A devoted follower and defender of Louis Farrakhan manages outreach for the district attorney responsible for prosecuting criminals in Boston, Massachusetts, and several communities north of the city. Farrakhan is the leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI), a black-supremacist organization notorious for promoting anti-Semitism and anti-white racism. The employee in question, True-See Allah, describes Farrakhan as the “undisputed Champion for all of humanity.”
It’s an odd thing to say about a black supremacist who has declared that white people “are born with lie and murder in their nature” and describes Jews as the “enemies” of God.
Astonishingly enough, Allah’s membership in a black-supremacist organization and his devotion to the bigoted Farrakhan did not prevent Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden from appointing him his director of community engagement in early June 2022. Hayden doesn’t seem bothered by Allah’s admiration for Farrakhan, whom the Anti-Defamation League calls America’s “most popular antisemite.”
The presence of a member of a black-supremacist organization on Hayden’s staff raises an obvious question: Just how seriously does Hayden take the 14th Amendment, which requires public officials to provide equal protection under the law to all citizens, regardless of their race or skin color? No prosecutor even remotely familiar with the 14th Amendment would hire a member of the Ku Klux Klan or a follower of a white supremacist like David Duke to work as an outreach director in a multi-racial city such as Boston. But Hayden has done the exact same by giving a member of NOI and follower of Farrakhan a job in that very city.
Allah has done anything but tiptoe around his admiration for Farrakhan.
“True-See Allah is a valued member of our staff and has shown great skill in reaching out to all communities and demographics in Suffolk County to relay information on the goals, programs and progress of the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office,” wrote James Borghesani, chief of communications for the Suffolk County defense attorney’s office, in response to an email asking about Allah, his affiliation with NOI, and his support for Farrakhan.
This is not Allah’s first job in Massachusetts government. Between 2013 and 2020, he was a prominent staffer in the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department, leaving the agency after he achieved the title of assistant deputy superintendent. Between 2020 and 2022, he worked at Massachusetts’ Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, where he served as director of reentry, overseeing efforts to help former inmates adjust to life outside of prison.
It’s an astonishing career path for an ex-con who spent more than eight years in prison for his role in a gang-related shooting in 1989, which left its target paralyzed for several years before dying, in Allah’s words, “from subsequent wounds of the shooting.” While serving his time in a medium-security prison in Norfolk, Allah, then known as Troy Christopher Watson, listened to the preaching of Farrakhan confidant Don Muhammad, leader of NOI Mosque No. 11 in Boston, broadcast on a local radio station.
It wasn’t the first time Allah had been exposed to NOI teachings, however. Prior to his time in state prison, a NOI chaplain had ministered to Allah while he was serving time in county jail for a conviction on a gun-related charge, he reported in 2016.
“He was dealing with the history of the [black] nation, black history,” Allah said. “So, I began to fall in love with myself, my true self, and tap into the history of being the builders of the pyramids and all of the great inventions and contributions that we made to civilization, which I wasn’t getting in the traditional school system [where] everything was white. Everything was white.”
After leaving prison in 1998, Allah changed his name to True-See Shabbaz Allah and joined Don Muhammad’s mosque. According to a 2016 interview, Allah eventually became first officer at the mosque, effectively serving as Don Muhammad’s bodyguard and sidekick. In this position, Allah marveled at the influence his mentor exerted over political life in Boston despite complaints from the targets of Farrakhan’s notorious rhetoric.
“Minister Don did so many meetings with so many high-level elected officials, but it was always backdoor; it was always quiet because of the misperception from the Jewish community,” Allah said in a 2022 interview. “They love us in secret, but publicly, a lot of people have to tiptoe around showing that love.”
Allah has done anything but tiptoe around his admiration for Farrakhan. In 2016, Allah affirmed his allegiance to NOI’s “illustrious leader, teacher and guide ... the embodiment of righteous conduct, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.” In the 2022 interview — conducted several months after he began his job at the defense attorney’s office — Allah gushed about the admiration directed toward Farrakhan by a police escort when he visited the mosque.
“I used to get chased by the police,” Allah said. “Then by working alongside Minister Don, I’m getting escorted by the police as we pick up the Honorable Minister Lois Farrakhan from the airport.... The police were so gracious to us, and they were so professional, and you could see the gleam and the love that they have for the Honorable Minister Lewis [sic] Farrakhan, contrary to all of the reputation that some people were trying to paint incorrectly about him.”
Allah made his admiration for Farrakhan explicit on July 1, 2020, by posting on Facebook an image of Farrakhan embracing him as a young man. In text accompanying the image, Allah encouraged people to listen to an upcoming speech by Farrakhan: “July 4th, 2020 @11:00am EST. Tune into NOI.org to hear the Undisputed Champion for all of humanity The Honorable Min. Louis Farrakhan.” In the speech that Allah encouraged his followers to hear, Farrakhan declared that Jews had “broken their covenant relationship with God” and made his derogatory comment that white people “are born with lie ... and murder in their nature.”
A vocal defender of Farrakhan should not serve as advance man for the district attorney responsible for enforcing the law in a multi-racial and multi-faith city.
There is something incongruous about Allah’s own personal history and his admiration for a man who spews hostility toward white people. White people helped Allah get his life together after he was released from prison — even as he participated in the life of a religious community that demonized them. While serving in Massachusetts law enforcement, Allah began establishing a network of boosters, who wrote letters upholding his efforts to obtain a state pardon for his crimes. These supporters included Daniel Linskey, superintendent-in-chief of the Boston Police Department; Paul Joyce, superintendent of the Boston Police Department; and Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley, who spoke movingly on behalf of Allah’s pardon, which was granted by then–Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick in January 2015.
In a world that made sense, asking a devotee and vocal defender of Louis Farrakhan, a notorious anti-Semite and anti-white racist, to serve as advance man for the district attorney responsible for enforcing the law in a multi-racial and multi-faith city with more than 600,000 inhabitants — most of them white — would be political suicide. And asking the targets of Farrakhan’s rhetoric to tolerate the presence of one of his strident supporters in the halls of power would, to most observers, look like political suicide.
But not in Boston, Massachusetts.
