The musical peace offering is only part of Farrakhan’s bid for a broader audience. Later this year he’ll publish a new book, “A Torchlight for America,” recasting the spiritual teachings of his late mentor Elijah Muhammad as remedies for drug addiction and crime in black and white communities. He’s made overtures to Jewish leaders, dining last month at the home of a prominent Chicago rabbi. And his new outreach isn’t limited to whites. Farrakhan recently joined Coretta Scott King, Andrew Young and the Rev. Joseph Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference at a gathering of African and African-American leaders in Gabon. “There are more things we agree on than disagree on,” says Lowery.
Set off: While maintaining his perennial call for an African homeland for American blacks, the man who called Hitler “wickedly great” and allegedly described Judaism as a “gutter religion” says he is more optimistic about prospects for racial harmony. “We don’t want to be set off to the side for people to look at and say, ‘They’re the haters, they’re the anti-Semites’,” he says.
Why is Farrakhan reaching out? One reason is political pragmatism. He realizes that unless he sheds his image as an antagonist from the racist fringe, his hopes of reaching large black and white middle-class audiences with his message are remote. He also believes that repairing relations with Jews will make it more acceptable for influential blacks in sports, entertainment and business worlds to associate with him. But friends say the shift also signals more personal changes. They wonder whether advancing age-he turned 60 last month-and a recent brush with prostate cancer has stirred a sense of mortality. And while he has crusaded against drug abuse, one of his sons is “struggling” with substance abuse (he won’t elaborate). It all suggests, friends say, a tempering of passions. “He’s reached the same point Malcolm X reached,” says Vincent Lane, chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority. “No man is an island. Racial hate doesn’t work. It’s a change, and he’s trying to signal it with music.”
Farrakhan’s fence-mending efforts are getting a mostly frosty reception. “Sorry, but I don’t think a few musical notes would be enough to soothe my rage as an African-American if someone talked about my people the way Farrakhan has talked about Jews,” wrote Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, who has covered Farrakhan for years. Chicago Jewish leaders complain that The Final Call, his Nation of Islam newspaper, is still filled with anti-Jewish invective. National Jewish leaders are also unenthusiastic. “Playing the music of a dead convert from Judaism [Mendelssohn converted to Christianity] will not repair the depth of hurt, insult and damage that Reverend Farrakhan has spewed,” says Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.
Farrakhan’s new benign rhetoric grows sharp again when confronted with resistance from his old enemies. “Some of my detractors want apology before dialogue,” he thundered in his interview with NEWSWEEK. “[They] want me to say to my people that Louis Farrakhan has come on bending knee and capitulated. That you will never see if you live 10,000 years!” Farrakhan says his most notorious phrases come from polemics taken out of context in the culture of the 30-second sound bite. He insists that the “gutter religion” comment was a condemnation of Israel for persecuting Palestinians in the name of Judaism. “I never meant to slander the Jewish faith,” he says. “I was speaking of Israel.”
Farrakhan’s attempts to allay white suspicion are causing him problems among long-time supporters. Black nationalists who viewed him as an unwavering spokesman against white oppression are disenchanted. “My radio callers are asking, ‘What’s happened to Farrakhan?’” says Lu Palmer, a prominent black call-in host and a friend. “They’re concerned that a voice that was uncompromising has now been softened.”
Calypso singer: White America first heard Farrakhan’s voice in defense of Jackson, who referred to New York City as “Hymietown” while running for president in 1984. By then, Farrakhan had been a fixture in the black community for 20 years. Raised in Boston as Louis Eugene Walcott, he worked as a guitarist and nightclub calypso singer (stage name: The Charmer) before joining the Nation of Islam at the urging of Malcolm X. Farrakhan eventually denounced the Muslim leader for accusing Nation founder Elijah Muhammad of extramarital affairs, but he denies any role in Malcolm’s 1965 assassination. He broke with the sect in the late ’70s when Muhammad’s son steered it from racial separatism toward orthodox Islam. Farrakhan founded a reconstituted Nation based on Muhammad’s original doctrines of nationalism and self-renewal through strict behavioral and dietary codes.
Farrakhan works from a heavily secured, Syrian-style home in an integrated neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, rising before dawn to answer mail and work out for two hours (with a trainer) on treadmill and weights. For the last two years, he’s also spent three hours a day with a violin teacher preparing for his concerts. His nearly unbroken layoff of 40 years showed in his April 18 performance, but critics were nonetheless impressed. “Mr. Farrakhan’s sound is that of the authentic player,” said The New York Times. Music critics may be the only skeptics Farrakhan can win over. The repressive character of Nation culture, especially its antipathy toward feminism and gay rights, is certain to limit his audience. And those he has savaged in his rhetoric are waiting for larger signs of contrition than Farrakhan may ever be willing or able to provide. Playing a concerto is one thing. Facing the music is another.
