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| #AtlantisBuild #FivePercenter #KnowledgeOfSelf |
According
to Universal Shaamgaud Allah, the architect of the Five Percent Nation's
Universal Flag, it was the best of three that he completed in May of 1966. Upon
completion, he along with two colleagues [Black Seed and Gykee], went to visit
Allah in Matteawan State Hospital to
present it to him. Allah was in Matteawan because in May
of 1965 he was arrested along with several other men for unlawful assembly and
disorderly conduct at a rally in front of the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, NY.
Allah was arraigned in criminal court before Judge Francis X. O'Brien and held
on a $9,500 bond. Four months later he was shipped off to the Psychiatric Unit
at Bellevue Hospital and would remain there until a final psychiatric report
submitted to Judge O'Brien stated that "he did not understand the charges
against him." Thus Allah was remanded to the NYS Department of Mental
Hygiene for indefinite confinement and remained in these institutions, Bellevue
and Matteawan State Hospital, for two years.
When Shammgaud, Black Seed and Gykee
arrived at Matteawan State Hospital to present the Universal Flag to Allah, the hospital
administration would not allow them to bring it inside. Thus Allah did not receive it
until he was released from Matteawan in April of 1967. Our Five Percent Nation’s
flag, Shaamgaud gave us this explanation of its symbols:
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| The Universal Flag and its architect Universal Shaamgaud Allah |
"The five-pointed star symbolizes Knowledge, the Seed, the Child with the power, the Supreme Knowledge that was manifested by W.F. Muhammad and revealed to us by Almighty God ALLAH, it is solid Black! The Crescent Moon symbolizes Wisdom, the Women (without child); it shows reflected light (Truth or Knowledge) and is not yet at its fullest equality. It also symbolizes the Divine Wisdom that was manifested by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and revealed to us by Almighty God ALLAH, it is solid yellow! Together the Star and Crescent stand for Knowledge and Wisdom, which is the unity of knowing it and speaking it! (Teaching) It also symbolizes the Earth (woman with child); a planet that has life, and the dominance the Woman has over the Seed (the child or the Knowledge) while it is young, and it has been the symbol of Freedom Justice and Equality since the awaking of Islam in the West of North America.
The 7 has seven sides. It symbolizes the Original Man, the True and Living God, the Supreme Being, Almighty God ALLAH. Since the very creation of mathematics 7 has been the mathematical terminology for the Creator of the Universe. It is solid Black. Together this stands for the Supreme Understanding that was revealed to us by Almighty God ALLAH himself, it shows a unification of Knowledge Wisdom and Understanding, Man, Woman, Child and shows the authority of ALLAH over the Planets and Stars and the proper order of the Universe. The seven symbolizes the male seed in full bloom, it shows that God must be the Most High, the Master of Wisdom, Culture and Equality at all times, because they are six, and can never dominate ALLAH, so they must remain in six or distill back to whence it came! This no part of the crescent moon should ever show over the top of the seven!
The white background symbolizes the white clouds of deception that have drowned our people in a sea of ignorance, and the feeble attempts of the wicked to conceal the true and living God which is the Son of Man! The Cipher (circle) around the Allah Crescent Star is Black, the Original Color of the Sun (anything that burns that hot and that long can't be yellow!) This symbolizes the Sun, the Universal symbol of Truth and Light, and whose power can evaporate all clouds of deception (lies).
The Eight Points are the symbol of the ever-expanding Universe, and symbolizes the rays of the Sun, and the speed and distance that the Truth is capable of traveling. There are two shades to each point, the Left is Black. The left represents the Original Black man, the Right side is Gold. The Gold represents Brown and Yellow seeds (from the first of the Brown to the last of the Yellow). Just as Jacob separated the seeds, 200 years from Black to Brown, 200 years from Brown to Yellow and 200 years from Yellow to Caucasian, ALLAH taught us that each brother should have a seed thus he reunited the seeds, united they are one! The eight points are a sign of He who is the Master builder of Rain, Snow, Hail and Earthquakes! The sixteen sections of the points, one for each year and degree that our seeds (child) must master before he is at the age of self-responsibility and required to teach civilization." -Universal Shaamgaud Allah
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| (L to R) Mayor John Lindsay, Barry Gottehrer, Sid Davidoff |
When our Five Percent Nation began to grow amongst the youth throughout the boroughs of New York, Mayor John Lindsay, a Liberal Republican, formed a relationship with Allah through his Aide Barry Gottehrer and Executive Assistant Sid Davidoff. Mayor Lindsay was a clean-cut lawyer by profession who graduated from Yale University. A
former U.S. Congressman and a gunnery officer in the United States Navy,
Lindsay was also affiliated with the Bush family; he ushered at the wedding for
Nancy Bush where he met his bridesmaid wife Mary Anne. Nancy Bush is the sister
of former CIA Director and POTUS George HW Bush Sr.
Barry Gottehrer was an investigative journalist prior to becoming an Aide in the Lindsay Administration. His insightful award-winning newspaper series "New York City in Crisis" laid bare the racial and socioeconomic problems in NYC. Considered a political hatchet job, this New York Herald-Tribune series attacked the policies of current Democratic Mayor Robert Wagner II and painted an untainted picture of the Herald-Tribune's endorsed candidate Congressman John Lindsay. This compelled Lindsay to add Gottehrer, and his narrative shaping expertise, to his Administrative Staff once he was elected Mayor.
Sid Davidoff was Mayor Lindsay's troubleshooting consigliere. Another lawyer by profession and visiting lecturer at Lindsay's alma mater Yale University, Davidoff was considered one of President Nixon's worst enemies; named among other political opponents as part of Nixon's covert "Political Enemies Project" list that was revealed during the Senate Watergate Committee investigating the Watergate scandal.
With Allah's street knowledge and cultural worldview, he along with Lindsay, Gottehrer, and Davidoff were able to successfully produce projects and initiatives that Five Percenters used to positively transform the landscape of Harlem and NYC as a whole.
Upon Allah's approval of our Universal Flag design by Universal Shaamgaud, the image was given to Mayor Lindsay to create flag lapel pins. Allah was not anti-government so in collaboration with Mayor Lindsay's office, Lindsay had our lapel pins created by Eagle Regalia; a manufacturing company that was founded in New York City in 1910, specializing in the production of banners, flags, emblematic jewelry, buttons, badges, plaques, and trophies. In addition to our lapel pins, Eagle Regalia also created the licensed badges of the NYPD and other government agencies in New York. According to our nation elders, young Five Percenters would be given a Universal Flag lapel pin with their righteous name inscribed on it. When a Five Percenter chose a righteous name and earned or was given a lapel pin, it was distributed at the Street Academy [Allah School]; a property given to the Five Percenters with a ninety-nine-year lease by the Lindsay Administration in 1967. To receive a lapel pin Five Percenters were required to write down their honorable name [birth name] in a book and their righteous name beside it. Some lapel pins had names already inscribed on them. Other lapel pins were blank and were sent out to have their name inscribed on them. These lapel pins were more than just decorative symbols of our cultural identity, accomplishment, and pride. They enabled Allah, in partnership with the city government, to better organize, document, monitor, and deputize a growing youth movement into an unrivaled dynamic of power. A powerful segment of New York's citizenry that the NY Daily News partly described as "the neighborhoods most respected."
On the night of April 4th, 1968 when Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, Mayor Lindsay contacted Sid Davidoff and Barry Gottehrer about coming to Harlem to pay his respects and offer his condolences to the people. Against their advice to not come because they could not guarantee his safety, Mayor Lindsay came to Harlem anyway and met with Gottehrer and Davidoff along with Allah and a group of his Five Percenters. As they began to walk the streets of Harlem, people began to join them and together they successfully stopped the Harlem community from rioting.
During those early years of the Five Percent Nation our Universal Flag was protected and functioned like closed-source software or informal intellectual property that was not made available to the general public. Anybody could not just get it or wear it. Times have since changed with the growth of the internet and social media. Up until the mid-2000s, it was rare for people to casually wear or use our Universal Flag. If vendors in New York City were selling items bearing the Universal Flag it was common for those products to be destroyed, taken and/or the vendor accosted by Five Percenters.
Nowadays, with the expansion of the internet, social media,
and e-commerce, our Universal Flag has taken on more
of an open-source expression. Thus it is freely available, redistributed, and modified in the public domain and across digital space by people who are not a part of the Five Percent Nation. This has
become problematic because these outsiders are using our Universal Flag to sell merchandise, provide services, edit Wikipedia content, publish articles, create/monetize content, make social media profiles/pages, create/manage websites
and share disinformation about our Five Percent Nation. One of the solutions that I have suggested over the years is for us [Five Percenters] to invest in creating such a large digital footprint of positive, accurate, authentic content that it drowns out the disinformation and cultural appropriation. This is no easy task and requires the same or even greater level of commitment to content creation than me -and I have been helping consistently expand our Five Percent digital footprint for more than two decades. We are not quite there yet and as we continue to push our culture forward into this Blockchain Age, it is important that we give all that we have and do all within our power to protect and control our narrative online and offline, or outsiders will continue to...
Our Universal Flag has done more than exemplify our righteous names, reputation, and overall culture of the Five Percent. During the night of MLK's assassination, other instances throughout the Lindsay Administration, and the years that followed, our Universal Flag lapel pins became symbols of empowerment. They became emblems connected to our ability to teach, resolve conflicts, and address issues of truancy and juvenile delinquency in the place of law enforcement and other government agencies. In addition to Shaamgaud's important meaning of our Universal Flag, it was and will always be, a badge of honor.
Peace,
Saladin
