This statement is to congratulate and to recognize Mr. Robert F. Smith as a leader for the African-American spirit of achievement and accepting responsibility for our whole life in America. On behalf of my people, we are inspired. Further, we are compelled by his deed of addressing the economic burdens of striving African-American men, to say to him, that our people, the People of W. Deen Mohammed -that is THE community of African-American Muslims, see with his great and generous act a fulfillment of the prayers and dreams of our slave ancestors.
Our slave fathers and mothers endured their condition with the prayer to G'd that there would be a day in America where our people would be "enough" to take care of our own, without the permission or patronization of white authority, free from the degradation of oppression's grip on our psyche. This was the driving principle in the lives of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and his son Imam Wallace D. Mohammed, who are our benefactors in so many ways, and the spirit of the great thinker and educator of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Dr. Benjamin Mays.
Mr. Robert Smith said in explanation of his act of self-love and philanthropic beauty that "We are enough to ensure we have all of the opportunities of the American dream, and we will show it to each other through our actions and through our words and through our deeds." We will have our independent views of how to get to the place that Mr. Smith has arrived, but in that process we are obligated to hold him up on our shoulders for the world to see and tribute, that the African-American people see the value of our human lives, that we are not a crushed people, and that we are much more than a spiritual soul people. We are more than a soul body.
We are a people of this material earth with the determination to have our portion of it to address our needs as a people, so that we may also make our material contribution by supporting and enabling our young people in improving this world and existence we have, that all peoples of the earth must share in and care for. We say thank you to Mr. Robert Smith, and we pray that G'd preserves him and gives him increase in all ways.