To The Black Woman In America

 

By Elijah Muhammad, Messenger of Allah

 

Reprinted from the September 4, 1970 Edition of Muhammad Speaks Newspaper

 

  MY DEAR SISTERS, the Beloved of God and His Messenger Muhammad, and the Nation of Righteousness: As I have taught you and have written in the MUHAMMAD SPEAKS NEWSPAPER, you the Black Woman are the greatest and the most prided woman of the Nation of the earth. But, you are now like wild game in the jungle.

  In order to get you to commit evil and indecency, the white man cuts your dress off up to the and above your knee, and you follow them with a smile.

  It did not seem possible before yesterday, that you would stoop to any such filth, and display your nude body and spread out your low desire and characteristics and allow the public to see you in such a half-nude condition. But you fall back on this answer: "That is the style."

  You do not have enough sense to reply that this is the style of the enemy of yours, for you are lost to the knowledge of self and you think everything white people do, you should follow them.

  THIS IS DUE TO THE LACK OF KNOWLEDGE of  yourself and the white race. You pay no attention to the truth of their history, that God in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad, to Whom praises are due forever, has taught me. And I am teaching you that they had 2,000 years of living as savages and that they did not regard themselves as being nude when they lived in the hills and cavesides of Europe.

  They went wild and captured and killed animals -- taking the coat off animals and putting them on themselves. And they still do it. He, the white man, still hunts animals that have fine hides and fur to sell them to the world, and to keep the cold out of their body.

   NOW THE WHITE MAN is talking about a more modest dress