Testimony Part 1

In the Name of Allah the Beneficent the Merciful I bear witness that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Messenger. As Salaam Alakium.

I have to lay a foundation of what I am standing on as I write this testimony. It is really a testimony of what happen to me before I was a Muslim in The Nation Of Islam and after I became one. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan’s 1981 Saviour’s Day message of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad being physically alive and The Ministers Vision like experience on The Mother wheel in 1985 is that foundation, I won’t go into it out of respect for The Minister. Meaning I don’t want to fill theses pages up with his experience to promote or proselytize this testimony.  But I urge you to purchase these 2 lectures. https://store.finalcall.com/product/saviours-day-february-22-1981/

https://store.finalcall.com/product/the-announcement-dvd/

 

The motive to write this testimony comes out of Saviour’s Day 2023, in Chicago Illinois, Mccormick Place Convention Center at the plenary session called The Christ The Messiah The Wheel, Student National Assistant Minister Ishmael Muhammad explained what happened to him and said the stories must come forth from the believers, meaning there experience of how they come believe that The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is physically alive.

For the reader who believes in coincidences, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said there is no such thing as a coincidence, so put that thought aside as you read this testimony.

I thought about it for months and months and months, and I said to myself it’s time to reveal it, so here it is. I will start with what happened to me before I knew I was a Muslim, then afterwards.  

Myself and my biological brother and sister, Lester Harris the 4th, and Yolonda Harris had a pattern when I was 9 or 10, that we would take turns going downtown to the Cochran Gardens Senior Citizen building at 1228 north 9th street St. Louis Mo, to spend the weekend with my grandmother.

My grandmother Mary Ellen Brooks wasn’t supposed to have us down there spending nights, so we rotated on the weekends ever so often, so that at least one of us can spend a couple nights with her.  My turn came, then sunday night came and the weekend was at the end, it was time for me to go home, we were living in Berkeley Mo at 4427 Springdale Ave.

I was sad to go home because being with grandma meant all you could eat, and I didn’t have to fight over the TV with my siblings. That night when I came home I had my first vision that Allah gave me in my sleep. In this vision my brother Lester Harris 4th and I were swimming in a pool, I got out of the pool to get a towel and my brother said to bring him a towel as well. So out the pool I went and into these sliding doors into an apartment off the patio, I came out of the sliding doors with the two towels and now all of a sudden, the water in the pool was splashing back and forth side to side aggressively, and some water splashed up in front of my feet and my brothers’ bones washed up with it. It appeared as though we were swimming at night, but I know now from my experience with visions that sometimes the night represents a dark time in my life. I heard a sad violin song in my left ear and I woke up crying in the night. I cried for a minute or two and went back to sleep, I woke up the next morning and couldn’t remember anything.  

So the next two and a half years leading up to the week my brother drowned, me and my brother had an argument and I told my cousin Ozell Smith that same week that sometimes I wish my brother was dead, it would come to pass that my brother would drown at the Lamp Light Apartments on Springdale Ave a few days later. While my mother and sister and I were at the hospital, a nurse was going back and forth to the emergency operating room and back to us as they were trying to revive my brother.  She was giving us updates on his condition, I was sitting on my mother’s lap next to the door and I could see that the nurse was coming down the hall for the last update, and I could see the look on her face. I knew my brother didn’t make it, the nurse broke the news and everyone began to cry. I didn’t cry at that time, I just had a blank look on my face. After a few minutes the nurse looked at me and said “Your Brother is in Heaven now”. 

I looked at her and said “How Do You Know?” She turned and dropped her head and left me alone.  Now I am supposed to be in pain and willing to take the words of the nurse with ease and believe that, I was 12 years old, I wasn’t a Muslim then, I believe that on one of the worst days of my life, Allah gave me that thought or response to give to the nurse to say to me, you have lost your brother this day, but you have gained a seed that will later be a foundational piece or belief system that will help you later on. We left the hospital feeling empty and feeling like someone was being left behind. Once we got home a friend of mines by the of name Suan Hall came to my room, and as I was talking about what happened and it suddenly came to my memory that I saw this in a vision two and half to three years ago. My other friend Steven Burke came by also to be by myside.  My father Lester Harris the 3rd, came to my brother’s funeral, I had never seen him before. My mother had been looking for him for child support. Once my brother transitioned, the state released the info of my father’s whereabouts for him to attend the funeral. Later that month he mailed me a bicycle for my 13th birthday from California and I never heard or saw him again.

So now a couple of months pass and I my grandfather Lester Harris the 2nd, now has an interest in bringing me to Milwaukee to spend a week with him. This is the first time I get to meet him as well, most likely my father gave him my mothers number. So he picks me up and we are driving to his daughters home to visit her.

My grandfather and I was at his daughter’s house and at a certain point he went into a room with the door open, and was on his knees will a pillow facing the opposite direction of the door in a corner. He stood up and bent over and went down to his knees, I heard him speak a language I didn’t understand. I asked his daughter who is my aunt, I can’t remember her name…. what is he doing? She said he is praying. We left her home and began to hit the road to Milwaukee. While on the road I asked him where is my father? He said he didn’t know, of course even at 13th I knew that wasn’t true. He was protecting his son from child support. So while we were driving he mentioned to me to always keep a clean pair of underwear in the glove compartment. I didn’t understand what that was all about.

We arrived to Milwaukee and we stopped at a barber shop and he had the barber take my french braids out and shaved my head to a low cut. After that we stopped at a place he told me was called jew town, which looked like a flea market. He collected fancy stain glasses that you would see in a church. After waiting for him to take care of his business there, we left and went to his apartment.  He took me in the restroom and told me to always wet the toilet paper when doing number two. I was hungry so he showed me a pack of beef hotdogs and ran some scolding hot water over them for a while and I begin to eat.

If I had to guess we arrived at his place around 1:30pmc, after I finished eating, he told me he had to make a run and he would return later.  So quite some time passed and it’s now around 8pmc and I haven’t heard anything from my grandfather. I called my mother on the house phone my grandfather had and explained to her that I haven’t seen or heard from him in a long time, around 7 hours or so.  She contacted my grandmother, who contacted a friend she had in Milwaukee. My grandmother arranged for a taxi to come and pick me up. I stayed at this woman’s home over night. The next day I caught a bus to Chicago with my uncle Lonnie Brooks, then to St. Louis.  When I came home my mother was on the phone going off on my grandfather. I never knew what happed to him when he left me alone in his apartment for those hours, I never seen or heard from him again.

Some time passed, I’m now 14 years old, my mother Cynthia L Harris meets a man name Lovell Wynn. Lovell had been in prison for 5 years, she is spending time with him for a while, then after so long my mother tells me and my sister… lovell is moving in and we won’t be eating pork, she said he was a Muslim. I now thought of my grandfather and those beef hotdogs. One day my mother and her boyfriend were having a discussion in the living room. I was walking out of the kitchen into the living room, on my way up the stairs to my room. And mother said “What about Farrakhan?” I thought to myself who and what kind of name is that? And continued to walk up the stairs to my room.

Now Lovell and my mother would have their differences for that duration of there togetherness. Maybe a year and half. Lovell and my mother had decided to sell weed out the house. This also lead to Lovell beginning to rob places, he would come home with these funny looking new clothes to sale. Most likely taken from a store or warehouse. I knew he didn’t buy them, he even came home with a stack a beta max vcr’s to sale. Now things where getting heated up with attention at 4427 Springdale. One of my friends by the name a Lester Jeffries said. ”Man It be a lot of cars at your house”. Of course, I knew that he was referring to the weed buyers, I just played dumb and ignored him.

Now it came a time where me and Lovell was about to come to blows, I’m 15 now, and hip hop and some R&B music is my addiction and medication. I came home from school one day, and Lovell worked nights at cupples rubber manufactory, so I am in the living room playing some music as Lovell is trying to sleep in the bedroom. He says “Turn it down!”, so I turn it down. He yells again “Turn it down!”, so I turn it down some more. Now by this time I can barely hear it and he comes out of the bedroom. He walks to me as I am sitting down and says I SAID TURN IT DOWN! I said I can barely hear it. By this time I am standing up, and Lovell says to me” I kill Niggas like you!”. So we are face to face and he says you want to go outside, I said COME ON WITH IT!

We both started heading to the back door to go outside and my sister Yolanda stopped us, and called my mother at work. Some months passed and my mother had been long over due of wanting Lovell to leave. So one night while I was watching television she came and sat next to me, she had a plan to move to California, as she was tired of fighting with Lovell and the direction he was going and wanted him to leave her house.  She asked me if I would go with her, I said yes….but deep down inside I was disappointed that she would leave her house for him. But I told her he’s not going to be here(alive) long….he is getting away with too much stuff. She got up and walked into her room and I finished watching television. I went upstairs to my room late after watching television and went sleep. Saturday the next morning, I woke up around 10am.

I went downstairs to use the restroom, and as I was finishing in the restroom, I heard the phone ring, and I heard my mother start screaming and crying as I open the restroom door she had dropped the phone. Lovell Wynn age 34, had been shot and killed in east saint louis. My mother said she wanted him to leave, but not that way.

Lovell had this idea that he would rob his weed supplier and take the money and graduate to selling cocaine. His supplier’s name was Bud. Bud was a homosexual, and lovell thought he could just rob him because of his sexuality. Pookie, Lovell’s friend, was hiding outside the front door as Lovell knocked on buds door to make the purchase, Pookie was known by bud and Pookie didn’t want to be seen by bud.

Lovell comes into buds home under the false pretense that he’s there to buy some more weed. He shoots bud, and bud is down. Lovell swings the door open and tells Pookie, come on man it’s clear! Pookie said gun fire came from upstairs and hit Lovell and Lovell went down in front of him. And Pookie ran down the street and heard some more shots.

Now you may ask, how do I know this at age 15? Well, Pookie came over to our house the next night with a tourniquet on his arm, my mother contacted Lovell’s cousin cleveland, our neighbor, to come and sit with her as Pookie explained what happened to him and Lovell.  They were in my mother’s bedroom with the door closed. I put my ear to the wall and listened and recorded it mentally. During that time I was in the trend of break dancing, some months prior to Lovell’s moving in with us, I met a friend named Kenneth Arron. Kenneth had moved from U-city to Berkeley, right up the street from me but had moved from California originally. He was into break dancing as well, so we clicked right way. At one point we were talking about music and he said he had a mixer and two turn tables. So he invited me into his room and for the 1st time.  

I saw a Gemini mixer a maranz amplifier and two Gemini turn tables, two Peavey speakers with 15 inch woofers. He played a record and brought another record on simultaneously as the first one played, and I was blown away! I said to Kenneth, the way you brought the record on and I could hear both records being played, that’s what I hear on the radio! Then he showed me how to scratch, and then I was really blown away. I was a drum player at school, so scratching and mixing came easy to me because of the rhythm that was needed.  So when christmas came around, I had to have a mixer and a turntable. So I started mixing and scratching and doing a couple of parties here and there, just a small DJ. I was always curious with electronics and things.

So some months past after my mothers boyfriends passing and now Kenneth and his family is moving back to California. So I was sad that he was leaving, I came to his house to say goodbye. He gave me his maranz amplifier as a parting gift. It needed to be repaired, but I was still honored that he showed me how to spin records and gave me an amplifier. We hugged each other and I thought, man I have to give him something to show my appreciation. I went back home and looked around to see what could I give him, that’s a good gift. I looked on the bookshelf in the living room and I grabbed my mothers late boyfriends Yusef Ali holy Quran and took it up the street and gave it him. So after Kenneth leaves, I have a task to get this amplifier repaired. There was a white man that stayed up the street on rickey drive named Steven Berkemeier that repaired televisions and things, I knew of him because he fixed our television at one point……and he smoked weed with my mother a couple of times, he reminded me of chong from cheech and chong movie characters that smoked weed.

I brought the amplifier to him and asked could he fix it, he said he could. But month after month after month, he never fixed it. He always had an excuse of not finding parts and what not. I got so angry that I went to his house and asked him face to face about fixing it and I was standing in his doorway looking around him in his living room for my amplifier because I felt like he was keeping it for himself. He didn’t even return it unrepaired. So I was frustrated, but I found another amplifier elsewhere.  At the same time I was 15 in school at Berkeley Senior High as a freshman I took a computer class, which just added to my curiosity of tinkering with electronics and things. 

Later at 16 years old I would meet a friend name Frederick Cobb who stayed on the same path to Steven Berkemeiers house, he had a computer and we would play games on his computer.
By the time I was 17 I decided to go to Parkway South from Frederick Cobbs suggestion, a large school mainly white students. I decided to take a computer class. I was in an all-white students classroom, I can see that their computer class was more advanced then Berkeley, I didn’t know what was going on, so I asked the guidance counselor to remove me from that class, he told me he had a chinese student that can tutor me. I told him a tutor is when you are having problems, I don’t know what I am looking at, I need out of this class. After the 1st semester I went back to Berkeley Senior High and Parkway South gave me an F for withdrawing from that class.

So by this time I was I was very familiar with the different types of DJ mixers and amplifiers, turntables and the different cassette tape brands for recording.
So music kept me busy, so a weird event happen to me at 18, I was asked by a couple of so called friends to ride with them in a car, this has significance to what happen to me later. Please be patient and continue to read. One friend was named Claude Blake, he was 17. The other friend was Robert Loyd, he was 21. Robert had moved from a street called Bridgedale Ave with his older brother. I believe he moved somewhere in the city. Even though he had moved, he was still coming back and forth to Berkeley because his parents and some of his siblings still stayed on Bridgedale. Bridgedale was a street right behind the street I stayed on, which was Springdale Ave.

I felt strange riding with both of them, because I have never been in a car with both of them at the same time. I would ride with Claude sometimes to take him to Florissant Valley Community College to jog with me, I had started boxing when I was 17. So jogging was to get in shape. Robert is driving, it’s his car, Claude is in the passenger seat front, I’m sitting in the left rear. The music is playing, and I see Robert and Claude lean towards each other and started whispering. I lean forward trying to hear above the music, then Robert says he has to go home, meaning his new place, because he forgot something.  So we are riding to his apartment, and I thought to myself, if these two dudes are on the homo tip, I can handle myself, I’m good with my hands, size don’t mean nothing.

So we arrived at Roberts place, I watched Robert and Claude get out of the car. I get out last wondering why would all of us have to get out of the car for what Robert forgot. So I go along and we approached Roberts door, he has a mean dog, a boxer named bearing. The dog was in the stairwell barking, he put his dog in the back room. He let us up the stairs, at the top of the stairs there was a closed door on my left, which was his bedroom, then in front of me was the main door. Which lead into the kitchen, he lead us into his kitchen then sharp left into his bedroom and closed the door. He then put his dog in the stairwell, then he opened the bedroom door and walked into the kitchen. I could hear some dishes clinking I’m assuming he was washing dishes.

Now I didn’t see a chair in the room, so I sat on his bed. Claude sat on the other side of the bed with his knees and body pointing facing the closet. The bed that we were sitting was sitting against the door in the stairwell. We saw the door open and close a few times, the door immediately closed because the bed was up against it. Then I realized that his dog kept trying to open the door. I said man I’m glad the bed is up against the door, bearing is trying to get in. I looked at the open door that led to the kitchen a couple of times, wondering when is Robert going to get what he forgot, and lets go! All of a sudden, the main front door that led into the kitchen from the stairs opened! Roberts dog walks through the door! In my mind I said who let this dog in? I got up from the bed and moved towards the wall at the end of the bed! The dog came into the room and charged me! As he was running towards me, I tried to time him and revved up and tried to kick the hell out of him. The dog dropped his head and caught my foot in his mouth. He bit down so hard, his bottom fang punctured through the bottom of my tennis shoe. Putting a hole in my foot, I shook him loose temporarily, then he grabbed my ankle and pants, ripped up my little parachute pants. I went to get in the closet, and low and behold Claude is in the closet. I squeezed in front of him, and tried to close the door, the closet door isn’t fully closed because two people are in it. The dog reaches in and grabs my ankle and squeezes and bites my ankle again. All I can do is bite down and take it!

Robert finally comes in the room and grabs his dog. Claude and I both come out the closet, I am grabbing my foot in pain with a disbelief look on my face. I’m wondering why it took so long for Robert to come in the bedroom and grab his dog. I know he heard the commotion!  I’m looking at my foot like man, this dog, which was a boxer bit through my tennis. Robert gave me some kind of weak excuse and sorry. Then we left, so at that time and some time afterwards I replayed that event over and over in my mind. It didn’t take me long to see that……man these dudes set me up!

Robert knew that his dog grabs door knobs, that’s why he kept the front door unlocked, and he stayed away from the door, so call doing the dishes or cooking. I had a doberman mixed with a shepherd, I knew his every move. What he would do and what he wouldn’t do. Robert Loyd at that time was the kind of person that if he couldn’t manipulate and control you, he didn’t like you. He wanted it to look like an innocent accident situation where his dog just broke through the door. So Robert had Claude to sit on the bed directly at an angle of the closet, so that when his dog runs in, he can jump right into the closet for safety. I couldn’t say to Robert he put his dog on me, because he could say Claude was in the room with me, that’s the rebuttal I could’ve received.  We left and he drove us back to Berkeley.  I didn’t do anything to Robert to warrant that dog attack. Robert had just moved from Berkeley to the city, it’s like a bucket list of something he had been wanting to do for a while.  What ever his reason was for putting his dog on me was a cowards move. So after a while I brushed it off and kept it moving. From time to time over the years I would think about it.  

A couple of years past now I’m 20.  During this time period I’m deep into conscious hip hop and some R&B music and boxing. I would hear a man speaking in rappers song like Public Enemy, Big Daddy kane, Brand Nubians etc, and I didn’t know at that time it was Farrakhan.  I had a pattern that even if I wasn’t training for a fight, I would go up to Florissant Valley Community College and run a few miles to keep my wind up. I would come back home, shower, get something to eat, rest for a few hours and go to work. This particular day something happened to me during my pattern, first let me explain this. You may be familiar with this, when I was a preteen and a teen, I would have this occurrence from time to time where I was waking up out of my sleep, I could see the room, but I couldn’t move. After about a minute of struggling to move I could finally move, it was as though my spirit had not finished traveling and had to catch up with my body. But this day my pattern was different, after I ran, showered and ate, I laid in bed just looking at the wall, now mind you I am awake. I’m looking just scanning the wall with my eyes. I fixed my eyes on one spot and I go to move to get a different comfortable position, and all of a sudden, I couldn’t move! I know I’m not tripping, I can’t move! and my eyes are open. Behind my head I hear a voice speaking to my left ear in a language that I never heard before, as I hear the voice a hand touched left shoulder from behind, this talk or language I heard went on for about 7 to 10 seconds. My eyes are still open but I still can’t move. The speaking stopped and the hand let go, and after a couple of seconds I could move. I sat up looking around behind me and of course no one was there, I was dumb founded, and I didn’t know what to think.

Years later I thought maybe it was arabic, but I really didn’t know.  It was like someone came to my reality from there reality and froze me to give me something or tell me something about myself.  So time moves on and now I’m 22, I still think about the experience I had when I was 20, but I didn’t understand it. One night I decided to get some gas for my car at the quik trip on Springdale and natural bridge, I got out of my car to pay for my gas and was walking from the pump towards the front door of the quik trip, I saw a lady named Judy Madlock standing outside the quik trip, she was the mother of 2 brothers named Jerry and Sydney who stayed on rolling drive. I looked at her and she was shaking and standing next to a pay phone, it was a little cold out but not by much, I said to myself she is not going to live long……….she was found dead later that week in Kinloch, a small neighboring county 5 minutes from Berkeley. A few months pass by and now the movie Malcolm X has come out, everyone is going to the show to see it. My mother and uncle and aunt are going to see it, and they asked me did I want to come. I told them not yet, I wanted to read up on Malcolm X and not just follow a movie like everyone else. I got a book on The life and Death of Malcolm X by Peter Goldman, the book was a nice read up until Malcolm left the nation, then I stopped reading it.

Then I saw a documentary on Malcolm x and I noticed he kept saying The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us this and taught us that, I felt I needed to know who this Elijah dude is that another grown man is quoting, that was strange to me, but I knew if this man was being quoted, I needed to know who he is. So I remembered going to a black owned book store in the delmar loop a year ago called Progressive Emporium to get some black santa clause gift wrap! I decided to go back to that store to see if they had a book on Yacub and Elijah Muhammad, they sold me Message to The Blackman. I started reading that, then after a short time of reading, I went back to that book store and asked the gentlemen did he have a book on Master Fard Muhammad, he sold me a book called Essays on the life and teachings of Master Fard Muhammad: The Foundation of The Nation of Islam, by Hakim Shabazz. Then I began to look at my mothers late boyfriends books and I saw a book by Warith Deen Mohammed, I started reading it and I noticed at a certain point in the book, Warith begin saying out the blue “How can my god be born in 1877 when god has always been here”? I said this dude is knocking Master Fard Muhammad. So I cast that book aside.

So then I felt like I needed to go where Message to the Blackman was being taught, so back to Progressive Emporium bookstore I went, I asked the gentlemen in the store where is the mosque? He said there is a mosque on grand, I said is that the Nation of Islam? He laughed and said no but it’s a mosque, I could see he wanted me to go to Warith Deen Mohammed’s masjid, so I asked him where is the Nation of Islam mosque? Then he told me it was in Illinois on state street. So, Allah continued to guide me to Muhammad Mosque28 on 2216 State street, east saint louis. So I came to a sunday meeting and accepted on that first meeting. One day while I was processing after reading some of Message to the Blackman, I walked into the kitchen with the book in my hand, my mother was sitting at the kitchen table and said to me, your grandfather had that book. I saw him and some other brothers beat up a man because he owed your grandfather some money, your father was in that(religion) too, he didn’t want to work for white people.

I was in shock, but didn’t show it, all this time I didn’t know my father and grandfather was in the nation. I just kept reading Message to the Blackman.

 I would take Message to the Blackman to work and read it on my lunch break. One evening at home in my bedroom I was reading in bed and I read a lot, I began to doze off and I could hear The Honorable Elijah Muhammad saying something in my left ear, I opened my eyes and I remember looking at the lights in my room and turning over and closed my eyes, then I heard his voice again in my left ear. When I woke up the next morning, I looked at the book and was thankful I didn’t tear any pages, I wondered was I dreaming, did I really hear Elijahs voice. I went downstairs to take a shower and got prepared to go work, I thought about my pattern of taking Message to the Blackman to work and reading again on my lunch break, but I was spooked, and didn’t know what to make of what happened that night. I decided not to read that day at work, I was trying to process his voice in my left ear. I picked back up reading the next day, I continued processing and after several months I recited and got my X on Sep 26th 1993.  I was now in the ranks…of the F.O.I!(Fruit Of Islam)

After a few years 1996 I am driving with a friend of mines name Steven Burke, who I have known since I was around 10 years of age. We stopped somewhere and we saw Robert Loyd, it was good to see him, it was always good to see someone from Springdale Ave, especially someone that was part of the airport buy out. Robert and Steve stayed on Bridgedale, right behind my street Springdale. We exchanged numbers and agreed to have a sit down some time, he said they stayed in Spanishlake, I said so do we. So about a week later I called him and got his address, I got a hold of Steve and we went over to visit him. We got to the door and I knocked, we could hear his dog barking, after Robert put his dog up in the back room with his mother he let us in, he escorted us through the living room and we made an immediate right down some stairs into there basement. We sat down on a couch around a small table,

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