Why Farrakhan appeals: touching the souls of black folk.

Not since the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968, has black leadership spoken in a genuine, effective way to the souls of black folk. Not, that is, until October 16 and the Million Man March. The genius of the event--which is to say the genius of Louis Farrakhan, who conceived it--was to couch its purpose in religious terms: atonement, reconciliation, recommitment to God, women, family, and community. In so doing, he spoke to the souls of black folk in a way that not even Jesse Jackson had managed to in the twenty-seven years since Dr. King's death. In so doing, he transformed the Million Man March into an occasion for re-fusing a severed cord, for reconnecting with the hopeful, faith-filled religious tradition that King represented and that seemed to fall into decay after his murder. I am convinced that this religious aspect, as much as anything else, accounted for the huge turnout and the undeniable success of the march.

Let me start with the obligatory disclaimers: I am no fan of Farrakhan. His protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, I believe that he is anti-Semitic and that that is abhorrent. (I also think he wishes in a strange sort of way that he could stop being so, but he seems constitutionally incapable of it. He also is anti- a lot of other things that no truly decent, God-fearing, God-loving person ought to be, including a couple that touch me intimately (anti-interracial marriage and anti-Catholic). As a result of an this, it's hard to tell when Farrakhan speaks whether it is God's messenger one is hearing or a silver-tongued devil doing an impression of God. I choose to believe that, in the Million Man March, it was the former.

All his hatreds aside, one thing is clear about Farrakhan: He loves black people. He loves them so much that he has made himself hated by virtually every other group in this nation to prove his love for blacks. He loves them so much that he will criticize them as no white person and dam few black people could. Indeed, he boasted about that in his overlong but far more coherent than most critics gave it credit for being) speech at the Million Man March. "I point out the evils of black people like no other leader does," Farrakhan declared, "but my people don't call me anti-black, because they know I must love them m order to point out what's wrong so we can get it right to come back into the favor of God!"

One other thing also is certain: Farrakhan, a Muslim, employs Christian and Judaic religious themes more effectively than almost any other prominent contemporary preacher. He did it to powerful effect in his Million Man March address, and in the process summoned up memories of that old religious tradition of which Dr. King was the greatest exemplar.

Many commentators have made the obvious unfavorable comparison between Farrakhan's speech and that of Dr. King at the 1963 March on Washington. Fair enough. But what seems more noteworthy is how accustomed all of us, black people and white, have become over the last quarter-century to hearing so-called black leaders talk like bureaucrats and policy wonks. No wonder their leadership has been so empty and feckless. Their oratory--like their policy prescriptions--never seems to rise above a ringing endorsement of "a Marshall Plan for the cities" or some other such child. Even so brilliant a thinker and orator as Jesse Jackson has been ensnared by policythink and policytalk.

But what black people have needed and wanted was someone who could make sense of their plight, someone who could explain, in an uplifting and ennobling way, their existential condition. Or to put it more soulfully, someone who could answer Louis Armstrong's musical question: "What did I do to be so black and blue?" That requires not the prose of the policy wonk, but the poetry of the preacher steeped in Scripture. So listen to Farrakhan: "And if God were to answer us today he would say to black people, `Yes, I allowed this to happen. And I know you suffered, but Martin King, my servant, said it: Undeserved suffering is redemptive'....

"He said, `Black man, I love you.' He said, `But God, I mean, that's a heck of a way to show you love me." He said, `But I love my son. I love Jesus more than I love any of our servants. But I had a cross for him. I had nails for him....but I loved him more than anybody else.'"

When did we last hear anyone speak in that way to the souls of black folk?

So the march is now almost a month in the past. Will it have any lasting benefit or effect, or will it turn out to have been just a momentary high? My bet is that it will turn out to be as important for black people--and for the nation as a whole--as was the 1963 march, which provided the momentum for the great civil rights laws.

The Million Man March amounted to a declaration by black people that they will not be defined any longer merely as victim. That definition, which many black leaders actively sought and cultivated over the last quarter-century ("We don't want to let white folks off the hook) has been crippling to African-Americans and profoundly irritating to race relations. It can only be good to have it eradicated and replaced with a different image, one of black men and women as strong, striving, self-determining people, working hard, raising families, guiding children. Once that old image is shed and the new one replaces it, I expect there will be more of a disposition among white and other Americans to lend a hand. It's a basic fact of life: Nobody goes out of his way to help someone who doesn't at least give the appearance of trying to help himself.

I see nothing but good ahead because of the Million Man March. And it's all because it touched the souls of black folk.

Don Wycliff is the editorial page editor of the Chicago Tribune.