about to become a part of. I returned the following month to be installed as the minister of Muhammad Mosque 51. Early on, rejection was bountiful on several levels because of my outspokenness and religious status as Muslim – but I was unfazed. Upon arrival I sent out introductory press kits to the media and various organizations including the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance, an organization serving the Black community. They outright rejected my assistant’s attempt to join the alliance. Even though to my knowledge, Rabbi Steven Foster, a leader in the Jewish community of Denver was privileged with membership in the ministerial alliance. This same rabbi invited me to discuss current events on his cable TV show on more than one occasion. In addition to my new position being very enjoyable, it was also very educational. I had had plenty of experiences to draw from, including my time in Watts, Inglewood and several other LA neighborhoods as a lieutenant and study group coordinator. But, I had never been the focus of any television or newspaper reporting to the degree that I experienced in Denver. In Los Angeles, I was a teacher, lieutenant and student minister in the mosque, not a public figure as such. I was always wearing too many hats. As a Fruit of Islam officer in LA, I worked airport security detail to secure Minister Farrakhan’s wellbeing many times. I recall one time in particular when my regional minister, Abdul Wazir Muhammad, called me from the side of the car I had driven to the airport to drop off the minister at LAX. Minister Farrakhan came walking back out of the airport terminal by himself towards me. He talked to me and greeted me very warmly and asked me about my family. He told me that Minister Wazir had told him how involved I was in the Los Angeles NOI activities. Praising me playfully and very fatherly, the Minister said that I was following his path and becoming like him. I was very active in LA. It was an honor to me and it was really a great honor to be around the minister. I remember
A Caribbean Brother Regrets Nothing,
Looks Forward By Jamal Mootoo “The stone that the builders refuse shall become the head corner stone.” Psalms 118:22
In March 1996, I awoke one Friday
morning, after speaking at East High School the night before, to find my image on the front page of both the Denver Post and the now defunct Rocky Mountain News. The headlines read something like, “Jamal X did not apologize.” I didn’t apologize for critical remarks about racism and white supremacy in my presentations at local high schools and colleges. At the time, I was the Denver, Colorado representative of Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam (NOI). I was known first as Jamal X and then as Jamal Muhammad. That was approximately 20 years ago. Before my arrival to the Mile High City, I taught at the University of Islam, an elementary and middle school in South Central Los Angeles dedicated to teaching youth to be academically competent with the LA Unified School District and to also
train them in self- knowledge and organization. Many of our students came from the “killing fields” of LA schools to our mosque school where they experienced positive changes in their academic levels and general behavior. I was the former first lieutenant of the FOI (Fruit of Islam) of Muhammad Mosque 27, one of the NOI satellites favored by Minister Louis Farrakhan for its great support of his directives and program. I didn’t sit on my hands at the LA mosque and complain about what was wrong. I was known as a worker who would roll up his sleeves and get down and dirty if needed. The first time I came to Denver was in June 1994 with two or three NOI security officers to deliver a lecture at the local mosque in the old Dahlia Shopping Center. I had to hold back tears as I saw the condition of my brothers and sisters in the local mosque. There was a lot of infighting and disagreements before I arrived and this was the scene that I was
Denver Urban Spectrum — www.denverurbanspectrum.com – February 2016
6
being in charge of the post, directly behind his back, at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1990. I remember many things. And, even though many times I felt like an outsider in the midst of the Nation of Islam, I regret nothing. Denver’s African-American community was quite different from what I was accustomed to. It was not as confrontational and tended to be less outwardly aggressive as their Los Angeles and East Coast counterparts. There definitely was more apathy and passivity than you might find in any major city but Denver Black people also had their first Black mayor – the mayor nationally known for putting on his tennis shoes and hitting the pavement – the Honorable Wellington E. Webb. He had much love and support for and from the “hood” but there was also mixed feelings and some resentment from the community. It seemed that Black lives really didn’t matter as much as other lives in the city of Denver, even though it was a fast growing city with many opportunities for educated Blacks. During that time, I had heard a speech by Mayor Webb about Denver and how it was a growing city and I thought that Black people including myself should be growing with it. But I kept reading about crimes committed against Black women and Black people in general and it bothered me a lot. It was just like in South Central Los Angeles where numerous Black women were killed. They were under-investigated and under-reported in the LA law enforcement and media for almost 30 years and were the subject of a 2014 Lifetime channel movie, “Tales of the Grim Sleeper.” Margaret Prescod, KPFK radio host of the “Sojourner Truth” morning show out of Los Angeles kept this issue front and center on her show for the past three decades. In a Denver Post article, writer Chuck Green lamented on the noninvolvement of Denver’s Blacks in a recent killing of a young African American female who was found close to Grape Street near where I lived and not too far from where the NOI weekly meetings were held. I was sensitive to this issue from my South Central LA background. That incident sparked an exchange between Green and me about how media ignored Black suffering and used appropriated images of dark humanity to scare voters like what George Bush Sr. did in his Willie Horton ad against Democrat candidate George Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election. I agreed with Green that Black people weren’t outraged enough at many negative things in the communities of color. I challenged the media to report more accurate facts about cocaine arrests in the Black com-