Chavis brings call for peace to Wilmington
Star-News (Wilmington, NC)
August 7, 1997
Author: HANNAH MITCHELL, Staff writer
Estimated printed pages: 3
His speech peppered with the word ''peace,'' a soft-spoken Ben Chavis came to Wilmington on Wednesday using his new Muslim name and honoring the leaders of his new religion: the Nation of Islam.
The most famous member of the Wilmington 10, Mr. Chavis - now known as Minister Benjamin Muhammad - brought the black American sect's National Revival Tour to the city where he and nine others were jailed in 1972 after protests over local schools' handling of integration.
Wearing a bright blue suit and a gentle smile, the 49-year-old assistant to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan said that although Wilmington has made progress since the race-divided years of the Wilmington 10, it still has problems.
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CHAVIS' CALL FOR UNITY ECHOES FARRAKHAN'S WARNS AGAINST EXTERNAL FORCES
Greensboro News & Record
January 20, 1995
Author: LORRAINE AHEARN Staff writer
Estimated printed pages: 2
Back in the Triad, former NAACP leader Ben Chavis blames "dirty tricks" in the alleged Farrakhan murder plot.
Ousted NAACP director Ben Chavis warned Thursday night that external forces are sowing "seeds of discord" to destroy
African-American unity.
Chavis said that FBI allegations of a plot by Malcolm X's daughter to kill Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan are trumped up. Chavis had appeared at Farrakhan's side two days earlier in Chicago.
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CHAVIS CONVERTS TO ISLAMIC FAITH
Charlotte Observer, The (NC)
February 25, 1997
Author: PAUL SHEPARD, Associated Press
Estimated printed pages: 2
As a Christian minister, Benjamin Chavis said uplifting black people was his primary goal.
Now as Benjamin Chavis Muhammad, the former executive director of the NAACP says the Nation of Islam's influence in the black community helped spur his conversion.
``What other organization is taking men and women out of despair and making them upright? There has been a convergence and I have evolved into the Nation of Islam,'' he said in a telephone interview Monday, one day after announcing his conversion in Chicago.
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http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/daniels1.htm
The Rise and Demise
of Ben Chavis at the NAACP
Ron Daniels
The news that Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis had been selected as the new Executive Director of the NAACP, the oldest and largest civil rights organization, was greeted with great expectancy by many within the National African American community and the progressive movement. There were great expectations for Ben Chavis as head of the NAACP because he came to the position with a long history as a progressive activist. This mood of expectancy was re-enforced when Chavis selected as his top aides Don Rojas, former Director of Communications for the People's Revolutionary Government of Grenada under Maurice Bishop and Lewis Myers Jr., a progressive activist and attorney and former legal adviser to Rev. Jesse L. Jackson and Minister Louis Farrakhan. ...........................
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