Louis Farrakhan facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Minister Louis Farrakhan
Farrakhan in 2018
Leader of the Nation of Islam
Incumbent
Assumed office 1981
Preceded by	Warith Deen Muhammad
Personal details
Born	Louis Eugene Walcott (1933-05-11) May 11, 1933 (age 92) New York City, U.S.
Spouse(s)	Khadijah Farrakhan ​ (m. 1953)​
Children	9 (1 deceased)
Education	Winston-Salem State University
Occupation	Leader of the Nation of Islam Former calypso music singer

Louis Farrakhan (/ˈfɑːrəkɑːn/; born Louis Eugene Walcott; May 11, 1933) is an American religious leader who heads the Nation of Islam (NOI), a black nationalist organization. Farrakhan is notable for his leadership of the 1995 Million Man March in Washington, D.C.

Prior to joining the NOI, Farrakhan was a calypso singer who used the stage name Calypso Gene. Early in his career, he served as the minister of mosques in Boston and Harlem and was appointed to the post of National Representative of the Nation of Islam by then-NOI leader Elijah Muhammad. He adopted the name Louis X before being named Louis Farrakhan.

After Warith Deen Mohammed reorganized the original NOI into the orthodox Sunni Islamic group American Society of Muslims, Farrakhan began to rebuild the NOI as "Final Call". In 1981, he officially adopted the name "Nation of Islam", reviving the group and establishing its headquarters at Mosque Maryam. In October 1995, Farrakhan organized and led the Million Man March in Washington, D.C.. Due to health issues, he reduced his responsibilities with the NOI in 2007. However, Farrakhan has continued to deliver sermons and speak at NOI events. In 2015, he led the 20th Anniversary of the Million Man March: Justice or Else.

Farrakhan was banned from Facebook in 2019 along with other public figures considered to be extremists.

Early life and education

Farrakhan, who is Black, was born Louis Eugene Walcott on May 11, 1933 in The Bronx, New York City. He is the younger of two sons of Sarah Mae Manning (1900–1988) and Percival Clark, immigrants from the Anglo-Caribbean islands. His mother was born in Saint Kitts, while his father was Jamaican. The couple separated before their second son was born, and Walcott says he never knew his biological father. Walcott was named after Louis Walcott, a man with whom his mother had a relationship after becoming separated from Percival Clark. In a 1996 interview with Henry Louis Gates Jr., Walcott speculated that Percival Clark, "a light-skinned man with straight hair from Jamaica", may have been Jewish.

After Walcott's stepfather died in 1936, the Walcott family moved to Boston, where they settled in the largely African-American neighborhood of Roxbury.

Walcott received his first violin at the age of five. By the time he was 12 years old, he had been on tour with the Boston College Orchestra. A year later, he participated in national competitions and won them. In 1946, he was one of the first black performers to appear on the Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour, where he also won an award. Walcott and his family were active members of the Episcopal St. Cyprian's Church in Roxbury.

Walcott attended the Boston Latin School, and later attended and graduated from the English High School. He completed three years at Winston-Salem Teachers College, where he had a track scholarship.

Khadijah and Louis Farrakhan, 1996

In 1953, Walcott married Betsy Ross (later known as Khadijah Farrakhan) while he was in college. Due to complications from his new wife's first pregnancy, Walcott dropped out after completing his junior year of college to devote time to his wife and their child.

Music career

In the 1950s, Walcott began his professional music career as a singer billed as "The Charmer". It was during a tour in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, that he took this nickname. At this point, earning $500 a week, Walcott was touring the northeastern and midwestern United States, sometimes also using the nickname "Calypso Gene". In 1953–1954, preceding Harry Belafonte's success with his album Calypso (released in 1956), he recorded and released a dozen cheeky, funny tunes as "The Charmer" in a mixed mento/calypso style, including "Ugly Woman", "Stone Cold Man" and calypso standards like "Zombie Jamboree", "Hol 'Em Joe", "Mary Ann" and "Brown Skin Girl".

When Farrakhan first joined the NOI, he was asked by Elijah Muhammad to put aside his musical career as a calypso singer. After many years, Farrakhan decided to take up the violin once more primarily due to the urging of prominent classical musician Sylvia Olden Lee.

On April 17, 1993, Farrakhan made his return concert debut with performances of the Violin Concerto in E Minor by Felix Mendelssohn. Farrakhan intimated that his performance of a concerto by a Jewish composer was, in part, an effort to heal a rift between him and the Jewish community. (Mendelssohn's family converted to Christianity). The New York Times music critic Bernard Holland reported that Farrakhan's performance was somewhat flawed due to years of neglect, but "nonetheless Mr. Farrakhan's sound is that of the authentic player. It is wide, deep and full of the energy that makes the violin gleam."'

In 2021, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, Farrakhan performed Violin Concerto in D Major Op. 61 with the New World Symphony.

Nation of Islam

In February 1955, Walcott was headlining a show in Chicago, Illinois, called Calypso Follies. There he first came in contact with the teachings of the Nation of Islam (NOI) through Rodney Smith, a friend and saxophonist from Boston. Walcott and his wife Betsy were invited to the Nation of Islam's annual Saviours' Day address by Elijah Muhammad. Prior to going to Saviours' Day, due to then-Minister Malcolm X's media presence, Walcott had never heard of Elijah Muhammad, and like many outside of the Nation of Islam, he thought that Malcolm X was the leader of the Nation of Islam.

In 1955, Walcott fulfilled the requirements to be a registered Muslim/registered believer/registered laborer. He memorized and recited verbatim the 10 questions and answers of the NOI's Student Enrollment. He then wrote a Saviour's Letter that must be sent to the NOI's headquarters in Chicago. The Saviour's Letter must be copied verbatim, and have the identical handwriting of the Nation of Islam's founder, Wallace Fard Muhammad.

After having the Saviour's Letter reviewed and approved by the NOI's headquarters in Chicago in July 1955, Walcott received a letter of approval from the Nation of Islam acknowledging his official membership as a registered Muslim/registered believer/registered laborer in the NOI. As a result, he received his "X." The "X" was considered a placeholder, used to indicate that Nation of Islam members' original African family names had been lost. They acknowledged that European surnames were slave names, assigned by the slaveowners in order to mark their ownership. Members of the NOI used the "X" while they were waiting for their Islamic names, which some NOI members received later in their conversions.

Hence, Louis Walcott became Louis X. Elijah Muhammad then replaced his "X" with the "holy name" Farrakhan, which is a corruption of the Arabic word فرقان furqan, which means "The Criterion". On a very different tone from his calypso songs, he recorded two tunes as Louis X, criticizing racism in A White Man's Heaven Is a Black Man's Hell, a record album which was issued on Boston's A Moslem Sings label in 1960. The summer after Farrakhan's conversion, Elijah Muhammad stated that all musicians in the NOI had to choose between music and the Nation of Islam.

Early ministry roles (1956–1980)

After nine months of being a registered Muslim in the NOI and a member of Muhammad's Temple of Islam in Boston, where Malcolm X was the minister, Farrakhan became his assistant minister. Eventually he became the official minister after Elijah Muhammad transferred Malcolm X to Muhammad's Temple of Islam No. 7 on West 116th St. in Harlem, New York City. Louis X wrote in the Dec. 4, 1964, issue of Muhammad Speaks, the organization's newspaper: "The dye is set and Malcolm shall not escape. Such a man is worthy of death."

After Malcolm X's death in 1965, Elijah Muhammad appointed Farrakhan to two prominent positions that Malcolm held before being dismissed from the NOI. Farrakhan became the national spokesman/representative of the NOI and was appointed minister of the influential Harlem Mosque, where he served until 1975. Warith Deen Mohammed, the seventh son of Elijah and Clara Muhammad, was declared the new leader of the Nation of Islam at the annual Saviours' Day Convention in February 1975, a day after his father died. He made substantial changes in the organization in the late 1970s, taking most of its members into a closer relationship with orthodox Islam, and renaming the group "World Community of Islam in the West". Eventually, Warith Deen Mohammed renamed the group the American Society of Muslims. He rejected the deification of the Nation of Islam's founder Wallace D. Fard, the Mahdi of the Holy Qur'an, and the messiah of the Bible. Mohammed also welcomed white people—who were once considered devils and enemies by the NOI—as equal brothers, sisters, and friends. Mohammed gave some white people X's, and he extended efforts at inter-religious cooperation and outreach to Christians and Jews.

Farrakhan joined Mohammed's movement and served as a Sunni Imam under him for ³⁄₁ years from 1975 to 1978. In 1978, Farrakhan distanced himself from Mohammed's movement. According to The New York Times, Farrakhan "could not embrace its new philosophy. In particular, Mr. Farrakhan opposed the concept of working with whites to solve the problems of blacks".

In 1979, Farrakhan's group founded a weekly newspaper entitled The Final Call, which was intended to be similar to the original Muhammad Speaks newspaper that Malcolm X claimed to have started.

Assassination of Malcolm X and aftermath

The day that Malcolm X was assassinated in Harlem, Farrakhan happened to be in Newark, New Jersey, on rotation, 45 minutes away from where Malcolm X was assassinated.

Farrakhan made numerous incendiary statements about Malcolm X, contributing to what was called a "climate of vilification". Three men from a Newark NOI mosque—Thomas Hagan, Muhammad Abdul Aziz (aka Norman 3X Butler) and Kahlil Islam (aka Thomas 15X Johnson)—were convicted of the killing and served prison sentences. Only Hagan ever admitted his role.

Many, including Malcolm X's family, have accused Farrakhan of being involved in the plot to assassinate Malcolm X. For many years, Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, harbored resentment toward the Nation of Islam—and Farrakhan in particular—for what she felt was their role in the assassination of her husband. In a 1993 speech, Farrakhan seemed to confirm that the Nation of Islam was responsible for the assassination:

We don't care about no white man law if you attack what we love. And frankly, it ain't none of your business. What do you got to say about it? Did you teach Malcolm? Did you make Malcolm? Did you clean up Malcolm? Did you put Malcolm out before the world? Was Malcolm your traitor or ours? And if we dealt with him like a nation deals with a traitor, what the hell business is it of yours? You just shut your mouth, and stay out of it. Because in the future, we gonna become a nation. And a nation gotta be able to deal with traitors and cutthroats and turncoats. The white man deals with his. The Jews deal with theirs.

During a 1994 interview, Gabe Pressman asked Shabazz whether Farrakhan "had anything to do" with Malcolm X's death. She replied: "Of course, yes. Nobody kept it a secret. It was a badge of honor. Everybody talked about it, yes."

In a 60 Minutes interview that aired during May 2000, Farrakhan stated that some of the things he said may have led to the assassination of Malcolm X. "I may have been complicit in words that I spoke", he said. "I acknowledge that and regret that any word that I have said caused the loss of life of a human being." A few days later Farrakhan denied that he "ordered the assassination" of Malcolm X, although he again acknowledged that he "created the atmosphere that ultimately led to Malcolm X's assassination."

Leadership of Nation of Islam (1981–present)

In 1981, Farrakhan and his supporters held their first Saviours' Day convention in Chicago, Illinois, and took back the name of the Nation of Islam. The event was similar to the earlier Nation's celebrations, last held in Chicago on February 26, 1975. At the convention's keynote address, Farrakhan announced his attempt to restore the Nation of Islam under Elijah Muhammad's teachings.

On October 24, 1989, at a press conference at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C., Farrakhan described a vision which he had on September 17, 1985 in Tepoztlán, Mexico. In the vision, he was carried up to "a Wheel, or what you call an unidentified flying object", as in the Bible's Book of Ezekiel. During this experience, he heard the voice of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. Farrakhan indicated that Elijah Muhammad "spoke in short cryptic sentences and as he spoke a scroll full of cursive writing rolled down in front of my eyes, but it was a projection of what was being written in my mind. As I attempted to read the cursive writing, which was in English, the scroll disappeared and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad began to speak to me". [Elijah Muhammad said], "President Reagan has met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to plan a war. I want you to hold a press conference in Washington, D.C., and announce their plan and say to the world that you got the information from me, Elijah Muhammad, on the Wheel".

During that same press conference, Farrakhan stated that he believed his vision had been proven: "In 1987, in The New York Times' Sunday magazine and on the front page of The Atlanta Constitution, the truth of my vision was verified, for the headlines of The Atlanta Constitution read, 'President Reagan Planned War Against Libya.'" Farrakhan added "In the article which followed, the exact words that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad spoke to me on the Wheel were found; that the President had met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and planned a war against Libya in the early part of September 1985".

Farrakhan visited Turkey at invitation on February 18, 1996, and met with the country's leading Islamist political figure, Necmettin Erbakan, and his Welfare Party's officials. He said that the Turkish people must decide whether it wants to have a secular or Islamic government.

Farrakhan in 1997

Million Man March

In October 1995, Farrakhan convened a broad coalition of what he and his supporters claimed was one million men in Washington, D.C., for the Million Man March. The count however fell far below the hoped-for numbers. The National Park Service estimated that approximately 440,000 were in attendance. Farrakhan threatened to sue the National Park Service because of the low estimate from the Park Police.

Farrakhan and other speakers called for black men to renew their commitments to their families and communities. In Farrakhan's 21⁄2 hours he quoted from spirituals as well as the Old and New Testaments and termed himself a prophet sent by God to show America its evil. The event was organized by many civil rights and religious organizations and drew men and their sons from across the United States of America. Many other distinguished African Americans addressed the throng, including: Maya Angelou; Rosa Parks; Martin Luther King III, Cornel West, Jesse Jackson and Benjamin Chavis. In 2005, together with other prominent African Americans such as the New Black Panther Party leader Malik Zulu Shabazz, the activist Al Sharpton, Addis Daniel and others, Farrakhan marked the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March by holding a second gathering, the Millions More Movement, October 14–17 in Washington D.C.

Succession

It is unknown who will lead the Nation of Islam after Farrakhan's death. Ishmael Muhammad has been speculated to be a potential successor. Before 1993, Khallid Muhammad was "the most likely heir apparent".

Personal life

Family

Farrakhan has been married to Khadijah Farrakhan since 1953. He is the father of nine children and the grandfather of basketball player Mustapha Farrakhan Jr. Farrakhan's eldest son, Louis Farrakhan Jr., died on June 2, 2018.

Health

Farrakhan announced that he was seriously ill in a letter on September 11, 2006. The letter was directed to his staff, the Nation of Islam members, and supporters. The letter, published in The Final Call newspaper, said that doctors in Cuba had discovered a peptic ulcer. According to the letter, Farrakhan lost 35 pounds (16 kg) due to subsequent infections, and he urged the Nation of Islam leadership to carry on while he recovered.

Farrakhan was released from his five-week hospital stay on January 28, 2007, after major abdominal surgery. The operation was performed to correct damage caused by side effects of a radioactive "seed" implantation procedure that he received years earlier to successfully treat prostate cancer.

Following his hospital stay, Farrakhan released a "Message of Appreciation" to supporters and well-wishers and weeks later delivered the keynote address at the Nation of Islam's annual convention in Detroit.

In December 2013, Farrakhan announced that he had not appeared publicly for two months because he had suffered a heart attack in October.

Awards

• 2005, a Black Entertainment Television (BET) poll voted Farrakhan the 'Person of the Year'.

See also

In Spanish: Louis Farrakhan para niños