BY TIM CALLAHAN
Recently, a group called the Black Hebrew Israelites came into national prominence as a result of a video that went viral after a confrontation involving a number of groups that took place at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., in early 2019. They were somewhat upstaged in the initial press coverage by what appeared to be smirking teenaged jerks who seemed to be mocking a Native American elder, Nathan Philips, as he was beating a drum and chanting. However, this was not the entirety of the confrontation:
But a longer video soon bubbled to the surface, widening the lens. It showed how a group of half a dozen Hebrew Israelites had, in fact, been goading and preaching at both the Native Americans and high schoolers, using profanity and highly provocative language, for nearly an hour…. Dressed in fringed black garb, some with scarves tied around their heads, they preached what to many were both abrasive and unfamiliar End Times messages…calling Native Americans literal descendants of the Israelite “Tribe of Gad,” the white students cursed “Edomites,” and preaching that a nuclear apocalypse was around the corner.1