Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 21, 1990 TAG: 9004210313
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-4 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES HIGHER EDUCATION WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
He did. And he lived up to the advance billing.
White America has been "miseducating" blacks for centuries, he said, depicting George Washington as the honest father of the country when, in fact, "he was a lying, no-good slave master . . . who used black women as bed warmers and belly warmers.
"I didn't make George do that. Don't get angry at me . . . for pulling the wig off George," Muhammad boomed into the microphone as he circled the lectern.
With each step, he was shadowed by two bodyguards, one to his left, another to his right. A third stood behind Muhammad and two more - wearing the Nation's trademark dark suit, white shirt and red bow tie - were stationed at the stairs to the right and left of the stage in Burruss Hall.
"You want us to read your history, but you don't want us to read your real history," he said, addressing the few whites in the audience, most of them police, reporters and a few faculty and students.
To the some 100 students, almost all of them black, he said: "If a people won't treat you right, what makes you think they'll teach you right?"
He decried the "semantics" practiced by white historians who call the Boston Tea Party a "party", but blacks fighting for their rights a "riot."
"We don't call black people standing up for their rights a riot," Muhammad said. "We call it a rebellion."
Ten police officers in plain clothes, some from Tech, others from the Blacksburg Police Department, lined the back of the auditorium. One or two wandered the lobby while Muhammad spoke.
"We won't go into your jails tonight, we won't be shot," he said, directing his remarks out into the hall.
Some 45 minutes into the lecture most of the officers wandered out into the lobby and began munching on pizza, talking quietly among themselves.
There was AIDS, "which didn't come from a green monkey. It came from a white monkey - with a suit and a white coat. Don't you put it past white folks," he cautioned the blacks there.
His voice rising, he continued: "Don't you put it past them that AIDS - which is spreading through Africa, . . . which is spreading through the black community - is a tool for black genocide."
Muhammad promised to address reports that Farrakhan had described Hitler as a "wickedly great" man and that he had called Judaism a "dirty" religion.
"Anything I say here tonight, I will document it, I will back it up."
by CNB