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Louis Farrakhan on Ethopia's Significance to African Americans


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Louis Farrakhan on Ethiopia's Significance to African Americans (length: 1 min 30 sec)
At a hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Gates runs into Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, who shares his thoughts on Gates' article in the New Yorker and the importance of the late Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie. Read Transcript

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GATES AND MINISTER SHAKE HANDS.

FARRAKHAN: I want you to know I didn't like the article but I thank you for writing about me and, in your books and in the article. And I know that as time goes on we'll do better and better and better.

C.U. MINISTER.

FARRAKHAN: Well you know, most of us who were nationalistic in thought always looked to scripture in the Bible that said that Ethiopia one day would stretch forth its hands and as black people who never thought that we had a stake in the scriptures, but when we found Ethiopia we found Africa, we found ourselves, so there's a special magic that Ethiopia has. Maybe I'm not using the right word but it's mystical, it's magical - for black people Ethiopia, that name Haile Selassie among the Rastafari and among those of us who never saw a black monarch. We saw King George, we saw Queen Elizabeth, we saw all of the white kings and queens, but Haile Selassie gave us somebody that we could look to say well, some of us were kings.

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