinnings of the
"neo-cons" and their race to usher in "Armageddon". This portion of the
"Jesus Revolution" website gives a commentary on 3 John 1:2 which reads,

"Beloved, I pray that in all things thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul
prospereth."

Then the commentator on this website writes: "Once you believe something with your mind then
you commit to it. Egypt is sin."

However, there is no Bible reference given for the phrase, "Egypt is sin". It’s just
one of those "white" things that Blacks are supposed to accept as doctrine because they
said it, I suppose. Is this white woman a part of the "Jesus Revolution" or other
Christian fundamentalist groups that are considered part of the "base" for President
George W. Bush’s form of neo-conservative religious right foreign policy "crusading"
initiatives in the Middle East? If so, then how does the phrase "Egypt is sin" coincide
with another phrase of the neo-cons, "Egypt the prize", which we have expounded on in a
former article of the KRIST Newsletter called "Egypt is the prize"?

If "Egypt is sin" then why do the neo-cons want it as a prize? And what is some
so-called white woman doing running around to Black churches talking about "Egypt is sin"?
What has "Egypt" done to Black people, that we should consider her "sin"? Who
has political stake in how Black people view "Egypt"?

The answer of course is "Israel". It was Egypt that has gone to war with Israel on at
least two occasions to end Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. I believe that Anwar Sadat,
the former president of Egypt, was assassinated because he told the Jews that they did not help
build the pyramids, neither were they ever in bondage to the native Egyptians. He also told both the
Jews and Arabs that they were cousins fighting over territory that historically belonged to Africa
and Africans.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said in "Message to the Black Man" that it is America
that has fulfilled the story of 400 years of affliction of her Black slaves under the type of
"Israel". He writes, "In fact, and as God taught me, the Bible is not referring to
those people as His People, it is referring to the so-called Negro and his enemy (the white
race)."

Not only has America fulfilled the role of "Egypt" and Blacks the role of the enslaved
"Children of Israel", but this portion of Southwest Georgia, 30 miles from the church in
which this white woman uttered "Egypt is sin" was called the "Egypt of the
Confederacy" in the late 1850’s and early 1860’s. W. E. B. DuBois in "Souls of Black
Folk" states:

"This was indeed the Egypt of the Confederacy,–the rich granary whence potatoes and corn
and cotton poured out to the famished and ragged Confederate troops as they battled for a cause lost
long before 1861. Sheltered and secure, it became the place of refuge for families, wealth, and
slaves."

It seems that unremorseful Albany did not repent from her "sin" of slavery but by 1909
she proudly proclaimed on a banner which covered the pyramid like stacking of cotton bales as one
entered the city from the west, "Welcome to the Egypt of America".

So we ask our white evangelist, "Which Egypt are you talking about, the mythical and
allegorical slave holding "Egypt" of the Bible or the real "Egypt" of bondage
and 400 years of continued affliction for Blacks, called "America"? And tell me Miss and
Mr. Evangelist, what type of morality are you "crusading" to bring to the Middle East? Why
would a good Christian loving country like America feel the need to corrupt the morals of people she
labels as infidels?

Let me get specific. I saw the pictures from the Abu Gharib prison. Why would good Christians
force men to do homosexual acts, film them and threaten to send these pictures to their relatives if
they did not talk? This sounds like a work that only a "Devil" or maybe "Satan"
could do. Then why would "gays" force the government of America to accept homosexual
marriage, ignoring the story of "Sodom and Gomorah" in the Bible? Then why would they
choose May 17, 2004, the 50th anniversary of Brown v. the Board of education to perform the first
"homosexual marriage" in Boston? Now how are Blacks to celebrate this day? Is this the
beginning of "Civil Rights" for Blacks or the crowning of Satan’s desire to corrupt the
moral fiber of society?

We must not sleep on "Egypt": the mythical Egypt of the Bible and the historical Egypt
of the pyramids while secret orders like the Freemasons and "Skull and Bones" try to claim
her as the source of their "New Age" speculations into the "Wisdom of the
Ancients." This white race’s type of deceptive maneuvering to keep the original heirs to the
"Wisdom" afraid to study or even look at what the imposter and usurper pays billions of
dollars to study, is indeed truly Satanic.

"Egypt is the Prize" and not "sin".

Jews





http

http://www.the7thfire.com/new_world_order/zionism/who_are_the_Jews.htm

Deconstructing the walls of Jericho: Who are the Jews

By Ze’ev Herzog
A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.- Bertrand de Juvenal

(from Ha’aretz Magazine, Friday, October 29, 1999)

Following 70 years of intensive excavations in the Land of Israel,
archaeologists have found out: The patriarchs’ acts are legendary, the
Israelites did not sojourn in Egypt or make an exodus, they did not conquer
the land. Neither is there any mention of the empire of David and Solomon,
nor of the source of belief in the God of Israel. These facts have been known
for years, but Israel is a stubborn people and nobody wants to hear about it 

This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel:
the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the
land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps
even harder to swallow is the fact that the united monarchy of David and Solomon,
which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal
kingdom. And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God of Israel,
Jehovah, had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism
only in the waning period of the monarchy and not at Mount Sinai.Most of those who
are engaged in scientific work in the interlocking spheres of the Bible, archaeology and
the history of the Jewish people – and who once went into the field looking for proof to
corroborate the Bible story – now agree that the historic events relating to the stages of
the Jewish people’s emergence are radically different from what that story tells.
http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/jerques.htm 

In a September 22nd, 2002 speech to visiting Christian Zionists, Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asserted, “This land is ours… God gave us the
title deeds…” However, recent scholarly research, including discoveries by
an archaeological team from the University of Tel Aviv, not only deconstruct
the Biblical Old Testament and Torah stories upon which this claim rests, but
grant previously unthinkable credence to an ancient historian’s claim that the
Israelites of Exodus were actually the Hyksos, and therefore of Asiatic origin.

To trace the foundations of this ongoing Biblical bonfire, we must go back to
1999. 

All hell broke loose in Israel in November of that year when Prof. Ze’ev
Herzog of Tel Aviv University announced: “the Israelites were never in Egypt,
did not wander the desert, did not conquer the land, and did not pass it on to
the twelve tribes”. Moreover, the Jewish God YHWH had a female consort –
the goddess Asherah! 

His conclusion that the kingdom of David and Solomon was at best a small
tribal monarchy, at worst total myth, has made enemies for him in the camps
of traditional Jewish and Christian belief systems. He asserts: all evidence
demonstrates that the Jews did not adopt monotheism until the 7th Century
BCE – a heresy according to the Biblical tradition dating it to Moses at
Mount Sinai. 

Tel Aviv University’s archaeological investigation at Megiddo and
examination of the six-sided gate there dates it to the 9th Century BCE, not
the 10th Century BCE claimed by the 1960’s investigator Yigael Yadin who
attributed it to Solomon. Herzog, moreover, states that Solomon and David
are “entirely absent in the archaeological record”. 

In addition, Herzog’s colleague, Israel Finkelstein, claims the Jews were
nothing more than nomadic Canaanites who bartered with the city dwellers. 

The team’s studies concluded that Jerusalem did not have any central status
until 722 BCE with the destruction of its northern rival Samaria. 

However, the real bombshell is Herzog’s discovery of numerous references
to Yahweh having a consort in the form of Asherah. Inscriptions, written in
Hebrew by official Jewish scribes in the 8th century BCE, were found in
numerous sites all over the land. For Yahweh, supposedly the “One God”, to
have had a female consort and, of all people, the goddess Asherah, is
dynamite of wide ranging significance.

But what does all this do to the validity of the “Title Deeds” from God that
Ariel Sharon refers to? Quite apart from the obvious conclusion that the god
assumed to have given the “promised land” to his chosen people was just
one god from a pantheon and not the alleged monotheistic only God of the
cosmos, Herzog’s findings corroborate theories that have been “out there”
for some time. 

The Hyksos 

Like Herzog, the historian Josephus (c. 37CE – c. 100CE) denied the
account of the Hebrews being held in captivity in Egypt, but he went a drastic
step further about the racial origins of the Jews, whom he identified with the
Hyksos. He further claimed they did not flee from Egypt but were evicted due
to them being leprous. 

It must be said that Josephus has been vilified over the ages as a Roman
collaborator by both Jewish and Christian scholars who have argued that the
dating of the exodus of the “Hebrews” from Egypt in the Bible positively rules
out their identification as Hyksos. 

However, Jan Assmann, a prominent Egyptologist at Heidelberg University,
is quite positive in his writings that the Exodus story is an inversion of the
Hyksos expulsion and furthermore that Moses was an Egyptian. 

Likewise, Donald P. Redford, of Toronto University, presents striking
evidence that the Expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt was inverted to
construct the exodus of the Hebrew slaves story in the Torah and Old
Testament. His book, which argued this theory, “Egypt, Canaan, and Israel
in Ancient Times” was Winner of the 1993 Best Scholarly Book in
Archaeology Award of the Biblical Archaeological Society. 

There is irrefutable evidence that the Hyksos, a mixed Semitic-Asiatic group
who infiltrated the Nile valley, seized power in Lower Egypt in the 17th
Century BCE. They ruled there from c. 1674 BCE until expelled when their
capital, Avaris, fell to Ahmose around 1567 BCE. 

The Hyksos in Egypt worshipped Set, who like ISH.KUR they identified as a
storm deity. 

Under the “inversion theory”, Jewish scholars in the 7th Century BCE
changed the story from “expelled” to “escaped” and as a further insult to
their enemy, Ahmose, changed and miss-spelt his name to Moses,
presenting him as leader of a Hebrew revolt. But there is also a strong
possibility of two separate origins to the “Moses” character being merged
into one, which I will come to later. 

Ahmose’s success in 1567 BCE led to the establishment of the 18th
Dynasty in Egypt. ThotMoses III overthrew the transvestite Pharaoh
Atchepsut, and under ThotMoses IV Egyptian conquests extended beyond
the Sinai into Palestine, Syria, reaching Babylonia and included Canaan. 

By the end of this expansion, Amenophis III (1380BCE) ruled an Egyptian
empire whose provinces and colonies bordered what is now known as
Turkey. This empire would have included the regions in which most of the
expelled Hyksos now lived. 

Amenophis IV succeeded the throne in 1353BCE. He established a new
monotheism cult establishing “Aten” as the one supreme god and he
changed his name to Akhenaton. Married to the mysterious Nefertiti,
Akhenaton declared himself a god on earth, intermediary between the
one-god Aten (Ra) and humanity, with his spouse as partner, effectively
displacing Isis and Osiris in the Egyptian Enead. 

Declaring all men to be the children of Aten, historians suspect Akhenaton
planned an empire-wide religion. He banned all idolatry, the use of images
to represent god, and banned the idea that there was more than one
supreme god. 

It is alongside Akhenaten and his father Amenophis III that we find the
second Moses. 

An important figure during this period was confusingly called Amenophis son
of Hapu. He was First Minister (Vizier) to both kings. He is generally
depicted as a scribe, crouching and holding on his knees a roll of papyrus.
He more than anyone was responsible for authoring the religion in which the
old gods were merged into one living god, Aten, who had been responsible
for the creation of the Earth and of humanity. 

The symbol of this god, the sun disk, represented Ra, Horus and the other
gods in one. The sun disk, in symbolism, was supported between the horns
of a bull. The Son of Hapu says this about creation: “I have come to you who
reigns over the gods oh Amon, Lord of the Two Lands, for you are Re who
appears in the sky, who illuminates the earth with a brilliantly shining eye,
who came out of the Nou, who appeared above the primitive water, who
created everything, who generated the great Enneade of the gods, who
created his own flesh and gave birth to his own form.” 

The king’s overseer of the land of Nubia was a certain Mermose (spelled
both Mermose and Merymose on his sarcophagus in the British Museum).
According to modern historians, in Amenhotep’s third year as king,
Mermose took his army far up the Nile, supposedly to quell a minor rebellion,
but actually to secure gold mining territories which would supply his king with
the greatest wealth of any ruler of Egypt. 

Recent scholarship has indicated Mermose took his army to the
neighborhood of the confluence of the Nile and Atbara Rivers and beyond. 

But who was this Mermose? According to historian Dawn Breasted, the
Greek translation of this name was Moses. Does Jewish tradition support
this identification? 

According to Jewish history not included in the Bible, Moses led the army of
Pharaoh to the South, into the land of Kush, and reached the vicinity of the
Atbara River. There he attracted the love of the princess of the fortress city
of Saba, later Meroe. She gave up the city in exchange for marriage. Biblical
confirmation of such a marriage is to be found in Numbers 12:1. “And
Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman
whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.” 

The archaeology of the Land of Israel is completing a process that amounts to a
scientific revolution in its field. It is ready to confront the findings of biblical scholarship
and of ancient history. But at the same time, we are witnessing a fascinating
phenomenon in which all this is simply ignored by the Israeli public. Many of the
findings mentioned here have been known for decades. The professional literature in
the spheres of archaeology, Bible and the history of the Jewish people has addressed
them in dozens of books and hundreds of articles. Even if not all the scholars accept the
individual arguments that inform the examples I cited, the majority have adopted their
main points.

Nevertheless, these revolutionary views are not penetrating the public consciousness.
About a year ago, my colleague, the historian Prof. Nadav Ne’eman, published an
article in the Culture and Literature section of Ha’aretz entitled “To Remove the Bible
from the Jewish Bookshelf,” but there was no public outcry. Any attempt to question
the reliability of the biblical descriptions is perceived as an attempt to undermine “our
historic right to the land” and as shattering the myth of the nation that is renewing the
ancient Kingdom of Israel. These symbolic elements constitute such a critical
component of the construction of the Israeli identity that any attempt to call their
veracity into question encounters hostility or silence. It is of some interest that such
tendencies within the Israeli secular society go hand-in-hand with the outlook among
educated Christian groups. I have found a similar hostility in reaction to lectures I have
delivered abroad to groups of Christian bible lovers, though what upset them was the
challenge to the foundations of their fundamentalist religious belief.

It turns out that part of Israeli society is ready to recognize the injustice that was done
to the Arab inhabitants of the country and is willing to accept the principle of equal
rights for women – but is not up to adopting the archaeological facts that shatter the
biblical myth. The blow to the mythical foundations of the Israeli identity is apparently
too threatening, and it is more convenient to turn a blind eye. Ha’aretz., October 29, 1999

introduction





Introduction

Introduction:

There are many detractors of the Teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad who feel that it is a
little bit peculiar that a man (whom no one knows his origin or
what
happened to him) who allegedly taught that there is a "mothership" hovering around the
earth waiting to kill white people made by a  black so-called
God-devil
scientist, and another group of scientists who tried to blow up the earth
66
trillion years ago  (but Elijah says they weren’t successful–and that is how we
have
the moon today).

Yes, it is very "peculiar". But the issue is not that it is "peculiar" but IF
it can be
proven to be true or false. There are many things in
the Quran that are not yet
understood by the
"scholars". There are many things that happened on this planet
that
the scientists of this world are just discovering and have yet to discover.

Remember that this western world condemned Galileo when he talked about the earth
not being in the center of the solar system.
Yes, a stranger who
seemingly no one knew came to the slums of Detroit in the
middle
of a depression talking about stuff that nobody, even the scientists of
that
day, knew about. For instance, he said that Mt. Everest was 29,141 feet high. In
a
recent newspaper article the scientists have measured Mt. Everest using more sophisticated methods
and it seems to have grown closer to Master Fard’s figure and further from their previous

calculations.

Before you discount the moon being blown from the earth, you need to do the calculations
of what the diameter of the earth would be if you put the mass of the
moon
back into it. Then you need to evaluate why is the whole area around the
Pacific
ocean called the "ring of fire". Then you need to check out the chemical
composition
of the moon rocks brought back by the astronauts and ask, "If the
moon
came from other than the earth, then why is its composition so similar?"

"Why would moon rock have the smell of gunpowder?"

You then need to look at a globe of the earth and see how if you took North and South
America and moved it closer to Europe and Africa, how you would have a
perfect
fit.

Now about "Yakub": Where did so-called white folk come from? I say
"so-called"
because they are nothing but ALBINOS who
came from Africa and somehow got
stranded in the Islands in the
Aegean Sea and forgot or were lied to about their
ancestry.

Why do so-called white folks when they get mad with each other say,
"you Cretin"? Read your Greek literature and find out where
they said that they
came from. It was not from no Indo-Europea
either.

Who were those people who lost a
war in Kmt and were put on boats 6,000 years ago? Where did they go? Sir
Arthur
Evans believes they wound up on Crete.

Master Fard Muhammad taught us the basis of genetic manipulation in how the white
man was made. Now the so-called white man is using genetic engineering
to
make whole new species of creatures and weapons to eliminate the original
inhabitants.

Who is the Original Man? Surely not white people, their genetic researchers have
traced all of us back to some Africans, so the Black man is the "original man".

By the way, Africa and Asia are one land mass and "Africa" is not what Africans called
their land. "Africa" is a European word not "African". Where did the word
"Asia"
come from?

We notice that so-called white folks who know a little about science never argue with
us about that "peculiar" stuff that Elijah (a man with a third grade education)
taught.
They just don’t like being called "devil". Of course if they would join Islam,then we
could no longer call them "devil" because by their own choice they would have rejected the
LIE that separates them from the human family. "Devil" is a
psychological
state not a state of the flesh. Albinos who accept being Black fit right
in
with the rest of the world. So-called white people hold themselves up as separate and something

special, i.e. like Iblis.

Granted, most of the followers of the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, never bothered
to study to see if they could be verified from a third perspective. They
simply
believed in Elijah and that was sufficient until he left. When his son
Wallace
took over and said that all we were taught was a bunch of myths, most,
even
myself discounted all that he had taught us except the part about studying
the
Holy Quran so that we would be accepted by the our "Brothers in the East".

Without going into long detail here, it was not until I was a graduate
student at Michigan State and went back deeply into the volumes at their
library
that I began to see that I had better rethink the Teachings of Elijah
Muhammad.
Then when so-called white folks began to get burnt up by the sun
(melanoma
from depletion of ozone), well that was too close to Elijah’s prediction
of
them being burnt up by the sun for me to ignore the implications of that for our
future.

Then I really began studying Ancient Kmt and the pyramids and realized that our ancestors
were really something and the relationship between Islam and their
religion
was too close to be coincidental. And the relationship between their
history
and what was taught to us by Master Fard Muhammad about the "Holy
Land"
and the "Best Part of the Planet Earth" was too close to ignore.

Yes, it is difficult to explain many of the "peculiar" teachings that Master Fard
brought and Elijah taught without years of study. I am just scratching
the surface, but fortunately my work has inspired many others to do so as well.

The Kemetic Research Institution of Science and Technology was
established to continue that search for truth so skillfully held from the world but locked within
the writings, monuments and geometry left by our ancestors.  So now we begin to rebuild.

Peace, Doc

 

index






Muhammad Farms

 

Dr. Ridgely has new email: drridge@noimoa.com

NOIMOA
Staple Goods Purchase Project

THE
FARMER Newsletter

Weekly Column 


"Paradise is a Garden": Five Part Series

Ministry of
Agriculture Resource List

Big Business
Courts Black Farmers

Planned
Demise of the Black Farmers by the U.S. Government

Free the Black
Land!

The
Black Farmer Lawsuit

BFAA vs BFAA, Inc:

The Lone Rangers and "Tomtoe"
&

"Passion" of the Black
Farmers

"Terminator Genes"
Poem and video

THE
FARMER Newsletter

K.R.I.S.T. Newsletter

Book Reviews: "The
Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews, Volume 2"

Did the
Exodus Ever Happen?

New Website for the Ministry of
Agriculture: NOIMOA.COM

The
Surprising Truth About Wheat and Your Health

Sources for
Seeds

Was the Moon
created by a nuclear explosion on Earth?

Press Release: Network
of Black Farm Organizations and Advocates

New Books: "The
Science and Business of Farming vs. the Art and Hobby of Gardening
"

"Commonomics:
Developing a Post Yakub Economy
"

Works of Dr. Ridgely Abdul Mu’min Muhammad

Government
control of your garden: HR 875 and SR 425?

Link
found between Alzheimer’s, mad cow protein


NEWS
 
POEMS

Ministry of
Agriculture Resource List

  Final Call Newspaper

Links

Visit Muhammad Farms

Setting up Food
Coops

Backyard
Gardening
Feature Gardens

"The Farm is the engine of our national life."

Donations to the Ministry of
Agriculture
 

Why does the US Government Hate Cuba?

Reclaiming Our African Culture

Syllabus for "Farm and Food"
Workshop
   Setting up Food
Co-ops

The Hand of
God: Hurricanes and Mighty Snow

Hurricane Katrina and the financial fall of America

Muhammad Farms: Free and Clear

Welcome to Muhammad Farms: 
Donations  
Recipes   
 

Black Farmers/Food
co-ops
  
 Economic Development 
   
    

Help support Muhammad Farms (773)924-6514 or Find out
more about the 3 Year Economic Savings Program


     Amen: The Secret Waters of the
Great Pyramid

       USDA:
Lawsuit
 
           

    Visit Muhammad Farms    
Meet "Doc" Ridgely

Contact Dr. Ridgely, at drridge@noimoa.com    Messages 

Comments Questions or Suggestions?  Send a note Here

Immortal Cells





Henrietta Lacks

Henrietta Lacks’ `Immortal’ Cells
Journalist Rebecca Skloot’s new book investigates
how a poor black tobacco farmer had a groundbreaking
impact on modern medicine
By Sarah Zielinski
Smithsonian.com
January 22, 2010
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Henrietta-Lacks-Immortal-Cells.html

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot
Crown Publishing Group
Pub Date: February 02, 2010
368pp

[moderator: the book is available in traditional
format and also as a CD or E-book. The article link
above contains links to photos and other items
of interest]

Medical researchers use laboratory-grown human cells to
learn the intricacies of how cells work and test
theories about the causes and treatment of diseases. The
cell lines they need are "immortal"-they can grow
indefinitely, be frozen for decades, divided into
different batches and shared among scientists. In 1951,
a scientist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore,
Maryland, created the first immortal human cell line
with a tissue sample taken from a young black woman with
cervical cancer. Those cells, called HeLa cells, quickly
became invaluable to medical research-though their donor
remained a mystery for decades. In her new book, The
Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, journalist Rebecca
Skloot tracks down the story of the source of the
amazing HeLa cells, Henrietta Lacks, and documents the
cell line’s impact on both modern medicine and the Lacks
family.

Who was Henrietta Lacks?

She was a black tobacco farmer from southern Virginia
who got cervical cancer when she was 30. A doctor at
Johns Hopkins took a piece of her tumor without telling
her and sent it down the hall to scientists there who
had been trying to grow tissues in culture for decades
without success. No one knows why, but her cells never
died.

Why are her cells so important?

Henrietta’s cells were the first immortal human cells
ever grown in culture. They were essential to developing
the polio vaccine. They went up in the first space
missions to see what would happen to cells in zero
gravity. Many scientific landmarks since then have used
her cells, including cloning, gene mapping and in vitro
fertilization.

There has been a lot of confusion over the years about
the source of HeLa cells. Why?

When the cells were taken, they were given the code name
HeLa, for the first two letters in Henrietta and Lacks.
Today, anonymizing samples is a very important part of
doing research on cells. But that wasn’t something
doctors worried about much in the 1950s, so they weren’t
terribly careful about her identity. When some members
of the press got close to finding Henrietta’s family,
the researcher who’d grown the cells made up a
pseudonym-Helen Lane-to throw the media off track. Other
pseudonyms, like Helen Larsen, eventually showed up,
too. Her real name didn’t really leak out into the world
until the 1970s.

How did you first get interested in this story?

I first learned about Henrietta in 1988. I was 16 and a
student in a community college biology class. Everybody
learns about these cells in basic biology, but what was
unique about my situation was that my teacher actually
knew Henrietta’s real name and that she was black. But
that’s all he knew. The moment I heard about her, I
became obsessed: Did she have any kids? What do they
think about part of their mother being alive all these
years after she died? Years later, when I started being
interested in writing, one of the first stories I
imagined myself writing was hers. But it wasn’t until I
went to grad school that I thought about trying to track
down her family.

How did you win the trust of Henrietta’s family?

Part of it was that I just wouldn’t go away and was
determined to tell the story. It took almost a year even
to convince Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah, to talk to
me. I knew she was desperate to learn about her mother.
So when I started doing my own research, I’d tell her
everything I found. I went down to Clover, Virginia,
where Henrietta was raised, and tracked down her
cousins, then called Deborah and left these stories
about Henrietta on her voice mail. Because part of what
I was trying to convey to her was I wasn’t hiding
anything, that we could learn about her mother together.
After a year, finally she said, fine, let’s do this
thing.

When did her family find out about Henrietta’s cells?

Twenty-five years after Henrietta died, a scientist
discovered that many cell cultures thought to be from
other tissue types, including breast and prostate cells,
were in fact HeLa cells. It turned out that HeLa cells
could float on dust particles in the air and travel on
unwashed hands and contaminate other cultures. It became
an enormous controversy. In the midst of that, one group
of scientists tracked down Henrietta’s relatives to take
some samples with hopes that they could use the family’s
DNA to make a map of Henrietta’s genes so they could
tell which cell cultures were HeLa and which weren’t, to
begin straightening out the contamination problem.

So a postdoc called Henrietta’s husband one day. But he
had a third-grade education and didn’t even know what a
cell was. The way he understood the phone call was:
"We’ve got your wife. She’s alive in a laboratory. We’ve
been doing research on her for the last 25 years. And
now we have to test your kids to see if they have
cancer." Which wasn’t what the researcher said at all.
The scientists didn’t know that the family didn’t
understand. From that point on, though, the family got
sucked into this world of research they didn’t
understand, and the cells, in a sense, took over their
lives.

How did they do that?

This was most true for Henrietta’s daughter. Deborah
never knew her mother; she was an infant when Henrietta
died. She had always wanted to know who her mother was
but no one ever talked about Henrietta. So when Deborah
found out that this part of her mother was still alive
she became desperate to understand what that meant: Did
it hurt her mother when scientists injected her cells
with viruses and toxins? Had scientists cloned her
mother? And could those cells help scientists tell her
about her mother, like what her favorite color was and
if she liked to dance.

Deborah’s brothers, though, didn’t think much about the
cells until they found out there was money involved.
HeLa cells were the first human biological materials
ever bought and sold, which helped launch a multi-
billion-dollar industry. When Deborah’s brothers found
out that people were selling vials of their mother’s
cells, and that the family didn’t get any of the
resulting money, they got very angry. Henrietta’s family
has lived in poverty most of their lives, and many of
them can’t afford health insurance. One of her sons was
homeless and living on the streets of Baltimore. So the
family launched a campaign to get some of what they felt
they were owed financially. It consumed their lives in
that way.

What are the lessons from this book?

For scientists, one of the lessons is that there are
human beings behind every biological sample used in the
laboratory. So much of science today revolves around
using human biological tissue of some kind. For
scientists, cells are often just like tubes or fruit
flies-they’re just inanimate tools that are always there
in the lab. The people behind those samples often have
their own thoughts and feelings about what should happen
to their tissues, but they’re usually left out of the
equation.

And for the rest of us?

The story of HeLa cells and what happened with Henrietta
has often been held up as an example of a racist white
scientist doing something malicious to a black woman.
But that’s not accurate. The real story is much more
subtle and complicated. What is very true about science
is that there are human beings behind it and sometimes
even with the best of intentions things go wrong.

One of the things I don’t want people to take from the
story is the idea that tissue culture is bad. So much of
medicine today depends on tissue culture. HIV tests,
many basic drugs, all of our vaccines-we would have none
of that if it wasn’t for scientists collecting cells
from people and growing them. And the need for these
cells is going to get greater, not less. Instead of
saying we don’t want that to happen, we just need to
look at how it can happen in a way that everyone is OK
with.