BY BRIAN TAYLOR
Benjamin Chavis announced February 23 that he joined the Nation of Islam (NOI) at the organization's annual Savior's Day meeting in Chicago.

Chavis, who changed his name to Minister Benjamin Chavis Muhammad, gained prominence as one of the "Wilmington 10." This was a group of Black activists framed up for the 1971 fire bombing of a grocery store in North Carolina, in the context of an uprising by Blacks responding to racist vigilante attacks on the Black community. He was imprisoned from 1976 to 1980.

Chavis was one of the founders of the National Black Independent Political Party, an organization forged in 1980 that rejected the Republican and Democratic parties. After that formation dissolved, he continued functioning as the executive director of the United Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justice. He was ordained as a minister of that organization in the 1970s.

In April, 1993 Chavis was elected the executive director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and several months later began publicly associating with NOI leader Louis Farrakhan. Some 16 months after his appointment as NAACP executive director, Chavis was fired in 1994 for unilaterally using $330,000 from the organization's budget to reach an out-of-court settlement for sexual harassment claims made against him.

Chavis then joined forces with Farrakhan and helped organize the 1995 Million Man March in Washington, D.C. The following year, they organized a political convention in St. Louis where fascist politician Lyndon LaRouche was invited to speak. Chavis has given several prominent interviews to LaRouche's newspaper, the New Federalist. He has also participated in public meetings with LaRouche and events sponsored by LaRouche's organization, the Schiller Institute.

LaRouche was introduced to the St. Louis meeting by James Bevel, who was the vice presidential candidate in LaRouche's campaign for U.S. president in 1992. LaRouche left the stage in the face of jeers from a handful of people in the audience.

Manning Marable, professor of history and director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University, denounced Chavis and Farrakhan for putting "a notorious white racist" on a "public platform." In a February 1 Amsterdam News article entitled "No compromise: Farrakhan, Chavis and Lyndon LaRouche," Marable challenged "Chavis and Farrakhan to have a full disclosure on their full political relationship with LaRouche."

Marable, however, failed to comment about fascist politician James Bevel, who is Black. Bevel, once an advisor and aid to civil rights activists Martin Luther King Jr. and member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, is now a frequent columnist in the NOI organ, the Final Call, and a close aide of LaRouche.  
 
 
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