Mourners Remember Forceful Black Leader

NEW YORK —  A coffin bearing black militant Khallid Abdul Muhammad was carried through the streets of Harlem on Saturday after a funeral service that mingled warm memories and harsh rhetoric.

“Long live Khallid Muhammad! Long live Khallid Muhammad!” scores of mourners shouted as they marched up Malcolm X Boulevard behind black-clad pallbearers from Muhammad’s New Black Panther Party.

Muhammad, who died at 53 in Atlanta, founded the party after being ousted by the Nation of Islam in 1993 for his harsh statements against whites and Jews.

Muhammad “wanted powerful black people,” Maulana Karenga, the creator of Kwanzaa, told several hundred mourners at Mount Olivet Baptist Church.

“He believed we had a right to self-determination, self-responsibility, self-defense,” Karenga said. “We have no business bowing in the pale shadow of our oppressors.”

Muhammad’s annual Million Youth March in Harlem was his highest-profile event. The first, in 1998, ended with a brawl between police and protesters; last year, barely 100 people showed up.

In a 1993 speech at Union, N.J., Muhammad denounced Jews as “bloodsuckers” and urged mob murder of white South Africans. In 1995, he told a crowd in Atlanta: “I was born to give the white man hell, and I will give him hell from the cradle to the grave.”

In 1981, Muhammad was named a top lieutenant to the Rev. Louis Farrakhan in the Nation of Islam.

Two years later, Farrakhan repudiated Muhammad over his increasingly angry rhetoric.

However, a letter from Farrakhan was read at the service, expressing sympathy for Muhammad’s family and friends.