Last week, on Oct. 16, marked the 29th anniversary of the Million Man March, the historic mass gathering of Black men that laid the foundation for subsequent Black nationalist coalition building efforts.
In recent years, the Nubian Leadership Circle has represented the latest iteration of Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan’s mandate of operational unity in the Black community.
Black women, like Lesa Muhammad, have answered the call.
“This nation [the United States] is not for us, so we need a nation that’s going to be everlasting,” said Muhammad, a retired teacher from Boston and one of several people who converged on Union Temple Baptist Church in Southeast for the Nubian Leadership Circle’s Summit XI on Oct. 19.
The first Nubian Leadership Circle summit in 2021, Farrakhan gave the keynote address. Subsequent summits, at least four a year, attracted hundreds of Black nationalists and Pan-Africanists from across the U.S. and other parts of the world.
The most recent summit was the first of its kind to take place in person since the Nubian Leadership Circle’s inception during the pandemic. Muhammad, a mother of seven, said that the face-to-face interactions enhanced discussions about land ownership and food sovereignty, issues she found critical for Black America.
Food is necessary and people are buying land and destroying it,” Muhammad told The Informer. “If you don’t have good food, you won’t be around for a long time. Everything is poisoned so we can get back to what we had at the beginning.”
Black Leaders Discuss Pressing Issues and Importance of Nation-Building
On Oct. 19, Summit XI opened in Union Temple’s main sanctuary with a singing of James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Summit convener Sadiki Kambon provided comments that laid the foundation for breakout sessions about, not only food and land, but family essence, economic development, arts and culture, spiritual renewal, health, education and international advocacy.
Participants later listened to a panel discussion that Kambon and then Million Woman March cofounder Phile Chionesu moderated. The panelists were: Attorney Nkechi Taifa; Paul Pumphrey of Friends of the Congo; the Rev. Willie Wilson, founding pastor of Union Temple; and Nation of Islam Student Minister Nuri Muhammad.
Student Minister Muhammad, who has amassed a strong following on social media in recent years, weighed in on the issue of technology. He called it a crucial tool, despite its crippling effect on Black people’s collective psyche.
“Ignorance and depression is at an all-time high because of what they call the World Wide Web,” Muhammad said. “This poisonous spider took out our insides. We have a body with empty vessels. But if we use [social media] right to eliminate time and space, it can be used for good.”
During the pandemic, the Nubian Leadership Circle, as other entities did, depended on the internet to establish and maintain communication. In the days leading to Summit XI, Kambon, founder of Nubian Leadership Circle and New England organizer of the Million Man March, continued to tout operational unity as the ultimate goal of this movement.
“We have to do what we do by ourselves,” said Kambon, who founded the Nubian Leadership Circle in the spirit of a popular blog he circulated in the years following the Million Man March. “This is a coalition building effort in many respects… People can maintain their sovereignty as we work together. Let’s come together with our minds and resources with a plan.”
Discussions Lay Groundwork for Organizing Efforts
Lashawna Henderson, a D.C. resident and co-facilitator of the family essence working group, said she and other cadre members spoke about how to revitalize periodic family gatherings.
“Family is ground zero for all of us. What we do in the home, grows into the community,” Henderson told summit participants during the plenary session. “We have ideas to strengthen our family units, establish a cadence and find time to talk as a family. You can bring everyone together to open communication channels for conflict resolution.”
In their report from the spiritual renewal breakout session, the husband-wife duo who led that cadre said they learned about fellow summit participants who are fulfilling their divine calling.
“Brothers and sisters are reaching out to be mentors in the prison system. We also had retired teachers and first responders. One father talked about being role models for his sons,“ said Rodney Muhammad, a Boston resident who spoke on the stage of Union Temple’s sanctuary with his wife Lisa Muhammad. “We had that opportunity to show why it’s important to be in that light after more than 400 years of slavery. God is able to restore that which needs to be restored.”
Earlier, during a breakout session that lasted more than an hour in Union Temple’s basement, some summit participants mulled over how to finance a Black nation.
With a collection basket on the table, economic development cadre leader Eric Wilson guided discussions about land ownership and projects that the Nubian Leadership Circle looks forward to executing in the coming years.
Wilson, an entrepreneur who lives in Las Vegas, also emphasized the importance of international solidarity. He said he will practice that concept when he visits Togo later this year for a conference.
As the work abroad continues, Wilson and other cadre members also aim to raise $500,000 among African people living in the United States. These funds, he said, will go into an account the Nubian Leadership Circle opened with United Bank.
“We’ve been told that African American wealth will be zero in the next 50 years, but they can’t happen on our watch,” Wilson said. “The economic development part makes unity work. If we don’t have economic viability, we won’t move forward.”
Long before he sat on the panel, Pumphrey grabbed the attention of those who participated in the international advocacy breakout session with an on-the-ground perspective about anticolonial activities in the Sahel region of Africa, the siphoning of Congo’s natural resources and U.S. intrusion in Haitian politics.
Pumphrey, a vendor of chocolate cultivated along the equator, proposed that Black Americans use resources at their disposal to counter mass killings and stealing of resources around the world.
“It’s about understanding what we know and what we need to be trained on,” Pumphrey said while touting an airline mechanic program at University of District of Columbia that he said can equip young people to help their brothers and sisters abroad.
“Africa needs licensed mechanics or they can’t fly to other parts of the world. We need to help our young brothers and sisters. These are the main things we need to think about when we talk about nation-building.”
Little Concern about the Outcome of the 2024 General Election
The Nubian Leadership Circle’s Summit XI took place with less than three weeks left before the 2024 general election.
As many Black people continue to debate the merits of voting for Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump, many, if not all of the Summit XI appear to have no interest in either party.
Senghor Baye, a longtime Garveyite and member of the Nubian Leadership Circle, emphasized this point on Oct. 19.
“There’s so much work needed to be done so we all need to be doing something of significance,” Baye said during the international advocacy breakout session.
“The Reptilian Party wants to wipe us out and the Demon-crats want to keep us asleep. Project 2025 didn’t just start with Trump so when Kamala Harris gets there, it’s still going to be an issue. We want to make sure we continue to build moving forward.”