Tuskegee Board Member Andy Hornsby Fails History
By Tingba Muhammad, and the NOI Research Group
(Final Call, March 25, 2013) Last week a local Montgomery TV station, WNCF, broadcast the intemperate remarks of a white Tuskegee University board member, Andy Hornsby. The former deputy director of the Alabama Finance Commission and the director of food stamps under Pres. George H.W. Bush decided to concern himself with the much-anticipated visit of The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan to the Tuskegee campus and he publicly vented his disapproval. He is quoted thus:
“There is no question that he [Farrakhan] hates Jewish people, and I find that appalling….We shouldn’t endorse him anymore than we endorse the Ku Klux Klan. They are two organizations of a similar breed [and] I encourage my friends and others not to attend.”
By what measure does Mr. Hornsby calculate “hate,” and is he willing to apply that measurement equally to all, or just to Black people?
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has led the Nation of Islam since 1977, and in those 36 extraordinary years, there is not a single instance where The Minister, the Nation of Islam, or any of its members have committed a single act that has injured one Jewish person, stopped a single Jew from doing business, infringed on the Jewish people’s civil or human rights, hindered their education, injured their families, or sullied, desecrated, or disrespected their synagogues or institutions. There is not one. Except for The Minister’s willingness to tell the truth and his unwillingness to apologize for telling the truth, on what basis does Mr. Hornsby charge Minister Farrakhan with being a “hater” of Jews?
And since Mr. Hornsby is unable to support his libelous charge with any proof whatsoever, WNCF reporter Jessica Gertler enlisted the aid of a Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center. And though that organization claims to be the best cataloguer of “hate crimes,” Beirich was yet unable to attribute a single “hate crime” to Minister Farrakhan or the Nation of Islam, but she nonetheless added, “Any time that Farrakhan is on the road speaking to groups we are afraid [his] ideas are going to be spread.”
Farrakhan Controversial Visit Awakens Tuskegee University
Minister Farrakhan has hosted and attended meetings with rabbis and Jewish scholars where they have had frank, open, and intelligent dialogue about issues important to both people. The Minister has always advocated constructive engagement with all who may hold opinions differing from his own, but the bitterness and vitriol that characterize the remarks of Mr. Hornsby and Ms. Beirich have no function in advancing true understanding.
But Mr. Hornsby didn’t stop there. In his attempt to make his slander stick, he proceeded to draw a false parallel between the notorious terrorist group Ku Klux Klan and the Nation of Islam. By every measurement—be it religious, philosophical, or behavioral—the two groups could not be further apart. The Ku Klux Klan since its post–Civil War inception has always been dedicated to white racial dominance and control. It has tried to achieve this through bloody violence and murderous racial terrorism. Quite the opposite, the Nation of Islam is dedicated to racial and spiritual redemption through the religion of Islam and a Do-for-Self philosophy that prepares Blacks to overcome the debilitating effects of America’s entrenched and violent white supremacy. Polar opposites.
But let us see whether Mr. Hornsby and Ms. Beirich are willing to truly examine history and to appropriately apply the label of “hater” to whom it belongs. Research now reveals that the very people that Mr. Hornsby falsely claims are “hated” by The Minister have a long history that is much closer to that of the Ku Klux Klan than to that of “God’s Chosen People.” The fact is Jews were involved in the formation of the KKK after the Civil War, its rebirth in the 1910s, and the worldwide promotion of its particular white supremacist ideology.
The Gentile founders of the Ku Klux Klan received their first major “start-up” investment from a Jewish banker and slaveholder named Judah P. Benjamin. Jews became members of the Klan, and there are many documented instances where Jewish merchants supplied the terrorists with guns, sheets, and hoods. The KKK attacked Black schools and Black businesses and murdered Black voters. The purpose was to drive freed Blacks away from independent development and back to the cotton fields to grow and pick the world’s most important cash crop. Jews were the major cotton dealers and exporters at that time, so it should not be hard to see why the Jewish support for the Ku Klux Klan was so extensive.
The obscene Jewish cotton profits are why their rabbis defended the Ku Klux Klan, and Jewish lawyers handled the KKK’s legal issues. The Nation of Islam has published documents and writings by Jewish scholars, rabbis, politicians, historians, and other Jewish notables attesting to all these facts in the recently released book The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Vol. 2. It is now up to Mr. Hornsby, with all the resources of academia at his command, to try to refute the fact that Jewish people were intimately involved with the most violent band of race haters in American history. Jewish people have gone to the far ends of the earth to ensure that every human being knows of their suffering and exactly who caused it. Would Mr. Hornsby deny Black people the same right to never forget?
Not all of Tuskegee’s great and historic community share the views of Mr. Hornsby. Vice President of Student Affairs Cynthia Sellers reflects the true and free spirit of the event when she says that “the university invites all walks of life to speak at the school. We know that [Min. Farrakhan’s] main topic is on Historical Black Colleges and Universities, and of course, by being one, we are very excited.”
The Minister’s February 2013 announcement that he will be implementing The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint is profoundly important, and it is an economic plan in which our great Black Colleges must be intimately involved. The Minister has presented a vision of how the 40 million Blacks all over America can reverse their spiraling downfall to become free and self-sufficient once and for all.
And there is probably no one in history that would welcome The Blueprint more joyfully than Tuskegee’s illustrious and visionary founder, Booker T. Washington. His dream was to develop and organize the great potential of his people, even as the Ku Klux Klan and most of white and Jewish America saw Black education as a MAJOR threat to white rule. Mr. Washington passionately wanted Blacks to pool their human and financial resources to build a strong economic base, as other immigrant groups had done. Under his leadership Tuskegee encouraged Blacks to become everything they aspired to be—from doctors, lawyers, engineers, carpenters, and masons, to teachers, bankers, merchants, mechanics, farmers, and more. And all of Black America shared in that hope. But outside interference corrupted that dream, and blurred that vision, and we lost our educational and economic footing.
Tuskegee students already know this, and they have made a wise decision in inviting our greatest leader and visionary to their campus. All should attend Minister Farrakhan’s lecture and then engage in the kind of dialogue that will lead Blacks to the success that Bro. Booker T. Washington envisioned—and indeed that God Himself has commanded for His people.
