A look at the history of the Israelite School of Universal Practical Knowledge, an extremist group of Hebrew Isrealites that’s long had a presence in Philadelphia.
It was a striking visual: a group of white teens wearing “Make America Great Again” hats appearing to taunt an American Indian elder banging on a drum near the Lincoln Memorial. The video of the standoff during the annual March for Life on Friday in Washington quickly went viral, and was seen by many as a sign of the political and racial divides of Trumpism.
But an extended cut of the video has brought another group into the fold: Hebrew Israelites, a religious organization that appears to have been involved in a confrontation with the teens that the elder was reportedly trying to defuse.
Anyone who’s walked the sidewalks on a Friday in Center City over the last 25 years is probably familiar with Hebrew Israelites. An Upper Darby-based outpost called the Israelite School of Universal Practical Knowledge (ISUPK) teaches that African Americans are descended from the Israelites in the Bible. Its members preach by shouting obscenities at pedestrians.
Ornately dressed men representing the Israelite School have been known to park on the sidewalk and set up a platform with grainy-sounding microphones — they’re typically found these days outside Temple University’s Center City campus, near 15th Street and JFK Boulevard — and spew hateful language at anyone who walks by. Among their favorite terms: “white devils,” “whores,» “faggots,” and the N-word, which members routinely shout at black passersby.
A New York-based leader of the sect, who wanted to be called General Mahayaman, said what happened Friday is “a perfect metaphor for why street speaking is so important.”
“There was the American Indian demonstrator who attempted to sing in the face of great hatred,” he said, referring to the teenagers wearing MAGA hats (which he said “are no different than Klan hoods”). “What we learned in the Israelite School is that you can’t sing in the face of hatred. You’re going to have to speak up and talk back, and our street speaking is how you talk back.”
The below video includes obscene language.
The Israelite School of Universal Practical Knowledge (ISUPK), a sect of the Hebrew Israelites, is classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group of black nationalists.
