CHARLESTON, South Carolina—In an exclusive interview, black separatist leader Malik Zulu Shabazz said that Breitbart Texas misrepresented comments he made at a rally last Tuesday about completing “the mission” of a freed slave who planned a slave revolt in 1822 with the goal of killing as many white people as possible.
Shabazz, head of a group called Black Lawyers for Justice and a longtime leader in the New Black Panther Party, returned to Charleston Sunday evening for another rally. It’s the second event that Shabazz has headlined since the shooting of nine black churchgoers at the Mother Emanuel church.
Freed slave Denmark Vesey was one of the founders of the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. Vesey and 34 others were killed and the church was burned to the ground after his plan to have slaves kill their masters while they slept and then take boats to Haiti—killing any white people they saw on the way—was discovered.
During his Friday eulogy for slain pastor, President Obama made reference to that event without mentioning Denmark Vesey by name.
Breitbart Texas reported that at Tuesday’s New Black Panther Party-supported rally, Dr. Shabazz said, “Denmark Vesey had a plan to kill all the slave masters in the state. Denmark Vesey had a plan to kill every last one of them and kill all of their goddamn families.”
Minutes later as part of introducing a speaker who suggested to the audience that they arm themselves, Shabazz said, “We got to complete what Denmark didn’t finish. Denmark didn’t finish his mission.”
When asked whether he’d talked about finishing Denmark’s mission, Shabazz responded:
I said that but y’all took it out of context. I went over Denmark Vesey’s whole life history, I went over what kind of man he was, what kind of character he had. I went over…I did go over the revolt and what he was planning. First of all, I never said to anybody to kill anybody. Now, y’all know that that’s not right, to say that Shabazz said to kill anybody, that’s not right, I never said that. I gave honor to his history.
During his remarks to the audience on Sunday, Shabazz also said his remarks were misreported and that it was a deliberate attempt to discredit him.
“It was not a specific call to kill anyone, ” Shabazz told Breitbart Texas. “I did not mean we need to go and kill what doesn’t even exist. I meant carry on his general work as an emancipator.”
At this Sunday speech, Shabazz did not repeat his remarks about Vesey killing people or urge the audience to complete his mission, but discussed Vesey in broad terms as an ‘emancipator and liberator.’”
In other comments in the exclusive interview, Shabazz said he generally opposed the death penalty for black Americans, who he said can’t get a fair trial. Shabazz said last Tuesday that he wants the death penalty for accused whit killer Dylann Roof, who allegedly shot nine black churchgoers nearly two weeks ago.
Shabazz told Breitbart Texas that his group doesn’t want welfare and is pro-Second Amendment and wants black Americans to arm themselves for self-defense. He also repeated his call for white Americans to pay reparations for slavery.
As Breitbart Texas told Dr. Shabazz in this exclusive interview, we will post his complete comments from last Tuesday’s rally and let readers decide for themselves whether Dr. Shabazz’s comments were described accurately.
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