Farrakhan Delays L.A. Speech, Plans to Petition Blacks

Black Muslim Minister Louis Farrakhan has postponed a scheduled Aug. 8 speech in Los Angeles until petitions can be circulated to determine whether black Los Angeles residents want him to come to town, an aide said Thursday.

“Minister Farrakhan will abide by the decision of the black people of Los Angeles,” Abdul Allah Muhammad said. “If they don’t want him to come, then he won’t come.”

If enough signatures are gathered to persuade the Nation of Islam leader to visit Los Angeles, Muhammad said, “no power can keep him away.”

Muhammad added that the Nation of Islam’s legal department is exploring taking action against Mayor Tom Bradley, the Los Angeles City Council and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for “slanderous attacks” against Farrakhan.

All 11 council members present at a meeting last week signed a resolution stating that although the council “treasures the right of free speech for all Americans, it believes most strongly that the message of Louis Farrakhan is not the message for Los Angeles.”

While seeking a way to break Farrakhan’s contract to use the Los Angeles Convention Center for the speech, Bradley said:

“I say to Mr. Farrakhan, and to anybody else, that statements of racial bigotry, racial hatred or religious hatred of any kind are unwelcome in the city of Los Angeles.

“We make that unequivocal statement, even in the advance of an appearance of Mr. Farrakhan, so he will have no question on where I and other leaders in this community stand on that kind of an issue.”

City Atty. James Hahn later advised the mayor that any attempt to block Farrakhan from using the city-owned Convention Center would probably fail in the courts because of constitutional guarantees of free speech.

Muhammad told reporters at a press conference Thursday that Farrakhan does not accept Bradley’s, the council’s or the supervisors’ decisions “as reflecting the will of the black people of Los Angeles.”

“This is not a plantation where the master decides who can and cannot come and speak to his slaves. We are a free people, and we are going to behave like a free people.

“Minister Farrakhan will respond only to the voice of black Los Angeles, since these are the people to whom he is coming to speak, and not to those who presume to speak for them.”

Muhammad said no new date will be set for Farrakhan’s speech until after the petition drive, but he said the Nation of Islam has received indications that a facility larger than the Convention Center would be needed.

15,000 at the Forum

Farrakhan attracted more than 15,000 to the Inglewood Forum in September, 1985, after local Jewish leaders had called upon Bradley to repudiate the Black Muslim minister before the speech. Bradley remained silent, precipitating a furor in the local Jewish community.

The mayor’s comments in opposition to Farrakhan’s now-postponed speech came after Irv Rubin, national director of the Jewish Defense League, disrupted a Bradley press conference last week, demanding that the mayor “repudiate the Nazi Farrakhan.”

Muhammad expressed disappointment that “a lunatic fringe terrorist leader--and I say it publicly--(could) make the top executive of the second-largest city in America . . . attack another black man.”

Declaring that Farrakhan is not an anti-Semite, Muhammad said, “Col. (Moammar) Kadafi (Libya’s head of state) is a Semite, and you all (the media) make a great deal of the fact that he loaned us $5 million.”

Although Semite is loosely used to refer only to Jews, Webster’s New World dictionary defines the word as referring to those speaking a Semitic language--Hebrews, Arabs, Assyrians, Phoenicians and others.

Muhammad also defended Farrakhan against accusations that he is anti-Jewish, saying that the Nation of Islam leader holds a view shared by “ultra-orthodox” Jewish sects that the state of Israel should not be established before the coming of the prophesied Messiah.