A Call to Think, Build, and Become. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan at Kennedy-King College, Chicago, Illinois (2005)

The Honorable Minister Farrakhan

BLXCR Editorial: Our mission is to highlight messages that challenge the mind, uplift the spirit, and call our people toward action. What you are about to read is drawn from a powerful message delivered by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. This is not just a speech about health. It is a message about responsibility, self-development, and building a future for ourselves.

A Call to Think, Build, and Become

In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan opened with gratitude to Allah and respect for the teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He greeted the audience with peace, but quickly moved into a serious question that should make all of us think. What kind of generation are we leaving behind?

He spoke as an elder looking at the future, asking whether the next generation will inherit strength, discipline, and responsibility, or fear, dependence, and confusion. He made it plain that every creature does for itself, and questioned why we as human beings often look to others to do for us what we should be doing for ourselves.

You are not what you say you are—you are what you think. A person can claim titles, affiliations, or identities all day long, but if the thinking is off, the life will reflect it. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. That means the real battlefield is not outside—it’s inside the mind. And if someone else can control what you see, hear, taste, smell, and feel, then they are feeding your thoughts, shaping your perception, and ultimately directing your life. This is why mental discipline is not optional—it is survival.

Every creature must do something for itself. You will never see a bird standing in line waiting for another bird to feed it. Nature itself teaches self-reliance, yet we as human beings, who are supposed to be the highest form of creation, have become dependent. The question is no longer what was done to us—that history is real—but what are we doing right now to correct it? Responsibility is the dividing line between stagnation and growth. At some point, we have to move from awareness to action.

Education, as it stands today, must be questioned. Is it truly cultivating what God has placed within us, or is it simply preparing us to serve someone else’s system? Too many people graduate with degrees in quoting but not in thinking. They can repeat information, but they cannot create, build, or produce. So we must ask honestly: is education liberating us, or is it another form of incarceration? True education should awaken purpose, sharpen the mind, and develop the ability to stand independently.

There is greatness in every human being.

Minister Farrakhan made it clear—he has never met a person in whom he did not find something superior. That means every individual carries value, ability, and divine potential. The tragedy is not that people lack greatness, but that their greatness is never cultivated. When a system fails to develop what is inside of a person, that person may live and die without ever realizing who they truly are. But the truth remains—every one of us is a giant, whether we have tapped into it or not.

No nation can rise without its women.

The woman is the mother of civilization, and if she is not respected, protected, educated, and elevated, then the entire society suffers. If the woman is deprived of knowledge, then the children she raises will be deprived as well. You cannot build a strong people on a weak foundation, and the condition of the woman reflects the condition of the nation. Elevating women is not optional—it is essential to the future.

When we talk about hell, we often think of something after death, but the Minister forced us to look at the reality of hell right now. What hell is worse than poverty, disease, broken homes, violence, and hopelessness? What hell is worse than a child growing up without love, or a family struggling just to survive? These are not abstract conditions—they are lived experiences. And until we address them directly, we will continue to suffer while waiting for relief that must be built here and now.

Control is not always obvious. It can come through food, water, media, and culture. He who controls your food controls your life. Even when you think you have made better choices, you must ask yourself—who controls the production of what you eat? Who controls what you see and hear every day? It is not just what you put in your mouth that affects you, but what you feed your mind. If both are contaminated, then the outcome is predictable.

Freedom requires self-sufficiency.

When your mouth is in somebody else’s kitchen, you cannot be free. If you do not produce the essentials of life—food, clothing, shelter, and business—then you will always be dependent on those who do. If you are not doing business in your own community, then you are not truly alive as a people. A living community produces, creates, and sustains itself. A dead community consumes what others provide.

Truth is the foundation of freedom. You cannot stand against falsehood until you know the truth. And once you know the truth, it has the power to set you free—but only if you act on it. Truth is not just something to hear or repeat; it is something to live. Without action, truth becomes just another idea.

At the end of it all, the message comes back to action. We cannot continue to blame others without examining ourselves. What are we doing to correct the condition we are in? There is no power in heaven or on earth that can stop a people who are determined, disciplined, and united—except themselves. The greatest obstacle is often not the enemy outside, but the hesitation, fear, and lack of unity within. Once we remove that, there is nothing that can stop us.

Toward the end, he spoke about building something new. He pointed toward a future where we create our own systems of education, training, and development. A future where we do not wait for validation, but we build based on our own standards and our own needs.

BLXCR Reflection

This message is not just something to listen to and move on from. It is something to reflect on. We have to ask ourselves if we are thinking for ourselves, if we are producing for ourselves, and if we are building something that will last beyond us. We believe the grassroots must continue to raise real questions and push toward real solutions. Not just talking, but building. Not just reacting, but creating.

Closing Word

Minister Farrakhan ended with a call for us to rise and take responsibility for our lives and our future. The message is simple but powerful. We cannot keep blaming others without also asking what we are doing to fix our condition. If we change our thinking, take responsibility, and work together, we can build something better.

Get up, Black man and woman, and let us get health from our head to our feet, and offer health and well-being to everyone who needs it.