A SEA OF GOODWILL flooded the Mall as African-American men gathered for the Million Man March. It provided a heartening contrast to the hate-filled rhetoric spewed by Nation of Islam leaders at a rally two nights earlier.
Bathed in sunlight and awash in a sea of ebony faces, The Mall in Washington last Monday became the nation’s village green.
As I picked my way among the throngs of black men gathered there, writing down their words or putting aside my reporter’s notepad to share in their conversations, the bitterness and fear I’d felt two days before began to ease from my bones.
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On the Saturday night before the march, a top Nation of Islam minister had me tossed out of a march rally for one simple reason: I was the only white person there.
On The Mall, I was met with dignity. Standing as if some burden had been lifted from them, beaming and wrapping their arms around each others’ shoulders, the men I talked to were only too happy to tell America, through the hundreds of reporters there, how it felt to set their nation, neighborhoods and souls on a new path.
It was said so many times last week that it almost became a cliche, but there really were two separate marches.
At one, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan delivered a rambling exegesis on numerology and colonial slave trading, quarrelled with his critics and crowned himself the “validated” leader of black Americans.
The other march belonged to those assembled on the green, whether they were 400,000 or more than a million, as march organizers claim. Their focus was not so much on the speakers platform as on each other, and it was their good will and spiritual rebirth that touched the lives of so many millions more, including me.
But I was intrigued by the pre-march rally posters that appeared on lamposts all over the District of Columbia. They bore the words “BLACK HOLOCAUST” with blood-red ink dripping from them. And like professional wrestlers, the speakers they featured had nicknames listed below their photographs:
The headliner, Nation of Islam Minister Khallid Muhammad, was billed as “Farrakhan’s Flamethrower.”
Former Chicago mayoral aide Steve Cokely, fired in 1988 for claiming that Jewish doctors were infecting black babies with AIDS, was dubbed, “Conspiracy Researcher Naming the Names of White Supremacy.”
The red-draped stage at the McKinley Tech High School auditorium was guarded that Saturday night by men in sunglasses, black berets, black shirts and black pants tucked into high black boots.
“All praises due to Allah, let’s get ready to rumble!” host Malik Zulu Shabazz shouted to the crowd of about 1,000.
He led them in a chant: “Farr-a-khan! Farr-a-khan! Farr-a-khan!” And in the darkened auditorium, a feverish energy built as speaker after speaker bellowed about the giant, global conspiracies that pulled black people from their rightful place of majesty.
Whenever a speaker said the word “Jew,” a cathartic cheer rose from the crowd, as if something had come uncorked in them.
“All you Jews can go straight to hell,” cried Nation of Islam National Youth Minister Quanell X.
Earlier, when he saw me taking notes, Quanell X had lowered himself into the seat beside me and, without a word, handed me his business card.
A heavyset 24-year-old in a midnight blue dress suit, Quanell X was clearly a man of many titles: besides being the Nation’s National Youth Minister, he was the minister of its Houston mosque, an aide to Texas State Rep. Ron Wilson (D-Houston), and promoter of a rapper named Scarface.
“They say I’m the new Malcolm X for my generation,” he added. “I don’t mind doing an interview, but I would like to see it printed.”
He said, “There will be no more rallies after this. We won’t lift every voice and sing, we’ll lift every black fist and swing.”
Farrakhan aide Khallid Muhammad, whose incendiary remarks about Jews, Catholics and whites had earned him a six-month suspension from the Nation of Islam’s ministry last year, arrived in a multicolored coat, his fist raised in greeting, and was immediately thronged by followers who wanted to kiss him, get his autograph, or pose next to him for photographs. And he, too, was delighted to meet the press.
“The so-called Jew is a parasite,” he told me, and President Clinton was a “cracker.”
There were a few other reporters in the hall early on, but they left after interviewing Khallid.
At about 11 p.m., to warm up the crowd for Steve Cokely, the Nation of Islam’s rap group, X-Niggaz, performed an acappella number in which the lead singer recited statistics about slavery while the audience chanted the chorus:
“Add it up, white man, add it up!”
In oversize suits and crisp white shirts, the four rappers swung their arms and bobbed their heads while two guards stood impassively behind them in dark sunglasses and berets.
As audience members took up the chorus, they started wagging their fingers gleefully at me-“Add it up, white man, add it up!”-and suddenly, I was dealing not with a series of individuals who wanted to see their names in print, but with a crowd.
When the song ended, Quanell X grabbed the mike and, staring straight at me, said, “We ought to just turn the lights out and boot your ass out.”
The crowd roared its approval. Khallid rose to applaud and a group of young men converged around me. One grabbed my shirt and pulled me from my seat and others pushed and tugged me down the aisle.
In a moment, my ears burning with shame, betrayal and fear, I found myself standing in a high school parking lot on a rainy night in Washington. Inside the auditorium, the ministers who used me to get in their quotes were crowing in triumph at tossing me out.
I could see the Capitol dome gleaming in the distance and, holding that as my compass, threaded my way through the broken streets of the northeast district, back to my hotel.
Monday spread a bright blue canopy over The Mall, and Washington telephone repairman William Casey, 48, spread his arms wide.
“If you don’t get caught up in this, something’s wrong with you,” Casey told me. “This is blackness, being, belonging.”
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“I don’t share all of Farrakhan’s views,” he added, “but this transcends him. It is about all of us.”
With a rich, rolling laugh, Chicago city cement finisher Harry Allen, 35, pointed to my reporter’s notepad and said, “Write `unity’ a thousand times and you’ll have your story.”
Billy Dee Williams, 13, a 7th grader from Akron, clutched his father’s hand and grinned: “There’s one word that explains it all: magnificent.”
From the vantage point of Chicago city worker Kelvin Blanks, 37, the speakers’ podium was a distant vision, and he hadn’t paid all that much attention to the political and economic platforms being broadcast there.
“By the time that stuff trickles down, you’re talking three or four years anyway,” he said.
For Blanks, the march was about bigger, less tangible things: the way middle-aged men greeted youth they’d ordinarily cross the street to avoid-“Come on, black man!” It was about presenting the world with a new image of African-Americans and offering their presence as proof that they intended the world to change.
He said, “We’re the ones who are actually going to have to do this thing for ourselves.”
When I got back to my hotel, Farrakhan was on “Larry King Live,” his voice softer than crushed velvet, insisting as he always does that he has tried to build bridges with Jews.
“For 11 years now, we’ve been seeking a dialogue,” he said.
On Wednesday morning, Quanell X called to apologize for having me “removed” from the rally.
“I didn’t even see the gentlemen step at you,” he said. “No one stopped them?”
And then he launched into a rambling diatribe about how “America should be happy that each and every one of these white folks are left alive.”
I wrote down his words, but somehow felt no bitterness: Some half-million men had washed that out of me.
SATURDAY OCT. 14, 1995
“This is the time of the black man’s rise and the white man’s demise.”
– MINISTER KHALLID MUHAMMAD OF THE NATION OF ISLAM, AT “THE BLACK HOLOCAUST” CONFERENCE
MONDAY OCT. 16, 1995
“Write `unity’ a thousand times and you’ll have your story,” said one participant in the march.