The 85th annual Saviours’ Day celebration kicked off last Friday as the start of a three-day holiday weekend. This year’s theme was “The Intensifying Universal Cry for Justice.”
Saviours’ Day commemorates the birthday of the founder of the Nation of Islam, Master Fard Muhammad, the great Mahdi who was born in Mecca and traveled to the United States of America to save the Black family. He would eventually become the holy teacher of the honorable Elijah Muhammad. Upon his departure in 1934, he appointed the Minister Elijah Muhammad as the spiritual leader and teacher of the Nation of Islam.
This Saviours’ Day marks more than “80 years of excellence for the Nation of Islam,” an organization that was designed to uplift and restore the Black man and woman to a divine state of peace and harmony.
This year, the honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, the nationwide leader of the Nation of Islam and the former student of the honorable Muhammad, delivered a keynote address via live webcast from the Salem United Methodist Church in Harlem. Occurring during a time when rallies and meetings talk about Black lives being in danger as targets of law enforcement and other government agencies, Farrakhan’s timing on raising the quality of life issue for Black people internationally was seen as impeccable by the “believers” who packed the churches and mosques from New York to Chicago.
Preceding Sunday’s keynote address, the Nation of Islam prepared youth workshops about a nationwide economic plan and held a “Black Lives Matter/ Youth in Peril” town hall meeting. At a time when some state that “Black lives are in peril,” an international cry for justice and unity has the global support of African descendants worldwide.
On the minds of many was Muhammad’s “Economic Blue Print,” which calls for 16 million Black wage earners to contribute just 35 cents a week, 5 cents a day, $1.40 a month and $18.20 a year, which would give us $291 million in one year alone to end poverty for people of African and indigenous descent worldwide.
One of the most important things taken from this Saviours’ Day in particular is that the time for us to save ourselves, without the dominant society helping us, is now closer than ever before. It will require believers first, and anyone who is pursuing justice as an alternative to global white supremacy and its attack on Black lives.