Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Several Democratic members of the Congressional Black Caucus Tuesday refused to denounce Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison’s call for a black state. One congressman stated, “I don’t see anything really objectionable.” . . . The Georgia Democrat said he wouldn’t comment on whether Ellison would have to denounce these comments. While Rep. Lewis said previous groups espoused similar ideas for a black state, the New Black Panther Party currently supports it. The group’s co-leader proposed an idea very similar to Ellison’s. He said that African-Americans should claim a “black nation” in “Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia.” Ellison’s...

As a third-year student at the University of Minnesota Law School in 1989-90, he wrote two columns for the Minnesota Daily under the name “Keith Hakim.” In the first, Ellison refers to ‘Minister Louis Farrakhan,’ defends Nation of Islam spokesman Khalid Abdul Muhammad, and speaks in the voice of a Nation of Islam advocate. In the second, ‘Hakim’ demands reparations for slavery and throws in a demand for an optional separate homeland for American blacks.”