The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan speaks at the Prince Hall Shriners Convention in St. Louis Missouri, on August 12, 1983

Transcript:

We are born into a circle of light. And this is to teach us a lesson. Ignorance is darkness. Light is all around us. If God hated darkness and loved the light, that He vanished darkness and darkness is forever a vanishing in His universe.

Think over that. Darkness is not real, it is only the absence of light. And when the light comes where does the darkness go? It goes because it does not have a base for its existence.

So it is with ignorance. Ignorance has no base for existence. And as long as a people are walking in ignorance they are walking in darkness. And when they walk in the darkness they have no measurement for the time or for their life. For all measurement starts with man's relationship to light. And when you’re not in the light you have nothing by which to measure time.

So time passes for the ignorant. In a fleeting moment, How long have you tarried? The ignorant do not know because they cannot tell time because they are not walking in the light.

So those who love God and those whom God has blessed with the light have a responsibility to vanish darkness. Even as the stars and the moon and the sun vanish darkness, men of knowledge, women of knowledge, men of understanding, women of understanding. Men and women of wisdom have a sacred yoke around their necks, and that yoke is that you are bound to the light, bound to the principles of the light, and bound to the duty imposed upon those who bask in the light. And that is to lead those who walk in darkness into the marvelous light that you have discovered.

If you don’t lead others into the light then God will hold you responsible. For him to whom much is given much is required. Then what man having the light will hide it under a bushel basket? That man having a light will put it on a hill. Why? Let your light so shine before men that they may what? Hear your talk? No. See your good works.

For a man that has light and has no works is really in the dark and has deceived himself. You didn’t hear me. I’m going to say it again. Any man or women who says they are in the light and has no productive work is engulfed in darkness and has deluded himself or herself. For with light you have energy. With light you have power. And with power you have the ability to overcome obstacles.

What Black person having light then should walk in America feeling as though the white man is a stumbling block in our path? Or his evil racist society is a stumbling block in our path? When you have the light, you go over the stumbling block, under the stumbling block, through the stumbling block, but nothing stops men and women of wisdom and light...