Local activists are preparing to commemorate the legacy of Dr. Khalid Abdul Muhammad this Thursday, Jan. 12, the 69th anniversary of his birthday, at the House of the Lord Church (415 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn) from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Dr. Umar Johnson is the keynote speaker, and many of Muhammad’s admirers and comrades are expected to pay tribute as they reflect on the Black Power general.
“The best way to fight an oppressive and alien culture is to live your own,” Muhammad once suggested.
Many conscious individuals across America have missed the uncompromising militant Black man from Houston with the shiny bald head since he joined the ancestors Feb. 17, 2002.
While he was shunned and feared by the bourgeois middle-class, the underground grassroots community fully embraced him for his brutal honesty and always speaking truth to power.
“I’m a truth terrorist, a knowledge gangsta, a Black history hitman, a lie killa, urban guerilla roughneck,” he proclaimed during his lecture titled “The Truth Terrorist.”
He had resided in Harlem from the mid-’80s until the early ’90s when he was minister of the Nation of Islam’s Temple #7. After departing from the self-determining organization in early 1994, he called Harlem’s prestigious Striver’s Row home.
“We must fully understand racism in order to be able to fight it effectively,” Muhammad assured. “We need to know what it’s about and how it works, because many of us don’t. Racism is much more than an attitude. Racism is about power and wealth.”
As part of the secular New Black Panther Party from the mid-’90s until his passing, he regularly lectured at various college campuses sharing his unique perspective on America’s social ills.
“The reason our oppressors try so hard to push that ‘we are one’ mentality is because our unity has always been our biggest weapon,” Muhammad contended. “They don’t want us to protect or provide for each other. The only time unity is seen as a threat is when it involves Black people!”