Let's dispel a
favorite urban myth by Stanley Crouch
The lies are supposed to be behind the Nation of Islam now. But I am not so sure. Whenever its current leader, Louis Farrakhan, takes to the podium, something like the truth and its cousin, logic, head for the hills.
The "Willie Lynch" story that Farrakhan delivered at the Million Man March became part of the unquestioned "folk wisdom" of the sidewalk, barbershop, beauty parlor and student "understanding" of the black predicament.
The talk was about a supposed speech given in 1712 by William Lynch, a slaveholder who was lecturing his fellow chattel owners in the best ways to keep the slaves divided. It is a perfect example of the "big lie" theory. Tell a big enough lie and it will become its own truth. At the Million Man March, Farrakhan presented a piece of "truth" that had been hidden from black people.
Now it's 10 years later, and after a Millions More Movement, the Lynch lie maintains its position as potted history passed off as fact. It has ingrained itself so much into our culture's consciousness that Prof. William Jelani Cobb of Spelman College had to sweep away this rhetorical piece of dung on his Web site jelanicobb.com. Cobb was disturbed by how deeply this has penetrated the thought of black Americans across classes and professions. A decade later, people repeat it over and over. The rapper Talib Kweli has even cited it in his material. According to Cobb's Web site, it has taken on the life of a factoid, something that seems true but is not.
The only problem is that Farrakhan's talk was no more than a historical bean pie in the sky. A trumped up example of paranoid "insight," it revealed nothing.
The Nation of Islam, when Malcolm X was alive, and when its founder, Elijah Muhammad, called the shots, prided itself on revealing the truth to "so-called Negroes" who were deaf, dumb and blind to their history. The wool had been pulled over their eyes by the white man who was no more than a devil invented 6,000 years ago by Yacub, a mad black scientist.
The white devil was destined to destroy the civilized world created by black men and take reign, but would be pulled down when UFOs, spaceships flown by black men and filled with dynamite, would rain down explosives on America until it was set ablaze. It would burn for 777 years, cool for another 777. Then it would become a paradise and all black people who had been smart enough to emigrate to Africa could come back. (Actually, I assume the descendants of those who left, but you never know.)
Fast forward to 2005. The mad scientist is no more, but the William Lynch lie continues, permeating the fabric of modern-day black society.
Cobb was rattled to the point that he had to take Farrakhan's fairy tale apart, piece by piece, even noting that the language itself was not authentic. It was clearly written far, far later than it was supposed to be.
Unlike the "doctor" whom the Nation of Islam presented at the Million Man March as a man who had found a cure for AIDS, the William Lynch myth remains current snake oil.
If we think the masses are deserving of the truth, then we have to ask why more people are not involved, like Prof. Cobb, in seriously questioning Farrakhan.
We have been waiting a long time for this and will continue to wait as the Farrakhan spin becomes an ever more serious condition of vertigo.
Willie Lynch is Dead (1712?-2003)
I long ago stopped listening to sentences that began with “The problem with black people” or ended with “and that’s why black people can’t get ahead now,” -- which partly explains my initial disinterest in now-famous William Lynch Speech. In the few years since the speech on how to train slaves first appeared, it has been cited by countless college students, a black member of the House of Representatives and become the essential verbal footnote in barbershop analysis of what’s wrong with black people. The rapper Talib Kweli laments on the song “Know That” “blacks are dyin’/how to make a slave/by Willie Lynch is still applyin’” and one professor at a mid-western university made the speech required reading for her class. Of late, the frequency of its citations seems to be increasing – at least three people have asked me about it in the last month.
According to the speech’s preface, Master Lynch was concerned enough with the fortunes of his slave-holding brethren in the American colonies to give a speech on the bank of the James River explaining how to keep unruly servants disunited. The old, he argued, should be pitted against the young, the dark against the light, the male against the female and so on. Such disunifying tactics “will control the slaves for at least 300 years,” he guaranteed. And that, it seems, is why black people can’t get ahead now.
There are many problems with this document – not the least of which is the fact that it is absolutely fake.
As a historian, I am generally skeptical of smoking guns. Historical work, like forensic science, is more about the painstaking aggregation of facts that lead researchers to the most likely explanation, but rarely the only one. Slavery was an incredibly complex set of social, economic and legal relations that literally boiled down to black and white. But given the variation in size of farms, number of enslaved workers, region, crops grown, law, gender-ratios, religion and local economy, it is unlikely that a single letter could explain slave policy for at least 151 years of the institution and its ramifications down to the present day.
Considering the limited number of extant sources from 18th century, if this speech had been “discovered” it would’ve been the subject of incessant historical panels, scholarly articles and debates. It would literally be a career-making find. But the letter was never “discovered,” but rather it “appeared” – bypassing the official historical circuits and making its way via internet directly into the canon of American racial conspiratoria.
On a more practical level, the speech is filled with references that are questionable if not completely inaccurate. Lynch makes reference to an invitation reaching him on his “modest plantation in the West Indies.” While this is theoretically possible – the plantation system was well-established in the Caribbean by 1712 – most plantation owners were absentees who chose to remain in the colonizing country while the day-to-day affairs of their holdings were run by hired managers and overseers. But assuming that Mr. Lynch was an exception to this practice, much of the text of his “speech” is anachronistic. Lynch makes consistent reference to “slaves” – which again is possible, though it is far more likely people during this era would refer to persons in bondage simply as “Negroes.” In the first paragraph, he promises that “Ancient Rome would envy us if my program is implemented,” but the word “program” did not enter the English language with this connotation until 1837 – at the time of this speech it was used to reference a written notice for theater events.
Two paragraphs later he says that he will “give an outline of action,” for slave-holders; the word “out-line” had appeared only 50 years earlier and was an artistic term meaning a sketch – it didn’t convey it’s present meaning until 1759. Even more damning is his use of the terms “indoctrination” and “self-refueling” in the next sentence. The first word didn’t carry it current connotation until 1832; the second didn’t even enter the language until 1811 -- a century after the purported date of Lynch’s speech. More obviously, Lynch uses the word “Black,” with an upper-case “B” to describe African Americans more than two centuries before the word came to be applied as a common ethnic identifier.
In popular citations, Lynch has also been – inexplicably – credited with the term “lynching” which would be odd since the speech promises to provide slave-holders with non-violent techniques that will save them the expense of killing valuable, if unruly, property. This inaccuracy points to a more basic problem in understanding American history.
The violence directed at black people in America was exceptional in the regard that it was racialized and used to reinforce political and social subordination, but it was not unique. Early America was incredibly violent in general – stemming in part from the endemic violence in British society and partly from the violence that tends to be associated with frontier societies. For most of its history, lynching was a non-racial phenomenon– actually it was racial in that it most often directed at white people. “Lynch law” was derived from the mob violence directed at Tories, or British loyalists, just after the American Revolution. While there is disagreement about the precise origins of the term – some associate it with Charles Lynch, a Revolution-era Justice-of-the-Peace who imprisoned Tories, others see it as the legacy of an armed militia founded near the Lynche River or the militia captain named Lynch who created judicial tribunals in Virginia in 1776 – there is no reference to the term earlier than 1768, more than half a century after the date given for the speech.
Given the sparse judicial resources (judges were forced to travel from town-to-town hearing cases, which is where we get the term “judicial circuit”) and the frequency of property crimes in the early republic, lynching was often seen as a form of community justice. Not until the 1880s, after the end of Reconstruction, did “lynching” become associated with African Americans; gradually the number of blacks lynched each year surpassed the number of whites until it became almost exclusively directed at black people late in the century.
On another level, the Willie Lynch speech would seem to give a quick-and-easy explanation of the roots of our much-lamented “black disunity.” You could make similar arguments about the lingering effects of a real historical document like the 1845 tract “Religious Instruction of Negroes” – written by a proslavery Presbyterian minister -- or the British practice of mixing different African ethnicities on slave ships in order to make communication – and therefore rebellion – more difficult. But this too is questionable – it presumes that whites, or any other diverse group, do not face divisive gender issues, generation gaps and class distinctions. Willie Lynch offers no explanation for the white pro-lifer who guns down a white abortion-provider or white-on-white domestic violence. He does not explain political conflicts among different Latino groups or crime in Asian communities. Unity is not the same as unanimity and in the end, black people are no more disunited than any other group of people – and a lot more united than we give ourselves credit for.
Funny, I had never heard of the so-called "Willie Lynch" speech until a fews days ago, when someone sent me a private email asking my opinion of it. So I read the purported speech, and the following was my reply:
myself wrote:
You asked: What are your thoughts concerning Willie Lynch and his advocation of slave control.
Well, the idea of divide and conquer goes back forever. Furthermore, there is no question that the rulers of Virginia invented North America's world-unique endogamous color line around 1691 in order to stop European and Native American slaves from joining with African slaves and overthrowing planter rule. Nevertheless, the specific "Willie Lynch letter" is an urban legend invented in the early 1990s, possibly in support of the "million man march," where it was first widely publicized.
The letter is crawling with linguistic anachronisms as obvious, say, as a supposed letter by Julius Caesar favoring the Macintosh over Windows. The term "fool-proof" was coined in 1902. The use of "program" as a noun was invented in the 1830s. "Self-refueling," would have been utterly meaningless in the early 1700s since "fueling" and "refueling" were invented after stream engines around 1770. The word "installed" referred only to people as in, say, "Walsingham was installed as Lord High Chamberlain." Not until the 1850s was it ever used towards ideas or plans. The word "attitude" meant "physical position" until the 1850s. At the supposed time of this made-up speech, King James had not been king for a century--Queen Anne reigned then, and Cromwell's rule had pretty well ended any public praise of James. The supposed speech contains so many other anachronisms and errors that it has been thoroughly debunked as a historical document. Oh yes, there is no record in the histories of any of the British West Indies of a planter of that name, and there is no record in the contemporary accounts of early 1700s Virginia that any such person ever visited the wealthy planter class in Virginia.
But now that I think about the so-called Willie Lynch speech again, I question its effectiveness. Apparently it was invented by someone in NOI, since it is used so consistently by its leadership. It is an exhortation in favor of Black unity, of course. But it portrays independence and disagreement within the Black community as being secretly plotted and fomented by evil Whites. "We must all think alike; anyone who thinks on his own is a pawn of the evil White Man."
Now, it seems to me that the Catholic Church has grappled with this same problem (stifling independent thought in favor of monolithic unity) for many centuries, long before NOI was invented. But the Church's approach has been to blame it all your own evil tendencies. It portrays independence and disagreement within the Catholic community as being spawned by temptation from within. "We must all think alike; anyone who thinks on his own is a pawn of his or her own temptations."
Judging by the scorecard so far, the Church's approach seems to be more effective.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Sat 22 Oct 2005 14:36 Post subject: Techniques of the Catholic Church
fwsweet wrote:
...
Now, it seems to me that the Catholic Church has grappled with this same problem (stifling independent thought in favor of monolithic unity) for many centuries, long before NOI was invented. But the Church's approach has been to blame it all your own evil tendencies. It portrays independence and disagreement within the Catholic community as being spawned by temptation from within. "We must all think alike; anyone who thinks on his own is a pawn of his or her own temptations."
Judging by the scorecard so far, the Church's approach seems to be more effective.
Hi Frank,
The Catholic church have the idea there is a single God and every men is a produce of him. It also claim they are the inheritors of the real Christianity that received directly from Paul and Peter. The center of that faith is Jesus Christ teachings and the New Testament. That marks a difference with the rest of the Christian churches that put an enphasis in the Old Testament.
It is curious to notice that the very name -Catholic- mean universal. So "Catholic church" is a sinonym of "Universal church".
Now, that church has fought all its life for the equality of Catholics and human beings in general. That church believe every human being is the same. And it also believes human beings know very well the difference between good and sin, and that all the sins are personal faults.
Yes. That church has commited sins in the past. But It has also recognized them and asked for forgiveness. An attitude that is remarkable.
I am not Catholic but I grew up under the possitive side of its culture. And I do believe same of their ideas are very worthy for a global world. A world without differences between people.
But now that I think about the so-called Willie Lynch speech again, I question its effectiveness. Apparently it was invented by someone in NOI, since it is used so consistently by its leadership.
Actually, it is modified plagiarism from a novel about Napoleon and Haiti.
The Black Consul : A Narrative of Haiti and the French Revolution by Anatolii ; Burns, Emile Vinogradov (Hardcover - 1935)
The 'Willie Lynch" syndrome is like the many syndromes out there but I see it as a positive because the other syndromes tend to be negative in context and approach to whom it is directed (usually a hated or outgroup)while the psychological paradigm of the purported WIllie Lynch speech is cleverly put together in a sort of Aesop tale/speech that attempts to teach a lesson or invoke self study or reflection for the target group!
The 'Willie Lynch" syndrome is like the many syndromes out there but I see it as a positive because the other syndromes tend to be negative in context and approach to whom it is directed (usually a hated or outgroup)while the psychological paradigm of the purported WIllie Lynch speech is cleverly put together in a sort of Aesop tale/speech that attempts to teach a lesson or invoke self study or reflection for the target group!
I think you hit the nail on the head. The Willie Lynch story is at least 40 years old. I was an avid collector of the writings of the Ansar Allahs...so I had heard/read this in their writings back to my teen years.
Philadelphia's Black community was so rich with different Black nationalist and religious groups...My dad was a Garvey-ite (or at least had his literature in the basement)...we had the Black Panther handbook in our house. As a child we used to "fear" the "mojo" boys...that was Sisietr Falaka Fattah (her "no gang war in 74" flyers made her a legend) Her son is Pennsylvania state senator Chaka Fattah. She took over a whole city black in Philly, Frazier Street, it was called the House of Umoja.
52nd Street was controlled by the Nation of Islam and the Ansar Allahs for years. I went to their meetings often...so Willie Lynch, Yacoub's grafted devil...a pig is a cross between a dog, a cat and a rat...yes I know all that stuff intimately...read Message to the Black Man and required my son's to buy and read it...
Although alot of the stuff may not be technically true the writings have the same purpose as the stories of Adam and Eve and Noah's ark...
Ancient Hebrews weren't claiming ancient inferior races though.
Here, here.
To equate the two is not accurate. On one hand, you have a religous faith thousands of years old and on the other, you have a political ideology decades old. Not eqiuvalent at all.
And let's see, hmmm which one and its followers are still around today? Are still relevant to society today? Are still respected by millions?
That's why, IMO, separatism and violence rarely work. Ghandi, Dahli Lama, and MLK are mentioned in other countries among other 'struggling' groups. And they are respected for their PEACE work, not hatred and violence.
Ancient Hebrews weren't claiming ancient inferior races though.
Here, here.
To equate the two is not accurate. On one hand, you have a religous faith thousands of years old and on the other, you have a political ideology decades old. Not eqiuvalent at all.
And let's see, hmmm which one and its followers are still around today? Are still relevant to society today? Are still respected by millions?
That's why, IMO, separatism and violence rarely work. Ghandi, Dahli Lama, and MLK are mentioned in other countries among other 'struggling' groups. And they are respected for their PEACE work, not hatred and violence.
Through out the bible many groups were pitted against one another for various reasons sanctioned by "God"...I guess you'd have to have read it to know...
The Nation of Islam is equal to the Catholic church is equal to the Jehovah witnesses is equal to the Mormons...and so on and so on...
I believe that "God" sent a divine message to the black man in the USA through the honorable Elijah Muhammad, that he appeared in the form of Farad Muhammad who gave Elijah a wisdom that Changed the lives of African Americans...At least here in Philadelphia African American community, the teachings of the Nation STOPPED several generations from consuming pork...I'm in my 40's with almost no freinds or relatives with high blood pressure...when I was coming up, everyone's parents and grandparents had "high blood". I think there are at LEAST a million Black folks who are "into" the teachings of the Nation. didn't a million show up in washington one time
I think there are at LEAST a million Black folks who are "into" the teachings of the Nation. didn't a million show up in washington one time
It was hardly a million people who showed up at the "Million Man March.
okay...807,999 people....the point is the teachings of the Honerable Elijah Muhammad is a BIG part of the urban African American community.
My husband who is mixed and as far away from the teachings of the Nation...turned right to the Nation one time when we were having problems in our marriage...he brought home the tape series on a Happy Marriage produced by the Nation of Islam.
When I was speaking of the various influential groups in Philadelphia, I forgot about the group lead by Noble Drew Ali which existed before the Nation of Islam...to this day there is still a large amount of AA's with the last name Johnson-Bey or Smith-El....adding El or Bey to their last names to denote they were followers of Noble Drew Ali.
Through out the bible many groups were pitted against one another for various reasons sanctioned by "God"...I guess you'd have to have read it to know...[/quote]
Sorry, but pitted because of ideological or ethnic belonging is quite different from racial beliefs.
Quote:
The Nation of Islam is equal to the Catholic church is equal to the Jehovah witnesses is equal to the Mormons...and so on and so on...
Hardly. That is why Elijah Mohammed's son joined main stream Islam. He realized his father's religion was a corruption of others already existent.
Quote:
I believe that "God" sent a divine message to the black man in the USA through the honorable Elijah Muhammad, that he appeared in the form of Farad Muhammad who gave Elijah a wisdom that Changed the lives of African Americans...
The dude was a con man.
Quote:
At least here in Philadelphia African American community, the teachings of the Nation STOPPED several generations from consuming pork.
Plenty of other unhealthy food. Did you stop going to Mc Donalds and Burger King?
Quote:
I'm in my 40's with almost no freinds or relatives with high blood pressure...when I was coming up, everyone's parents and grandparents had "high blood". I think there are at LEAST a million Black folks who are "into" the teachings of the Nation. didn't a million show up in washington one time
Mostly wishful thinking there.
Give me an actual study that shows the changes in the heath patterns of these people. Or that they number a million.
The Nation of Islam is equal to the Catholic church is equal to the Jehovah witnesses is equal to the Mormons...and so on and so on...
Hardly. That is why Elijah Mohammed's son joined main stream Islam. He realized his father's religion was a corruption of others already existent.
In the sense tha they are all based on myths and the belief that some divine being speaks to people called prophets I guess you can claim they are equal to one another.
Through out the bible many groups were pitted against one another for various reasons sanctioned by "God"...I guess you'd have to have read it to know...
Sorry, but pitted because of ideological or ethnic belonging is quite different from racial beliefs.
Quote:
The Nation of Islam is equal to the Catholic church is equal to the Jehovah witnesses is equal to the Mormons...and so on and so on...
Hardly. That is why Elijah Mohammed's son joined main stream Islam. He realized his father's religion was a corruption of others already existent.
Quote:
I believe that "God" sent a divine message to the black man in the USA through the honorable Elijah Muhammad, that he appeared in the form of Farad Muhammad who gave Elijah a wisdom that Changed the lives of African Americans...
The dude was a con man.
Quote:
At least here in Philadelphia African American community, the teachings of the Nation STOPPED several generations from consuming pork.
Plenty of other unhealthy food. Did you stop going to Mc Donalds and Burger King?
Quote:
I'm in my 40's with almost no freinds or relatives with high blood pressure...when I was coming up, everyone's parents and grandparents had "high blood". I think there are at LEAST a million Black folks who are "into" the teachings of the Nation. didn't a million show up in washington one time
Mostly wishful thinking there.
Give me an actual study that shows the changes in the heath patterns of these people. Or that they number a million.[/quote]
Well we can't say the bible made racial designations because ancient definitions are quite different from modern definitions.
Do you expected to judged on the choices your children make...if your wife is a school teacher and your daughter is a stripper, does that somehow make your wife's choice invalid?
No, I don't have an actual "study"...though I am going to look because it is my belief that the Nation IS the reason for the decline of pork consumption...hey thats a thought...thats what I'll look up!
Joined: 27 Nov 2004 {Posts: 1842 } Location: Hudson Valley, NY
Posted: Mon 05 Nov 2007 15:56 Post subject:
Monica wrote:
okay...807,999 people....the point is the teachings of the Honerable Elijah Muhammad is a BIG part of the urban African American community.
There was controversy regarding the actual attendence number. The U.S. Park Police officially estimated the crowd at 400,000. I personally think it was much larger, but 807,999 people, where did you come up with that number????
ahhhhh....I meant it like a joke...Fsweet, everyone who watched the Million Man March knows there was a dispute over exactly how many people attended...some people said from the ariel photos it WAS a million....others said it wasn't...hows this...it was alotta people at the million man march...more that 1,000.
ahhhhh....I meant it like a joke...Fsweet, everyone who watched the Million Man March knows there was a dispute over exactly how many people attended...some people said from the ariel photos it WAS a million....others said it wasn't...hows this...it was alotta people at the million man march...more that 1,000.
And the majority were not NOI.
Quote:
Well we can't say the bible made racial designations because ancient definitions are quite different from modern definitions.
Ajnd thus the religious comparison is different. Christian identity groups would be a better comparison.
Quote:
Do you expected to judged on the choices your children make...if your wife is a school teacher and your daughter is a stripper, does that somehow make your wife's choice invalid?
Where exactly are you going with this?
Quote:
No, I don't have an actual "study"...though I am going to look because it is my belief that the Nation IS the reason for the decline of pork consumption...hey thats a thought...thats what I'll look up!
The Moorish movement had already existed before the NOI. I suspect they already were anti-pork. But again, Pork is no worse than a lot that is on the fast food market.
'
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