MALCOLM X

THE COMPLETE MALCOLM X: 40 Hours of Audio, 14 Hours of Video, 4,000 Pages of FBI Files and More!

2018-02-21T19:15:00.002-08:00

Now Available as a 2-DVD Collection
or Digital Download!

Malcolm X was one of the world's most important human rights leaders and an incredibly gifted speaker. Now he can be seen on a new 2-DVD collection of the most complete Malcolm X video material ever assembled. This collection includes 40 Hours of Audio, 14 hours of video, 4,000 pages of FBI Files and more. Order now and receive a 1,200 Page Malcolm X eBook FREE! Available on DVD or as easily downloadable files. Playable on any computer, iPhone or iPad! This is the most complete collection of Malcolm X speeches, debates and interviews ever assembled!

CONTENTS

AUDIO (40 Hours):

Barry Gray Interview (March 10, 1960) - 41:09

Lecture in Atlantic City, New Jersey (1960) - 25:19

Lecture in Atlanta, Georgia (1960) - 28:00

The Embassy in Los Angeles (April 16, 1961) - 1:17:39

Open Mind: The Black Muslims in America (April 23, 1961) - 56:33

Ed Harvey Interview (June, 1961) - 22:55

Eleanor Fischer Interview (1961) - 31:03

Malcolm X Debates Bayard Rustin (January 23, 1962) - 37:45

Bayard Rustin Debate (February 15, 1962) - 33:28

Ronald Stokes Memorial Service (April 28, 1962) - 39:43

Dick Elman Interview (May 1, 1962) - 12:27

The Crisis of Racism (May 1, 1962) - 14:30

Ed Harvey Interview (September 26, 1962) - 24:25

Black Man’s History (December 12, 1962) - 1:29:01

Malcolm X on the Original Asiatic Man (1962) - 2:25:32

Michigan State University (January 23, 1963) - 47:12

City Desk Interview (March 17, 1963) - 28:15

Red Benson Interview (April 26, 1963) - 16:37

Open Mind: Race Relations In Crisis (June 12, 1963) - 1:39:29

Abyssinian Baptist Church (June 12, 1963) - 26:50

Kenneth Clark Interview (June 30, 1963) - 13:06

Harlem Unity Rally (August 10, 1963) - 2:05:23

James Baldwin Debate (September 5, 1963) - 27:44

Address to the Ford Hall Forum (October 10, 1963) - 54:16

UC Berkeley Interview (October 11, 1963) - 39:53

UC Berkeley Speech (October 11, 1963) - 46:40

Austin Clarke Interview (October 13, 1963) - 1:04:50

A Message to the Grassroots (November 10, 1963) - 43:31

A Visit From the FBI (February 4, 1964) - 8:30

Declaration of Independence (March 12, 1964) - 7:22

The Black Revolution (April 8, 1964) - 45:13

The Ballot or the Bullet (April 12, 1964) - 52:48

Return from Mecca Press Conference (May 21, 1964) - 14:52

The Militant Labor Forum (May 29, 1964) - 1:04:56

Robert Penn Warren Interview (June 2, 1964) - 1:00:40

Ed Harvey Interview (June 4, 1964) - 18:24

John Nebel Interview (June 20, 1964) - 3:37:59

Bob Kennedy Interview (June 25, 1964) - 21:42

Comments in Paris (November 23, 1964) - 13:38

Oxford Union Debate (December 3, 1964) - 31:30

HARYOU-ACT Forum (December 12, 1964) - 49:37

Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu Intro. (December 13, 1964) - 1:09:44

Harvard Law School Forum (December 16, 1964) - 48:27

Fannie Lou Hamer Introduction (December 20, 1964) - 25:37

SNCC Civil Rights Workers (January 1, 1965) - 21:53

Front Page Challenge (January 5, 1965) - 13:05

Prospects for Freedom in 1965 (January 7, 1965) - 1:15:24

On Afro-American History (January 24, 1965) - 45:10

After the Firebombing (February 14, 1965) - 1:23:54

Stan Bernard interview (February 18, 1965) - 1:26:03

VIDEO COLLECTION (12 Hours):

1960 Harlem Rally (15 min)

1962 Bayard Rustin Debate (15 min)

1962 Los Angeles (40 min)

1963 Berkeley (45 min)

1963 City Desk (30 min)

1963 Kenneth Clark (15 min)

1963 Open Mind Debate (120 min)

1964 Front Page Challenge (15 min)

1964 Malcolm X Exposes Elijah Muhammad (20 min)

1964 Oxford Union Debate (15 min)

1964 Return From Mecca Press Conference (15 min)

1965 A Worldwide Revolution (40 min)

1965 Malcolm X Documentary (90 min)

1965 The Assassination of Malcolm X

1983 The War Against Malcolm X (60 min)

1992 Brother Malcolm (120 min)

Short Clips (120 min)

Malcolm X on Self-Defense

Malcolm X in Harlem

Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali

First Interview in England

James Baldwin on Malcolm X

Our African Brothers

Malcolm X Interview (1963)

John F. Kennedy is a Trickster

Malcolm X at the Audubon

War Against The Racists

Send the Government to Mississippi

Direct Action

The House Negro and the Field Negro

Guerrilla Warfare

Betty Shabazz Interview after the Firebombing

Martin Luther King on Malcolm X

The Fear is Gone

Comments in Paris (November 23, 1964)

OAAU Founding Rally (June 28, 1964)

Looking For Justice

Malcolm X Collection

Malcolm X on JFK and Birmingham

Malcolm X in Smethwick

Harlem Riots

Racist Politicians

Buy A Shotgun

The Second Amendment

Racism is a Cancer

After the Firebombing

Malcolm X interviewed in England

New York City School Boycott

Black Nationalism

Secret recording of the FBI by Malcolm X (Feb. 4, 1964)

Harlem reacts to the Assassination 1

Wake Up Clean Up and Stand Up

Louis Lomax Interviews Malcolm X (1959)

Times will never get better until you make them better

Malcolm X Exposes Media Manipulation

On Being Militant

Education Not Legislation

Malcolm X speaks against integration

On the Police of Harlem

Why I Left the Nation of Islam

On African History

The Burial of Malcolm X

On the United Nations

A Call For International Unity

The Power Shifts to Africa

Who Are You

Assassination Footage

Patrice Lumumba

Betty Shabazz Interview after the Assassination

Early Mike Wallace Interview

The Problem is Still Here

Protesting the NYPD

I Probably Am a Dead Man Already

The Funeral of Malcolm X

James Baldwin on the Assassination

Martin Luther King on the Assassination

White People's Guilt Complex

Malcolm X Speaks

Malcolm X on the KKK

Self-Defense Units

The Black Bourgeoisie

Malcolm X on Muhammad Ali

Harlem reacts to the Assassination 2

Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Meeting

My Life is in Danger

TEXT:

4,000 Pages of FBI Files

Malcolm X Collected Speeches Volume 1 (355 pages)

Malcolm X Collected Speeches Volume 2 (425 pages)

IMAGES:

Gallery of over 60 rare images of Malcolm X

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Malcolm X Collected Speeches, Debates and Interviews as PDF
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MALCOLM X: COLLECTED SPEECHES IN PAPERBACK!

2018-02-19T04:23:00.001-08:00

NOW AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK FOR THE FIRST TIME!

MALCOLM X: COLLECTED SPEECHES
VOLUME 1 and VOLUME 2

Never before available! These brand new paperbacks are the most complete collection of Malcolm X speeches ever assembled! This is the most comprehensive collection ever published of Malcolm X’s speeches, debates and interviews. No other collection includes this much material from one of the world’s most important human rights leaders. Arranged chronologically and containing the full version of never-before-published speeches, these two volumes show the evolution of Malcolm X’s philosophy from 1960 to 1965. These two volumes contain more than 80 speeches, debates and interviews by Malcolm X including some of his most famous speeches including, “The Ballot or the Bullet”, “A Message to the Grassroots” and his debate at the Oxford Union. There has NEVER been a collection like this!

This collection is available ONLY through this website!

Table of Contents - Volume One

1960

Barry Gray Interview (WMCA-FM) (March 10, 1960)

The Negro’s Position in the Recent American Society (May 5, 1960)

Bayard Rustin Debate (November, 1960)

1961

The American Negro: Problems and Solutions (March 24, 1961)

Speech at the Embassy (April 16, 1961)

Open Mind: The Black Muslims in America (April 23, 1961)

Harlem Freedom Rally (May 13, 1961)

Open Mind: The New Negro (October 15, 1961)

Eleanor Fischer Interview (1961)

1962

Bayard Rustin Debate (February 15, 1962)

Dick Elman Interview (May 1, 1962)

The Crisis of Racism (May 1, 1962)

Ronald Stokes Memorial Service (May 5, 1962)

Ed Harvey Interview (September 26, 1962)

Yale Law School (October 20, 1962)

1963

Michigan State University (January 23, 1963)

City Desk Interview (March 17, 1963)

The Black Revolution (April 8, 1963)

Red Benson Interview (April 26, 1963)

Alex Haley Interview (May 6, 1963)

WUST-FM Interview (May 12, 1963)

Abyssinian Baptist Church (June 12, 1963)

Open Mind: Race Relations in Crisis (June 12, 1963)

Dr. Kenneth Clark Interview (June 24, 1963)

James Baldwin Debate (September 5, 1963)

The Old Negro and the New Negro (September, 1963)

Address to the Ford Hall Forum (October 6, 1963)

UC Berkeley Interview (October 11, 1963)

UC Berkeley Speech (October 11, 1963)

Austin Clarke Interview (October 13, 1963)

A Message to the Grassroots (November 10, 1963)

Columbia University (November 20, 1963)

God’s Judgment of White America (December 1, 1963)

CLICK HERE TO BUY VOLUME 1
($39.99 plus shipping)

______________________________________________________________

Table of Contents - Volume Two

1965

A Visit From the FBI (February 4, 1964)
A Declaration of Independence (March 12, 1964)
A. B. Spellman Interview (March 17, 1964)
Leverett House Forum (March 18, 1964)
The Ballot or the Bullet (April 3, 1964)
The Ballot or the Bullet (April 12, 1964)
Letter From Mecca (April 20, 1964)
University of Ghana (May 13, 1964)
Return from Mecca Press Conference (May 21, 1964)
The Harlem Hate Gang Scare (May 29, 1964)
Robert Penn Warren Interview (June 2, 1964)
Ed Harvey Interview (June 4, 1964)
Bob Kennedy Interview (June 25, 1964)
OAAU Founding Rally (June 28, 1964)
Second OAAU Rally (July 5, 1964)
Milton Henry Interview (July 24, 1964)
African Summit Conference (August 21, 1964)
Second African Summit Conference (August 21, 1964)
Racism: The Cancer That is Destroying America (August 25, 1964)
OAAU Homecoming Rally (November 29, 1964)
Les Crane Interview (December 27, 1964)
Oxford Union Debate (December 3, 1964)
HARYOU-ACT Forum (December 12, 1964)
Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu Introduction (December 13, 1964)
The African Revolution and its Impact Upon the American Negro (December 16, 1964)
Fannie Lou Hamer Introduction (December 20, 1964)
By Any Means Necessary (December 20, 1964)
Bernice Bass Interview (December 27, 1964)
Claude Lewis Interview (December 31, 1964)

1965

Speech to SNCC Civil Rights Workers (January 1, 1965)
Tuskegee Institute Campus Digest (February 3, 1965)
Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church (February 4, 1965)
Front Page Challenge (January 5, 1965)
Prospects for Freedom in 1965 (January 7, 1965)
Young Socialist Magazine Interview (January 18, 1965)
Pierre Berton Interview (January 19, 1965)
Tuskegee Institute Interview (February 3, 1965)
On Afro-American History (January 24, 1965)
Harry Ring Interview (WBAI-FM) (January 28, 1965)
Irving Kupcinet Interview (January 30, 1965)
The Oppressed Masses of the World Cry Out for Action (February 11, 1965)
After the Firebombing (February 14, 1965)
There’s A Worldwide Revolution Going On (February 15, 1965)
Not Just an American Problem, But a World Problem (February 16, 1965)
Stan Bernard Interview (WINS-AM) (February 18, 1965)
Al-Muslimoon Magazine Interview (February 20, 1965)
Program of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (February 21, 1965)

CLICK HERE TO BUY VOLUME 2

($39.99 plus shipping)

THE BLACK PANTHER COLLECTION

2013-08-19T17:30:00.000-07:00

The members of the revolutionary Black Panther party were the political descendants of Malcolm X and worked to put his philosophy into action. Founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, the organization was founded to put an end to police brutality in black neighborhoods. This new collection is the most complete collection of Black Panther material ever assembled. Included are video, audio and text files by Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Fred Hampton, H. Rap Brown, Eldridge Cleaver and more. This is the most complete collection of Black Panther material every assembled and is available ONLY through this site!

VIDEO (12 hours)

Black Panther Party - Power To the People (120 min)
Free Huey Rally (45 min)
History of Bloods and Crips in L.A (90 min)
How the FBI Sabotaged Black America (50 min)
Huey P. Newton - Prelude to Revolution (30 min)
Huey P. Newton with William F. Buckley Jr (5 min)
Kenya and the Mau Mau Revolution (50 min)
Robert Williams - Let It Burn (60 min)
The FBIs War on Black America (50 min)
The Murder of Fred Hampton (90 min)
The Story of Marcus Garvey (120 min)

AUDIO (32 hours)

Black Panther Party Rally for Oakland

Bobby Seale Interview with Bob Avakian

Bobby Seale - Huey Newton Birthday Rally

Berkley Discussion to Free Fred Hampton

Charles Garry on Eldridge Cleaver

Bobby Hutton Funeral

Bobby Seale on Huey Newton

Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver in Sacramento

Huey Newton Interview in Oakland

Kathleen Cleaver Interview

Huey Newton at Alameda County Jail

Cleaver Newton Seale on Police Raid

Eldridge Cleaver on Blacks in America

Yippie Rally in Berkeley - Eldridge Cleaver and Tom Hayden Elections

Eldridge Cleaver - The Last Speech

Free Breakfast KPFA interview

Hutton Park Rally - Angela Davis

Bobby Seale Interview from San Francisco Jail

Huey Newton interview from San Luis Obispo Prison

Huey Newton Freed from Jail

Jonathan Jackson Memorial

George Jackson and William Christmas Funeral

Soledad Brothers transfer to San Quentin

Eldridge Cleaver on Drug Culture

George Jackson Interview

Huey Newton on Vietnam

Discussion on Panthers in San Quentin

John Jackson Jr. and Angela Davis on George Jackson Murder

Bobby Seale on George Jackson

Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton at George Jackson Funeral

Attica Rebellion September

Huey Newton Funeral

Black Panther Party Rally - 1968

Black Panther Party 1968 Interview

Black Panther Party Conference

Black Panther Party Press Conference 1968

Black Panther Party Rally 1969

Bobby Hutton Funeral Speeches

Bobby Seale Interview From Jail

Bobby Seale At Free Huey Rally

Bobby Seale On Black Power

Bobby Seale On George Jackson

Blacks In America

Eldridge Cleaver On Timothy Leary

Eldridge Cleaver Speaking in San Francisco

Fred Hampton On Revolution

Rap Brown On Black Americans

Stokely Carmichael At Free Huey Rally

TEXT (300 pages)

Black Power by Huey P. Newton

Die Nigger Die by H. Rap Brown

Eldridge Cleaver Interview

Essays by Huey P. Newton

Fred Hampton Speech

George Jackson Interview

Huey P. Newton Interview

Huey P. Newton on the Church

Huey P. Newton Speech in Boston

Huey P. Newton Thesis - Revolutionary Suicide

Huey P. Newton vs. William F. Buckley

Huey P. Newton Interview 1968

Seize The Time by Bobby Seale

The Black Panther Ten Point Program

To Die For The People by Huey P. Newton

War Against The Panthers

FBI FILES (6,791 pages)

The Black Panthers

Fred Hampton

"Black Extremist Organizations"

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The Black Panther Collection

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Simply click on the links above to order the BLACK PANTHER COLLECTION. After payment, you will be immediately sent a link to download the collection. All video is easily played on any computer, Mac or PC, as well as iPhone, iPad or other mobile device. For more information, or if you have ANY questions, please contact me. Order your copy today!

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

2013-08-18T17:31:00.001-07:00

Dr. Martin Luther King was recognized around the world as the leader of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and was one of the most respected human rights leaders in the world. He can now be seen and heard on a new collection that includes over 12 hours of video, 10 hours of audio, over 300 pages of speeches and a collection of FBI files. This digital collection is easily downloadable and is playable on any computer, iPhone or iPad! This is an excellent companion to the Malcolm X Audio Collection. Click on the link below to order.

VIDEO (12 hours)

Documentaries

Dr. King - An American Story (110 min)
The Story of Dr. Martin Luther King (60 min)
The Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King (80 min)
Who Killed Dr. Martin Luther King (60 min)

Historical Footage

Open Mind - The New Negro (30 min)
Dr. Martin Luther King Face to Face (30 min)
Dr. Martin Luther King on Meet the Press in 1965 (25 min)
Dr. Martin Luther King Interview (20 min)
I Have A Dream Speech - March on Washington (20 min)
Dr. Martin Luther King Assassination Newsreel (10 min)
Dr. Martin Luther King on the Vietnam War (10 min)
Dr Martin Luther King in Cleveland 1967 (10 min)
Malcolm X on Dr. Martin Luther King (15 min)
Dr. Martin Luther King Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (12 min)
Dr. Martin Luther King on Malcolm X (10 min)
Dr. Martin Luther King at the Stockholm Opera House (7 min)
Dr. Martin Luther King in Cleveland 1963 and 1965 (5 min)
I Have Been to the Mountaintop (3 min)
Robert Kennedy on the Death of Dr. Martin Luther King (5 min)
Dr. Martin Luther King on Civil Rights (5 min)
Dr. Martin Luther King - Black is Beautiful (2 min)
Dr. Martin Luther King on Face the Nation (30 sec)
Dr. Martin Luther King on Muhammad Ali (30 sec)

Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X Meeting (30 sec)

AUDIO (10 hours)
Rediscovering Lost Values (Feb. 28, 1954)

First Montgomery Improvement Association (Dec. 5, 1955)
Pauls Letter to American Christians (Nov. 4, 1956)
Birth of a New Nation (April 7, 1957)
Give Us the Ballot (May 17, 1957)
Love Your Enemies (Nov. 17, 1957)
Address at Freedom Hall Rally Detroit (June 23, 1963)
I Have a Dream - March for Jobs (Aug. 28, 1963)
Eulogy for the Young Victims (Sept. 18, 1963)
Nobel Peace Prize (Dec. 10, 1964)
The Selma to Montgomery March (March 25, 1965)
The American Dream (July 4, 1965)
Guidelines for a Constructive Church (June 5, 1966)
Beyond Vietnam (April 4, 1967)
The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life (April 9, 1967)
Knock at Midnight (Aug. 16, 1967)
Where Do We Go From Here (Aug. 16, 1967)
Why Jesus Called a Man a Fool (Aug. 27, 1967)
The Drum Major Instinct (Feb. 4, 1968)
Unfulfilled Dreams (March 3, 1968)
Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution (March 31, 1968)
I Have Been to the Mountaintop (March 3, 1968)

TEXT (330 pages)
Rediscovering Lost Values (Feb. 28, 1954)
1st Montgomery Improvement Association (Dec. 5, 1955)
Pauls Letter to American Christians (Nov. 4, 1956)
Birth of a New Nation (April 7, 1957)
Garden of Gethsemane (April 14, 1957)
Give Us the Ballot (May 17, 1957)
Love Your Enemies (Nov. 17, 1957)
Pilgrimage to Nonviolence (April 13, 1960)
The Burning Truth in the South (May 5, 1960)
Letter From Birmingham Jail (April 16, 1963)
Address at Freedom Hall Rally Detroit (June 23, 1963)
I Have a Dream - March for Jobs (Aug. 28, 1963)
Eulogy for the Young Victims (Sept. 18, 1963)
Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance (Dec. 10, 1964)
Nobel Prize Lecture (Dec. 11, 1964)
The Selma to Montgomery March (March 25, 1965)
The American Dream (July 4, 1965)
Guidelines for a Constructive Church (June 5, 1966)
Beyond Vietnam (April 4, 1967)
The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life (April 9, 1967)
Knock at Midnight (Aug. 16, 1967)
Where Do We Go From Here (Aug. 16, 1967)
Why Jesus Called a Man a Fool (Aug. 27, 1967)
The Drum Major Instinct (Feb. 4, 1968)
Unfulfilled Dreams (March 3, 1968)
The Other America (March 14, 1968)
Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution (March 31, 1968)
I Have Been to the Mountaintop (April 3, 1968)

FBI Files (226 pages)
More than 226 pages of FBI Files.

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ORDER NOW AND RECEIVE THE 800-page Malcolm X eBook ABSOLUTELY FREE!

Simply click on the links above to order the DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION. After payment, you will be immediately sent a link to download the collection. All video is easily played on any computer, Mac or PC, as well as iPhone, iPad or other mobile device. For more information, or if you have ANY questions, please contact me. Order your copy today!

"Racism: The Cancer That is Destroying America" - Egyptian Gazette, Cairo, Egypt (August 25, 1964)

2013-08-01T08:15:00.000-07:00

I am not a racist, and I do not subscribe to any of the tenets of racism. But the seed of racism has been firmly planted in the hearts of most American whites ever since the beginning of that country. This seed of racism has rooted itself so deeply in the subconsciousness of many American whites that they themselves ofttimes are not even aware of its existence, but it can be easily detected in their thoughts, their words, and in their deeds.

In the past I permitted myself to be used by Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the sect known as the Black Muslims, to make sweeping indictments of all white people, the entire white race, and these generalizations have caused injuries to some whites who perhaps did not deserve to be hurt. Because of the spiritual enlightenment which I was blessed to receive as the result of my recent pilgrimage to the Holy City of Mecca, I no longer subscribe to sweeping indictments of any one race.

My religious pilgrimage, Hajj, to Mecca has given me a new insight into the true brotherhood of Islam, which encompasses all the races of mankind. The pilgrimage broadened my scope, my mind, my outlook, and made me more flexible in approaching life’s many complexities and in my reactions to its paradoxes.

At Mecca I saw the spirit of unity and true brotherhood displayed by tens of thousands of people from all over the world, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans. This served to convince me that perhaps some American whites can also be cured of the rampant racism which is consuming them and about to destroy that country. I am now striving to live the life of a true Sunni Muslim.

In the future I intend to be careful not to sentence anyone who has not first been proven guilty. I must repeat that I am not a racist nor do I subscribe to the tenets of racism. I can state in all sincerity that I wish nothing but freedom, justice, and equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all people.

However, the first law of nature is self-preservation, so my first concern is with the oppressed group of people to which I belong, the twenty-two million Afro-Americans, for we, more than any other people on earth today, are deprived of these inalienable human rights.

But time is running out for America. The twenty-two million Afro- Americans are not yet filled with hate or a desire for revenge, as the propaganda of the segregationists would have people believe. The universal law of justice is sufficient to bring judgment upon the American whites who are guilty of racism. The same law will also punish those who have benefited from the racist practices of their forefathers and have done nothing to atone for the “sins of their fathers.” Just look around on this earth today and see the increasing troubles this generation of American whites is having. The “sins of their fathers” are definitely being visited upon the heads of this present generation. Most intelligent American whites will admit freely today without hesitation that their present generation is already being punished and plagued for the evil deeds their forefathers committed when they enslaved millions of Afro-Americans in that country.

But it is not necessary for their victim—the Afro-American—to seek revenge. The very conditions the American whites created are already plaguing them into insanity and death. They are reaping what their forefathers have sown. Their chickens are coming home to roost. And we, the twenty-two million Afro-Americans, their victims, need only to spend more time removing the “scars of slavery” from the backs and the mind of our own people, physical and mental scars left by four hundred years of inhuman treatment there in America at the hands of white racists.

The key to our success lies in united action. Lack of unity among the various Afro-American groups involved in our struggle has always been the reason we have failed to win concrete gains in our war against America’s oppression, exploitation, discrimination, segregation, degradation, and humiliation. Before the miserable condition of the twenty-two million “second-class citizens” can be corrected, all the groups in the Afro-American community must form a united front.

Only through united efforts can our problems there be solved.

How can we get the unity of the Afro-American community? Ignorance of each other is what has made unity impossible in the past. Therefore we need enlightenment. We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity. Once we have more knowledge, light, about each other we will stop condemning each other and a united front will be brought about.

All twenty-two million Afro-Americans have the same basic goal, the same basic objective. We want freedom, justice, and equality, we want recognition and respect as human beings. We are not divided over objectives, but we have allowed our racist enemies to divide us over the methods of attaining these common objectives. Our enemy has magnified our minor points of difference, then maneuvered us into wasting our time debating and fighting each other over insignificant and irrelevant issues.

The common goal of twenty-two million Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being. Our common goal is to obtain the human rights that America has been denying us. We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognized as citizens there until we are first recognized as humans.

The present American “system” can never produce freedom for the black man. A chicken cannot lay a duck egg because the chicken’s “system” is not designed or equipped to produce a duck egg. The system of the chicken was produced by a chicken egg and can therefore reproduce only that which produced it.

The American system, political, economic, and social, was produced from the enslavement of the black man, and this present “system” is capable only of perpetuating that enslavement. In order for a chicken to produce a duck egg, its system would have to undergo a drastic and painful revolutionary change...or revolution. So be it with America’s enslaving system.

In the past, the civil rights groups in America have been foolishly attempting to obtain constitutional rights from the same government that has conspired against us to deny our people these rights. Only a world body, a world court, can be instrumental in obtaining those rights which belong to a human being by dint of his being a member of the human family.

As long as the freedom struggle of the twenty-two million Afro- Americans is labeled a civil rights issue it remains a domestic problem under the jurisdiction of the United States, and as such, bars the intervention and support of our brothers and sisters in Africa, Asia, Latin America, as well as that of the well-meaning whites of Europe. But once our struggle is lifted from the confining civil rights label to the level of human rights, our freedom struggle has then become internationalized.

Just as the violation of human rights of our brothers and sisters in South Africa and Angola is an international issue and has brought the racists of South Africa and Portugal under attack from all other independent governments at the United Nations, once the miserable plight of the twenty-two million Afro-Americans is also lifted to the level of human rights, our struggle then becomes an international issue, and the direct concern of all other civilized governments. We can then take the racist American government before the World Court and have the racists in it exposed and condemned as the criminals that they are. Why should it be necessary to go before a world court in order to solve America’s race problem? One hundred years ago a civil war was fought supposedly to free us from the Southern racists. We are still the victims of their racism. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was supposedly to free us. We are still crying for freedom. The politicians fought for amendments to the Constitution supposedly to make us first-class citizens. We are still second-class citizens.

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court itself issued a historic decision outlawing the segregated school system, and ten years have passed and this law is yet to be enforced even in the Northern states.

If White America doesn’t think the Afro-American, especially the upcoming generation, is capable of adopting the guerrilla tactics now being used by oppressed people elsewhere on this earth, she is making a drastic mistake. She is underestimating the force that can do her the most harm.

A real honest effort to remove the just grievances of the twenty-two million Afro-Americans must be made immediately, or in a short time it will be too late.

On Afro-American History (January 24, 1965)

2013-07-06T18:49:00.000-07:00

Brothers and Sisters, first I want to, as Brother James has pointed out, thank you, as we do each week, or have been doing each week. It seems that during the month of January it doesn’t snow or rain or hail or get bad in any way weather-wise until Saturday night, and it stays like that Saturday through Sunday, and then the sun comes back out on Monday—it seems. But since I was a little boy I learned that one of the things that makes you grow into manhood are tests and trials and tribulations. If you can come through the snow and the rain and the sleet, you know you can make it easily when the sun is out and everything is right. So I’m happy to see that those of you who are here tonight don’t let anything get in your way, that is, weather wise.

During the next three weeks, we’re going to have a series that will be designed to give us a better understanding of the past, I should say a better knowledge of the past, in order that we may understand the present and be better prepared for the future. I don’t think any of you will deny the fact that it is impossible to understand the present or prepare for the future unless we have some knowledge of the past. And the thing that has kept most of us—that is, the Afro-Americans—almost crippled in this society has been our complete lack of knowledge concerning the past. The number one thing that makes us differ from other people is our lack of knowledge concerning the past. Proof of which: almost anyone else can come into this country and get around barriers and obstacles that we cannot get around; and the only difference between them and us, they know something about the past, and in knowing something about the past, they know something about themselves, they have an identity. But wherein you and I differ from them is primarily revolved around our lack of knowledge concerning the past.

And tonight, this is what we would like to go into. Next Sunday night, it’s our intention to go into the present, some of the tricks that are used to keep us at the level that we are on by making us think that we’re going forward when we are actually standing still. And then the third Sunday night, the thirty-first, it’s the intention of the Organization of Afro American Unity at that time to spell out what we think are the best steps to take, and at that time also offer a program that we feel Harlem, people in Harlem, can participate in toward getting that objective or solution into becoming a reality. When you deal with the past, you’re dealing with history; you’re dealing actually with the origin of a thing. When you know the origin, you know the cause. If you don’t know the origin, you don’t know the cause. And if you don’t know the cause, you don’t know the reason, you’re just cut off, you’re left standing in midair. So the past deals with history or the origin of anything—the origin of a person, the origin of a nation, the origin of an incident. And when you know the origin, then you get a better understanding of the causes that produce whatever originated there and its reason for originating and its reason for being.

It’s impossible for you and me to have a balanced mind in this society without going into the past, because in this particular society, as we function and fit into it right now, we’re such an underdog, we’re trampled upon, we’re looked upon as almost nothing. Now if we don’t go into the past and find out how we got this way, we will think that we were always this way. And if you think that you were always in the condition that you’re in right now, it’s impossible for you to have too much confidence in yourself, you become worthless, almost nothing.

But when you go back into the past and find out where you once were, then you will know that you weren’t always at this level, that you once had attained a higher level, had made great achievements, contributions to society, civilization, science, and so forth. And you know that if you once did it, you can do it again; you automatically get the incentive, the inspiration, and the energy necessary to duplicate what our forefathers formerly did. But by keeping us completely cut off from our past, it is easy for the man who has power over us to make us willing to stay at this level because we will feel that we were always at this level, a low level. That’s why I say it is so important for you and me to spend time today learning something about the past so that we can better understand the present, analyze it, and then do something about it.

One of the main things that you will find when you compare people who come out here on Sunday nights with other people is that those who come here have interests that go beyond local interests or even national interests. I think you will find most who come out here are interested in things local, and interested in things national, but are also interested in things international.

Most Afro-Americans who go to other meetings are usually interested in things local—Harlem, that’s it; or Mississippi, that’s it—national. But seldom do you find them taking a keen interest in things going on worldwide, because they don’t know what part they play in things going on worldwide.

But those of us who come here, come here because we not only see the importance of having an understanding of things local and things national, but we see today the importance of having an understanding of things international, and where our people, the Afro-Americans in this country, fit into that scheme of things, where things international are concerned. We come out because our scope is broad, our scope is international rather than national, and our interests are international rather than national. Our interests are worldwide rather than limited just to things American, or things New York, or things Mississippi. And this is very important.

You can get into a conversation with a person, and in five minutes tell whether or not that person’s scope is broad or whether that person’s scope is narrow, whether that person is interested in things going on in his block where he lives or interested in things going on all over the world. Now persons who are narrow-minded, because their knowledge is limited, think that they’re affected only by things happening in their block. But when you find a person who has a knowledge of things of the world today, he realizes that what happens in South Vietnam can affect him if he’s living on St. Nicholas Avenue, or what’s happening in the Congo affects his situation on Eighth Avenue or Seventh Avenue or Lenox Avenue. The person who realizes the effect that things all over the world have right on his block, on his salary, on his reception or lack of reception into society, immediately becomes interested in things international. But if a person’s scope is so limited that he thinks things that affect him are only those things that take place across the street or downtown, then he’s only interested in things across the street and downtown.

So, one of our greatest desires here at Organization of Afro-American Unity meetings is to try and broaden the scope and even the reading habits of most of our people, who need their scope broadened and their reading habits also broadened today. Another thing that you will find is that those who go to other places usually think of themselves as a minority. If you’ll notice, in all of their struggling, programming, or even crying or demanding, they even refer to themselves as a minority, and they use a minority approach. By a minority they mean that they are lesser than something else, or they are outnumbered, or the odds are against them—and this is the approach that they use in their argument, in their demand, in their negotiation.

But when you find those of us who have been following the nationalistic thinking that prevails in Harlem, we don’t think of ourselves as a minority, because we don’t think of ourselves just within the context of the American stage or the American scene, in which we would be a minority. We think of things worldly, or as the world is; we think of our part in the world, and we look upon ourselves not as a dark minority on the white American stage, but rather we look upon ourselves as a part of the dark majority who now prevail on the world stage. And when you think like this, automatically, when you realize you are part of the majority, you approach your problem as if odds are on your side rather than odds are against you. You approach demanding rather than using the begging approach.

And this is one of the things that is frightening the white man. As long as the Black man in America thinks of himself as a minority, as an underdog, he can’t shout but so loud; or if he does shout, he shouts loudly only to the degree that the power structure encourages him to. He never gets irresponsible. He never goes beyond what the power structure thinks is the right voice to shout in. But when you begin to connect yourself on the world stage with the whole of dark mankind, and you see that you’re the majority and this majority is waking up and rising up and becoming strong, then when you deal with this man, you don’t deal with him like he’s your boss or he’s better than you or stronger than you. You put him right where he belongs. When you realize that he’s a minority, that his time is running out, you approach him like that, you approach him like one who used to be strong but is now getting weak, who used to be in a position to retaliate against you but now is not in that position anymore.

When you jump out around some Black Americans and speak as if everything is on your side, why, they think you’re crazy. But they think you’re crazy because they can’t see what you see. All they see is Charlie, all they see is the white man. And because he is all they see, to them he looks like a giant. But you’re looking beyond the white man. You see the nations of the earth that are black, brown, red, and yellow, who used to be down, now getting up. And when you see them, you find that you look more like them than you look like Sam. And then you find yourself relating to them, whereas you formerly tried to relate to Sam. When you relate to them, you’re related to the majority. But when you relate to Uncle Sam, you automatically become a minority relative. You understand? He examines us all the time. He has the Black community throughout this land always under a microscope just like in a scientists laboratory, to find out how you’re thinking, to keep up to date on how you think, on the beat of your pulse—are you beating too hot, or is your temperature running too hot, or is it cool. He wants to know how you think and how you feel. If you seem to be working up a temperature that he’s not responsible for, it worries him. As long as your temperature rises when he puts the pressure, that’s okay. But if he sees you making some reactions that are motivated other than by something that he has done, then he begins to worry. He finds that something else is influencing you and controlling you beyond his control and influence. And he should worry when you begin to get like that.

Whether you come to the meetings of the Organization of Afro-American Unity or not, whether you go to church today or into the lodge or anywhere, there is one thing that everyone agrees—that the world is in trouble. Whether you go to church, the mosque, the synagogue, or are just a plain atheist and go to the poolroom, or someplace else, there’s one thing that everyone has to agree upon, and that is that the world is in trouble, the world is in real trouble. There are many different spots in the world today that could cause it to explode. And it’s in multiple trouble since China exploded the atomic bomb. Formerly, when just the white nations had it, they went according to certain rules, rules laid down by them. They’ve always done this. They lay down rules but the rules are always in their favor. But they have already learned through history that the dark nation that becomes truly independent intellectually doesn’t necessarily go by their rules. The Japanese proved this when they hit Pearl Harbor. They’d smile and let you have it. Well, this is true. And this goes beyond the ground rules that they laid down and it gets unexpected results. Now since the Japanese proved their ability to do this with Pearl Harbor, which is intelligent in my opinion—I don’t think that anybody should tell somebody else what they’re going to do; they should go ahead and do it, and that’s it. Because you might say what you’re going to do, and not get a chance to do it, and you look bad; not only do you feel bad, you end up looking bad. So it’s better to go ahead and do it. I think they had the right philosophy there myself. And the Chinese can do it even better than that They’ve got more people to do it with, and now they’ve got more explosiveness to do it with.

So we’re living in troubled times. We’re living at a time when anything can happen. Just a couple of years ago it couldn’t happen unless Sam said so, or unless Khrushchev said so, or unless de Gaulle said so. But now it can happen anytime. It’s not in the power of just one race to say when this can happen or when that can happen; it can now be set off by dark nations. So the world is in trouble.

Another characteristic of this era that we’re living in, that’s causing it to be a troubled world, is the fact that the dark world is rising. And as the dark world rises, the white world declines. It’s impossible for the dark world to increase in its power and strength without the power and strength of the white world decreasing. This is just the way it is, it’s almost mathematics. If there is only so much power, and all of it has been over there, well, the only way this man’s going to get some over here is to take it away from those over there. That’s plain fact.

Up until recent times, all of the power has been in Europe, it has all been in the hands of the white man. The base of power has been in London and Paris and Brussels and Washington, D.C., and some of those places like that. Now the bases of power are changing. You have a base of power in Accra, in Ghana, in Africa. Another base of power in Zanzibar, another base of power in Cairo, another base of power in Algiers, another base of power in Tokyo, another base of power in Peking. Well, as these bases of power increase, it decreases Europe as a base of power. And this is what’s causing trouble. The white man is worried. He knows that he didn’t do right when he had all the power, and if the base of power changes, those into whose hands it falls may know how to really do right. The rise of the dark world is producing the fall of the white world.

And I’ve got to point out right here that what I’m saying is not racist. I’m not speaking racism, I’m not condemning all white people. I’m just saying that in the past the white world was in power, and it was. This is history, this is fact. They called it European history, or colonialism. They ruled all the dark world. Now when they were in power and had everything going their way, they didn’t call that racism, they called it colonialism. And they were happy too when they could stand up and tell how much power they had. Britain used to brag about the sun never set on her empire. Her empire was so vast, you know, that the sun would never set on it, she bragged. I heard Churchill say it, and Macmillan, and some of those others who sat over there telling everybody else what to do.

But now the shoe is on the other foot. There is no nation today that can brag about its power being unlimited, or that it can take unilateral action in any area of the earth that they desire. No white nation can do this. But just twenty years ago they could do it. Twenty years ago the United States could do it, twenty years ago England could do it, France could do it, even little old runt Belgium could do it, and Holland could do it. But they can’t do it now, because the base of power is shifting. And this is what you and I have to understand, really, in order to understand what’s happening in Georgia, in Alabama, in Mississippi, and in New York City.

The power is shifting, and as it shifts the man in whose hands it once was gets worried, and the man in whose hands it falls, who hasn’t had it for a long time, he gets powerhappy, you know, and he is not particularly interested in playing according to the rules, especially the rules that this man laid down. Now as the base of power shifts, what it is doing is bringing an end to what you and I know to have been white supremacy. Supreme means to be above others. And up until recent times, the white nations were above the dark nations. They ruled supreme on this earth. They didn’t call it white supremacy, but this is what it was.

Now white supremacy has come to an end. Only meaning that the time when the white man could reign supreme all over the world—that’s ended, that’s outdated, that’s gone by, it can’t happen any more. And it is reflected in what Macmillan meant when he spoke in Africa three years ago about the winds of change. At this time Macmillan was the prime minister of England and he was making a tour through Africa; and he came back crying to the other Europeans about the winds of change that are sweeping down across the African continent, meaning that the people who formerly had permitted Europeans or whites to oppress them had changed their minds. They didn’t want to be oppressed any longer, they didn’t want to be exploited any longer, they wanted to be independent and free to build a society of their own for themselves.

As soon as this mood or tempo began to be visible on the African continent, some of this earth’s leading white states men at the top level admitted it—and didn’t admit it secretly, admitted it openly. Adlai Stevenson got up in the United Nations, I think it was last year, and accused the dark nations of playing a skin game in the UN. And you know what he meant by skin game? He meant that people of the same skin color were banding together. Meaning that people with dark skins were banding together in the UN against people with white skins. This is something to think about. Now this means that the United States representative to the United Nations, an international body, was alert enough, had sufficient foresight, to see that in this era that we’re living in right now, dark-skinned people were coming together, they were uniting, they were forming blocs—the Afro-Asian bloc, the Afro-Asian-Arab bloc, the Afro-Asian-Arab-Latin bloc, you know—and all these blocs were against him. He could see this, and this is what caused so much worry and so much confusion today.

As soon as he saw that these dark-skinned people were getting together in unity and harmony, he began to put out the propaganda that the dark-skinned people aren’t ready yet. This is his analysis after our efforts—that we aren’t ready for freedom. And to try and prove that we weren’t ready for freedom, they let the people in the Congo go so far free and then turned right around and stirred it up to make them look foolish—so that they could use that to say that Africa wasn’t ready for freedom.

They say the same thing to you and me over here, that we’re not ready yet—isn’t that what they say? Certainly, theysay that you’re not ready to live in a decent house, and that you’re not ready to go to a decent school, or that you’re not ready to work on a decent job. This is what they say, and they don’t say why we’re not ready, they don’t say why. And if we’re not ready, they don’t say that we once were ready, but we’re not now—they try and make it look like we never were ready, that we never were in history a people who occupied a responsible position on the cultural tree, the civilization tree, or any other tree. They try to give us the impression, you know, that we never were qualified, therefore we can only qualify today to the degree that they themselves qualify us. And they trick us this way. Trick us into going to them and asking them, “Qualify me, you know, so I can be free.” Why, you’re out of your mind.

They also know that the only way we’re going to do it is through unity. So they create another trap. Every effort we make to unite among ourselves on the basis of what we are, they label it as what? Racism. If we say that we want to form something that’s based on Black people getting together, the white man calls that racism. Mind you. And then some of these old white-minded Negroes do the same thing, they say, “That’s racism, I don’t want to belong to anything that’s all Black.” A lot of them say this. But it’s only because they themselves have been bitten by the bug, the white bug. And they think the only way they can belong to something that is going to be progressive or successful, it has got to have the white man in it. Many of them think that.

But these are traps. He traps us because he knows it’s impossible for us to go forward unless we get together. But what basis are we going to get together on? We’ve got to get together on the same basis they got together. Italians got together because they were Italian, the Jews got together on the basis of being Jews, the Irish got together on the basis of being Irish. Now what basis are you and I going to get together on? We’ve got to have some kind of basis. But as soon as we mention the only basis that we’ve got to get together on, they trick us by telling our leaders, you know, that anything that’s all Black is putting segregation in reverse. Isn’t that what they say? So the people who are Black don’t want to get together because they don’t want segregation. See, the man is tricky, brothers and sisters. I mean the man is tricky. He’s a master of tricks. And if you don’t realize how tricky he is, he’ll have you maneuvered right on back into slavery—I shouldn’t say back into slavery because we’re not out of it yet.

These are traps that he creates. If you speak in an angry way about what has happened to our people and what is happening to our people, what does he call it? Emotionalism. Pick up on that. Here the man has got a rope around his neck and because he screams, you know, the cracker that’s putting the rope around his neck accuses him of being emotional. You’re supposed to have the rope around your neck and holler politely, you know. You’re supposed to watch your diction, not shout and wake other people up—this is how you’re supposed to holler. You’re supposed to be respectable and responsible when you holler against what they’re doing to you. And you’ve got a lot of Afro-Americans who fall for that. They say, “No, you can’t do it like that, you’ve got to be responsible, you’ve got to be respectable.” And you’ll always be a slave as long as you’re trying to be responsible and respectable in the eyesight of your master; you’ll remain a slave. When you’re in the eyesight of your master, you’ve got to let him know you’re irresponsible and you’ll blow his irresponsible head off.

And again you’ve got another trap that he maneuvers you into. If you begin to talk about what he did to you, he’ll say that’s hate, you’re teaching hate. Pick up on that. He won’t say he didn’t do it, because he can’t. But he’ll accuse you of teaching hate just because you begin to spell out what he did to you. Which is an intellectual trap—because he knows we don’t want to be accused of hate.

And the average Black American who has been real brainwashed, he never wants to be accused of being emotional. You ever watched them? You ever watched one of them? Do that. Watch them; watch the real bourgeois Black Americans. He never wants to show any sign of emotion. He won’t even tap his feet. You can have some of that real soul music, and he’ll sit there, you know, like it doesn’t move him. I watch him, and I’m telling you. And the reason he tries to pretend like it doesn’t move him is that he knows it doesn’t move them. And it doesn’t move them because they can’t feel it; they’ve got no soul. And he’s got to pretend he has none just to make it with them. This is a shame, really.

And then you go a step farther, they get you again on this violence. They have another trap wherein they make it look criminal if any of us, who has a rope around his neck or one is being put around his neck—if you do anything to stop the man from putting that rope around your neck, that’s violence. And again this bourgeois Negro, who’s trying to be polite and respectable and all, he never wants to be identified with violence. So he lets them do anything to him, and he sits there submitting to it nonviolently, just so he can keep his image of responsibility. He dies with a responsible image, he dies with a polite image, but he dies. The man who is irresponsible and impolite, he keeps his life. That responsible Negro, he’ll die every day, but if the irresponsible one dies he takes some of those with him who were trying to make him die.

So the era that we’re living in is an era in which we see the people in the East on the rise and the people in the West on the decline. That is, the dark world is rising and the white world, or the Western world, is having its power curtailed. This is happening and it’s happening every day.

Take right there in Saigon, in South Vietnam. Don’t you realize that twenty years ago those little people over there didn’t have a chance? All they needed would be for a battleship to sail up to the coastline, and everybody over there would bow down, “Yessir, boss.” That’s how they said it, same as you say it over here. But not now. Now they don’t yes anybody’s boss. They get them a rifle and run boss clean on out of there.

The entire East, the dark world, is on the rise, whether you like it or not. And as the dark world rises up, it puts the white world on the spot, it puts the Western world on the spot, and it puts you and me on the spot. Why does it put us on the spot? Because although we’re in the West, we’re from the East. Many, many Black Americans don’t realize this. You are not of the West, you are in the West. You’re not a Westerner; you’re from the East. You’re not white—you’re in the white world, but that doesn’t make you white; you’re as Black as you ever were, you’re just in the white world.

And next month they’ll come up to show you another trick. They’ll come at you and me next month with this Negro History Week, they call it. This week comes around once every year. And during this one week they drown us with propaganda about Negro history in Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama. Never do they take us back across the water, back home. They take us down home, but they never give us a history of back home. They never give us enough information to let us know what were we doing before we ended up in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Texas, and some of those other prison states. They give us the impression with Negro History Week that we were cotton pickers all of our lives. Cotton pickers, orange growers, mammies, and uncles for the white man in this country—this is our history when you talk in terms of Negro History Week. They might tell you about one or two people who took a peanut and made another white man rich. George Washington Carver—he was a scientist, but he died broke. He made Ford rich. So he wasn’t doing anything for himself and his people. He got a good name for us, but what did we get out of it? Nothing. The master got it. Just like a dog who runs out in the woods and grabs a rabbit. No matter how hungry the dog is, does he eat it? No, he takes it back and lays it at the boss’s feet. The boss skins it, takes the meat, and gives the dog the bones. And the dog is going right on, hungry again. But he could have gotten the rabbit and eaten it for himself. And boss couldn’t even have caught him until later, because he can outrun the boss.

It’s the same way with you and me. Every contribution we make, we don’t make it for our people, we make it for the man, we make it for our master. He gets the benefit from it. We die, not for our people, we die for him. We don’t die for our home and our house, we die for his house. We don’t die for our country, we die for his country. A lot of you all were fools on the front lines, were you not? Yes, you were. You put on the uniform and went right up on the front lines like a roaring hound dog barking for master. And when you come back here—you’ve had to bark since you came back. So Negro History Week reminds us of this. It doesn’t remind us of past achievements, it reminds us only of the achievements we made in the Western Hemisphere under the tutelage of the white man. So that whatever achievement that was made in the Western Hemisphere that the spotlight is put upon, this is the white man’s shrewd way of taking credit for whatever we have accomplished. But he never lets us know of an accomplishment that we made prior to being born here. This is another trick.

The worst trick of all is when he names us Negro and calls us Negro. And when we call ourselves that, we end up tricking ourselves. My brother Cassius was on the screen the other night talking with Les Crane about the word Negro. I wish he wouldn’t have gone so fast, because he was in a position to have done a very good job. But he was right in saying that we’re not Negroes, and have never been, until we were brought here and made into that. We were scientifically produced by the white man. Whenever you see somebody who calls himself a Negro, he’s a product of Western civilization—not only Western civilization, but Western crime. The Negro, as he is called or calls himself in the West, is the best evidence that can be used against Western civilization today. One of the main reasons we are called Negro is so we won’t know who we really are. And when you call yourself that, you don’t know who you really are. You don’t know what you are, you don’t know where you came from, you don’t know what is yours. As long as you call yourself a Negro, nothing is yours. No languages—you can’t lay claim to any language, not even English; you mess it up. You can’t lay claim to any name, any type of name, that will identify you as something that you should be. You can’t lay claim to any culture as long as you use the word Negro to identify yourself. It attaches you to nothing. It doesn’t even identify your color.

If you talk about one of them, they call themselves white, don’t they? Or they might call someone else Puerto Rican to identify them. Mind you how they do this. When they call him a Puerto Rican, they’re giving him a better name. Because there is a place called Puerto Rico, you know. It at least lets you know where he came from. So they’ll say whites, Puerto Ricans, and Negroes. Pick up on that. That’s a drag, brothers. White is legitimate. It means that’s what color they are. Puerto Rican tells you that they’re something else, came from somewhere else, but they’re here now. Negro doesn’t tell you anything. I mean nothing, absolutely nothing. What do you identify it with? Tell me. Nothing. What do you attach it to, what do you attach to it? Nothing. It’s completely in the middle of nowhere. And when you call yourself that, that’s where you are—right in the middle of nowhere. It doesn’t give you a language, because there is no such thing as a Negro language. It doesn’t give you a country, because there is no such thing as a Negro country. It doesn’t give you a culture—there is no such thing as a Negro culture, it doesn’t exist. The land doesn’t exist, the culture doesn’t exist, the language doesn’t exist, and the man doesn’t exist. They take you out of existence by calling you a Negro. And you can walk around in front of them all day long and they act like they don’t even see you. Because you made yourself nonexistent. It’s a person who has no history; and by having no history, he has no culture.

Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history or cultural roots also becomes a dead people. And when you look at us, those of us who are called Negro, we’re called that because we are like a dead people. We have nothing to identify ourselves as part of the human family. You know, you take a tree, you can tell what kind of tree it is by looking at the leaves. If the leaves are gone, you can look at the bark and tell what kind it is. But when you find a tree with the leaves gone a and the bark gone, everything gone, you call that a what? A stump. And you can’t identify a stump as easily as you can identify a tree.

And this is the position that you and I are in here in America. Formerly we could be identified by the names we wore when we came here. When we were first brought here, we had different names. When we were first brought here, we had a different language. And these names and this language identified the culture that we were brought from, the land that we were brought from. In identifying that, we were able to point towards what we had produced, our net worth. But once our names were taken and our language was taken and our identity was destroyed and our roots were cut off with no history, we became like a stump, something dead, a twig over here in the Western Hemisphere. Anybody could step on us, trample upon us, or burn us, and there would be nothing that we could do about it.

Those of you who are religious, who go to church, know there are stories in the Bible that can be used easily to pretty well tell the condition of the Black man in America once he became a Negro. They refer to him in there as the lost sheep, meaning someone who is lost from his own kind, which is how you and I have been for the past four hundred years. We have been in a land where we are not citizens, or in a land where they have treated us as strangers.

They have another symbolic story in there, called the dry bones. Many of you have gone to church Sunday after Sunday and got, you know, the ghost, they call it—got happy. When the old preacher started singing about dry bones, you’d knock over benches, just because he was singing about those bones, “them dry bones”—I know how they say it. But you never could identify the symbolic meaning of those bones—how they were dead because they had been cut off from their own kind.

Our people here in America have been in the same condition as those dry bones that you sit in church singing about. But you shed more tears over those dry bones than you shed over yourself. This is a strange thing, but it shows what happens to a people when they are cut off and stripped of everything, like you and I have been cut off and stripped of everything. We become a people like no other people, and we are a people like no other people, there’s no other people on earth like you and me. We’re unique, we’re different. They say that we’re Negro, and they say that Negro means black; yet they don’t call all Black people Negroes. You see the contradiction? Mind you, they say that we’re Negro, because Negro means black in Spanish, yet they don’t call all Black people Negroes. Something there doesn’t add up.

And then to get around it they say mankind is divided up into three categories—Mongoloid, Caucasoid, and Negroid. Now pick up on that. And all Black people aren’t Negroid—they’ve got some jet black ones that they classify as Caucasoid. But if you’ll study very closely, all of the black ones that they classify as Caucasoid are those that still have great civilizations, or still have the remains of what was once a great civilization. The only ones that they classify as Negroid are those that they find with no evidence that they were ever civilized; then they call them Negroid. But they can’t afford to let any black-skinned people who have evidence that they formerly occupied a high seat in civilization, they can’t afford to let them be called Negroid, so they take them on into the Caucasoid classification.

And actually Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid—there’s no such thing. These are so-called anthropological terms that were put together by anthropologists who were nothing but agents of the colonial powers, and they were purposely given that status, they were purposely given such scientific positions, in order that they could come up with definitions that would justify the European domination over the Africans and the Asians. So immediately they invented classifications that would automatically demote these people or put them on a lesser level. All of the Caucasoids are on a high level, the Negroids are kept at a low level. This is just plain trickery that their scientists engage in order to keep you and me thinking that we never were anything, and therefore he’s doing us a favor as he lets us step upward or forward in his particular society or civilization. I hope you understand what I am saying.

Now then, once you see that the condition that we’re in is directly related to our lack of knowledge concerning the history of the Black man, only then can you realize the importance of knowing something about the history of the Black man. The Black man’s history—when you refer to him as the Black man you go way back, but when you refer to him as a Negro, you can only go as far back as the Negro goes. And when you go beyond the shores of America you can’t find a Negro. So if you go beyond the shores of America in history, looking for the history of the Black man, and you’re looking for him under the term Negro, you won’t find him. He doesn’t exist. So you end up thinking that you didn’t play any role in history.

But if you want to take the time to do research for yourself, I think you’ll find that on the African continent there was always, prior to the discovery of America, there was always a higher level of history, rather a higher level of culture and civilization, than that which existed in Europe at the same time.

At least five thousand years ago they had a Black civilization in the Middle East called the Sumerians. Now when they show you pictures of the Sumerians they try and make you think that they were white people. But if you go and read some of the ancient manuscripts or even read between the lines of some of the current writers, you’ll find that the Sumerian civilization was a very dark-skinned civilization, and it existed prior even to the existence of the Babylonian empire, right in the same area where you find Iraq and the Tigris-Euphrates rivers there. It was a black-skinned people who lived there, who had a high state of culture way back then.

And at a time even beyond this there was a black-skinned people in India, who were Black, just as Black as you and I, called Dravidians. They inhabited the subcontinent of India even before the present people that you see living there today, and they had a high state of culture. The present people of India even looked upon them as gods; most of their statues, if you’ll notice, have pronounced African features. You go right to India today—in their religion, which is called Buddhism, they give all their Buddha’s the image of a Black man, with his lips and his nose, and even show his hair all curled up on his head; they didn’t curl it up, he was born that way. And these people lived in that area before the present people of India lived there.

The Black man lived in the Middle East before the present people who are now living there. And he had a high culture and a high civilization, to say nothing about the oldest civilization of all that he had in Egypt along the banks of the Nile. And in Carthage in northwest Africa, another part of the continent, and at a later date in Mali and Ghana and Songhai and Moorish civilization—all of these civilizations existed on the African continent before America was discovered.

Now the Black civilization that shook the white man up the most was the Egyptian civilization, and it was a Black civilization. It was along the banks of the Nile, which runs through the heart of Africa. But again this tricky white man, and he’s tricky—and mind you again, when I say this, it’s not a racist statement. Some of them might not be tricky, but all of them I’ve met are tricky. And his civilization shows his trickiness. This tricky white man was able to take the Egyptian civilization, write books about it, put pictures in those books, make movies for television and the theater—so skillfully that he has even convinced other white people that the ancient Egyptians were white people themselves. They were African, they were as much African as you and I. And he even gave the clue away when he made this movie King Solomon’s Mines, and he showed the Watusis, you know, with their Black selves, and he outright admitted in there that they looked like the ancient pharaohs of ancient Egypt. Which means that the white man himself, he knows that the Black man had this high civilization in Egypt, whose remains today show the Black man in that area had mastered mathematics, had mastered architecture, the science of building things, had even mastered astronomy.

The pyramid, as the white scientists admit, is constructed in such a position on this earth to show that the Black people who were the architects of it had a knowledge of geography that was so vast, they knew the exact center of the earth’s land mass. Because the base of the pyramid is located in the exact center of the earth’s land mass, which could not have been so situated by its architect unless the architect in that day had known that the earth was round and knew how much land there was in all the directions from where he was standing. The pyramid was built so many thousand years ago that they don’t even know the exact time it was built, but they do know that the people who brought it into existence had mastered the science of building, had mastered the various sciences of the earth, and had mastered astronomy.

I read where one scientist said that the architect of the pyramid had built a shaft that went outward from the center of the pyramid, and the place it marked in the sky was the location where a star, a blue star I think, some kind of a star, made an appearance only once every fifty thousand years. Now they say that this architect’s knowledge of astronomy was so vast that he evidently had access to histories or records that spotlighted the existence of a star that made its appearance at a certain spot in the sky only once every fifty thousand years. Now he could not have known this unless he had records going back beyond fifty thousand years. Yet the pyramid is a living witness today that the Black people who were responsible for bringing it into existence had this kind of knowledge.

When you read the opinions of the white scientists about the pyramids and the building of the pyramids, they don’t make any secret at all over the fact that they marvel over the scientific ability that was in the possession of those people way back then. They had mastered chemistry to such extent that they could make paints whose color doesn’t fade right until today. When I was in Cairo in the summer, I was in King Tut’s tomb, plus, I saw that which was taken out of the tomb at the Cairo Museum. And the colors of the clothing that was worn and the colors inside the tomb are as bright and vivid and sharp today as they were when they were put there some thousands of years ago. Whereas, you know yourself, you can paint your house, and have to paint it again next year. This man hasn’t learned how to make paint yet that will last two years. And the Black man in that day was such a master in these various scientific fields that he left behind evidence that his scientific findings in that day exceeded the degree to which the white man here in the West has been able to rise today.

And you must know this, because if you don’t know this, you won’t really understand what there is about you that makes them so afraid of you, and makes them show that they find it imperative for them to keep you down, keep you from getting up. Because if they let you up one inch, you’ve got it and gone—just one inch, you’ve got it and gone. And you should get it and go.

Just behind the pyramids is a huge statue, which many of you are familiar with, called the Sphinx. The people who live over there call it Abou el-Hole, which means “father of everything.” This too was put over there so long ago they don’t know who did it, nor do they know how long ago it was done. And they marvel at it. What causes them to marvel is the fact that the Black man could have been at such a high level then, and now be where he is today, at the bottom of the heap, with no outer sign that he has any scientific ability left within him. And he himself doesn’t believe that he has any of this ability within him; he thinks that he has to turn to the man for some kind of formula on even how to get his freedom or how to build his house.

But the Black man by nature is a builder, he is scientific by nature, he’s mathematical by nature. Rhythm is mathematics, harmony is mathematics. It’s balance. And the Black man is balanced. Before you and I came over here, we were so well balanced we could toss something on our head and run with it. You can’t even run with your hat now—you can’t keep it on. Because you lost your balance. You’ve gotten away from yourself. But when you are in tune with yourself, your very nature has harmony, has rhythm, has mathematics. You can build. You don’t even need anybody to teach you how to build. You play music by ear. You dance by how you’re feeling. And you used to build the same way. You have it in you to do it. I know Black brick masons from the South who have never been to school a day in their life. They throw more bricks together and you don’t know how they learned how to do it, but they know how to do it. When you see one of those other people doing it, they’ve been to school—somebody had to teach them. But nobody teaches you always what you know how to do. It just comes to you. That’s what makes you dangerous. When you come to yourself, a whole lot of other things will start coming to you, and the man knows it.

In that day the Black man in Egypt was wearing silk, sharp as a tack, brothers. And those people up in Europe didn’t know what cloth was. They admit this. They were naked or they were wearing skins from animals. If they could get an animal, they would take his hide and throw it around their shoulders to keep warm. But they didn’t know how to sew and weave. They didn’t have that knowledge in Europe, not in those days. They didn’t cook their food in Europe. Even they themselves will show you when they were living up there in caves, they were knocking animals in the head and eating the raw meat. They were eating raw meat, raw food. They still like it raw today. You watch them go in a restaurant, they say, “Give me a steak rare, with the blood dripping in it.” And then you run in and say, “Give me one rare, with the blood dripping in it.” You don’t do it because that’s the way you like it; you’re just imitating them, you’re copying, you’re trying to be like that man. But when you act like yourself, you say, “Make mine well done.” You like cooked food, because you’ve been cooking a long time; but they haven’t been cooking so long—it wasn’t too long ago that they knew what fire was. This is true.

You were walking erect, upright. You ever watch your walk? Now you’re too hip to walk erect. You’ve come up with that other walk. But when you’re yourself, you walk with dignity. Wherever you see the Black man, he walks with dignity. They have a tendency to be other than with dignity, unless they’re trained. When their little girls go up to these, you know, highfalutin schools, and they want to teach them how to walk, they put a book on their head. Isn’t that what they do? They teach them how to walk like you. That’s what they’re learning how to walk like—like you. Because you were almost born with a book on your head. You can throw it up there and run with it. I was amazed when I was in Africa to see the sense of poise and balance that these people over there have, all throughout Africa and Asia. They have that poise and that balance. But this is not an accident. This comes from something. And you have it too, but you’ve been channeling yours in another direction, in a different direction. But when you come to yourself, you’ll channel it right.

Also as I said earlier, at that same time there was another African civilization called Carthage. One of the most famous persons in Carthage was a man named Hannibal. You and I have been taught that he was a white man. This is how they steal your history, they steal your culture, they steal your civilization—just by Hollywood producing a movie showing a Black man as a white man. I remember one day I told someone that Hannibal was Black. Some Negro, he was in college, one of these colleges—I told him Hannibal was a Black man, and he had a fit. Really, he did, he wanted to fight me on that. He said, “I know better than that.” “How do you know?” He said, “I saw him.” “Where’d you see him?” He said, “In the movies.” And he was in college, really, he was a highly educated Negro and he had a fit when I told him Hannibal was Black. And some of you all right now are having a fit because you didn’t know it either.

Hannibal was famous for crossing the Alps mountains with elephants. Europeans couldn’t go across the Alps on foot by themselves—no, they couldn’t. Hannibal found a way to cross the Alps with elephants. You know what an elephant is—a great big old animal, it’s hard to move him down the road. They moved him across the mountains. And he had with him ninety thousand African troops, defeated Rome, and occupied Italy for between fifteen and twenty years.

This is why you find many Italians dark—some of that Hannibal blood. No Italian will ever jump up in my face and start putting bad mouth on me, because I know his history. I tell him when you talk about me, you’re talking about your pappy, your father. He knows his history, he knows how he got that color. Don’t you know that just a handful of Black American troops spent a couple of years in England during World War and left more brown babies back there—just a handful of Black American soldiers in England and in Paris and in Germany messed up the whole country. Now what do you think ninety thousand Africans are going to do in Italy for twenty years? It’s good to know this because when you know it, you don’t have to get a club to fight the man—put truth on him.

Even the Irish got a dose of your and my blood when the Spanish Armada was defeated off the coast of Ireland, I think around about the seventeenth or eighteenth century; I forget exactly, you can check it out. The Spanish in those days were dark. They were the remnants of the Moors, and they went ashore and settled down in Ireland and right to this very day you’ve got what’s known as the Black Irish. And it’s not an accident that they call them Black Irish. If you look at them, they’ve got dark hair, dark features, and they’ve got Spanish names—like Eamon De Valera, the president, and there used to be another one called Costello. These names came from the Iberian Peninsula, which is the Spanish-Portuguese peninsula, and they came there through these seamen, who were dark in those days. Don’t let any Irishman jump up in your face and start telling you about you—why, he’s got some of your blood too. You’ve spread your blood everywhere. If you start to talk to any one of them, I don’t care where he is, if you know history, you can put him right in his place. In fact, he’ll stay in his place, if he knows that you know your history.

So all of this Carthage, Sumerian, Dravidian, Egyptian, Ethiopian history took place B.C., before Christ. In this era that you and I are living in after Christ, right in West Africa, one of the most highly developed civilizations was Ghana. Ghana wasn’t located where she is today geographically, she wasn’t limited to that geographic location. She covered pretty much a great portion of West Africa, and dates the early history of that empire at almost up to the time of the birth of Christ. And it was a highly developed civilization, highly developed society, that prevailed right up until I think around the eleventh century, or perhaps it went out of existence as an empire just before the tenth or the eleventh century. But this was an empire in Africa that was the source of gold and ivory; and other art objects, what would be called today art objects or items of luxury, came from Ghana. They had one of the most highly developed governmental systems, tax systems, cultures, period, at that time when people in Europe—when President Nkrumah, he wasn’t president then, I don’t think, visited New York, I think it was in 1959; Harriman was governor, they had a banquet for him downtown, which I attended. Governor Harriman, Abe Stark, Mayor Wagner, all of them were there. At one point when they were introducing Nkrumah, they were congratulating him. I remember Abe Stark said this: That Nkrumah comes from Ghana, a country which was highly civilized, wearing silks, at a time when we, he said, up in Europe, were painting ourselves blue. Pick up on that. Abe Stark at that time was right under Wagner, and he’s Jewish, which means he knows a whole lot of Black history, and here he was admitting that a civilization existed in Africa, where you and I came from, that was so highly developed that the people were wearing silks when his people, the Europeans, were up in the caves painting themselves blue.

Now you would think, with him saying that, that the Black newspaper reporters present would have put it in the paper and used it to wake up some of us in Harlem. They didn’t say a mumbling word. And I know—I could name the ones that were there right now, some of them occupying leading positions in Black newspapers in this city. They didn’t say a mumbling word.

They should have put it in the headlines, so they could wake Black people up, and let our people know that the white man knows that he didn’t get us out of the jungle, he didn’t get us out of some place that was savage. He got us out of a place that was highly civilized in culture and in art, and then brought us down to the level that you see us on today. But they are afraid to let us know what level we were on. They’ll tell the Africans because they know the Africans know it, but they don’t want you and me to know it. Because the first thing you and I would start asking them is, “Well, what did you do to us?” And if you find out, then you’ll want to do it to him. The only way you can forgive him is to not know what you’re forgiving him for. And you don’t know what you’ve been forgiving him for. If you find out what he did to you, you won’t have any forgiveness. No, you’ll say, let the good times roll, let the chips fall where they may.

After Ghana in West Africa, there was another civilization called Mali. Mali is one of the most famous because it was made famous by a Black sultan named Mansa Musa. Mansa Musa was famed for a journey he took from Mali to Mecca. In the same area—all of these three empires were in West Africa—after the Mali, I think, it was the Songhai empire. The Songhai empire covered, I think, even more territory than the Mali empire. And in those days there was the fabulous, fabled city of Timbuktu. Timbuktu was a center of learning where they had colleges and universities; and this Timbuktu existed as a hidden city, or forbidden city, to the white man for many centuries. He was not permitted to go there, none of them had been there—it was for us. They had universities there in which scholars traveled from China, Japan, the Orient, from Asia, from Africa, all the parts of Africa, to come there and learn. This was in Africa, and this existed before the discovery of America. These people who taught at this university, or these universities, had a knowledge of geography. They knew that the earth was round. It wasn’t Columbus that discovered that it was round for people in Europe; they discovered it when they began to be exposed to the science and learning that existed in the universities on the African continent. But the white man is such a liar, he doesn’t want it to be known that the Black man was so far ahead of him in science. Now, this isn’t racist talk, when I say he’s a liar. I’m not talking about all of them, I’m talking about those who are responsible for this false concept of the African image, and that is most of them. If I said all of them, they’d call me a racist. I can’t say all of them, but most of them, those in power, that told lies deliberately and scientifically to distort the image of Africa in order to mold a better picture and image of Europe—you can see the crime that they committed once you begin to delve into the African continent today and find its real position in science and civilization in times gone by.

Also, at that same time or a little later was a civilization called the Moors. The Moors were also a dark-skinned people on the African continent, who had a highly developed civilization. They were such magnificent warriors that they crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in, I think, the year 711, eighth century, conquered Portugal, what we today know as Portugal, Spain, and southern France, conquered it and ruled it for seven hundred years. And they admit that during this time Europe was in the Dark Ages, meaning darkness, ignorance. And it was the only light spot; the only light, the only light of learning, that existed on the European continent at that time were the universities that the Moors had erected in what we today know as Spain and Portugal. These were African universities that they set up in that area. And they ruled throughout that area, up to a place known as Tours, where they were stopped by a Frenchman known in history as Charles Martel, or Charles the Hammer. He stopped the invasion of the Africans, and these were Africans.

They try to confuse you and me by calling them Moors, so that you and I won’t know what they were. But when you go home, look in the dictionary. Look up the word M-o-o-r; it will tell you that Moor means black. Well, if Negro means black and Moor means black, then they’re talking about the same people all the time. But they don’t want you and me to know that we were warriors, that we conquered, that we had armies. They want you and me to think that we were always nonviolent, and passive, and peaceful, and forgiving. Sure, we forgave our enemies in those days—after we killed them, we forgave them.

The Black man in those days had never been defeated on the battlefield. He was only defeated when the Europeans invented, or got access to, gunpowder. I started to say invented gunpowder, but they didn’t invent it, the Chinese invented it. The Chinese used it for peaceful purposes. Marco Polo, I think it was Marco wasn’t it—he got ahold of it, and brought it back to Europe, and immediately they started using it to kill people with. This is the difference—that European, he’s got something going for him that other people don’t have going for them: he loves to kill—oh yes, he does. In Asia and in Africa, we kill for food. In Europe, they kill for sport. Have you not noticed that? Yes, they’re bloodthirsty, they love blood; they love to see the flow of other people’s blood, not their own. They’re bloodthirsty. But in all of your ancient Asian or African societies, the killing of game was done for food, not just for sport. You don’t get your kicks killing. They get their kicks killing. It gets good to them. Oh yes, you watch them sometime when they shoot a pheasant. I’ve watched them; when I was a little boy, I lived on a farm with white folks. When they shoot something, they just go crazy, you know, like they were really getting their kicks. And we have heard stories where they have lynched Black people, and right while they were lynching that Black man, you could see them getting their kicks, the thrill, while they do it. Whereas you and I, when we kill, we kill because we need to, either for food or to defend ourselves. That’s something to think about. But they never defeated the African armies until they got gunpowder. Then with their gunpowder, they came in. In those days we had mastered the blade. Right now, you notice they have nightmares when they think a Negro’s got a blade in his pocket. This is true, because they know you know how to use it, brothers. Historically, on the battlefield, no one could use a blade like you and me—yes. You see, it takes a man to use one, for one thing. It takes a man to use a sword and a spear, because you’ve got to have the heart to get up to someone close enough to work with him; you’ve got to have the heart. But anybody can take a gun and stand at a distance and shoot at something that’s no danger to him anyway. You and I, we went right on into him. And once he got ahold of the gun, that suited his nature; and he used it, and took over the world, with that gunpowder and his lies—I don’t know which was the most effective. He lied and killed, to take over the world.

During the Crusades, we fought him and beat him; again, he didn’t have the gunpowder. During the Crusades the Europeans fought against the Asians and the Africans—it was the war between what they called the Muslims and the Christians. In those days, you didn’t have Black Christians. Christians meant the European nations: France, Belgium. You go read the history of the Crusades. You’ll find that their chief general was the Pope, his headquarters was in Rome, and they made war trying to redeem the city of Jerusalem, in which was the tomb of Jesus. They wanted to regain it from the Muslims, but they never could do it. The Muslims defeated the Christian armies. And the Christian armies in those days were white; the Muslim armies were black, brown, red, and yellow. Some of the leading warriors in the Muslim armies were from Africa. The Africans had mastered metalwork with such skill that they had a coat that they put on, made of steel, that was just as pliable as this. Whereas, when you see the white knight, you notice he had to have some help to get on his horse. Because he looked like he was inside of a stove. They didn’t know how to work metal in Europe. But that Black man had mastered metalcraft, woodcraft, leathercraft—he was crafty, brothers, he mastered everything. But not a thing in Europe. And it was during the Crusades that many of the people in Europe realized what a high culture existed in Asia and in Africa. Why, these people were living in huts in Europe, and in holes in the hills, still in that day—they were savages almost, didn’t know what learning was, couldn’t read and write. The king couldn’t even read and write, and he was over all of them. They got all their reading and writing and arithmetic from you and me. And you see what they did with it? They turned around and used it on us.

So the question is: If we were at such a level then, what happened to us to get us where we are now? If we had such a high culture, such a high civilization, what happened to get us where we are now?

When America was discovered and colonized by England, England populated her American colonies not with people who were refined and cultured, but, if you read the history, she did the same thing here that she did in Australia. All the convicts were sent here to found this country. The prisons were emptied of prostitutes and thieves and murderers. They were sent over here to populate this country. When these people jump up in your and my face today, talking about the founding fathers were puritan pure, that’s some talk for somebody else. No, the founding fathers from England came from the dungeons of England, came from the prisons of England; they were prostitutes, they were murderers and thieves and liars. And as soon as they got over here, they proved it. They created one of the most criminal societies that has ever existed on the earth since time began. And if you doubt it, when you go home at night, look in the mirror at yourself, and you’ll see the victim of that criminal system that was created by them. They were such artful liars, they were such artful, skillful liars, that they were able to take a criminal system and, with lies, project it to the world as a humanitarian system. They were the worst form of criminals themselves, but with their lies they were able to project themselves as pilgrims who were so religious, they were coming to this country so they could practice their religion. And you ate that thing up 100 percent. No, they were crooks that came here—Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Quincy, and the others, all of them were criminals. And if you doubt that they were, when they wrote this document talking about freedom, they still owned you. Yes, when they wrote, how does that thing go—about “all men created equal”?—that was later on. Who was it wrote that—”all men are created equal”? It was Jefferson. Jefferson had more slaves than anybody else. So they weren’t talking about us.

When I see some poor old brainwashed Negroes—you mention Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Patrick Henry, they just swoon, you know, with patriotism. But they don’t realize that in the sight of George Washington, you were a sack of molasses, a sack of potatoes. You—yes—were a sack of potatoes, a barrel of molasses, you amounted to nothing, in the sight of Washington, or in the sight of Jefferson, or Hamilton, and some of those other so-called founding fathers. You were their property. And if it was left up to them, you’d still be their property today.

So it was in that atmosphere that you and I arrived here. It was in the hands of that kind of people that you and I fell, in around the sixteenth century. When we came here as slaves, we were civilized, we had culture, we had a knowledge of science. They don’t take a slave who’s dumb—a dumb slave is not good, you have to know how to do something to be a profitable slave. This was a country that needed an agricultural system. They had no agriculture in Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. What was the agricultural product, what farm product was Europe famous for? Tell me. You can’t. They had none, they were growing weeds up there in Europe. The farm products, the agricultural system, existed in Africa and Asia. You had mastered the growing of cotton, you had mastered the growing of all of the farm products that are necessary to give a person a balanced diet, on the African continent. You were a master of woodcraft, metalwork, and all of these other skills; and it was this that they needed. They didn’t need just someone with muscle to do work—they needed someone with skill. So they brought our people here, who were the fathers of skill, who had all of these skills. And they brought us here to set up an agricultural system for them, to weave their clothes and show them how to weave, and do the other things that make a civilization and society a balanced civilization and society.

So when our people got here—and they came here from a civilization where they had high morals; there was no stealing, no drunkenness, no adultery, fornication; there was nothing but high morals—when they got here, they found a country that had the lowest morals that existed on earth at that time, because it was peopled and run by prostitutes, by cutthroats, by criminals; and they created a society to fit their nature. And when our people came into that, they were shocked—they rebelled against it, they didn’t want to stay here. In the first place, they had been tricked over here, put in chains and brought here, as history points out. Initially—there’s a book called The Slave Trade by Spears, in which it points out that one of the first slave ships to come here was piloted by an Englishman named John Hawkins, and John Hawkins’s ship was called Jesus, the good ship Jesus. This was the boat that was used—it’s in history—they used Jesus to bring them here. And they’ve been using him to keep you here, too.

When our people got here and found out what they had gotten into, they didn’t want to stay. Many of them started looking for that ship that brought them here. The slaves had an old spiritual which they sang: “Steal away to Jesus, steal away home.” You think that they were talking about some man that got hung on the cross two thousand years ago, whereas they were talking about a ship. They wanted to steal away and get on board that ship that was named Jesus, so that they could go back home on the mother continent, the African continent, where they had been tricked and brought from. But you’ve got poor Negroes today, who have been brainwashed, still sitting in church talking about stealing away to Jesus; they talk about going up yonder, dying, if they’re going somewhere. Showing you how your mind is all messed up. They were talking about a boat. Or, they used to sing a song, “You can have all this world, but give me Jesus.” They weren’t talking about that man that died supposedly on the cross, they were talking about a boat. ‘You can have this world”—this Western world, this evil, corrupt, run-down, lowdown Western world—but give me Jesus the boat, but give me the ship Jesus, so I can go back home where I’ll be among my own kind. This is what the spiritual came from. But they’ve got it in the church today, and that old dumb preacher has your and my—yes, dumb preacher—has your and my mind so messed up we think that Jesus is somebody that died on a cross, and we sit there foaming at the mouth talking about “you can have all this world, but give me Jesus.” And the man took all this world and gave you Jesus, and that’s all you’ve got is Jesus.

There were three people involved in the crime that was committed against us—the slave trader, the slave master, and a third one that they don’t tell you and me about, the slave maker. You’ve read about the slave trader and you’ve read about the slave master; in fact, you know the slave master—you’re still in his hands. But you never read in history the part played by the slave maker.

You can’t make a wise man a slave, you can’t make a warrior a slave. When you and I came here, or rather when we were brought here, we were brought here from a society that was highly civilized, our culture was at the highest level, and we were warriors—we knew no fear. How could they make us slaves? They had to do the same thing to us that we do to a horse. When you take a horse out of the wilds, you don’t just jump on him and ride him, or put a bit in his mouth and use him to plow with. No, you’ve got to break him in first. Once you break him in, then you can ride him. Now the man who rides him is not the man who breaks him in. It takes a different type of man to break him in than it takes to ride him. The average man that’s been riding him can’t break him in. It takes a cruel man to break him in, a mean man, a heartless man, a man with no feelings. And this is why they took the role of the slave maker out of history. It was so criminal that they don’t even dare to write about it, to tell what was done to you and me to break us in and break us down to the level that we’re on today. Because if you find the role that that slave maker played, I’m telling you, you’ll find it hard to forget and forgive, you’ll find it hard. I can’t forgive the slave trader or the slave master; you know I can’t forgive the slave maker.

Our people weren’t brought right here to this country. They were first dropped off in the West Indian islands, in the Caribbean. Most of the slaves that were brought from Africa were dropped off first in the Caribbean, West Indian islands. Why? This was the breaking-in grounds. They would break them in down there. When they broke them in, then they would bring the ones whose spirit had been broken on to America. They had all kinds of tactics for breaking them in. They bred fear into them, for one thing. I read in one book how the slave maker used to take a pregnant woman, a Black woman, and make her watch as her man would be tortured and put to death. One of those slave makers had trees that he planted in positions where he would bend them and tie them, and then tie the hand of a Black man to one, a hand to the other, and his legs to two more, and he’d cut the rope. And when he’d cut the rope, that tree would snap up and pull the arm of the Black man right out of his socket, pull him up into four different parts. I’ll show you books where you can read it, they write about it. And they made the pregnant Black women stand there and watch as they did it, so that all this grief and fear that they felt would go right into that baby, that Black baby that was yet to be born. It would be born afraid, born with fear in it. And you’ve got it in you right now—right now, you’ve still got it. When you get in front of that blue-eyed thing, you start to itching, don’t you? And you don’t know why. It was bred into you. But when you find out how they did it, you can get it out of you and put it right back in them.

Now, I’m not talking racism. This isn’t racism—this is history, we’re dealing with just a little bit of history tonight. We’ve only got a few minutes left, so I’m trying to go fast. I’m kind of tired, so I can’t go too fast—you’ll have to excuse me—but I just want to get the rest of this out.

They used to take a Black woman who would be pregnant and tie her up by her toes, let her be hanging head down, and they would take a knife and cut her stomach open, let that Black unborn child fall out, and then stomp its head in the ground. I’ll show you books where they write about this, I’ll name them to you: Slave Trade by Spears; From Slavery to Freedom by John Hope Franklin; Negro Family in the U.S. by Frazier touches on some of it. All night long—Anti-Slavery by Dwight Lowell Dumond—I’ll cite you books all night long, where they write themselves on what they did to you and me. And have got the nerve to say we teach hate because we’re talking about what they did. Why, they’re lucky, really, they’re lucky, they’re fortunate.

Slaves used to sing that song about “My Lord’s going to move this wicked race and raise up a righteous nation that will obey.” They knew what they were talking about—they were talking about the man. They used to sing a song, “Good News, a Chariot Is Coming.” If you notice, everything they sang in those spirituals was talking about going to get away from here. None of them wanted to stay here. You’re the only ones, sitting around here now like a knot on a log, wanting to stay here. You’re supposed to be educated and hip, you’re supposed to know what’s happening, you know—they’re not supposed to know what’s happening. But everything they sang, every song, had a hint in it that they weren’t satisfied here, that they weren’t being treated right, that somebody had to go.

The slave maker knew that he couldn’t make these people slaves until he first made them dumb. And one of the best ways to make a man dumb is to take his tongue, take his language. A man who can’t talk, what do they call him? A dummy. Once your language is gone, you are a dummy. You can’t communicate with people who are your relatives, you can never have access to information from your family—you just can’t communicate.

Also, if you’ll notice, the natural tongue that one speaks is referred to as one’s mother tongue—mother tongue. And the natural intelligence that a person has before he goes to school is called mother wit. Not father wit—it’s called mother wit because everything a child knows before it gets to school, it learns from its mother, not its father. And if it never goes to school, whatever native intelligence it has, it got it primarily from its mother, not its father; so it’s called mother wit. And the mother is also the one who teaches the child how to speak its language, so that the natural tongue is called the mother tongue. Whenever you find as many people as we who aren’t able to speak any mother tongue, why, that’s evidence right there something was done to our mother. Something had to have happened to her.

They had laws in those days that made it mandatory for a Black child to be taken from its mother as fast as that child was born. The mother never had a chance to rear it. The child would be brought up somewhere else away from the mother, so that the mother couldn’t teach the child what she knew—about itself, about her past, about its heritage. It would have to grow up in complete darkness, knowing nothing about the land where it came from or the people that it came from. Not even about its own mother. There was no relationship between the Black child and its mother; it was against the law. And if the master would ever find any of those children who had any knowledge of its mother tongue, that child was put to death. They had to stamp out the language; they did it scientifically. If they found any one of them that could speak it, off went its head, or they would put it to death, they would kill it, in front of the mother, if necessary. This is history; this is how they took your language. You didn’t lose it, it didn’t evaporate—they took it with a scientific process, because they knew they had to take it to make you dumb, or into the dummy that you and I now are.

I read in some books where it said that some of the slave mothers would try and get tricky. In order to teach their child, who’d be off in another field somewhere, they themselves would be praying and they’d pray in a loud voice, and in their own language. The child in the distant field would hear his mother’s voice, and he’d learn how to pray in the same way; and in learning how to pray, he’d pick up on some of the language. And the master found that this was being done, and immediately he stepped up his efforts to kill all the little children that were benefiting from this. And so it became against the law even for the slave to be caught praying in his tongue, if he knew it. It was against the law. You’ve heard some of the people say they had to pray with their heads in a bucket. Well, they weren’t praying to the Jesus that they’re praying to now. The white man will let you call on that Jesus all day long; in fact he’ll make it possible for you to call on him. If you were calling on somebody else, then he’d have more fear of it. Your calling on that somebody else in that other language—that causes him a bit of fear, a bit of fright. They used to have to steal away and pray. All those songs that the slaves talked, or sang, and called spirituals, had wrapped up in them some of what was happening to them. And when the child realized that it couldn’t hear its mother pray any more, the slaves would come up with a song, “I Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray,” or the song “Motherless Child”: “Sometimes, I feel like a motherless child. Father gone, mother gone, motherless child sees a hard time.” All of these songs were describing what was happening to us then, in the only way the slaves knew how to communicate—in song. They didn’t dare say it outright, so they put it in song. They pretended that they were singing about Moses in “Go Down, Moses.” They weren’t talking about Moses and telling “old Pharaoh to let my people go.” They were trying to talk some kind of talk to each other, over the slave master’s head. Now you’ve got a-hold of the thing and you’re believing in it for real. Yes, I hear you singing “Go down, Moses,” and you’re still talking about Moses four thousand years ago—you’re out of your mind. But those slaves had a whole lot of sense. Everything they sang was designed toward freedom, designed toward going back home, or designed toward getting this big white ape off their backs.

For three hundred years we stayed at that level. Finally we got to where we had no language, no history, no name. The white man named us after himself—Jones, Smith, Johnson, Bunche, and names like those. We couldn’t speak our own language; we had none. And he then began to teach us that we came from a jungle, where the people had no language. This was the crime that was committed—he convinced us that our people back home were savages and animals in the jungle, and the reason we couldn’t talk was because we never had a language. And we grew up thinking that we never had one.

In the meantime, while he was working on us, his brothers—in England and in France and in Belgium and in Spain and in Italy and in Germany—were working on the African continent. While he was working on us over here, they were running wild on the African continent, stomping out all signs that ever there was a civilization over there, making slaves out of them over there too. And by working together as partners, the man on the European continent, in cahoots with this white man on the American continent, succeeded in taking over Africa and Asia and the entire world, while we went to sleep. Then in 1865 he came up with a trick, pretending that he was fighting a Civil War to set us free—which wasn’t to set us free. He came up with another trick, that he was issuing an Emancipation Proclamation to set us free—which wasn’t to set us free. And then he also pretended that he was putting some amendments to the Constitution to set us free—which wasn’t to set us free. Later on, he came up with a Supreme Court decision which he said was to give us free access to better education—which wasn’t to do that. And then last year he came up with a bill that he called also to give us more freedom—which also wasn’t to do that.

Any man who will know the level of civilization that we started out on and came from, any man who knows the criminal deeds that were done to us by his people to bring us to the level that we’ve been on for the past three hundred years, knows he is so deceptive, so deceitful, so criminally deceitful, that it is almost beyond his nature or desire to come up with anything meaningful that will undo what has been done to us over the past three hundred years. It is absolutely necessary—anything that is done for us, has to be done by us.

Now, brothers and sisters, it’s after ten o’clock, and I definitely didn’t intend to go beyond ten, but I do want you to have at least a ten-minute question period before we dismiss and prepare for our meeting next week. I felt that it was necessary tonight to go back somewhat and remind ourselves—because many of you know everything that I have said tonight, you know it already; then there are many others who don’t—but I felt it absolutely necessary to use tonight, since we’re getting ready to go into February and Negro History Week, to use tonight to kind of brush up on some of the history of our people that existed prior to the time we were brought to America; then next week, next Sunday night, deal with current conditions and the tricky schemes that are used by the government as well as other forces to perpetuate our condition, rather than alleviate it. And then on the third Sunday, the thirty-first of January, it is our intention to present to you the program and the solution of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which we feel will bring about some meaningful results immediately, and which we will ask your 100 percent cooperation in, in order to make it materialize. Before we have our question period, we’re going to take up a collection. And I want to ask you, especially tonight: please be more generous than you have been. Because if there’s anything we need, it’s finances. We don’t get any help from any outside source. Anybody else would get it. We don’t get any help whatsoever other than what we get right here at these meetings from you.

Also, this week we want to take out an ad in one of the local newspapers, so that it will be known that we’re out here next week. None of the newspapers ever talk about our meetings; they don’t help us publicize it in any way, shape, or form, other than The Militant—The Militant does. But some of the Negro newspapers don’t; I don’t know whether they won’t, but I do know that they don’t. And I would like for you to try and dig down as deeply as you can and help us. Because we need it. In fact, if we could get stronger financial support, we’d be in a position to make our program materialize much faster than we have.

[A collection is taken. A question is then asked by a woman about the selling of slaves by Africans to the Europeans.]

All of those things happened. Africans sold slaves; we sold each other. Arabs sold slaves. The white man bought the slaves. You may wonder what happened to make us sell each other. The white man had a trick going—what he called the three something-or-other. It dealt with rum, sugarcane—how does that go? They would grow sugarcane in the Caribbean and take it to New England and turn it into rum, and then take that rum to Africa and turn it into slaves. It was something like that. [Voices from audience: “Triangular.”] How was that? Yeah, triangle, some kind of triangle. Imagine that, they used our slave labor to grow the sugarcane; they took that cane to England and turned it into rum and whiskey and other things, and then took that to Africa and turned it into slaves. And then they had cotton that they took to Europe in exchange for manufactured goods that were being turned out there. But you and I, our sale, is what made them rich. Now, who did it? The Africans took captives in warfare, and the Europeans did that old divide-and-conquer act, and would sell guns to one side; and the guns that the one side had, enabled them to easily defeat the other side. And in that particular cultural thought pattern, the captive was a slave, he was a prize of war, and he was turned over to the Europeans. I doubt that any of them over there really knew what they were sending us into, or that we knew what we were coming into. But it was a very vicious thing; you and I are the victims of it. Everybody feels guilty about it, you can believe it. The Arabs are guilty; Europeans are guilty; the Africans feel guilty; everybody feels guilty. Yes, sir.

[A question is asked by a man about the different kinds of slavery that existed at different times in different countries.]

Yes, and I’m glad you brought that out. It is true that the type of slavery that was practiced in America was never practiced in history by any other country. A lot of times, what you read about in history as a slave was nothing but a servant, because he could get out of it. But the thing that you and I were sold into—we were sold like we were an animal. Our human characteristics were not recognized at all. We became a commodity, nameless, language-less, godless commodity, subhuman. And they had no feelings for us whatsoever. In church, they did it in the name of the Lord. Oh yes, they even put that into it. And don’t say anything about that church in Rome—they played one of the leading roles. Now, they try to act all sanctimonious, you know, like everything is all right. They made a few Black cardinals, a couple other bishops, and then you run and get the Catholic Holy Ghost.

Any more questions? Yes, sir.

[A question is asked by a man about the relationship between the people that brought the slaves to America and "the people that rule us today."]

Oh yes, their descendants. That’s all they are, brother, believe me. This is what makes them so deceitful and tricky. Like father, like son. You and I were produced by kings and queens from the African continent, scientists, the best. They took the best of the African society and sold them as slaves. We brought the highest price. We didn’t come here as chumps; we were the cream of the crop on the African continent. But not those men. Those that were sent here from Europe were the dregs of society. Old, run-down, ex-, worn-out thieves—you thought I was going to say something else, didn’t you. No, they were the worst part of that European society, brother, and they still reflect it right today.

Everything you see them doing here—no feelings; they’ll sell you right down the river right now. They have no morals at all; no sense of moral consciousness exists in them. They will lie, talk about the Great Society, and all that other stuff. No, nothing but lies. How is somebody from Texas going to start a great society? They don’t have it down there. You know, back when I was out there in the world, I used to see Willie Bryant at the Apollo. You remember Willie Bryant? They had a song in those days about “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” and I used to hear Willie Bryant singing, “The stars are bright, they’ll hang you any night, deep in the heart of Texas.” This is just twenty years ago, and they still do the same thing today. And Johnson was congressman then. You know Johnson—he’s got a cold. Are there any other questions? Yes, sir.

[A question is asked by a man about the number of Indians in the United States.]

Indians? He’s on the reservation. They put me and you on the plantation, and put the Indians on the reservation—that’s how they built this nation. The Indian is in worse shape than we are. I was out in the desert at an Arizona reservation a couple of years ago. They’re in bad shape. But they have more respect for the Indians than they do for you and me. You know why? Because they fought them. You don’t hear any white man talking about he’s got Black trouble, but in a minute you’ll hear him say he’s got some Indian trouble. A white man will say that. Haven’t you heard it? Sure, they’ll claim the Indians, but nobody is going to claim you and me—because we’re nonviolent. Nobody wants to be related to anything nonviolent, nobody. You’re going to be a peaceful slave, a nonviolent slave. No, that Indian, brother, he drank blood, he tomahawked. Imagine taking a man’s scalp. And then he’s going to say he’s got your blood. He’ll respect you. No, that’s what you need to learn how to do. The Indians said they had forked tongues, which means they’re liars, you know. The Indians knew them. And they show you every time you turn on the television—any old cowboy picture shows you a white man lying to the Indian. He doesn’t hide it. Time for a couple more questions, a couple more questions. Any more? Yes, ma’am.

[A question is asked by a woman about the “slave breeder.”]

No, the slave breeder was that slave maker. The slave maker was the one responsible for breeding slaves, and he bred them. They bred any-kind-of-looking slave you wanted.

[Same woman speaks further referring to the novel Mandingo.]

Yes. I know some of you all never read Mandingo, did you? It is true that they used to have special Black slaves that they called bucks, I think, whose job was to do nothing but breed. I see a lot of them, I think, around Harlem now. In those days a child born of a slave woman never knew its father, didn’t know who the father was; didn’t make any difference. And, you know, this has affected our society.

Even right now you read some of the conclusions reached by some of these so-called sociologists. They admit that the tendency of our women to have babies born out of wedlock is a throwback right to a habit that was born during slavery. In slavery, it was nothing for a Black woman to have a baby—she was supposed to have a baby. And the father, the Black man who fathered the baby, was never permitted to have the responsibility of a father. All he did was make the baby. He couldn’t recognize it as his; it was going to be sold as soon as the master wanted to sell it. He was never permitted to develop a sense of responsibility for taking care of his own offspring.

And that came right down from slavery to the Black community today. You’ll find many men who are married and have two or three children, walk away from that woman like she didn’t even exist, and leave those children in the house without a second thought, without a second thought. Well, you wouldn’t find an African doing this. We weren’t like this in Africa. This is a throwback, this is a holdover, from slavery. We’ve got to get rid of it. But you’re never going to get rid of it until you get rid of the cause, and man, you know who the cause is. Are there any other questions?

Then I have some announcements that I would like to read quickly. Our newsletter, The Blacklash, is going to be revised and turned into a newspaper, a more informative and attractive newspaper. We’re working on that right now. And the brother who has been doing such a wonderful job on the newsletter is Brother Peter. I don’t see him—where is Brother Peter? Way back there, the handsome brother. Give him a big hand. He’s been doing a wonderful job on the newsletter, and he’s now working toward turning it into a newspaper.

Also, there’ll be a membership meeting of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, Tuesday, January 26, at 8:00 p.m., at 2395 Eighth Avenue. We would like all of the members to attend, because we’re trying to get ourselves organized in such a way that we can become inseparably involved in an action program that will meet the needs, desires, likes, or dislikes of everyone that’s involved. And we want you involved in it. Also, the aims and the objectives of the Organization of Afro-American Unity are being prepared right now. They will be made available soon. We are attempting to make this organization one in which any serious-minded Afro-American can actively participate, and we welcome your suggestions at all of these membership meetings. One of these will be on Tuesday night. We want your suggestions; we don’t in any way claim to have the answers to everything, but we do feel that all of us combined can come up with an answer. We believe that the brain that you have, the ability to think, your experience in this hell that we’ve all been through, is all the credentials you need when you come to a membership meeting with your suggestions. With all of the combined suggestions and the combined talent and know-how, we do believe that we can devise a program that will shake the world. Frankly, that’s what we need to do—shake the world. We don’t need to duplicate anything that has been done with all this politeness and compromise and so forth; we need to find out what is necessary to be done, and do it, no matter whether they like it or not. First, analyze it, find out what is necessary to be done, and then let’s do it. Yes, sir.

[A man asks about a telegram that was to be sent to the leader of the American Nazi Party.]

Let me see if I have it here. I sent this telegram to Rockwell the other day. It states: “To George Lincoln Rockwell: This is to warn you that I am no longer held in check from fighting white supremacists by Elijah Muhammad’s separationist Black Muslim movement, and that if your present racist agitation against our people there in Alabama causes physical harm to Reverend King or any other Black Americans who are only attempting to enjoy their rights as free human beings, that you and your Ku Klux Klan friends will be met with maximum physical retaliation from those of us who are not handcuffed by the disarming philosophy of nonviolence, and who believe in asserting our right of self-defense—by any means necessary.”

That was sent. And it was sent at a time when he was acting bad and bigish there in Selma. And you haven’t heard anything about it since. No. The entire press was aware that it was sent. Nothing about it; they wouldn’t print it. I’m going to tell you why they wouldn’t print it, and I must tell you. The so-called liberal element of the white power structure never wants to see nationalists involved in anything that has to do with civil rights. And I’ll tell you why. Any other Black people who get involved are involved within the rules that are laid down by the white liberals. And as long as they are involved within those rules, then that means they’re only going to go as far as the liberal element of the power structure will endorse their activity. But when the nationalistic-minded Blacks get involved, then we do what our analysis tells us is necessary to be done, whether the white liberal or anybody else likes it or not. So, they don’t want us involved.

Plus, I was curious to find out how Dr. King would react, if he were told. See, I saw him getting knocked down on television, I saw the man knock him in his mouth. Well, that hurt me, I’ll tell you. Because I’m Black and he’s Black—I don’t care how dumb he is. Still, when I see a Black man knocked in the mouth, I feel it, because it could happen to you or me. And if I was there with King and I saw someone knocking on him, I’d come to his rescue. I would be misrepresenting myself if I made you think I wouldn’t. Yes, and then I’d show him, see, he’s doing it the wrong way—this is the way you do it. Did you have more to that, sir?

[A man relates an incident, following the attempted World’s Fair stall-in during April 1964, when Roy Wilkins and the NAACP national office cracked down on an NAACP youth council that had wanted to invite a Black nationalist speaker.]

Yes. You know why, brother? Because they are afraid, as I say, for any nationalist-minded person to get involved with any civil rights Negro. See, the civil rights Negro—let me use the word Negro for a minute—the civil rights Negro is in a straitjacket. Really, he is. Read this book The Negro Mood—the chapter, “The Black Establishment”—and you’ll see they’re in a straitjacket. I’ll tell you frankly what I intend to do. Since they used to condemn me all the time, when I was in the Black Muslim movement, for talking but not getting involved, “Okay,” I’ll say, “you’ve got some action going? I’ll get involved, I’ll get involved.” But I know they don’t want me involved. Because if I get involved, I’m for involvement all the way.

I say this: that if the law of the land states that you and I have the right to do thus and so, it doesn’t take a picket to establish that right. All we’ve got to do is go and do it. Now, anyone who gets in our way to deprive us of that right, which is constitutional—Supreme Court and all that kind of stuff—anyone who gets in our way is a lawbreaker. We’re not the lawbreakers; we’re enforcing the law. Anyone who stops you a from trying to register and vote is breaking the law. You can waste him, yes, you can waste him, and there’s nothing he can do about it. Now they know this. This is why they want to keep you out of the civil rights struggle. They don’t want any nationalists involved. And you actually do the whole thing a disservice by not getting involved, because what you do is create a vacuum, into which steps Uncle Tom. And Uncle Tom takes all the black belts and leads them the nonviolent way. No, I say let’s all get in it, and get in it without compromise, and anybody that gets in the way—don’t compromise. That’s all. If Black people in Alabama are trying to register and vote, if they’re trying to register, then those Black people in Alabama are within their rights. Anyone who in any way interferes with them is breaking the law. Well, our people in Alabama, our people in Harlem, our people in California, are the same people. You and I will not get anywhere by standing on the sidelines, saying they’re doing it wrong. I spent twelve years doing this in the Black Muslim movement, condemning everybody walking, and at no time were we permitted to get involved to show a better way. Okay, I say let’s get involved. But let’s get involved all the way. Let’s don’t get involved in a compromise way. That doesn’t mean we’re I going to get involved in just anything. But a man has a right to vote, a man has a right to be registered. In areas, especially in the South, where our people outnumber whites, if they were registered they could put all the whites out of office. But you know, this is between you and me, I just want to say—between you and me, and the stool pigeons present—even here in Harlem, where we have the right to register and vote, we don’t register and vote. If all the people in Alabama could register and vote, they probably wouldn’t register and vote. So, you see, you have to have a multiple program, a many-pronged program. And so when I say that we’re for that, that doesn’t mean that we’re not for some other things, too. It takes a many-pronged program to get this problem solved.

But, brother, the man can’t give you the solution. You never will get the solution from any white liberal. Let you and I sit down and discuss the problem, come up with what we feel the solution will be; and then if they want to help it, then let them help in their way, in a way that they can help. But don’t let them come and tell us how we should do to solve our problem. Those days are over, I can’t see that at all. If they want to help in their way, a way that they can help, good; but don’t come and join us and try and sit down and tell us how to solve our problem. They can’t do it, and they won’t. That’s like asking the fox to help you solve the problem confronting you and the wolf. He’ll tell you how to solve it all right, but I’ll guarantee you, you’ll have a worse problem afterwards—a foxy problem. He’ll give you a solution that will put you right in his clutches; and this is what the white liberal does.

Very seldom, if you notice, will you find whites who can in any way put up with Black nationalists. Haven’t you ever wondered why? I mean even the most liberal white can’t go along with this Black nationalism. He can’t, he just can’t stomach it. But he can go along with anything that’s integrated, because he knows he can get in there and finagle it, and have you walking backwards, thinking you’re walking forwards. No, we don’t want that. There’s a place for them, there’s some work that they can do. I’m not saying cut them out—there’s something that they can do. But I say, find out what the whites can do, and let them do that; and find out what we can do, and we’ll do that. Let them go their way; you take the low road and we’ll take the high road, and so on and so forth.

Also, a couple more announcements, please. We’re having an Arabic class beginning tomorrow, Monday, January 25, at 7:00 p.m.—tomorrow evening—in Room 128 at the Hotel Theresa. We’re having classes set up in Swahili—we have one set up already in Arabic—we’re having one set up in Swahili, and another one in Hausa, so that you can be—what they call it?—multilingual. You know, one of the things I found out when I was in Africa, I felt very much at a loss, many times, by not being able to speak the language.

Sir? Oh, that’s coming. The brother wanted to know what about a karate class. This is one of the first classes you should have—karate.

You know, I had some people try to jump on me night before last—some of those, I call them, I’ve got another name for them. They were waiting for me out near my house. So when I came out—thanks to Allah I’ve got a good intuition—and I did some things, and they jumped me. That’s right, when you read in the paper about these old crazy people going crazy, that’s not any exaggeration. They even shot a brother up here in the Bronx, I think in broad daylight; and whipped another one almost dead in Boston—you probably heard him on the Barry Gray Show telling about it. Well, they’ve gone out of their minds, absolutely. Whenever you find an organization that’s equipped like that, and you never see it take part in any kind of action that’s for the good of Black people against the real enemy, but they will turn all of their anger against each other, to destroy each other, why, you’ve got to start really analyzing the situation.

I hate to bring that up, but it’s true. A very bad situation has set in and deteriorated to the point where you have Black people trying to kill Black people; and they should be using that talent, really, to go after the Rockwells and the Klan. And you know, frankly, the more I talk about Rockwell and the Klan, the more it infuriates them—not Rockwell and the Klan, but them. One of these days, I’ll tell you why. You’ll never read anything in the Black Muslim newspaper against the Ku Klux Klan or Rockwell. You never will, not even accidentally. But if you’ll go back into some of the back issues, you’ll find J.B. Stoner interviewed in the Black Muslim newspaper, and he was interviewed objectively, favorably. That’s not an accident, and like I say, if you keep pressing me, I’ll tell you why. Also, since you know that it’s almost impossible for us to get the cooperation of the press in getting our meetings publicized, the only way that people in Harlem will know that we’re having meetings is if you inform them. So, if each of you here right now will take it upon yourself to inform just ten people between now and Sunday, that means by next Sunday, we’ll have—look at the crowd we have out here, and it’s the worst kind of weather outside; it’s a miracle really. You don’t know, you’re great. Do you know that this audience right here can whip any audience in New York City? You know why? You’re game to come out there in all that mean weather. You’ve got all the excuse in the world to stay home tonight. But the fact that you’ve come out shows you’re doing a whole lot of thinking about something. And I tell you, I love you for it. And I hope and pray to Allah—and whoever you believe in, whatever you believe in—I hope and pray that we’ll be able to organize ourselves together, wherein we’ll do anything we want, anything we want, to undertake in this organization. And we’re working toward that end right now.

I think I’ve read all these announcements. James, if I—oh yes, the last one they handed me is this: As you know, it costs us $150 to rent this hall each Sunday night, and we just collected $135. Plus, this week we had the cost of handbills and other things that we had to undertake to try and let you know where we are. So, should I turn you loose right now or pick up another collection? I hate to be like an old preacher, but brothers, I know what we’re up against. We’re trying to have two more meetings—don’t run yet, just stay time enough—we’re trying to have two more meetings, we’re going to try to have a meeting next Sunday and the following Sunday. Now, within the next two weeks we are going to try and put together an organization and a program that everybody in here can participate in. But honestly—you know I wouldn’t tell you this if it wasn’t true—we need your help. Thank you.

Stan Bernard Interviews Malcolm X (February 18, 1965)

2013-07-05T18:52:00.002-07:00

Stan Bernard: And what is the Black Muslim movement? Is it a bona fide religion or just a terror organization? Tonight on “Stan Bernard: Contact” we’re going to have a look at the Muslims and the Black nationalists in general. And my guests tonight: Malcolm X, once the number-two man in the Black Muslims, now broken with Elijah Muhammad; he says he’s a marked man and that a number of attempts have been made on his life. And also in the studio, or we hope very shortly, Aubrey Barnette. There’s been some difficulty tonight, just before air time, and Aubrey may join us and he may not. He’s also split from the organization, and he’s written an article in this week’s Saturday Evening Post labeled simply “The Black Muslims Are a Fraud.” And here is Aubrey Barnette now. And my third guest tonight, Gordon Hall, an expert on extremist organizations. Aubrey Barnette, in your article you call the Black Muslims a fraud. Now does this just apply to the mosque’s methods of raising money or what? Do you think it’s a religious fraud as well?

Aubrey Barnette: I think the entire Black Muslim movement is a fraud. And Webster’s Dictionary defines a fraud as deceit, trickery, or a trick. The Black Muslims have deceived the public. They’ve used trickery on trying to attract the Negroes and they have outright tricked the poor Black Muslim members. That’s why I say they are a fraud.

Bernard: Now, okay, they’ve tricked them. Now this is in terms of the religion itself as well as the money raising?

Barnette: Well, as far as the religion of Islam is concerned, I might say right here that any similarity between the Black Muslims and the true religion of Islam is purely coincidental.

Bernard: Malcolm X, I said at the outset that you were once the number-two man. I think I can rightfully say that, easily you were certainly as well known as, almost as well known, or as well known as Elijah Muhammad.

Malcolm X: But I never was the number-two man.

Bernard: You never were the number-two man.

Malcolm X: The press said I was the number-two man, but there were others ahead of me. 

Bernard: How do you feel about this comment from Aubrey Barnette?

 Malcolm X: What he’s saying is true, especially about the first, especially about the religion. The religion of Islam itself is a religion that is based upon brotherhood and a religion in which the persons who believe in it in no way judge a man by the color of his skin. The yardstick of measurement in Islam is one’s deeds, one’s conscious behavior. And the yardstick of measurement that was used by Elijah Muhammad was based upon the color of the skin.

Bernard: Malcolm, it wasn’t too long ago that you were preaching separation, Black supremacy, you were...or separation at any rate; if not Black supremacy, it sounded like Black supremacy to a lot of people. How do you equate that now with what you’re saying today?

Malcolm X: There’s not one person who is a Muslim who believes in Elijah Muhammad today who believes in him more strongly than I did. When I was with him I believed in him 100 percent. And it was my strong belief in him that made me go along with everything he taught. And I think if you check back on my representation of him while I was with him, I represented him 100 percent.

Bernard: What is your status now, Malcolm?

Malcolm X: How do you mean? 

Bernard: Right now. Have you broken...

Malcolm X: I’m a Muslim. When I...you must understand that the Black Muslim movement, although it claimed to be a religious movement, based upon Islam, it was never acceptable to the orthodox Muslim world. Although at the same time it attracted the most militant, the most dissatisfied of the Black community into it. And by them getting into it and the movement itself not having a real action program, it comprised a number of persons who were extremely young and militant but who could not...and who were activists by nature but who couldn’t participate in things. So the inactivity of the movement caused a great deal of dissatisfaction until finally dissension broke in and division, and those of us who left regrouped into a Muslim movement based upon orthodox Islam.

Bernard: So now that you’ve broken away, let me ask you a question and this calls for numbers. You’re no longer a member. Are you in a membership fight now with Elijah Muhammad?

Malcolm X: No, no, I have never at any time involved myself in a membership fight with Elijah Muhammad. In fact, if you go back to the release that I made public at the time of my official departure, I pointed out that I was in no way trying to take away the followers of Elijah Muhammad, but that I myself was going to become a Muslim, but would work among the 22 million non-Muslim Negroes and try to establish some kind of program that would be beneficial to the Black American, period.

Bernard: There were a lot of numbers that were thrown around some time ago. I guess it was two years ago or so. The numbers said something like 100,000 Muslims across the United States. And you, in your article Aubrey Barnette, talk about these numbers. You specify quite clearly. And you ask a question at one point. You say: “How large was our membership? The most accurate estimate I ever heard of our strength in Boston came during a radio debate between Gordon Hall a specialist on extremist organizations, and Malcolm X.” And that radio debate took place on “Bob Kennedy: Contact” in Boston; our sister station WBZ held that debate between you, Gordon, and Malcolm X. And I heard the tape of that debate. It was quite heated, and it was a very good debate, it was very entertaining, and I enjoyed it. What did you do...what now, when you talk about numbers today, and you, Aubrey, mention in your article you say something like fifty-five members in all of Boston, fifty-seven in another place.

Barnette: I say...

 Bernard: Small membership numbers.

 Barnette: I’m speaking of the present membership of the mosque right now. In Boston they have probably fifty-five male members and Springfield probably thirty-five or forty, and Providence, Rhode Island, maybe ten or fifteen members. The membership has just about dwindled in half. And before I comment on the actual sense of the movement at its peak, I’d like to add something to what Malcolm had just said. That not only did the Black Muslim movement attract dissatisfied Negroes, it attracted Negroes who were...contrary to the popular public belief, they did attract some Negroes who were doing very well in the world but...Negroes who thought that the Black Muslims had a program for improving the condition of the Negro in America. I was one of those Negroes. I was not very much dissatisfied as an individual when I came to the Muslim movement, but I knew that there was a problem existing in the Negro community. I knew that many Negroes were suffering from discrimination, they were frustrated, and there were many problems that were besetting our communities. And I thought the Muslims, Black Muslims, had a program for economic upliftment, a program of moral upliftment. I thought the Muslims had a program for combating juvenile delinquency.

Bernard: And you saw this as a myth now, or you see it...

Barnette: I see it as a myth now.

Bernard: I see. Gordon, you have been a critic of all extremist organizations. You sort of pinpointed the strength of the Muslim organization. And you say that the strength is basically a myth, with these hundred thousand numbers. How did you arrive at your own figures?

Gordon Hall: Well, I do this work full time to begin with, and I’ve done this work for close to twenty years, and when you follow extremists around, whether they’re Negro extremists or white extremists, if you follow the Klan around the way that I did, and penetrated their movements and found out numbers, you’ll find out that they make a lot of noise all out of proportion to their numbers, just as currently the Negro nationalists in the New York area are making noise all out of proportion to their numbers. And I think the real tip-off, Stan, came when Elijah was supposed to speak at the Boston Arena a few summers ago, I think it was July of 1962, and I flew back from a speaking date in Minneapolis and told the press that they couldn’t possibly fill the Boston Arena, which seats 7,200 people, even if they brought in all of the people from the other mosques around the Eastern Seaboard: Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and so on. I also predicted that Elijah Muhammad would not show up, that he’s an incoherent old man, he does not speak well he doesn’t make any sense in his public appearances, and I felt that Malcolm probably would carry the load that day. And it worked out precisely that way. This was a prediction long before they even opened the doors in the arena. And then lo and behold, despite all the efforts to allow the white public in, plus all the sisters and brothers, and all the fiddle-faddle about the whole show, they couldn’t even fill downstairs in the arena.

Bernard: And they brought in three thousand I think was the figure, right?

 Hall: Yes, something like that, and that was the clear tip-off to me that this thing was built on quicksand, that they’d never had any members, really, and this is pretty much the history of extremist movements in general, that they make noise all out of proportion to their numbers. This was based really on the reality of the situation and not listening to all the grandiose statements made by men like Malcolm X.

Malcolm X: What year was that?

Hall: I don’t have the figures with me, Malcolm. I think it was the summer of ‘62, if I remember correctly. You were the main speaker.

Bernard: [To Barnette] You mention that in your article. And you say there were three thousand there. And, Malcolm, you were the main speaker.

Hall: And there were a lot of white people there too.

Malcolm X: No, there were about two hundred, which was a lot for those days. But I think you’ll find that the Muslim movement reached its peak in strength in 1960, ‘59 and ‘60. And it began to taper off in ‘61 and ‘62.

Hall: Do you agree with Aubrey’s figures that the peak strength was about fifteen-thirteen-to-fifteen thousand? Would that be your estimate, as well, of the total Muslim movement?

Malcolm X: No, the peak in 19-, yes, the peak in 1959 and ‘60 was reached, but it began to go down after Elijah Muhammad took a trip abroad, plus became involved in other personal problems. And the movement itself began to deteriorate only after Elijah Muhammad put members of his own family in positions of authority, which weakened the structure and caused internal bickering and division and eventually the movement just petered out.

Hall: Just one more point, Stan. I think the whole point of this last discussion between Aubrey and Malcolm and myself would be to point out that the three of us agree that the peak figure of say fifteen thousand, regardless of the year, whether it was 1960 or ‘59, this is far below what the press had been estimating all over the country And fifteen thousand Muslims in any country are not very many Muslims when you figure that we have, let’s say, a Negro population of close to twenty two million. This is just a drop in the bucket.

Bernard: C. Eric Lincoln came up with a figure of 100,000.

Hall: That’s because he doesn’t study extremists. That’s why he came up with that figure.

Malcolm X: No, I have to contend with that. And I won’t go along with what you’re saying.

Bernard: In what way? Malcolm, in what way?

Malcolm X: C. Eric Lincoln is the person who was probably first to mention a number in regards to Black Muslims. But you will never find any figure given out at any time, in any way, not by me, concerning the numerical strength of the Muslims. I have never stated...my standing answer was that the best part of the tree is the root, and I never defined the extent of the tree beyond that.

Bernard: Malcolm...

 Hall: I don’t quite follow what...

 Malcolm X: The thing that you have to consider, Mr. Hall is, like, when you say that when you study extremist groups usually they are very small and don’t have much of an impact upon the public or drawing among the public. Whether you’re in the North, South, East, or West, here in the States, where the nationalists are concerned, usually nationalists have an “anti-press,” whereas the civil rights groups or the accepted civil rights groups, usually the press, the city government, all of the machinery that has to do with molding public opinion goes along with civil rights groups. And whenever they’re giving something, they have everything going for them toward promoting what they’re giving. But when it comes to the nationalists, usually you’ll find that they have to almost fight their way into print, in advance, if they’re going to give something. And despite those obstacles and that type of organized opposition, still you’ll find the nationalist groups, especially in the New York area, command a large following. I’ll give you an example. This coming Sunday, at two o’clock at the Audubon Ballroom, the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which I’m presently involved in, which is considered nationalist, are having a rally, and you are welcome to attend that: white, black brown, red, yellow, green, or whatever else you have. And I think you’ll find that despite the fact that we get no help whatsoever from the press, that we’re able, here in the New York area, to attract larger crowds to our rallies than any other kind of rally that’s given, and they are given the complete support of the press.

Hall: But that doesn’t prove anything, Malcolm, because Harlem is a big place. You’ll get a lot of Negroes in, you’ll get curious whites, that doesn’t...that’s not your membership.

 Malcolm X: No, nobody...

 Hall: Just as, just as when...

 Malcolm X: Listen... 

Hall: ...the Grand Dragon of the Klan speaks on campus he will outdraw the vice president. 

Malcolm X: He doesn’t have to have membership to still be the influencing factor in the South. You can’t tell me that the Klan is a handful of people in Alabama and then the whole government is supposed to be behind Martin Luther King, and the handful of Klansmen are keeping Dr. King in jail and marching Negro children down the road.

Hall: I’m not saying that at all.

Malcolm X: Well then you can’t say that extremist groups are not effective and do not represent an influencing factor in this society.

Bernard: Gentlemen, I want to ask...

Hall: I’m saying the Muslims and nationalists in the Negro community are not an important factor.

Bernard: I have a question to ask at this point.

Malcolm X: But the Klan is an important factor in the white community.

Hall: It has been historically, yes.

Bernard: Malcolm, Malcolm, you say attempts have been made on your life. And that was at this afternoon’s press conference. You say five different attempts recently. How were they attempted?

Malcolm X: Yes, more than five.

Bernard: Of course, there was the bombing of the house...

Malcolm X: Yes.

Bernard: ...which we know about, that occurred Sunday.

Malcolm X: Yes. First of all, I would like to point out about that bombing of the house, because the press has also been used during the past week to imply that I bombed my own house. I would like to point out right here and now that I have no life insurance. My wife has no life insurance. I have four baby girls, none of whom have life insurance. We don’t have health insurance. We don’t have fire insurance. We have no kind of insurance whatsoever. And the only group that stood to gain anything from the bombing of that house was the Black Muslim movement in which the insurance is actually...the insurance is in their name. And I really felt hurt that the press would allow itself to be used to give the public the impression that I would throw a bomb or light a fire to a home in which my family, which my wife and family are asleep. The deputy chief fire marshal, I think his name is Vincent Canty, pointed out to me, in the presence of witnesses on that same night, that a fireman picked up a bottle of gasoline from my living room that had not exploded, and because this bottle of gasoline was in a whiskey bottle, this fireman placed that bottle on a dresser in my baby’s room, thinking that it was a bottle of whiskey. And when my wife came in and saw the bottle there she asked the fireman what was it. And the fireman said it was whiskey. And well we know that there’s no whiskey in our house, and so she touched it and said, “This isn’t whiskey, this is something inflammable.” And then they took it out. Now despite that, the deputy marshal, deputy fire chief marshal, having this knowledge, and the police having this knowledge, still this knowledge is kept back from the press. And in the vacuum that exists, then this man James down at 116th Street steps in and tries to give the impression that all of this was done by me. And I think that it is a worse injustice on the part of the press and the police and the firemen, to let such an impression be given, even than the people who threw the bombs in the house themselves.

Bernard: Aubrey, you were attacked in Boston by a group that you say were members of a Muslim goon squad. How did that come about?

Barnette: Right. Well I think that I should be angry with Malcolm, because I think in a way Malcolm was responsible for my being attacked. And the reason I was attacked was because the Black Muslim movement, losing strength, had to build an enemy. And the enemy they projected was the Black nationalists. Now because I had left the mosque and put the Black Muslim behind, they branded me as a Black nationalist, even though I had left the mosque sometime before Malcolm ever thought of leaving the mosque. I was still accused of being a follower of Malcolm, although they should have turned it around and said Malcolm was following me, because I left first.

Malcolm X: That’s right.

Barnette: Anyway, I can testify to the brutality of the Black Muslims, because I was viciously attacked by the Black Muslims and put in the hospital for a week with a fractured...rather I was hospitalized for a week and at home in bed for another week. I had a fractured rib, a fractured ankle, two fractured vertebrae, and internal injuries. And the reason I was attacked was primarily because I had the audacity to quit the Black Muslim movement. And I might point out as far as the Black Muslims’ manufacturing stories. One of the most fantastic stories I ever heard was the Black Muslims’ testimony in the trial in which they were, incidentally, were all found guilty of assault and battery on myself and the other fellow...

Bernard: You pressed charges.

Barnette: Yes sir. I was one of the first cases in the country where a Black Muslim ex-member had pressed charges against the Black Muslims for being beat up. I’m not the first one who was beat up. I’m the first one who actually took the...had the courage to take them into court. And during this trial they made some outrageous charges. First of all they charged that John Thimas and myself attacked the mosque, two men, attacked the mosque.

Bernard: You were a mighty 135 pounds.

Barnette: I weigh 130 pounds soaking wet; with all my clothes on and probably with a pair of combat boots on I don’t weigh 130 pounds. But anyway I...John Thimas and myself attacked the mosque where there may be...according to the Black Muslim members they would have you believe there’s a thousand members there, but there were only probably fifty-five, but two men against fifty-five is pretty good odds. But this is the story they gave, that I attacked the mosque and during the course of the trial...I went to...after I was attacked I was taken to the city hospital by the Boston police. I stayed there for about two hours, and then the police took me to the Beth Israel...I mean I had myself transferred to the Beth Israel Hospital. So the lawyer, during the trial, said that I got together with the Beth Israel Hospital and faked all of these injuries. I faked the X rays, showing my fractured ribs. I faked the X rays, showing...

Malcolm X: Who was the lawyer?

 Barnette: The lawyer was Edward Jacko.

 Malcolm X: From New York City, Harlem?

Barnette: From New York City, yes.

 Malcolm X: You mean Edward Jacko came to Boston and accused you of faking these charges?

Barnette: Yes, apparently he wasn’t very familiar with the Beth Israel Hospital because it’s one of the biggest hospitals in Boston, and how I ever got together with the Beth Israel Hospital to fake these records is beyond me. And why the Beth Israel didn’t take him up on that is beyond me also. But they will fabricate any charges, make up the wildest stories.

 Bernard: Gentlemen, we’re going to get to the telephones in just one moment. 

Malcolm X: Can I ask him just a question?

Bernard: Yes. 

Malcolm X: Was Edward Jacko retained by the Muslims in Boston or was he retained by the Chicago headquarters?

Barnette: He was retained by the Chicago headquarters; because the Black Muslims were found guilty in lower court and advised by the judge to plead guilty and pay me restitution, $2,000, for the damages that I had sustained, and he would give them suspended sentences. But they, on orders of Chicago, they appealed the sentence, and they fired the other lawyer and imported Edward Jacko from New York.

Bernard: Okay, let’s get to our...do you have something, Gordon?

Hall: One quick comment on this general discussion of the courts and such. Aubrey took his case into the courts, placed it in the hands of what he feels is of a reasonably fair and uncorrupt courts and justices and so on, and his case has been settled. I would charge that Malcolm’s one-sided account of what actually happened in his home and everything will have to be settled by the courts through investigation and all the rest. And I warn your listeners not to simply accept this at face value, but to watch the newspapers and see what does develop in this current case.

Barnette: Hey, wait a minute. Hold it. 

Malcolm X: What do you mean by that? 

Barnette: The case was settled...

Hall: I mean just what I said by that. 

Barnette: ...not satisfactorily. These Muslims, I must point out, were given suspended sentences...

Hall: But they were convicted. 

Barnette: ...against the law. Against the laws of Massachusetts. The statutes of Massachusetts say that you cannot give a person a suspended sentence when he’s been convicted of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

Bernard: Well, there’s another point. There were actual suspects in that case. And let me say this about, in terms of fair play on this station. The Muslims are going to have a chance on March 3rd to answer every single charge that has been made here tonight against them.

Malcolm X: Well actually you should have had the Muslims here tonight.

Bernard: Well there’s a little problem with that, and we are going to arrange a program for them. And they are going to be appearing, including...and by the way there’s a good chance that Elijah Muhammad may appear on the program via the telephone. And we’re looking forward to that, of course. We’re trying to arrange that now. As soon as they were apprised of the fact that you were coming on the program tonight, they asked for equal time. And although it doesn’t really come under the equal time provisions by the FCC, we are going ahead and are giving them a program. I believe it’s March 3rd or March 4th. Well let’s get to our telephones. We have an awful lot of...

Hall: That was not the point, however, that I made. My only point was this, Stan. Simply that there are charges and countercharges leveled by dissident factions within the Negro community, the small dissident factions we’re talking about tonight. But these things will be thoroughly investigated by law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and justice will be done in the end, just as the Black Liberation Front will claim that they weren’t really trying to blow up anything, but the evidence is clear that they were trying to blow up the Statue of Liberty, despite their charges now that they’re being framed.

Malcolm X: Mr. Hall today we demanded that the FBI launch an immediate investigation of the bombing of my home on Sunday morning...

Hall: Very good. And I’m confident that...

Malcolm X: ...because we were charging a conspiracy on the part of some firemen, some policemen, and some newsmen to work together to cover up the part played by Elijah’s followers in the bombing and to give the public the impression that I bombed it myself, by withholding valuable information from the public and telling half-truths through the press. We demanded the FBI investigation...

Hall: Very good, very good.

Malcolm X: ...and I pointed out that my attorney had suggested that I and my wife submit ourselves to a lie detector test and that every policeman and fireman who entered that house that night do likewise. And we also suggest to the minister of the local temple here who represents Elijah that he too submit himself to a lie detector test and Joseph, the fat one, submit himself to a lie detector test since he has implied that the bombing was done by people other than himself. So we’re not in any way, sir, ducking away from any kind of investigation. We just demand...

Hall: Very good.

Malcolm X: ...that it be done by an impartial body and that it be done immediately.

Bernard: We haven’t taken a single phone call yet, gentlemen, and I would like to very much right now. Let’s find out what’s going on out there. The WINS “Contact” number: Judson 2-6405. This is Stan Bernard “Contact” you’re on the air.

Caller: Yes, I’d like to say that there’s one thing about this business about Malcolm’s home being bombed that really bothers me. He charges that the Black Muslims did this. There’s one thing. They happen to own this home. It’s not Malcolm’s home. It’s the Black Muslims’ home. Now it seems very odd to me that the Black Muslims would want to destroy their own property. It would seem more likely to me that Malcolm X would want to destroy the Black Muslims’ property. In other words, that he would try to just throw a couple of innocuous bombs in there that aren’t going to hurt anybody. He knows they’re not going to hurt anybody. They won’t do too much damage. And he’ll have a lot of publicity for himself. And then he can charge all he wants to “I’ll take a lie detector test” because he knows the lie detector test is not admissible in court as evidence of anything.

Bernard: Malcolm, how do you answer that?

Malcolm X: I say this: that the Black Muslim movement has never had as their motive the acquiring of that home. The possession of the home itself means nothing. Elijah Muhammad lives in a $150,000 house in Phoenix, Arizona. That house is worth less than $15,000. It’s not the home itself, the material home itself, that is the object of the present court battle. There’s more to it than that. And anybody...I should think people should question the deputy fire marshal and the others who investigated the bombing out there that night, and let them give their story as to whether or not I could have set those bombs. And this is why I say I charged a conspiracy on the part of some of the firemen, and some of the police, and some of the press, to give the impression that I set it. Anybody...

Bernard: Why would they side with the Black Muslim organization against you though, Malcolm? I don’t understand that.

Malcolm X: Well...

 Bernard: Why you, not them; why them, not you?

Malcolm X: Let’s answer your question this way. The press, whenever I mention that an attempt has been made on my life, they print it in such a way that I am implying that an attempt has been made. The Black Muslim movement tried to kill me in Los Angeles airport, two weeks ago, while I was in the company of the Los Angeles police. The Los Angeles police stopped the TWA airlines from taking off. They stopped the airline’s flight from taking off. They slipped me into a private room, onto the plane through the basement, because of the presence of these persons in the airport, who were completely heedless of the presence of the police. Now this airliner was held up an hour and a half. Every passenger aboard it was taken off, his luggage was searched. I was kept on the plane. My luggage was searched. And then the TW Airlines security agent flew to Chicago from Los Angeles with me. I was met at the airport in Chicago by the assistant attorney general of the state of Illinois and at least twenty different detectives. I was held in their custody for twenty-four hours. I appeared on the Kupcinet show. When I came out of the studio, officials of the Black Muslim movement in Chicago even tried to attack the police to get at me. This was...the Los Angeles incident was not reported in the press. The Chicago incident was not reported in the press. A couple days later I appeared on David Susskind’s “Hot Line” on a Tuesday night, February 2nd. Entering the studio that night, the police department had to clash with about thirty members of the local Black Muslim movement who tried to inflict physical harm upon those who were appearing on the program. None of this was mentioned in the press whatsoever.  By this type of incident being kept from the press, then when I jump out and say that somebody is trying to kill me, the implication is given that I’m trying to do some publicity seeking, or that I’m just making these stories up. But the police department from coast to coast in this country have the Black Muslim movement well infiltrated, just as they have any other group well infiltrated. They are well aware of these plots and discussions that take place.

Bernard: Malcolm, I...

 Malcolm X: They could stop them if they wanted to.

 Bernard: Malcolm, as a member of the press I have to say at this point that I’ve never heard anybody say to me or to anybody else, “Do not print anything about Malcolm X.” Or do not...or suppress a story. I have never heard that happen. When your house was bombed it was handled as a lead story, all the way. And whenever anybody that I know, who is a member of the press, is apprised of anything to do with Malcolm X, you’re news.

Malcolm X: Sir, but here’s the point. I’m news as long as what the news is about is something to project me in the image of someone with horns. But when it comes to objective reporting on things...

Bernard: I have you on this program tonight. I have you on this program tonight, and I don’t think anybody is knocking you. And I don’t think anybody...I don’t want to get this kind of personality...

Malcolm X: No, I’m not saying that. I’m not dealing with your program. I’m not dealing with your program. I’m dealing with this: that the impression like this man here, who just called in, tried to imply that I bombed my own home. Now, if he were aware of the physical attempts that have been made upon my life during the past year and the number of attempts that have been made, why it wouldn’t be difficult at all for him to see the...

Hall: ...go on television the day that your home was bombed. And I too am a public lecturer who travels from state to state giving lectures before large audiences. You were smiling and you were about to board a plane to go to Detroit. On the same day that your home was bombed, you carried out a speaking engagement. If that happened in my home, I would never think of leaving my loved ones for fear that something might happen while I’m gone. You got on the plane and went to Detroit and gave a lecture.

Malcolm X: The Black Muslim movement had its origin, as you know...

Hall: But is that not true that you did that?

Malcolm X: Hold it a minute. I’m going to explain it. The Black Muslim movement, as you, an expert, supposedly knows, had its origin in Detroit, Michigan. Now those who are in the Black Muslim movement symbolically regard Detroit as the  Mecca, the root or the focal point of the origin or beginning of Elijah Muhammad’s movement in this country. The fact that I was to appear at a rally in Detroit had been highly publicized in Detroit. My wife and I felt that one of the purposes of the bombing of the house was to keep me from going to Detroit. We discussed it. And she encouraged me not to delay my trip. I went to Detroit, made the speaking engagement, and flew right back here.

Bernard: The WINS “Contact” number: Judson 2-6405. This is Stan Bernard “Contact” you’re on the air.

Caller: Hello. Bernard: Yes.

Caller: Hello. I’d like to address my question to Malcolm X.

Bernard: Go, right ahead.

 Caller: Hello, Malcolm?

 Malcolm X: Yes Sir.

 Caller: I don”t sound-mean to sound rude, but aren’t you kind of a hypocrite, because you went all around the country preaching for the Black Muslims.

Malcolm X: No, I think I’m quite honest, because as long as I believed in what Elijah Muhammad was teaching and what he represented, I represented him 100 percent. Now, I know how bad it makes me look to tell you today what Elijah Muhammad is doing. That does not concern me. As long as I believed in him, I represented him. But there were things about Elijah Muhammad that his followers right now know and that I know. That when he became faced with it he didn’t stand up to it as a man. And when he failed to be able to stand up to his own problem as a man, it was then that those of us who left the movement realized, not only was he not divine, but he wasn’t even a man. And it was then that we began to reexamine all of what he taught. And I was fortunate enough to be able to go into the Muslim world and discuss the whole situation with the Muslims there, and since then I have been trying to practice the orthodox religion of Islam. But despite the fact that I’m trying to practice the orthodox religion of Islam, I don’t blind myself to the fact that our people in this country still have a problem that goes above and beyond religion. So we set up another organization that is not religious in order for all of us who want to participate in the struggle against these social-economic, and political evils in this country that confront our people, participate in them. And I don’t think it’s hypocritical at all for a person to be wrong and admit that he was wrong.

Bernard: Aubrey...

Malcolm X: I think it’s hypocritical when you pretend to still believe in something when you cease believing in it.

Bernard: Aubrey, you stopped believing, too. You left the Muslim movement. You wrote this article, “The Black Muslims Are a Fraud.” What were some of the specific things you saw in the movement that drove you away from it?

Barnette: Well some of the specific things that I saw that drove me away from it was...I’ll take for example the economic myth. The Muslims in their propaganda have projected the thought that they had a vast economic empire in Chicago. This is one of the things that really attracted me to the movement. When I first became aware of the movement, I was a college student and I had graduated from...I was just in the process of graduating from Boston University and I got a degree in, a bachelor of science degree in business administration. And when I started attending meetings, they used to tell me about the big businesses they had out in Chicago. Eleven months after I joined the movement, I finally went and saw these big businesses. And they consisted of a grocery store, a barbershop, a restaurant, and a dress factory, which had three power sewing machines in it. Now I was greatly disillusioned when I saw these things and...but this was the extent of the great Muslim empire that they had been speaking about.

Bernard: Well, was it just size? I mean a lot of people...you were...were you just disappointed in the fact that the size wasn’t everything that everybody thought it was going to be?

Barnette: I was disappointed, because they had projected this as being...in fact in their literature they had described it as Elijah Muhammad had invented a great communal system where the people, you know, the Negroes could get together and build businesses that would employ, give employment, you know, to all Negroes who needed jobs. And when I got out there I found out that these are businesses that Negroes had been establishing all across the country without inventing any new communal system. I was very disappointed.

Malcolm X: May I say something about that economic...what he’s saying is true, but I think I can shed a little clearer light on it. The businesses that the Muslim movement had established from coast to coast, all of them operated in the red. There was only one business in the entire Muslim movement that operated in the black and that was the restaurant there on 116th Street, right here in New York. In fact, the only businesses, the only Muslims in business, who operated businesses in the black were the Muslims in the New York area. And one of the bones of contention that developed between the factions in the Black Muslim movement was the jealousy that developed in Chicago toward the New York Muslims because they were more successful than the ones there in Chicago.

Barnette: There was another business, I think that operated in the black...

Malcolm X: Which one?

Barnette: And that was the dress factory. And the reason that operated in the black was because they had a captive market. One of the things that the Black Muslim members had to do was to buy these long robes for the women to wear. Now although the Muslim movement encouraged to learn how to sew, they were also forbidden to sew their own garments so they had to buy these garments from the dress factory in Chicago which, incidentally, was owned by the daughter of Elijah Muhammad, Ethel Sharrieff. So this was a very successful business, since in order to buy all these outfits you had to spend $200 to get the complete outfit.

Bernard: Gordon.

Hall: A point of fact, I think that also should be mentioned in connection with the businesses, that most of the Muslim businesses, Stan, around the country, those advertising in the paper, and so on, were not businesses established by men who joined the mosque and then became businessmen. They were businessmen who had established businesses, who then joined the mosque, and the Muslims claimed these businesses as their own. Is that not true, Malcolm?

Malcolm X: In some, in part. I think there are instances where...one thing the Muslim movement did do, persons who never thought in terms of business; they were taught so much business, so much talk about business was stressed that many who didn’t have any business knowledge at all would become involved in a business venture. And then that venture would fold, which actually was worse for the movement than it was good for the movement. But I want to point out that the businesses in Chicago, as Elijah Muhammad has told me from his own mouth, were such a failure that he subsidized them himself. He used to run those businesses with money out of his own pocket, so that they would serve as a front. And he always pointed out that the...none of his...especially his sons and those around him, had any business ability, and it developed within them a lot of envy and jealousy toward the New York Muslims, because the most successful businessmen among the Muslims were those right here in the New York area.

Bernard: This is Stan Bernard “Contact” you’re on the air. Go right ahead. You there? No? Let’s try the next one, Steve. This is “Contact,” you’re on the air.

Caller: I’d like to address my question to Malcolm. I’d like to know, sir, why do you still use your X? And as far as the public opinion about you, maybe it’s because of your abrupt change in the Black Muslim group, to form your own national group, that the public is sort of like, they don’t exactly know where you stand. I mean they figured, like you said before, that you were with the Black Muslims and you were definitely with Muhammad. I’m sure that some in the public feel that, now that you’re with someone else, that they’re sort of like, uh, influencing you as far as your beliefs are concerned.

Malcolm X: That’s why I’ve been very slow, since I returned From Africa, to really go all out in the formation, or rather I should say the formation of the two organizations in which I am involved. If you recall, when I was in Mecca I wrote a letter back saying that when I returned to America I wouldn’t rest until I exposed Elijah Muhammad as the religious faker that he was. I was 100 percent sincere in saying that. But when I returned, one of the reasons that I’ve avoided, that I initially avoided any kind of discussion or talk about Elijah Muhammad and the Black Muslim movement...after leaving Mecca, rather before going to Mecca, I had an hour and a half conversation with President Nasser in Egypt. After leaving Mecca I spent three hours with President Julius Nyerere in what was then Tanganyika, is now Tanzania. I spent a couple days with President Jomo Kenyatta and Prime Minister Milton Obote of Uganda, and also President Azikiwe in Nigeria, President Nkrumah in Ghana, President Sekou Toure in Guinea. And I had an opportunity to discuss the problem of Black people on the African continent, plus the plight of our people in this country. And I won’t hesitate to say that conversations with these men broadened my scope tremendously, beyond what it was before I went over there. And I felt, when I came back that many things that I had learned would be constructive, or could be used constructively by Black people in this country in our struggle for human dignity. And I felt that I would be wasting my time entering into some kind of dispute with Elijah Muhammad and his followers. And so I spent my time, when I first came back here, trying to get the Organization of Afro-American Unity consolidated, plus the Muslim Mosque, which is based upon orthodox Islam. But the Black Muslim movement was fearful that if I was ever left alone long enough to get my feet firmly planted on the ground, and get our program out here in the public, that it would be too much competition for what they had already projected or had in mind.

Bernard: Let me ask you this, Malcolm. You at one time espoused complete separation of the races.

Malcolm X: I must say this concerning what Elijah Muhammad said about separation. He didn’t espouse separation. What he said was this: that the government should...if the government can’t give complete equality right now, then the government should permit Black people to go back to Africa. He didn’t ever say back to Africa. Elijah Muhammad has never made one statement that’s pro-African. And he has never, in any of his speeches, or written or oral, said anything to his followers about Africa.

Bernard: What about a Black state in the United States?

Malcolm X: He was as anti-African as he was anti-white.

Bernard: Did you say a Black state in the United States?

Malcolm X: No. So what he said was, “We should go back to our own.” And he phrased it like that, because if he spelled it out, he would have to point to some geographic area, and he would have to have the consent of the people in that geographic area, which he knew he couldn’t get. So he just kept it elusive and said, “Let’s go back to our own.” And if the government wouldn’t let us go back to our own, then he said separation should set up right here. But at no time did he ever enter into any kind of activity or action that was designed to bring any of this into existence. And it was this lack of action that led many of the activists within the movement to become disillusioned and dissatisfied and eventually leave it.

Bernard: Let’s go right back to the phones. The WINS “Contact” number: Judson 2-6405. This is Stan Bernard “Contact,” you’re on the air.

Caller: I’d like to direct my question to Malcolm.

Bernard: Yes. 

Caller: I’ve traced the Muslims’ history. I’m a student in college right now, and I’ve done some research on this, and I’ve heard a lot about the FOI, the secret police, and I’ve tried to dig up some information on it, but everywhere the information has eluded me. I wonder if Malcolm could fill me in on some of the details of the FOI.

Malcolm X: Well in this article by Aubrey in this week’s Saturday Evening Post, he points out—I think it’s pointed out beautifully for the first time, too—that the FOI was not a special group among the Muslims, but every Muslim man, when he became a registered follower of Elijah Muhammad, was an FOI. But the press got the impression that it was a special or select group within the Muslims that constituted the FOI.

Bernard: So, there’s your answer.

Malcolm X: And then I might even point out too that if you go back and examine the Muslim philosophy and its general overall temperament up until 1960, you’ll find that it was a group of people who tried to practice religion. I don’t think that the real rot set in until after 1960. This is why I was pointing out to Mr. Hall that it began to deteriorate and decline after 1960.

Bernard: What were some of the rules, Aubrey, that you came in contact with? You used to read the charges, according to your article, against people who were brought up by charges in your mosque. What kind of rules were they that were broken?

Barnette: Well the Black Muslims have their own rules and regulations that each member must follow. They have such strict rules as you can’t go to the theater, you couldn’t go to a sporting event, you couldn’t attend a Christian funeral or even a Christian wedding, even if it was a relative of yours. Now there’s a very specific reason they do this. There are two reasons. One reason is because it costs money to do these things, and the other reason is they’re teaching total dissatisfaction with the present society. So that you can do anything to gain any satisfaction whatsoever from today’s society and you’re contradicting what they are teaching. So a member would be punished he could be put out of the mosque or punished in other ways for going to a theater.

Bernard: Gordon...

Malcolm X: And for adultery or fornication. If a Muslim man or woman had anything to do whatsoever with any man or woman to whom he or she was not married, that person would be given from one to five years out of the society. That is, they would be brought in front of the Muslim body and totally humiliated, which is the worst form of psychological treatment that you can receive. Then they would be isolated into a category where they would have no intercourse whatsoever with the Muslim community for a solid year. And if they came back on probation, they’d be on probation for four years. Now in 1954 a young girl who was a secretary in Chicago became pregnant. And she was brought in front of the Muslim community. She was humiliated. She was isolated by the judge, who was Elijah Muhammad. And everyone took it for granted that the father of her child was a non-Muslim, because the other half was never brought to trial. In 1956 it happened to another young secretary in Chicago. In 1960 it happened to four more young secretaries in Chicago. And everyone at each time took it for granted that this was, that the father of these offspring was a non-Muslim.

Bernard: I know the charge you’re going to make.

Malcolm X: I’m not going to make any charge, because I know what your libel laws are. I wouldn’t say that, but here’s what I’m pointing out. Anytime you find a judge who will sit on a bench and a young girl will come before him and that young girl will be charged with adultery, and he will humiliate her, almost castigate her, and then sentence her into oblivion, solely to keep the court from knowing that he himself is the father of her children, that judge is not only unfit to be a judge, but he is not even a man, because he doesn’t even accept the fatherhood of the children which he is responsible for having brought into this world. And this type of rot is what caused the moral deterioration within the Black Muslim movement today. Formerly, if you notice, no matter what kind of criticism you had of the Muslims, they were disciplined morally. They didn’t drink. They didn’t smoke. They tried to show respect for people. And there was that force within it, which was a spiritual force, that made the rank-and-file one who believed in it capable of abstaining from many of the moral weaknesses. But after the real faith, the religious side, or the real spiritual power began to fade from the Black Muslim movement, the power that used to enable the brothers and sisters to let their higher tendencies dominate, rather than their lower tendencies, it was switched around. So that today the reason you have so much incidence of Muslim attacking Muslim is because the spiritual force that used to exist in the movement, among the rank and file is gone. So now you have an organized group of people who do not have the moral strength to rise above or contain themselves from falling victim to their own low desires.

Bernard: Gordon?

Hall: This is...this is...you know I wish we had time. This is such a bundle of contradictions. All these words. Malcolm is the greatest one in the world for eating up the clock. He does it every time that I sit across the table from him. Now he said at the outset that Aubrey's piece, or Aubrey Barnette’s piece, is a wonderful piece, and Aubrey says that the religious emphasis in the Muslim movement was a total fraud from start to finish and...

Malcolm X: No, no, no, no, no...

Hall: And now we’re getting the story about this great uplift and the deterioration.

Malcolm X: No, no, no. The religious ingredient in the Black Muslim movement was a fraud in the sense that it identified itself as an Islamic movement, as an Islamic...of being of an Islamic nature. It was a fraud in that it had, it was diametrically opposed to Islam. It was...Elijah Muhammad himself is anti-Arab. He’s more anti-Arab than probably the Israelis are. Now when I say about the religion: the religion, sir, is belief in something. You don’t have to be of a specific persuasion...

Hall: I’m well aware of that. 

Malcolm X: ...for it to be a religion.

 Hall: You don’t have to define it for me.

 Malcolm X: No, what the Black Muslims believe in, they believe in it religiously. We believed in Yacub. We believed in what Elijah Muhammad taught about an airplane up in the sky. We believed...

Hall: I know.

Malcolm X: ...in some of the most fantastic things that you could ever imagine.

Hall: One of the distressing aspects of a discussion like this with limited time is that with this great outpouring of words on the part of someone like Malcolm, an average listener, both Negro and white, might get the idea that this is what life is all about in the Negro community. And this isn’t what life is all about in the Negro community. We’re still talking about a handful of Muslims and a much smaller handful of followers of Malcolm X.

Bernard: Well, I want to ask you a question though. You know we were talking about...we were talking about terror.

Hall: Yes.

Bernard: We were talking about terror. Malcolm X says that he’s in a sense terrorized. He’s not frightened.

Malcolm X: No, wait a minute.

 Bernard: Well, no, no.

 Malcolm X: Terrorized how?

 Bernard: No, I don’t mean you’re scared. I don’t mean you’re scared. I mean...

 Malcolm X: Well, I’m not terrorized either.

Bernard: Threats have been made on your life.

Malcolm X: Well, that’s still...threats are a far cry from me being terrorized.

Hall: Well, a man...

Bernard: Excuse me. Somebody can run down the street at you and he can threaten you and you can call it, you can stick a label on it, and you can say that somebody is terrorizing a community.

Malcolm X: Yes.

Bernard: And they can be, indeed, and you can say that, well they’re...you’re not frightened. That’s okay...

Malcolm X: With all due respect to you, sir, nobody’s terrorizing me.

Bernard: Okay, you’re not terrorized, but you are being threatened.

Malcolm X: Yes.

Bernard: Let’s accept that. You are being threatened. Five times, you say, recently, and your house has been bombed. You’re an expert on extremist organizations, Gordon Hall

Hall: And I get threatened, I might add, a good deal. And the last place that I take threats on my body...and I have also been beaten up very badly, too. The last place that I take them is to the press to tell them all about it, because it gives other people ideas. I keep these things to myself. This is one of the hazards of being in the field that I am in, and I don’t go announcing to the press every chance that I get.

Bernard: That’s all your attitude. [To Malcolm X] You announce it all the time. Why?

Malcolm X: No, I have not announced it all of the time. I have answered the charges made by the Black Muslim movement on 116th Street.

Bernard: Um hm. The charges.

Malcolm X: The charges that I’m seeking publicity and pretending to be threatened.

 Bernard: What did you do when you were beaten, Aubrey?

 Barnette: How?

Bernard: Did you...did it get into the papers right away?

Barnette: It got in the papers but in a distorted way. The papers unfortunately accepted the Black Muslim view of what had happened. And, as I said before, that I was immediately labeled as a rival of the Black Muslims, although I had left the movement and forgotten all about them, I thought.

Malcolm X: Why were you labeled as a rival of the Black Muslims?

Barnette: I was labeled as a rival of the Black Muslims because I think the Black Muslims needed a scapegoat. They needed someone to point to as an enemy, as all mass movements do. They have to have an enemy. A mass movement can exist without a god, but it can’t exist without a devil.

Malcolm X: What I was getting at, sir, is they tried to identify you with me.

Barnette: Yes.

Malcolm X: And any time you were ident—the only time Elijah Muhammad gets favorable publicity is when it’s against me. They side with him and anything his followers do, as long as it’s against me.

Bernard: Gordon.

Hall: A cogent point, I hope, about the press. I’ve had a good deal to do with the press, too, and I’ve written a good many articles for the press. One of the reasons that the press is confused about these things is here you have people running around with phony names and initials like X on their name, with unlisted telephone numbers, engaging in all sorts of countercharges of conspiracy and counter-conspiracies. It’s little wonder that the press is confused; the members themselves of these movements are confused.

Bernard: But Gordon...

 Malcolm X: No, no. The press isn’t confused.

Barnette: The press, the press...using my name, address, age, and everything else, without ever once consulting me, and labeling me as a Black nationalist, when I’ve never joined any Black nationalist organization, or any other organization after I left the Black Muslims.

Bernard: Gentlemen, we’re going to...

Malcolm X: The press is more frightened of the Black nationalists than of the Black Muslims. And if you doubt it, all you have to do is pick up any story written, that involves Black Muslims and Black nationalists, and you’ll always find the press slants it skillfully in favor of the Black Muslims, despite the fact that the Black Muslim movement teaches that every white individual that comes into the world is a devil by nature, by nature. And the Black nationalists don’t do that. The Black nationalists judge people by their behavior, by their deeds, not by their color. But still the press knows that the Black Muslim movement is a hybrid, a hybrid, political and religious hybrid that will ever do anything against the Ku Klux Klan or against the organized white elements in this society that are brutalizing Black people. But that same Black Muslim movement will give the order for Black people within it to murder and cripple other black people in the community. The Black Muslim movement has never at any time been involved in any kind of strike against the Ku Klux Klan or the Citizens’ Council. Even in the South or the North. But they give the orders to fight each other. When the brother was killed in Los Angeles, no order was given. In fact, the brothers who wanted to go into action were restrained many of them right here in New York, by little fat Joseph were restrained. But that same Joseph gives his crew orders to go out and cripple other Black persons who have left the movement through dissatisfaction over what they’ve learned.

Bernard: We ought to go right back to the telephone and see what’s doing out there, because we haven’t taken very many phone calls. I have to apologize. We’ve really been very wordy in the studio tonight and battling it out in here. This is “Contact,” you’re on the air.

Caller: Hello, may I speak with Mr. X?

Bernard: Yes.

 Caller: Mr. X?

 Malcolm X: Yes.

Caller: Oh, it’s just so wonderful to hear you. I’ve attended several of your meetings. And if prayer will save you and your family, there will never be any harm to you.

Malcolm X: Thank you.

Caller: And I admire you for what you’ve done for these little Black children. You’d be surprised. They are glad to be Black now.

Malcolm X: Thank you.

Caller: So, God bless you. Whatever God it may be. Any Supreme Being, protect you and your family.

Malcolm X: Thank you.

Bernard: Thank you for your call. This is “Contact” you’re on the air.

Caller: Yes, I’d like to address a question to Malcolm. I’d like to ask him why, after his suspension, then his decision to leave the Muslim movement, then he decided to tell all. Why did he not tell his people about the children, the misappropriation of funds? So what purpose is it going to serve now? And secondly, why does he think someone wants to take his life? What purpose is it going to serve?

Malcolm X: This is a very good question. When I...first, the Black Muslim movement, one thing that the Black Muslim movement did, positive, here in this country, the militancy that it projected, made the Black people in this country more militant than they had ever been. The whole civil rights struggle was affected by the general posture reflected, or projected, by the Black Muslim movement.
When I first came into the knowledge of the crisis within Elijah Muhammad’s family in Chicago and what it would mean to the Black Muslim movement if it were out, I chose myself to remain silent, because...not to save Elijah Muhammad, but I felt...I was afraid of the psychological harm it would do his followers, plus the effect it would have on the struggle that Black people are waging in this country, period. When I first left the movement, I left and took the full blame. I even made it appear that I was leaving. I never left the Black Muslim movement. I was put out. And because the law in the movement is that when a person is put out they must first be brought before the membership and given a hearing, Elijah Muhammad was afraid to bring me before the membership and give me a hearing, for fear of what I might say in my own defense. So I was put in limbo, so to speak, suspended, and the Muslims in the temple here in New York were told that I would be back in ninety days. But at the same time they were being told that I would be back in ninety days, brothers were sent out by Joseph to take my life and those brothers are with me now; the police know about it. This is a fact. It was only after I was out of the movement, and then Elijah Muhammad began to use every pulpit in every temple in the Nation to blaspheme against me, plus Muhammad Speaks newspaper, to poison the minds of his followers into thinking that I had actually committed some kind of treacherous deed against him, that I felt it necessary for me to tell his followers the real reason for which I came out of the movement. And I’ve been doing that ever since.

Bernard: Gordon, you’re a professional observer of extremist organizations, and you classify the Black nationalists, and of course the Muslims, as extremist organizations. How do you appraise this political warfare that’s going on in the Black nationalist organization?

Hall: Well to be perfectly frank with you, and I do believe in speaking frankly, I think at the moment the Muslims are a dying organization, they’re on the way out, they’ve made no impact in the Negro community nationally at any point, and even less so now. Malcolm has no place to go, which is why he’s floundering so badly. For example, he’s been breaking bread with the communists downtown...

Malcolm X: What communists, what communists have I been...

Hall: Socialist Workers Party...

Malcolm X: You are absolutely out of your mind, I have never broken bread with...

Hall: You have given several speeches which they have reprinted...

Malcolm X: Well, that’s not breaking bread. I speak anywhere, I spoke in London, England, and...

Hall: You were very glad to go back several times, and they are reprinting one of your major addresses in The Militant...

Malcolm X: I spoke in a church, I spoke in a church in Rochester a couple of nights ago. Does that make me a Methodist?

Hall: We’re not talking about churches, we’re not talking about churches, we’re talking about the Socialist Workers Party...

Malcolm X: Just because you speak somewhere doesn’t make you that. You speak to the public and you speak on any platform...

Hall: Oh, I don’t, Malcolm.

Malcolm X: ...and I speak to the public and I speak on any platform.

Hall: I’m afraid that’s not the case, Malcolm.

Malcolm X: If speaking on the socialist platform makes me a socialist, then when I speak in a Methodist church...

Hall: It was a communist platform...

Malcolm X: I was in Selma, Alabama, last week, speaking in Martin Luther King’s church. Does that make me a follower of Martin Luther King? No, your line of reasoning, sir, doesn’t fit me.

Hall: I was just saying that I was asked a question by Stan, and I think that at the moment the nationalist movement has no place to go, they’re floundering, and they’re putting out lines everywhere. And there is an alliance in the general Harlem area between some of the Peking-based communists, the Progressive Labor Movement, and some of the others, the Bill Epton crowd. Bill Epton is a self-confessed avowed communist—you’d agree to that, wouldn’t you, Malcolm?

Malcolm X: I know nothing about what Bill Epton’s political philosophy is. Bill Epton, in my opinion, is one of the militant leaders in Harlem. Now, what his political beliefs are, I think that he has a right to them.

Hall: I didn’t say he didn’t have a right, I’m just saying what he is.

Malcolm X: Well—

 Hall: He has stated to me personally—

 Malcolm X: Well, whatever they are—

 Hall: I have interviewed him, he told me that he was an avowed communist—

 Malcolm X: So whatever they are, he has a right to them. 

Hall:—and he’d like to see this system of ours completely junked, as well. All I’m saying is that there’s a lot of warfare—

Malcolm X: I think you’ll find that a lot of the children that are out there in Brooklyn—

Hall: May I speak, Malcolm, may I speak—

Malcolm X:—on the rampage against the segregated school system here in New York City—

Hall: May I speak?

Malcolm X:—and King and some of his followers in Alabama right now are fighting against the same system.

Hall: You’re a great clock-killer, but you don’t let other people speak.

Malcolm X: Well, say your words.

Hall: I’m trying to...if you would be kind enough to let me speak—

Bernard: Go ahead.

 Malcolm X: Go right ahead, Mr. Hall. Dr. Hall.

Hall: Well, at any rate, they’re floundering now, and there’s a lot of internecine warfare going on in the Harlem section, and most of the movements are small and splintered, and are splinters of splinters. And I suppose only the future will tell which one will emerge victorious and perhaps claim the most members. I would make a prediction, and I think we could come back a year from now, Stan, and I think you may find Malcolm preaching a completely separate doctrine, and leading some other kind of movement.

Malcolm X: Well, you know, one of the best compliments that Dr. Hall here can pay me is just the things that he says. When he begins to pat me on the back, I’ll be worried...

Hall: I’m not patting you on the back. I told you up in Boston...

Malcolm X: I said, when you begin to pat me on the back...

Hall: ...give a little time and you’d be preaching a new line, and you are.

Malcolm X: I said, when you begin to pat me on the back, I’ll be worried. When you begin, people of your profession, who make a profession out of dealing with groups in this country. When you begin to pat me on the back, then I’ll be worried, sir. Now I would advise you, if you think that nationalism has no influence whatsoever, the nationalists, the Organization of Afro-American Unity, are having a rally at the Audubon Ballroom on Broadway...

Hall: I think you mentioned it earlier, you’re getting in a couple of plugs.

Malcolm X: I’m going to mention it again. I wouldn’t come on the program and not mention it. Because one of the most difficult things for nationalists to do is to let the public know what they’re doing. So we’re having this rally at the Audubon...

Hall: The public is engaged in a vast conspiracy against you; it’s obvious from what you say...

Malcolm X: You’re going to make me mention it four or five times. We’re having this rally at the Audubon Ballroom this coming Sunday at 2 o’clock and people just like you, who consider themselves experts on nationalists, are given front-seat invitations, and I would advise you, since it’s your profession to know what nationalists and other so-called extremists are doing, to come and be our guest. Now, one thing I’d like to point out to you, Dr. Hall, whenever you find black...

Hall: You know perfectly well I’m not a doctor, Malcolm.

Malcolm X: Well, you sound like you’re an expert on something, I thought you were a doctor. Whenever you find the condition that black people are confronted by in this country, being permitted by the government to exist so long, the condition in itself is extreme—and any black man, who really feels about this situation that our people are confronted by, his feelings are extreme. You can’t take a cough syrup and cure somebody who has pneumonia. And the black people are becoming more extreme every day. I was in Alabama a couple of weeks ago, before I went to England, down there with Dr. King and some of the others, who are trying to just register and vote. Now I’ll tell you frankly, with King supposed to be the most moderate, most conservative, most loving, most endorsed, most supported—

Hall: The word is responsible, but go ahead.

Malcolm X: O.K., responsible to the white power structure. To me, when white people talk about responsible...

Hall: He’s a responsible American, that’s what he is.

Malcolm X: When people like you usually refer to Negroes as responsible, you mean Negroes who are responsible in the context of your type of thinking. So, getting right back to Dr. King, any time you find a person who goes along with the government, to the degree that Dr. King does, and still Dr. King’s followers, children, are made to run down the road by brute policemen who are nothing but Klansmen, and the federal government can step in and do nothing about it, I will guarantee you that you are producing extremists by the thousands. Now when I was down there, they wanted me to speak to the press, but didn’t want me to speak to the church, or the children or the students. It was the students themselves that insisted that I speak, that gave me the opportunity to speak.

Bernard: Malcolm, how do you think that’s going to be changed?

Malcolm X: Sir, I think that—

Bernard: How? I mean, I know you’re talking about these children being made into extremists, but how, how is the situation going to be changed? Do you think by warfare?

Malcolm X: It’s not going to be changed by making believe that it doesn’t exist to the intense degree that it exists. And it’s not going to be changed by putting out polls, like Newsweek magazine did last week, implying that Negroes are satisfied with the rate of progress. This is deluding yourself. And my contention is that white people do themselves a disservice by putting out these kinds of things to make it appear that Negroes are satisfied when the most explosive situation, racially, that has ever existed in this country, exists right now. And all of your so-called responsible leaders, when they speak about the situation, they say everything is in check. Yet every day you find Negro children becoming more explosive than ever—

Bernard: You’re not answering my question, you’re avoiding it. I asked you how is it going to change? Is it going to change through extreme behavior, let’s call it extreme reaction—in other words, you are going to react extremely to a situation that you don’t like? Now, how extreme can your reaction be?

Malcolm X: Well, sir, when Russia put missiles in Cuba, the only thing that made Russia get her missiles out of Cuba was when America pointed missiles right back at Russia.

Bernard: Are you suggesting revolution?

Malcolm X: No, I’m saying this: that when you respect the intelligence of black people in this country as being equal to that of whites, then you will realize that the reaction of the black man to oppression will be the same as the reaction of the white man to oppression. The white man will not turn the other cheek when he’s being oppressed. He will not practice any kind of love of a Klan or a Citizens Council or anyone else. But at the same time the white man is asking the black man to do this. So all I’m saying is, I absolutely believe the situation can be changed. But I don’t think it can be changed by white people taking a hypocritical approach, pretending that it is not as bad as it is, and by black leaders, so-called responsible leaders, taking a hypocritical approach, trying to make white people think that black people are patient and long-suffering and are willing to sit around here a long time, or a great deal of time longer, until the problem is made better.

Bernard: Let’s go back to the phone. The WINS Contact number: Judson 2-6405. This is Contact, you’re on the air.

Caller: Hello, Malcolm?

Malcolm X: Yes?

Caller: The Ku Klux Klan should get you.

Malcolm X: Ha-ha-ha-ha.

Bernard: Thank you very much.

Malcolm X: Let me point something out to this lady. I’m invited to Mississippi next week. I’ll be going to Mississippi next week. The Ku Klux Klan will have all the opportunity it wants to get me. I was in Alabama last week; they had an opportunity then. You don’t always have to go down South to find the Ku Klux Klan. Evidently one is your father, or you wouldn’t be able to speak as you do.

Bernard: This is Contact, you’re on the air.

Caller: I’d like to ask Mr. Barnette a question. In Louis Lomax’s book, When the Word Is Given..., he says none of the rumors about the Muslims receiving help from outside, communist or segregationist sources has proved true. Does Mr. Barnette have any information that will verify or refute that statement?

Bernard: I didn’t quite get it, but Mr. Barnette has left the room. He’s left the studio during this last part of the debate, and he’s not here to answer it.

Caller: Could Mr. Hall answer it?

Bernard: Could Mr. Hall answer it? 

Hall: I didn’t quite understand your question. Could you quote that again for us?

Caller: Yes. Louis Lomax says that none of the rumors about Muslims receiving help from outside, communist or segregationist sources has proved true. And I’d like to know what they think about this.

Hall: I would agree with Mr. Lomax’s statement on that. I think that’s an actual statement. I’m not so sure that that is applicable to other militant groups in the Negro community, but I think it’s applicable to the Muslims.

Bernard: I’m not sure—

Malcolm X: They don’t get any help from outside sources?

Hall: She’s talking about outside communist or segregationist sources.

Malcolm X: Do they get any help from inside segregationist sources? You’re the expert.

Hall: I would doubt that very much. I have no evidence of that, and neither do you; and if you do, then—

Malcolm X: I’m not saying that I do.

Hall:—put up, Malcolm. You’re implying; you’re a very sly implier.

Malcolm X: Because you give me the impression, all of a sudden, that you’re a protector of the Black Muslim movement—

Hall: Not a bit, not a bit.

Malcolm X:—when it comes to rallying them against the black nationalists. Because you know that the Black Muslim movement is in a bag, and has no place to go.

Hall: I’m the one, I’m the one—just to show how faulty your logic is—let me speak. Just to show you how faulty your logic is, I arranged for the Saturday Evening Post story, which you have praised with your own mouth tonight as the best thing ever written on the Black Muslims.

Malcolm X: Not because you arranged it—

 Hall: I arranged it.

 Malcolm X: It’s the best, not because you arranged it. That doesn’t make it best. It’s best because Aubrey—

Bernard: Mr. Hall is saying that he arranged for it to be written because he thought it was valid and valuable. 

Malcolm X: What he arranged, what he did, is immaterial to me. I’m not commenting on—

Hall: You never want to louse up an argument with facts, Malcolm.

 Malcolm X: Sir, I’m not commenting on what you did; it’s immaterial to me.

 Hall: But you said it was a wonderful piece.

Malcolm X: I’m saying what Aubrey did. Aubrey is the one who did the piece. You can arrange for Rockwell to write a piece.

Hall: Aubrey came to me—

Malcolm X: You can arrange for Rockwell to write a piece.

Hall:—because he knew that I could get this story told in the best fashion.

Malcolm X: You can arrange for Rockwell, you can arrange for the Klan to write a piece.

Hall: No, I could not, I could not.

Malcolm X: So what you can arrange doesn’t impress me.

Hall: Malcolm, you know perfectly well that I couldn’t. That’s just a smear.

Malcolm X: You could, sir. You’re a mercenary.

Hall (to Bernard): You can’t see the technique?

Malcolm X: No, you’re a professional, you said that yourself; that’s why I call you a doctor— 

Bernard: Next call, can we go on to our next call? Now?

 Hall: I like it when he talks this way, because he exposes himself.

 Malcolm X: No, I’m exposing you as a mercenary, an opportunist.

 Bernard: Here we go, it’s the next call time, here we go. This is Contact, you’re on the air.

Caller: I’d like to direct a question to Malcolm X.

 Bernard: Go ahead.

Caller: I heard him on a newsreel say that Charlie’s enemies are his enemies, and this was supposed to refer to the white man as Charlie.

Malcolm X: Charlie is the Ku Klux Klan, and the White Citizens Council, and white people who practice discrimination and segregation against black people.

Caller: Right. Then I’d like to ask you, something which you mentioned about aid from Red China.

Malcolm X: I’ve never mentioned anything about aid from Red China. Ask Dr. Hall here, he’s an expert; I think he’ll even have to agree to that.

Caller: This man asked you if the aid to fight Charlie came from the Red Chinese, would you accept it? You said from anybody.

Malcolm X: Well, that doesn’t specify Red China. I said this, that when you’re in the den of a wolf, and a fox comes along and offers to help you, you’ll accept help from any source available against that wolf.

Bernard: Yeah, but they asked you—

 Malcolm X: This doesn’t mean that you love foxes.

Bernard: Did they specify when they asked you the question whether they— 

Malcolm X: I don’t think they said Communist China; if I recall, I could be wrong, but I don’t think they specified Communist China. Although let me say this about Communist China: China is a nation of 700 million people. Physically they exist; physically they exist. I don’t go along with the American reaction of pretending that 700 million Chinese don’t exist. When I was in Africa during the summer, everywhere I looked, I saw Chinese. It’s only when I get back to America that I don’t see any Chinese. I just don’t think it’s mature to pretend that 700 million people don’t exist.

Hall: That doesn’t happen to be U.S. policy, to pretend that they don’t exist, Malcolm. You just say things that aren’t so.

Malcolm X: No, but I— 

Hall: The United States is well aware of Red China.

Malcolm X: She certainly is. They just detonated some nuclear bombs over there. Plus their forces have the United States soldiers tied down in Saigon. She’d have to be well aware. She has half of your forces tied up. You’d be crazy not to be aware of her existence. But at the same time you’re trying to give the public, the people over here, the impression that they don’t exist.

Hall: You’re just saying that; that’s not the case at all.

 Malcolm X: They’re human beings, just the same as you and I are.

 Bernard: You, of course, espouse recognition of Red China and her admission into the United Nations?

Malcolm X: Many of your senators in Washington, D.C., espouse the same thing. I think most intelligent, progressive people, who are up to date in their thinking, have finally reached intellectual and political maturity to the point where they feel that when you’ve got that many people on this earth, you’d better recognize them and deal with them as human beings, and then they will deal with you as human beings. If you say you shouldn’t deal with them because they are communist, then why deal with Russia? Or if you say you shouldn’t deal with them because they fought United Nations forces in Korea, then why deal with Tshombe? Tshombe also fought United Nations forces in Katanga. If you use the same yardstick to measure these people all the time, I think you’ll end up with better results.

Bernard: All right, let’s go on to our next call. Our WINS Contact number—Judson 2-6405. This is Stan Bernard’s Contact, you’re on the air.

Caller: Hello? Malcolm, I’d like to ask you whether you feel that the recent action of the Gaullist government in refusing you entry into France is in any way inconsistent with France’s general policy towards the Afro-Asian community and Africa in particular.

Malcolm X: Yes, I dispatched a wire to Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State here today, demanding an investigation into the reason why the French government could ban an American citizen and no reaction come from the American Embassy whatsoever. But I might point out, I was in Paris last November and was successful in organizing a good organization—another one that Dr. Hall over here can investigate in his capacity—in the American Negro community in Paris, and they have been working in conjunction with the African community. And it was the African community and the Afro-American community in Paris that invited me there to address a mass rally, and the French government permitted my entry into that country. And I might point out that it was the Communist trade-union workers in Paris that refused to let them have the hall initially, blocked their attempt to get the second hall, and eventually exercised influence in the French government to stop it. The Communist trade-union workers, one of the largest unions in that country. The reason I was in London—I had been invited there to attend the first congress that had been given by the Council of African Organizations, who had a four-day congress, and invited me to make the closing address, because they were interested in the struggle of the black man in this country in his quest for human dignity and human rights.

Bernard: O.K., we’re going to move on to our next call. This is Contact, you’re on the air.

Caller: Hello. May I speak to Malcolm X, please?

Bernard: Yes, go right ahead. 

Caller: I would like to—I don’t have a question for Malcolm X. I would like to tell him that I am 100 per cent with him for whatever he goes along with toward helping the Negro. I think it’s an awful shame that anyone should throw a bomb into a house where there’s human beings, particularly children. And I don’t go along at all with the Muslims, the so-called Muslims, because to me they’re only teaching hate.

Malcolm X: Well, I confess that I was one of the leaders in projecting the Muslim movement and causing so many people to believe in the distorted version of Islam that is taught there. But at the same time I have to point out that there are some progressive elements, right-meaning persons, in the Muslim movement. All of them are not wrong. There are many in there that mean well but are just being misled by the hierarchy, many of which do not mean well. But there is a large progressive element within the movement, and usually they are the ones who come in, they stay a year and they get disillusioned, and they go back out. But I was responsible for giving the people the impression that the Black Muslim movement was more than what it is, and I take that responsibility. You can put the complete blame upon me. But at the same time that I take that responsibility, I want to point out that no white man or white group or agency can use me against Elijah Muhammad or against the Black Muslim movement. When you hear me open up my mouth against another black man, no white man can put words in my mouth, nor can any white man sic me on another black group. When I have analyzed the man and the group with my own understanding, and feel that it is detrimental to the interests of the black community, then I’m going to attack it with that same intensity.

Bernard: Gordon, you were going to say something?

Hall: Well, again, as you know, it’s more words. He began by saying that he has to confess that he was responsible for misleading so many people on the Muslim count. There were never very many Muslims. Let’s always come back to the fact that not very many people were ever misled. The white press was misled into believing there were a lot of Muslims.

Malcolm X: Dr. Hall—

Hall: There were never more than 15,000 Muslims in America, and there are only now 6,000. And we have 22 million Negroes in the United States. Keep these facts uppermost in one’s mind.

Malcolm X: Dr. Hall—

Bernard: You admitted this at the very beginning, Malcolm. You said the 15,000 figure is correct.

Hall: These are facts, Malcolm. 

Malcolm X: Here’s another fact you have to keep in mind. There were never many Mau Mau. There never were. There were always more Kikuyu, more Kenyans, than Mau Mau.

Hall: What is this supposed to prove?

Malcolm X: But it was the Mau Mau who brought independence to Kenya. And the man that was regarded as an extremist and a monster, just five years ago, Jomo Kenyatta, is the president of the Republic of Kenya today; and it is this same man, who five years ago—

Hall: The situation in colonial Africa today is not like it is in the United States.

Malcolm X: Well, this is colonial. Any time you have a system, in 1965, that will take children and let them be marched down the road by not the criminal elements but—

Bernard: But in numbers you have to draw one big analogy. In the United States, the Negro is still a minority. In the United States. And when you are talking about minorities within minorities within minorities, and you start boiling it all down, you can’t really draw that analogy with a colony.

Malcolm X: I say this: The Mau Mau was also a minority, a microscopic minority, but it was the Mau Mau who not only brought independence to Kenya, but—

Bernard: Within a vast Negro majority.

Malcolm X: But it brought it—that wick. The powder keg is always larger than the wick. The smallest thing in the powder keg is the wick. You can touch the powder all day long and nothing happens. It’s the wick that you touch that sets the powder off.

Bernard: I wouldn’t want to, I think it’ll blow up.

Malcolm X: It’s the wick that you touch that sets the powder off. You go here in Harlem, and you take all these moderate Negroes that Dr. Hall here puts the stamp of approval on, and regards them as responsible— they don’t explode. It’s the wick, it’s that small element that you refer to as nationalist and other—

Hall: You’re doing all you can to encourage it, Malcolm, with your demagogic language—

Malcolm X: No, no, I don’t encourage it— 

Hall: Oh, yes you do. 

Malcolm X: I don’t encourage it; but I’m not going to sit here and pretend that it doesn’t exist.

 Bernard: Don’t you incite, Malcolm? Don’t you incite?

 Malcolm X: I don’t think so. How are you going to incite people who are living in slums and ghettos? It’s the city structure that incites. A city that continues to let people live in rat-nest dens in Harlem and pay higher rent in Harlem than they pay downtown. This is what incites it. Who lets merchants outcharge or overcharge people for their groceries and their clothing and other commodities in Harlem, while you pay less for it downtown. This is what incites it. A city that will not create some kind of employment for people who are barred from having jobs just because their skin is black. That’s what incites it. Don’t ever accuse a black man for voicing his resentment and dissatisfaction over the criminal condition of his people as being responsible for inciting the situation. You have to indict the society that allows these things to exist. And this is where I differ with Dr. Hall.

Bernard: Well, in a sense— 

Hall: We differ in many places, Malcolm.

Malcolm X: This is another one of the many places where we differ, Dr. Hall. 

Bernard: Well, in a sense, didn’t Hitler also talk about different points of view, didn’t he say that conditions existed, and didn’t he also incite?

Malcolm X: I don’t know anything about Hitler, I wasn’t in Germany. I’m in America.

Bernard: Don’t—don’t, please, Malcolm—

Malcolm X: I say, I wasn’t in Germany. 

Bernard: You know about Hitler as well as—

Malcolm X: You can’t point to Hitler and Germany behind what’s going on here in America! Turn on the television tonight and see what’s—

Bernard: In Harlem—

Malcolm X: No, no, no—turn on the television tonight and see what they’re doing to Dr. King.

Hall: Dr. King’s methods are not your methods. You couldn’t do in Alabama what he is doing.

Malcolm X: Sir—sir—

 Hall: You could not do— 

Malcolm X: Sir, you had better pray that I don’t go and try to do what he is doing. Any time Dr. King—

Hall: Oh, these are just, these are just words, Malcolm—

 Malcolm X: Any time Dr. King goes along with people like you—like you—you should put forth more effort to keep him out of jail. You should put forth more effort to protect him. And you should put forth more effort to protect the people who go along with him and display this love and this patience. If you would do more for those people and spend some of your time trying to help those people instead of trying to attack me, probably this country would be a much better place in which to live. You spend too much of your time, doctor, trying to investigate—

Hall: I rarely ever mention you, Malcolm, you’re hardly worth mentioning—

Malcolm X: You spend too much of your time, doctor, running around trying to keep track of dissatisfied black people whom you label as extremists—

Hall: Hardly, hardly—

Malcolm X:—whereas if you would spend some of your time in these places where Dr. King is fighting, then you would make this country a better place to live in.

Hall: Malcolm, I lectured all over the state of Alabama, when you had nothing to do with the Muslims or anybody else.

Malcolm X: Did you have on a white sheet? Did you have on a white sheet?

Hall: See what I mean?

Bernard: Gentlemen, time. Bell—here we go— bell. O. K., that’s round 15. We’ve just had it.

Malcolm X: Dr. Hall, come up to the Audubon Sunday at 2 o’clock, and we’ll continue from there.

Hall: I have more important things to do.

Bernard: Gentlemen, we have to move on. Time has run out. I’d like to thank all of you for showing up tonight. Thank you very much, Gordon—Malcolm— and, of course, Aubrey Barnette.

Not Just an American Problem, But a World Problem (Feb. 16, 1965)

2013-07-05T08:22:00.004-07:00

First, brothers and sisters, I want to start by thanking you for taking the time to come out this evening and especially for the invitation for me to come up to Rochester and participate in this little informal discussion this evening on matters that are of common interest to all elements in the community, in the entire Rochester community. My reason for being here is to discuss the Black revolution that is going on, that’s taking place on this earth, the manner in which it’s taking place on the African continent, and the impact that it’s having in Black communities, not only here in America but in England and in France and in other of the former colonial powers today.

Many of you probably read last week I made an effort to go to Paris and was turned away. And Paris doesn’t turn anybody away. You know anybody is supposed to be able to go to France, it’s supposed to be a very liberal place. But France is having problems today that haven’t been highly publicized. And England is also having problems that haven’t been highly publicized, because America’s problems have been so highly publicized. But all of these three partners, or allies, have troubles in common today that the Black American, or Afro-American, isn’t well enough up on.

And in order for you and me to know the nature of the struggle that you and I are involved in, we have to know not only the various ingredients involved at the local level and national level, but also the ingredients that are involved at the international level. And the problems of the Black man here in this country today have ceased to be a problem of just the American Negro or an American problem. It has become a problem that is so complex, and has so many implications in it, that you have to study it in its entire world, in the world context or in its international context, to really see it as it actually is. Otherwise you can’t even follow the local issue, unless you know what part it plays in the entire international context. And when you look at it in that context, you see it in a different light, but you see it with more clarity.

And you should ask yourself why should a country like France be so concerned with a little insignificant American Negro that they would prohibit him from going there, when almost anybody else can go to that country whenever they desire. And it’s primarily because the three countries have the same problems. And the problem is this: That in the Western Hemisphere, you and I haven’t realized it, but we aren’t exactly a minority on this earth. In the Western Hemisphere there are—there’s the people in Brazil, two thirds of the people in Brazil are dark-skinned people, the same as you and I. They are people of African origin, African ancestry—African background. And not only in Brazil, but throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, the United States, and Canada, you have people here who are of African origin.

Many of us fool ourselves into thinking of Afro-Americans as those only who are here in the United States. America is North America, Central America, and South America. Anybody of African ancestry in South America is an Afro-American. Anybody in Central America of African blood is an Afro-American. Anybody here in North America, including Canada, is an Afro-American if he has African ancestry—even down in the Caribbean’ he’s an Afro-American. So when I speak of the Afro-American, I’m not speaking of just the 22 million of us who are here in the United States. But the Afro-American is that large number of people in the Western Hemisphere, from the southernmost tip of South America to the northernmost tip of North America, all of whom have a common heritage and have a common origin when you go back to the roots of these people.

Now, there are four spheres of influence in the Western Hemisphere, where Black people are concerned. There’s the Spanish influence, which means that Spain formerly colonized a certain area of the Western Hemisphere. There’s the French sphere of influence, which means that area that she formerly colonized. The area that the British formerly colonized, and then those of us who are in the United States.

The area that was formerly colonized by the Spanish is commonly referred to as Latin America. They have many dark-skinned people there, of African ancestry. The area which the French colonized here in the Western Hemisphere is largely referred to as the French West Indies. And the area that the British colonized are those that are commonly referred to as the British West Indies, and also Canada. And then again, there’s the United States. So we have these four different classifications of Black people, or nonwhite people, here in the Western Hemisphere.

Because of the poor economy of Spain, and because it has ceased to be an influence on the world scene as it formerly was, not very many of the people from—not very many of the black-skinned people from the Spanish sphere of influence migrate to Spain. But because of the high standard of living in France and England, you find many of the Black people from the British West Indies have been migrating to Great Britain, many of the Black people from the French West Indies migrate to France, and then you and I are already here.

So it means that the three major allies, the United States, Britain, and France, have a problem today that is a common problem. But you and I are never given enough information to realize that they have a common problem. And that common problem is the new mood that is reflected in the overall division of the Black people within continental France, within the same sphere of England, and also here in the United States. So that—and this mood has been changing to the same degree that the mood on the African continent has been changing. So when you find the African revolution taking place, and by African revolution I mean the emergence of African nations into independence that has been going on for the past ten or twelve years, has absolutely affected the mood of the Black people in the Western Hemisphere. So much so that when they migrate to England, they pose a problem for the English. And when they migrate to France, they pose a problem for the French. And when they—already here in the States—but when they awaken, and this same mood is reflected in the Black man in the States, then it poses a problem to the white man here in America.

And don’t you think that the problem that the white man in America has is unique. France is having the same problem. And Great Britain is having the same problem. But the only difference between the problem in France and Britain and here is there have been many Black leaders that have risen up here in the Western Hemisphere, in the United States, that have created so much sort of militancy that has frightened the American whites. But that has been absent in France and England. And it has only been recently that the American Negro community and the British West Indian community, along with the African community in France, have begun to organize among themselves, and it’s frightening France to death. And the same thing is happening in England. It is—up until recently it was disorganized completely. But recently, the West Indians in England, along with the African community in England, along with the Asians in England began to organize and work in coordination with each other, in conjunction with each other. And this has posed England a very serious problem.

So I had to give you that background, in order for you to understand some of the current problems that are developing here on this earth. And in no time can you understand the problems between Black and white people here in Rochester or Black and white people in Mississippi or Black and white people in California, unless you understand the basic problem that exists between Black and white people not confined to the local level, but confined to the international, global level on this earth today. When you look at it in that context, you’ll understand. But if you only try to look at it in the local context, youl1 never understand. You have to see the trend that is taking place on this earth. And my purpose for coming here tonight is to try and give you as up-to-date an understanding of it all as is possible.

As many of you know, I left the Black Muslim movement and during the summer months, I spent five of those months on the—in the Middle East and on the African continent. During this time I visited many countries, first of which was Egypt, and then Arabia, then Kuwait, Lebanon, Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia, Zanzibar, Tanganyika—which is now Tanzania—Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Algeria. And then the five months that I was away I had an opportunity to hold lengthy discussions with President Nasser in Egypt, President Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya, Milton Obote in Uganda, Azikiwe in Nigeria, Nkrumah in Ghana, and Sekou Toure in Guinea. And during conversations with these men, and other Africans on that continent, there was much information exchanged that definitely broadened my understanding, and I feel, broadened my scope. For since coming back from over there, I have had no desire whatsoever to get bogged down in any picayune arguments with any bird-brained or small-minded people who happen to belong to organizations, based upon facts that are very misleading and don’t get you anywhere when you have problems as complex as ours that are trying to get solved.

So I’m not here tonight to talk about some of these movements that are clashing with each other. I’m here to talk about the problem that’s in front of all of us. And to do it in a very informal way. I never like to be tied down to a formal method or procedure when talking to an audience, because I find that usually the conversation that I’m involved in revolves around race, or things racial, which is not my fault. I didn’t create the race problem. And you know, I didn’t come to America on the Mayflower or at my own volition. Our people were brought here involuntarily, against our will. So if we pose the problem now, they shouldn’t blame us for being here. They brought us here.

One of the reasons I feel that it is best to remain very informal when discussing this type of topic, when people are discussing things based on race, they have a tendency to be very narrow-minded and to get emotional and all involved in , especially white people. I have found white people that usually are very intelligent, until you get them to talking about the race problem. Then they get blind as a bat and want you to see what they know is the exact opposite of the truth.

So what I would rather we try and do is be very informal, where we can relax and keep an open mind, and try and form the pattern or the habit of seeing for ourselves, hearing for ourselves, thinking for ourselves, and then we can come to an intelligent judgment for ourselves.

To straighten out my own position, as I did earlier in the day at Colgate, I’m a Muslim, which only means that my religion is Islam. I believe in God, the Supreme Being, the creator of the universe. This is a very simple form of religion, easy to understand. I believe in one God. It’s just a whole lot better. But I believe in one God, and I believe that that God had one religion, has one religion, always will have one religion. And that that God taught all of the prophets the same religion, so there is no argument about who was greater or who was better: Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, or some of the others. All of them were prophets who came from one God. They had one doctrine, and that doctrine was designed to give clarification of humanity, so that all of humanity would see that it was one and have some kind of brotherhood that would be practiced here on this earth. I believe in that.

I believe in the brotherhood of man. But despite the fact I that I believe in the brotherhood of man, I have to be a realist and realize that here in America we’re in a society that doesn’t practice brotherhood. It doesn’t practice what it preaches. It preaches brotherhood, but it doesn’t practice brotherhood. And because this society doesn’t practice brotherhood, those of us who are Muslim—those of us who left the Black Muslim movement and regrouped as Muslims, in a movement based upon orthodox Islam—we believe in the brotherhood of Islam.

But we also realize that the problem facing Black people in this country is so complex and so involved and has been here so long, unsolved, that it is absolutely necessary for us to form another organization. Which we did, which is a nonreligious organization in which—is known as the Organization of Afro-American Unity, and it is so structured organizationally to allow for active participation of any Afro-American, any Black American, in a program that is designed to eliminate the negative political, economic, and social evils that our people are confronted by in this society.

And we have that set up because we realize that we have to fight against the evils of a society that has failed to produce brotherhood for every member of that society. This in no way means that we’re anti-white, anti-blue, anti-green, or anti-yellow We’re anti-wrong. We’re anti-discrimination. We’re anti-segregation. We’re against anybody who wants to practice some form of segregation or discrimination against us because we don’t happen to be a color that’s acceptable to you...

We don’t judge a man because of the color of his skin. We don’t judge you because you’re white; we don’t judge you because you’re black; we don’t judge you because you’re brown. We judge you because of what you do and what you practice. And as long as you practice evil, we’re against you. And for us, the most—the worst form of evil is the evil that’s based upon judging a man because of the color of his skin. And I don’t think anybody here can deny that we’re living in a society that just doesn’t judge a man according to his talents, according to his know-how, according to his possibility—background, or lack of academic background. This society judges a man solely upon the color of his skin. If you’re white, you can go forward, and if you’re Black, you have to fight your way every step of the way, and you still don’t get forward.

We are living in a society that is by and large controlled by people who believe in segregation. We are living in a society that is by and large controlled by a people who believe in racism, and practice segregation and discrimination and racism. We believe in and I say that it is controlled, not by the well-meaning whites, but controlled by the segregationists, the racists. And you can see by the pattern that this society follows all over the world. Right now in Asia you have the American army dropping bombs on darkskinned people. You can’t say that—it’s as though you can justify being that far from home, dropping bombs on somebody else. If you were next door, I could see it, but you can’t go that far away from this country and drop bombs on somebody else and justify your presence over there, not with me.

It’s racism. Racism practiced by America. Racism which involves a war against the dark-skinned people in Asia, another form of racism involving a war against the dark-skinned people in the Congo, as it involves a war against the dark-skinned people in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Rochester, New York. So we’re not against people because they’re white. But we’re against those who practice racism. We’re against those who drop bombs on people because their color happens to be of a different shade than yours. And because we’re against it, the press says we’re violent. We’re not for violence. We’re for peace. But the people that we’re up against are for violence. You can’t be peaceful when you’re dealing with them. They accuse us of what they themselves are guilty of. This is what the criminal always does. They’ll bomb you, then accuse you of bombing yourself. They’ll crush your skull, then accuse you of attacking him. This is what the racists have always done the criminal, the one who has criminal processes developed to a science. Their practice is criminal action. And then use the press to make you victim—look like the victim is the criminal, and the criminal is the victim. This is how they do it.

And you here in Rochester probably know more about this than anybody anywhere else. Here’s an example of how they do. They take the press, and through the press, they beat the system, or through the white public, because the white public is divided. Some mean good, and some don’t mean good. Some are well meaning, and some are not well meaning. This is true. You got some that are not well meaning, and some are well meaning. And usually those that are not well meaning outnumber those that are well meaning. You need a microscope to find those that are well meaning. So they don’t like to do anything without the support of the white public. The racists, that are usually very influential in the society, don’t make their move without first going to get public opinion on their side. So they use the press to get public opinion on their side.

When they want to suppress and oppress the Black community, what do they do? They take the statistics, and through the press, they feed them to the public. They make it appear that the role of crime in the Black community is higher than it is anywhere else. What does this do? This message—this is a very skillful message used by racists to make the whites who aren’t racists think that the rate of crime in the Black community is so high. This keeps the Black community in the image of a criminal. It makes it appear that anyone in the Black community is a criminal. And as soon as this impression is given, then it makes it possible, or paves the way to set up a police-type state in the Black community, getting the full approval of the white public when the police come in, use all kind of brutal measures to suppress Black people, crush their skulls, sic dogs on them, and things of that type. And the whites go along with it. Because they think that everybody over there’s a criminal anyway. This is what—the press does this.

This is skill. This skill is called—this is a science that’s called “image making.” They hold you in check through this science of imagery. They even make you look down upon yourself, by giving you a bad image of yourself. Some of our own Black people who have eaten this image themselves and digested it—until they themselves don’t want to live in the Black community. They don’t want to be around Black people themselves.

It’s a science that they use, very skillfully, to make the criminal look like the victim, and to make the victim look like the criminal. Example: In the United States during the Harlem riots, I was in Africa, fortunately. During these riots, or because of these riots, or after the riots, again the press, very skillfully, depicted the rioters as hoodlums, criminals, thieves, because they were abducting some property.

Now mind you, it is true that property was destroyed. But look at it from another angle. In these Black communities, the economy of the community is not in the hands of the Black man. The Black man is not his own landlord. The buildings that he lives in are owned by someone else. The stores in the community are run by someone else. Everything in the community is out of his hands. He has no say-so in it whatsoever, other than to live there, and pay the highest rent for the lowest type boarding place, pays the highest prices for food, for the lowest grade of food. He is a victim of this, a victim of economic exploitation, political exploitation, and every other kind. Now, he’s so frustrated, so pent-up, so much explosive energy within him, that he would like to get at the one who’s exploiting him. But the one who’s exploiting him doesn’t live in his neighborhood. He only owns the house. He only owns the store. He only owns the neighborhood. So that when the Black man explodes, the one that he wants to get at isn’t there. So he destroys the property. He’s not a thief. He’s not trying to steal your cheap furniture or your cheap food. He wants to get at you, but you’re not there. And instead of the sociologists analyzing it as it actually is, trying to understand it as it actually is, again they cover up the real issue, and they use the press to make it appear that these people are thieves, hoodlums. No! They are the victims of organized thievery, organized landlords who are nothing but thieves, merchants who are nothing but thieves, politicians who sit in the city hall and who are nothing but thieves in cahoots with the landlords and the merchants.

But again, the press is used to make the victim look like the criminal and make the criminal look like the victim.... This is imagery. And just as this imagery is practiced at the local level, you can understand it better by an international example. The best recent example at the international level to bear witness to what I’m saying is what happened in the Congo. Look at what happened. We had a situation where a plane was dropping bombs on African villages. An African village has no defense against the bombs. And an African village is not sufficient threat that it has to be bombed! But planes were dropping bombs on African villages. When these bombs strike, they don’t distinguish between enemy and friend. They don’t distinguish between male and female. When these bombs are dropped on African villages in the Congo, they are dropped on Black women, Black children, Black babies. These human beings were blown to bits. I heard no outcry, no voice of compassion for these thousands of Black people who were slaughtered by planes.

Why was there no outcry? Why was there no concern? Because, again, the press very skillfully made the victims look like they were the criminals, and the criminals look like they were the victims.
They refer to the villages as “rebel held,” you know. As if to say, because they are rebel-held villages, you can destroy the population, and it’s okay. They also refer to the merchants of death as “American-trained, anti-Castro Cuban pilots.” This made it okay. Because these pilots, these mercenaries—you know what a mercenary is, he’s not a patriot. A mercenary is not someone who goes to war out of patriotism for his country. A mercenary is a hired killer. A person who kills, who draws blood for money, anybody’s blood. You kill a human being as easily as you kill a cat or a dog or a chicken. So these mercenaries, dropping bombs on African villages, caring nothing as to whether or not there are innocent, defenseless women and children and babies being destroyed by their bombs. But because they’re called “mercenaries,” given a glorified name, it doesn’t excite you. Because they are referred to as “American-trained” pilots, because they are American-trained, that makes them okay. “Anti-Castro Cubans,” that makes them okay. Castro’s a monster, so anybody who’s against Castro is all right with us, and anything they can do from there, that’s all right with us.... They put your mind right in a bag and take it wherever they want, as well.

But it’s something that you have to look at and answer for. Because they are American planes, American bombs, escorted by American paratroopers, armed with machine guns. But, you know, they say they’re not soldiers, they’re just there as escorts, like they started out with some advisers in South Vietnam. Twenty thousand of them— just advisers. These are just “escorts.” They’re able to do all of this mass murder and get away with it by labeling it “humanitarian,” an act of humanitarianism. Or “in the name of freedom,” “in the name of liberty.” All kinds of high-sounding slogans, but it’s cold-blooded murder, mass murder. And it’s done so skillfully, so you and I, who call ourselves sophisticated in this twentieth century, are able to watch it, and put the stamp of approval upon it. Simply because it’s being done to people with black skin, by people with white skin.

They take a man who is a cold-blooded murderer, named Tshombe. You’ve heard of him, Uncle Tom Tshombe. He murdered the prime minister, the rightful prime minister, Lumumba. He murdered him. Now here’s a man who’s an international murderer, selected by the State Department and placed over the Congo and propped into position by your tax dollars. He’s a killer. He’s hired by our government. He’s a hired killer. And to show the type of hired killer he is, as soon as he’s in office, he hires more killers in South Africa to shoot down his own people. And you wonder why your American image abroad is so bankrupt. Notice I said, “Your American image abroad is so bankrupt.” They make this man acceptable by saying in the press that he’s the only one that can unite the Congo. Ha. A murderer. They won’t let China in the United Nations because they say she declared war on UN troops in Korea. Tshombe declared war on UN troops in Katanga. You give him money and prop him up. You don’t use the same yardstick. You use the yardstick over here, change it over here.

This is true everybody can see you today. You make yourself look sick in the sight of the world trying to fool people that you were at least once wise with your trickery. But today your bag of tricks have absolutely run out. The whole world can see what you’re doing. The press whips up hysteria in the white public. Then it shifts gears and starts working trying to get the sympathy of the white public. And then it shifts gears and gets the white public to support whatever criminal action they’re getting ready to involve the United States in.

Remember how they referred to the hostages as “white hostages.” Not “hostages.” They said these “cannibals” in the Congo had “white hostages.” Oh, and this got you all shook up. White nuns, white priests, white missionaries. What’s thp difference between a white hostage and a Black hostage? What’s the difference between a white life and a Black life? You must think there’s a difference, because your press specifies whiteness. “Nineteen white hostages” cause you to grieve in your heart. During the months when bombs were being dropped on Black people by the hundreds and the thousands, you said nothing. And you did nothing. But as soon as a few—a handful of white people who didn’t have any business getting caught up in that thing in the first place——as soon as their lives became involved, you got concerned.

I was in Africa during the summer when they—when the mercenaries and the pilots were shooting down Black people in the Congo like flies. It wouldn’t even get mentioned in the Western press. It wasn’t mentioned. If it was mentioned, it was mentioned in the classified section of the newspaper. Someplace where you’d need a microscope to find it. And at that time the African brothers, at first they weren’t taking hostages. They only began to take hostages when they found that these pilots were bombing their villages. And then they took hostages, moved them into the village, and warned the pilots that if you drop bombs on the village, you’ll hit your own people. It was a war maneuver. They were at war. They only held a hostage in a village to keep the mercenaries from murdering on a mass scale the people of those villages. They weren’t keeping them as hostages because they were cannibals. Or because they thought their flesh was tasty. Some of those missionaries had been over there for forty years and didn’t get eaten up. If they were going to eat them they would have eaten them when they were young and tender. Why you can’t even digest that old white meat on an old chicken.

It’s imagery. They use their ability to create images, and then they use these images that they’ve created to mislead the people. To confuse the people and make the people accept wrong as right and reject right as wrong. Make the people actually think that the criminal is the victim and the victim is the criminal. Even as I point this out, you may say, “What does this all have to do with the Black man in America? And what does it have to do with the Black and white relations here in Rochester?”

You have to understand it. Until I959 the image of the African continent was created by the enemies of Africa. Africa was a land dominated by outside powers. A land dominated by Europeans. And as these Europeans dominated the continent of Africa, it was they who created the image of Africa that was projected abroad. And they projected Africa and the people of Africa in a negative image, a hateful image. They made us think that Africa was a land of jungles, a land of animals, a land of cannibals and savages. It was a hateful image. And because they were so successful in projecting this negative image of Africa, those of us here in the West of African ancestry, the Afro-American, we looked upon Africa as a hateful place. We looked upon the African as a hateful person. And if you referred to us as an African it was like putting us as a servant, or playing house, or talking about us in the way we didn’t want to be talked.

Why? Because those who oppress know that you can’t make a person hate the root without making them hate the tree. You can’t hate your own and not end up hating yourself. And since we all originated in Africa, you can’t make us hate Africa without making us hate ourselves. And they did this very skillfully. And what was the result? They ended up with 22 million Black people here in America who hated everything about us that was African. We hated the African characteristics, the African characteristics. We hated our hair. We hated our nose, the shape of our nose, and the shape of our lips, the color of our skin. Yes we did. And it was you who taught us to hate ourselves simply by shrewdly maneuvering us into hating the land of our forefathers and the people on that continent.

As long as we hated those people, we hated ourselves. As long as we hated what we thought they looked like, we hated what we actually looked like. And you call me a hate teacher. Why, you taught us to hate ourselves. You taught the world to hate a whole race of people and have the audacity now to blame us for hating you simply because we don’t like the rope that you put around our necks. When you teach a man to hate his lips, the lips that God gave him, the shape of the nose that God gave him, the texture of the hair that God gave him, the color of the skin that God gave him, you’ve committed the worst crime that a race of people can commit. And this is the crime that you’ve committed.

Our color became a chain, a psychological chain. Our blood—African blood—became a psychological chain, a prison, because we were ashamed of it. We believe they would tell it to your face, and say they weren’t; they were! We felt trapped because our skin was black. We felt trapped because we had African blood in our veins. This is how you imprisoned us. Not just bringing us over here and making us slaves. But the image that you created of our motherland and the image that you created of our people on that continent was a trap, was a prison, was a chain, was the worst form of slavery that has ever been invented by a so-called civilized race and a civilized nation since the beginning of the world.

You still see the result of it among our people in this country today. Because we hated our African blood, we felt inadequate, we felt inferior, we felt helpless. And in our state of helplessness, we wouldn’t work for ourselves. We turned to you for help, and then you wouldn’t help us. We didn’t feel adequate. We turned to you for advice and you gave us the wrong advice. Turned to you for direction and you kept us going in circles. But a change has come about. In us. And what from? Back in ‘55 in Indonesia, at Bandung, they had a conference of dark-skinned people. The people of Africa and Asia came together for the first time in centuries. They had no nuclear weapons, they had no air fleets, no navy. But they discussed their plight and they found that there was one thing that all of us had in common—oppression, exploitation, suffering. And we had a common oppressor, a common exploiter.

If a brother came from Kenya and called his oppressor an Englishman; and another came from the Congo, he called his oppressor a Belgian; another came from Guinea, he called his oppressor French. But when you brought the oppressors together there’s one thing they all had in common, they were all from Europe. And this European was oppressing the people of Africa and Asia.

And since we could see that we had oppression in common and exploitation in common, sorrow and sadness and grief in common, our people began to get together and determined at the Bandung Conference that it was time for us to forget our differences. We had differences. Some were Buddhists, some were Hindus, some were Christians, some were Muslim, some didn’t have any religion at all. Some were socialists, some were capitalists, some were communists, and some didn’t have any economy at all. But with all of the differences that existed, they agreed on one thing, the spirit of Bandung was, from there on in, to de-emphasize the areas of difference and emphasize the areas that we had in common.

And it was the spirit of Bandung that fed the flames of nationalism and freedom not only in Asia, but especially on the African continent. From ‘55 to ‘60 the flames of nationalism, independence on the African continent, became so bright and so furious, they were able to burn and sting anything that got in its path. And that same spirit didn’t stay on the African continent. It somehow or other—it slipped into the Western Hemisphere and got into the heart and the mind and the soul of the Black man in the Western Hemisphere who supposedly had been separate from the African continent for almost 400 years.

But the same desire for freedom that moved the Black man on the African continent began to burn in the heart and the mind and the soul of the Black man here, in South America, Central America, and North America, showing us we were not separated. Though there was an ocean between us, we were still moved by the same heartbeat. The spirit of nationalism on the African continent—It began to collapse; the powers, the colonial powers, they couldn’t stay there. The British got in trouble in Kenya, Nigeria, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and other areas of the continent. The French got in trouble in the entire French Equatorial North Africa, including Algeria. Became a trouble spot for France. The Congo wouldn’t any longer permit the Belgians to stay there. The entire African continent became explosive from ‘54’55 on up to 1959. By 1959 they couldn’t stay there any longer. It wasn’t that they wanted to go. It wasn’t that all of a sudden they had become benevolent. It wasn’t that all of a sudden they had ceased wanting to exploit the Black man of his natural resources. But it was the spirit of independence that was burning in the heart and mind of the Black man. He no longer would allow himself to be colonized, oppressed, and exploited. He was willing to lay down his life and take the lives of those who tried to take his, which was a new spirit.

The colonial powers didn’t leave. But what did they do? Whenever a person is playing basketball, if—you watch him—the players on the opposing team trap him and he doesn’t want to get rid of, to throw the ball away, he has to pass it to someone who’s in the clear, who’s on the same team as he. And since Belgium and France and Britain and these other colonial powers were trapped—they were exposed as colonial powers—they had to find someone who was still in the clear, and the only one in the clear so far as the Africans were concerned was the United States. So they passed the ball to the United States. And this administration picked it up and ran like mad ever since. As soon as they grabbed the ball, they realized that they were confronted with a new problem. The problem was that the Africans had awakened. And in their awakening they were no longer afraid. And because the Africans were not afraid, it was impossible for the European powers to stay on that continent by force. So our State Department, grabbing the ball and in their new analysis, they realized that they had to use a new strategy if they were going to replace the colonial powers of Europe.

What was their strategy? The friendly approach. Instead of coming over there with their teeth gritted, they started smiling at the Africans. “We’re your friends. But in order to convince the African that he was their friend he had to start off pretending like they were our friend.

You didn’t get the man to smile at you because you were bad, no. He was trying to impress your brother on the other side of the water. He smiled at you to make his smile consistent. He started using a friendly approach over there. A benevolent approach. A philanthropic approach. Call it benevolent colonialism. Philanthropic imperialism. Humanitarianism backed up by dollarism. Tokenism. This is the approach that they used. They didn’t go over there well meaning. How could you leave here and go on the African continent with the Peace Corps and Cross Roads and these other outfits when you’re hanging Black people in Mississippi? How could you do it? How could you train missionaries, supposedly over there to teach them about Christ, when you won’t let a Black man in your Christ’s church right here in Rochester, much less in the South. You know that’s something to think about. It gets me hot when I think about it.

From 1954 to 1964 can easily be looked upon as the era of the emerging African state. And as the African state emerged from ‘54 to ‘64, what impact, what effect did it have on the Afro-American, the Black American? As the Black man in Africa got independent, it put him in a position to be master of making his own image. Up until 1959 when you and I thought of an African, we thought of someone naked, coming with the tom-toms, with bones in his nose. Oh yeah! This was the only image you had in your mind of an African. And from ‘59 on when they begin to come into the UN and you’d see them on the television you’d get shocked. Here was an African who could speak better English than you. He made more sense than you. He had more freedom than you. Why places where you couldn’t go——places where you couldn’t go, all he had to do was throw on his robes and walk right past you. It had to shake you up. And it was only when you’d become shook up that you began to really wake up.

So as the African nations gained their independence and the image of the African continent began to change, the things agreed as the image of Africa switched from negative to positive. Subconsciously. The Black man throughout the Western Hemisphere, in his subconscious mind, began to identify with that emerging positive African image.

And when he saw the Black man on the African continent taking a stand, it made him become filled with the desire also to take a stand. The same image, the same just as the African image was negative—and you hear about old hat in the hand, compromising, fearful looks— we were the same way. But when we began to read about Jomo Kenyatta and the Mau Mau and others, then you find Black people in this country began to think along the same line. And more closely along the same line than some of them really want to admit.

When they saw—just as they had to change their approach with the people on the African continent, they also then began to change their approach with our people on this continent. As they used tokenism and a whole lot of other friendly, benevolent, philanthropic approaches on the African continent, which were only token efforts, they began to do the same thing with us here in the States. Tokenism. They came up with all kinds of programs that weren’t really designed to solve anybody’s problems. Every move they made was a token move. They never made a real down-to-earth move at one time to really solve the problem. They came up with a Supreme Court desegregation decision that they haven’t put into practice yet. Not even in Rochester, much less in Mississippi. They fooled the people in Mississippi by trying to make it appear that they were going to integrate the University of Mississippi. They took one Negro to the university backed up with about 6,000—15,000 troops, I think it was. And I think it cost them $6 million.

And three or four people got killed in the act. And it was only an act. Now, mind you, after one of them got in, they said there’s integration in Mississippi. They stuck two of them in the school in Georgia and said there’s integration in Georgia. Why you should be ashamed. Really, if I was white, I’d be so ashamed I’d crawl under a rug. And I’d feel so low while I was under that rug I wouldn’t even leave a hump.

This tokenism, this tokenism was a program that was designed to protect the benefits of only a handful of handpicked Negroes. And these handpicked Negroes were given big positions, and then they were used to open up their mouths to tell the world, “Look at how much progress we’re making.” He should say, look at how much progress he is making. For while these handpicked Negroes were eating high on the hog, rubbing elbows with white folk, sitting in Washington, D.C., the masses of Black people in this country continued to live in the slum and in the ghetto. The masses, the masses of Black people in this country remain unemployed, and the masses of Black people in this country continue to go to the worst schools and get the worst education. Along during the same time appeared a movement known as the Black Muslim movement. The Black Muslim movement did this: Up until the time the Black Muslim movement came on the scene, the NAACP was regarded as radical. They wanted to investigate it. They wanted to investigate it. CORE and all the rest of them were under suspect, under suspicion. King wasn’t heard of. When the Black Muslim movement came along talking that kind of talk that they talked, the white man said, “Thank God for the NMCP.” The Black Muslim movement has made the NMCP acceptable to white folks. It made its leaders acceptable. They then began to refer to them as responsible Negro leaders. Which meant they were responsible to white folk. Now I am not attacking the NMCP. I’m just telling you about it. And what makes it so bad, you can’t deny it.

So this is the contribution that that movement made. It frightened a lot of people. A lot of people who wouldn’t act right out of love begin to act right out of fear. Because Roy [Wilkins] and [James] Farmer and some of the others used to tell white folk, look if you don’t act right by us you’re going to have to listen to them. They used us to better their own position, their own bargaining position. No matter what you think of the philosophy of the Black Muslim movement, when you analyze the part that it played in the struggle of Black people during the past twelve years you have to put it in its proper context and see it in its proper perspective. The movement itself attracted the most militant, the most dissatisfied, the most uncompromising elements of the Black community. And also the youngest elements of the Black community. And as this movement grew, it attracted such a militant, uncompromising, dissatisfied element.

The movement itself was supposedly based upon the religion of Islam and therefore supposedly a religious movement’ But because the world of Islam or the orthodox Muslim world would never accept the Black Muslim movement as a bona fide part of it, it put those of us who were in it in a sort of religious vacuum. It put us in a position of identifying ourselves by a religion, while the world in which that religion was practiced rejected us as not being bona fide practicers…practitioners of that religion. Also the government tried to maneuver us and label us as political rather than religious so that they could charge us with sedition and subversion. This is the only reason But although we were labeled political, because we were never permitted to take part in politics we were in a vacuum politically. We were in a religious vacuum. We were in a political vacuum. We were actually alienated, cut off from all type of activity with even the world that we were fighting against. We became a sort of a religious/political hybrid, all to ourselves. Not involved in anything but just standing on the sidelines condemning everything. But in no position to correct anything because we couldn’t take action.

Yet at the same time, the nature of the movement was such that it attracted the activists. Those who wanted action. Those who wanted to do something about the evils that confronted all Black people. We weren’t particularly concerned with the religion of the Black man. Because whether he was a Methodist or a Baptist or an atheist or an agnostic, he caught the same hell.

So we could see that we had to have some action, and those of us who were activists became dissatisfied, disillusioned. And finally dissension set in and eventually a split. Those who split away were the real activists of the movement who were intelligent enough to want some kind of program that would enable us to fight for the rights of all Black people here in the Western Hemisphere.

But at the same time we wanted our religion. So when we left, the first thing we did we regrouped into a new organization known as the Muslim Mosque, headquartered in New York. And in that organization we adopted the real, orthodox religion of Islam, which is a religion of brotherhood. So that while accepting this religion and setting up an organization which could practice that religion—and immediately this particular Muslim Mosque was recognized and endorsed by the religious officials of the Muslim world. We realized at the same time we had a problem in this society that went beyond religion. And it was for that reason we set up the Organization of Afro-American Unity in which anybody in the community could participate in an action program designed to bring about complete recognition and respect of Black people as human beings.

And the motto of the Organization of Afro-American I Unity is By Any Means Necessary. We don’t believe in fighting a battle that’s going to—in which the ground rules are to be laid down by those who suppress us. We don’t believe that we can win in a battle where the ground rules are laid down by those who exploit us. We don’t believe that we can carry on a struggle trying to win the affection of those who for so long have oppressed and exploited us.

We believe that our fight is just. We believe that our grievances are just. We believe that the evil practices against Black people in this society are criminal and that those who engage in such criminal practices are to be looked upon themselves as nothing but criminals. And we believe that we are within our rights to fight those criminals by any means necessary. This doesn’t mean that we’re for violence. But we do—we have seen that the federal government has shown its inability, its absolute unwillingness, to protect the lives and the property of Black people. We have seen where organized white racists, Klansmen, Citizens’ Councilmen, and others can come into the Black community and take a Black man and make him disappear and nothing be done about it.

We reanalyzed our condition. When we go back to 1939, Black people in America were shining shoes. Some of the most educated were shining in Michigan, where I came from, in Lansing, the capital. The best jobs you could get in the city were carrying trays out at the country club to feed white people. And usually the waiter at the country club was looked upon as the town big shot ‘cause he had a good job around “good” white folks, you know.

He had the best education, but he’d be shining shoes right at the State House, the capitol. Shining the governor’s shoes, and the attorney general’s shoes, and this made him in the know, you know, ‘cause he could shine white folks’ shoes who were in big places. Whenever the people downtown wanted to know what was going on in the Black community, he was their boy. He was what’s known as the “town Negro,” the Negro leader. And those who weren’t shining shoes, the preachers, also had a big voice in the community. That’s all they’d let us do is shine shoes, wait on tables, and preach.

In 1939, before Hitler went on the rampage, or rather at the time yeah, before Hitler went on the rampage, a Black man couldn’t even work in the factory. We were digging ditches on WPA. Some of you all have forgotten too quick. We were ditch-digging on the VVPA. Our food came from the welfare, they were stamped “not to be sold.” I got so many things from the store called “not to be sold,” I thought that was a store some place. This is the condition the Black man was in, and that’s till 1939.... Until the war started, we were confined to these menial tasks. When the war started, they wouldn’t even take us in the army. A Black man wasn’t drafted. Was he or was he not? No! You couldn’t join the navy. Remember that? Wouldn’t draft one. This was as late as 1939 in the United States of America!

They taught you to sing “sweet land of liberty” and the rest of that stuff. No! You couldn’t join the army. You couldn’t join the navy. They wouldn’t even draft you. They only took white folks. They didn’t start drafting us until the Negro leader opened up his big mouth, talking about, “If white folks must die, we must die too.”

The Negro leader got a whole lot of Negroes killed in World War II who never had to die. So when America got into the war, immediately she was faced with a manpower shortage. Up until the time of the war, you couldn’t get inside of a plant. I lived in Lansing, where Oldsmobile’s factory was and Reo’s. There was about three in the whole plant and each one of them had a broom. They had education. They had gone to school. I think one had gone to college. But he was a “broomologist.” When times got tough and there was a manpower shortage, then they let us in the factory. Not through any effort of our own. Not through any sudden moral awakening on their part. They needed us. They needed manpower. Any kind of manpower. And when they got desperate and in need, they opened up the factory door and let us in. So we began to learn to run machines. Then we began to learn how to run machines, when they needed us. Put our women in as well as our men. As we learned to operate the machines, we began to make more money. As we began to make more money, we were able to live in a little better neighborhood. When we moved to a little better neighborhood, we went to a little better school. And when we went to that better school, we got a little better education and got in a little better position to get a little better job. It was no change of heart on their part. It was no sudden awakening of their moral consciousness. It was Hitler. It was Tojo. It was Stalin. Yes, it was pressure from the outside, at the world level, that enabled you and me to make a few steps forward. Why wouldn’t they draft us and put us in the army in the first place? They had treated us so bad, they were afraid that if they put us in the army and give us a gun and showed us how to shoot it— they feared that they wouldn’t have to tell us what to shoot at.

And probably they wouldn’t have had. It was their conscience. So I point this out to show that it was not change of heart on Uncle Sam’s part that permitted some of us to go a few steps forward. It was world pressure. It was threat from outside. Danger from outside that made it—that occupied his mind and forced him to permit you and me to stand up a little taller. Not because he wanted us to stand up. Not because he wanted us to go forward. He was forced to.

And once you properly analyze the ingredients that opened the doors even to the degree that they were forced open, when you see what it was, you’ll better understand your position today. And you’ll better understand the strategy that you need today. Any kind of movement for freedom of Black people based solely within the confines of America is absolutely doomed to fail.

As long as your problem is fought within the American context, all you can get as allies is fellow Americans. As long as you call it civil rights, it’s a domestic problem within the jurisdiction of the United States government. And the United States government consists of segregationists, racists. Why the most powerful men in the government are racists. This government is controlled by thirty-six committees, twenty congressional committees and sixteen senatorial committees. Thirteen of the twenty congressmen that make up the congressional committees are from the South. Ten of the sixteen senators that control the senatorial committees are from the South. Which means, that of the thirty-six committees that govern the foreign and domestic directions and temperament of the country in which we live, of the thirty-six, twenty-three of them are in the hands of racists. Outright, stone-cold, dead segregationists. This is what you and I are up against. We are in a society where the power is in the hands of those who are the worst breed of humanity. Now how are we going to get around them? How are we going to get justice in a Congress that they control? Or a Senate that they control? Or a White House that they control? Or from a Supreme Court that they control?

Look at the pitiful decision that the Supreme Court handed down. Brother, look at it! Don’t you know these men on the Supreme Court are masters of legal—not only of law, but legal phraseology. They are such masters of the legal language that they could very easily have handed down a desegregation decision on education so worded that no one could have gotten around. But they come up with that thing worded in such a way that here ten years have passed, and there’s all kind of loopholes in it. They knew what they were doing. They pretend to give you something while knowing all the time you can’t utilize it.

They come up last year with a civil rights bill that they publicized all around the world as if it would lead us into the promised land of integration. Oh yeah! Just last week, the Right Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King come out of the jail house and went to Washington, D.C., saying he’s going to ask every day for new legislation to protect voting rights for Black people in Alabama. Why? You just had legislation. You just had a civil rights bill. You mean to tell me that that highly publicized civil rights bill doesn’t even give the federal government enough power to protect Black people in Alabama who don’t want to do anything but register? Why it’s another foul trick, ‘cause they tricked us year in and year out. Another foul trick.

So, since we see...I don’t want you to think I’m teaching hate. I love everybody who loves me. But I sure don’t love those who don’t love me. Since we see all of this subterfuge, this trickery, this maneuvering—it’s not only at the federal level, the national level, the local level, all levels. The young generation of Blacks that’s coming up now can see that as long as we wait for the Congress and the Senate and the Supreme Court and the president to solve our problems, you’ll have us waiting on tables for another thousand years. And there aren’t no days like those.

Since the civil rights bill—I used to see African diplomats at the UN crying out against the injustice that was being done to Black people in Mozambique, in Angola, the Congo, in South Africa, and I wondered why and how they could go back to their hotels and turn on the TV and see dogs biting Black people right down the block and policemen wrecking the stores of Black people with their clubs right down the block, and putting water hoses on Black people with pressure so high it tear our clothes off, right down the block. And I wondered how they could talk all that talk about what was happening in Angola and Mozambique and all the rest of it and see it happen right down the block and get up on the podium in the UN and not say anything about it.

But I went and discussed it with some of them. And they said that as long as the Black man in America calls his struggle a struggle of civil rights—that in the civil rights context, it’s domestic and it remains within the jurisdiction of the United States. And if any of them open up their mouths to say anything about it, it’s considered a violation of the laws and rules of protocol. And the difference with the other people was that they didn’t call their grievances “civil rights” grievances, they called them “human rights” grievances. “Civil rights” are within the jurisdiction of the government where they are involved. But “human rights” is part of the charter of the United Nations.

All the nations that signed the charter of the UN came up with the Declaration of Human Rights and anyone who classifies his grievances under the label of “human rights” violations, those grievances can then be brought into the United Nations and be discussed by people all over the world. For as long as you call it “civil rights” your only allies can be the people in the next community, many of whom are responsible for your grievance. But when you call it “human rights” it becomes international. And then you can take your troubles to the World Court. You can take them before the world. And anybody anywhere on this earth can become your ally.

So one of the first steps that we became involved in, those of us who got into the Organization of Afro American Unity, was to come up with a program that would make our grievances international and make the world see that our problem was no longer a Negro problem or an American problem but a human problem. A problem for humanity and a problem which should be attacked by all elements of humanity. A problem that was so complex that it was impossible for Uncle Sam to solve it himself and therefore we want to get into a body or conference with people who are in such positions that they can help us get some kind of adjustment for this situation before it gets so explosive that no one can handle it.

Thank you.

There's A Worldwide Revolution Going On (Feb. 15, 1965)

2013-07-04T20:05:00.001-07:00

As many of you probably know, tonight we were going to unfold a program which we felt would be beneficial to the struggle of our people in this country. But because of events which are beyond our control we feel that it is best to postpone unfolding the program that we had in mind until a later date.
Sunday morning about three o’clock, somebody threw some bombs inside my house.

Normally I wouldn’t get excited over a few bombs, but the ones who threw these not only aimed them in rooms where there—where there was no one, but even in rooms where three of my daughters sleep. One daughter six, one daughter four, and one daughter two. And since I am, am quite certain that those who threw the bombs knew my house well enough to know where everyone was sleeping, I can’t quite bring my heart to the point where it can in any way be merciful, or from now on compromising, toward anyone who can be that low. Especially when I heard on the news today that Joseph, a brother that I found in the garbage can in Detroit in 1952—that’s where I found him—made the statement that I had bombed my own house.

Now you see, this doesn’t surprise me, because I know that since many of us left the Muslim movement, its intelligence and its morals have gone bankrupt. Both its intelligence and its morals have gone bankrupt.

And now they are using the same tactics that’s used by the Ku Klux Klan. When the Klan bombs your church, they say you did it. When they bomb the synagogue, they say the Jews bombed their own synagogue. This is a Klan tactic. And to me, I’ll tell you why the Black Muslim movement is now adopting the same tactic against Black people as has been up to now the exclusive method of the Ku Klux Klan.

I want to point out, too, that I’m not talking about Muslims just to make white people happy. Because I don’t believe in letting anyone use me against somebody else. I’m telling you these things because I have reached a point where I feel that Black people in this country need to know what’s going on. And I’m talking about an organization which I had a hand in building, which I had a hand in organizing. I know its characteristics. I know its potential. I know its behavior patterns. I know what it can do and what it cannot do. One of the things it can do is bomb your house and try to kill your baby.

Before we get into it, I would like to point out also, as many of you know, last Tuesday, or last weekend, I was invited to address the first congress of the Council of African Organizations in London. They had a four-day congress on the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th and had invited me there to make the closing address and bring the delegates from the various African organizations that are situated on the European continent up to date in regards to the struggle of the Black man in this country in his quest for human rights and human dignity. And in it conjunction with that invitation, I had gotten an invitation to visit Paris from the Afro-American community in Paris, which was sponsoring a rally in conjunction with the African community. And I was supposed to go there Tuesday also and address them and let them know the state of development or lack of development of our progress in this country for human rights, or toward human rights.

As many of you know, when I got to Paris, the man said I couldn’t come in—some man. French man. They gave me no explanation other than that they—we have our own. They wouldn’t let me phone the American embassy. And they tried to imply that the American embassy was behind it, which—I told them that I didn’t know de Gaulle had become a satellite of Lyndon B. Johnson. I knew that Kennedy had made a satellite out of Khrushchev and half of—and Britain—and half of these other countries, and I didn’t think that France was a satellite of the United States.

Well, it made them angry because they like to be independent, you know—or pretend to be independent. But they wouldn’t let me in. They wouldn’t let me phone the American embassy.
And later on, when I got back in London—and by the way, when I got back to London there was about twenty different delegates who were delegates from about twenty different African organizations on hand at the airport, and they were going to raise hell if anything had happened other than what should have happened. As it was, I ended back—I re-entered England with no trouble and immediately got in telephone contact with the brothers and sisters who were in Paris. And they pointed out that they had encountered some difficulty, first from the Communist trade union workers. Now mind you, Communist trade union workers had prevented them from renting their hall, and when they went to get another hall the same Communist group had exercised its influence to prevent them from getting that hall.

Finally, when they did get a hall, evidently someone was strong enough to exercise influence over the French government. And I might add that while I was in custody of the French, every time I made a request, before they would say yes or no, they telephoned the French foreign ministry. So that they were taking their orders from someone high up in the French foreign ministry who did not want me to enter France. And there’s a reason for it. I don’t blame them, because and I told the parties there—I said maybe my plane got mixed up and I was in South Africa, in the wrong country. This couldn’t be Paris, it must be Johannesburg. And they got red. And you know how they can get red. One of them was pink.

The same thing happened in England, as many of you probably read in the Sunday Times and the Tribune. There was a great fear in England concerning me speaking to the West Indian community. And because—this is because England has a very serious color problem developing, because so many of our people are migrating there from the British West Indies. France, quietly as it is kept, has a very serious color problem developing because of the migration to France of our people from the French West Indies. And with these people from the French West Indies, Black people going to France, others from the British West Indies going to England, coupled with the Asians who are coming from the Commonwealth territory, along with the Africans from French Equatorial West Africa into France, and the British possessions into Britain, there’s a large, increasing number of dark-skinned people swelling the dark population of France and Britain. And it’s giving them a great deal of horror of the world—the only difference over there and over here being that no one of black skin in France has ever tried to unite the dark-skinned people together. Neither have they done so in England. So you can somewhat see what their fear is.

No effort has been made to unite the Afro-American community or the American Negro community with the West Indian community and then those two communities with the African community, and both communities with the Asian community. This has never been done, in neither England or France. But when I was in France in November just for a few days, I was successful in getting a few of the Afro-Americans who live there together, and they formed a branch of the OAAU, the Organization of Afro-American Unity. And as soon as they formed this branch, they began to work in conjunction with the African organization and became a power that had to be reckoned with. And this is what the French government did not want.

Also the same thing in Britain. The West Indian community is very restless, or rather, yes, restless and dissatisfied. And they too are trying to organize or find someone who can bring them together. And this has caused in England a great deal of fear, a great deal of concern. And the effect of it is that it makes them act in a very silly way sometimes. Now, to leave that for a moment, as you’ll recall, when I was in Mecca in September, I wrote back a letter which was printed in The New York Times in which I pointed out that it was my intention when I returned to expose Elijah Muhammad as a religious faker. This is what I wrote. Now, while I was in Mecca among the Muslims, I had a chance to meditate and think and see things with a great deal of clarity—with much greater clarity than I’ve achieved from over here, entangled with all this mess that we are confronted by constantly. And I had made up my mind, yes, that I was going to tell the Black people in the Western Hemisphere, who I had played a great role in misleading into the hands of Elijah Muhammad, exactly what kind of man he was and what he was doing.

And I might point out right here that it was not a case of my knowing all the time, because I didn’t. I had blind faith in him, the same as many of you have had and still have blind faith in me or blind faith in Moses or blind faith in somebody else. My faith in Elijah Muhammad was more blind and more uncompromising than any faith that any man has ever had for another man. And so I didn’t try to see him as he actually was. But, being away, I could see him better, understand many things better. And, well, when I came back to this country, as you recall, I was very quiet. I knew the best thing was when they tried to ask me questions about him, I ducked it. I didn’t want to get involved. I didn’t want to get into it. Well, the reason for that was this: The letter that I wrote was written when I was in Arabia, in September, whereas, after leaving Arabia I had gone into Africa. I had had an opportunity to hold long discussions with President Julius Nyerere in what is now Tanzania; with Jomo Kenyatta, the president of Kenya, the Republic of Kenya; long discussions with Prime Minister Milton Obote of Uganda; President Azikiwe of Nigeria; President Nkrumah of Ghana; and President Sekou Toure in Guinea. And the understanding that I had in conversations with these men is that they are great men.

The understanding that I got broadened my scope so much that I felt I could see the problems and complaints of Black people in America and the Western Hemisphere with much greater clarity.
And I felt foolish coming back to this country and getting into a little two-bit argument with some bird-brained person who calls himself a Black Muslim. I felt I was wasting my time. I felt it would be a drag for me to come back here and allow myself to be in a whole lot of public arguments and physical fisticuffs—knowing what I knew, and knowing that it would actually be more beneficial to our people if a constructive program were put in front of them immediately.

Many of you will recall that shortly after I came back, despite the fact that I said nothing about the Black Muslims, a wire was put in the newspaper under the name of Raymond Sharrieff threatening me if I were to say anything about Elijah Muhammad. Actually that wasn’t Raymond Sharrieff’s wire, that was Elijah Muhammad’s wire. Raymond Sharrieff has no words of his own.

If you recall, when I was in the Black Muslim movement, I never said anything without saying Elijah Muhammad seems to believe thus and so, or Elijah Muhammad said thus and so. This is the way the Black Muslim movement is organized. Nobody makes any public statement unless it comes from Elijah Muhammad. And nobody makes any move unless it comes from Elijah Muhammad. They didn’t do it then and they don’t do it now. So, when Raymond Sharrieff put that letter in the paper—that wire, rather, in the paper—that wire was from Elijah Muhammad himself. And he was trying to irk me into saying something so that a public hullabaloo would take place again because they wanted to jockey me into the same position I was in before I left the country. Before I left the country, I had permitted them to jockey me into a position—me and the good brothers and sisters who also had sense enough to leave from down there—I was foolish enough to let them jockey me into a position where we were taking potshots at each other, so to speak, and it was known throughout the country that the Muslims in the temple were trying to do this thing.

So it put me in a spot where anybody could do it and then blame it on those foolish Muslims. And I was well aware of this. So, by staying away for four or five months, that ended. But when I came back, being quiet, they wanted the same thing again. They wanted some more hullabaloo so that it would appear that the Black Muslims were going to do this and the Black Muslims were going to do that and then anybody could do it and blame those fools and they wouldn’t have sense enough to see it. You can understand that can’t you? And when I say anybody, I mean anybody. But I know who those anybodies are.

I continue to concentrate, continue to ignore them and concentrate on trying to get the Organization of Afro- American Unity better organized. Because I knew that and I felt that what it had in mind would actually solve the problems of many of our people—most of our people.

If you’ll notice and, but despite the fact that I tried to keep quiet, on January 22 I came out of my house one night and they jumped me, on a Friday night, about 11:15. Now, I knew that they weren’t out there waiting for me, because normally I wouldn’t come out at that time of the night. So that when I did come out and ran into them and they did jump me, I knew then that they were casing my house. And frankly, I waited for them for a month. I’d sit around that house with my rifle; stayed up all times of the night just to get one chance to put somebody in hell. Just one chance. I warned my wife at that time that they were casing the it house. Again, I know their behavior. And I also became more careful, wherever I would go and whenever I would go anywhere. And then to make it worse, when I went to Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago, they had gotten so insane that they chased me right down the Hollywood Freeway in broad daylight. Yes!

Now, the thing that you have to consider about this is, the police were at the airport. The police knew what they were up to. In fact, the police arrested a couple of them in front of someone’s home the night before. They knew all about it. Nothing was said in the paper. Now, imagine someone is chasing you down the Hollywood Freeway at eighty miles an hour and it doesn’t get in the paper. No.

So later on—that was on a Thursday. Friday I was in Chicago. I appeared on the Kup show. And when I went on the Kup show I had about twenty police. There were twenty police out there guarding the station. It might seem odd, but the Muslims were there. And they even tried to attack the police, which was never put in the paper. They followed the police, because of that—they act kind of nuts. And I’m so thankful that I’m out of there, I don’t expect...because I was the same kind of nut. I was just as nuts as they were. If Elijah Muhammad had told me to go get somebody’s head, I would have gone and gotten it just like that. And that’s what’s the matter with them. They’re only following what I taught them how to do. So, I understand.

But despite the fact that they put on this performance, it was quieted down. Nothing was said about it. And then the night I was on the Susskind show, the David Susskind Show, those same persons were—had surrounded the station. They had even almost strong-armed the police. The police didn’t do a thing to strike back at them. They almost strong-armed them. Nothing was done about that. But while I was on the show they had come to the studio and told Susskind that I wasn’t going to be down there that night. And told him that I would never make it. But, again, I know how they do, and I, thanks to Allah, did something other than what they expected.

So, the next thing that irritated them and irritated them the most was this. And I’ve been doing it for a month, and nobody knew why I was doing it. You notice, I had shifted my attack from them to Rockwell and the Ku Klux Klan. For the past month I’ve been beating on the Klan and beating on Rockwell and beating on these so-called rightwingers. You may wonder why. I sent a wire to Rockwell warning him if anything happened to Black people in Alabama that we would give him maximum retaliation. The press knew it. You heard nothing it about it. Rockwell disappeared because he’s scared of power like anybody else. Because they know that he has strength only as long as he’s dealing with somebody that’s nonviolent. Good Lord. Rockwell and his whole crowd agree only as long as they’re dealing with someone nonviolent. The Ku Klux Klan and that crowd agree only when they’re dealing it with someone nonviolent. Citizens’ Council and that crowd agree only when they’re dealing with someone that’s nonviolent. And you know it.

So, he cleared out. I went to Alabama. I went to Alabama purposely to see what was happening down there. While I was there, I wasn’t trying to interfere with King’s program, whatever it was. He was in jail. I talked, I spoke it at Tuskegee. I spoke at Tuskegee Institute last Tuesday night, I think it was. There were over 3,000 students and others. And it was the students themselves that night who insisted that I go with them the next morning to Selma, some students from Smith. So I went. After giving it careful thought, I went.

When I got to Selma, the press began to bug me right it away. And I wouldn’t even tell them my name. I just ignored them completely. So they insisted that I hold a press conference. I didn’t ask for a press conference. They insisted that I hold a press conference. Which was held. And while the press was there, the Klan was there. When you’re looking at the cops in Alabama, you’re looking at the Klan. That’s who the Klan is.

Knowing where I was, right then and there, I reminded Lyndon B. Johnson of the promise he had made to good, well-meaning Americans when he was running for president. He said that if he were elected he would pull the sheets off the Ku Klux Klan. Did he not say that? Yes, he did. So, here you’ve got Klansmen knocking little babies down the road with a...you’ve got Klansmen knocking Black women down in front of a camera and that poor fool Black man standing on the sidelines because he’s nonviolent. Now, we don’t go along with a thing like that.

Well, it was then, in Selma, Alabama, in front of the face of the Ku Klux Klan that I demanded in your name, the Organization of Afro-American Unity—could I make that demand in your name? Since 97 percent of the Black people in this country had supported Lyndon B. Johnson and his promise, and now that his party has the largest majority that any president has had in a long time, Lyndon B. Johnson is obligated to the Black man in this country to put up an immediate federal commission to investigate the Ku Klux Klan, which is a criminal organization organized to murder and maim and cripple Black people in this country.

And, I pointed out that if Lyndon B. Johnson could not keep his promise and expose the Ku Klux Klan, then we would be within our rights to come to Alabama and organize the Black people of Alabama and pull the sheets off the Klan ourselves. And we can do it. Brothers and sisters, we can do it. And the federal government won’t do it. Since then, they’ve been talking about a little investigation of the Klan and the Citizens’ Council and the Black Muslims and some of the others. But they’re not going to do anything. The only way the Klan is going to be stopped is when you and I organize and stop them ourselves. Yes, that’s what’s out there.

You may say, well, why am I so down on the Klan all of a sudden? I’m going to tell you why. And why did I shift my attack from the Black Muslims—Elijah Muhammad and his immoral self—to the Klan? Yes, he’s immoral. You can’t take nine teenaged women and seduce them and give them babies and not tell me you’re—and then tell me you’re moral. You could do it if you admitted you did it and admitted that the babies were yours. I’d shake your hand and call you a man. A good one too. Any time you seduce teenaged girls and make them be with child with adultery, make them hide your crimes, why, you’re not even a man, much less a divine man. So, and this is what he did. He took at least nine that we know about. And I’m not speculating, because he told this to me himself. Yes, that’s why he wants me dead because he knew as soon as I walked out that I’d tell it. Nine of them. Not two of them who are suing him, but nine of them. And the FBI knows it. The law in Chicago knows it. The press even knows it. And they don’t expose the man.

And don’t let me get out of here tonight without telling you why they won’t expose him. Why they’re afraid to expose him. They know that if they expose him, that he has them all set. See, the Black Muslim movement, it was organized in such a way that it attracted the most militant, the most uncompromising, the most fearless, and the youngest of the Black people in the United States. That’s who went into it. Those who didn’t mind dying. They didn’t mind making a sacrifice. All they were interested in was freedom and justice and equality, and they would do anything to see that it was brought about. These are the people who have followed him for the past twelve years. And the government knows it. But all these upfront militants have been held in check by an organization that doesn’t take an active part in anything. And therefore it cannot be a threat to anybody because it’s not going to do anything against anybody but itself.

Don’t you know? The way they threw that bomb in there they could have thrown it in a Ku Klux Klan house. Why do they want to bomb my house? Why don’t they bomb the Klan? I’m going to tell you why.

In 1960, in December, in December of 1960, I was in the home of Jeremiah, the minister in Atlanta, Georgia. I’m ashamed to say it, but I’m going to tell you the truth. I sat at the table myself with the heads of the Ku Klux Klan. I sat there myself, with the heads of the Ku Klux Klan, who at that time were trying to negotiate with Elijah Muhammad so that they could make available to him a large area of land in Georgia or I think it was South Carolina. They had some very responsible persons in the government who were involved in it and who were willing to go along with it. They wanted to make this land available to him so that his program of separation would sound more feasible to Negroes and therefore lessen the pressure that the integrationists were putting upon the white man. I sat there. I negotiated it. I listened to their offer. And I was the one who went back to Chicago and told Elijah Muhammad what they had offered. Now, this was in December of 1960.

The code name that Jeremiah gave the Klan leader was 666. Whenever they would refer to him they would refer to him as Old Six. What his name was right now escapes me. But they even sat there and told stories how—what they had done on different escapades that they had been involved in. Jeremiah was there and his wife was there and I was there and the Klan was there.

From that day onward the Klan never interfered with the Black Muslim movement in the South. Jeremiah attended Klan rallies, as you read on the front page of the New York Tribune. They never bothered him, never touched him. He never touched a Muslim, and a Muslim never touched him. Elijah Muhammad would never let me go back down since January of 1961. I never went South, as long as I remained in the Black Muslim movement, again, from January of 1961, because most of the actions the Muslims got involved in was action that I was involved in myself. Wherever it happened in the country, where there was an action, it was action that I was involved in, because I believed in action. I never have gone along with no Ku Klux Klan.

And another one that he had made a deal with was this man Rockwell. Rockwell and Elijah Muhammad are regular correspondents with each other. You can hate me for telling you this, but I’m going to tell it to you. Rockwell attended the rally because Elijah Muhammad put the okay on it. And Sharrieff, the captain of the FOI, and I had discussed it, wondering why Rockwell could come to our meeting because it didn’t help us. But Elijah Muhammad said let him in, so he had to be let in. No one questioned what Elijah Muhammad said. Now, if you doubt that this is true, you get all of the back issues of Muhammad Speaks newspaper and you will find articles in it about the Ku Klux Klan actually praising him. Jeremiah interviewed—I think it was—J.B. Stoner for the Muslim newspaper, and the old devil even gave him a contribution that he reported about in that paper. Sure he did.

When the brothers in Monroe, Louisiana, were involved in trouble with the police, if you’ll recall, Elijah Muhammad got old Venable. Venable is the Ku Klux Klan lawyer. He’s a Ku Klux Klan chieftain, according to the Saturday Evening Post, that was up on the witness stand. Go back and read the paper and you’ll see that Venable was the one who represented the Black Muslim movement in Louisiana.

Now, brothers and sisters, until 1961, until 1960, until just before Elijah Muhammad went to the East, there was not a better organization among Black people in this country than the Muslim movement. It was militant. It made the whole struggle of the Black man in this country pick up momentum because of the unity, the militancy, created by the Muslim movement lent weight to the struggle of the Black man in this country against oppression.

But after 1960, after Elijah Muhammad went over there in December of ‘59 and came back in January of ‘60—when he came back, the whole trend or direction that he formerly had taken began to change. And in that change there’s a whole lot of other things that had come into the picture. But he began to be more mercenary. More interested in money. More interested in wealth And, yes, more interested in girls.

And I guess many of you have heard it said that his financial support comes from a rich man in Texas. I heard that while I was in the movement. I’ve heard it more since I left the movement. A rich man in Texas. You can look up, any of you can look up his name. But the FBI knows that too. But they still don’t touch him. And never have I seen a man—and this rich man who lives in Texas, by the way, lives in Dallas. His headquarters is in Dallas, his money is in Dallas, the same city where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And never have I seen a man in my life more afraid, more frightened than Elijah Muhammad was when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I’ve never in my life seen a man as frightened as he was. And when I made the statement that I did, why he almost cracked up behind it because there were all kinds of implications to it that at that time were way above and beyond my understanding.

Now you may wonder, why is it so important to many interests for the Black Muslim movement to remain? But I told you, it has the most militant, most uncompromising, most dissatisfied Black people in America in it. Many have left it, many are still in it. The fear has been that if anything happened to Elijah Muhammad and the Black Muslim movement were to crumble, that all those militants who formerly were in it and were held in check would immediately become involved in the civil rights struggle, and they would add the same kinds of energy to the civil rights struggle that they gave to the Black Muslim movement. And there’s a great fear. You know yourself, white people don’t like for Black people to get involved in anything to do with civil rights unless those Black people are nonviolent, loving, patient, forgiving, and all of that. They don’t like it otherwise.

And there has been a conspiracy across the country on the part of many factions of the press to suppress news that would open the eyes of the Muslims who are following Elijah Muhammad. They continue to make him look like he’s a prophet somewhere who is getting some messages direct from God and is untouchable and things of that sort. I’m telling you the truth. But they do know that if something were to happen and all these brothers, their eyes were to come open, they would be right out here in every one of these civil rights organizations making these Uncle Tom Negro leaders stand up and fight like men instead of running around here nonviolently acting like women.

So they hope Elijah Muhammad remains as he is for a long time because they know that any organization that he heads, it will not do anything in the struggle that the Black man is confronted with in this country. Proof of which, look how violent they can get. They were violent, they’ve been violent from coast to coast. Muslims, in the Muslim movement, have been involved in cold, calculated violence. And not at one time have they been involved in any violence against the Ku Klux Klan. They’re capable. They’re qualified. They’re equipped. They know how to do it. But they’ll never do it—only to another brother. Now, I am well aware of what I’m setting in motion by what I’m saying up here tonight. I’m well aware. But I have never said or done anything in my life that I wasn’t prepared to suffer the consequences for.

Now, what does this have to do with France, England, the United States? You and I are living at a time when there’s a revolution going on. A worldwide revolution. It goes beyond Mississippi. It goes beyond Alabama. It goes beyond Harlem. There’s a worldwide revolution going on. And it’s in two phases.

Number one, what is it revolting against? The power structure. The American power structure? No. The French power structure? No. The English power structure? No. Then what power structure? An international Western power structure. An international power structure consisting of American interests, French interests, English interests, Belgian interests, European interests. These countries that formerly colonized the dark man formed into a giant international combine. A structure, a house that has ruled the world up until now. And in recent times there has been a revolution taking place in Asia and in Africa, whacking away at the strength or at the foundation of the power structure.

Now, the man was shook up enough when Africa was in revolt and when Asia was in revolt. All of this revolt was actually taking place on the outside of his house, on the outside of his base, or on the outside of his headquarters. But now he’s faced with something new. Just as the French and the British and the—the French, and the British, and the Americans formed one huge home or house or power structure, those brothers in Africa and Asia, although they are fighting against it, they also have some brothers on the inside of the house. And as fast as the brothers in Africa and Asia get their independence, get freedom, get strength, begin to rise up, begin to change their image from negative to positive, this African image that has jumped from negative to positive affects the image that the Black man in the Western Hemisphere has of himself.

Whereas in the West Indies and in Latin American countries and in the United States, you or I used to be ashamed of ourselves, used to look down upon ourselves, used to have no tendency whatsoever or desire whatsoever to stick together. As the African nations become independent and mold a new image a positive image, a militant image, an upright image, the image of a man, not a boy. How has this affected the Black man in the Western Hemisphere? It has taken the Black man in the Caribbean and given him some pride. It has given pride to the Black man in Latin America and has given pride to the Black man right here in the United States. So that when the Black revolution begins to roll on the African continent it affects the Black man in the United States and affects the relationship between the Black man and the white man in the United States.

When the Black man in the Caribbean sees the brother on the continent of Africa waking up and rising up, the Black man in the Caribbean begins to throw back his shoulders and stick out his chest and stand up. Now, when that Black man goes to England he’s right inside the English power structure, ready to give it trouble. When the Black man from the French West Indies goes to France, why the effect upon him of the African revolution is the same as the effect upon us here in the States by the African revolution. This is what you have to understand.

Now, up to now there have been Black people in France, divided. Black people in England, divided. Black people here in America, divided. What divided us? Our lack of pride. Our lack of racial identity. Our lack of racial pride. Our lack of cultural roots. We had nothing in common. But as the African nation got its independence and changed its image we became proud of it. And to the same degree that we became proud of it we began to have something in common to that same degree. So, whereas formerly it was difficult to unite Black people, today it is easier to unite Black people. Where formerly Black people didn’t want to come together with Black people, but only with white people, today you find Black people want to come together with Black people. All they need is someone to start the ball rolling.

So this is what you have to understand. And as the brothers on the African continent lead the way, it has an effect and an impact upon the brothers here, upon the brothers here in the Western Hemisphere. So that when you find the Afro-American community in France uniting not only with itself, but for the first time beginning to unite and work in conjunction with the African community, this frightens old De Gaulle to death, because he sees some new problems in front of him.

And when the Afro and West Indian community, which is an Afro-American community in England, begins to unite and then unite also with the African community in England and reach out and get the Asian community, it’s trouble for old John Bull. Trouble that he never foresaw before. And this is something that he has to face up to.

Likewise, here in America, with you and me. For the first time in our history here you find we have a tendency to want to come together. For the first time we have a tendency to want to work together. And, up to now, no organization on the American continent has tried to unite you and me with our brothers and sisters back home. At no time. None of them. Marcus Garvey did it. They put him in jail. They framed him. The government—framed him and put him in jail. Marcus Garvey tried.

The only fear that exists is that you and I once we get united will also unite with our brothers and sisters. And since they knew that my calling in life, as a Muslim— number one, I’m a Muslim, for which I’m proud. And in no way has that changed, my being a Muslim. My religion is Islam. What’s that? [Interjection from audience] Okay. Y’all sit down and be cool. Just sit down and be cool.

As a Muslim, when I left the Black Muslim movement, I realized that what we taught in there was not authentic Islam. My first journey was to Mecca to make myself an authentic Muslim. And to bring them there up to date on the problems that our people who are Muslims had. As soon as we established our religious authenticity with the Muslim world, we set up the Organization of Afro-American Unity and took immediate steps to make certain that we would be in direct contact with our African brothers on the African continent. So the first step that has been taken, brothers and sisters, since Garvey died, to actually establish contact between the 22 million Black Americans with our brothers and sisters back home was done by two organizations. Done first by the Muslim Mosque, which gave us direct ties with our brothers and sisters in Asia and Africa who are Muslims. And, you know we’ve got to unite with them, because there are 700 million Muslims and we surely need to stop being the minority and become part of the majority.

So, as Muslims, we united with our Muslim brothers in Asia and Africa. And as members of the Organization of African, or Afro-American Unity, we set out on a program to unite our people on this continent with our people on the mother continent. And this frightened many power—many interests in this country. Many people in this country who want to see us the minority and who don’t want to see us taking too militant or too uncompromising a stand are absolutely against the successful regrouping or organizing of any faction in this country whose thought and whose thinking patterns is international, rather than national. Whose thought patterns, whose hopes and aspirations are worldly rather than just within the context of the United States border or the borderline of the United States.

So this has been the purpose of the OAAU and also the Muslim Mosque to give us direct links, direct contact, direct communication and cooperation with our brothers and sisters all over the earth. And once we are successful in uniting ourselves with our people all over the world, it puts us in a position where we no longer are a minority who can be abused and walked upon. We become a part of the majority. And then if this man over here plays too rough, we have some brothers who can play as rough as he. So that’s all I have to say about that.

I wanted you to know that my house was bombed. It was bombed by the Black Muslim movement upon the orders of Elijah Muhammad. And when the bomb was thrown, one of the bombs was thrown at the rear window of my house where my three little baby girls sleep. And I have no compassion or mercy or forgiveness or anything of that sort for anyone who attacks children. If you attack me, that’s one thing. I know what to do when you start attacking me, but when you attack sleeping babies, why, you are lower than a God...

The only thing that I regret in all of this is that two Black groups have to fight and kill each other off. Elijah Muhammad could stop the whole thing tomorrow, just by raising his hand. Really, he could. He could stop the whole thing by raising his hand. But he won’t. He doesn’t love Black people. He doesn’t even want to go forward. Proof of which, they’re killing each other. They killed one in the Bronx. They shot another one in the Bronx. They tried to get six of us Sunday morning. And the pattern has developed across the country. The man has gone insane, absolutely out of his mind. Besides, you can’t be seventy-years-old and surround yourself by a handful of sixteen-, seventeen-, eighteen-year- old girls and keep your right mind.

So, from tonight on, there’ll be a hot time in the old town. With regret. With great regret. There’s no organization in this country that could do more for the struggling Black man than the Black Muslim movement if it wanted to, but it has gotten into the possession of a man who’s become senile in his old age and perhaps doesn’t realize it. And then he has surrounded himself by his children, who are now in power and want nothing but luxury and security and comfort and will do anything to safeguard their own interests.

So, I feel responsible for having played a major role in developing a criminal organization. It was not a criminal organization at the outset. It was an organization that had the power, the spiritual power, to reform the criminal. And this is what you have to understand. As long as that strong spiritual power was in the movement, it gave the moral strength to the believer that would enable him to rise above all his negative tendencies. I know, because I went into the movement with more negative tendencies than anybody in the movement. It was faith in what I was taught that made it possible for me to stop doing anything that I was doing and everything that I was doing. And I saw thousands of brothers and sisters come in who were in the same condition. And whatever they were doing, they would stop it overnight, just through faith and faith alone. And by this spiritual force, giving one the faith that enabled one to exercise some moral discipline, it became an organization that was to be respected as well as feared.

But as soon as the faith in the movement, the faith in the minds of the people in the movement was destroyed, now it has become a movement that’s organized but not on a spiritual basis. And because there’s no spiritual ingredient within the organization, there’s no moral discipline. For it now consists of brothers and sisters who were once well meaning, but now who do not have the strength to discipline themselves. So they permit themselves to be used as a machine for a man who, as I say, has gone senile and is using them now to commit murder, acts of maiming and crippling other people.

And, I know that there’s a brother sitting in here right now, tonight, who was beaten by them a couple of years ago—I’m not going to say. He knows. And if anybody should apologize to him, I should apologize to him. And I do apologize to him. Because he was beaten by the movement when I was in the movement, and I wasn’t too far from him when he got beaten.

But this is what happens and this is what we have to contend with. I, for one, disassociate myself from the movement completely. And I dedicate myself to the organizing of Black people into a group that are interested in doing things constructive, not for just one religious segment of the community, but for the entire Black community. This is what the purpose of the Organization of Afro-American Unity is. 1b have an action program that’s for the good of the entire Black community, and we are for it the betterment of the community by any means necessary.

And, since tonight we had to get into this old nasty, negative subject, we didn’t want to bring up our program. We’re going to have a rally here this coming Sunday at two o’clock in the afternoon, at two o’clock—is it two o’clock Brother Ruben? Two o’clock. At two o’clock, at it which time we will give you the program of the Organization of Afro-American Unity; what our aims are, our objectives are, what our program is, whether or not you want to be identified with it, and what active part you can play in helping us to straighten Harlem out. Nobody’s going to straighten out Harlem but us. Nobody cleans up your house for you. You have to clean it up yourself. it Harlem is our house; we’ll clean it up. But when we clean it up, we’ll also control it. We’ll control the politics. We’ll control the economy. We’ll control the school system and see that our people get a break.

So, on that note, I’m going to bring my talk to a close. I’m going to let you have a five minute recess, during which time we’re going to take up a collection so that we it can pay for the expense of the hall. And then we’ll take a fifteen-minute question period afterwards.

So, Brother James, is everything all set? Yes. We’re going to have a—those lights are something else—we’re going to have a collection period right now, and all we want you to do brothers and sisters, is to help us pay for the hall. And if each of you put a dollar in those white pails that’s going by, we’ll have the hall paid for. And I really want to apologize to you for taking your good time tonight to talk about a nasty, negative subject. But if you wake up in the middle of the night and see your house on fire all around you, with your babies crying, you’ll take time to get on a nasty, negative subject, too.

* * *

Malcolm X: I want to thank you for your patience. And ask you to be patient just a couple—this microphone doesn’t seem to be up at all. Sir, was there—there was some questions you wanted to ask, was it?

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: Yes, the press here wants to ask a couple questions. I just want to take time to answer them for them, then wel1 get right into our business. We can get rid of them and get right into our business.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: Well, I’m not at the house, because the house was bombed out.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: I wouldn’t say. Behind what has happened, I wouldn’t ever say where I’m going to live.

Question: What do you mean when you say “there’s a hot time in the old town tonight”?

Malcolm X: Well, that’s an expression. Okay....This is the press. They want to get some questions out of the way. Please. When I said there’d be a hot time in the old town tonight, that’s just a song, you know, that people sing. Yes, sir?

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: Yes, the house was bombed by the Black Muslim movement upon orders from Elijah Muhammad himself. And Raymond Sharrieff, the Supreme Captain of the FOI, stated in a telegram that he made public that the Muslims would not condone me making any statements about Elijah Muhammad. They let it be known where they stood and what they intended to do. And when they made such a statement, I was surprised that the police and the public didn’t do something about it. But they were hoping that the Black Muslim movement could get to me and then they would move in on the Black Muslim movement. I know what they’re up to. They want those fools to get me and then they’ll move in on them. I can see all the way around that.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: Do I feel that the police—wait a minute. Stop. Don’t go anywhere. Do I feel that the New York police are providing enough protection, or do I have to have protection of my own? I look for protection from Allah.

Question: You mentioned a conspiracy between the Black Muslims and the right wing in this country. Could you elaborate?

Malcolm X: I mentioned the conspiracy between the Muslims and the right wing in this country? I know for a fact that there is a conspiracy between, among, between the Muslims and the Lincoln Rockwell Nazis and also the Ku Klux Klan. There is a conspiracy. Well, the Ku Klux Klan made a deal, or were trying to make a deal with Elijah Muhammad in 1960 in the home of Jeremiah X, the minister in Atlanta at that time, in the presence of the minister in Philadelphia. They were trying to make a deal with him to make available to Elijah Muhammad a county-size tract of land in Georgia or South Carolina where Elijah Muhammad could then induce Negroes to migrate and make it appear that his program of a segregated state or separated state was feasible. And to what extent these negotiations finally developed, I do not know. Because I was not involved in them beyond the period of December 1960. But I do know that after that, Jeremiah, who was the minister throughout the South, could roam the entire South and the Klan not bother him in any way, shape, or form, nor would they bother any of the Black Muslims from then on. Nor would the Black Muslims bother the Klan.

Question: Are you inferring because of this conspiracy the attempt was made upon your life?

Malcolm X: The attempt could have been made upon my life at the...

Question: Are you inferring that because of this conspiracy the attempt was made upon your life?

Malcolm X: Not necessarily that conspiracy. The attempt was made upon my life because I speak my mind and I know too much and they know that I will speak it.

Question: Are you directing your followers to take any action?

Malcolm X: Am I directing my followers to take action against the Muslims? No. No.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: Am I going to try to infiltrate their organization and win over some of their supporters? No, I have never tried to win supporters from Elijah Muhammad. Since I have left the Black Muslim movement, I’ve spoken at these rallies. Those who come, come; those who don’t, don’t. But I’ve never gone out of my way to win over any of his followers. And he himself is fearful, because he knows that you don’t have to exercise too much energy to win his followers as soon as they know the truth and compare the two—by the way, this is the brother—this is Leon Ameer, who was Cassius Clay’s secretary, whom they beat unmercifully up in Boston. And the courts freed the men who beat him. They fined them $100—was it?—fined them $100 and he was on the inside of the Black Muslim specialty squad. And it was he who heard Elijah Muhammad, Jr., come to New York when Elijah Muhammad was at the armory in June of last year. Junior stood up and told the Fruit—many of whom are here now also—that I should have been killed. That my tongue should have been put in an envelope and sent back to Chicago by now. And because Fat Joseph had not done it, they demoted him. He remained captain, but Clarence up in Boston was put over Joseph and Joseph’s authority was curtailed. And then Clarence, the captain from Boston, and John, the captain from Springfield, came to New York to assassinate me. And came to him to get a silencer and couldn’t get it. So the police know this. It’s not something that’s new. They’re just waiting until the job is done and then they step in.

Question: Do you know that Elijah Muhammad was behind this?

Malcolm X: Yes.

Question: Or is this your belief?

Malcolm X: Elijah Muhammad invited—called all of his officials, national officials, to Chicago in October and ordered them to kill or maim any of his followers who leave him to follow me.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: Well, when you say, how do I know...many of the brothers who were in at that time are out now. And if this ever comes into the courts, there are plenty of witnesses who can stand up and testify to it.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: I’d rather not say at this time.

[Question unintelligible, protests from audience]

Malcolm X: Give them two more minutes and we’ll end it.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: Yes, when I said that no one could clean up our homes but us, and that we will clean it up and that no one should control it but us, including the politics; what do I mean? I mean exactly that. That the Black people—[Interjection] What? Including who? Powell? Powell is one of us—

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: No, he’s not a member of our organization, but when I say he is one of us I mean he’s one of the family. And then no one outside the family can get up and talk about him. If we talk about him, we talk about him within the family. But nobody outside the family can instigate us against Powell.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: Yes, by controlling it politically I mean that the politics of the community of Harlem should be controlled by those of us who live in Harlem. Not by somebody sitting down in Gracie Mansion.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: No. But the Organization of Afro-American Unity intends to get involved in every kind of action that’s going on in New York City. We don’t intend to let anybody downtown influence us in any way, shape, or form. We want the influence to come from Harlem. And from other Harlems around the country. Now, this doesn’t mean we’re anti-outside-of-Harlem. This doesn’t mean we’re anti-Bronx or anti-White Plains or anti-white or anti-German or anything like that. But it means we’re pro-Harlem. We’re pro-ourselves. We want to start doing something for ourselves. That’s all it means. It means that we want to stop begging you for your school; we want you to get out of the way and let us straighten out the schools in Harlem.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: I just answered this when I said from tonight on there will be a hot time in the old town. I answered it when this gentleman over here asked. The song will be the same. An implication? An implied threat? I never imply any threat to anyone. I am a Muslim, my religion is Islam—it’s a religion of peace.

Question: Do you think there will be any further attempts?

Malcolm X: Sir, yes I do believe there will be further attempts on my life. I know them. They are foaming at the mouth. The rank-and-file Muslim means well. It’s those at the hierarchy, who are living off the fatted calf, who don’t mean well. And this coming Sunday at two o’clock, as I say, our program will be unfolded. Elijah Muhammad knows—he has done some good things and he has done some bad things. He knows that if he had wanted to, he could have united our people with the Muslim world just by teaching the right religion of Islam. He could have done so. The entire Muslim world would have accepted him; as it is now, the Muslim world has rejected him. He can never go into the Muslim world and say that he is a prophet or that Allah came over here in the flesh—they would cut his head off if he said that. I mean he knows this. None of his followers can go over there without denouncing him. It is impossible for them to go to Mecca or any other place unless they subscribe to Islam, as it is subscribed to over there. So he was in a position to unite us with the Muslim world, those of us who were Muslim. He was also in a position to unite us with Africa. But you cannot read anything that Elijah Muhammad has ever written that’s pro-African. I defy you to find one word in his direct writings that’s pro-African. You can’t find it.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: Listen to this question this man got. What are you trying to get at?

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: No, he asked me. No. I got to tell them what you asked me. He asked me, don’t I think if I got hurt, you know, wouldn’t some of my followers retaliate? What are you trying to say? Or, what are you trying to get me to say? No. I mean, it’s okay. I’m not going to get you into any trouble. These are your friends in here. I just I want them to hear what you’re asking me. That’s all. I just want them to hear what you’re asking me. You’re not going to get in no trouble for this. Would he? No. Yes sir, last question.

Question: You’re under civil court order to get out of your house in Queens?

Malcolm X: I’m under a civil court order to get out of my house in Queens? You know, I only—somebody told me that they heard that on the radio. I know nothing about it. And I haven’t discussed it with a lawyer yet and I won’t make any comments until I’ve discussed it with a lawyer. But I just hope that nobody tries to go in there while what’s left of my belongings are there.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: Some have been in the vicinity, yes, and some policemen, too, have been nice enough to watch the house ever since it was bombed. I wish they had been watching it while it was bombed.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: Yeah, a great deal of my personal belongings were lost. They threw four bombs in there. I might point this out, that those who did it were so vicious and those who did it knew the whole layout of the house. They—and to show you why I believe in Allah—the bombs that were thrown into the front part of the house were thrown directly against the window, you know, so they came through. But before they threw the first one, l the neighbors saw someone go up to the window with a mop like instrument and break the windows, crack the glass, and then they threw the bombs in after the glass was broken and that was in the front part. Now if they had come around to...they had planned to do it from the front and the back so that I couldn’t get out. They covered the front completely, the front door. Then they had come to the back but instead of getting directly in back of the house and throwing it this way, they stood at a forty-five degree angle and tossed it at the window so it glanced and went onto the ground. And the fire hit the window and it woke up my second oldest baby, but the fire burned on the outside of the house. But had that fire, had that gone through that window it would have fallen on a six-year-old girl, a four-year-old girl, and a two-year-old girl. Now I’m going to tell you, if it had done it, I’d taken my rifle and gone after anybody in sight. I would not wait. I say that because of this. The police know the criminal operation of the Black Muslim movement because they have thoroughly infiltrated it. There is no conversation that takes place in the Black Muslim movement that the city police don’t know about, because they have policemen in there. They don’t let Black people form anything without some policemen in there. And while I was in the Black Muslim movement, over the Black Muslim movement, many of the police who were sent to infiltrate us—they’re Black—would tell me, "Look, I’m a cop, but I have to come." They would tell me. I knew the Muslim movement was full of police. So don’t you think anything is going down that they don’t know about. The only thing that goes down is what they want to go down, and what they don’t want to go down they don’t let it go down.

Question: I have one last question.

Malcolm X: One last question, yes sir.

Question: The Muslims claim that you bombed your own house.

Malcolm X: Yes, that’s what I said. The Muslims claim I bombed my house.

Question: Of course, they say, while you were there.

Malcolm X: Yeah. No, well, you can think what you want. The arson squad, the fire marshal, all of them are expert in this kind of thing And if anybody can find where I’ve bombed my house, they can put a rifle bullet through my head. It was my children and my own life and my wife’s life that was at stake. Hey, let me tell you something, sir. I stood Sunday morning, you know what the degree—what the temperature was? It was about fifteen or twenty. I stood in my underwear, barefoot in the middle of my driveway with a gun in my hands for forty-five minutes waiting for the police or waiting for the fire department to come. If I’d wanted to put on a show I could find a better way than that to put it on. That’s all.

[DISCUSSION PERIOD]

Malcolm X: There’s a—brothers and sisters, there’s a—here’s the Saturday Evening Post dated February 27, 1965, and in it there’s an article titled, “An ex-official tells - why the Black Muslims are a fraud.” This is one of the brothers in Boston and who was formerly the secretary up there and who is the cousin of Ronald Stokes, the brother who was killed out in California in April of 1962. And I would like to say this before anything else, and that is, don’t think that I don’t know how bad I make myself look by attacking an organization that I was once so inseparably a part of. Well, I’m not particularly concerned it with how bad it makes me look. My prime concern is to expose it to the fullest of my ability, let the chips fall where they may. And if the Black Muslim movement says that I’m wrong in what I say, then I say since they’re so well qualified and equipped, let them attack the Klan. Let them go find out who—let them get the persons who bombed that it church in Birmingham. Because I’ll go get them. I’ll go attack the Klan. And attack Rockwell and any of the others. And I defy them to do so. They can’t do it. Because they both have the same paymaster. So now our question period.. And you have to stand up because I can’t see beyond this man’s light. Yes sir.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: Don’t I think that we should become involved in some direct action, demonstrations? We are going to unveil our program on that next Sunday at two o’clock. Brother, I’m for anything you’re for as long as it’s going to get some results. I’m for anything you’re for. As long as it’s intelligent, as long as it’s disciplined, as long as it’s aimed in the right direction—I’m for it. And what determines what we should do, or shouldn’t do, will in no way be influenced by what the man downtown thinks.

We don’t need anybody on the outside laying the ground rules by which we are going to fight our battles. We'll study the battle, study the enemy, study what we’re up against, and then outline or map our own battle strategy. And we’ll get some results. But as long as you have someone coming in from the outside telling you how you should do it and how you shouldn’t do it—and always what they tell you is nonviolence, peaceful, love everybody, forgive them Lord, they know not what they do. As long as you get into that kind of bag, why you’ll never get anywhere. What we want is to let them know that our aims are just. Our aims are within the realm of justice. And since they are, we’re justified in going after those aims. Don’t you know it’s a disgrace for the United States of America to let—to have Martin Luther King, my good friend, the Right Reverend Dr. Martin, in Alabama, using school children to do what the federal government should do. Think of this. Those school children shouldn’t have to march. Why Lyndon Johnson is supposed to have troops down there marching.

Your children aren’t supposed to have to get out there and demonstrate just to vote. Is it that bad? It shows our so-called leaders have been outmaneuvered. Every day, you look on the television, you listen to the radio, you read the newspaper, and see where Black it people are going to jail by the hundreds, by the thousands. You don’t do this in a civilized country. In any other country, the government would do its job. But this exists only because the government is not doing its job.

They’ve got Martin Luther King down there with crocodile tears crying his way into jail and still coming out and haven’t got the ballot yet. We can get the ballot. Didn’t they pass the civil rights bill? Just a minute, didn’t they pass the civil rights bill and have made it legal. Don’t you know that anywhere our people want to register and vote they’re within their legal rights? All you and I have to do is show that we’re men. And when we, and when they go to vote, we go with them. With them. With them. Prepared! Not prepared to make trouble. Not prepared to cause trouble. But prepared to protect ourselves in case trouble comes our way. And no one can find fault with that. Yes ma’am?

Question: My nephew is in Vietnam and—

Malcolm X: Your nephew is where?

Question: In South Vietnam—

Malcolm X: In Vietnam? You should have him in Alabama.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: You told him right. Sister, you’re talking my kind of talk. Yeah.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: I know you would. I know you would. Who else? Yes ma’am? . . .

Question: Brother Malcolm [Unintelligible] have fallen out of a hospital window. We buried him Saturday. [Unintelligible] refuse to speak to anyone. They have not spoken to his mother or anyone else. We have sent delegations there and each time they tell us that there’s no one available to speak to. I had a picket line there Saturday. Now can’t something be done about this? A thirteen-year-old child?

Malcolm X: Fell out of the hospital window?

Question: So they say. But this child had lived on the top floor all of his life. What can we do and what must we do to avoid something else like this?

Malcolm X: This is what I meant earlier when I said concerning the importance of our controlling Harlem. As long as we have outsiders running our hospitals and our schools and our everything else, they will run us right on out of existence. I would suggest that you come over to the office and see what we can get our heads together on. And see what we can do. Anything I can do, I certainly will and I know all the brothers and sisters will. We have time for two more questions. Yes ma’am. Right in front.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: No, they’re not. They’re marching for their parents. Let me tell you. You know, I was in Selma, and when I got to Selma I talked to these children. I talked to them. And you know I have to say this. I have to expose the man. King’s man did not want me to talk to them. They told me they didn’t mind me coming in and all of that but they preferred that I didn’t talk to the children. Because they knew what I was going to say. But the children insisted that I be heard. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have gotten a hearing at all. And some of the, many of the students from SNCC also insisted that I be heard. This is the only way I got a chance to talk to them. And I might point out that one little girl who was only thirteen years old told me that she had been in jail the night before. She had just gotten out that morning. And she told of how they were using cattle prods, sticking it up against the heads of some of these little children and giving them headaches and things of that sort. Oh, yes. The most brutal form of punishment imaginable takes place down there and nothing is done about it. Old Lyndon is all tied up in South Vietnam and the Congo and other places, but he’s not minding his business in Mississippi, in Alabama. But you see, I don’t blame them. I blame us. Really, I blame us. Once we organize, we can straighten it out.

The government is not going to straighten it out. It’s getting too corrupt. It has too many racists in it. Too many segregationists running the government. So how is somebody from Texas going to stop the Klan? From Texas! Texas is a Klan state itself No. You and I have to do it. And I promised the brothers and sisters in Alabama when I was there that we’d be back. I’ll be back, you’ll be back, we’ll be back. Well ease on in, brothers and sisters. Those people down there aren’t afraid. They aren’t afraid, they’re just waiting for somebody to tell them what to do. That’s all. And they don’t go for that old turn-the-other-cheek stuff. No. That’s why they got children doing it. And even those children don’t go for turning the other cheek. And there’s nothing wrong with my saying this. Any time you live in a government, a government in 1965, that will permit conditions to exist that force a Negro leader to take children—babies—and march them down the street to get the right to register and vote, why that government should come under question. Should come under examination. We should stop and take a second look at it. And if it’s not the government, then it’s the men in the government. But the blame has got to be put somewhere. But you know where I put it? On us. We’re too easy. We’re too forgiving. We’re too loving. We’re too forgetful. We’re too compromising. And we’re too peaceful. Time for one more question. Yes sir.... Yes, yes ma’am.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: Yes, Yes. Akbar Muhammad along with Wallace Muhammad. But Akbar Muhammad gave a press conference in Cairo completely disassociating himself from his father and pointing out that what Elijah Muhammad is teaching in this country is absolutely and diametrically opposed to the true teachings of Islam. This was in Cairo. And actually what Elijah Muhammad is teaching is an insult to the entire Muslim world, because Islam as the religion, as a religion, has nothing to do with color. There is no religion that has anything to do with color and Islam—as a religion, it doesn’t use the color of a man’s skin to measure him or as a yardstick. Islam, as a religion, judges a man by his intention, by his behavior, by his deeds. Now I can judge these crackers not ‘cause they’re white. I’m not talking about them ‘cause they’re white. I’m talking about them because what they do. Do you understand? Anything you hear me say here about whitey, or the white man, is not because he’s white—no, I’ll shake his hand if he’s all right. But first he got to get all right.

The standard of judgment from a Muslim is behavior, intention, and deed. Do you understand? What Elijah Muhammad teaches is not that. Yes sir.

Question: Getting back to the action.

Malcolm X: The action, yes.

Question: You know, having power, wouldn’t it be better if we were—I mean speaking of the Black man—to form a Black Ku Klux Klan7

Malcolm X: No. No. No. Don’t let them maneuver you into forming anything that can be compared with the Klan. See, it is true we’re the target of brutal, criminal treatment from the Klan. Now, we don’t need a Black Ku Klux Klan. All we need is Black people who believe in the brotherhood of man and who will fight anyone who threatens the brotherhood of man. Now, the Klan is a threat to this brotherhood and we are legally within our rights to defend ourselves from this Klan. But if we call ourselves the Klan, what will happen— the press will pick up what you do and make what you do look wrong. Because they will make it look wrong anyway. So if you call yourself that, you help them. You help them hurt you. No we don’t want anything to do with the Klan or anything like the Klan. We want to destroy the Klan. Disband it, destroy it, erase it from this earth. And we can do it.

You’ve been in the army. They taught you all those tricks. Well, use them. I got to say this; then we’re going to close. You need to study guerrilla warfare. Get every book you can find on guerrilla warfare. There’s nothing wrong with saying that. Yes, it’s good to know everything. There’s nothing wrong with knowing that. Why, the government teaches you that. They draft you to teach you that, don’t they? Sure, they it taught it to your son. Well, go on and teach it to your son. But then tell your son how to use it. No, you study. We’re going to have classes. The OAAU is going to have classes in all of the various sciences that you and I need to know—karate, judo. We’ve got some experts. This brother here is an expert judo man, expert karate man. He’d break that board right here like it wasn’t even a board.

You come on in the OAAU and we’ll train you. Show you how to protect yourself. Not so that you can go out and attack someone. You should never attack anybody. But at the same time whenever you, yourself, are attacked you are not supposed to turn the other cheek. Never turn the other cheek until you see the white man turn his cheek. The day that the white man turns the cheek, then you turn the cheek. If Martin Luther King was teaching white people to turn the other cheek, then I would say he was justified in teaching Black people to turn the other cheek. That’s all I’m against. Make it a two-way street. Make it even-steven. If I’m going to be nonviolent, then let them be nonviolent. But as long as they’re not nonviolent, don’t you let anybody tell you anything about nonviolence. No. Be intelligent. Brothers and sisters, we’re going to have our program on Sunday at two o’clock. I hope that every one of you will be here. It will be one of the last programs that we have—please don’t move; please don’t move; please don’t move. It’s going to be one of the last programs we have, next Sunday, at two o’clock. It will be designed to unfold to you completely, what our program is, and as I said earlier—some of you came late—the only reason that I didn’t do it tonight, I wanted to give you a complete clarification on what happened at my house Sunday morning, so that you would know.

And once you know, then you can stay way away from me or come on in, we’ll get you, one of the two. But I don’t want to get you into anything that you don’t know what you’re getting into. I’m not trying to get you in any trouble, but I am trying to get something organized that will enable us to take a direct action against the forces that have been holding us back. Thank you.

After the Firebombing (Feb. 14, 1965)

2013-07-04T19:47:00.004-07:00

Distinguished guests, brothers and sisters, ladies and gentlemen, friends and enemies:

I want to point out first that I am very happy to be here this evening and I'm thankful for the invitation to come here to Detroit this evening. I was in a house last night that was bombed, my own. It didn't destroy all my clothes, not all, but you know what happens when fire dashes through—they get smoky. The only thing I could get my hands on before leaving was what I have on now.

It isn't something that made me lose confidence in what I am doing, because my wife understands and I have children from this size on down, and even in their young age they understand. I think they would rather have a father or brother or whatever the situation may be who will take a stand in the face of any kind of reaction from narrow-minded people rather than to compromise and later on have to grow up in shame and in disgrace.

So I just ask you to excuse my appearance. I don't normally come out in front of people without a shirt and a tie. I guess that's somewhat a holdover from the Black Muslim movement, which I was in. That's one of the good aspects of that movement. It teaches you to be very careful and conscious of how you look, which is a positive contribution on their part. But that positive contribution on their part is greatly offset by too many other liabilities.

Tonight we want to discuss—and by the way, also, when I came here today I was a bit—last night, the temperature was about twenty above and when this explosion took place, I was caught in what I had on, some pajamas. And in trying to get my family out of the house, none of us stopped for any clothes at that point—twenty-degree cold. I myself was—I had gotten them into the house of the neighbor next door. So I thought perhaps being in that condition for so long I would get pneumonia or a cold or something like that, so a doctor came today—a nice doctor too—and he shot something in my arm that naturally put me to sleep. I've been back there asleep ever since the program started in order to get back in shape. So if I have a tendency to stutter or slow down, it's still the effects of that drug. I don't know what kind it was, but it was good; it makes you sleep, and there's nothing like sleeping through a whole lot of excitement.

Tonight one of the things that has to be stressed is that which has not only the United States very much worried but which also has France, Great Britain, and most of the powers, who formerly were known as colonial powers, worried also, and that primarily is the African revolution. They are more concerned with the revolution that's taking place on the African continent than they are with the revolution in Asia and in Latin America. And this is because there are so many people of African ancestry within the domestic confines or jurisdiction of these various governments.

There are four different types of people in the Western Hemisphere, all of whom have Africa as a common heritage, common origin, and that's the—those of our people in Latin America, who are Black, but who are in the Spanish-speaking areas. Many of them ofttimes migrate back to Spain, the only difference being Spain has such bad economic conditions until many of the people from Latin America don't think it's worthwhile to migrate back there. And then the British and the French had a great deal of control in the Caribbean, in the West Indies. And so now you have many people from the West Indies migrating to both London—rather both England and France. The people from the British West Indies go to London, and those from the French West Indies go to Paris. And it has put France and England since World War II in the precarious position of having a sort of a commonwealth structure that makes it easy for all of the people in the commonwealth territories to come into their country with no restrictions. So there's an increasing number of dark-skinned people in England and also in France.

When I was in Africa in May, I noticed a tendency on the part of the Afro-Americans to, what I call lollygag. Everybody else who was over there had something on the ball, something they were doing, something constructive. For instance, in Ghana, just to take Ghana as an example. There would be many refugees in Ghana from South Africa. But those who were in Ghana were organized and were serving as pressure groups, some were training for military—some were being trained in how to be soldiers, but others were involved as a pressure group or lobby group to let the people of Ghana never forget what's happening to the brother in South Africa. Also you'd have brothers there from Angola and Mozambique. But all of the Africans who were exiles from their particular country and would be in a place like Ghana or Tanganyika, now Tanzania, they would be training. Their every move would still be designed to offset what was happening to their people back home where they had left.

The only difference on the continent was the American Negro. Those who were over there weren't even thinking about these over here. This was the basic difference. The Africans, when they escaped from their respective countries that were still colonized, they didn't try and run away from the problem. But as soon as they got where they were going, they then began to organize into pressure groups to get governmental support at the international level against the injustices they were experiencing back home.

And as I said, the American Negro, or the Afro-American, who was in these various countries, some working for this government, some working for that government, some just in business—they were just socializing, they had turned their back on the cause over here, they were partying, you know.
And when I went through one country in particular, I heard a lot of their complaints and I didn't make any move on them.

But when I got to another country, I found the Afro-Americans there were making the same complaints. So we sat down and talked and we organized a branch in this particular country, a branch of the OAAU, Organization of Afro-American Unity. That one was the only one in existence at that time. Then during the summer, when I went back to Africa, I was able in each country that I visited, to get the Afro-American community together and organize them and make them aware of their responsibility to those of us who are still here in the lion's den.

They began to do this quite well, and when I got to Paris and London—there are many Afro-Americans in Paris, and many in London. And in December—no, November—we organized a group in Paris and just within a very short time they had grown into a well-organized unit. And they, in conjunction with the African community, invited me to Paris, Tuesday, to address a large gathering of Parisians and Afro-Americans and people from the Caribbean and also from Africa who were interested in our struggle in this country and the rate of progress that we have been making.

But since the French government and the British government and this government here, the United States, know that I have been almost fanatically stressing the importance of the Afro-American uniting with the African and working as a coalition, especially in areas which are of mutual benefit to all of us. And the governments in these different places were frightened because they know that the Black revolution that's taking place on the outside of their house.

And I might point out right here that colonialism or imperialism, as the slave system of the West is called, is not something that's just confined to England or France or the United States. But the interests in this country are in cahoots with the interests in France and the interests in Britain. It's one huge complex or combine, and it creates what's known as not the American power structure or the French power structure, but it's an international power structure. And this international power structure is used to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources.

So that the era in which you and I have been living during the past ten years most specifically has witnessed the upsurge on the part of the Black man in Africa against the power structure.
He wants his freedom.

Now, mind you, the power structure is international, and as such, its own domestic base is in London, in Paris, in Washington, D.C., and so forth. And the outside or external phase of the revolution, which is manifest in the attitude and action of the Africans today is troublesome enough. The revolution on the outside of the house, or the outside of the structure, is troublesome enough. But now the powers that be are beginning to see that this struggle on the outside by the Black man is affecting, infecting the Black man who is on the inside of that structure. I hope you understand what I'm trying to say.

The newly awakened people all over the world pose a problem for what's known as Western interests, which is imperialism, colonialism, racism, and all these other negative -isms or vulturistic -isms. Just as the external forces pose a grave threat, they can now see that the internal forces pose an even greater threat. But the internal forces pose an even greater threat only when they have properly analyzed the situation and know what the stakes really are.

Just by advocating a coalition of Africans, Afro-Americans, Arabs, and Asians who live within the structure, it automatically has upset France, which is supposed to be one of the most liberal—heh!—countries on earth, and it made them expose their hand. England the same way. And I don't have to tell you about this country that we are living in now.

So when you count the number of dark-skinned people in the Western Hemisphere you can see that there are probably over 100 million. When you consider Brazil has two-thirds what we call colored, or nonwhite, and Venezuela, Honduras and other Central American countries, Cuba and Jamaica, and the United States and even Canada—when you total all these people up, you have probably over 100 million. And this 100 million on the inside of the power structure today is what is causing a great deal of concern for the power structure itself.

Not a great deal of concern for all white people, but a great deal of concern for most white people. See, if I said "all white people" then they would call me a racist for giving a blanket condemnation of things.

And this is true; this is how they do it. They take one little word out of what you say, ignore all the rest, and then begin to magnify it all over the world to make you look like what you actually aren't. And I'm very used to that.

So we saw that the first thing to do was to unite our people, not only unite us internally, but we have to be united with our brothers and sisters abroad. It was for that purpose that I spent five months in the Middle East and Africa during the summer. The trip was very enlightening, inspiring, and fruitful. I didn't go into any African country, or any country in the Middle East for that matter, and run into any closed door, closed mind, or closed heart. I found a warm reception and an amazingly deep interest and sympathy for the Black man in this country in regards to our struggle for human rights.
While I was traveling, I had a chance to speak in Cairo, or rather Alexandria, with President Nasser for about an hour and a half. He's a very brilliant man. And I can see why they're so afraid of him, and they are afraid of him—they know he can cut off their oil. And actually the only thing power respects is power. Whenever you find a man who's in a position to show power against power then that man is respected. But you can take a man who has power and love him all the rest of your life, nonviolently and forgivingly and all the rest of those oft-time things, and you won't get anything out of it.

So I also had a chance to speak to President Nyerere in Tanganyika, which is now Tanzania, and also Kenyata—I know that all of you know him. He was the head of the Mau Mau, which really brought freedom to many of the African countries. This is true. The Mau Mau played a major role in bringing about freedom for Kenya, and not only for Kenya but other African countries. Because what the Mau Mau did frightened the white man so much in other countries until he said, "Well I better get this thing straight before some of them pop up here." This is good to study because you see what makes him react: Nothing loving makes him react, nothing forgiving makes him react. The only time he reacts is when he knows you can hurt him, and when you let him know you can hurt him he has to think two or three times before he tries to hurt you. But if you're not going to do nothing but return that hurt with love—why good night! He knows you're out of your mind.

And also I had an opportunity to speak with President Azikiwe in Nigeria, President Nkrumah in Ghana, and President Sekou Toure in Guinea. And in all of these people I found nothing but warmth, friendship, sympathy, and a desire to help the Black man in this country in fighting our problem. And we have a very complex problem.

Now I hope you'll forgive me for just speaking so informally tonight, but I frankly think it's always better to be informal. As far as I am concerned, I can speak to people better in an informal way than I can with all of this stiff formality that ends up meaning nothing. Plus, when people are informal, they're relaxed. When they're relaxed, their mind is more open, and they can weigh things more objectively. Whenever you and I are discussing our problems we need to be very objective, very cool, calm, collected. But that doesn't mean we should always be. There's a time to be cool and a time to be hot. See, you got messed up into thinking that there's only one time for everything. There's a time to love and a time to hate. Even Solomon said that, and he was in that Book too. You're just taking something out of the Book that fits your cowardly nature. And when you don't want to fight, you say, "Well, Jesus said don't fight." But I don't even believe Jesus said that.

Also I am very pleased to see so many who have come out to always see for yourself, where you can hear for yourself, and then think for yourself. Then you'll be in a better position to make an intelligent judgment for yourself. But if you form the habit of listening to what others say about something or some one or reading what someone else has written about someone, somebody can confuse you and misuse you. So as Afro-Americans or Black people here in the Western Hemisphere, you and I have to learn to weigh things for ourselves. No matter what the man says, you better look into it.

And a good example of why it's so important to look into things for yourself: I was on a plane between Algiers and Geneva and it just happened that two other Americans were sitting in the two seats next to me. None of us knew each other and the other two were white, one a male, the other a female. And after we had been flying along for about forty minutes, the lady, she says, "Could I ask you a personal question?"

I said, '"Yes." She said, "Well--" she had been looking at my briefcase, and she said, "Well, what does that X--" she says, "What kind of last name could you have that begins with X?" So I said, "That's it -- X." And she said, "Well, what does the 'M' stand for?" I said, "Malcolm." So she was quiet for about ten minutes, and she turned to me and she says, "You're not Malcolm X?"

You see, we had been riding along in a nice conversation like three human beings, you know, no hostility, no animosity, just human. And she couldn't take this, she said, "Well you're not who I was looking for," you know. And she ended up telling me that she was looking for horns and all that, and for someone who was out to kill all white people, as if all white people could be killed. This was her general attitude, and this attitude had been given her—this image had been given her by the press.

So before I get involved in anything nowadays, I have to straighten out my own position, which is clear. I am not a racist in any form whatsoever. I don't believe in any form of racism. I don't believe in any form of discrimination or segregation. I believe in Islam. I am a Muslim. And there's nothing wrong with being a Muslim, nothing wrong with the religion of Islam. It just teaches us to believe in Allah as the God. Those of you who are Christians probably believe in the same God, because I think you believe in the God who created the universe. That's the One we believe in, the one who created the universe, the only difference being you call Him God and I—we call Him Allah. The Jews call him Jehovah. If you could understand Hebrew, you'd probably call him Jehovah too. If you could understand Arabic, you'd probably call him Allah.

But since the white man, your "friend," took your language away from you during slavery, the only language you know is his language. You know, your friend's language. So you call for the same God he calls for. When he's putting a rope around your neck, you call for God and he calls for God. And you wonder why the one you call on never answers you.

So that once you realize that I believe in the Supreme Being who created the universe, and believe in him as being one—I also have been taught in Islam that one God only has one religion, and that religion is called Islam, and all of the prophets who came forth taught that religion—Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, all of them. And by believing in one God and one religion and all of the prophets, it creates unity. There's no room for argument, no need for us to be arguing with each other.
And also in that religion, of the real religion of Islam—when I was in the Black Muslim movement, I wasn't—they didn't have the real religion of Islam in that movement. It was something else. And the real religion of Islam doesn't teach anyone to judge another human being by the color of his skin. The yardstick that is used by the Muslim to measure another man is not the man's color but the man's deeds, the man's conscious behavior, the man's intentions. And when you use that as a standard of measurement or judgment, you never go wrong.

But when you just judge a man because of the color of his skin, then you're committing a crime, because that's the worst kind of judgment. If you judged him just because he was a Jew, that's not as bad as judging him because he's Black. Because a Jew can hide his religion. He can say he's something else—and which a lot of them do that, they say they're something else. But the Black man can't hide. When they start indicting us because of our color that means we're indicted before we're born, which is the worst kind of crime that can be committed. The Muslim religion has eliminated all tendencies to judge a man according to the color of his skin, but rather the judgment is based upon his deeds.

And when, prior to going into the Muslim world, I didn't have any—Elijah Muhammad had taught us that the white man could not enter into Mecca in Arabia, and all of us who followed him, we believed it. And he said the reason he couldn't enter was because he's white and inherently evil, it's impossible to change him. And the only thing that would change him is Islam, and he can't accept Islam because by nature he's evil. And therefore by not being able to accept Islam and become a Muslim, he could never enter Mecca. This is how he taught us, you know.

So when I got over there and went to Mecca and saw these people who were blond and blue-eyed and pale-skinned and all those things, I said, "Well!" But I watched them closely. And I noticed that though they were white, and they would call themselves white, there was a difference between them and the white one over here. And that basic difference was this: in Asia or the Arab world or in Africa, where the Muslims are, if you find one who says he's white, all he's doing is using an adjective to describe something that's incidental about him, one of his incidental characteristics; so there's nothing else to it, he's just white.

But when you get the white man over here in America and he says he's white, he means something else. You can listen to the sound of his voice—when he says he's white, he means he's a boss. That's right. That's what "white" means in this language. You know the expression, "free, white, and twenty-one." He made that up. He's letting you know all of them mean the same. "White" means free, boss. He's up there. So that when he says he's white he has a little different sound in his voice. I know you know what I'm talking about.

This was what I saw was missing in the Muslim world. If they said they were white, it was incidental. White, black, brown, red, yellow, doesn't make any difference what color you are. So this was the religion that I had accepted and had gone there to get a better knowledge of it.

But despite the fact that I saw that Islam was a religion of brotherhood, I also had to face reality. And when I got back into this American society, I'm not in a society that practices brotherhood. I'm in a society that might preach it on Sunday, but they don't practice it on no day—on any day. And so, since I could see that America itself is a society where there is no brotherhood and that this society is controlled primarily by racists and segregationists—and it is—who are in Washington, D.C., in positions of power. And from Washington, D.C., they exercise the same forms of brutal oppression against dark-skinned people in South and North Vietnam, or in the Congo, or in Cuba, or in any other place on this earth where they're trying to exploit and oppress. This is a society whose government doesn't hesitate to inflict the most brutal form of punishment and oppression upon dark-skinned people all over the world.

To wit, right now what's going on in and around Saigon and Hanoi and in the Congo and elsewhere. They are violent when their interests are at stake. But all of that violence that they display at the international level, when you and I want just a little bit of freedom, we're supposed to be nonviolent. They're violent. They're violent in Korea, they're violent in Germany, they're violent in the South Pacific, they're violent in Cuba, they're violent wherever they go. But when it comes time for you and me to protect ourselves against lynchings, they tell us to be nonviolent.

That's a shame. Because we get tricked into being nonviolent, and when somebody stands up and talks like I just did, they say, "Why, he's advocating violence!" Isn't that what they say? Every time you pick up your newspaper, you see where one of these things has written into it that I'm advocating violence. I have never advocated any violence. I've only said that Black people who are the victims of organized violence perpetrated upon us by the Klan, the Citizens' Council, and many other forms, we should defend ourselves. And when I say that we should defend ourselves against the violence of others, they use their press skillfully to make the world think that I'm calling on violence, period. I wouldn't call on anybody to be violent without a cause. But I think the Black man in this country, above and beyond people all over the world, will be more justified when he stands up and starts to protect himself, no matter how many necks he has to break and heads he has to crack.

I saw in the paper where they—on the television where they took this Black woman down in Selma, Alabama, and knocked her right down on the ground, dragging her down the street. You saw it, you're trying to pretend like you didn't see it 'cause you knew you should've done something about it and didn't. It showed the sheriff and his henchmen throwing this Black woman on the ground—on the ground.

And Negro men standing around doing nothing about it saying, "Well, let's overcome them with our capacity to love." What kind of phrase is that? "Overcome them with our capacity to love." And then it disgraces the rest of us, because all over the world the picture is splashed showing a Black woman with some white brutes, with their knees on her holding her down, and full-grown Black men standing around watching it. Why, you are lucky they let you stay on earth, much less stay in the country.

When I saw it I dispatched a wire to Rockwell; Rockwell was one of the agitators down there, Rockwell, this Lincoln Rockwell. And the wire said in essence that this is to warn him that I am no longer held in check from fighting white supremacists by Elijah Muhammad's separatist Black Muslim movement. And that if Rockwell's presence in Alabama causes harm to come to Dr. King or any other Black person in Alabama who's doing nothing other than trying to enjoy their rights, then Rockwell and his Ku Klux Klan friends would be met with maximum retaliation from those of us who are not handcuffed by this nonviolent philosophy. And I haven't heard from Rockwell since.

Brothers and sisters, if you and I would just realize that once we learn to talk the language that they understand, they will then get the point. You can't ever reach a man if you don't speak his language. If a man speaks the language of brute force, you can't come to him with peace. Why, good night! He'll break you in two, as he has been doing all along. If a man speaks French, you can't speak to him in German. If he speaks Swahili, you can't communicate with him in Chinese. You have to find out what does this man speak. And once you know his language, learn how to speak his language, and he'll get the point. There'll be some dialogue, some communication, and some understanding will be developed.

You've been in this country long enough to know the language the Klan speaks. They only know one language. And what you and I have to start doing in 1965—I mean that's what you have to do, because most of us already been doing it—is start learning a new language. Learn the language that they understand. And then when they come up on our doorstep to talk, we can talk. And they will get the point. There'll be a dialogue, there'll be some communication, and I'm quite certain there will then be some understanding. Why? Because the Klan is a cowardly outfit. They have perfected the art of making Negroes be afraid. As long as the Negro's afraid, the Klan is safe. But the Klan itself is cowardly. One of them will never come after one of you. They all come together. Sure, and they're scared of you.

And you sit there when they're putting the rope around your neck saying, "Forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do." As long as they've been doing it, they're experts at it, they know what they're doing!

No, since they federal government has shown that it isn't going to do anything about it but talk, it is a duty, it's your and my duty as men, as human beings, it is our duty to our people, to organize ourselves and let the government know that if they don't stop that Klan, we'll stop it ourselves. And then you'll see the government start doing something about it. But don't ever think that they're going to do it just on some kind of morality basis, no. So I don't believe in violence—that's why I want to stop it. And you can't stop it with love, not love of those things down there, no. So, we only mean vigorous action in self-defense, and that vigorous action we feel we're justified in initiating by any means necessary.

Now, the press, behind something like that, they call us racist and people who are "violent in reverse." This is how they psyche you. They make you think that if you try to stop the Klan from lynching you, you're practicing "violence in reverse." Pick up on this, I hear a lot of you all parrot what the man says. You say, "I don't want to be a Ku Klux Klan in reverse." Well, you—heh!—if a criminal comes around your house with his gun, brother, just because he's got a gun and he's robbing your house, brother, and he's a robber, it doesn't make you a robber because you grab your gun and run him out. No, see, the man is using some tricky logic on you. And he has absolutely got a Ku Klux Klan outfit that goes through the country frightening black people. Now, I say it is time for black people to put together the type of action, the unity, that is necessary to pull the sheet off of them so they won't be frightening black people any longer. That's all. And when we say this, the press calls us "racist in reverse."

"Don't struggle—only within the ground rules that the people you're struggling against have laid down." Why, this is insane. But it shows you how they can do it. With skillful manipulating of the press, they're able to make the victim look like the criminal, and the criminal look like the victim.
Right now in New York we had a couple cases where police grabbed the brother and beat him unmercifully—and then charged him with assaulting them. They used the press to make it look like he's the criminal and they're the victim. This is how they do it, and if you study how they do it there, then you'll know how they do it over here. It's the same game going all the time, and if you and I don't awaken and see what this man is doing to us, then it'll be too late. They may have the gas ovens already built before you realize that they're hot.

One of the shrewd ways that they use the press to project us in the eye or image of a criminal: they take statistics. And with the press they feed these statistics to the public, primarily the white public. Because there are some well-meaning persons in the white public as well as bad-meaning persons in the white public. And whatever the government is going to do, it always wants the public on its side, whether it's the local government, state government, federal government. So they use the press to create images. And at the local level, they'll create an image by feeding statistics to the press—through the press showing the high crime rate in the Negro community. As soon as this high crime rate is emphasized through the press, then people begin to look upon the Negro community as a community of criminals.

And then any Negro in the community can be stopped in the street. "Put your hands up," and they pat you down. You might be a doctor, a lawyer, a preacher, or some other kind of Uncle Tom. But despite your professional standing, you'll find that you're the same victim as the man who's in the alley. Just because you're Black and you live in a Black community, which has been projected as a community of criminals. This is done. And once the public accepts this image also, it paves the way for a police-state type of activity in the Negro community. They can use any kind of brutal methods to suppress Blacks because "they're criminals anyway." And what has given this image? The press again, by letting the power structure or the racist element in the power structure use them in that way.

A very good example was the riots that took place here during the summer: I was in Africa, I read about them over there. If you'll notice, they referred to the rioters as vandals, hoodlums, thieves. They tried to make it appear that this wasn't—they tried to make it—and they did this, they skillfully took the burden off the society for its failure to correct these negative conditions in the Black community. It took the burden completely off the society and put it right on the community by using the press to make it appear that the looting and all of this was proof that the whole act was nothing but vandals and robbers and thieves, who weren't really interested in anything other than that which was negative. And I hear many old, dumb, brainwashed Negroes who parrot the same old party line that the man handed down in his paper.

It was not the case that they were just knocking out store windows ignorantly. In Harlem, for instance, all of the stores are owned by white people, all of the buildings are owned by white people. Black people are just there, paying rent, buying the groceries. But they don't own the stores, clothing stores, food stores, any kind of stores; don't even own the homes that they live in. This is all owned by outsiders. And then these run down apartment dwellings, the Black man in Harlem pays more money for it than the man down in the rich Park Avenue section. It costs us more money to live in the slum, than it costs them to live down on Park Avenue. Black people in Harlem know this. And the white merchants charge us more money for food in Harlem—and it's the cheap food, it's the worst food; and we have to pay more money for it than the man has to pay for it downtown. So Black people know that they're being exploited and that their blood is being sucked and they see no way out of it.

So finally, when the thing is sparked, the white man is not there; he's gone. The merchant is not there, the landlord is not there; the one he considers to be the enemy isn't there. So, they knock at his property. This is what makes them knock down the store windows and set fire to things, and things of that sort.

It's not that they're thieves. But they try and project the image to the public that this is being done by thieves, and thieves alone. And they ignore the fact that no, it is not thievery alone. It's a corrupt, vicious, hypocritical system that has castrated the Black man; and the only way the Black man can get back at it is to strike it in the only way he knows how.

They use the press. That doesn't mean that all reporters are bad. Some of them are good…I suppose. But you can take their collective approach to any problem and see that they can always agree when it gets to you and me. They knew that this affair—which is designed to honor outstanding Black Americans, is it not? You'd find nothing in the newspapers to give the slightest hint that this affair was going to take place. Not one hint.

Why? You see, you have many sources of news. If you don't think that they're in cahoots, watch! They're all interested, or none of them are interested. It's not a staggering thing. They're not going to say anything in advance that's being given by any Black people who believe in functioning beyond the scope of the ground rules that are laid down by the "liberal" element of the power structure.

When you begin to start thinking for yourself, you frighten them, and they try and block your getting to the public, for fear that if the public listens to you, then the public won't listen to them anymore. And they've got certain Negroes whom they have to keep blowing up in the papers to make them look like leaders. So that the people will keep on following them, no matter how many knocks they get on their heads following him. This is how the man does it, and if you don't wake up and find out how he does it, I tell you, they'll be building gas chambers and gas ovens pretty soon—I don't mean those kind you've got at home in your kitchen.

Another example at the international level of how skillfully they use this trickery was in the Congo. In the Congo, airplanes were dropping bombs on African villages. African villages don't have a defense against bombs. And the pilot can't tell who the bomb is being dropped upon. When a bomb hits a village, everything goes. And these pilots, flying planes filled with bombs, dropping these bombs on African villages, were destroying women, were destroying children, were destroying babies. You never heard any outcry over here about that.

And it had started way back in June. They would drop bombs on African villages that would blow that village apart and everything in it—man, woman, child, and baby. No outcry, no sympathy, no support, no concern, because the press didn't project it in such a way that it would be designed to get your sympathy. They know how to put something so that you'll sympathize with it, and they know how to put it so you'll be against it. I'm telling you, they are masters at it. And if you don't develop the analytical ability to read between the lines in what they're saying, I'm telling you again—they'll be building gas ovens, and before you wake up you'll be in one of them, just like the Jews ended up in gas ovens over there in Germany. You're in a society that's just as capable of building gas ovens for Black people as Hitler's society was.

This was mass murder in the Congo, of women and children and babies. But there was no outcry even from the white liberals, even from your "friends." Why? Because they made it appear that it was a humanitarian project. They said that the planes were being flown by "American-trained anti-Castro Cuban pilots." This is propaganda, too. Soon as you hear that it's American-trained, you say, "Oh that's all right, that's us." And the anti-Castro Cubans, "Oh that's all right too, 'cause if they're against Castro, whoever else they're against that's good, 'cause Castro is a monster." But you see how step-by-step they grab your mind?

And these pilots are hired, their salaries are paid by the United States government. They're called mercenaries, these pilots are. And a mercenary is not someone who kills you because he's patriotic. He kills you for blood money, he's a hired killer. This is what a mercenary means. And they're able to take these hired killers, put them in American planes, with American bombs, and drop them on African villages, blowing to bits Black men, Black women, Black children, Black babies, and you Black people sitting over here cool like it doesn't even involve you. You're a fool. They'll do it to them today, and do it to you tomorrow. Because you and I and they are all the same.

They call it a humanitarian project and that they're doing it in the name of freedom. And all of this, these glorious terms, are used to pave the way in your mind for what they're going to do.

Then they take Tshombe. You've heard of Tshombe. He's the worst African that was ever born. The lowest type that was ever born. He's a murderer himself. He's the murderer of Lumumba, the former prime minister of—the first and only rightful prime minister of the Congo. He's an international—he's a murderer with an international stature as a murderer. Yet the United States government went and got Tshombe in Spain, and put him as the head of the Congolese government. This is criminal! Here's a man who's a murderer, so the United States takes him, puts him over the Congo, and supports his government with your tax dollars. Now—they hired him to occupy the position as head of state over the Congo—a killer! He is a hired killer himself! His salary's paid by the United States government. And he turns—his first move is to bring in South Africans, who hate everything in sight. He hires those South Africans to come and kill his own Congolese people. And the United States, again, pays their salary.

You know, it's something to think about. How do you think you would feel right now if some Congolese brothers walked up to you—and they look just like you, don't think you don't look Congolese. You look as much Congolese as a Congolese does. They got all kinds of Congolese over there. How would you feel if one of them walked up to you and asked you about what your government is doing in the Congo. I was asked that when I was over there. But they don't have to come to me like that, 'cause they know where I stand automatically. And for one time I'm thankful to the press, for letting everybody know where I stand. They—but you have no explanation. Your tongue stays in your mouth. And then you have to become—you have to go to the extreme to convince them that you don't go along with what the United States government is doing in the Congo.

And they justify the usage of Tshombe as the present head of state by saying that he's the only African who can unite—or bring unity to the Congo. Has he brought unity to the Congo? But, see, this is their game! And their real reason for wanting Tshombe there was so that Tshombe could invite them to come in. Now, what African head of state would have dared to invite outside powers? So they put Tshombe there, and as soon as Tshombe got there he invited them to bring paratroopers from Belgium in the United States' transport planes to try and recapture Congo.

This is all a cold-blooded act on the part of your Western powers, namely the Western powers here in the United States—interests in the United States, in England, and France, and Belgium and so forth. They want the wealth of the Congo, plus its strategic geographic position.

The step-by-step process that was used by the press: First they fanned the flame in such a manner to create hysteria in the mind of the public. And then they shift gears and fan the flame in a manner designed to get the sympathy of the public. And once they go from hysteria to sympathy, their next step is to get the public to support them in whatever act they're getting ready to go down with. You're dealing with a cold calculating international machine, that's so criminal in its objectives and motives that it has the seeds of its own destruction, right within. They use the press to emphasize that white hostages are being held, or white priests, white missionaries, white nuns—they don't say nuns: white nuns. You know what the paper said right here in Detroit: white missionaries, not just a missionary; a white nun—as if there's a difference between a white nun and a black nun; or a white priest and a black priest; or if the light that's in a white skin is more valuable than a light within a black skin. This is what they're implying! And the press—look at the press when this thing was going on—and you will see what I'm talking about. They're vicious in their whiteness.

But still, I wouldn't judge them just 'cause they're white, or they'd call me a racist. I'm judging by their deeds, by their conscious behavior—and you know how they've been consciously behaving in the Congo, and how they consciously behave in Vietnam, and how they consciously behave right now in Alabama and Mississippi. So you and I got to get conscious, and start behaving in a way that we can offset this thing before it's too late—and this is what they don't want to hear.

One more thing concerning Tshombe, if you notice while we were over there on the African continent, in order to give you a better understanding of what is going on right here. The next thing that is good to know about Tshombe: no Congolese troops have ever won any victories, whatsoever, for the present Congolese government. Congolese soldiers won't even fight unless they're forced to.

But the fighters in the Congo, or the freedom fighters—the rebels from the Oriental, eastern province—they fought with stones, and sticks, and rocks, spears, and arrows. And the only time they had a gun was when they got some soldier who had it, and they'd kill him and take his gun. But they were winning, they took over two-thirds of the Congo. I'm showing you, they were fighting from their hearts.

The other people, their heart wasn't in it. And because of the fighting spirit of these people, it will be impossible for Tshombe to remain as head of state over the Congo without additional troops—white troops—being constantly brought in from South Africa or elsewhere. But sooner or later, these troops are going to give out, and then America's going to have to increase her troops like she did in South Vietnam. She's not at war with Vietnam yet, she's only there "advising." They have 20,000 "advisors," you know, on the front lines. But it's not a war. Just—they're in "advisory capacity." Why, they insult the intelligence of their own public!

And they're going to have to end up doing the same thing in the Congo, they'll be trapped. They'll have to eventually send American troops to occupy the Congo. 'Cause the African freedom fighters are going to fight—they're not going to give up one inch without fighting back. And there's something that you should know! That they realize now on the African continent what's at stake, and how much—what these Western powers have in common and what they're doing in cahoots with each other behind the closed doors.

So on the African continent they are training Africans—these soldiers—so they can invade one of these countries, and take it over, and give it to the rightful people.

One of the last things I must say concerning the Congo: not only do they not intend for the Congo to fall into African hands because of its mineral wealth—and it has the greatest deposits of some of the richest elements, or minerals, of any other area on this earth. They don't intend to give it up because of its wealth; another reason they don't intend to give it up is if you look at the map you'll see that it is so strategically located geographically.

Wherein, if a real genuine African government were to come in power over the Congo, then it would be possible for African troops from all countries to invade Angola—which is a Portuguese possession. And if Angola fell, and it would fall, then it would only be a matter of time before South-West Africa, Southern Rhodesia, and Betuanaland also would fall. And it would put African troops right on the border of South Africa. And that's where they really want to get, that man down there in South Africa.

And the United States' interests are involved in blocking this, yes! Some of these liberals who grin in your face like they're your best friends, they have money tied up in the Congo. Some of the most powerful political figures in this country, come up and governors over states, have got interests in the Congo, and got interests in South Africa, and got interests all over the African continent, and go there! And as the Africans awaken and realize, they—it makes them full of the incentive to never rest until that exploiter is driven out.

So, now what effect does this have on us? Why should the Black man in America concern himself—since he's been away from the African continent for three or four hundred years—why should we concern ourselves? What impact does what happens to them have upon us? Number one, first you have to realize that up until 1959 Africa was dominated by the colonial powers. And by the colonial powers of Europe having complete control over Africa, they projected the image of Africa negatively. They projected Africa always in a negative light: jungles, savages, cannibals, nothing civilized. Why then naturally it was so negative, it was negative to you and me, and you and I began to hate it. We didn't want anybody telling us anything about Africa, much less calling us Africans. In hating Africa and in hating the Africans, we ended up hating ourselves, without even realizing it. Because you can't hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree. You can't hate your origin and not end up hating yourself. You can't hate Africa and not hate yourself.

You show me one of these people over here who have been thoroughly brainwashed, who has a negative attitude toward Africa, and I'll show you one that has a negative attitude toward himself. You can't have a positive attitude toward yourself and a negative attitude toward Africa at the same time. To the same degree that your understanding of and attitude toward Africa becomes positive, you'll find that your understanding of and your attitude toward yourself will also become positive. And this is what the white man knows. So they very skillfully made you and me hate our African identity, our African characteristics.

You know yourself—and we have been a people who hated our African characteristics. We hated our hair, we hated the shape of our nose—we wanted one of those long, dog-like noses, you know. Yeah. We hated the color of our skin, hated the blood of Africa that was in our veins. And in hating our features and our skin and our blood, why, we had to end up hating ourselves.

And we hated ourselves. Our color became to us a chain. We felt that it was holding us back. Our color became to us like a prison, which we felt was keeping us confined, not letting us go this way or that way. We felt that all of these restrictions were based solely upon our color. And the psychological reaction to that would have to be that as long as we felt imprisoned or chained or trapped by Black skin, Black features, and Black blood, that skin and those features and that blood that was holding us back automatically had to become hateful to us. And it became hateful to us. It made us feel inferior; it made us feel inadequate; it made us feel helpless.

And when we fell victims to this feeling of inadequacy or inferiority or helplessness, we turned to somebody else to show us the way. We didn't have confidence in another Black man to show us the way, or Black people to show us the way. In those days we didn't. We didn't think a Black man could do anything but play some horn—you know, some sounds and make you happy with some songs and in that way. But in serious things, where our food, clothing, and shelter was concerned and our education was concerned, we turned to the man. We never thought in terms of bringing these things into existence for ourselves, we never thought in terms of doing things for our selves. Because we felt helpless. What made us feel helpless was our hatred for ourselves. And our hatred for ourselves stemmed from our hatred of things African.

Along about 1955 they had the Bandung Conference in Indonesia. And at that time the Africans, the Asians, the Arabs, all of the nonwhite people got together and agreed to de-emphasize their differences and emphasize what they had in common, and form a working unity. And it was the working unity—the spirit of Bandung created a working unity that made it possible for the Asians, who were oppressed, the Africans, who were oppressed, and others who were oppressed to work together toward gaining independence for these other people. And it was the spirit of Bandung that brought into existence this working unity that made it possible for nations that didn't have a chance to become independent to come into their independence. And most of this began along in 1959.

After 1959 the spirit of African nationalism was fanned to a high flame, and we then began to witness the complete collapse of colonialism. France began to get out of French West Africa; Belgium began to make moves to get out of the Congo; Britain began to make moves to get out of Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda, Nigeria, and some of these other places. And although it looked like they were getting out, they pulled a trick that was colossal.

In that—when you're playing basketball and they get you trapped, you don't throw the ball away, you throw it to one of your teammates who's in the clear. And this is what the European powers did. They were trapped on the African continent, they couldn't stay there; they were looked upon as colonial, imperialist. So they had to pass the ball to someone whose image was different, and they passed the ball to Uncle Sam. And he picked it up and has been running it for a touchdown ever since. He was in the clear, he was not looked upon as one who had colonized the African continent. But at that time, the Africans couldn't see that though the United States hadn't colonized the African continent, he had colonized twenty-two million Blacks here on this continent. Because we are just as thoroughly colonized as anybody else.

When the ball was passed to the United States, it was passed at the time when John Kennedy came into power. He picked it up and helped to run it. He was one of the shrewdest backfield runners that history has ever recorded. He surrounded himself with intellectuals—highly educated, learned, and well-informed people. And their analysis told him that the government of America was confronted with a new problem. And this new problem stemmed from the fact that Africans were now awakened, they were enlightened, and they were fearless, they would fight. So this meant that the Western powers couldn't stay there by force. And since their own economies, the European economy and the American economy, was based upon their continued influence over the African continent, they had to find some means of staying there. So they used the "friendly" approach. They switched from the old, open colonial, imperialistic approach to the benevolent approach. They came up with some benevolent colonialism, philanthropic colonialism, humanitarianism, or dollarism. Immediately everything was Peace Corps, Crossroads, "We've got to help our African brothers." Pick up on that. Can't help us in Mississippi. Can't help us in Alabama, or Detroit, out here in Dearborn where some real Ku Klux Klan live.

They're going to send all the way to Africa to help. I know Dearborn; you know, I'm from Detroit, I used to live out here in Inkster. And you had to go through Dearborn to get to Inkster. Just like driving through Mississippi when you go to Dearborn. Is it still that way? [From the audience: "Yes."] Well, you should straighten it out.

So, realizing that it was necessary to come up with these new approaches, Kennedy did it. He won—he created an image of him self that was skillfully designed to make the people on the African continent think that he was Jesus, the great white father, come to make things right. I'm telling you, some of these Negroes cried harder when he died than they cried for Jesus when he was crucified.
From 1954 to 1964 was the era in which we witnessed the emerging of Africa. The impact that this had upon the civil rights struggle in America has never been told, fully told.

For one reason—for one thing, one of the primary ingredients in the complete civil rights struggle was the 'Black Muslim' movement. The 'Black Muslim' movement, though it took no part in things political, civic—it didn't take too much part in anything other than stopping people from doing this drinking, smoking, and so on. Moral reform it had, but beyond that it did nothing. But it talked such a strong talk until it put the other Negro organizations on the spot. Before the 'Black Muslim' movement came along, the NAACP was looked upon as radical; they were getting ready to investigate it. And then along came the 'Muslim' movement and frightened the white man so much he began to say, "Thank God for old Uncle Roy and Uncle Whitney and Uncle A. Philip and Uncle...—you've got a whole lot of uncles in there. I can't remember their names, they're all older than I, so I call them "uncle." Plus, if you use the word "Uncle Tom" nowadays, I heard they'll sue you for libel, you know. So I don't call any of them Uncle Tom anymore. I call them Uncle Roy.

One of the things that made the 'Black Muslim' movement grow was its emphasis upon things African. This was the secret to the growth of the 'Black Muslim' movement. African blood, African origin, African culture, African ties. And you'd be surprised, we discovered that deep within the subconscious of the Black man in this country, he's still more African than he is American. He thinks that he's more American than African, because the man is jiving him, the man is brainwashing him every day. He's telling him, "You're an American, you're an American." Man, how could you think you're an American and you haven't ever had any kind of American treat over here? You have never, never!

Ten men can be sitting at a table eating, you know, dining, and I can come and sit down where they're dining. They're dining; I've got a plate in front of me, but nothing is on it. Because all of us are sitting at the same table, are all of us diners? I'm not a diner until you let me dine. Then I become a diner. Just being at the table with others who are dining doesn't make me a diner, and this is what you've got to get in your head here in this country.

Just because you're in this country doesn't make you an American. No, you've got to go farther than that before you can become an American. You've got to enjoy the fruits of Americanism. You haven't enjoyed those fruits. You've enjoyed the thorns. You've enjoyed the thistles. But you have not enjoyed the fruits, no sir. You have fought harder for the fruits than the white man has. You have worked harder for the fruits than the white man has, but you've enjoyed less. When the man put the uniform on you and sent you abroad, you fought harder than they did. Yeah, I know you—when you're fighting for them, you can fight.

The 'Black Muslim' movement did make that contribution. They made the whole civil rights movement become more militant, and more acceptable to the white power structure. He would rather have them than us. In fact, I think we forced many of the civil rights leaders to be even more militant than they intended. I know some of them who get out there and "boom, boom, boom" and don't mean it. Because they're right on back in their corner as soon as the action comes.

John F. Kennedy also saw that it was necessary for a new approach among the American Negroes. And during his entire term in office, he specialized in how to psyche the American Negro. Now, a lot of you all don't like my saying that, but I wouldn't ever take a stand on that if I didn't know what I was talking about. And I don't—by living in this kind of society, pretty much around them—and you know what I mean when I say "them"—I learned to study them. You can think that they mean you some good ofttimes, but if you look at it a little closer you'll see that they don't mean you any good. That doesn't mean there aren't some of them who mean good. But it does mean that most of them don't mean good.

Kennedy's new approach was pretending to go along with us in our struggle for civil rights and different other forms of rights. But I remember the exposé that Look magazine did on Meredith's situation in Mississippi. Look magazine did an expose showing that Robert Kennedy and Governor Wallace—not Governor Wallace, Governor Barnett—had made a deal, wherein the attorney general was going to come down and try and force Meredith into school, and Barnett was going to stand at the door, you know, and say, "No, you can't come in." He was going to get in anyway. But it was all arranged in advance. And then Barnett was supposed to keep the support of the white racists, because that's who he was holding up, and Kennedy would keep the support of the Negroes, because that's who he'd be holding up. That's—it was a cut-and-dried deal. And it's not a secret; it was written, they write about it. But if that's a deal and that's a deal, how many other deals do you think go down? What you think is on the level is crookeder, brothers and sisters, than a pretzel, which is most crooked.

So in my conclusion I would like to point out that the approach that was used by the administration right on up until today—see, even the present generation—was designed skillfully to make it appear that they were trying to solve the problem when they actually weren't. They would deal with the conditions, but never the cause. They only gave us tokenism. Tokenism benefits only a few. It never benefits the masses, and the masses are the ones who have the problem, not the few. That one who benefits from tokenism, he doesn't want to be around us anyway—that's why he picks up on the token.

You ever notice how some Negroes will brag, "I'm the only one out there, I'm the only one on my job." Don't you hear them say that? Yes, you ought to punch him in his...no he's your brother, you shouldn't punch your brother. But you should really get him—you can punch him with some words.
Whenever you see a Negro bragging about "he's the only one in his neighborhood," he's bragging. He's telling you in essence, "I'm surrounded by white folks," you know. "I love them, and they love me." Oh yes. And on his job "I'm the only one on my job." I've been listening to that stuff all my life, and the generation that's coming up, they're not going to be saying that. The generation that's coming up, everybody is going to look like an Uncle Tom to them. And you and I have to learn that in time, so that we don't pose that image when our people, when our young generation come up and begin to look at us.

The masses of our people still have bad housing, bad schooling, and inferior jobs, jobs that don't compensate with sufficient salary for them to carry on their life in this world. So that the problem for the masses has gone absolutely unsolved. The only ones for whom it has been solved are people like Whitney Young, who's supposed to be placed in the cabinet, so the rumors say. He'll be one of the first Black cabinet men. And that answers where he's at. And others who have been given jobs—Carl Rowan, who was put over the USIA, who is very skillfully trying to make Africans think that the problem of Black men in this country is all solved.

And this is the worst thing the white man can do to himself is to take one of these kind of Negroes and ask him, "How do your people feel, boy?" He's going to tell that man that we are satisfied. That's what they do, brothers and sisters. They get behind the door and tell the white man we're satisfied. "Just keep on—keep me up here in front of them, boss, and I'll keep 'em behind you." That's what they talk when they're behind closed doors. 'Cause, see, the white man doesn't go along with anybody who's not for him. He doesn't care whether you're for right or wrong, he wants to know, are you for him. And if you're for him, he doesn't care what else you're for. As long as you're for him, then he puts you up over the Negro community. You become the spokesman.

In your struggle it's like standing on a revolving wheel: you're running, but you're not going anywhere. You run faster and faster and the wheel just goes faster and faster. You don't ever leave the spot that you're standing in. So, it is very important for you and me to see that the only way that our problem is going to be solved, it has to be with a solution that will benefit the masses, not the upper class—so-called "upper class."

Actually, there's no such thing as an upper-class Negro, because he catches the same hell as the other class Negro. All of them catch the same hell, which is one of the things that's good about this racist system—it makes us all one.

Quickly, if you'll notice in 1963, everyone was talking about the "centennial of progress!" I think that's what they called it. A hundred years since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, and everyone is celebrating how much white and Black people have learned to love each other in America. You probably remember how they were talking in January of 1963. Well, if you had stood up in January at the same time that they were talking all this talk about a good year ahead, good things ahead, and told them that by May, Birmingham would have exploded, and Bull Connor would be known as an international thug for the brutality that he heaped upon Black people; if you would tell the people in January of '63 that John F. Kennedy would be killed for his role in everything; if you had told them in January that Medgar Evers would be murdered and nobody able to bring his killer to justice; or if you were to have told them in January of 1963 that a church would be bombed in Birmingham, with four little Black girls blown to bits while they were praying and serving Jesus—why, they would say you're crazy.

In 1964 they started out the same way. That was the year of promise. If you were to have told them while they were talking about this great year of promise ahead, you know, civil rights and all of that, what was coming, that before long three civil rights workers would be brutally murdered and the government unable to do anything about it. A Negro educator in Georgia brutally murdered in broad daylight and the men who did it be known, and the government not able to do anything about it. If you had said this in January of '64, they'd say you were nuts. Now they are starting out 1965 the same way. Talking about the "Great Society,'' you know, "antipoverty."

If you tell them right now what is in store for 1965, they'll think you're crazy for sure. But 1965 will be the longest and hottest and bloodiest year of them all. It has to be, not because you want it to be, or I want it to be, or we want it to be, but because the conditions that created these explosions in 1963 are still here; the conditions that created explosions in '64 are still here. You can't say that you're not going to have an explosion and you leave the condition, the ingredients, still here. As long as those ingredients, explosive ingredients, remain, then you're going to have the potential for explosion on your hands.

Brothers and sisters, let me tell you, I spend my time out there in the street with people, all kind of people, listening to what they have to say. And they're dissatisfied, they're disillusioned, they're fed up, they're getting to the point of frustration where they are beginning to feel: What do they have to lose? And when you get to that point you're the type of person who can create a very dangerously explosive atmosphere. This is what's happening in our neighborhood, to our people. I read in a poll taken by Newsweek magazine this week, saying that Negroes are satisfied. Oh yes, poll you know, in Newsweek, supposed to be a top magazine with a top pollster, talking about how satisfied Negroes are. Maybe I haven't met the Negroes he met. Because I know he hasn't met the ones that I've met.
But this is dangerous. This is where the white man does himself the most harm. He invents statistics to create an image, thinking that that image is going to hold things in check. You know why they always say Negroes are lazy? 'Cause they want Negroes to be lazy. They always say Negroes can't unite because they don't want Negroes to unite. And once they put this thing in the mind, they feel that the Negro gets that into him and he tries to fulfill their image. If you say you can't unite him, and then you come to him to unite him, he won't unite because it's been said that he's not supposed to unite. It's a psyche that they work, and it's the same way with these statistics.

When they think that an explosive era is coming up, then they grab their press again and begin to shower the Negro public, to make it appear that all Negroes are satisfied. Because if you know that you're dissatisfied all by yourself and ten others aren't, you play it cool; but you know if all ten of you are dissatisfied, you get with it. Well, this is what the man knows. The man knows that if these Negroes find out how dissatisfied they really are—and all of them, even Uncle Tom is dissatisfied, he's just playing his part for now—this is what makes them frightened. It frightens them in France, it frightens them in England, and it frightens them in the United States.

And it is for this reason that it is so important for you and me to start organizing among ourselves, intelligently, and try to find out: What are we going to do if this happens, that happens, or the next thing happens? Don't think that you're going to run to the man and say, "Look, boss, this is me." Why, when the deal goes down, you'll look just like me in his eyesight; I'll make it tough for you. Yes, when the deal goes down, he doesn't look at you in any better light than he looks at me.

I was on a television program in New York last week. One of the liberals did a take-off on James Farmer. Now here's James Farmer teaching Negroes to be nonviolent and loving and all of that—why they should be patting him on the back. And instead of them patting him on the back they want to knock at him. And it put me in a position of having to defend him, which I did; I was glad to because I wanted to crack this man's neck anyway—mentally, rather I should say intellectually.

I point these things out, brothers and sisters, so that you and I will know the importance in 1963 of being in complete unity with each other, in harmony with each other, and not letting the man maneuver us into fighting one another. The situation I have been maneuvered into right now between me and the 'Black Muslim' movement, is something that I really deeply regret, because I don't think anything is more destructive than two groups of Black people fighting each other. But it's something that can't be avoided because it goes deep down beneath the surface, and these things wiIl come up in the very near future.

I might say this before I sit down. If you recall, when I left the 'Black Muslim' movement, I stated clearly that it wasn't my intention to even continue to be aware that they existed; but that I was going to spend my time working in the non-Muslim community. But they were fearful that if they didn't do something that perhaps many of those who were in the mosque would leave it and follow a different direction. So they had to start doing a take-off on me, plus, they had to try and silence me because of what they know that I know.

I should think that they should know me well enough to know that they certainly can't frighten me. But when it does come to the light—excuse me for keep coughing like that, but I got some of that smoke last night—there are some things involving the 'Black Muslim' movement which, when they come to light, you will be shocked. The thing that you have to understand where those of us in the Black Muslim movement were concerned: all of us believed 100 percent in the divinity of Elijah Muhammad. We believed in him. We actually believed that God had taught him—right here in Detroit by the way—that God had taught him and all of that. I always thought that he believed it himself. And I was shocked when I found out that he himself didn't believe it. And when that shock reached me, then I began to look everywhere else and try to get a better understanding of the things that confront all of us, so that we can get together in some kind of way to offset them.

I want to thank you for coming out this afternoon—this evening. I think it's wonderful that as many of you came out, considering the blackout on the meeting that took place. Also, Milton Henry and the brothers who are here in Detroit are very progressive young men, and I would advise all of you to get with them in every way that you can to try and create some kind of united effort toward common goals, common objectives. Don't let the power structure maneuver you into a time wasting battle with others when you could be involved in something that's constructive and getting a real job done.

Probably, one thing I should've pointed out to you, that once we formed our new organization, once we became identified with the orthodox Muslim world, we also formed a group known as the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which is designed to fight all the negative political, economic, and social conditions that exist in our neighborhood. It's a nonreligious organization to which anyone can belong who's interested in direct action.

And one of our first programs is to take our problem out of the civil rights context and place it at the international level, of human rights, so that the entire world can have a voice in our struggle. If we keep it at civil rights, then the only place we can turn for allies is within the domestic confines of America. But when you make it a human rights struggle, it becomes international, and then you can open the door for all types of advice and support from our brothers in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere. So it's very, very important—that's our international aim, that's our external aim.

Our internal aim is to become immediately involved in a mass voter registration drive. But we don't believe in voter registration without voter education. We believe that our people should be educated into the science of politics, so that they will know what a vote is for, and what a vote is supposed to produce, and also how to utilize this united voting power so that you can control the politics of your own community, and the politicians that represent that community. We're for that.

And in that line we will work with all others, even civil rights groups, who are dedicated to increase the number of Black registered voters in the South. The only area in which we differ with them is this: we don't believe that young students should be sent into Mississippi, Alabama, and these other places without some kind of protection. So we will join in with them in their voter registration and help to train brothers in the arts that are necessary in this day and age to enable one to continue his existence upon this earth.

I say again that I'm not a racist, I don't believe in any form of segregation or anything like that. I'm for the brotherhood of everybody, but I don't believe in forcing brotherhood upon people who don't want it. Long as we practice brotherhood among ourselves, and then others who want to practice brotherhood with us, we practice it with them also, we're for that. But I don't think that we should run around trying to love somebody who doesn't love us. Thank you.

London School of Economics (February 11, 1965)

2013-07-04T18:55:00.000-07:00

[Introduction missing]

It is only being a Muslim which keeps me from seeing people by the color of their skin. This religion teaches brotherhood, but I have to be a realist—I live in America, a society which does not believe in brotherhood in any sense of the term. Brute force is used by white racists to suppress nonwhites. It is a racist society ruled by segregationists.

Where the government fails to protect the Negro he is entitled to do it himself. He is within his rights. I have found the only white elements who do not want this advice given to undefensive Blacks are the racist liberals. They use the press to project us in the image of violence. There is an element of whites who are nothing but cold, animalistic racists. That element is the one that controls or has strong influence in the power structure. It uses the press skillfully to feed statistics to the public to make it appear that the rate of crime in the Black community, or community of nonwhite people, is at such a high level. It gives the impression or the image that everyone in that community is criminal. And as soon as the public accepts the fact that the dark-skinned community consists largely of criminals or people who are dirty, then it makes it possible for the power structure to set up a police-state system. Which will make it permissible in the minds of even the well-meaning white public for them to come in and use all kinds of police methods to brutally suppress the struggle on the part of these people against segregation, discrimination, and other acts that are unleashed against them that are absolutely unjust.

They use the press to set up this police state, and they use the press to make the white public accept whatever they do to the dark-skinned public. They do that here in London right now with the constant reference to the West Indian population and the Asian population having a high rate of crime or having a tendency toward dirtiness. They have all kinds of negative characteristics that they project to make the white public draw back, or to make the white public be apathetic when police-state-like methods are used in these areas to suppress the people’s honest and just struggle against discrimination and other forms of segregation.

A good example of how they do it in New York: last summer, when the Blacks were rioting—the riots, actually they weren’t riots in the first place; they were reactions against police brutality. And when the Afro-Americans reacted against the brutal measures that were executed against them by the police, the press all over the world projected them as rioters. When the store windows were broken in the Black community, immediately it was made to appear that this was being done not by people who were reacting over civil rights violations, but they gave the impression that these were hoodlums, vagrants, criminals, who wanted nothing other than to get into the stores and take the merchandise.

But this is wrong. In America the Black community in which we live is not owned by us. The landlord is white. The merchant is white. In fact, the entire economy of the Black community in the States is controlled by someone who doesn’t even live there. The property that we live in is owned by someone else. The store that we trade with is operated by someone else. And these are the people who suck the economic blood of our community.

And being in a position to suck the economic blood of our community, they control the radio programs that cater to us, they control the newspapers, the advertising, that cater to us. They control our minds. They end up controlling our civic organizations. They end up controlling us economically, politically, socially, mentally, and every other kind of way. They suck our blood like vultures.

And when you see the Blacks react, since the people who do this aren’t there, they react against their property. The property is the only thing that’s there. And they destroy it. And you get the impression over here that because they are destroying the property where they live, that they are destroying their own property. No. They can’t get to the Man, so they get at what he owns.

This doesn’t say it’s intelligent. But whoever heard of a sociological explosion that was done intelligently and politely? And this is what you’re trying to make the Black man do. You’re trying to drive him into a ghetto and make him the victim of every kind of unjust condition imaginable. Then when he explodes, you want him to explode politely! You want him to explode according to somebody’s ground rules. Why, you’re dealing with the wrong man, and you’re dealing with him at the wrong time in the wrong way.

Another example of how this imagery is mastered, at the international level, is the recent situation in the Congo. Here we have an example of planes dropping bombs on defenseless African villages. When a bomb is dropped on an African village, there’s no way of defending the people from the bomb. The bomb doesn’t make a distinction between men and women. That bomb is dropped on men, women, children, and babies. Now it has not been in any way a disguised fact that planes have been dropping bombs on Congolese villages all during the entire summer. There is no outcry. There is no concern. There is no sympathy. There is no urge on the part of even the so-called progressive element to try and bring a halt to this mass murder. Why?

Because all the press had to do was use that shrewd propaganda word that these villages were in “rebel-held” territory. “Rebel-held,” what does that mean? That’s an enemy, so anything that they do to those people is all right. You cease to think of the women and the children and the babies in the so-called rebel-held territory as human beings. So that anything that is done to them is done with justification. And the progressives, the liberals don’t even make any outcry. They sit twiddling their thumbs, as if they were captivated by this press imagery that has been mastered here in the West also.

They refer to the pilots that are dropping the bombs on these babies as “American-trained, anti-Castro Cuban pilots.” As long as they are American-trained, this is supposed to put the stamp of approval on it, because America is your ally. As long as they are anti-Castro Cubans, since Castro is supposed to be a monster and these pilots are against Castro, anybody else they are against is also all right. So the American planes with American bombs being piloted by American-trained pilots, dropping American bombs on Black people, Black babies, Black children, destroying them completely—which is nothing but mass murder—goes absolutely unnoticed.

They take this man Tshombe—I guess he’s a man—and try and make him acceptable to the public by using the press to refer to him as the only one who can unite the Congo. Imagine, a murderer—not an ordinary murderer, a murderer of a prime minister, the murderer of the rightful prime minister of the Congo—and yet they want to force him upon the people of the Congo, through Western manipulation and Western pressures. The United States, the country that I come from, pays his salary. They openly admit that they pay his salary. And in saying this, I don’t want you to think that I come here to make an anti-American speech. I wouldn’t come here for that. I come here to make a speech, to tell you the truth. And if the truth is anti-American, then blame the truth, don’t blame me.

He’s propped up by American dollars. The salaries of the hired killers from South Africa that he uses to kill innocent Congolese are paid by American dollars. Which means that I come from a country that is busily sending the Peace Corps to Nigeria while sending hired killers to the Congo. The government is not consistent; something is not right there. And it starts some of my African brothers and sisters that have been so happy to see the Peace Corps landing on their shores to take another look at that thing, and see what it really is. [From the audience: “What is it?”] Exactly what it says: Peace Corps, get a piece of their country.

So what the press does with its skillful ability to create this imagery, it uses its pages to whip up this hysteria in the white public. And as soon as the hysteria of the white public reaches the proper degree, they will begin to work on the sympathy of the white public. And once the sympathy reaches the proper degree, then they put forth their program, knowing that they are going to get the support of the gullible white public in whatever they do. And what they are going to do is criminal. And what they are doing is criminal.

How do they do it? If you recall reading in the paper, they never talked about the Congolese who were being slaughtered. But as soon as a few whites, the lives of a few whites were at stake, they began to speak of “white hostages,” “white missionaries,” “white priests,” “white nuns”—as if a white life, one white life, was of such greater value than a Black life, than a thousand Black lives.

They showed you their open contempt for the lives of the Blacks, and their deep concern for the lives of the whites. This is the press. And after the press had gotten the whites all whipped up, then anything that the Western powers wanted to do against these defenseless, innocent freedom fighters from the eastern provinces of the Congo, the white public went along with it. So to get towards the end of that, what it has done, just in press manipulation, the Western governments have permitted themselves to get trapped, in a sense, in backing Tshombe, the same as the United States is trapped over there in South Vietnam. If she goes forward she loses, if she backs up she loses. She’s getting bogged down in the Congo in the same way.  Because no African troops win victories for Tshombe. They never have. The only war, the only battles won by the African troops, in the African revolution, in the Congo area, were those won by the freedom fighters from the Oriental province.

They won battles with spears, stones, twigs. They won battles because their heart was in what they were doing. But Tshombe’s men from the central Congo government never won any battles. And it was for this reason that he had to import these white mercenaries, the paid killers, to win some battles for him. Which means that Tshombe’s government can only stay in power with white help, with white troops.

Well, there will come a time when he won’t be able to recruit any more mercenaries, and the Western powers, who are really behind him, will then have to commit their own troops openly. Which means you will then be bogged down in the Congo the same as you’re bogged down over there now in South Vietnam. And you can’t win in the Congo. If you can’t win in South Vietnam, you know you can’t win in the Congo.

You think you can win in South Vietnam? The French were deeply entrenched. The French were deeply entrenched in Vietnam for a hundred years or so. They had the best weapons of warfare, a highly mechanized army, everything that you would need. And the guerrillas come out of the rice paddies with nothing but sneakers on and a rifle and a bowl of rice, nothing but gym shoes—tennis shoes—and a rifle and a bowl of rice. And you know what they did in Dien Bien Phu. They ran the French out of there. And if the French were deeply entrenched and couldn’t stay there, then how do you think someone else is going to stay there, who is not even there yet. Yes, all of them are brothers. They had a bowl of rice and a rifle and some shoes. I don’t care whether they came from China or South Vietnam. And the French aren’t there anymore. We don’t care how they did it; they’re not there anymore. The same thing will happen in the Congo.

See, the African revolution must proceed onward, and one of the reasons that the Western powers are fighting so hard and are trying to cloud the issue in the Congo is that it’s not a humanitarian project. It’s not a feeling or sense of humanity that makes them want to go in and save some hostages, but there are bigger stakes.

They realize not only that the Congo is a source of mineral wealth, minerals that they need, but the Congo is so situated strategically, geographically, that if it falls into the hands of a genuine African government that has the hopes and aspirations of the African people at heart, then it will be possible for the Africans to put their own soldiers right on the border of Angola and wipe the Portuguese out of there overnight.

So that if the Congo falls, Mozambique and Angola must fall. And when they fall, suddenly you have to deal with Ian Smith. He won’t be there overnight once you can put some troops on his borders. Oh yes. Which means it will only be a matter of time before they will be right on the border with South Africa, and then they can talk the type of language that the South Africans understand. And this is the only language that they understand.

I might point out right here and now—and I say it bluntly—that you have had a generation of Africans who actually have believed that they could negotiate, negotiate, negotiate, and eventually get some kind of independence. But you’re getting a new generation that is being born right now, and they are beginning to think with their own mind and see that you can’t negotiate upon freedom nowadays. If something is yours by right, then you fight for it or shut up. If you can’t fight for it, then forget it.

So we in the West have a stake in the African revolution. We have a stake for this reason: as long as the African continent was dominated by enemies, and as long as it was dominated by colonial powers, those colonial powers were enemies of the African people. They were enemies to the African continent. They meant the African people no good, they did the African people no good, they did the African continent no good.

And then in the position that they were, they were the ones who created the image of the African continent and the African people. They created that continent and those people in a negative image. And they projected this negative image abroad. They projected an image of Africa in the people abroad that was very hateful, extremely hateful. And because it was hateful, there are over a hundred million of us of African heritage in the West who looked at that hateful image and didn’t want to be identified with it. We shunned it, and not because it was something to be shunned. But we believed the image that had been created of our own homeland by the enemy of our own homeland. And in hating that image we ended up hating ourselves without even realizing it.

Why? Because once we in the West were made to hate Africa and hate the African, why, the chain-reaction effect was it had to make us end up hating ourselves. You can’t hate the roots of the tree without hating the tree, without ending up hating the tree. You can’t hate your origin without ending up hating yourself. You can’t hate the land, your motherland, the place that you came from, and we can’t hate Africa without ending up hating ourselves.

The Black man in the Western Hemisphere—in North America, Central America, South America, and in the Caribbean—is the best example of how one can be made, skillfully, to hate himself that you can find anywhere on this earth.

The reason you’re having a problem with the West Indians right now is because they hate their origin. Because they don’t want to accept their origin, they have no origin, they have no identity. They are running around here in search of an identity, and instead of trying to be what they are, they want to be Englishmen. Which is not their fault, actually. Because in America our people are trying to be Americans, and in the islands you got them trying to be Englishmen, and nothing sounds more obnoxious than to find somebody from Jamaica running around here trying to outdo the Englishman with his Englishness.

And I say that this is a very serious problem, because all of it stems from what the Western powers do to the image of the African continent and the African people. By making our people in the Western Hemisphere hate Africa, we ended up hating ourselves. We hated our African characteristics. We hated our African identity. We hated our African features. So much so that you would find those of us in the West who would hate the shape of our nose. We would hate the shape of our lips. We would hate the color of our skin and the texture of our hair. This was a reaction, but we didn’t realize that it was a reaction.

Imagine now, somebody got nerve enough, some whites have the audacity to refer to me as a hate teacher. If I’m teaching someone to hate, I teach them to hate the Ku Klux Klan. But here in America, they have taught us to hate ourselves. To hate our skin, hate our hair, hate our features, hate our blood, hate what we are. Why, Uncle Sam is a master hate teacher, so much so that he makes somebody think he’s teaching love, when he’s teaching hate. When you make a man hate himself, why you really got it and gone.

By skillfully making us hate Africa and, in turn, making us hate ourselves, hate our color and our blood, our color became a chain. Our color became to us a chain. It became a prison. It became something that was a shame, something that we felt held us back, kept us trapped.

So because we felt that our color had trapped us, had imprisoned us, had brought us down, we ended up hating the Black skin, which we felt was holding us back. We ended up hating the Black blood, which we felt was holding us back. This is the problem that the Black man in the West has had.
The African hasn’t realized that this was the problem. And it was only as long as the African himself was held in bondage by the colonial powers, was kept from projecting any positive image of himself on our continent, something that we could look at proudly and then identify with—it was only as long as the African himself was kept down that we were kept down.

But to the same degree, during these recent years, that the African people have become independent, and they have gotten in a position on that continent to project their own image, their image has shifted from negative to positive. And to the same degree that it has shifted from negative to positive, you’ll find that the image of the Black man in the West of himself has also shifted from negative to positive. To the same degree that the African has become uncompromising and militant in knowing what he wants, you will find that the Black man in the West has followed the same line.

Why? Because the same beat, the same heart, the same pulse that moves the Black man on the African continent—despite the fact that four hundred years have separated us from that mother continent, and an ocean of water has separated us from that mother continent— still, the same pulse that beats in the Black man on the African continent today is beating in the heart of the Black man in North America, Central America, South America, and in the Caribbean. Many of them don’t know it, but it’s true.

As long as we hated our African blood, our African skin, our Africanness, we ended up feeling inferior, we felt inadequate, and we felt helpless. And because we felt so inferior and so inadequate and so helpless, instead of trying to stand on our own feet and do something for ourselves, we turned to the white man, thinking he was the only one who could do it for us. Because we were taught, we have been taught, that he was the personification of beauty and the personification of success.

At the Bandung Conference in 1955, one of the first and best steps toward real independence for non-white people took place. The people of Africa and Asia and Latin America were able to get together. They sat down, they realized that they had differences. They agreed not to place any emphasis any longer upon these differences, but to submerge the areas of differences and place emphasis upon areas where they had something in common.

This agreement that was reached at Bandung produced the spirit of Bandung. So that the people who were oppressed, who had no jet planes, no nuclear weapons, no armies, no navies—and despite the fact that they didn’t have this, their unity alone was sufficient to enable them, over a period of years, to maneuver and make it possible for other nations in Asia to become independent, and many more nations in Africa to become independent.

And by 1959, many of you will recall how colonialism on the African continent had already begun to collapse. It began to collapse because the spirit of African nationalism had been fanned from a spark to a roaring flame. And it made it impossible for the colonial powers to stay there by force. Formerly, when the Africans were fearful, the colonial powers could come up with a battleship, or threaten to land an army, or something like that, and the oppressed people would submit and go ahead being colonized for a while longer.

But by 1959 all of the fear had left the African continent and the Asian continent. And because this fear was gone, especially in regards to the colonial powers of Europe, it made it impossible for them to continue to stay in there by the same methods that they had employed up to that time.

So it’s just like when a person is playing football. If he has the ball and he gets trapped, he doesn’t throw the ball away, he passes it to some of his teammates who are in the clear. And in 1959, when France and Britain and Belgium and some of the others saw that they were trapped by the African nationalism on that continent, instead of throwing the ball of colonialism away, they passed it to the only one of their team that was in the clear—and that was Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam grabbed the ball and has been running with it ever since.

The one who picked it up, really, was John F. Kennedy. He was the shrewdest backfield runner that America has produced in a long time—oh yes he was. He was very tricky; he was intelligent; he was an intellectual; he surrounded himself with intellectuals who had a lot of foresight and a lot of cunning. The first thing they did was to give a reanalysis of the problem. They realized they were confronted with a new problem.

The newness of the problem was created by the fact that the Africans had lost all fear. There was no fear in them anymore. Therefore the colonial powers couldn’t stay there by force, and America, the new colonial power, neocolonial power, or neo-imperialist power, also couldn’t stay there by force. So they come up with a “friendly” approach, a new approach which was friendly. Benevolent colonialism or philanthropic imperialism. They called it humanitarianism, or dollarism. And whereas the Africans could fight against colonialism, they found it difficult to fight against dollarism, or to condemn dollarism. It was all a token friendship, and all of the so-called benefits that were offered to the African countries were nothing but tokens.

But from ‘54 to ‘64 was the era of an emerging Africa, an independent Africa. And the impact of those independent African nations upon the civil rights struggle in the United States was tremendous. Number one, one of the first things the African revolution produced was rapid growth in a movement called the Black Muslim movement. The militancy that existed on the African continent was one of the main motivating factors in the rapid growth of the group known as the Black Muslim movement, to which I belonged. And the Black Muslim movement was one of the main ingredients in the entire civil rights struggle.

Martin Luther King has held Negroes in check up to recently. But he’s losing his grip, he’s losing his influence, he’s losing his control.

I know you don’t want me to say that. But, see, this is why you’re in trouble. You want somebody to come and tell you that your house is safe, while you’re sitting on a powder keg. This is the mentality, this is the level of Western mentality today. Rather than face up to the facts concerning the danger that you’re in, you would rather have someone come along and jive you and tell you that everything is all right and pack you to sleep. Why, the best thing that anybody can tell you is when they let you know how fed up with disillusionment and frustration the man in your house has become.

So to bring my talk to a conclusion, I must point out that just as John F. Kennedy realized the necessity of a new approach on the African problem—and I must say that it was during his administration that the United States gained so much influence on the African continent. They removed the other colonial powers and stepped in themselves with their benevolent, philanthropic, friendly approach. And they got just as firm a grip on countries on that continent as some of the colonial powers formerly had on that continent. Not only on the African continent but in Asia too. They did it with dollars.

They used a new approach on us in the States, also. Friendly. Whereas formerly they just outright denied us certain rights, they began to use a new, tricky approach. And this approach was to make it appear that they were making moves to solve our problems. They would pass bills, they would come up with Supreme Court decisions. The Supreme Court came up with what they called a desegregation decision in 1954—it hasn’t been implemented yet; they can’t even implement it in New York City, where I live—outlawing the segregated school system, supposedly to eliminate segregated schooling in Mississippi and Alabama and other places in the South. And they haven’t even been able to implement this Supreme Court decision concerning the educational system in New York City and in Boston and some of the so-called liberal cities of the North.

This was all tokenism. They made the world think that they had desegregated the University of Mississippi. This shows you how deceitful they are. They took one Negro, named Meredith, and took all of the world press down to show that they were going to solve the problem by putting Meredith in the University of Mississippi. I think it cost them something like $15 million and they had to use about seven thousand troops—one or the other—to put one Black man in the University of Mississippi.

And then Look magazine came out with a story afterwards showing the exposé where the attorney general—at that time Robert Kennedy—had made a deal with Governor Barnett. They were going to play a game on the Negro. Barnett was the racist governor from Mississippi. Kennedy was one of these shining liberal progressives—Robert, that is. And they had made a deal, according to Look magazine—which all belongs to the same setup, so they must know what they are talking about. Look magazine said that Robert Kennedy had told Barnett, “Now, since you want the white votes in the South, what you do is you stand in the doorway and pretend like you’re going to keep Meredith out. And when I come, I’m going to come with the marshals, and force Meredith in. So you’ll keep all the white votes in the South, and I’ll get all the Negro votes in the North.”

This is what we face in that country. And Kennedy is supposed to be a liberal. He’s supposed to be a friend of the Negro. He’s supposed to be the brother of John F. Kennedy—all of them in the same family. You know, he being the attorney general, he couldn’t go down with that kind of deal unless he had the permission of his older brother, who was his older brother at that time.

So they come up only with tokenism. And this tokenism that they give us benefits only a few. A few handpicked Negroes gain from this; a few handpicked Negroes get good jobs; a few handpicked Negroes get good homes or go to a decent school. And then they use these handpicked Negroes, they put ‘em on television, blow ‘em up, and make it look like you got a whole lot of ‘em, when you only got one or two.

And this one or two is going to open up his mouth and talk about how the problem is being solved. And the whole world thinks that America’s race problem is being solved, when actually the masses of Black people in America are still living in the ghettos and the slums; they still are the victims of inferior housing; they are still the victims of a segregated school system, which gives them inferior education. They are still victims, after they get that inferior education, where they can only get the worst form of jobs.

And they do this very skillfully to keep us trapped. They know that as long as they keep us undereducated, or with an inferior education, it’s impossible for us to compete with them for job openings. And as long as we can’t compete with them and get a decent job, we’re trapped. We are low-wage earners. We have to live in a run-down neighborhood, which means our children go to inferior schools. They get inferior education. And when they grow up, they fall right into the same cycle again.

This is the American way. This is the American democracy that she tries to sell to the whole world as being that which will solve the problems of other people too. It’s the worst form of hypocrisy that has ever been practiced by any government or society anywhere on this earth, since the beginning of time.

It is the African revolution that produced the Black Muslim movement. It was the Black Muslim movement that pushed the civil rights movement. And it was the civil rights movement that pushed the liberals out into the open, where today they are exposed as people who have no more concern for the rights of dark-skinned humanity than they do for any other form of humanity.

To bring my talk to a conclusion, all of this created a hot climate, a hot climate. And from 1963, ‘64 it reached its peak. Nineteen sixty-three was started out in America by all of the politicians talking about this being the hundredth year since the Emancipation Proclamation. They were going to celebrate all over America “a century of progress in race relations.” This is the way January and February and March of 1963 started out.

And then Martin Luther King went into Birmingham, Alabama, just trying to get a few Negroes to be able to sit down at a lunch counter and drink an integrated cup of coffee. That’s all he wanted. That’s all he wanted. They ended up putting him in jail. They ended up putting thousands of Negroes in jail. And many of you saw on television, in Birmingham, how the police had these big vicious dogs biting Black people. They were crushing the skulls of Black people. They had water hoses turned on our women, stripping off the clothes from our own women, from our children.

And the world saw this. The world saw what the world had thought was going to be a year which would celebrate a hundred years of progress toward good race relations between white and Black in the United States— they saw one of the most inhuman, savage displays there in that country.
Right after that, this was followed by the assassination of John F. Kennedy, all by the same problem, and Medgar Evers, another one by the same problem. And it ended in the bombing of a church in Alabama where four little girls, Christians, sitting in Sunday school, singing about Jesus, were blown apart by people who claim to be Christians. And this happened in the year 1963, the year that they said in that country would mark a hundred years of good relations between the races.

By 1964...1964 was the year in which three civil rights workers, who were doing nothing other than trying to show Black people in Mississippi how to register and take advantage of their political potential—they were murdered in cold blood. They weren’t murdered by some unknown element. They were murdered by an organized group of criminals known as the Ku Klux Klan, which was headed by the sheriff and his deputy and a clergyman. A preacher, a man of the cloth, was responsible for the murder. And when they tell you what was done to the body of that little Black one that they found—all three were murdered, but when they found the three bodies they said that every bone in the body of the Black one was broken, as if these brutes had gone insane while they were beating him to death. This was in 1964.

Now 1965 is here, and you got these same old people, jumping up talking about the “Great Society” now is coming into existence. Nineteen sixty-five will be the longest and the hottest and the bloodiest year that has yet been witnessed in the United States. Why? I’m not saying this to advocate violence. I’m saying this after a careful analysis of the ingredients—the sociological, political dynamite that exists in every Black community in that country.

Africa is emerging. It’s making the Black man in the Western Hemisphere militant. It’s making him shift from negative to positive in his image of himself and in his confidence in himself. He sees himself as a new man. He’s beginning to identify himself with new forces. Whereas in the past he thought of his problem as one of civil rights—which made it a domestic issue, which kept it confined to the jurisdiction of the United States, a jurisdiction in which he could only seek the aid of white liberals within continental United States—today the Black man in the Western Hemisphere, especially in the United States, is beginning to see where his problem is not one of civil rights, but it is rather one of human rights. And that in the human rights context it becomes an international issue. It ceases to be a Negro problem, it ceases to be an American problem. It becomes a human problem, a problem of human rights, a problem of humanity, a problem for the world.

And by shifting his entire position from civil rights to human rights, he puts it on the world stage and makes it possible where today he no more has to rely on only the white liberals within continental United States to be his supporters. But he brings it onto the world stage and makes it possible for all of our African brothers, our Asian brothers, our Latin American brothers, and those people in Europe, some of whom claim to mean right, also to step into the picture and do whatever is necessary to help us to see that our rights are guaranteed us—not sometime in the long future, but almost immediately.

So the basic difference between the struggle of the Black man in the Western Hemisphere today from the past: he has a new sense of identity; he has a new sense of dignity; he has a new sense of urgency.

And above all else, he sees now that he has allies. He sees that the brothers on the African continent, who have emerged and gotten independent states, can see that they have an obligation to the lost brother who went astray and then found himself today in a foreign land. They are obligated. They are just as obligated to the brother who’s gone away as they are to the brother who’s still at home.

And just as you see the oppressed people all over the world today getting together, the Black people in the West are also seeing that they are oppressed. Instead of just calling themselves an oppressed minority in the States, they are part of the oppressed masses of people all over the world today who are crying out for action against the common oppressor.

Thank you.

Pierre Berton interviews Malcolm X (January 19, 1965)

2013-07-04T18:45:00.000-07:00

[Pierre Berton begins by asking Malcolm about the rift between him and Elijah Muhammad.]

Malcolm X: Well, he represented himself to us as a prophet who had been visited by God, who had been taught by God, who had been given an analysis of the problems concerning black people in America by God, and also a solution by the same God, and as long as I believed in him as a man, I actually thought that he had been taught and commissioned by God to solve the problems of our people in America. Then I came into the knowledge of something in his own personal life that he admitted to me when I confronted him with it. But when it came to him taking the steps that a man would take to correct this mistake, I found that his own ability to be a man was lacking. Hence I ceased to respect him as a man, I could see that he also was not divine. There was no God with him at all.

Berton: I take it you don’t want to discuss this specific thing in his personal life?

Malcolm X: Well, discussing it might keep your show from going on the air.

Berton: All right, we won’t discuss it; but there seemed to me at the time that there were other reasons given for your break with Elijah Muhammad. At the time of President Kennedy’s assassination, you made a speech that seemed to indicate that you were pleased that he had been assassinated. Certainly at that time, Elijah Muhammad indicated that you had been fired or suspended from the Black Muslim movement. How about that?

Malcolm X: I had taken a subject as my topic that day, an approach that was designed to show that the seeds that America had sown—in enslavement, in many of the things that followed since then—all of these seeds were coming up today; it was harvest time. At the end of this particular lecture, during the question-and-answer period, somebody asked me what I thought of the assassination of President Kennedy. In line with the topic that I had just been discussing, I pointed out that it was a case of the chickens coming home to roost, by which I meant that this was the result of seeds that had been sown, that this was the harvest. This was taken out of context, and reported in one of the papers, and Elijah Muhammad, who had been waiting for me to make a move that would enable him to suspend me and get the support of the public in doing so, took advantage of that opportunity. He gave the impression that I was saying something against the president himself because he felt that the public wouldn’t go along with that.

Berton: How did you feel, personally, about the president’s assassination in that connection? Were you bothered about it? Were you angered by it? Or were you jubilant?

Malcolm X: No. I was realistic, in that being at the forefront of this struggle of the black man in America—in his quest for respect as a human being—I had seen the many-faceted repercussions of this hate taking a grip on the American public. I think that many of the politicians took advantage of it and exploited it for their own personal benefit. So to me the whole thing was a case of politics, hate and a combination of other things.

Berton: There seems to me to have been a fair amount of hate in the Black Muslim movement itself.

Malcolm X: Well, I won’t deny that. But, at the same time, I don’t think that the Black Muslim movement and its hate can be classified as the same degree or type of hate you find in the American society itself, because the hate, so-called, that you see among black people is a reaction to the hate of the society which has rejected us. In that sense it is not hate.

Berton: I’m not saying that the hate, or whatever it is, isn’t understandable. I’m asking if it’s effective to fight hate with hate?

Malcolm X: In my opinion, I think that it is not fair to classify the reaction of people who are oppressed as hate. They are reacting to the hate of the society they have had put upon them or practiced against them.

Berton: Let me ask you this about your God, Mr. X. Has he got any color? Is he black?

Malcolm X: No. 

Berton: Is he white?

 Malcolm X: As a Black Muslim, who believed what Elijah Muhammad taught, I regarded God just as he taught, as a black man. Having since gone into the Muslim world and got a better understanding of the religion of Islam, I believe that God is the supreme being, and that color plays no part in his particular being.

Berton: In fact, isn’t the God of the Muslims and of the Jews and the Christians really the same God?

Malcolm X: If they believe in the God who created the universe, then we all believe in the same God. I believe in the God who created the universe. Muslims call him Allah. Christians, perhaps, call him Christ, or by some other name. Jews call him Jehovah, and in referring to him they mean “the creative.” We are all referring to the same God.

Berton: Now, let me switch the subject briefly, and ask you what you mean when you say that the Black Muslims are not militant enough. Your new organization, I take it, will be more militant than the Black Muslims. In what way?

Malcolm X: Well, the Black Muslim movement, number one, professes to be a religious movement. They profess the religion of Islam. But the Muslim world rejected the Black Muslim movement as a bona fide Islamic group, so it found itself maneuvered into a religious vacuum—or a sort of religious hybrid. At the same time, the government of the United States tried to maneuver the Black Muslim movement, with the press, into an image that was political instead of religious. So the Black Muslim movement came to be known as a political group. Yet, at the same time, it didn’t vote; it didn’t take part in any politics; it didn’t involve itself actively in the civil rights struggle; so it became a political hybrid as well as a religious hybrid. Now, on the other hand, the Black Muslim movement attracted the most militant black American, the young, dissatisfied, uncompromising element that exists in this country—drawing them in yet, at the same time, giving them no part to play in the struggle other than moral reform. It created a lot of disillusion, dissatisfaction, dissension, and eventually division. Those who divided are the ones that I’m a part of. We set up the Muslim Mosque, which is based upon orthodox Islam, as a religious group so that we could get a better understanding of our religion; but being black Americans, though we are Muslims, who believe in brotherhood, we also realized that our people have a problem in America that goes beyond religion. We realized that many of our people aren’t going to become Muslim; many of them aren’t even interested in anything religious; so we set up the Organization of Afro-American Unity as a non-religious organization which all black Americans could become a part of and play an active part in striking out at the political, economic, and social evils that all of us are confronted by.

Berton: That “striking out,” what form is it going to take? You talk of giving the Ku Klux Klan a taste of its own medicine. This is in direct opposition to the theory of non-violence of Dr. Martin Luther King, who doesn’t believe in striking back. What do you mean by “a taste of its own medicine”? Are you going to burn fiery crosses on their lawns? Are you going to blow up churches with the Ku Klux Klan kids in them? What are you going to do?

Malcolm X: Well, I think that the only way that two different races can get along with each other is, first, they have to understand each other. That cannot be brought about other than through communication, dialogue—and you can’t communicate with a person unless you speak his language. If the person speaks French, you can’t speak English or German.

Berton: We have that problem in our country, too.

Malcolm X: In America, our people have so far not been able to speak the type of language that the racists understand. By not speaking that language, they fail to communicate, so that the racist element doesn’t really believe that the black American is a human being—part of the human family. There is no communication. So I believe that the only way to communicate with that element is to be in a position to speak their language.

Berton: And this language is violence?

Malcolm X: I wouldn’t call it violence. I think that they should be made to know that, any time they come into a black community and inflict violence upon members of that black community, they should realize in advance that the black community can speak the same language. Then they would be less likely to come in.

Berton: Let’s be specific here: suppose that a church is bombed. Will you bomb back?

Malcolm X: I believe that any area of the United States, where the federal government has shown either its unwillingness or inability to protect the lives and the property of the black American, then it is time for the black Americans to band together and do whatever is necessary to see that we get the type of protection we need.

Berton: “Whatever is necessary?”

Malcolm X: I mean just that, whatever is necessary. This does not mean that we should go out and initiate acts of aggression indiscriminately in the white community. But it does mean that, if we are going to be respected as human beings, we should reserve the right to defend ourselves by whatever means necessary. This is recognized and accepted in any civilized society.

Berton: There are some people going to go on trial in Mississippi for the murder of three civil rights workers. There are some witnesses who identify them as murderers, but the general feeling is they’ll get off. Will you do anything about this if they get off?

Malcolm X: I wouldn’t say. 

Berton: You don’t want to say? 

Malcolm X: Because, then, if something happened to them, they would blame me. But I will say that in a society where the law itself is incapable of bringing known murderers to justice, it’s historically demonstrable that the well-meaning people of that society have always banded together in one form or another to see that their society was protected against repetitious acts by these same murderers.

Berton: What you’re talking about here is a vigilante movement.

Malcolm X: There have been vigilante movements forming all over America in white communities, but the black community has yet to form a vigilante committee. This is why we aren’t respected as human beings.

Berton: Are you training men to use aggressive methods? Are you training men as the Black Muslim movement trained the elite core known as the Fruit of Islam? Have you got trainees operating now who know how to fight back?

Malcolm X: Yes.

Berton: Who know how to use knuckle-dusters and guns?

Malcolm X: Yes, oh yes. The black man in America doesn’t need that much training. Most of them have been in the army–have already been trained by the government itself. They haven’t been trained to think for themselves and, therefore, they’ve never used this training to protect themselves.

Berton: Have you got a specific cadre of such young, tough guys working for you or operating under your aegis?

Malcolm X: We’re not a cadre, nor do we want it to be felt that we want to be tough. We’re trying to be human beings, and we want to be recognized and accepted as human beings. But we don’t think humanity will recognize us or accept us as such until humanity knows that we will do everything to protect our human ranks, as others will do for theirs.

Berton: Are you prepared to send flying squads into areas where the Negroes have been oppressed without any legal help?

Malcolm X: We are prepared to do whatever is necessary to see that our people, wherever they are, get the type of protection that the federal government has refused to give them.

Berton: Okay. Do you still believe that all whites are devils and all blacks saints, as I’m sure you did under the Black Muslim movement?

Malcolm X: This is what Elijah Muhammad teaches. No, I don’t believe that. I believe as the Qur'an teaches, that a man should not be judged by the color of his skin but rather by his conscious behavior, by his actions, by his attitude towards others and his actions towards others.

Berton: Now, before you left Elijah Muhammad and went to Mecca and saw the original world of Islam, you believed in complete segregation of the whites and the Negroes. You were opposed both to integration and to intermarriage. Have you changed your views there?

Malcolm X: I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being, neither white, black, brown nor red. When you are dealing with humanity as one family, there’s no question of integration or intermarriage. It’s just one human being marrying another human being, or one human being living around and with another human being. I may say, though, that I don’t think the burden to defend any such position should ever be put upon the black man. Because it is the white man collectively who has shown that he is hostile towards integration and towards intermarriage and towards these other strides towards oneness. So, as a black man, and especially as a black American, I don’t think that I would have to defend any stand that I formerly took. Because it’s still a reaction of the society and it’s a reaction that was produced by the white society. And I think that it is the society that produced this that should be attacked, not the reaction that develops among the people who are the victims of that negative society.

Berton: But you no longer believe in a Black State?

Malcolm X: No. 

Berton: In North America?

 Malcolm X: No. I believe in a society in which people can live like human beings on the basis of equality.

Berton: So you have been changed considerably by your visit to the Muslim world and specifically to Mecca. Did this produce violent emotions within yourself? When people lose their faith or change their faith or renew their faith, they usually suffer terrible internal conflicts.

 Malcolm X: Oh, yes. I will confess readily that it’s impossible to believe as strongly in a man as I believed in Elijah Muhammad and have him disappoint me—or disappoint anyone else for that matter—and not create a great deal of internal conflict. One of the things that I am thankful for about the religion of Islam is that it is sufficiently strong in itself so that when one broadens one’s understanding of it, it gives one the inner strength to face up to some of these crises or tests that one encounters.

Berton: There has been talk, I think by you and by Elijah Muhammad, about an Armageddon in the United States by 1984. I’m wondering if you still believe that, and why that particular date?

Malcolm X: I don’t frankly. Much of what Elijah Muhammad has taught I don’t think he believes in himself. I say that and can easily defend it sitting opposite him. But, where an ultimate clash between East and West is concerned, well, I think that an objective analysis of events taking place on this earth today points towards some type of ultimate showdown. You can call it a political showdown or even a showdown between the economic systems that exist on this earth, which almost boil down along racial lines. I do believe that there will be a clash between East and West. I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice, and equality for everyone, and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don’t think that it will be based upon the color of the skin, as Elijah Muhammad has taught it. However, I do think you’ll find that the European powers, which are the former colonial powers, if they’re not able to readjust their feeling of superiority towards the darker skinned people, whom they have been made to think are inferior, then the lines can easily be drawn. They can easily be lumped into racial groups, and it will be a racial war.

Prospects for Freedom in 1965 (January 7, 1965)

2013-07-04T18:20:00.002-07:00

Mr. Chairman, who's one of my brothers, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters: It is an honor to me to come back to the Militant Labor Forum again this evening. It's my third time here. I was just telling my brother up here that probably tomorrow morning the press will try to make it appear that this little chat that we're having here this evening took place in Peking or someplace else. They have a tendency to discolor things in that way, to try and make people not place the proper importance upon what they hear, especially when they're hearing it from persons they can't control, or, as my brother just pointed out, persons whom they consider "irresponsible."

It's the third time that I've had the opportunity to be a guest of the Militant Labor Forum. I always feel that it is an honor and every time that they open the door for me to do so, I will be right here. The Militant newspaper is one of the best in New York City. In fact, it is one of the best anywhere you go today because everywhere I go I see it. I saw it even in Paris about a month ago; they were reading it over there. And I saw it in some parts of Africa where I was during the summer. I don't know how it gets there. But if you put the right things in it, what you put in it will see that it gets around.

Tonight, during the few moments that we have, we're going to have a little chat, like brothers and sisters and friends, and probably enemies too, about the prospects for peace—or the prospects for freedom in 1965. As you notice, I almost slipped and said peace. Actually you can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom. You can't separate the two—and this is the thing that makes 1965 so explosive and so dangerous.

The people in this country who in the past have been at peace and have been peaceful were that way only because they didn't know what freedom was. They let somebody else define it for them, but today, 1965, you find those who have not had freedom, and were not in a position to define freedom, are beginning to define it for themselves. And as they get in a position intellectually to define freedom for themselves, they see that they don't have it, and it makes them less peaceful, or less inclined towards peace.

In 1964, oppressed people all over the world, in Africa, in Asia and Latin America, in the Caribbean, made some progress. Northern Rhodesia threw off the yoke of colonialism and became Zambia, and was accepted into the United Nations, the society of independent governments. Nyasaland became Malawi and also was accepted into the UN, into the family of independent governments. Zanzibar had a revolution, threw out the colonialists and their lackeys and then united with Tanganyika into what is now known as the Republic of Tanzania—which is progress, indeed.

Also in 1964, the oppressed people of South Vietnam, and in that entire Southeast Asia area, were successful in fighting off the agents of imperialism. All the king's horses and all the king's men haven't enabled them to put North and South Vietnam together again. Little rice farmers, peasants, with a rifle—up against all the highly-mechanized weapons of warfare—jets, napalm, battleships, everything else, and they can't put those rice farmers back where they want them. Somebody's waking up.

In the Congo, the People's Republic of the Congo, headquartered at Stanleyville, fought a war for freedom against Tshombe, who is an agent for Western imperialism—and by Western imperialism I mean that which is headquartered in the United States, in the State Department.

In 1964 this government, subsidizing Tshombe, the murderer of Lumumba, and Tshombe's mercenaries, hired killers from South Africa, along with the former colonial power, Belgium, dropped paratroopers on the people of the Congo, used Cubans, that they had trained, to drop bombs on the people of the Congo with American-made planes—to no avail. The struggle is still going on, and America's man, Tshombe, is still losing.

All of this in 1964. Now, in speaking like this, it doesn't mean that I am anti-American. I am not. I'm not anti-American, or un-American. And I'm not saying that to defend myself. Because if I was that, I'd have a right to be that -- after what America has done to us. This government should feel lucky that our people aren't anti-American. They should get down on their hands and knees every morning and thank God that 22 million black people have not become anti-American. You've given us every right to. The whole world would side with us, if we became anti-American. You know, that's something to think about.

But we are not anti-American. We are anti or against what America is doing wrong in other parts of the world as well as here. And what she did in the Congo in 1964 is wrong. It's criminal, criminal. And what she did to the American public, to get the American public to go along with it, is criminal. What she's doing in South Vietnam is criminal. She's causing American soldiers to be murdered every day, killed every day, die every day, for no reason at all. That's wrong. Now, you're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it.

Also in 1964, China exploded her bomb, which was a scientific breakthrough for the oppressed people in China, who suffered for a long time. I, for one, was very happy to hear that the great people of China were able to display their scientific advancement, their advanced knowledge of science, to the point where a country which is as backward as this country keeps saying China is, and so behind everybody, and so poor, could come up with an atomic bomb. Why, I had to marvel at that. It made me realize that poor people can do it as well as rich people.

So all these little advances were made by oppressed people in other parts of the world during 1964. These were tangible gains, and the reason that they were able to make these gains was they realized that power was the magic word—power against power. Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression, because power, real power, comes from conviction which produces action, uncompromising action. It also produces insurrection against oppression. This is the only way you end oppression—with power.

Power never takes a back step—only in the face of more power. Power doesn't back up in the face of a smile, or in the face of a threat, or in the face of some kind of nonviolent loving action. It's not the nature of power to back up in the face of anything but some more power. And this is what the people have realized in Southeast Asia, in the Congo, in Cuba, in other parts of the world. Power recognizes only power, and all of them who realize this have made gains.

Now here in America it's different. When you compare our strides in 1964 with strides that have been made forward by people elsewhere all over the world, only then can you appreciate the great doublecross experienced by black people here in America in 1964. The power structure started out the new year the same way they started it out in Washington the other day. Only now they call it—what's that?—"The Great Society?" Last year, 1964, was supposed to be the "Year of Promise." They opened up the new year in Washington, D.C., and in the city hall and in Albany talking about the Year of Promise.

But by the end of 1964, we had to agree that instead of the Year of Promise, instead of those promises materializing, they substituted devices to create the illusion of progress; 1964 was the Year of Illusion and Delusion. We received nothing but a promise. In 1963, one of their devices to let off the steam of frustration was the march on Washington. They used that to make us think we were making progress. Imagine, marching to Washington and getting nothing for it whatsoever.

In '63, it was the march on Washington. In '64, what was it? The civil-rights bill. Right after they passed the civil-rights bill, they murdered a Negro in Georgia and did nothing about it; murdered two whites and a Negro in Mississippi and did nothing about it. So that the civil-rights bill has produced nothing where we're concerned. It was only a valve, a vent, that was designed to enable us to let off our frustrations. But the bill itself was not designed to solve our problems.

Since we see what they did in 1963, and we saw what they did in 1964, what will they do now, in 1965? If the march on Washington was supposed to lessen the explosion, and the civil-rights bill was designed to lessen the explosion—that's all it was designed to do; it wasn't designed to solve the problems; it was designed to lessen the explosion. Everyone in his right mind knows there should have been an explosion. You can't have all those ingredients, those explosive ingredients that exist in Harlem and elsewhere where our people suffer, and not have an explosion. So these are devices to lessen the danger of the explosion, but not designed to remove the material that's going to explode.
What will they give us in 1965? I just read where they planned to make a black cabinet member. Yes, they have a new gimmick every year. They're going to take one of their boys, black boys, and put him in the cabinet, so he can walk around Washington with a cigar—fire on one end and fool on the other.
And because his immediate personal problem will have been solved, he will be the one to tell our people, "Look how much progress we're making: I'm in Washington, D.C. I can have tea in the White House. I'm your spokesman, I'm your, you know, your leader." But will it work? Can that one, whom they are going to put down there, step into the fire and put it out when the flames begin to leap up? When people take to the streets in their explosive mood, will that one, that they're going to put in the cabinet, be able to go among those people? Why, they'll burn him faster than they burn the ones who sent him.

At the international level in 1964, they used the device of sending well-chosen black representatives to the African continent, whose mission it was to make the people on that continent think all our problems had been solved. They went over there as apologists. I saw some of them, trailed some of them and saw the results that some of them had left there. Their prime mission was to go into Africa, which is most vital to the United States' interests. These Toms—you're not supposed to call them Toms nowadays; they'll sue you—so these Uncles were sent over there...don't bother the man. He's doing his job. He's going to put you on TV, so you can get investigated. These Toms don't go to Africa because they want to explore, learn something for themselves, broaden their scope, or communicate between their people and our people over there. They go primarily to represent the United States government. And when they go, they gloss things over, they tell how well we are doing here, how the civil-rights bill has settled everything, and how the Nobel Peace Prize was handed down. Oh, yes, that's how they tell it. Actually they succeed in widening the gap between Afro-Americans and the Africans. The image that they leave there of the Afro-American is so obnoxious that the African ends up not wanting to identify with us or be related to us.

It is only when the nationalist-minded or black-minded Afro-American goes abroad to the African continent and establishes direct lines of communication and lets the African brothers know what is happening over here, and know that our people are not so dumb that we are blind to our true condition and position in this structure, that the Africans begin to understand us and identify with us and sympathize with our problems, to the point where they are willing to make whatever sacrifices are necessary to see that their long-lost brothers get a better break than we have been getting up to now.

On the national scale during 1964, as I just mentioned, politically, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party had its face slapped at Atlantic City, at a convention over which Lyndon B. Johnson was the boss, and Hubert Humphrey was the next boss, and Mayor Wagner had a lot of influence himself. Still none of that influence was shown in any way whatsoever when the hopes and aspirations of the people, the black people of Mississippi, were at stake.

Though at the beginning of '64 we were told that our political rights would be broadened, it was in 1964 that the two white civil-rights workers, working with the black civil-rights worker, were murdered. They were trying to show our people in Mississippi how to become registered voters. This was their crime. This was the reason for which they were murdered.

And the most pitiful part about them being murdered was the civil-rights organizations themselves being so chicken when it comes to reacting in the way that they should have reacted to the murder of these three civil-rights workers. The civil-rights groups sold those three brothers out—sold them out—sold them right down the river. Because they died and what has been done about it? And what voice is being raised every day today in regards to the murder of those three civil-rights workers?

So this is why I say if we get involved in the civil-rights movement and go to Mississippi, or anyplace else, to help our people get registered to vote, we intend to go prepared. We don't intend to break the law, but when you're trying to register to vote you're upholding the law. It's the one who tries to prevent you from registering to vote who's breaking the law, and you've got a right to protect yourself by any means necessary. And if the government doesn't want civil-rights groups going equipped, the government should do its job.

Concerning the Harlem incident that took place during the summer when the citizens of Harlem were attacked in a pogrom. I can't pronounce it, because it's not my word. We had heard long before it took place that it was going to take place. We had gotten the word that there were elements in the power structure that were going to incite something in Harlem that they could call a riot—in order that they could step in and be justified in using whatever measures necessary to crush the militant groups which were still considered in the embryonic stage.

And realizing that there was a plan afoot to instigate something in Harlem, so they could step in and crush it, there were elements in Harlem, who were prepared and qualified and equipped to retaliate in situations like that, who purposely did not get involved. And the real miracle of the Harlem explosion was the restraint exercised by the people of Harlem. The miracle of 1964, I'll tell it to you straight, the miracle of 1964, during the incidents that took place in Harlem, was the restraint exercised by the people in Harlem who are qualified and equipped, and whatever else there is, to protect themselves when they are being illegally and immorally and unjustly attacked.

An illegal attack, an unjust attack and an immoral attack can be made against you by anyone. Just because a person has on a uniform does not give him the right to come and shoot up your neighborhood. No, this is not right, and my suggestion would be that as long as the police department doesn't use those methods in white neighborhoods, they shouldn't come to Harlem and use them in our neighborhood.

I wasn't here. I'm glad I wasn't here. Because I'd be dead, they'd have to kill me. I'd rather be dead than let someone walk around my house or in my neighborhood shooting it up, where my children are in the line of fire. Either they'd die or I'd die.

It's not intelligent—and it all started when a little boy was shot by a policeman, and he was turned loose the same as the sheriff was turned loose in Mississippi when he killed the three civil-rights workers.

I'm almost finished. I'm taking my time tonight because I'm overworked. I'm taking my time by not hurrying up, I mean. In 1964 we had still with us the slumlords, people who own the houses but don't live there themselves; usually they live up around the Grand Concourse or somewhere. They contribute to the NAACP and CORE and all the civil-rights organizations; give you money to go out and picket, and they own the house that you're picketing.

These bad housing conditions that continue to exist up there keep our people victims of health problems—high infant and adult mortality rates, higher in Harlem than any other part of the city. They promised us jobs and gave us welfare checks instead; we're still jobless, still unemployed; the welfare is taking care of us, making us beggars, robbing us of our dignity, of our manhood.

So I point out that 1964 was not a pie-in-the-sky Year of Promise, as was promised in January of that year. Blood did flow in the streets of Harlem, Philadelphia, Rochester, some places over in New Jersey and elsewhere. In 1965 even more blood will flow. More than you ever dreamed. It'll flow downtown as well as uptown. Why? Why will it flow? Have the causes that forced it to flow in '64 been removed? Have the causes that made it flow in '63 been removed? The causes are still there.

In 1964, 97 per cent of the black American voters supported Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert Humphrey and the Democratic Party. Ninety-seven per cent! No one minority group in the history of the world has ever given so much of its uncompromising support to one candidate and one party. No one people, no one group, has ever gone all the way to support a party and its candidate as did the black people in America in 1964.

And the first act of the Democratic Party, Lyndon B. included, in 1965, when the representatives from the state of Mississippi who refused to support Johnson came to Washington, D.C., and the black people of Mississippi sent representatives there to challenge the legality of these people being seated, what did Johnson say? Nothing! What did Humphrey say? Nothing! What did Robert Pretty-Boy Kennedy say? Nothing! Nothing! Not one thing! These are the people that black people have supported. This is the party that they have supported. Where were they when the black man needed them a couple days ago in Washington, D.C.? They were where they always are—twiddling their thumbs someplace in the poolroom, or in the gallery.

Black people in 1965 will not be controlled by these Uncle Tom leaders, believe me; they won't be held in check, they won't be held on the plantation by these overseers, they won't be held on the corral, they won't be held back at all.

The frustration of these black representatives from Mississippi, when they arrived in Washington, D.C., the other day, thinking, you know, that the Great Society was going to include them—only to see the door closed in their face like that—that's what makes them think. That's what makes them realize what they're up against. It is this type of frustration that produced the Mau Mau. They reached the point where they saw that it takes power to talk to power. It takes power to make power respect you. It takes madness almost to deal with a power structure that's so corrupt, so corrupt.

So in 1965 we should see a lot of action. Since the old methods haven't worked, they'll be forced to try new methods.

Speech to Civil Rights Workers from Mississippi (Jan. 1, 1965)

2013-07-04T18:07:00.004-07:00

I was approached, I think we were at the United Nations, and I met Mrs. Walker, about two or three weeks ago, and she said that a group of students were coming up from McComb, Mississippi, and wanted to know if I would meet with you and speak with you. I told her frankly that it would be the greatest honor that I ever had experienced. Because I have never been in the state of Mississippi, number one—not through any fault of my own, I don’t think—but it’s been my great desire to either go there or meet someone from there.

To not take too much of your time, I would like to point out a little incident that I was involved in a short while ago that will give you somewhat of an idea of why I am going to say what I am.

I was flying on a plane from Algiers to Geneva about four weeks ago, with two other Americans. Both of them were white—one was a male, the other was a female. And after we had flown together for about forty minutes, the lady turned to me and asked me—she had looked at my briefcase and saw the initials M and X—and she said, “I would like to ask you a question. What kind of last name could you have that begins with X?”

So I told her, “That’s it: X.”

She was quiet for a little while. For about ten minutes she was quiet. She hadn’t been quiet at all up to then, you know. And then finally she turned and she said, “Well, what’s your first name?”

I said, “Malcolm.”

She was quiet for about ten more minutes. Then she turned and she said, “Well, you’re not Malcolm X?”

But the reason she asked that question was, she had gotten from the press, and from things that she had heard and read, she was looking for something different, or for someone different.

The reason I take time to tell you this is, one of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn how to do is see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself. Then you can come to an intelligent decision for yourself. But if you form the habit of going by what you hear others say about someone, or going by what others think about someone, instead of going and searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself, you’ll be walking west when you think you’re going east, and you’ll be walking east when you think you’re going west. So this generation, especially of our people, have a burden upon themselves, more so than at any other time in history. The most important thing we can learn how to do today is think for ourselves.

It’s good to keep wide-open ears and listen to what everybody else has to say, but when you come to make a decision, you have to weigh all of what you’ve heard on its own, and place it where it belongs, and then come to a decision for yourself. You’ll never regret it. But if you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out for yourself, you’ll find that other people will have you hating your own friends and loving your enemies. This is one of the things that our people are beginning to learn today—that it is very important to think out a situation for yourself. If you don’t do it, then you’ll always be maneuvered into actually—You’ll never fight your enemies, but you will find yourself fighting your own self.

I think our people in this country are the best examples of that. Because many of us want to be nonviolent. We talk very loudly, you know, about being nonviolent. Here in Harlem, where there are probably more Black people concentrated than any place else in the world, some talk that nonviolent talk too. And when they stop talking about how nonviolent they are, we find that they aren’t nonviolent with each other. At Harlem Hospital, you can go out here on Friday night, which—today is what, Friday? yes—you can go out here to Harlem Hospital, where there are more Black patients in one hospital than any hospital in the world—because there’s a concentration of our people here—and find Black people who claim they’re nonviolent. But you see them going in there all cut up and shot up and busted up where they got violent with each other.

So my experience has been that in many instances where you find Negroes always talking about being nonviolent, they’re not nonviolent with each other, and they’re not loving with each other, or patient with each other, or forgiving with each other. Usually, when they say they’re nonviolent, they mean they’re nonviolent with somebody else. I think you understand what I mean. They are nonviolent with the enemy. A person can come to your home, and if he’s white and he wants to heap some kind of brutality upon you, you’re nonviolent. Or he can come put a rope around your neck, you’re nonviolent. Or he can come to take your father out and put a rope around his neck, you’re nonviolent. But now if another Negro just stomps his foot, you’ll rumble with him in a minute. Which shows you there’s an inconsistency there.

So I myself would go for nonviolence if it was consistent, if it was intelligent, if everybody was going to be nonviolent, and if we were going to be nonviolent all the time. I’d say, okay, let’s get with it, we’ll all be nonviolent. But I don’t go along—and I’m just telling you how I think—I don’t go along with any kind of nonviolence unless everybody’s going to be nonviolent. If they make the Ku Klux Klan nonviolent, I’ll be nonviolent. If they make the White Citizens’ Council nonviolent, I’ll be nonviolent. 18 But as long as you’ve got somebody else not being nonviolent, I don’t want anybody coming to me talking any kind of nonviolent talk. I don’t think it is fair to tell our people to be nonviolent unless someone is out there making the Klan and the Citizens’ Council and these other groups also be nonviolent.

Now I’m not criticizing those here who are nonviolent. I think everybody should do it the way they feel is best, and I congratulate anybody who can be nonviolent in the face of all that kind of action that I read about in that part of the world. But I don’t think that in 1965 you will find the upcoming generation of our people, especially those who have been doing some thinking, who will go along with any form of nonviolence unless nonviolence is going to be practiced all the way around.

If the leaders of the nonviolent movement can go into the white community and teach nonviolence, good. I’d go along with that. But as long as I see them teaching nonviolence only in the Black community, then we can’t go along with that. We believe in equality, and equality means you have to put the same thing over here that you put over there. And if just Black people alone are going to be the ones who are nonviolent, then it’s not fair. We throw ourselves off guard. In fact, we disarm ourselves and make ourselves defenseless.

Now to try and give you a better understanding of our own position, I guess you have to know something about the Black Muslim movement, which is supposed to be a religious movement in this country, which was extremely militant, vocally militant, or militantly vocal. The Black Muslim movement was supposed to be a religious group. And because it was supposed to be a religious group, it never involved itself in civic matters, so it claimed. And by not getting involved in civic matters, what it did, being militant, it attracted the most militant Negroes, or Afro-Americans, in this country, which it actually did. The Black Muslim movement attracted the most dissatisfied, impatient, and militant Black people in this country.

But when it attracted them, the movement itself, by never involving itself in the real struggle that’s confronting Black people in this country, in a sense has gotten maneuvered into a sort of a political and civic vacuum. It was militant, it was vocal, but it never got into the battle itself.

And though it professed to be a religious group, the people from the part of the world whose religion it had adopted didn’t recognize them or accept them as a religious group. So it was also in a religious vacuum. It was in a vacuum religiously, by claiming to be a religious group and by having adopted a religion which actually rejected them or wouldn’t accept them. So religiously it was in a vacuum. The federal government tried to classify it as a political group, in order to maneuver it into a position where they could label it as seditious, so that they could crush it because they were afraid of its uncompromising, militant characteristics. So for that reason, though it was labeled a political group and never took part in politics, it was in a political vacuum. So the group, the Black Muslim movement itself, actually developed into a sort of a hybrid, a religious hybrid, a political hybrid, a hybrid-type organization.

Getting all of these very militant Black people into it, and then not having a program that would enable them to take an active part in the struggle, it created a lot of dissatisfaction among its members. It polarized into two different factions—one faction that was militantly vocal, and another faction that wanted some action, militant action, uncompromising action. Finally the dissatisfaction developed into a division, the division developed into a split, and many of its members left. Those who left formed what was known as the Muslim Mosque, Incorporated, which is authentically a religious organization that is affiliated with and recognized by all of the official religious heads in the Muslim world. This was called the Muslim Mosque, Incorporated, whose offices are here.

But this group, being Afro-American or being Black American, realized that although we were practicing the religion of Islam, still there was a problem confronting our people in this country that had nothing to do with religion and went above and beyond religion. A religious organization couldn’t attack that problem according to the magnitude of the problem, the complexity of the problem itself. So those in that group, after analyzing the problem, saw the need, or the necessity, of forming another group that had nothing to do with religion whatsoever. And that group is what’s named and is today known as the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

The Organization of Afro-American Unity is a nonreligious group of Black people in this country who believe that the problems confronting our people in this country need to be reanalyzed and a new approach devised toward trying to get a solution. Studying the problem, we recall that prior to 1939 in this country, all of our people—in the North, South, East, and West, no matter how much education we had—were segregated. We were segregated in the North just as much as we were segregated in the South. And even right now, today, there’s as much segregation in the North as there is in the South. There’s some worse segregation right here in New York City than there is in McComb, Mississippi; but up here they’re subtle and tricky and deceitful, and they make you think that you’ve got it made when you haven’t even begun to make it yet.

Prior to 1939 our people were in a very menial position or condition. Most of us were waiters and porters and bellhops and janitors and waitresses and things of that sort. It was not until war was declared in Germany by Hitler, and America became involved in a manpower shortage in regards to her factories plus her army—it was only then that the Black man in this country was permitted to make a few strides forward. It was never out of some kind of moral enlightenment or moral awareness on the part of Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam only let the Black man take a step forward when he himself had his back to the wall.

In Michigan, where I was brought up at that time, I recall that the best jobs in the city for Blacks were waiters out at the country club. And in those days if you had a job waiting table in the country club, you had it made. Or if you had a job at the State House. Having a job at the State House didn’t mean that you were a clerk or something of that sort—you had the shoeshine stand in the State House. Just by being in there where you could be around all these big politicians, that made you a big-shot Negro. You were shining shoes, but you were a big-shot Negro because you were around big-shot white people and you could bend their ear and get up next to them. And ofttimes in those days, you were chosen to be the voice of the Negro community.

Also right at this time, 1939 or ‘40, ‘41, they weren’t drafting Negroes in the army or the navy. A Negro couldn’t join the navy in 1940 or ‘41 in this country. He couldn’t join. They wouldn’t take a Black man in the navy. They would take him if they wanted and make him a cook. But he couldn’t just go and join the navy. And he couldn’t just go—I don’t think he could just go and join the army. They weren’t drafting him when the war first started.

This is what they thought of you and me in those days. For one thing, they didn’t trust us. They feared that if they put us in the army and trained us on how to use rifles and other things, that we might shoot at some targets that they hadn’t picked out. And we would have. Any thinking man knows what target to shoot at. And if a man doesn’t, if he has to have someone else to choose his target, then he’s not thinking for himself—they’re doing the thinking for him.

So it was only when the Negro leaders—they had the same type of Negro leaders in those days that we have today—when the Negro leaders saw all the white fellows being drafted and taken into the army and dying on the battlefield, and no Negroes were dying because they weren’t being drafted, the Negro leaders came up and said, “We’ve got to die too. We want to be drafted too, and we demand that you take us in there and let us die for our country too.” This is what the Negro leaders said, back in 1940, I remember. A. Philip Randolph was one of the leading Negroes in those days who said it, and he’s one of the Big Six right now; and this is why he’s one of the Big Six right now. 19

They started drafting Negro soldiers then, and then they started letting Negroes get into the navy—but not until Hitler and Tojo and the foreign powers were strong enough to bring pressure upon this country, so that it had its back to the wall and it needed us. At that same time, they let us work in factories. Up until that time we couldn’t work in the factories. I’m talking about the North as well as the South. And when they let us work in the factories we began—at first when they let us in we could only be janitors. Then, after a year or so passed by, they let us work on machines. We became machinists, got a little skill. And as we got a little more skill, we made a little more money, which enabled us to live in a little better neighborhood. When we lived in a little better neighborhood, we went to a little better school, got a little better education, and could come out and get a little better job. So the cycle was broken somewhat.

But the cycle was not broken because of some kind of sense of moral responsibility on the part of the government. No, the only time that cycle was broken even to a degree was when world pressure was brought to bear upon the United States government and they were forced to look at the Negro—and then they didn’t even look at us as human beings, they just put us into their system and let us advance a little bit farther because it served their interests. But they never let us advance a little bit farther because they were interested in our interests, or interested in us as human beings. Any of you who have a knowledge of history, sociology, political science, or the economic development of this country and its race relations, all you have to do is take what I’m telling you and go back and do some research on it and you’ll have to admit that this is true.

It was during the time that Hitler and Tojo were able to make war with this country and put pressure upon them that Negroes in this country advanced a little bit. At the end of the war with Germany and Japan, then Joe Stalin and Communist Russia were a threat. And during that period we made a little bit more advances.

Now the point that I’m making is this: Never at any time in the history of our people in this country have we made advances or advancement, or made progress in any way just based upon the internal good will of this country, or based upon the internal activity of this country. We have only made advancement in this country when this country was under pressure from forces above and beyond its control. Because the internal moral consciousness of this country is bankrupt. It hasn’t existed since they first brought us over here and made slaves out of us. They trick up on the confirmation and make it appear that they have our good interests at heart. But when you study it, every time, no matter how many steps they take us forward, it’s like we’re standing on a—what do you call that thing?—a treadmill. The treadmill is moving backwards faster than we’re able to go forward in this direction. We’re not even standing still—we’re walking forward, at the same time we’re going backward.

I say that because the Organization of Afro-American Unity, in studying the process of this so-called progress during the past twenty years, realized that the only time the Black man in this country is given any kind of recognition, or shown any kind of favor at all, or even his voice is listened to, is when America is afraid of outside pressure, or when she’s afraid of her image abroad. We could see that as long as we sat around and carried on our struggle at a level or in a manner that involved only the good will of the internal forces of this country, we would continue to go backward, there would be no real meaningful changes made. So the Organization of Afro-American Unity saw that it was necessary to expand the problem and the struggle of the Black man in this country until it went above and beyond the jurisdiction of the United States.

For the past fifteen years the struggle of the Black man in this country was labeled as a civil rights struggle, and as such it remained completely within the jurisdiction of the United States. You and I could get no kind of benefits whatsoever other than that which would be forthcoming from Washington, D.C. Which meant, in order for it to be forthcoming from Washington, D.C., all of the congressmen and the senators would have to agree to it.

But the most powerful congressmen and the most powerful senators were from the South. And they were from the South because they had seniority in Washington, D.C. And they had seniority because our people in the South, where they came from, couldn’t vote. They didn’t have the right to vote.

So when we saw that we were up against a hopeless battle internally, we saw the necessity of getting allies at the world level or from abroad, from all over the world. And so immediately we realized that as long as the struggle was a civil rights struggle, was under the jurisdiction of the United States, we would have no real allies or real support. We decided that the only way to make the problem rise to the level where we could get world support was to take it away from the civil rights label, and put in the human rights label.

It is not an accident that the struggle of the Black man in this country for the past ten or fifteen years has been called a struggle for civil rights. Because as long as you’re struggling for civil rights, what you are doing is asking these racist segregationists who control Washington, D.C.—and they control Washington, D.C., they control the federal government through these committees—as long as this thing is a civil rights struggle, you are asking it at a level where your so-called benefactor is actually someone from the worst part of this country. You can only go forward to the degree that they let you.

But when you get involved in a struggle for human rights, it’s completely out of the jurisdiction of the United States government. You take it to the United Nations. And any problem that is taken to the United Nations, the United States has no say-so on it whatsoever. Because in the UN she only has one vote, and in the UN the largest bloc of votes is African; the continent of Africa has the largest bloc of votes of any continent on this earth. And the continent of Africa, coupled with the Asian bloc and the Arab bloc, comprises over two-thirds of the UN forces, and they’re the dark nations. That’s the only court that you can go to today and get your own people, the people who look like you, on your side—the United Nations.

This could have been done fifteen years ago. It could have been done nineteen years ago. But they tricked us. They got ahold of our leaders and used our leaders to lead us right back to their courts, knowing that they control their courts. So the leaders look like they’re leading us against an enemy, but when you analyze the struggle that we’ve been involved in for the past fifteen years, the good or the progress that we’ve made is actually disgraceful. We should be ashamed to even use the word “progress” in the context of our struggle.

So there has been a move on—and I will conclude in a moment—there has been a move on to keep the Negro thinking in this country that he was making strides in the civil rights field, only for the purpose of distracting him and not letting him know that were he to acquaint himself with the structure of the United Nations and the politics of the United Nations, the aim and the purpose of the United Nations, he could lift his problem into that world body. And he’d have the strongest stick in the world that he could use against the racists in Mississippi.

But one of the arguments against getting you and me to do this has always been that our problem is a domestic problem of the United States. And as such, we should not think to put it at a level where somebody else can come and mess with United States domestic affairs. But you’re giving Uncle Sam a break. Uncle Sam’s got his hands in the Congo, in Cuba, in South America, in Saigon. Uncle Sam has got his bloody hands in every continent and in everybody else’s business on this earth. But at the same time, when it comes to taking forceful action in this country where our rights are concerned, he’s always going to tell you and me, “Well, these are states’ rights.” Or he’ll make some kind of off-the-wall alibi that’s not a bona fide alibi—not because it’s an alibi, but to justify his inactivity where your and my rights are concerned.

We were successful when we realized that we had to bring this to the United Nations. We knew that we had to get support, we had to get world support, and that the most logical part of the world to look in for support is among people who look just like you and me.

I was fortunate to be able to take a tour of the African continent during the summer—the Middle East and Africa. I went to Egypt, then to Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and then to Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, and Algeria. I found while I was traveling on the African continent—I had already detected it in May—that someone has very shrewdly planted the seeds of division on this continent to make the Africans not show genuine concern with our problem, just as they plant seeds in your and my minds so that we won’t show concern with the African problem. They try and make you and me think that we’re separate, and the two problems are separate.

When I went back this time and traveled to those different countries, I was fortunate enough to spend an hour and a half with Nasser in Egypt, which is a North African country; and three hours with President Nyerere in Tanganyika, which has now become Tanzania, which is an East African country; and with Prime Minister Obote, Milton Obote, in Uganda, which is also an East African country; and with Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya, which is another East African country; and with President Azikiwe in Nigeria, President Nkrumah in Ghana, and President Sékou Touré in Guinea.

I found that in every one of these African countries, the head of state is genuinely concerned with the problem of the Black man in this country, but many of them thought that if they opened their mouths and voiced concern, that they would be insulted by the American Negro leaders. Because one head of state in Asia voiced his support of the civil rights struggle and a couple of the Big Six had the audacity to slap his face and say they weren’t interested in that kind of help—which in my opinion is asinine. So that the African leaders only had to be convinced that if they took an open stand at the governmental level and showed interest in the problem of Black people in this country, that they wouldn’t be rebuffed.

And today you’ll find in the United Nations—and it’s not an accident—that every time the Congo question or anything on the African continent is being debated in the Security Council, they couple it with what’s going on, or what is happening to you and me, in Mississippi and Alabama and these other places. In my opinion, the greatest accomplishment that was made in the struggle of the Black man in America in 1964 toward some kind of real progress was the successful linking together of our problem with the African problem, or making our problem a world problem. Because now, whenever anything happens to you in Mississippi, it’s not a case of just somebody in Alabama getting indignant, or somebody in New York getting indignant. Whatever happens in Mississippi today, with the attention of the African nations drawn toward Mississippi at a governmental level, then the same repercussions that you see all over the world when an imperialist or foreign power interferes in some section of Africa, you see repercussions, you see the embassies being bombed and burned and overturned. Nowadays, when something happens to Black people in Mississippi, you will see the same repercussions all over the world.

I wanted to point this out to you, because it is important for you to know that when you’re in Mississippi you’re not alone. But as long as you think you’re alone, then you take a stand as if you’re a minority or as if you’re out-numbered, and that kind of stand will never enable you to win a battle. You’ve got to know that you’ve got as much power on your side as that Ku Klux Klan has on its side. And when you know that you’ve got just as much power on your side as the Klan has on its side, you’ll talk the same kind of language with that Klan as that Klan is talking with you.

I’ll say one more thing, and then I’ll conclude.

When I say the same kind of language, I should explain what I mean. See, you can never get good relations with anybody that you can’t communicate with. You can never have good relations with anybody that doesn’t understand you. There has to be an understanding. Understanding is brought about through dialogue. Dialogue is communication of ideas. This can only be done in a language, a common language. You can never talk French to somebody who speaks only German and think you’re communicating. Neither of them—they don’t get the point. You have to be able to speak a man’s language in order to make him get the point.

Now, you’ve lived in Mississippi long enough to know what the language of the Ku Klux Klan is. They only know one language. If you come up with another language, you don’t communicate. You’ve got to be able to speak the same language they speak, whether you’re in Mississippi, New York City, or Alabama, or California, or anywhere else. When you develop or mature to the point where you can speak another man’s language on his level, that man gets the point. That’s the only time he gets the point. You can’t talk peace to a person who doesn’t know what peace means. You can’t talk love to a person who doesn’t know what love means. And you can’t talk any form of nonviolence to a person who doesn’t believe in nonviolence. Why, you’re wasting your time.

So I think in 1965—whether you like it, or I like it, or we like it, or they like it, or not—you will see that there is a generation of Black people born in this country who become mature to the point where they feel that they have no more business being asked to take a peaceful approach than anybody else takes, unless everybody’s going to take a peaceful approach.

So we here in the Organization of Afro-American Unity, we’re with the struggle in Mississippi 1,000 percent. We’re with the efforts to register our people in Mississippi to vote 1,000 percent. But we do not go along with anybody telling us to help nonviolently. We think if the government says that Negroes have a right to vote, and then when Negroes go out to vote some kind of Ku Klux Klan is going to put them in the river, and the government doesn’t do anything about it, it’s time for us to organize and band together and equip ourselves and qualify ourselves to protect ourselves. And once you can protect yourself, you don’t have to worry about being hurt. That’s it.

* * *

So we’re going to have a few minutes now for you to ask questions on all that that has been said, and all that hasn’t been said.

Yes, sir.

Question: Could you please say something on the Freedom Democratic Party?

Malcolm X: Yes. We support the Freedom Democratic Party. We have a statement that we’re making in support. We had a rally last Sunday night—no, a week ago Sunday night, to which we invited Mrs. Hamer. She spoke and explained the position of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and we support it. To give you an example of why we support this, it has as much effect on New York City as it does in Mississippi.

But by the same token, I must point out that those who are depriving you of your rights in Mississippi aren’t all in Mississippi. You got these New York Democrats who are just as much responsible. The mayor of this city is a Democrat. The senator, you’ve heard of him, Robert Kennedy, he’s a Democrat. The president of the country is a Democrat. The vice president is a Democrat. Now don’t you tell me anything about a Democrat in Mississippi who is depriving you of your rights, when the power of the Democratic Party is in Washington, D.C., and in New York City, and in Chicago, and some of these northern cities.

In New York City Negroes can already vote. When you make known in the city of New York the position of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and why it was necessary to form that party, and what that party is trying to do toward ousting these illegal representatives from Mississippi, then the Negroes in New York City know what it’s all about. We want to know, where does Wagner stand, since he’s one of the most powerful and influential leaders of the Democratic Party in the United States. And we want to know where the senator, Robert Kennedy, stands, since he’s also one of the most powerful and influential leaders of the Democratic Party in the United States. And we’ve got a Negro who’s the assistant to the mayor in this city. We want to know where he stands. Plus you got Lyndon B. Johnson and Hubert Humphrey, who professes to drool at the mouth over Negroes, to let you know where they stand before January 4.

When you get that kind of action off some of these northern Democrats, then you’ll get some action in Mississippi. You don’t have to worry about that man in Mississippi. The power of the Democratic Party are these people up here who hold all the power in the North. So we’re with you, but we want to go all the way.

See, as a Muslim, I don’t get my religion involved in my politics, because they clash. They don’t clash, but when you go into something as a Muslim, you’ve got a whole lot of Negroes who are Christians, who aren’t broad-minded enough, so you get into a religious argument, and it doesn’t pay.

So I don’t enter into this struggle as a Muslim, inasmuch as I enter into it as a member of the Organization of Afro-American Unity. And the stand that the Organization of Afro-American Unity takes is that we get into it without compromising.

You compromise when you’re wrong. You don’t have to compromise when you’re right. Why, you’re right. They’re not giving you something. This is yours. If you were born in this country, nobody’s doing you any favor when they let you vote or when they let you register. They’re only recognizing you as a human being and recognizing your right as a human being to exercise your right as a citizen. So they’re not doing you any favors.

As long as you approach this thing like somebody has done you a favor, or that you’re dealing with a friend, you never can fight that fight. Because when they deal with you, they’re not dealing with you like they’re dealing with a friend. They look at you like you’re an enemy. Now you have to look at them just as if they’re an enemy. And once you know what it is you’re dealing with, you can deal with that thing. But you can’t deal with them with love. Why, man, if there was any love with them, if there was any love in them, you wouldn’t have any fight in Mississippi. There’s no love there. You have to realize that there’s no love there, and then you don’t be looking for it, and go ahead and fight them.

When you go to vote or register and someone gets in your way, you’re supposed to answer them in the same way that they answer you. When you answer them that way, you get a little dialogue. And if you don’t have enough of them down there to do it, we’ll come down there and help you do it. Because we are tired of this old runaround that our people have been given in this country.

For a long time they accused me of not getting involved in politics. They should’ve been glad I didn’t get involved in politics, because anything I get in, I’m in it all the way. Now if they say that we don’t take part in the Mississippi struggle, we will organize brothers here in New York who know how to handle these kinds of affairs, and they’ll slip into Mississippi like Jesus slipped into Jerusalem.

This doesn’t mean that we’re against white people, but we sure are against the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens’ Councils. Anything that looks like it’s against us, we’re against it.

Excuse me for raising my voice, but this thing, you know, it gets me upset. Even being involved in a discussion in a country that’s supposed to be a democracy. Imagine that, in a country that’s supposed to be a democracy, supposed to be for freedom and all of that kind of stuff that they tell you when they want to draft you and put you in the army and send you to Saigon to fight for them. And then you’ve got to turn around and all night long discuss how you’re going to just get a right to register and vote without being murdered. Why, that’s the most hypocritical governmental half-truth that has ever been invented since the world was the world.

Malcolm X: Yes, ma’am.

Question: The question I have is what does the Afro-American Unity do?

Malcolm X: First, Afro-American means us.

Question: I know what it means, I just want to know: What does it do?

Malcolm X: How do you mean?

Question: What kind of struggles, what does it do?

Malcolm X: Well, first, it was patterned after the OAU. The OAU is the Organization of African Unity. And the reason we patterned our organization after theirs was they had trouble on the African continent similar to ours. Meaning that there were many independent countries that were so divided against each other that they couldn’t come together in a united effort and resolve any of their problems. So some of the more mature African politicians were able to work behind the scenes and get a common understanding, out of which materialized the Organization of African Unity, the purpose of which was to get all African leaders to see the necessity of de-emphasizing their areas of disagreement and emphasizing their areas of agreement, where they had common interests.

This led to the Organization of African Unity being formed, and today they work together in unity and harmony, although there are diverse philosophies, diverse personalities. All of these differences exist; still they can unite together for a common objective. So studying their problems, and seeing that their problems were similar to ours, we formed ours after the letter and spirit of that OAU, only with an OAAU.

Our first objective is—our first step was to find an area of agreement among Afro-Americans. We found that you have the nationalists, you have the civil rights groups, you have all these diverse elements in the Black community. Some want separation, some want integration; some want this, some want that. So how are you going to find something that they all agree upon? You won’t find the nationalists agree on civil rights, because they think it’s a farce. You won’t find the nationalists agree on integration, because they think it’s a farce. They haven’t seen anyplace where it has ever materialized. It’s only a word, something that’s played around, kicked around.

So we had to find something that both the nationalists and the integrationists would agree upon. And we found that all of them would agree on the necessity of our people in this country being respected and recognized as human beings. So instead of launching our struggle at the civil rights level that would cause a whole lot of argument, we launched it at the human rights level. And we know that anybody that’s for civil rights has got to be for human rights, whether you’re an integrationist or a separationist or what you are; you still have to be for human rights.

So our first platform was that we recognized the right of the Black man in the Western Hemisphere to exercise his right as a human being. Rights that he was born with, rights that no government has the power to give him. God makes you a human being, and God is the one who gives you your human rights, not a government, or some senators, or a judge, or some representatives. And so this is our stand. We are human beings, and our fight is to see that every Black man, woman, and child in this country is respected and recognized as a human being.

Our method is: any means necessary. That’s our motto. We’re not restricted to this, or confined to that. We reserve the right to use any means necessary to protect our humanity, or to make the world see that they respect us as human beings. Any means necessary.

When I say that, I don’t mean anything illegal. The government—You’re being treated criminally. The criminal is the one who’s illegal. The one who’s responsible for these criminal conditions, he’s a criminal, he’s illegal. And whatever you’ve got to do to stop this crime from being committed against you, as far as I’m concerned you’re not illegal.

So that’s our first step at the international level. And politically, we devise and support any program that’s designed to give the Black man in this country an opportunity to participate as a citizen, a free citizen, in this political system and in this society. We will involve ourselves in programs of our own, or in anyone else’s programs, as long as it doesn’t involve any kind of compromise in its approach to getting our people in this country the rights to register and to vote in whichever direction they desire to.

Question: ...

Malcolm X: The voter registration?

Question: How important is it?

Malcolm X: We ourselves have our own voter registration drive in the areas where we are, plus we work with other civil rights groups who also have voter registration drives.

Question: ...

Malcolm X: No. Not as yet... keep it, what’s the word, keep it to ourselves, we would keep it confidential. We will never let you know how many members we have.

Question: I’m not asking that.

Malcolm X: I learned that. I’m giving you some light without you asking. That’s one thing I learned in the Black Muslim movement that I found most important: never let anybody know what they’re dealing with—its size, its strength, its nothing. The reason for that is, I found, if you’re in the jungle or in the woods and you hear something rustling in the bush, you don’t know what kind of gun to reach for until you know what’s making that noise. Because you might pull out a rabbit gun for an elephant, or you might pull out an elephant gun for a rabbit, and you look foolish either way. It’s not good to ever let too much of what you are come out above the ground. The most important part of the tree is the roots, and the roots always remain beneath the ground. That’s where the tree gets its life. And the tree dies only when you put those roots up where the light is and it dries up.

So our membership—its nature, its caliber, its content, all of that—we keep it to ourselves. But you see here and there, wherever you find dissatisfied Negroes, if they’re not our blood brothers, they’re at least some relatives, some relation. If we’re not blood brothers, we’re at least related. Any more?

Question: We obviously can’t say—

Malcolm X: You from Mississippi too?

Question: No, I’m not.

Malcolm X: I didn’t think so. Keep on asking.

Question: Obviously you can’t say what you do. I just was wondering what kind of—

Malcolm X: It’s not a case of I can’t say what we do. I told you that we involve ourselves in our own programs to get our people registered, as registered voters in this area and wherever else we are. And we work with any other group that’s trying to get our people registered so that they can vote. This is in this political area or in the area of politics. Now what else did you want to know, since you don’t seem to be satisfied?

Question: Well, maybe. Do you think—

Malcolm X: No, if that’s not clear, ask me. I mean, if I didn’t clarify your question, go ahead and dig into it a little deeper.

Question: No, I think that man from the other... don’t vote either, which makes it look like—

Malcolm X: This is true, which shows you that the reluctance on the part of the Negro to vote isn’t always because they don’t have the right to. The political history of our people in this country has been that usually you have political machines in most states and in most cities. And they select, as a rule, not Black people to run in the Black community who are intellectually capable to deal with politics as it is, but puppets that serve as their mouthpiece to control the politics of the community. The Black people in Harlem have witnessed this thing year in and year out and have seen how the politics of Harlem and other Negro communities have been pretty much controlled from outside.

So it’s not that they’re politically lethargic or dead, but they purposely have abstained. But when you give them something to point toward, or vote for, you’ll find that they’ll be just as active as they’ve been inactive.

It’s the purpose of the OAAU to work among that element of inactive Black people, who have been politically inactive in this area. We intend to charge them and get them active out here, so that we can get a little action. Because those are the real activists. Those who haven’t been involved in politics actively are the ones who get involved in physical action. They have not seen anything that’s good be made to materialize through politics in the past, so they didn’t resort to politics. They resorted to things physical, to methods physical, if you understand what I mean.

What we intend to do is try and harness their energy by giving them an understanding of politics, first. Because we don’t think that anybody should get us registered as voters and not at the same time give us some education in regards to politics. We don’t think that a voter registration program on its own is sufficient. But in line with any voter registration program among Negroes, there must be a voter education program to make our people enlightened in regards to the science of politics, so that they will know what politics is supposed to produce and what the politician is supposed to produce, what his responsibilities are. And then we can’t be exploited.

But if you just get Negroes out here and register them, then what you’re going to have are more Negroes whose political energy can be exploited by the big city political machines. We don’t think that that will ever solve our problems. There has to be voter education as well as voter registration. Most of the Negro politicians don’t want this, because those who have been politicians haven’t really been trying to solve our problems, inasmuch as they’ve been getting the handouts from the machine for keeping us in check. When the people realize that, the people wake up.

One of the reasons, if I may add, that Negroes haven’t been actively involved in politics is, when the Negro leader—when Negroes go out to try and make other Negroes get registered to vote, they have the wrong motives, usually—especially the politicians. The young students who are doing it today are a little different. But the politician, when he tries to get you registered to vote, he’s not interested in making you enlightened so you can vote. He wants you to stay in the dark but register. Then maybe you’ll vote for him, or vote for his party, or vote for what he’s got going for him. He’s not even interested in your condition. And this is why you find Negroes in Harlem haven’t gotten involved.

But don’t think that they can’t get involved. You can get as many Negroes interested politically in Harlem overnight, but you’ve got to give him something, give him something that he will see will materialize. And I think that our people in this area are ready.

Question: ...

Malcolm X: Well, there wouldn’t have to be necessarily any particular party to make them have something to look forward to, especially up around here. It takes something else to make these people in Harlem feel that they have something to look forward to.

Question: [Inaudible, asks about “political pressure” in Harlem]

Malcolm X: No, not particularly. Although, the only real power in this government is politics—and money. The only thing that people recognize is power and money. Power—that’s all they recognize. That’s why I say, in Mississippi you can love all you want. They don’t recognize love, they recognize power. Power. You can love, look how long you’ve been loving, that’s proof of it. You’ve been loving them like a blind—

Question: It’s not love—

Malcolm X: Yeah, I understand, but—

Question: Don’t let love...

Malcolm X: Brother, I will read the breakdown. You know, in various counties now, you got more Negroes than you got whites. Negroes outnumber the whites. And you see, freedom comes only two ways. There’s only two ways that a person gets freedom: either by the ballot or by bullets.

Question: [Inaudible, asks about “the riot you had here”]

Malcolm X: In Harlem?

Question: Yes.

Malcolm X: It wasn’t a riot. That was a pogrom. You know what a pogrom is? How do you say that? Pogrom. Pogrom is what it was. Pogrom. That wasn’t any riot, that was a pogrom. That was the police heaping brutality upon the people of the area. It was a set-up.

Question: Could I ask you, what was actually accomplished by this so-called riot?

Malcolm X: It wasn’t a riot. There was a rumor passed on to us in May that the police in New York during the summer were going to try and provoke trouble, so that they could step in and crush the organizing and growth of militant groups that they were afraid, if they were allowed to grow, would get to the size that they could never be controlled.

If you study the characteristics of that so-called riot, every action on the part of the police in Harlem was designed to draw out groups that they felt were equipped and ready to do this thing. The tactics that the police used were designed to draw fire back. They were firing guns at people who didn’t have guns. But they were firing to get somebody to fight, to shoot back. The police know you got just as many guns in Harlem as there are in Saigon right now. But none of the groups in Harlem that were equipped and qualified to strike back got involved. None of them got involved.

But the whole thing was set up to try and get them involved, so that they could be crushed while they were still in their embryonic, so-called embryonic stage. As you said, it goes beyond the Mississippi situation. But all of our problems are the same: wrong color.

Question: ..

Malcolm X: Whether it was the COFO?

Question: Right.

Malcolm X: Any program that’s designed to get our people registered is good, especially in Mississippi. Because our people in Mississippi outnumber—there’s a greater percentage of our people in the state of Mississippi than there is, probably, in any other state. If the people in Mississippi did have voting rights, what’s his name—Eastland—wouldn’t be in Washington, D.C. None of those powerful senators and congressmen who control the committees in Washington, D.C., would be there.

So any effort on the part of any group that gets our people in the state of Mississippi registered, that’s good. But my only criticism is sending people on the front lines against well-armed enemies and telling them, “Don’t fight.” Why, that’s insane. I can’t go along with that. No.

When those three brothers were murdered down there, it was a drag, it’s been a drag on the part of the civil rights groups, the way they’ve just taken that thing so easy. Hardly nothing has happened. They’re telling everybody to be patient, be loving and long-suffering when the whole world is on your side. If you went on the rampage in Mississippi, wouldn’t nobody hold it against you. Because the whole world knows that the people down there are the worst things on this earth.

So we go for the operation, but we don’t go for sending anybody to a front line and telling them, don’t protect themselves. No. Then, after one of your soldiers gets killed, everybody says, well, you’re supposed to keep on loving anyway? No, I can’t go along with that.

That’s what split the Muslim movement. That’s what caused the Black Muslim movement to be split. Some of our brothers got hurt and nothing was done about it. Those of us who wanted to do something about it were kept from doing something about it. So we split.

No, I don’t go along with any kind of action that ties up my hands and then put me in the ring with Sonny Liston or Cassius Clay. No, don’t tie my hands, unless you’re going to tie up their hands too. Then it’s fair.

You don’t see the white man sending his people to war somewhere and tying up their hands. No, and if those two hadn’t been white, you wouldn’t even have known that that happened in Mississippi, because they kill Negroes in Mississippi every day. Ever since we’ve been here.

I was over in Africa, brother, while all that was going on. And I read about it and I know that it tore the Africans up. Tore ‘em up. Why, if you had thrown bombs right and left in Mississippi, you’d have had the world on your side.

I’m not telling you to throw bombs. I’m just telling you what would happen. If I told you that, if somebody started throwing bombs around here tomorrow, they’d blame me, put the blame on me. They would never give me credit, but they’d put the blame on me.

Only from Mississippi. Questions. Are you from Mississippi? Are there any other questions?

I hope that you don’t think that I’m trying to incite you. But look here, just look at yourselves. Some of you all are teenagers, students. Now how do you think I feel—and I belong to a generation ahead of you—how do you think I feel having to tell you, “We, my generation, sat around like a knot on the wall while the whole world was actually fighting for what were its human rights”—and you’ve got to be born into a society where you still have that same fight. What did we do, who preceded you? I’ll tell what we did: nothing. And don’t you make the same mistake we made.

You tell me why a Black man in this society has to wait on the Supreme Court and a white man doesn’t have to wait on the Supreme Court. Yet both of them are men. You tell me why the Congress and the Senate have got to make a Black man a human being, and the same Congress and Senate don’t have to make a white man a human being, if they’re both men. You tell why you need a presidential proclamation to get respect and recognition, and a white man doesn’t need it, if we’re both men.

I’ll tell you why: we’re not both men.

A man will die and fight for what is his right. And if he doesn’t, if he’s not ready to fight and die for what is his right, he’s not a man. That’s the only way you can look at it. And when you begin to look like you’re going to...you get what belongs to a man.

But as long as you sit around here waiting on some court that is headed by a Ku Klux Klan judge, or waiting on a Senate that’s controlled by a Ku Klux Klan senator, or a Congress that’s controlled by a White Citizens’ Council congressman, or a White House that’s got just as much Klan influence in it as any other part of the country, why, no, you’ll never be respected as a human being.

I must say this: I was in Africa, I was in Kenya. Five years ago, one of the men in Africa who had the worst image was Kenyatta. They tried to make you and me think that Kenyatta, Jomo Kenyatta, was a monster. I met Kenyatta. I flew from Tanganyika to Zanzibar to Kenya with Kenyatta, and everybody respects him. He’s known there as the father of the country. The white man respects him and the Black man respects him. Five years ago they said he was a leader of the Mau Mau. And they tried to make him appear to be a monster. As long as he didn’t have his own independence, he was a monster.

But today Kenyatta is so highly respected it’s not an accident that when the brothers in Stanleyville had all these hostages in the Congo, and they wanted to try and save them, who did they choose to moderate the conference that took place between Ambassador Atwood and Tom Kanza in Nairobi? Jomo Kenyatta. The same man that this government and this society was labeling as a monster five years ago, now they turn to him when statesmanship is needed. He had a negative image five years ago because he wouldn’t compromise. He was bringing freedom to his people by any means necessary. Now that his people have gotten their freedom, he’s respected.

And this is the only way you’ll get it. You get freedom by not being confined. You get freedom by letting your enemy know that you’ll do anything to get your freedom. You’ll get it. It’s the only way you’ll get it. Then, when you get that kind of attitude, they’ll label you as a “crazy Negro,” or they’ll call you a “crazy nigger”—they don’t say Negro. They say, “That nigger’s crazy.” Or they’ll call you an extremist or they’ll call you a subversive, or seditious, or a Red, or a radical. But when you stay radical long enough, and get enough people to be just like you, you’ll get your freedom. Then, after you get your freedom, they’ll talk about what a great person you are, just like they do with Kenyatta. So if Lumumba had lived long enough and consolidated the Congo, they’d talk about him like a great person, because he’d be free and independent.

So don’t you run around here trying to make friends with somebody who’s depriving you of your rights. They’re not your friends. No, they’re your enemies. Treat them like that and fight them, and you’ll get your freedom. And after you get your freedom, your enemy will respect you. He will respect you.

I say that with no hate. I have no hate in me. I have no hate at all. I don’t have any hate. But I’ve got some sense. I think I’ve got some sense. I’m not going to let somebody who hates me tell me to love him. I’m not that way-out. And you, young as you are, and because you start thinking, you’re not going to do it either. The only time you’re going to get in that kind of bag is if somebody puts you in there, somebody else, who doesn’t have your welfare at heart.

I’m just going to take five more minutes, because Sharon Jackson reminded me of something which I think is very important. It’s why at the beginning I mentioned, when I was on this plane, how I rode right next to this man and woman for an hour, and they didn’t have the slightest idea who I was, because they were looking for somebody with horns. Usually white people think anybody who is not going to be cool and calm under their extreme brutality has got horns. So this is done by image making. People who make images use images to make you hate their enemies and love your own. No: hate their friends and love their enemies. They use images to do this.

One place they’ve done it is in the Congo. The Congo is where they told me and you we came from. All my life, when I was a little boy, they said we came out of Africa, and they made believe we came out of the Congo, because that was supposed to be the most savage part of Africa. So you know, we’re probably more closely related to the brothers in the Congo than anybody else. And when you hear them talking about cannibals, they’re talking about our cousins, about our brothers, you know. If you really want to believe it. But they aren’t any more cannibalistic in the Congo than they are in the downtown, there in the Village. There’s some real cannibals down there in the Village. They’ll be eating up anything, you know.

In this country what they try and make it appear is that the people in the Congo are savages. And they do this very skillfully in order to justify their being over there. Now when I was in Tanganyika, Dar es Salaam—I think it was in October—some American Negroes, Afro-Americans who live in Dar es Salaam, came to me and told me about this Congolese who was cussing them out. And I asked them, why...[gap in tape]...African village. Now you know a village has no air force. A village has no defense against bombs that are being dropped on it. And the pilot in the plane can’t tell who the bomb is being dropped upon. It’s just being dropped on a village.

So here you have American airplanes being flown by what they call “anti-Castro Cuban, American-trained pilots.” Now you see how slick they are. The reason they say “American-trained pilots” is to make you automatically side with them, because they are American-trained. The reason they say they are anti-Castro Cuban pilots is because Castro’s already a monster, and if somebody links these people, that they’re against Castro, then whoever else they’re against, it’s all right. It’s what you call a journalistic, psychological trick on your mind.

So now you have airplanes that are dropping bombs on Black women, Black children, and Black babies, blowing them to bits in the Congo. They justify it by making it appear to be a humanitarian project. And they get big Negroes in this country to talk to you and tell you that America is justified in doing it. You show me a big Negro and usually he’s their big Negro. And his job is to make you and me think that no matter how much atrocity they are committing, that they are right. And they do it with these tricks.

How can you justify dropping a bomb on a village—not a civilization that has all the weapons of warfare, but a village? You don’t need to drop a bomb on a village that doesn’t even have rifles in it. But it shows you their complete lack of concern for life when that life is clothed in a black skin.

To show you again how merciless they are. They take Tshombe. Tshombe is a Black man, but he’s a murderer. He murdered this man called Patrice Lumumba, in cold blood. And this government took Tshombe away from Spain. And this government did do it, because I know people who can tell you how certain high members of this country’s State Department got on board a plane with a certain African leader and flew all the way almost to his country, trying to get this African leader to use his influence on other African leaders to make Tshombe acceptable to the people of the African continent. And this happened almost a year before they brought Tshombe back down—to show you what a plot, what a conspiracy that they’re involved in.

And here Tshombe is a killer, a murderer—of Patrice Lumumba. They put him over the government in Léopoldville, and then they used the press to give him an image of acceptability by saying he’s the only one that can restore peace to the Congo. Imagine this, he’s a murderer. It’s like saying Jesse James is the only one can run the bank. Therefore you should let Jesse James run the bank; and the only reason the bank is in trouble is because Jesse James already was in the bank.

So just to go one step farther. They take Tshombe and give him enough money to go to South Africa and bring white mercenaries, hired killers, in to fight for him. A mercenary is someone who kills for pay. He doesn’t kill because he’s patriotic. He doesn’t kill because he’s loyal. He kills anything in sight for pay, and this is what America is using your tax dollars to support: a Black murderer who hires white murderers to shoot down his own people. Because America knows if she went in and did it, the world wouldn’t go along with her.

And then, when these white murderers are heaping so much butchery upon the people in the Oriental province of the Congo, the brothers in the Oriental province are forced to start using some of the methods to keep these white mercenaries and white hired killers from wiping them out. So they shoot hostages. The only reason they held hostages was to keep America’s mercenaries from dropping bombs on them. It’s the only thing they could do. They held the hostages not because they were cannibals. And they didn’t eat people like they’re trying to say in the newspapers. Why would they wait to this late date to eat some white meat, when they been over there all those years? And they went in there at a time when they were probably more tasty than they are in times like this.

At the time the hostages were being held, the American government—rather the Congolese government from Stanleyville—sent an emissary, Tom Kanza, their foreign minister, to Kenya, and he was negotiating with Atwood, the ambassador to Kenya from America, at a meeting which Kenyatta was mediating. And at the time that this was going on, it was then that America dropped the paratroopers in Stanleyville. At no time did the Africans or the Congolese in any way harm any white hostages until those paratroopers were dropped. And I think it’s America that harmed more than one. If they were savages, there wouldn’t have been a white hostage seen. How are you going to come out of the sky and save some hostages that are already in my hands, when I’ve got some machine guns? No. If you save some, it means that I’m human and I treated them in a humane way, because I didn’t wipe them all out when I see your airplane coming.

So this old stuff you hear about the government trying to make you think that their being in the Congo is something humanitarian—it’s the most criminal operation that has ever been carried on by a so-called civilized government since history was recorded!

The United States was the one responsible there. And you will find that she will suffer over there, because the only way she can hold Tshombe in power is to send in more white troops. The Black troops don’t fight for Tshombe. He needs white troops. And there are too many Black troops fighting against those white troops for them to win, for the white ones to win, which means more whites will have to be added to it and added to it and added to it.

And first thing you know they’ll be hung up in the same kind of situation that they got themselves bogged down in South Vietnam right now. Because all the African nations combined will fight there in the Congo. You don’t need a whole lot of heavy war machinery to fight a war nowadays. All you need is some darkness and a little lighting equipment. That equalizes things.

We got about three more minutes. Three more minutes.

Well, I want to thank all of you for taking the time to come to Harlem and especially here. I hope that you have gotten a better understanding of us. I put it to you just as plain as I know how to put it; there’s no interpretation necessary. And I want you to know that we’re not in any way trying to advocate any kind of indiscriminate, unintelligent action. But we will go along with you in any kind of intelligent action that you are involved in to protect the lives and property of our people in this country. Any kind of action that you’re ever involved in that’s designed to protect the lives and the property of our mistreated people in this country, we’re with you 1,000 percent. And if you don’t feel that you are qualified to do it, we have some brothers who will slip in, as I said earlier, and help train you and show you how to equip yourself in such a manner to deal with these people who need to be dealt with.

And before you dismiss, let me see one of those... I would like to read you this—it’s brief—before you leave. It says:

“We applaud the efforts of James Farmer and the other civil rights groups to block the seating of the five illegal representatives from Mississippi when Congress convenes on January 4. We are pleased to see that Mr. Farmer and his civil rights colleagues are so dead earnest in backing the election challenges that have been initiated by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. As chairman of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, I want to state emphatically that we support all uncompromising efforts made by all well-meaning people to unseat the illegal representatives from the state of Mississippi and any other area where our people are denied the right to vote simply because they have been born with dark skin.

“We also insist that since over 97 percent of the Black Americans supported Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Robert Kennedy, and the Democratic Party in the recent elections, which is the most overwhelming support given by any minority group to one party and its candidates, I am challenging Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, and Robert Kennedy, to declare exactly where they stand on the seating of these illegal representatives from Mississippi before January 4.” And they should state their case.

“We applaud the lead that has been taken by New York representative William Fitts Ryan in blocking the seating of these Mississippi congressmen, and the firm stand taken at his side by Adam Clayton Powell. Since Mayor Wagner will be in Harlem later this year to obtain the political support of our people in order to remain in City Hall, I challenge Mayor Wagner and his chief assistant, J. Jones, also to let nearly one and a half million Black Americans in New York City know where they stand on the plan to seat illegal representatives before January 4.

“I, for one, along with some friends, plan to be in Washington on January 4 as an observer. We wish to witness and record the stand taken by the so-called liberals, who are seekers of our people’s political support at poll time, for we plan to be 100 percent active in all political areas from 1965 onward.”

So I thank you and I hope to see you in Mississippi myself in January. Thank you.

Claude Lewis Interviews Malcolm X (December, 1964)

2013-07-04T17:56:00.003-07:00

Claude Lewis: I notice you’re growing a beard. What does that mean? Is it a symbol of anything?

Malcolm X: It has no particular meaning, other than it probably reflects a change that I’ve undergone and am still undergoing.

Lewis: Then will you shave it off one day?

Malcolm X: Certainly. I might leave it on forever, or I might shave it off in the morning. I’m not dogmatic about anything. I don’t intend to get into any more straitjackets.

Lewis: What do you mean, any more straitjackets?

Malcolm X: I don’t intend to let anybody make my mind become so set on anything that I can’t change it according to the circumstances and conditions that I happen to find myself in.

Lewis: I see. You’ve been traveling a good deal recently. Can you tell me a little bit about the experiences relative to your movement? Where you’ve been and...

Malcolm X: Well I was in Cairo, in Mecca, Arabia; in Kuwait, in Beirut, Lebanon; Khartoum, Sudan; Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, Nairobi in Kenya, Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam in what is now Tanzania and Lagos, Nigeria; Accra in Ghana, Monrovia in Liberia and Conakry in Guinea, and Algiers in Algeria. And during my tour of those various cities, or countries, I spent an hour and a half with President Nasser in Egypt; I spent three hours with President Nyerere president of Tanganuika or Tanzania; I spent several days with Jomo Kenyatta and in fact I flew with Jomo Kenyatta and Prime Minister Milton Obote of Uganda from Tanganyika, from Dar es Salaam to Kenya. I saw Azikwe and I had an audience with Azikwe; also with President Nkrumah and I lived three days in Sekou Toure’s house in Conakry. And I cite this to show that everywhere I went I found people at all levels of government and out of government with open minds, open hearts, and open doors.

Lewis: I see. How long was the trip?

Malcolm X: I was away almost five months.

Lewis: And do you think you’ve learned very much? 

Malcolm X: Oh yes, I’ve learned a great deal because in each country that I visited, I spoke with people at all levels. I had an open mind. I spoke with heads of state, I spoke with their ministers, I spoke with cabinet members, I spoke with kings; I was the guest of State again when I re-visited Saudi Arabia, I spoke with members of King Faisal’s family—I don’t know how many foreign ministers I spoke with in the Middle East and in Africa and all of them discussed our problems quite freely.

Lewis: The Negro problem in America?

Malcolm X: Oh yes, yes!

 Lewis: Did they seem to know much about it?

Malcolm X: Oh yes. Not only did they seem to know much about it, but they were very sympathetic with it. In fact, it’s not an accident that in the United Nations during the debate on the Congo problem in the Security Council, that almost every one of the African foreign ministers tied in what was happening in the Congo with what’s happening in Mississippi.

Lewis: Do you think this changes the minds of any of the Mississippians here in this country?

Malcolm X: Well, the Mississippian—it’s not a case of changing the mind of the Mississippian as much as it’s a case of changing the mind of the Americans. The problem is not a Mississippi problem, it’s an American problem.

Lewis: Do you think that it’s getting any better, the situation here?

Malcolm X: No! It’ll never get any better until our people in this country learn how to speak the same language that the racists speak. If a man speaks French, you can’t talk to him in German. In order to communicate, you have to use the same language he’s familiar with. And the language of the racist in the South is the language of violence. It’s the language of brutality, and power and retaliation.

Lewis: You think this is what the Negro should subscribe to?

Malcolm X: The Negro should—if he’s going to communicate—subscribe to whatever language the people use that you're trying to communicate with. And when you’re dealing with racists, they only know one language. And if you’re not capable of adopting that language or speaking that language, you don’t need to try and communicate with those racists.

Lewis: Dr. Martin Luther King, the other night, was honored in Harlem after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. And he said, if I can quote him, “If blood must flow on the streets, brothers, let it be ours.”

Malcolm X: I was sitting in the audience. I heard him say that.

Lewis: What do you think of that statement?

Malcolm X: I think that if there’s going to be a flowing of blood, that it should be reciprocal. The flow of blood should be two ways. Black people shouldn’t be willing to bleed, unless white people are willing to bleed. And black people shouldn’t be willing to be nonviolent, unless white people are going to be nonviolent.

Lewis: Well, do you think the majority of Americans are nonviolent?

Malcolm X: No. If the majority of Americans were nonviolent, America couldn’t continue to exist as a country. Is America nonviolent in the Congo, or is she nonviolent in South Vietnam? You can’t point to a place where America’s nonviolent. The only people that they want to be nonviolent are American Negroes. We’re supposed to be nonviolent. When the world becomes nonviolent, I’ll become nonviolent. When the white man becomes nonviolent, I’ll become nonviolent.

Lewis: I’ve heard talk recently about Negroes getting money together and hiring a mafia to take care of some of the murderers.

Malcolm X: You don’t need to hire a mafia but units should be trained among our people who know how to speak the language of the Klan and the Citizens Council. And at any time any Ku Klux Klan inflicts any kind of brutality against any Negro, we should be in a position to strike back. We should not go out and initiate violence against white indiscriminately, but we should absolutely be in a position to retaliate against the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council. Especially, since the government seems to be incapable or unwilling to curtail the activities of the Klan.

Lewis: Can you tell me a little bit about your new program, if you have a new program?

Malcolm X: We’re not unveiling our new program until January. But I will say this, that the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which I’m the chairman of, intends to work with any group that’s trying to bring about maximum registration of Negroes in this country. We will not encourage Negroes to become registered Democrats or Republicans. We feel that the Negro should be an independent, so that he can throw his weight either way. He should be nonaligned. His political philosophy should be the same as that of the African, absolute neutrality or nonalignment. When the African makes a move, his move is designed to benefit Africa. And when the Negro makes a move, our move should be designed to benefit us; not the Democratic party or the Republican party or some of these machines. So, our program is to make our people become involved in the mainstream of the political structure of this country but not politically naive. We think that we should be educated in the science of politics so that we understand the very workings of it, what it should produce, and who is responsible when that which we are looking for doesn’t materialize.

Lewis: Do you tell people what they want to hear, essentially?

Malcolm X: I tell them what I’ve got on my mind to tell them, whether they like it or not. And I think that most people would have to agree. I don’t think anybody could ever accuse me of telling people just what they want to hear. Because most of them don’t want to hear what I’m saying, especially white people.

Lewis: Do you think the Negro can succeed in America through the vote?

Malcolm X: Well, independence comes only by two ways; by ballots or by bullets. Historically you’ll find that everyone who gets freedom, they get it through ballots or bullets. Now naturally everyone prefers ballots, and even I prefer ballots but I don’t discount bullets. I’m not interested in either ballots or bullets, I’m interested in freedom. I’m not interested in the means, I’m interested in the objective. So I believe that black people should get free by ballot or bullets. If we can’t use ballots to get free, we should use bullets. Yes, yes, I believe that black people should be just as quick to use bullets as ballots. The white man has not given us anything. It’s not something that is his to give. He is not doing us a favor when he permits us a few liberties. So I don’t think we should approach it like that; I don’t think we should approach our battle like we’re battling a friend. We’re battling an enemy. Anybody who stands in the way of the black man being free is an enemy of the black man, and should be dealt with as an enemy.

Lewis: Would you say there are some blacks in that group?

Malcolm X: Oh, yes. A lot of black people in that group. But they are not independent, they’re puppets. You don’t worry about the puppet, you worry about the puppeteer.

Lewis: You’ve been threatened; do you take those threats lightly?

Malcolm X: I don’t take anything lightly. I don’t take life lightly. But I never worry about dying. I don’t see how a Negro can start worrying about dying at this late date. But I think that Negro organizations that talk about killing other Negroes should first go and talk to somebody about practicing some of their killing skill on the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council.

Lewis: What do you think of Dr. King?

Malcolm X: He’s a man. He’s a human being that is trying to keep Negroes from exploding, so white folk won’t have too much to worry about.

Lewis: Would you say that he’s getting in the way of Negro progress?

Malcolm X: Of Negro what? 

Lewis: Progress? 

Malcolm X: Well the Negro will never progress nonviolently.

 Lewis: What were your thoughts when King was receiving the award last week?

Malcolm X: Well, to me it represented the fact that the struggle of the Negro in this country was being endorsed at the international level and that it was looked upon as a problem that affects the peace of the world. And it was looked upon as a human problem or a problem for humanity, rather than just a Mississippi problem or an American problem.  To me, King getting that Nobel Peace Prize—it wasn’t King getting it—it represented the awareness on the part of the world that the race problem in America could upset the peace of the world. And this is true. If King can get—see I don’t think that King got the prize because he had solved our people’s problem, cause we still got the problem. He got the Peace Prize, and we got the problem. And so I don’t think he should have gotten the medal for that. On the other hand, if Negroes can get it nonviolently, good.

Lewis: Are you in favor of that?

Malcolm X: I’m not in favor of anything that doesn’t get the solution. But if Negroes can get freedom nonviolently, good. But that’s a dream. Even King calls it a dream. But I don’t go for no dream. And the only way that you can think Negroes can get it nonviolently, is dream. But when you get out here and start facing the reality of it, Negroes are the victims of violence every day. So I’d rather get violent, right along with the white man.

Lewis: Have you ever received an award of any kind for your work?

Malcolm X: No...Yes, I’ve received an award. Whenever I walk the street and I see people ready to get with it. That’s my reward. Whenever people come out, they know in advance what I’m going to talk about. And if they show any sign of interest in it or agreement with it, that’s my reward. And when they show that they’re fed up with this slow pace, you know, that’s my reward.

Lewis: When King received his medal, did you sort of wish that it was yours?

Malcolm X: I don’t want the white man giving me medals, If I’m following a general, and he’s leading me into battle, and the enemy begins to give him awards, I get suspicious of him. Especially if he gets the peace award before the war is over.

Lewis: You don’t propose that Negroes leave the U.S.?

Malcolm X: I propose that we have the right to do whatever is necessary to bring about an answer to our problem. And whatever is necessary, if it’s necessary to leave to get a solution then we should leave. If we can get a solution staying here, then we should stay. The main thing we want is a solution.

Lewis: Well, do you think things have changed very much since you grew up?

Malcolm X: They’ve changed in this sense. If you’re a butler for a poor white man, you’re a butler and you live but so well and you eat but so well. But if your master becomes rich, you begin to eat better and you begin to live better, but you’re still a butler. And the only change that has been made in this society—we occupied a menial position twenty years ago. Our position hasn’t changed. Our condition has changed somewhat, but our position hasn’t changed. And the change that has been brought about, has been only to the extent that this country has changed. The white man got richer, we’re living a little better. He got more power, we got a little more power, but we’re still at the same level in his system. You understand what I’m saying?

Lewis: Oh yes. Oh yes.

Malcolm X: Our position has never changed. If you sit at the back of the plane and it’s going a hundred miles an hour, and you’re on the back of the plane, well it can start going a thousand miles an hour; you’re going faster, but you’re still at the back of the plane. And that’s the same way with the Negro in this society, we started out at the rear and we’re still in the rear. Society is going faster, but we’re still in the rear. And we think we’ve made progress because they’ve made progress.

Lewis: Why do you stay in America? Wouldn’t it be easier for you to...

Malcolm X: I was offered some good positions in several countries that I went to. Good positions, that would solve my problems personally. But I feel pretty much responsible for much of the action and energy that has been stirred up among our people for rights and for freedom. And I think I’d be wrong to stir it up and then run away from it myself.

Lewis: Do you expect further riots next year?

Malcolm X: Yes. I expect that the miracle of 1964 was the degree of restraint that Negroes displayed in Harlem. The miracle of 1964 was the ability of the Negroes to restrain themselves and contain themselves. Because there is no place where Negroes are more equipped and capable of retaliation than right here in Harlem.

Lewis: Can you give me a capsule opinion of some of the following people? Adam Clayton Powell.

Malcolm X: Powell is actually the most independent black politician in America. He’s in a better position to do more for black people than any other politician...

Lewis: Is he doing it?

Malcolm X: ...and the reason that he’s in that position is because he’s in an area where people support him. They support him, whereas many other Negro politicians don’t get that type of support. People in Harlem are just independent-minded. They just vote for a black man, whether the machine likes it or not. So Powell is in a tremendous position. And with his position also goes responsibility. I think that he should see his responsibilities with the same clarity that he sees his powerful position.

Lewis: What about Roy Wilkins?

Malcolm X: Well, I heard Roy at the rally the other night that he was three-fourths or one-fourth Scandinavian. And he seemed to be lost in that Scandinavian dream somewhat, that night.

Lewis: Martin Luther King, well—we’ve talked about him.

Malcolm X: Well, every time I hear Martin he’s got a dream, And I think the Negro leaders have to come out of the clouds, and wake up, and stop dreaming and start facing reality.

Lewis: Do you ever think of Whitney Young?

Malcolm X: Whitney seems to be more down to earth, but he doesn’t spend enough time around Negroes. He seems to be down to earth; he’s a young man for one thing. But not enough Negroes know him. When I say he needs to be around Negroes, not enough Negroes know Whitney Young. Whitney Young could walk around Harlem all day long and probably no more than five people would know who he was. And he’s supposed to be one of our leaders. So he should make himself more known to those who are following him.

Lewis: Where are you headed from here? Where do you think your future lies?

Malcolm X: I think one of the most sincere of those Big Six is James Farmer. You missed asking me about him. I think James Farmer seems to...he seems sincere. And I get the impression when I watch Farmer that he could be another Mandela. Mandela, you know, was a man who advocated nonviolence in South Africa, until he saw that it wasn’t getting anywhere and then Mandela stepped up and had to resort to tactical violence. Which showed that Mandela was for the freedom of his people. He was more interested in the end than he was the means. Whereas many of the Negro leaders are more straight-jacketed by the means rather than by the end.

Lewis: Where are you headed? What do you suppose your future is from here?

Malcolm X: I have no idea.

 Lewis: You have no idea?

 Malcolm X: I have no idea. I’m for freedom. I can capsulize how I feel. I’m for the freedom of the twenty-two million Afro-Americans by any means necessary. By any means necessary. I’m for freedom. I’m for a society in which our people are recognized and respected as human beings and I believe that we have the right to resort to any means necessary to bring that about. So when you ask me where I’m headed, how can I say? I’m headed in any direction that will bring us some immediate results. Nothing wrong with that!

Lewis: I think it’s going to take a tremendous public relations job to change your image. And you may not be interested in changing your image, but everybody else is. I agree with a lot that you say, but I don’t see how people can sign up with you.

Malcolm X: They don’t need to sign up. The most effective part of the trees are the roots. And they’re signed up with the tree but you don’t ever see them. They’re always beneath the ground. And the reason that you never see me worry about my image is because that image puts me in a better position than anybody else. Because I’m able to walk through the street or anywhere else and really find out where people are at. In a silent sort of way, I know where they are, in a silent sort of way. I think that the sympathies are deeply rooted, many of them. Plus also it puts me in a position wherever I go, people know where I stand in advance. And doors that would normally be closed for American Negroes, I don’t find them closed for me anywhere. It doesn’t make any difference. Anywhere.

Lewis: So you’re saying because of your outspokenness, your honesty...

Malcolm X: People know where I stand. They know where I stand. And you see I’m not standing in an unjust position. This is the thing. Whatever I say I’m justified. If I say the Negroes should get out of here right tomorrow and go to war, I’m justified. Really! It may sound extreme, but you can’t say it’s not justified. If I say right now that we should go down and shoot fifteen Ku Klux Klansmen in the morning, you may say well that’s insane, but you can’t say that I’m not justified. This is what I mean. I think that the stand that I’m taking is justified. Many others might not take it.

Lewis: What I’m trying to do is find out if there is a new Malcolm X?

Malcolm X: Well, there is a new one in the sense that, perhaps in approach. My travels have broadened my scope, but it hasn’t changed me from speaking my mind. I can get along with white people who can get along with me. But you don’t see me trying to get along with any white man who doesn’t want to get along with me. I don’t believe in that. Now you got to get another religion.

Lewis: When you get old and retire...

Malcolm X: I’ll never get old.

Lewis: What does that mean? 

Malcolm X: Well, I’ll tell you what it means. You’ll find very few people who feel like I feel that live long enough to get old. I’ll tell you what I mean and why I say that. When I say by any means necessary, I mean it with all my heart, and my mind and my soul. But a black man should give his life to be free, but he should also be willing to take the life of those who want to take his. It’s reciprocal. And when you really think like that, you don’t live long. And if freedom doesn’t come to your lifetime, it’ll come to your children. Another thing about being an old man, that never has come across my mind. I can’t even see myself old.

Lewis: Well, how would you like to be remembered by your black brothers and sisters around the world—twenty years from now?

Malcolm X: Sincere. In whatever I did or do, even if I make mistakes, they were made in sincerity. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong in sincerity. I think that the best a person can be—he can be wrong, but if he’s sincere you can put up with him. But you can’t put up with a person who’s right, if he’s insincere. I’d rather deal with a person’s sincerity, and respect a person for their sincerity than anything else. Especially when you’re living in a world that’s so hypocritical. This is an era of hypocrisy. The times that we live in can rightfully be labeled, the Era of Hypocrisy. When the white folks pretend that they want Negroes to be free, and Negroes pretend to white folks that they really believe that white folks want them to be free. All Era of Hypocrisy, brother. You fool me and I fool you. This is the game that the white man and the Negro play with each other. You pretend that you’re my brother and I pretend that I really believe you’re my brother.

Lewis: Do you think there are going to be more killings and more bombings in Mississippi and Alabama?

Malcolm X: In the North as well as the South. There might be even more in the North because I’ll tell you one of the dangers of Martin Luther King. King himself is probably a good man, means well and all that. But the danger is that white people use King. They use King to satisfy their own fears. They blow him up. They give him power beyond his actual influence. Because they want to believe within themselves that Negroes are nonviolent and patient, and long suffering and forgiving. White people want to believe that so bad, ‘cause they’re so guilty. But the danger is, when they blow up King and fool themselves into thinking that Negroes are really nonviolent, and patient, and long suffering, they’ve got a powder keg in their house. And instead of them trying to do something to defuse the powder keg, they’re putting a blanket over it, trying to make believe that this is no powder keg; that this is a couch that we can lay on and enjoy. So that’s it. Whatever I do, whatever I did, whatever I’ve said, was all done in sincerity. That’s the way I want to be remembered because that’s the way it is.

Bernice Bass Interviews Malcolm X (December 27, 1964)

2013-07-04T17:45:00.001-07:00

Bernice Bass: And now dear hearts, I think it important that we turn to our guest of honor at this time, Minister Malcolm X, the son of a Baptist minister. Good morning.

Malcolm X: How are you, Miss Bass?

Bass: Just fine, thank you. I suppose that's the question New York could ask you after your travels all over the African continent, Europe. We'd love to know exactly what you discovered and what you observed. Whether or not your viewpoints have changed any on the Afro-American questions.

Malcolm X: Well, I've done a lot of traveling and, I think over all, travel does broaden one's soul. If anything at all, that's probably the most important of what's happened to me during the past five or six months. I was fortunate to be able to spend, I think it was, two months in the Middle East and another two months in the African countries. And I think I visited Egypt, Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and then Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, what was then Zanzibar and Tanganyika and is now Tanzania, also Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Guinea, and Algiers, or rather Algeria. Then in Europe: Geneva, Paris, and London.

Bass: We who have not traveled have to rely solely on our communications media for the news that we get. What is disturbing and confusing, really, coming out of the African continent, is there unity among the African leaders there? Is there a cohesive effort or is it a divisive thing that has been reported so faithfully in the press, the American press.

Malcolm X: The Western press tries to make it appear that there is a division among Africans. In any bloc or group that has a common objective, you will find disagreements. But overall there's unity. I think—during World War II, America had her allies, and their common objective was to gain victory over a common enemy, but even within that body of allies, there were differences.

Bass: Just as there are today in NATO.

Malcolm X: Certainly, today. But usually Western powers think that they have a priority on the right to differ among themselves. Because when blocs that are other than Western show signs of being able to differ—or differences pop up, the Western press uses this to try and make it appear that they are savage, backward, not able to govern—things of that sort.

Bass: That's something I wanted to ask you about. I've noticed in the last couple of weeks all of the references to the Congo crisis, when they talked about the debate in the United Nations they have talked about going back to savagery, tribal practices, this kind of thing. And yet they have in Italy the fact that they have eighteen ballots cast just this week alone trying to elect a premier. They have also—before de Gaulle rose to power, they had a new premier of France every month. And no one considered that backward, and yet these were examples of civilization, culture, and so forth. How do the African delegates in this country and the African leaders in their own countries feel about this kind of characterization?

Malcolm X: Well the—I think this is one of the mistakes the West is making in its efforts to try and win the Africans on their side. The Africans, probably more so than ever before, are beginning to see the deceit and the double standard of measurement that's used when their own case is involved. And how it differs from that when the African case is involved. And this has gone a long ways toward making Africans question the motive of Western powers, including the United States.

It's not an accident that in the United Nations during this present session, for the first time during the nineteen or twenty years that the UN has been in existence, we find African foreign ministers who are openly accusing the United States of being an imperialist power and of practicing racism. In the past, these labels were always confined to the European colonial powers. But never was the United States itself singled out and labeled, identified as an imperialist power. Neither was the case of Black people in this country ever linked with what was happening to people on the African continent. And if there's any drastic departure from past procedures that have been reflected already in the present UN session, it's the tendency on the part of African representatives one after another all to link what's happening in the Congo with what's happening in Mississippi.

And for the first time, too, since the UN has been in existence, we have representatives of foreign governments referring to the releasing of the twenty-one assassins of the civil rights workers. This was mentioned in the United Nations Security Council debate this week. And so all of this is a sign, or reflects the tendency on the part of Africans to identify completely with what is happening to the Black man in this country. And they also realize that there's an increasing tendency on the part of our people in this country to identify with what's going on or happening to our people on the African continent. And never are our people given the real picture.

One thing I will say for James Farmer, with whom I was in a discussion earlier this week. He is going to Africa. One radio report—I was riding home in my car one night, and I heard a radio newscaster say that James Farmer was going to Africa to counteract the false conceptions that I had given during my trip. Well, I called Farmer the next day. First I was in—I was irked, I was irritated, I was very angry. But then I began to remember what the press had done to me and done to others in trying to divide and conquer, and I called Mr. Farmer. And he said he knew absolutely nothing about what this particular newscaster had reported. And then I had a personal conversation with him a little later on, which I found to be very intelligent and very objective on his part. And he explained then that he was going to take a fact-finding trip to Africa, and visit many of these places. And he had done so under the auspices of the Big Six to find out—they want to know for themselves the African story. And whether or not the news of Africa is being properly reported in this country. Which I think is a very progressive move on the part of those people who have been set up to lead Black people in this country.

Bass: Was this an outgrowth of—I think they've had two meetings—all of the Big Six in Washington, members of the State Department, and so forth, and African representatives—in the attempt to bridge the gap?

Malcolm X: Because those who are invited are able to see that the problem of the Black people in this country is not an isolated problem. It's not a Negro problem or an American problem. It's part of the world problem. It's a human problem.

Bass: May I ask you this—can I interrupt you a moment to ask you this: I'm concerned over the habit that the communications media has picked up of identifying Black people in Africa as Negroes and then Black people here as Negroes....

Malcolm X: Well, that's because at one time Africa, the word African, was used in this country in a derogatory way. But now, since Africa has gotten—it's getting its independence and there are so many independent African states. The image of the African has changed from negative to positive. And the white man in this country does not like to give us anything positive that we can identify with. And since he can't stop the independence movement of the people on that continent, he's trying to change the label. Trying to change that which they call themselves to put them in the same category with us. But I don't think they'll be very successful at that.

Bass: Well, how do the African delegates in this country and the people, the leaders, how do they feel about it?

Malcolm X: They don't accept the word Negro at all. No one accepts the word Negro but our people in this country, and it's only because we've been mistaught, misguided, misled, and misinformed.

Bass: We've reached a very good point at which to pause in order to identify both the program and the station. By this time you know this is "Community Corner" here in New York City and your hostess for this period as she has been for the last three-and-a-half years is Bernice Bass and our guest here is the son of a Baptist minister, the Honorable Minister Malcolm X....

Malcolm X: I never accept the term "honorable."

Bass: That's a beautiful title.

Malcolm X: Well, I'll tell you. Most people I've seen really end up misusing it, and I'd rather just be your Brother Malcolm.

Bass: I've got a big family, but I can always use additional. I hope my mother will not be disturbed about it—but I find most people are honorable, whether they wear the title or not. We have a few brothers who aren't. Getting back to what you saw when you were in Africa, how are the countries developing and how—when you hear all this business about the tremendous amount of aid that the United States is giving all of these countries. Are they developing? What plans do they have?

Malcolm X: Yes, one of the countries developing the most swiftly is Egypt. Egypt's development is tremendous and also Ghana. Ghana, probably, and Egypt are the forefront. Ghana is a remarkable country, a remarkably progressive country. And I think that it might even interest you, and by the way, it might interest you to know that one of the most progressive moves Ghana has made is to start establishing, installing, a television network. And I was taken through this television studio and plant by Mrs. Du Bois, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois's wife, who is the director of television in Ghana. She—to my knowledge, she's the only Black director of television in Africa. I may be wrong, but the only one I know of is she. And she's a woman, and she's an Afro-American, and I think that should make Afro-American women mighty proud.

She's one of the most intelligent women I've ever met, and not only is she the director of television, but she took me on a tour of Tema, which is a new industrial city. It's a new city that has been set up by President Nkrumah which has the most advanced type of machinery and everything else in it. And one of the things that exists in this city is the publishing plant—the most modern publishing plant on the African continent. The machines are tremendous, and it can reproduce any type of magazine, book, or newspaper in the best form and of the best quality. And there are many other aspects of the Ghanaian life that I found to be quite progressive.

I was saying—if I may continue—I was in a hotel in Cairo, the Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo, and there was a group of students that had traveled the African continent from a certain college here in this country. And Africa was their last stop before embarking for the States. I was in conversation with some of them in the lobby of the Shepheard's and they were conveying some of their impressions. And they were greatly enthused over Senghor in Senegal, collectively. And they were, at the same time, disillusioned with Nkrumah in Ghana, collectively. They had a tendency to criticize and condemn Nkrumah, but at the same time pat Senghor of Senegal on the back. Later on in the conversation, while they were pointing out the negative conditions that existed in Senegal—how Dakar had poverty, beggars, and things of that sort—and at the same time they were speaking of the actions of beggars and the progressiveness of the Ghanaian people and how they all looked industrious and seemed to be making a contribution to the whole overall forward movement—progressive movement forward.

So I answered that. These were students. How could they say that Senghor was such a great president and at the same time speak of the negative conditions that his people were in and also turn around and say that they have criticisms for Nkrumah? They have to admit that the negative conditions didn't exist in Nkrumah's country. So, what I gather from this, that their yardstick of measurement for leadership was not what the leader was doing for his people and his country, but the attitude that that particular leader had toward this country and the attitude that this country had toward that leader.

They weren't using a real yardstick to measure that person's abilities. So I thought I would throw this in because to me it was quite indicative of the entire attitude of the power structure here toward the African countries and African leaders. If African leaders are manipulated—if they can be manipulated by the power structure here, no matter how negative the conditions remain in that particular leader's country, this power structure turns its propaganda machine for the benefit, for the benefit of that African leader. But by the same token, if it's an African leader that they can't manipulate and use as a puppet, then they turn their propaganda machine upon that particular leader and make him appear as a dictator or some type of monstrosity and misinform and mislead the American public this way.

Bass: May I ask you—one of the points that you have not yet made in regard to that problem is the fact that the Ghanaian women there seem to be emerging on the scene at all levels.

Malcolm X: One thing I noticed in both the Middle East and Africa, in every country that was progressive, the women were progressive. In every country that was underdeveloped and backward, it was to the same degree that the women were undeveloped, or underdeveloped, and backward.

Bass: What you're saying is the women are actually playing a part there, in Africa ?

Malcolm X: Well, no, I'm saying this: that it's noticeable that in these type of societies where they put the woman in a closet and discourage her from getting a sufficient education and don't give her the incentive by allowing her maximum participation in whatever area of the society where she's qualified, they kill her incentive. And killing her incentive, she kills the incentive in her children. And the man himself has no competition so he doesn't develop to his fullest potential. So in the African countries where they opt for mass education, whether it be female or male, you find that they have a more valid society, a more progressive society. And Ghana is one of the best examples of this. Egypt was also another example of this.

Bass: Well, certainly. I remember when the White Paper came out issued by Kwame Nkrumah on this business of polygamy. There was a great deal of talk, discussion back and forth, and I remember I interviewed a young lady from the Ghanaian embassy here and—is polygamy—was it there or did you get a chance to notice it?

Malcolm X: Well, how would you know? I didn't have any yardstick that I could use to determine...

Bass: I thought in conversation, not actual...

Malcolm X: Well, their conversation differs from the conversation over here. They aren't so inclined to talk about their...

Bass: Personal lives...

Malcolm X: ...as is the case in this society.

Bass: Well, isn't that funny. Now, I'm thinking of [name unintelligible], I think, from here at the United Nations from Nigeria. He stirred a great deal of controversy when he came out in favor of polygamy when he was speaking before a women's group pressing for women's rights at the United Nations.

Malcolm X: Well, he stirred up even more controversy this time by pressing for United States' right to drop bombs on defenseless African villages.

Bass: Well, I'm telling you—you've been talking about Ghana. How does Ghana compare to Nigeria in terms of development, in terms of their handling of national affairs and that sort of thing?

Malcolm X: Well, the Nigerian people are great. You never can find any people anywhere in Africa more hospitable and brotherly and who will welcome you more warmly than the people in Nigeria. But by the same token the United States influence in Nigeria has turned it almost into a colony. And there are conditions that exist in Nigeria that are very explosive. They're getting ready to have elections this week, which could turn Nigeria into another Congo.

Nigeria is one of the richest countries on the African continent—one of the most beautiful of the African countries. But by the same token you'll find beggars there, you find poverty there. You don't find new cities. You find beggars and poverty in Lagos, which you don't see in Ghana.

I don't in any way condemn or criticize the Nigerian people. I think Nigeria's problems stem primarily from the over-exertion on the part of outside interests. The United States presence in Nigeria is far beyond what it should be, and its influence is far beyond what it should be.

I might say, Miss Bass, in most of the African countries that are the most pro-American or the most inseparably interwoven into the American way of thought, you find that the conditions, economic conditions, of those countries are usually the worst.

Bass: Like Liberia.

Malcolm X: Well name whichever you like. But you'd be surprised. The countries that are identified with America the most are the ones that are the most backward and the ones that have the most problems.

Bass: Now the ones that are the most progressive, they are most closely identified with what power?

Malcolm X: Well, they're more closely identified with themselves. I don't think that one can—there's a tendency here in America again, to try and project any African nation that isn't on America's apron strings as linked with some other power. But the Africans themselves want to be Africans. They don't want to be identified with any of the what's known as European philosophies or Occidental or Western philosophies. They want what's good for Africa. They want to take out of any other philosophy that which they can adopt to their own needs and to their own development. But to be identified with either the Communist bloc or the capitalist bloc, I don't think you'll find any African country or African leader who will buy that—he's for Africa.

And during the five weeks that I was there, I took some excellent movies, by the way, which I'm going to show at the Audubon Ballroom this time Friday night. I took movies in Egypt that were—I think no one else has them. I'll just say that they're unique—exclusives, yes. I was at the 23rd of July independence celebration in Egypt when Haile Selassie, President Nkrumah, all of the heads of state were there. And they were watching President Nasser's display of weaponry that is unequaled on the African continent. You've got to see these films to see the massive military might that President Gamal Abdel Nasser has developed there in Egypt. Then you can see why he's in a position to openly state that he will support the Congo freedom fighters, and you can also see why it caused so much concern here in the West.

Bass: But now I'd ask you—at the same time he announced his intention to do that, he's also stepping up his request for aid from the United States to the tune of 35 to 40 billion dollars in surplus food.

Malcolm X: President Nasser took all of the aid that was forthcoming from Russia to build the Aswan Dam and turned around and put the Communists in jail in his country. Which shows he doesn't take aid for those countries to tell him what he can do. If they're interested in objectively contributing to the development of his country and his people, then he takes the aid. He'll take American aid with no strings attached. But if there are strings attached, he does exactly what he says in the paper, he tells them to go jump in the lake.

Bass: Well, that's interesting. Except that—you begin to wonder when it's done on an international level, not just with Nasser but all the others, too. Practical reality tells you, you can't get something for nothing. And when they come after you for money or aid or what have you, what are they giving in return? I can't understand...

Malcolm X: You've got to consider that these Western powers are in the economic position of strength that exists in their countries today only because of their past exploitation of these same areas. They're not giving aid, they're only returning some of what was taken.

Bass: But in business, you don't do this. You know what I mean. What you're saying anyhow talking about a moral right and I agree...

Malcolm X: I don't talk moral...

Bass: But I'm talking about a practical business standpoint. I have amassed so many billions of dollars. You are now struggling. You are asking for a loan. I can or cannot give...

Malcolm X: One of the reasons I'm struggling is because you took from me the...

Bass: Ah ha.

Malcolm X: ...the billions of dollars that you have.

Bass: You know, somebody once said—not talking about the international scene—but they once said that if all the wealth in the world were divided equally, in a matter of years or in a specified amount of time, most of the people who had the wealth previously would have it again.

Malcolm X: That's because most of them who have it are more shrewd at thievery and those other things that bring it about.

Bass: Now, when all these other countries begin to get as prosperous as the Western powers, will they then be accused of having gotten that way through thievery or will theirs be shrewdness and cunning?

Malcolm X: Well, you see these people—look at in terms of business. In business it's called profit sharing. And...

Bass: I wonder...

Malcolm X: If you check today's New York Times, they're saying the Egyptian situation with Gamal AbJel Nasser—in the Sunday Times it was—Arnold Toynbee, he is supposed to be one of the brains in this era, he says, and I quote: "Dr. Toynbee regards the Middle East as an area of growing importance. Nasser has been tactless in his dealings with other Arab leaders, but he is the first ruler to do anything for the Egyptian peasants. The pyramids were built for the rulers of Egypt, but the Aswan High Dam for the good of the people. Nasser will continue to be a big force in the Arab world; I myself rather like and admire him. I've noticed quite a prejudice against Nasser in this country, Americans seem to assume that he is a dictator, a bad man. I don't agree with that." This is Toynbee.

Bass: Yes, I know. He used to say about two or three years ago, in talking about Martin Luther King—said that in his opinion, his espousal of nonviolence was perhaps one of the savings of Christianity in the Western world.

Malcolm X: It probably would be the savings of Christianity in the Western world, even if it wasn't the savings of the Negroes...

Bass: No, he didn't say Negroes. He said Christianity. I'd like to know about the impact of the various American missionaries, all the religious feeling, on the African continent. I find that in other reports that have come in, that Islam, the religion of Islam, seems to be making great strides and Christianity is not doing very well there, and I wonder, why?

Malcolm X: This is true. The religion of Islam has spread rapidly in Africa and is still spreading quite rapidly in Africa. It's a very powerful force. And the religion of Christianity has run into what you might call a stone wall. There's a tendency on the part of our people in that area to link Christianity with the European colonial powers that have dominated and exploited these past years. And Islam is a religion that's won more acceptance. It s easier to fit, it fits right in to the nature of one's everyday life. In fact it's a natural religion. It's a religion that's easier to practice.

Bass: Well! let me see—and I'm trying to remember now—who was it who said one of the missionaries was talking about his impressions of Africa— I've forgotten what country it was involved at the time—that when he got there he was surprised to find other missionaries who were teaching the natives Christianity, insisting on the natives coming through the back door while their white compatriots came through the front door. And this new white missionary to Africa found this a bit strange, since they were all reading the same Bible.

Malcolm X: Well, this is why Islam is spreading. Islam has no color bar in it at all. Islam has no—there's nothing in Islam that teaches one to judge a man by the color of his skin. No matter what color you are in Islam—you're a Muslim, you're a brother

Bass: That's interesting, hearing you say that, in view of some of your former statements...

Malcolm X: Well, notice all of my former statements were prefaced by "the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches thus and so." They weren't my statements, they were his statements, and I was repeating them.

Bass: Parroting them. The same thing you accuse Judge Thurgood Marshall of doing once upon a time.

Malcolm X: And now the parrot has jumped out of the cage.

Bass: Well, that's interesting, we're going to see what else he does. Good morning....

Caller: I'm calling from Manhattan. I would like to ask: Why do the Arabs discriminate against the Black man? And especially I read about the Sudan where they attacked and killed Negroes just because they were black.

Bass: Perhaps Minister Malcolm X can answer that.

Malcolm X: My own—when I was in East Africa, I noticed that there was a strong feeling among the Africans along the East African coast against the Asians. When I went to West Africa, I noticed that there was a strong feeling among the Africans against the Arabs. And in parts of Africa where there were neither Asians or Arabs, I noticed a strong feeling among Africans—if they were Muslim, it was against Africans who were Christian, or if they were Christian, it was against Africans who were Muslim.

And when you study the divisive forces at work on the African continent today, you'll find that these divisive forces are not indigenous to the African or the African continent, but they are coming from outside. And the powers that have ruled Africa in the past are aware that the real independence of Africa began to take its impetus from the Bandung Conference, which was a forging together of the Asian-Arab-African bloc. And this bloc, with no nuclear weapons or weapons of modern warfare, were able to gain a great deal toward independence against the European powers, because of their numerical strength, their unity.

So these powers realize that they've been pushed against the wall during recent years and the only weapon that they have against this force that has been pushing them against the wall is divide and conquer—the tactic that they've always used. So that, if I may finish, so that in every area where you find people who have been colonized and oppressed today striving toward freedom, you find that whereas in the past they got along, today they're fighting each other. Just like in British Guyana—it's the Asians against the Black man. And this is not indigenous trouble that stems from the people themselves. It's instigated by outside forces. And then it's blown up to give the impression that the fight that's going on among them or between them is something other than what it actually is.

Bass: May I ask you this—now you say this is not indigenous to the African continent and then of course, you just mentioned British Guyana. But if you look at history, don't you find that all continents or all groups of people in a wide geographical area usually come up with differences within themselves—Canada for instance, the United States. It's not just Africa alone.

Malcolm X: Certainly. But when these differences come up and they are normal, or natural...

Bass: Hold on just a minute.

Malcolm X: ...you'll find that they usually take a different pattern than that which is developing on the African continent or in British Guyana. Because if the Asians and the Blacks in British Guyana could live so much in harmony together when the British were there, you tell me why now that the British are being pushed out, or they're being threatened with being pushed out, that all of a sudden the power that could push them out—instead of pushing them out begins to fight among themselves. This is not an accident. And the same pattern is developing in different parts of the world. It's divide and conquer.

Bass: Does that answer your question, sir?

Caller: Ma'am, for clearness' sake you should also talk about the Arabs. I think for clearness' sake you should also mention the Arab role in—as slave traders and the hatred that would stem from that.

Bass: Did you hear that, Minister Malcolm X? Now we're going to hang up, but he's going to answer that.

Malcolm X: I don't condone slavery, no matter who it's carried on by. And I think that—I don't condone slavery no matter who carries it on. And I think that every power that has participated in slavery of any form on this earth, in history, has paid for it, except the United States. All of your European powers that colonized, your—the part that the Arabs played in the enslavement of Africans, all of them who played a part have lost their empire, lost their power, lost their position, except the United States. The United States was the recipient of the slaves, and she's the only one up till now who has yet to pay.

Bass: Do you want—what's your prognosis for the future as regards the United States, as we get ready to leave our breathless listening audience?

Malcolm X: The Bible, in the Book of Revelations, says he that leads into captivity shall go into captivity. This is in the thirteenth chapter, the one that the preacher thought didn't exist. It says he who leads into captivity shall go into captivity. He who kills by the sword shall be killed by the sword. This is justice. So I don't think that any power can enslave a people and not look forward to having that justice come back upon itself.

Bass: Well, Minister Malcolm X, thank you for visiting. We need to have you back time and time and time again so that we can eventually touch on some of the points of interest that intrigue our listening audience. Now we don't want our listeners to forget that you are going to be showing movies taken on your trip at the Audubon Ballroom at what time?

Malcolm X: At eight o'clock Sunday night, the Audubon Ballroom.

Bass: At eight o'clock Sunday night, here in New York City. Minister Malcolm X himself.

Malcolm X Introduces Fannie Lou Hamer (December 20, 1964)

2013-07-04T17:37:00.003-07:00

Reverend Coles, Mrs. Hamer, honored guests, brothers and sisters, friends and enemies; also ABC and CBS and FBI and CIA.

I couldn’t help but be very impressed at the outstart when the Freedom Singers were singing the song “Oginga Odinga” because Oginga Odinga is one of the foremost freedom fighters on the African continent. At the time he visited in Atlanta, Georgia, I think he was then the minister of home affairs in Kenya. But since Kenya became a republic last week, and Jomo Kenyatta ceased being the prime minister and became the president, the same person you are singing about, Oginga Odinga, is now Kenyatta’s vice president. He’s the number-two man in the Kenya government.

The fact that you would be singing about him, to me is quite significant. Two or three years ago, this wouldn’t have been done. Two or three years ago, most of our people would choose to sing about someone who was, you know, passive and meek and humble and forgiving. Oginga Odinga is not passive. He’s not meek. He’s not humble. He’s not nonviolent. But he’s free.

Oginga Odinga is vice president under Jomo Kenyatta, and Jomo Kenyatta was considered to be the organizer of the Mau Mau; I think you mentioned the Mau Mau in that song. And if you analyze closely those words, I think you’ll have the key to how to straighten the situation out in Mississippi. When the nations of Africa are truly independent—and they will be truly independent because they’re going about it in the right way—the historians will give Prime Minister, or rather, President Kenyatta and the Mau Mau their rightful role in African history. They’ll go down as the greatest African patriots and freedom fighters that that continent ever knew, and they will be given credit for bringing about the independence of many of the existing independent states on that continent right now. There was a time when their image was negative, but today they’re looked upon with respect and their chief is the president and their next chief is the vice president.

I have to take time to mention that because, in my opinion, not only in Mississippi and Alabama, but right here in New York City, you and I can best learn how to get real freedom by studying how Kenyatta brought it to his people in Kenya, and how Odinga helped him, and the excellent job that was done by the Mau Mau freedom fighters. In fact, that’s what we need in Mississippi. In Mississippi we need a Mau Mau. In Alabama we need a Mau Mau. In Georgia we need a Mau Mau. Right here in Harlem, in New York City, we need a Mau Mau.

I say it with no anger; I say it with very careful forethought. The language that you and I have been speaking to this man in the past hasn’t reached him. And you can never really get your point across to a person until you learn how to communicate with him. If he speaks French, you can’t speak German. You have to know what language he speaks and then speak to him in that language.

When I listen to Mrs. Hamer, a black woman—could be my mother, my sister, my daughter—describe what they had done to her in Mississippi, I ask myself how in the world can we ever expect to be respected as men when we will allow something like that to be done to our women, and we do nothing about it? How can you and I be looked upon as men with black women being beaten and nothing being done about it, black children and black babies being beaten and nothing being done about it? No, we don’t deserve to be recognized and respected as men as long as our women can be brutalized in the manner that this woman described, and nothing being done about it, but we sit around singing “We Shall Overcome.”  We need a Mau Mau. If they don’t want to deal with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, then we’ll give them something else to deal with. If they don’t want to deal with the Student Nonviolent Committee, then we have to give them an alternative. Never stick someone out there without an alternative or we waste our time. Give them this or give them that. Give them the choice between this or that.

When I was in Africa, I noticed some of the Africans got their freedom faster than others. Some areas of the African continent became independent faster than other areas. I noticed that in the areas where independence had been gotten, someone got angry. And in the areas where independence had not been achieved yet, no one was angry. They were sad—they’d sit around and talk about their plight, but they weren’t mad. And usually, when people are sad, they don’t do anything. They just cry over their condition.

But when they get angry, they bring about a change. When they get angry, they aren’t interested in logic, they aren’t interested in odds, they aren’t interested in consequences. When they get angry, they realize the condition that they’re in—that their suffering is unjust, immoral, illegal, and that anything they do to correct it or eliminate it, they’re justified. When you and I develop that type of anger and speak in that voice, then we’ll get some kind of respect and recognition, and some changes from these people who have been promising us falsely already for far too long.

So you have to speak their language. The language that they were speaking to Mrs. Hamer was the language of brutality. Beasts, they were, beating her—the two Negroes, they weren’t at fault. They were just puppets. You don’t blame the puppet, you blame the puppeteer. They were just carrying out someone else’s orders. They were under someone else’s jurisdiction. They weren’t at fault; in a way they were, but I still won’t blame them. I put the blame on that man who gave the orders. And when you and I begin to look at him and see the language he speaks, the language of a brute, the language of someone who has no sense of morality, who absolutely ignores law—when you and I learn how to speak his language, then we can communicate. But we will never communicate talking one language while he’s talking another language. He’s talking the language of violence while you and I are running around with this little chicken-picking type of language—and think that he’s going to understand.  Let’s learn his language. If his language is with a shotgun, get a shotgun. Yes, I said if he only understands the language of a rifle, get a rifle. If he only understands the language of a rope, get a rope. But don’t waste time talking the wrong language to a man if you want to really communicate with him. Speak his language—there’s nothing wrong with that. If something was wrong with that language, the federal government would have stopped the cracker from speaking it to you and me.

I might say, secondly, some people wonder, well, what has Mississippi got to do with Harlem? It isn’t actually Mississippi; it’s America. America is Mississippi. There’s no such thing as a Mason-Dixon Line—it’s America. There’s no such thing as the South—it’s America. If one room in your house is dirty, you’ve got a dirty house. If the closet is dirty, you’ve got a dirty house. Don’t say that that room is dirty but the rest of my house is clean. You’re over the whole house. You have authority over the whole house; the entire house is under your jurisdiction. And the mistake that you and I make is letting these Northern crackers shift the weight to the Southern crackers.

The senator from Mississippi is over the Judiciary Committee. He’s in Washington, D.C., as Mrs. Hamer has pointed out, illegally. Every senator from a state where our people are deprived of the right to vote—they’re in Washington, D.C., illegally. This country is a country whose governmental system is run by committees— House committees and Senate committees. The committee chairman occupies that position by dint of his seniority. Eastland is over the Judiciary Committee because he has more seniority than any other senator after the same post or on that committee; he’s the chairman. Fulbright, another cracker, from Arkansas, is over the Foreign Relations Committee. Ellender, of Louisiana, is over the Agriculture and Forestry Committee. Russell, of Georgia, is over the Armed Services Committee.

And it goes right on down the line. Out of sixteen committees, ten of them are in the hands of Southern racists. Out of twenty congressional committees, thirteen are in the hands, or at least they were before the recent elections, in the hands of Southern racists. Out of forty-six committees that govern the foreign and domestic direction of this country, twenty-three are in the hands of Southern racists. And the reason they’re in the hands of Southern racists is because in the areas from which they come, the black man is deprived of his right to vote.

If we had the ballot in that area, those racists would not be in Washington, D. C. There’d be some black faces there, there’d be some brown and some yellow and some red faces there. There’d be some faces other than those cracker faces that are there right now.

So, what happens in Mississippi and the South has a direct bearing on what happens to you and me here in Harlem. Likewise, the Democratic Party, which black people supported recently, I think, something like 97 per cent. All of these crackers—and that’s what they are, crackers—they belong to the Democratic Party. That’s the party they belong to—the same one you belong to, the same one you support, the same one you say is going to get you this and get you that. Why, the base of the Democratic Party is in the South. The foundation of its authority is in the South. The head of the Democratic Party is sitting in the White House. He could have gotten Mrs. Hamer into Atlantic City. He could have opened up his mouth and had her seated. Hubert Humphrey could have opened his mouth and had her seated. Wagner, the mayor right here, could have opened up his mouth and used his weight and had her seated. Don’t be talking about some crackers down in Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia—all of them are playing the same game. Lyndon B. Johnson is the head of the Cracker Party.

Now, I don’t want to be stepping on toes or saying things that you didn’t think I was going to say, but don’t ever, ever, ever call me up here to talk about Mississippi. It’s controlled right up here from the North. Mississippi is controlled from the North. Alabama is controlled from the North. These Northern crackers are in cahoots with the Southern crackers, only these Northern crackers smile in your face and show you their teeth and they stick the knife in your back when you turn around. You at least know what that man down there is doing and you know how to deal with him.

So all I say is this, this is all I say: when you start talking about one, talk about the others. When you start worrying about the part or the piece, worry about the whole. And if this piece is no good, the entire pie is no good, because it all comes out of the same plate. It’s made up out of the same ingredients. Wagner is a Democrat. He belongs to the same party as Eastland. Johnson is a Democrat. He belongs to the same party as Eastland. Wagner was in Atlantic City, Ray Jones was in Atlantic City, Lyndon B. Johnson was in Atlantic City, Hubert Humphrey was in Atlantic City—the crackers that you voted for were in Atlantic City. What did they do for you when you wanted to sit down? They were quiet. They were silent. They said, “Don’t rock the boat, you might get Goldwater elected... .”

I have this bit of suggestion. Find out what Wagner is going to do in behalf of this resolution, that you’re trying to get through, before January 4. Find out in advance where does he stand on these Mississippi congressmen who are illegally coming up from the South to represent Democrats. Find out where the mayor of this city stands and make him come out on the record without dilly-dallying and without compromise. Find out where his friends stand on seating the Mississippians who are coming forth illegally. Find out where Ray Jones, who is one of the most powerful black Democrats in this city—find out where he stands. Before January 4. You can’t talk about Rockefeller because he’s a Republican. Although he’s in the same boat right along with the rest of them.

So I say, in my conclusion, as Mrs. Hamer pointed out, the brothers and sisters in Mississippi are being beaten and killed for no reason other than they want to be treated as first-class citizens. There’s only one way to be a first-class citizen. There’s only one way to be independent. There’s only one way to be free. It’s not something that someone gives to you. It’s something that you take. Nobody can give you independence. Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it. If you can’t take it, you don’t deserve it. Nobody can give it to you. So if you and I want freedom, if we want independence, if we want respect, if we want recognition, we obey the law, we are peaceful—but at the same time, at any moment that you and I are involved in any kind of action that is legal, that is in accord with our civil rights, in accord with the courts of this land, in accord with the Constitution—when all of these things are on our side, and we still can’t get it, it’s because we aren’t on our own side.

We don’t yet realize the real price necessary to pay to see that these things are enforced where we’re concerned. And until we realize this, they won’t be enforced where we’re concerned. We have to let the people in Mississippi as well as in Mississippi, New York, and elsewhere know that freedom comes to us either by ballots or by bullets. That’s the only way freedom is gotten. Freedom is gotten by ballots or bullets. These are the only two avenues, the only two roads, the only two methods, the only two means—either ballots or bullets. And when you know that, then you are careful how you use the word freedom. As long as you think we are going to sing up on some, you come in and sing. I watch you, those of you who are singing—are you also willing to do some swinging?

They’ve always said that I’m anti-white. I’m for anybody who’s for freedom. I’m for anybody who’s for justice. I’m for anybody who’s for equality. I’m not for anybody who tells me to sit around and wait for mine. I’m not for anybody who tells me to turn the other cheek when a cracker is busting up my jaw. I’m not for anybody who tells black people to be nonviolent while nobody is telling white people to be nonviolent. I know I’m in the church, I probably shouldn’t be talking like this—but Jesus himself was ready to turn the synagogue inside out and upside down when things weren’t going right. In fact, in the Book of Revelations, they’ve got Jesus sitting on a horse with a sword in his hand, getting ready to go into action. But they don’t tell you or me about that Jesus. They only tell you and me about that peaceful Jesus. They never let you get down to the end of the book. They keep you up there where everything is, you know, nonviolent. No, go and read the whole book, and when you get to Revelations, you’ll find that even Jesus’ patience ran out. And when his patience ran out, he got the whole situation straightened out. He picked up the sword.

I believe that there are some white people who might be sincere. But I think they should prove it. And you can’t prove it to me by singing with me. You can’t prove it to me by being nonviolent. No, you can prove it by recognizing the law of justice. And the law of justice is “as ye sow, so shall ye reap.” The law of justice is “he who kills by the sword shall be killed by the sword.” This is justice. Now if you are with us, all I say is, make the same kind of contribution with us in our struggle for freedom that all white people have always made when they were struggling for their own freedom. You were struggling for your freedom in the Revolutionary War. Your own Patrick Henry said “liberty or death,” and George Washington got the cannons out, and all the rest of them that you taught me to worship as my heroes, they were fighters, they were warriors.

But now when the time comes for our freedom, you want to reach back in the bag and grab somebody who’s nonviolent and peaceful and forgiving and long-suffering. I don’t go for that—no. I say that a black man’s freedom is as valuable as a white man’s freedom. And I say that a black man has the right to do whatever is necessary to get his freedom that other human beings have done to get their freedom. I say that you and I will never get our freedom nonviolently and patiently and lovingly. We will never get it until we let the world know that as other human beings have laid down their lives for freedom—and also taken life for freedom—that you and I are ready and willing and equipped and qualified to do the same thing.

It’s a shame that Mrs. Hamer came out here this afternoon where there are so few people. It’s a shame. All of our people in Harlem should have heard her describe what they did to her down there. Because I think the people in Harlem are more capable of evening the score than people are anywhere else in this country. Yes, they are, and they need to hear her story. They need to know more, first hand, about what’s happening down there, especially to our women. And then they need some lessons in tactics and strategy on how to get even. I, for one, will make the first contribution to any fund that’s raised for the purpose of evening the score. Whenever someone commits murder, what do you do? You put out a “reward, wanted—dead or alive” for the murderer. Yes, learn how to do it. We’ve had three people murdered. No reward has been put on the head of the murderer. Don’t just put a reward—put “dead or alive, dead or alive.” And let that Klan know that we can do it tit for tat, tit for tat. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

And if you all don’t want to do it, we’ll do it. We’ll do it. We have brothers who are equipped, and who are qualified, and who are willing to—As Jesus said, “Little children, go thee where I send thee.” We have brothers who can do that, and who will do that, and who are ready to do that. And I say that if the government of the United States cannot bring to justice people who murder Negroes, or people who murder those who are at the forefront fighting in behalf of Negroes, then it’s time for you and me to retire quietly to our closets and devise means and methods of seeing that justice is executed against murderers where justice has not been forthcoming in the past.

I say in my conclusion that if you and I here in Harlem, who form the habit ofttimes of fighting each other, who sneak around trying to wait for an opportunity to throw some acid or some lye on each other, or sprinkle dust on each other’s doorsteps—if you and I were really and truly for the freedom of our people, we wouldn’t waste all of that energy thinking how to do harm to each other. Since you have that ingenuity, if you know how to do it, let me know; I’ll give you some money and show you where to go, and show you who to do it to. And then you’ll go down in history as having done an honorable thing.

So, Mrs. Hamer, we have another rally up at the Audubon tonight, at eight o’clock, where there’ll be a lot of black people. I myself would like to have you tell them what you told us here this afternoon, so you are welcome to be my guest tonight if you will, at the Audubon. And those singers who sing about Oginga Odinga, if you haven’t got anything else to do, you need to come up in Harlem and let some people hear you singing about Oginga Odinga and Kenyatta and Lumumba, and the next time you come to Harlem, you’ll have a crowd out here. Thank you.

Malcolm X on The Power of Africa (Audubon Ballroom, December 20, 1964)

2013-07-04T17:23:00.002-07:00

Asalaam Alaikum. I suppose I should take time to explain what I mean when I say “Asalaam Alaikum.” Actually, it’s an expression that means “peace,” and it’s one that is always given to one’s brother or to one’s sister. It only means “peace be unto you.” So, when I say “Asalaam Alaikum” or “Salaam Alaikum” and others reply, “Alaikum Salaam,” why, they’re just returning the peace. It means we’re all at peace with one another, as brothers and sisters.

Now, brothers and sisters, first I want to thank those of you who have taken the time to come through that snow, which almost turned me back myself, and come out where we can try and put our heads together and get a better understanding of what is going on, what we’ve been through and what we’re all concerned about. As Sister Sharon has already pointed out, and I think she did so beautifully, during recent years our people have been struggling for some kind of relief from the conditions we’re confronted by.

When you go back over the period of struggle, I think it would be agreed that we’ve gone through different patterns of struggle, that we’ve struggled in different ways. Each way that we tried never produced what we were looking for. If it had been productive, we would have continued along that same way. We’ve tried probably more different methods than any people. But at the same time, I think we’ve tried more wrong methods than any other people, because most others have gotten more freedom than we have. Everywhere you look, people get their freedom faster than we do. They get more respect and recognition faster than we do. We get promises, but we never get the real thing. And primarily because we have yet to learn the proper tactic or strategy or method to bring freedom into existence.

I think that one of the things that has caused our people in this country to try so many methods is that times have changed so rapidly. What would be proper ten years ago would not have been proper seven years ago, or five years ago, or three years ago. Times change so quickly that if you and I don’t keep up with the times, we’ll find ourselves with an umbrella in our hand, over our head, when the sun is out. Or we’ll find ourselves standing in the rain, with the umbrella inside the door. If we don’t keep up with what’s going on, we will not be able to display the type of intelligence that will show the world we know what time it is and that we know what is happening around us.

Several persons have asked me recently, since I’ve been back, “What is your program?” I purposely, to this day, have not in any way mentioned what our program is, because there will come a time when we will unveil it so that everybody will understand it. Policies change, and programs change, according to time. But objective never changes. You might change your method of achieving the objective, but the objective never changes. Our objective is complete freedom, complete justice, complete equality, by any means necessary. That never changes. Complete and immediate recognition and respect as human beings, that doesn’t change, that’s what all of us want. I don’t care what you belong to, you still want that recognition and respect as a human being. But you have changed your methods from time to time on how you go about getting it. The reason you change your method is that you have to change your method according to time and conditions that prevail. And one of the conditions that prevails on this earth right now, that we know too little about, is our relationship with the freedom struggle of people all over the world.a

Here in America, we have always thought that we were struggling by ourselves, and most Afro-Americans will tell you just that we’re a minority. By thinking we’re a minority, we struggle like a minority. We struggle like we’re an underdog. We struggle like all of the odds are against us. This type of struggle takes place only because we don’t yet know where we fit in the scheme of things. We’ve been maneuvered out of a position where we could rightly know and understand where we fit into the scheme of things. It’s impossible for you and me to know where we stand until we look around on this entire earth. Not just look around in Harlem or New York, or Mississippi, or America, we have got to look all around this earth. We don’t know where we stand until, we know where America stands. You don’t know where you stand in America until you know where America stands in the world. We don’t know where you and I stand in this context, known to us as America, until we know where America stands in the world context. When you and I are inside of America and look at America, she looks big and bad and invincible. Oh, yes, and when we approach her in that context, we approach her as beggars, with our hat in our hands. As Toms, actually, only in the twentieth century sense, but still as Toms. While if we understand what’s going on this earth and what’s going on in the world today, and fit America into that context, we find out she’s not so bad, after all; she’s not very invincible. And when you find out she’s not invincible, you don’t approach her like you’re dealing with someone who’s invincible.

As a rule, up to now, the strategy of America has been to tuck all of our leaders up into her dress, and besiege them with money, with prestige, with praise, and make them jump, and tell them what to tell us. And they always tell us we’re the underdog, and that we don’t have a chance, and that we should do it nonviolently and carefully; otherwise, we’ll get hurt or we’ll get wasted. We don’t buy that.

Number one, we want to know what are we? How did we get to be what we are? Where did we come from? How did we come from there? Who did we leave behind? Where was it that we left them behind, and what are they doing over there where we used to be? This is something that we have not been told. We have been brought over here and isolated—you know the funniest thing about that: they accuse us of introducing “separation” and “isolation.” No one is more isolated than you and I. There’s no system on earth more capable of thoroughly separating and isolating a people than this system that they call the democratic system; and you and I are the best proof of it, the best example of it. We were separated from our people, and have been isolated here for a long time.

So thoroughly has this been done to us that now we don’t even know that there is somebody else that looks like we do. When we see them, we look at them like they’re strangers. And when we see somebody that doesn’t look anything like us, we call them our friends. That’s a shame. It shows you what has been done to us. Yes, I mean our own people—we see our people come here who look exactly like we do, our twins, can’t tell them apart, and we say, “Those are foreigners.” Yet we’re getting our heads busted trying to snuggle up to somebody who not only doesn’t look like us, but doesn’t even smell like us.

So you can see the importance of these meetings on Sunday nights during the past two or three weeks, and for a couple more weeks. It is not so much to spell out any program; you can’t give a people a program until they realize they need one, and until they realize that all existing programs aren’t programs that are going to produce productive results. So what we would like to do on Sunday nights is to go into our problem, and just analyze and analyze and analyze; and question things that you don’t understand, so we can at least try and get a better picture of what faces us. I, for one, believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what it is that confronts them, and the basic causes that produce it, they’ll create their own program; and when the people create a program, you get action.

When these “leaders” create programs, you get no action. The only time you see them is when the people are exploding. Then the leaders are shot into the situation and told to control things. You can’t show me a leader that has set off an explosion. No, they come and contain the explosion. They say, “Don’t get rough, you know, do the smart thing.” This is their role’ they’re there just to restrain you and me, to restrain the struggle, to keep it in a certain groove, and not let it get out of control. Whereas you and I don’t want anybody to keep us from getting out of control. We want to get out of control. We want to smash anything that gets in our way that doesn’t belong there.

Listen to the last part of what I said: I didn’t just say we want to smash anything that gets in our way. I said we want to smash anything that gets in our way that doesn’t belong there. You see, I had to give you the whole thing, because when you read it, you’ll hear we’re going to smash up everybody. No, I didn’t say that. I said we’ll smash up anything that gets in the way that doesn’t belong there. I mean that. If it doesn’t belong there, it’s worthy to be smashed. This country practices that power. This country smashes anything that gets in its way. It crushes anything that gets in its way. And since we’re Americans, they tell us, well, we’ll do it the American way. We’ll smash anything that gets in our way.

This is the type of philosophy that we want to express among our people. We don’t need to give them a program, not yet. First, give them something to think about. If we give them something to think about, and start them thinking in a way that they should think, they’ll see through all this camouflage that’s going on right now. It’s just a show the result of a script written by somebody else. The people will take that script and tear it up and write one for themselves. And you can bet that when you write the script for yourself, you’re always doing something different than you’d be doing if you followed somebody else’s script.

So, brothers and sisters, the thing that you and I must have an understanding of is the role that’s being played in world affairs today, number one, by the continent of Africa; number two, by the people on that continent; number three, by those of us who are related to the people on that continent, but who, by some quirk in our own history, find ourselves today here in the Western hemisphere. Always bear that in mind that our being in the Western hemisphere differs from anyone else, because everyone else here came voluntarily. Everyone that you see in this part of the world got on a boat and came here voluntarily; whether they were immigrants or what have you, they came here voluntarily. So they don’t have any real squawk, because they got what they were looking for. But you and I can squawk because we didn’t come here voluntarily. We didn’t ask to be brought here. We were brought here forcibly, against. our will, and in chains. And at no time since we have been here, have they even acted like they wanted us here. At no time. At no time have they even tried to pretend that we were brought here to be citizens. Why, they don’t even pretend. So why should we pretend?

Look at the continent of Africa today and see what position it occupies on this earth, and you realize that there’s a tussle going on between East and West. It used to be between America and the West and Russia, but they’re not tussling with each other any more. Kennedy made a satellite out of Russia. He put Khrushchev in his pocket; yes, he did, lost him his job. The tussle now is between America and China. In the camp of the West, America is foremost. Most other Western nations are satellites to America. England is an American satellite. All of them are satellites, perhaps with the exception of France. France wants America to be her satellite. You never can tell what the future might bring. Better nations than this have fallen, if you read history. Most of the European Communist nations are still satelliting around Russia. But in Asia, China is the center of power.

Among Asian countries, whether they are communist, socialist, you don’t find any capitalist countries over there too much nowadays. Almost every one of the countries that has gotten independence has devised some kind of socialistic system, and this is no accident. This is another reason why I say that you and I here in America, who are looking for a job, who are looking for better housing, looking for a better education, before you start trying to be incorporated, or integrated, or disintegrated, into this capitalistic system, should look over there and find out what are the people who have gotten their freedom adopting to provide themselves with better housing and better education and better food and better clothing.

None of them are adopting the capitalistic system because they realize they can’t. You can’t operate a capitalistic system unless you are vulturistic; you have to have someone else’s blood to suck to be a capitalist. You show me a capitalist, I’ll show you a bloodsucker. He cannot be anything but a bloodsucker if he’s going to be a capitalist. He’s got to get it from somewhere other than himself, and that’s where he gets it, from somewhere or someone other than himself. So, when we look at the African continent, when we look at the trouble that’s going on between East and West, we find that the nations in Africa are developing socialistic systems to solve their problems. There’s one thing that Martin Luther King mentioned at the Armory the other night, which I thought was most significant. I hope he really understood what he was saying. He mentioned that while he was in some of those Scandinavian countries he saw no poverty. There was no unemployment, no poverty. Everyone was getting education, everyone had decent housing, decent whatever they needed to exist. But why did he mention those countries on his list as different?

This is the richest country on earth and there’s poverty, there’s bad housing, there’s slums, there’s inferior education. And this is the richest country on earth. Now, you know, if those countries that are poor can come up with a solution to their problems so that there’s no unemployment, then instead of you running downtown picketing city hall, you should stop and find out what they do over there to solve their problems. This is why the man doesn’t want you and me to look beyond Harlem or beyond the shores of America. As long as you don’t know what’s happening on the outside, you’ll be all messed up dealing with this man on the inside. I mean what they use to solve the problem is not capitalism. What they are using to solve their problem in Africa and Asia is not capitalism. So what you and I should do is find out what they are using to get rid of poverty and all the other negative characteristics of a rundown society.

Africa is strategically located, geographically between East and West; it’s the most valuable piece of property involved in the struggle between East and West. You can’t get to the East without going past it, and can’t get from the East to West without going past it. It sits right there between all of them. It sits snuggled into a nest between Asia and Europe; it can reach either one. None of the natural resources that are needed in Europe that they get from Asia can get to Europe without coming either around Africa, over Africa, or in between the Suez Canal which is sitting at the tip of Africa. She can cut off Europe’s bread. She can put Europe to sleep overnight, just like that. Because she’s in a position to; the African continent is in a position to do this. But they want you and me to think Africa is a jungle, of no value, of no consequence. Because they also know that if you knew how valuable it was, you’d realize why they’re over there killing our people. And you’d realize that it’s not for some kind of humanitarian purpose or reason.

Also, Africa as a continent is important because of its tropical climate. It’s so heavily vegetated you can take any section of Africa and use modern agricultural methods and turn that section alone into the breadbasket for the world. Almost any country over there can feed the whole continent, if it only had access to people who had the technical know-how to bring into that area modern methods of agriculture. It’s rich. A jungle is only a place that’s heavily vegetated, the soil is so rich and the climate is so good that everything grows, and it doesn’t grow in season, it grows all the time. All the time is the season. That means it can grow anything, produce anything.

Added to its richness and its strategic position geographically is the fact of the existence of the Suez Canal and the Strait of Gibraltar. Those two narrow straits can cut off from Europe anything and everything Europe needs. All of the oil that runs Europe goes through the Suez Canal, up the Mediterranean Sea to places like Greece and Italy and Southern Spain and France and along through there; or through the Strait of Gibraltar and around on into England. And they need it. They need access through the Suez. When Nasser took over the Suez, they almost died in Europe. It scared them to death, why? Because Egypt is in Africa, in fact, Egypt is in both Africa and Asia...Before the Suez Canal was built, it was all one, you couldn’t really make a distinction between Africa and Asia. It was all one. When President Nasser took the Suez Canal, that meant that for the first time the Suez Canal was under the complete jurisdiction of an African nation, and it meant that other nations had to cater to this African nation if they wanted to survive, if they didn’t want their oil and other sources of supply cut off. Immediately this had an effect on European attitudes and European economic measures. They began to try and devise new means, new routes, to get the things that they needed.

Another reason the continent is so important is because of its gold. It has some of the largest deposits of gold on earth, and diamonds. Not only the diamonds you put on your. finger and in your ear, but industrial diamonds, diamonds that are needed to make machines, machines that can’t function or can’t run unless they have these diamonds. These industrial diamonds play a major role in the entire industrialization of the European nations, and without these diamonds their industry would fall.

You and I usually know of diamonds for rings, because those are the only diamonds we get close to, or the only diamonds within our line of thinking. We don’t think in terms of diamonds for other uses. Or baseball diamonds, some of us only get that far.

Not only diamonds, but also cobalt. Cobalt is one of the most valuable minerals on this earth today, and I think Africa is one of the only places where it is found. They use it in cancer treatment, plus they use it in this nuclear field that you’ve heard so much about. Cobalt and uranium, the largest deposits are right there on the African continent. And this is what the man is after. The man is after keeping you over here worrying about a cup of coffee, while he’s over there in your motherland taking control over minerals that have so much value they make the world go around. While you and I are still walking around over here, yes, trying to drink some coffee with a cracker. It’s one of the largest sources of iron and bauxite and lumber and even oil, and Western industry needs all of these minerals in order to survive. All of these natural minerals are needed by the Western industrialists in order for their industry to keep running at the clip that it’s been used to. Can we prove it? Yes. You know that France lost her French West African possessions, Belgium lost the Congo, England lost Nigeria and Ghana and some of the other English-speaking areas; France also lost Algeria, or the Algerians took Algeria.

As soon as these European powers lost their African possessions, Belgium had an economic crisis, the same year she turned the Congo loose. She had to rearrange her entire economy and her economic methods had to be revised, because she had lost possession of the source of most of her raw materials, raw materials that she got almost free, almost with no price or output whatsoever. When she got into a position where she didn’t have access to these free raw materials anymore, it affected her economy. It affected the French economy. It affected the British economy. It drove all of these European countries to the point where they had to come together and form what’s known as the European Common Market. Prior to that, you wouldn’t hear anything about a European Common Market. Being the gateway to Southwest Africa, Southern Rhodesia, Basutoland, Swaziland, and South Africa, the Congo is a country on the African continent which is so strategically located geographically that if it were to fall into the hands of a real dyed-in-the-wool African nationalist, he could then make it possible for African soldiers to train in the Congo for the purpose of invading Angola. When they invade Angola, that means Angola must fall, because there are more Africans than there are Portuguese, and they just couldn’t control Angola any longer. And if the Congo fell into good hands, other than Tshombe, then it would mean. that Angola would fall, Southern Rhodesia would fall, Southwest Africa would fall and South Africa would fall. And that’s the only way they would fall.

When these countries fall, it would mean that the source of raw material, natural resources, some of the richest mineral deposits on earth, would then be taken away from the European economy. And without free access to this, the economy of Europe wouldn’t be worth two cents. All of your European countries would be of no more importance than a country like Norway, which is all right for Norwegians, but has no influence beyond that. It’s just another country stuck up some place in the northern part, like Sweden and some of those places. Every European country would be just as insignificant as the smallest insignificant country in Europe right now if they lost the rest of Africa. Because the rest of Africa that’s still colonized is the part of the African continent that’s still backing up the European economy. And if the economy of Europe was to sink any farther, it would really wash away the American economy. American economy can never be any stronger than the European economy because both of them are one. It’s one and the same economy.. They are brothers. I say this because it is necessary for you and me to understand what is at stake. You can’t understand what is going on in Mississippi if you don’t understand what is going on in the Congo. And you can’t really be interested in what’s going on in Mississippi if you’re not also interested in what’s going on in the Congo. They’re both the same. The same interests are at stake. The same sides are drawn up, the same schemes are at work in the Congo that are at work in Mississippi. The same stake, no difference whatsoever.

Another frightening thing for this continent and the European continent is the fact that the Africans are trying to industrialize. One of the most highly industrialized African nations is Egypt. They have had a limited source of power up to now, but they are building a dam in upper Egypt, where the black Egyptians live. I was there, I took some pictures I’m going to show you some movies, probably on the first Sunday in January, a week from next Sunday. The Aswan Dam is something that everybody should see. The Aswan is being built on the Nile in the heart of the desert, surrounded by mountains. One of the most outstanding things about this dam isn’t so much its miraculous technical aspects, but the human aspects.  When you build a dam in an area where there’s already vegetation, that’s one thing. But this dam is being built in an area where there’s no vegetation. Once this river is dammed, it will create a lake in the middle of the desert which will set up a water cycle, rain, you know, clouds, and all of that stuff, and it will turn the desert into a civilization, into a very fertile valley. In order for this artificial lake to be built in that way, from that dam, it washed away the homes of the Nubians, people who look just like you and I do, who have been living there for thousands of years. They had to replace them, they had to transplant them from where they were living for thousands of years to another area.

This in itself was an operation that would hold you spellbound if you could see all the aspects of it. It meant taking a people from one place and putting them in another place. The place where they had been was antiquated. Their methods, their customs, their homes were thousands of years old. But overnight these people, who lived that far in the past, were taken to new cities that had been built by the government. Modern cities, where they had modern schools, modern rooms in which to live, and modern hospitals. When you go into these new cities that are Nubian villages, the first thing you always see is a mosque. Their religion is Islam, they’re Muslims.

The Egyptian government, the revolutionary government, differs from most revolutions in that it’s one of the few revolutions that have taken place where religion has not been minimized. In most revolutions, religion is immediately de-emphasized. Eventually that revolution loses something. Always. But the thing about the Egyptian revolution was that it never de-emphasized the importance of religion. In these new cities, the first thing they build is a mosque, so people can practice their religion. Then they build schools so the people can be educated free; and then they build hospitals. They believe that the religious aspect keeps the people spiritually and morally balanced, and then everyone should have the best education and free hospitalization.

These new villages actually reflect the whole motive behind the Egyptian revolution. I found this quite interesting. I was there and could study it for two months. It’s a balanced revolution. I go for revolution, but revolution should always do something for the people and it should always keep them balanced. You don’t find anybody that’s more revolutionary than those people over there in Egypt; they’re revolutionary, they’re involved in every revolution that’s going on on the African continent right now.

So the Aswan Dam creates enough additional power to make it possible to step up or speed up the industrialization of that particular African nation. And as their industrialization is stepped up, it means that they can produce their own cars, their own tractors, their own tools, their own machinery, plus a lot of other things. Not only Egypt, but Ghana too. Ghana is building a dam, they’re damming the Volta River. There’s the Volta High Dam, and it’s being built for the purpose of increasing the power potential of Ghana, so that Ghana also can increase its industrial output.

As these African nations get in a position to increase their own power and to industrialize, what does it mean? It means that where they now are a market for American goods and America’s finished products, and a market for European finished products, when they’re able to finish their own products, they will be able to get their products cheaper because they’re putting their own raw materials into the finished products. Now the raw materials are taken from Africa, shipped all the way to Europe, used to feed the machines of the Europeans, and make jobs for them, and then turned around and sold back to the Africans as finished products. But when the African nations become industrialized, they can take their own products and stick them in the machines and finish them into whatever they want. Then they can live cheaper. The whole system will be a system with a high standard of living but a cheaper standard of living.

This standard of living automatically will threaten the standard of living in Europe because it will cut off the European market. European factories can’t produce unless they have some place to market the products. American factories can’t produce unless she has some place to market her products. It is for this reason that the European nations in the past have kept the nations in Latin America and in Africa and in Asia from becoming industrial powers. They keep the machinery and the ability to produce and manufacture limited to Europe and limited to America. Then this puts America and the Europeans in a position to control the economy of all other nations and keep them living at a low standard.

These people are beginning to see that. The Africans see it, the Latin Americans see it, the Asians see it. So when you hear them talking about freedom, they’re not talking about a cup of coffee with a cracker. No, they’re talking about getting in a position to feed themselves and clothe themselves and make these other things that, when you have them, make life worth living. So this is the way you and I have to understand the world revolution that’s taking place right now.

When you understand the motive behind the world revolution, the drive behind the African and the drive behind the Asian, then you get some of that drive yourself. You’ll be driving for real. The man downtown knows the difference between when you’re driving for real and when you’re driving not for real. As long as you keep asking about coffee, he doesn’t have to worry about you; he can send you to Brazil. So these dams being set up over there in different parts of the continent are putting African nations in a position to have more power, to become more industrial and also to be self- sustained and self-sufficient.

In line with that: in the past it was the world bank, controlled again by Europeans and from Europe, that subsidized most of the effort that was being made by African nations and Asian nations to develop underdeveloped areas. But the African nations are now getting together and forming their own bank, the African bank. The details of it aren’t as much in my mind as I would like them to be, but when I was in Lagos, Nigeria, they were having a meeting there. It was among African bankers and African nations, and the Organization of African Unity, which is the best thing that has ever happened on the African continent, had taken up as part of its program the task of getting all of the African nations to pool their efforts in creating an African bank, so that there would be an internal bank in the internal African structure to which underdeveloped African nations can turn for financial assistance in projects that they’re trying to undertake that would be beneficial to the whole continent.

Politically, Africa as a continent, and the African people as a people, have the largest representation of any continent in the United Nations. Politically, the Africans are in a more strategic position and in a stronger position whenever a conference is taking place at the international level. Today, power is international, real power is international; today, real power is not local. The only kind of power that can help you and me is international power, not local power. Any power that’s local, if it’s real power, is only a reflection or a part of that international power. If you think you’ve got some power, and it isn’t in some way tied into that international thing, brother, don’t get too far out on a limb.

If your power base is only here, you can forget it. You can’t build a power base here. You have to have a power base among brothers and sisters. You have to have your power base among people who have something in common with you. They have to have some kind of cultural identity, or there has to be some relationship between you and your power base. When you build a power base in this country, you’re building it where you aren’t in any way related to what you build it on. No, you have to have that base somewhere else. You can work here, but you’d better put your base somewhere else. Don’t put it in this man’s hand. Any kind of organization that is based here can’t be an effective organization. Anything you’ve got going for you, if the base is here, is not going to be effective. Your and my base must be at home, and this is not at home.

When you see that the African nations at the international level comprise the largest representative body and the largest force of any continent, why, you and I would be out of our minds not to identify with that power bloc. We would be out of our minds, we would actually be traitors to ourselves, to be reluctant or fearful to identify with people with whom we have so much in common. If it was a people who had nothing to offer, nothing to contribute to our well-being, you might be justified, even though they looked like we do; if there was no contribution to be made, you might be justified. But when you have people who look exactly like you, and you are catching hell, to boot, and you still are reluctant or hesitant or slow to identify with them, then you need to catch hell, yes. You deserve all the hell you get.

The African representatives, coupled with the Asians and Arabs, form a bloc that’s almost impossible for anybody to contend with. The African-Asian-Arab bloc was the bloc that started the real independence movement among the oppressed peoples of the world. The first coming together of that bloc was at the Bandung conference. To show you the power of that bloc and the results that they’ve gotten and how well the Europeans know it: on the African continent, when I was there, one thing I noticed was the twenty-four-hour-a-day effort being made in East Africa to turn the African against the Asian; and in West Africa to turn the African against the Arab; and in parts of Africa where there are no Asians or Arabs, to turn the Muslim African against the Christian African. When you go over there and study this thing, you can see that it is not something that’s indigenous, it’s not a divisive situation that’s indigenous to the African himself. But someone realizes that the power of the oppressed black, brown, red and yellow people began at the Bandung conference, which was a coalition between the Arab and the Asian and the African, and how much pressure they’ve been able to put on the oppressor since then.

So, very shrewdly they have moved in. Now when you travel on the continent, you see the African in East Africa is being sicked on the Asian, there’s a division taking place. And in West Africa he’s being sicked on the Arab, there’s a division taking place. And where the oppressor, this ingenious oppressor, diabolically ingenious, where he hasn’t found an Asian to sic the African on, or an Arab to sic the African on, he uses the Muslim African against the Christian African. Or the one that believes in religion against the one that doesn’t believe in religion. But the main thing he’s doing is causing this division to in some way keep the African, the Arab and the Asian from beating up on him.

He’s doing the same thing in British Guyana. He’s got the black Guyanians down there fighting against the so-called Indians. He’s got them fighting each other. They didn’t fight each other when the British were there in full control. If you notice, as long as the place was an old-style colony, no fight. But as soon as the British are supposed to be moving away, the black one starts fighting the red one. Why? This is no accident. If they didn’t fight before, they don’t need to fight now. There’s no reason for it. But their fighting each other keeps the man on top. The fact that he can turn one against the other keeps the man on top.

He does the same thing with you and me right here in Harlem. All day long. I turned on the radio last night. I heard them say, every hour on the hour, that James Farmer, the head of CORE, was going to Africa, Egypt and Israel. And they said the reason he was going was because he wanted to correct false statements made by black nationalist leader Malcolm X when he was over there. If I hadn’t had this experience before, immediately I would have started blasting Farmer. But I called him up today. He said he didn’t know what they were talking about. But why do they do it? They do it to make us fight each other. As long as we’re fighting each other, we can’t get at the man who should be fought against from the start. Do you understand? Once we see the strategy that they use at the international level, then we can better understand the strategy that they use at the national and at the local level.

Lastly, I would like to point out my understanding of what I think is the position taken in African policy. Their policy, in a nutshell, is positive neutrality, non-alignment. They don’t line up either way. Africa is for the Africans. And the Africans are for the Africans. The policy of the independent African states, by and large, is positive neutrality, non-alignment. Egypt is a good example. They take from East and West and don’t take sides with either one. Nasser took everything Russia could give him, and then put all the communists in jail. Not that I mean the communists should necessarily have been put in jail. For the communist is a man, a capitalist is a man, and a socialist is a man. Well, if all of them are men, why should they be put in jail, unless one of them is committing a crime? And if being a communist or being a capitalist or being a socialist is a crime, first you have to study which of those systems is the most criminal. And then you’ll be slow to say which one should be in jail.
I cite that as an example just to show what this positive neutrality means: If you want to help us, help us; we’re still not with you. If you have a contribution to make to our development, do it. But that doesn’t mean we’re with you or against you. We’re neutral. We’re for ourselves. Whatever is good for us, that’s what we’re interested in. That doesn’t mean we’re against you. But it does mean we’re for ourselves.

This is what you and I need to learn. You and I need to learn how to be positively neutral. You and I need to learn how to be non-aligned. And if you and I ever study the science of non-alignment, then you’ll find out that there’s more power in non-alignment than there is alignment. In this country, it’s impossible for you to be aligned with either party. Either party that you align yourself with is suicide. Because both parties are criminal. Both parties are responsible for the criminal condition that exists. So you can’t align yourself with a party.

What you can do is get registered so that you have power’ political potential. When you register your political potential, that means your gun is loaded. But just because it’s loaded, you don’t have to shoot until you see a target that will be beneficial to you. If you want a duck, don’t shoot when you see a bear; wait till you see a duck. And if you want a bear, don’t shoot when see a duck; wait till you see a bear. Wait till you see what you want, then take aim and shoot!

What they do with you and me is tell us, “Register and vote.” Don’t register and vote, register! That’s intelligent. Don’t register and vote, you can vote for a dummy, you can vote for a crook, you can vote for another who’d want to exploit you. “Register” means being in a position to take political action any time, any place and in any manner that would be beneficial to you and me; being in a position to take advantage of our position. Then we’ll be in a position to be respected and recognized. But as soon as you get registered, and you want to be a Democrat or a Republican, you are aligning. And once you are aligning, you have no bargaining power, none whatsoever. We’ve got a program we are going to launch, which will involve the absolute maximum registering of as many of our people as we can. But they will be registered as independents. And by being registered as independents, it means we can do whatever is necessary, wherever it’s necessary, and whenever the time comes. Do you understand?

So, I say in my conclusion, we have a lady that I want to introduce you to, who I think is one of the best freedom fighters in America today. She’s from Mississippi, and you’ve got to be a freedom fighter to even live in Mississippi. You’ve got to be a freedom fighter to live anywhere in this country, but especially Mississippi. This woman has been in the forefront of the struggle in Mississippi. I was on a program with her this afternoon. As I mentioned today, and you’ll probably read about it tomorrow; they’ll blow it up, and out of context, what we need in this country, and I believe it with all my heart, and with all my mind, and with all my soul, is the same type of Mau Mau here that they had over there in Kenya. Don’t you ever be ashamed of the Mau Mau. They’re not to be ashamed of. They are to be proud of. Those brothers were freedom fighters.

Not only brothers, there were sisters over there. I met a lot of them. They’re brave. They hug you and kiss you, glad to see you. In fact, if they were over here, they’d get this problem straightened up just like that. I read a little story once, and Mau Mau proved it. I read a story once where someone asked some group of people how many of them wanted freedom. They all put up their hand. Think there were about 300 of them. Then the person says, “Well, how many of you are ready to kill anybody who gets in your way for freedom?” About fifty put up their hands. And he told those fifty, “You stand over here.” That left 250 sitting who wanted freedom, but weren’t ready to kill for it. So he told this fifty, “Now you wanted freedom and you said you’d kill anybody who’d get in your way. You see those 250? You get them first. Some of them are your own brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers. But they’re the ones who stand in the way of your freedom. They’re afraid to do whatever is necessary to get it and they’ll stop you from doing it. Get rid of them and freedom will come naturally.”

I go for that. That’s what the Mau Mau learned. The Mau Mau realized that the only thing that was standing in the way of the independence of the African in Kenya was another African. So they started getting them one by one, all those Toms. One after another, they’d find another Uncle Tom African by the roadside. Today they’re free. The white man didn’t even get involved, he got out of the way. That’s the same thing that will happen here. We’ve got too many of our own people who stand in the way. They’re too squeamish. They want to be looked upon as respectable Uncle Toms. They want to be looked upon by the white man as responsible. They don’t want to be classified by him as extremist, or violent, or, you know, irresponsible. They want that good image. And nobody who’s looking for a good image will ever be free. No, that kind of image doesn’t get you free. You’ve got to take something in your hand and say, “Look, it’s you or me.” And I guarantee you he’ll give you freedom then. He’ll say, “This man is ready for it.” I said something in your hand, I won’t define what I mean by “something in your hand.” I don’t mean bananas.

So, we are honored to have with us tonight not only a freedom fighter, but some singers on that program today, I think they’re all here; I asked them to come out tonight because they sang one song that just knocked me out. I’m not one who goes for “We Shall Overcome.” I just don’t believe, we’re going to overcome, singing. If you’re going to get yourself a .45 and start singing “We Shall Overcome,” I’m with you. But I’m not for singing that doesn’t at the same time tell you how to get something to use after you get through singing. I realize I’m saying some things that you think can get me in trouble, but, brothers, I was born in, trouble. I don’t even care about trouble. I’m interested in one thing alone, and that’s freedom, by any means necessary. So I’ll bring you now the country’s number one freedom-fighting woman.

[Mrs. Hamer speaks.]

Now you see why Mississippi is in trouble. And I hope that our brothers, especially our brothers here in Harlem, listened very well, very closely, to what I call one of this country’s foremost freedom fighters. You don’t have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is be an intelligent human being. And automatically, your intelligence makes you want freedom so badly that you’ll do anything, by any means necessary, to get that freedom. And I want Mrs. Hamer to know that anything we can do to help them in Mississippi, we’re at their disposal. One of the things that we will definitely provide you with, because I think it’s the only real help that you can get down there: You can let those hooded people know that, from here on in, when they start taking the lives of innocent black people, we believe in tit for tat. If I were to go home and find some blood on the leg of one of my little girls, and my wife told me that a snake bit the child, I’d go looking for the snake. And if I found the snake, I wouldn’t necessarily take time to see if it had blood on its jaws. As far as I’m concerned the snake is the snake. So if snakes don’t want someone hunting snakes indiscriminately, I say that snakes should get together and clean out their snakey house. If snakes don’t want people running around indiscriminately chopping off the heads of snakes, my advice to snakes would be to keep their house in order. I think you well understand what I’m saying. Now those were twenty one snakes that killed those three brothers down there. Twenty-one of those are snakes. And there is no law in any society on earth that would hold it against anyone for taking the heads of those snakes.

Believe it, the whole world would honor you or honor anyone who did what the federal government refused to do. We should let them know that we believe in giving them what they deserve. There are brothers around the country right now, a lot of them, who feel like I do, a lot of them who feel like I do. I’ve even met white students who feel that way. When they tell me that they’re liberal, I tell them, “Great, go get me one of those snake heads.” I’m sincere about this. I think that there are many whites who are sincere, especially at the student level. They just don’t know how to show their sincerity. They think that they’re showing sincerity by going down there and encouraging our people to be nonviolent. That’s not where it’s at. Since they’re white, they can get closer to whitey than we can. They can put on a sheet and walk right on into camp with the rest of them. I’m telling you how to do it: You’re a liberal; get you a sheet. And get you something up under that sheet that you know how to use, and walk right on in that camp of sheeted people with the rest of them. And show how liberal you are. I’ll come back and shake your hand all day long. I’ll walk you around Harlem and tell everybody what a good white person you are. Because you’ve proved it. But I don’t accept any nonviolent liberals. This doesn’t mean that you’ve got to be violent; but it does mean that you can’t be nonviolent.

Harvard Law School Forum (December 16, 1964)

2013-07-04T17:10:00.003-07:00

I first want to thank the Harvard Law School Forum for the invitation to speak here this evening, more especially to speak on a very timely topic—“The African Revolution and Its Impact on the American Negro.” I probably won’t use the word “American Negro,” but substitute “Afro-American.” And when I say Afro-American, I mean it in the same context in which you usually use the word Negro. Our people today are increasingly shying away from use of that word. They find that when you’re identified as Negro, it tends to make you “catch a whole lot of hell” that people who don’t use it don’t catch.

In the present debate over the Congo, you are probably aware that a new tone and a new tempo, almost a new temper, are being reflected among African statesmen toward the United States. And I think we should be interested in and concerned with what impact this will have upon Afro-Americans and how it will affect America’s international race relations. We know that it will have an effect at the international level. It’s already having such an effect. But I am primarily concerned with what effect it will have on the internal race relations of this country—that is to say, between the Afro-American and the white American.

When you let yourself be influenced by images created by others, you’ll find that oftentimes the one who creates those images can use them to mislead you and misuse you. A good example: A couple of weeks ago I was on a plane with a couple of Americans, a male and a female sitting to my right. We were in the same row and had a nice conversation for about thirty-five to forty minutes. Finally the lady looked at my briefcase and said, “I would like to ask you a personal question,” and I knew what was coming. She said, “What kind of last name could you have that begins with X?” I said, “Malcolm.” Ten minutes went by, and she turned to me and said, “You’re not Malcolm X?” You see, we had a nice conversation going, just three human beings, but she was soon looking at the image created by the press. She said so: “I just wouldn’t believe that you were that man,” she said. I had a similar experience last week at Oxford. The Oxford Union had arranged a debate. Before the debate I had dinner with four students. A girl student looked kind of crosseyed, goggle-eyed and otherwise, and finally just told me she wanted to ask me a question. (I found out she was a conservative, by the way, whatever that is.) She said, “I just can’t get over your not being as I had expected.” I told her it was a case of the press carefully creating images.

Again I had a similar experience last night. At the United Nations a friend from Africa came in with a white woman who is involved with a philanthropic foundation over there. He and I were engaged in conversation for several minutes, and she was in and out of the conversation. Finally I heard her whisper to someone off to the side. She didn’t think I was listening. She said-she actually said this—”He doesn’t look so wild, you know.” Now this is a full-grown, so-called “mature” woman. It shows the extent to which the press can create images. People looking for one thing actually miss the boat because they’re looking for the wrong thing. They are looking for someone with horns, someone who is a rabble-rouser, an irrational, antisocial extremist. They expect to hear me say that Negroes should kill all the white people—as if you could kill all the white people! In fact, if I had believed what they said about the people in Britain, I never would have gone to Oxford. I would have let it slide. When I got there I didn’t go by what I had read about them. I found out they were quite human and likable. Some weren’t what I had expected.

Now I have taken time to discuss images because one of the sciences used and misused today is this science of image making. The power structure uses it at the local level, at the national level, at the international level. And oftentimes when you and I feel we’ve come to a conclusion on our own, the conclusion is something that someone has invented for us through the images he has created.

I’m a Muslim. Now if something is wrong with being Muslim, we can argue, we can “get with it.” I’m a Muslim, which means that I believe in the religion of Islam. I believe in Allah, the same God that many of you would probably believe in if you knew more about Him. I believe in all of the prophets: Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad. Most of you are Jewish, and you believe in Moses; you might not pick Jesus. If you’re Christians, you believe in Moses and Jesus. Well, I’m Muslim, and I believe in Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. I believe in all of them. So I think I’m “way up on you.”

In Islam we practice prayer, charity, fasting. These should be practiced in all religions. The Muslim religion also requires one to make the pilgrimage to the Holy City of Mecca. I was fortunate enough to make it in April, and I went back again in September. Insofar as being a Muslim is concerned, I have done what one is supposed to do to be a Muslim. Despite being a Muslim, I can’t overlook the fact that I’m an Afro-American in a country which practices racism against black people. There is no religion under the sun that would make me forget the suffering that Negro people have undergone in this country. Negroes have suffered for no reason other than that their skins happen to be black. So whether I’m Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist or agnostic, I would still be in the front lines with Negro people fighting against the racism, segregation, and discrimination practiced in this country at all levels in the North, South, East, and West. I believe in the brotherhood of all men, but I don’t believe in wasting brotherhood on anyone who doesn’t want to, practice it with me. Brotherhood is a two-way street. I don’t think brotherhood should be practiced with a man just because his skin is white. Brotherhood should hinge upon the deeds and attitudes of a man. I couldn’t practice brotherhood, for example, with some of those Eastlands or crackers in the South who are responsible for the condition of our people.

I don’t think anyone would deny either that if you send chickens out of your barnyard in the morning, at nightfall those chickens will come home to roost in your barnyard. Chickens that you send out always come back home. It is a law of nature. I was an old farm boy myself, and I got in trouble saying this once, but it didn’t stop me from being a farm boy. Other people’s chickens don’t come to roost on your doorstep, and yours don’t go to roost on theirs. The chickens that this country is responsible for sending out, whether the country likes it or not (and if you’re mature, you look at it “like it is”), someday, and someday soon, have got to come back home to roost.

Victims of racism are created in the image of racists. When the victims struggle vigorously to protect themselves from violence of others, they are made to appear in the image of criminals; as the criminal image is projected onto the victim. The recent situation in the Congo is one of the best examples of this. The headlines were used to mislead the public, to create wrong images. In the Congo, planes were bombing Congolese villages, yet Americans read that American-trained anti-Castro Cuban pilots were bombing rebel strongholds. These pilots were actually dropping bombs on villages with women and children. But because the tags “American-trained” and “anti-Castro Cubans” were applied, the bombing was legal. Anyone against Castro is all right. The press gave them a “holier than thou” image. And you let them get away with it because of the labels. The victim is made the criminal. It is really mass murder, murder of women, children, and babies. And mass murder is disguised as a humanitarian project. They fool nobody but the people of America. They don’t fool the people of the world, who see beyond the images.

Their man in the Congo is Tshombe, the murderer of the rightful Prime Minister of the Congo. No matter what kind of language you use, he’s purely and simply a murderer. The real Prime Minister of the Congo was Patrice Lumumba. The American government-your and my government-took this murderer and hired him to run the Congo. He became their hired killer. And to show what a hired killer he is, his first act was to go to South Africa and to hire more killers, paying them with American dollars. But he is glorified because he is given the image of the only one who could bring stability to the Congo. Whether he can bring stability or not, he’s still a murderer. The headlines spoke of white hostages, not simply hostages, but white hostages, and of white nuns and priests, not simply nuns and priests, but white nuns and priests. Why? To gain the sympathy of the white public of America. The press had to shake up your mind in order to get your sympathy and support for criminal actions. They tricked you. Americans consider forty white lives more valuable than four thousand black lives. Thousands of Congolese were losing their lives. Mercenaries were paid with American dollars. The American press made the murderers look like saints and the victims like criminals. They made criminals look like victims and indeed the devil look like an angel and angels like the devil.  A friend of mine from Africa, who is in a good position to know, said he believed the United States government is being advised by her worst enemy in the Congo, because an American citizen could not suggest such insane action—especially identifying with Tshombe, who is the worst African on earth.

You cannot find an African on earth who is more hated than Tshombe. It’s a justifiable hatred they have toward him. He has won no victory himself. His Congolese troops have never won a victory for him. Every victory has been won by white mercenaries, who are hired to kill for him. The African soldiers in the Congo are fighting for the Stanleyville government. Here Tshombe is a curse. He’s an insult to anyone who means to do right, black or white. When Tshombe visited Cairo, he caused trouble. When he visited Rome last week, he caused trouble, and the same happened in Germany. Wherever Tshombe goes, trouble erupts. And if Tshombe comes to America, you’ll see the worst rioting, bloodshed, and violence this country has ever seen. Nobody wants this kind of man in his country.

What effect does all this have on Afro-Americans? What effect will it have on race relations in this country? In the U.N. at this moment, Africans are using more uncompromising language and are heaping hot fire upon America as the racist and neocolonial power par excellence. African statesmen have never used this language before. These statesmen are beginning to connect the criminal, racist acts practiced in the Congo with similar acts in Mississippi and Alabama. The Africans are pointing out that the white American government—not all white people—has shown just as much disregard for lives wrapped in black skin in the Congo as it shows for lives wrapped in black skin in Mississippi and in Alabama. When Africans, therefore, as well as we begin to think of Negro problems as interrelated, what will be the effect of such thinking on programs for improved race relations in this country? Many people will tell you that the black man in this country doesn’t identify with Africa. Before 1959, many Negroes didn’t. But before 1959, the image of Africa was created by an enemy of Africa, because Africans weren’t in a position to create and project their own images. The image was created by the imperial powers of Europe.

Europeans created and popularized the image of Africa as a jungle, a wild place where people were cannibals, naked and savage in a countryside overrun with dangerous animals. Such an image of the Africans was so hateful to Afro-Americans that they refused to identify with Africa. We did not realize that in hating Africa and the Africans we were hating ourselves. You cannot hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree itself. Negroes certainly cannot at the same time hate Africa and love themselves. We Negroes hated the American features: the African nose, the shape of our lips, the color of our skin, the texture of our hair. We could only end up hating ourselves. Our skin became a trap, a prison; we felt inferior, inadequate, helpless. It was not an image created by Africans or by Afro-Americans, but by an enemy.

Since 1959 the image has changed. The African states have emerged and achieved independence. Black people in this country are crying out for their independence and show a desire to make a fighting stand for it. The attitude of the Afro-American cannot be disconnected from the attitude of the African. The pulse beat, the voice, the very life-drive that is reflected in the African is reflected today here among the Afro-Americans. The only way you can really understand the black man in America and the changes in his heart and mind is to fully understand the heart and mind of the black man on the African continent; because it is the same heart and the same mind, although separated by four hundred years and by the Atlantic Ocean. There are those who wouldn’t like us to have the same heart and the same mind for fear that that heart and mind might get together. Because when our people in this country received a new image of Africa, they automatically united through the new image of themselves. Fear left them completely. There was fear, however, among the racist elements and the State Department. Their fear was of our sympathy for Africa and for its hopes and aspirations and of this sympathy developing into a form of alliance. It is only natural to expect us today to turn and look in the direction of our homeland and of our motherland and to wonder whether we can make any contact with her.

I grew up in Lansing, Michigan, a typical American city. In those days, a black man could have a job shining shoes or waiting tables. The best job was waiting tables at the country club, as is still the case in most cities. In those days, if a fellow worked at the State House shining shoes, he was considered a big shot in the town. Only when Hitler went on the rampage in 1939, and this country suffered a manpower shortage, did the black man get a shot at better jobs. He was permitted a step forward only when Uncle Sam had his back to the wall and needed him. In 1939, ‘40, and ‘41, a black man couldn’t even join the Army or Navy, and when they began drafting, they weren’t drafting black soldiers but only white. I think it was well agreed upon and understood: if you let the black man get in the Army, get hold of a gun, and learn to shoot it, you wouldn’t have to tell him what the target was. It was not until the Negro leaders (and in this sense I use the word Negro purposely) began to cry out and complain—”If white boys are gonna die on the battlefields, our black boys must die on the battlefields tool”—that they started drafting us. If it hadn’t been for that type of leadership, we never would have been drafted. The Negro leaders just wanted to show that we were good enough to die too, although we hadn’t been good enough to join the Army or Navy prior to that time.

During the time that Hitler and Tojo were on the rampage, the black man was needed in the plants, and for the first time in the history of America, we were given an opportunity on a large scale to get skills in areas that were closed previously to us. When we got these skills, we were put in a position to get more money. We made more money. We moved to a better neighborhood. When we moved to a better neighborhood, we were able to go to a better school and to get a better education, and this put us into a position to know what we hadn’t been receiving up to that time. Then we began to cry a little louder than we had ever cried before. But this advancement never was out of Uncle Sam’s goodwill. We never made one step forward until world pressure put Uncle Sam on the spot. And it was when he was on the spot that he allowed us to take a couple of steps forward. It has never been out of any internal sense of morality or legality or humanism that we were allowed to advance. You have been as cold as an icicle whenever it came to the rights of the black man in this country. Excuse me for raising my voice, but I think it’s time. As long as my voice is the only thing I raise, I don’t think you should become upset!

Because we began to cry a little louder, a new strategy was used to handle us. The strategy evolved with the Supreme Court desegregation decision, which was written in such tricky language that every crook in the country could sidestep it. The Supreme Court desegregation decision was handed down over ten years ago. It has been implemented less than ten percent in those ten years. It was a token advancement, even as we’ve been the recipients of “tokenism” in education, housing, employment, everything. But nowhere in the country during the past ten years has the black man been treated as a human being in the same context as other human beings. He’s always being patronized in a very paternalistic way, but never has he been given an opportunity to function as a human being. Actually, in one sense, it’s our own fault, but I’ll get to that later on. We have never gotten the real thing.

Heck, I’ll get to it right now. The reason we never received the real thing is that we have not displayed any tendency to do the same for ourselves which other human beings do: to protect our humanity and project our humanity. I’ll clarify what I mean. Not a single white person in America would sit idly by and let someone do to him what we black men have been letting others do to us. The white person would not remain passive, peaceful, and nonviolent. The day the black man in this country shows others that we are just as human as they in reaction to injustice, that we are willing to die just as quickly to protect our lives and property as whites have shown, only then will our people be recognized as human beings. It is inhuman, absolutely subhuman, for a man to let a dog bite him and not fight back. Let someone club him and let him not fight back, or let someone put water hoses on his women, his mother and daughter and babies and let him not fight back then he’s subhuman. The day he becomes a human being he will react as other human beings have reacted, and nobody will hold it against him.

In 1959, we saw the emergence of the Negro revolt and the collapse of European colonialism on the African continent. Our struggle, our initiative, and our militancy were in tune with the struggle and initiative and militancy of our brothers in Africa. When the colonial powers saw they couldn’t remain in Africa, they behaved as somebody playing basketball. He gets the basketball and must pass it to a teammate in the clear. The colonial powers were boxed in on the African continent. They didn’t intend to give up the ball. They just passed it to the one that was in the clear, and the one that was in the clear was the United States. The ball was passed to her, and she picked it up and has been running like mad ever since. Her presence on the African continent has replaced the imperialism and the colonialism of Europeans. But it’s still imperialism and colonialism. Americans fooled many of the Africans into thinking that they weren’t an imperialist power or colonial power until their intentions were revealed, until they hired Tshombe and put him back to kill in the Congo. Nothing America could have done would have ever awakened the Africans to her true intentions as did her dealings with this murderer named Tshombe.

America knew that Africa was waking up in ‘59. Africa was developing a higher degree of intelligence than she reflected in the past. America, for her part, knew she had to use a more intelligent approach. She used the friendly approach: the Peace Corps, Crossroads. Such philanthropic acts disguised American imperialism and colonialism with dollar-ism. America was not honest with what she was doing. I don’t mean that those in the Peace Corps weren’t honest. But the Corps was being used more for political purposes than for moral purposes. I met many white Peace Corps workers while on the African continent. Many of them were properly motivated and were making a great contribution. But the Peace Corps will never work over there until the idea has been applied over here.

Of course the Civil Rights Bill was designed supposedly to solve our problem. As soon as it was passed, however, three civil rights workers were murdered. Nothing has been done about it, and I think nothing will be done about it until the people themselves do something about it. I, for one, think the best way to stop the Ku Klux Klan is to talk to the Ku Klux Klan in the only language it understands, for you can’t talk French to someone who speaks German and communicate. Find out what language a person speaks, speak their language, and you’ll get your point across. Racists know only one language, and it is doing the black man in this country an injustice to expect him to talk the language of peace to people who don’t know peaceful language. In order to get any kind of point across our people must speak whatever language the racist speaks.

The government can’t protect us. The government has not protected us. It is time for us to do whatever is necessary by any means necessary to protect ourselves. If the government doesn’t want us running around here wild like that, then I say let the government get up off its whatever it’s on, and take care of it itself. After the passage of the Civil Rights Bill, they killed the Negro educator Pitt in Georgia. The killers were brought to court and then set free. This is the pattern in this country, and I think that white people (I use the word white people because it’s cut short; it gets right to the point) are doing us an injustice. If you expect us to be nonviolent, you yourselves aren’t. If someone came knocking on your door with a rifle, you’d walk out of the door with your rifle. Now the black man in this country is getting ready to do the same thing.

I say in conclusion that the Negro problem has ceased to be a Negro problem. It has ceased to be an American problem and has now become a world problem, a problem for all humanity. Negroes waste their time confining their struggle to civil rights: In that context the problem remains only within the jurisdiction of the United States. No allies can help Negroes without violating United States protocol.

But today the black man in America has seen his mistake and is correcting it by lifting his struggle from the level of civil rights to the level of human rights. No longer does the United States government sit in an ivory tower where it can point at South Africa, point at the Portuguese, British, French, and other European colonial powers. No longer can the United States hold twenty million black people in second-class citizenship and think that the world will keep a silent mouth. No matter what the independent African states are doing in the United Nations, it is only a flicker, a glimpse, a ripple of what this country is in for in the future, unless a halt is brought to the illegal injustices which our people continue to suffer every day.

The Organization of Afro-American Unity, to which I belong, is a peaceful organization based on brotherhood. Oh yes, it is peaceful. But I believe you can’t have peace until you’re ready to protect it. As you will die protecting yours, I will die protecting mine. The OAAU is trying to get our problem before the United Nations. This is one of its immediate projects on the domestic front. We will work with all existing civil rights organizations. Since there has been talk of minimizing demonstrations and of becoming involved in political action, we want to see if civil rights organizations mean it.

The OAAU will become involved in every move to secure maximum opportunity for black people to register peacefully as voters. We believe that along with voter registration, Afro-Americans need voter education. Our people should receive education in the science of politics so that the crooked politician cannot exploit us. We must put ourselves in a position to become active politically. We believe that the OAAU should provide defense units in every area of this country where workers are registering or are seeking voting rights, in every area where young students go out on the battlefront, which it actually is. Such self-defense units should have brothers who will not go out and initiate aggression, but brothers who are qualified, equipped to retaliate when anyone imposes brutally on us, whether it be in Mississippi, Massachusetts, California, or New York City. The OAAU doesn’t believe it should permit civil rights workers to be murdered.

When a government can’t protect civil rights workers, we believe we should do it. Even in the Christian Bible it says that he who kills with the sword shall be killed by the sword, and I’m not against it. I’m for peace, yet I believe that any man facing death should be able to go to any length to assure that whoever is trying to kill him doesn’t have a chance. The OAAU supports the plan of every civil rights group for political action, as long as it doesn’t involve compromise. We don’t believe Afro-Americans should be victims any longer. We believe we should let the world know, the Ku Klux Klan know, that bloodshed is a twoway street, that dying is a two-way street, that killing is a two-way street. Now I say all this in as peaceful a language as I know.

There was another man back in history whom I read about once, an old friend of mine whose name was Hamlet, who confronted, in a sense, the same thing our people are confronting here in America. Hamlet was debating whether “To be or not to be”—that was the question. He was trying to decide whether it was “nobler in the mind to suffer, peacefully, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” or whether it was nobler “to take up arms” and oppose them. I think his little soliloquy answers itself. As long as you sit around suffering the slings and arrows and are afraid to use some slings and arrows yourself, you’ll continue to suffer. The OAAU has come to the conclusion that it is time to take up whatever means necessary to bring these sufferings to a halt.

* * *

Alan Dershowitz: The floor will be open for questions.

Question: Mr. X, do you feel that the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Dr. Martin Luther King has in any way helped the Negro cause in the United States?

Malcolm X: Black people in this country have no peace and have not made the strides forward that would in any way justify receiving a reward by any of us. The war is not won nor has any battle been won. But I have no comment to make about my good friend, Dr. King.

Question: Sir, I would like to know the difference between a white racist and a black racist, besides the fact that they are white and black.

Malcolm X: Usually the black racist has been produced by the white racist. And in most cases, black racism is in reaction to white racism. If you analyze it very closely, you will find that it is not black racism. Black people have shown fewer tendencies toward racism than any people since the beginning of history. I cannot agree with my brother here who says that Negroes are immoral; that’s what I get out of what he said. It is the whites who have committed violence against us.

Question: I am one of the whites who agrees with you one hundred percent. You pointed out that the majority of Negro people voted for Johnson, and then he invaded the Congo, something which Goldwater did not even advocate. What do you propose that black people should do in future elections?

Malcolm X: First our people should become registered voters. But they should not become actively involved in politics until we have also gotten a much better understanding of the game of politics in this country. We go into politics in a sort of gullible way, where politics in this country is cold-blooded and heartless. We need a better understanding of the science of politics as well as becoming registered voters. And then we should not take sides either way. We should reserve political action for the situation at hand, in no way identifying with either political party (the Democrats or the Republicans) or selling ourselves to either party. We should take political action for the good of human beings; that will eliminate the injustices. I for one do not think that the man presently in the White House is morally capable of taking the kind of action necessary to eliminate these things.

Question: Mr. X, your idea of an Afro-American is a very hard lump to swallow. James Baldwin, in describing a conference of African writers and politicians which took place in Paris in 1956, reported that the conference had difficulty in defining an African personality common to all countries in Africa and to the American Negroes. The members of the conference, including James Baldwin, began to realize that there was a big rift between American Negroes and the people from Africa. The American Negro has a totally different set of values and ideas from that of the African. Therefore, if you still talk about the Afro-American in which the only connection is the color of the skin, this is a racist concept. Why emphasize Afro-American, which is a racist concept and a reactionary concept, instead of something more positive?

Malcolm X: I do not think that anything is more positive than accepting what you are. The Negro in America tries to be more American than anyone else. The attempt has created a person who is actually negative in almost everything he reflects. We are just as much African today as we were in Africa four hundred years ago, only we are a modern counterpart of it. When you hear a black man playing music, whether it is jazz or Bach, you still hear African music. The soul of Africa is still reflected in the music played by black men. In everything else we do we still are African in color, feeling, everything. And we will always be that whether we like it or not.

Malcolm X with Dick Gregory At the Audubon Ballroom (Dec. 13, 1964)

2013-07-04T16:54:00.003-07:00

Brothers and sisters: We’re very happy to see so many of you out on such a foggy night. We hope that we haven’t kept you too long, but a very good friend of mine, and a very good friend of yours, is on his way here and I didn’t want to have too much to say in front of him. He’s a person whose actions in the past have actually spoken for themselves. He’s a master of revolution. We’re living in a revolutionary world and in a revolutionary age, but you and I have never met a real dyed-in-the-wool black revolutionary before. So tonight we want to unveil one.

Also, I should explain that one of the reasons that the meeting started late was that we had a movie (right now I’m wrestling with this American mic), we had a movie that we wanted to show on the Congo, which I believe you would have enjoyed and would also have set the tone for what our guest will have to say when he arrives. Due to technical difficulties, which are to be expected in a highly technical society that’s kind of running out of gas, we couldn’t show the movie. But we will show it at a later date. (Either this microphone is way off or I’m getting weak.)

The purpose of our meeting tonight, as was announced, was to show the relationship between the struggle that is going on on the African continent and the struggle that’s going on among the Afro-Americans here in this country. I, for one, would like to impress, especially upon those who call themselves leaders, the importance of realizing the direct connection between the struggle of the Afro-American in this country and the struggle of our people all over the world. As long as we think—as one of my good brothers mentioned out of the side of his mouth here a couple of Sundays ago— that we should get Mississippi straightened out before we worry about the Congo, you’ll never get Mississippi straightened out. Not until you start realizing your connection with the Congo.

We have to realize what part our struggle has in the over-all world struggle. Secondly, we need allies; and as long as you and I think that we can only get allies from the Bronx, or allies, you know, from up on the Grand Concourse, I mean where you don’t live; as long as you and I think that’s the only source or area from which we and I think that’s the only source or area from which we an get allies, our source of allies is limited. But when we realize how large this earth is and how many different people there are on it, and how closely they resemble us, then when we turn to them for some sort of help or aid or to form alliances, then we’ll make a little faster progress.

Before our visitor gets here, I think it’s important to show the importance of keeping an open mind. You’ll be surprised how fast, how easy it is for someone to steal your and my mind. You don’t think so? We never like to think in terms of being dumb enough to let someone put something over on us in a very deceitful and tricky way. But you and I are living in a very deceitful and tricky society, in a very deceitful and tricky country, which has a very deceitful and tricky government. All of them in it aren’t tricky and deceitful, but most of them are. And any time you have a government in which most of them are deceitful and tricky, you have to be on guard at all times. You have to know how they work this deceit and how they work these tricks. Otherwise you’ll find yourself in a bind.

One of the best ways to safeguard yourself from being deceived is always to form the habit of looking at things for yourself, listening to things for yourself, thinking for yourself, before you try and come to any judgment. Never base your impression of someone on what someone else has said. Or upon what someone else has written. Or upon what you read about someone that somebody else wrote. Never base your judgment on things like that. Especially in this kind of country and in this kind of society which has mastered the art of very deceitfully painting people whom they don’t like in an image that they know you won’t like. So you end up hating your friends and loving their enemies.

An example: I was flying from Algiers to Geneva about three or four weeks ago, and seated beside me on the airplane were a couple of Americans, both white, one a male and the other a female. One was an interpreter who worked in Geneva for the United Nations, the other was a girl who worked in one of the embassies in some part of Algeria. We conversed for about forty or forty- five minutes and then the lady, who had been looking at my briefcase, said, “May I ask you a personal question?” And I said, “Yes.” Because they always do anyway. She said, “What kind of last name do you have that begins with X?” I said, “That’s it, X.” So she said, “X?” “Yes.” “Well, what is your first name?” I said, “Malcolm.” So she waited for about ten minutes and then she said, “You’re not Malcolm X.” And I said, “Yes, I’m Malcolm X. Why, what’s the matter?” And she said, “Well, you’re not what I was looking for.”

What she was looking for was what the newspapers, the press, had created. She was looking for the image that the press had created. Somebody with some horns, you know, about to kill all the white people—as if he could kill all of them, or as if he shouldn’t. She was looking for someone who was a rabble-rouser, who couldn’t even converse with people with blue eyes, you know, someone who was irrational, and things of that sort. I take time to point this out, because it shows how skillfully someone can take a newspaper and build an image of someone so that before you even meet them, you’ll run. You don’t even want to hear what they have to say, you don’t even know them, all you know is what the press has had to say, and the press is white. And when I say the press is white, I mean it is white. And it’s dangerous.

The FBI can feed information to the press to make your neighbor think you’re something subversive. The FBI—they do it very skillfully, they maneuver the press on a national scale; and the CIA maneuvers the press on an international scale. They do all their dirt with the press. They take the newspapers and make the newspapers blow you and me up as if all of us are criminals, all of us are racists, all of us are drug addicts, or all of us are rioting. This is how they do it. When you explode legitimately against the injustices that have been heaped upon you, they use the press to make it look like you’re a vandal. If you were a vandal, you have a right to be a vandal.

They master this imagery, this image-making. They give you the image of an extremist, and from then on anything you do is extreme. You can pull a baby out of the water and save it from drowning—you’re still an extremist, because they projected this image of you. They can create an image of you as a subversive and you can go out and die fighting for the United States—you’re still subversive, because the press has made you a subversive. They can paint the image of you as someone irresponsible, and you can come up with the best program that will save the black man from the oppression of the white man and—when I say oppression, that’s where oppression comes from, the white man. There are some oppressive black people, but they’re only doing what the white man has taught them.

When I say that, I’m not blanketly condemning all whites. All of them don’t oppress. All of them aren’t in a position to. But most of them are, and most of them do. The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make a criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press. It will make the criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.

If you aren’t careful, because I’ve seen some of you get caught in that bag, you run away hating yourself and loving the man—while you are catching hell from the man. You let the man maneuver you into thinking that it’s wrong to fight him when he’s fighting you. He’s fighting you in the morning, fighting you in the noon, fighting you at night and fighting you all in between, and you still think it’s wrong to fight him back. Why? The press. The newspapers make you look wrong. As long as you take a beating, you’re all right. As long as you get your head busted, you’re all right. As long as you let his dogs fight you, you’re all right. Because that’s the press. That’s the image-making press. That thing is dangerous if you don’t guard yourself against it. It’ll make you love the criminal, as I say, and make you hate the one who’s the victim of the criminal.

A good example of what the press can do with its images is the Congo, the area of Africa that our guest, that’s on his way, is going to talk to us about tonight. Right now, in the Congo, defenseless villages are being bombed, black women and children and babies are being blown to bits by airplanes. Where do these airplanes come from? The United States, the U-n-i-t-e-d S-t-a-t- e-s. Yes, and you won’t write that. You won’t write that American planes are blowing the flesh from the bodies of black women and black babies and black men. No. Why? Because they’re American planes. As long as they’re American planes, that’s humanitarian. As long as they’re being piloted by anti-Castro Cubans, that makes it all right. Because Castro’s a villain, and anybody who’s against him, whatever they do, that’s humanitarian. You see how tricky they are? American planes, anti-Castro Cuban pilots, dropping bombs on African villages that have no defense against bombs, and blowing black women to bits. When you drop a bomb, you don’t look to see where it explodes.

They’re doing the same thing as when they dropped it on the Japanese at Hiroshima. They don’t even think about dropping it on Congolese. And you, running around here getting all upset because a few white hostages die, you’re out of your minds, out of your minds. They take the press with their ability to control you with image-making, and they make mass murder, cold-blooded murder, look like a humanitarian project. All these thousands of black people dying, butchered, and you have no compassion in your hearts whatsoever for them, because the victim has been made to look like he’s the criminal and the criminal has been made to look like he’s the victim. Why, you and I should go on a rampage. I mean on a rampage—intelligently.

Let’s just take it one step farther before our guest arrives, to show you how they use this image-making through the press. I’m not condemning the whole press, because some of them are all right; but most of them aren’t. Take Tshombe, there’s a man that you should never let set foot in America. That man is the worst African that was ever born. He’s a cold-blooded murderer. He murdered Patrice Lumumba, the rightful prime minister of the Congo. And what happened there at the time? They used their press to give Tshombe a good image. Yes, the American press. They take this man who’s a murderer, a cold-blooded murderer—didn’t murder just somebody, murdered the prime minister—and they go and use their press to make this man acceptable to the world.

He’ll never be acceptable to the world. The world is not that dumb, not that easily fooled. Now, some of us in this country may be dumb, but not all of us, just some of us. And those that haven’t been fooled will do whatever is necessary to keep that man from setting foot on this continent. He should be afraid to come here. He should think a long time before he comes here. Why? Because they told you and me we came from the Congo. Isn’t that what they told you? I mean, isn’t that what they taught us in school? So we came from the Congo. We’re savages and cannibals and all that kind of stuff from the Congo; they’ve been teaching me all my life I’m from the Congo. I love the Congo. That’s my country. And that’s my people that your airplanes are killing over there.

They take Tshombe and they prop him up with American dollars. They glorify his image with the American press. What’s the first thing he does? Now, Tshombe’s a murderer, he has been hired by the United States to rule the Congo. Yes, that’s all it boils down to. You can put it in a whole lot of pretty language, but we don’t want pretty language for a nasty situation. He’s a murderer, who has been hired by the United States government and is being paid with your tax dollars by the United States government.

And to show you what his thinking is—a hired killer—what’s the first thing he did? He hired more killers. He went out and got the mercenaries from South Africa. And what is a mercenary? A hired killer. That’s all a mercenary is. The anti-Castro Cuban pilots, what are they? Mercenaries, hired killers. Who hired them? The United States. Who hired the killers from South Africa? The United States; they just used Tshombe to do it. Just like they do with us in this country. They get a Negro and hire him and make him a big shot—so he’s a voice of the community—and then he tells all of them to come on in and join the organization with us, and they take it over. Then they give him peace prizes and medals and things. They will probably give Tshombe the peace prize next year for the work that he’s doing. I expect them to, he’ll be the Nobel Peace Prize winner next year. Because he’s doing a good job. But for who? For the man.

So these mercenaries come in, and again, what makes these mercenaries acceptable? The press. The press doesn’t refer to them as hired killers. The press doesn’t refer to them as murderers. The press refers to the brothers in Stanleyville, who are defending their country, as rebels, savages, cannibals. You know, brothers, the press has a grave responsibility, and it also has the responsibility sometimes as an accessory. Because if it allows itself to be used to make criminals look like victims and victims look like criminals, then the press is an accessory to the same crime. They are permitting themselves to be used as a weapon in the hands of those that are actually guilty.

I cite this tonight, before our guest comes—and I was told ten minutes ago that he should be here in ten minutes—I cite this to show you that, just as they do it on an international level, they also do it with us. Anytime black people in this country are not able to be controlled by the man, the press immediately begins to label those black people as irresponsible or as extremists. They put all these old negative labels up there, and you and I do the same thing—we draw back from it. Not because we know anything about them. But we draw back because of the image of them that the man has created.

And if you notice everyone who takes a firm, uncompromising stand against the man—when I say the man, you know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the man that lynches, the man that segregates, the man that discriminates, the man that oppresses and exploits, the man that won’t let you and me have quality education facilities here in Harlem. That man, whoever he is, that’s who I’m talking about. I have to talk about him like this, because if I talk about him any closer, they’ll call me a racist. And I’m not a racist. I’m not against somebody because of their race, but I’m sure against them because of what they’re doing; and if they’re doing wrong, we should stop them, and by any means necessary.

If you’ll notice, as long as the blacks in the Congo were being slaughtered on a mass scale, there was no outcry. But as soon as the lives of a few whites were involved, the whole world became in an uproar. What caused the world to become involved in an uproar? The press. The press made it appear that 2,000 white people are being held hostage. And they started crying in big headlines if any of them were killed. Now the Africans didn’t kill any of them, the brothers there in Stanleyville didn’t kill any of them until the paratroopers landed. If the paratroopers hadn’t invaded their property, nobody would have been killed. They hadn’t killed them up to that point. And many people say it wasn’t the brothers in Stanleyville that killed them; the paratroopers and mercenaries started shooting at everybody.

You think I’m spoofing? I was in London last Sunday, and in the Daily Express a white writer—I must say white, because if I don’t specify that it is a white man writing this, you’d think that I wrote it, or some black man wrote it. Look what he says here in the Daily Express, which is a far from left newspaper, far from liberal. It’s written by Walter Partington from Stanleyville. Just after the paratroopers had dropped, he says, there was “a dusk strike by cannon-firing T-28s flown by Cuban mercenaries”—these are airplanes, flown by Cuban mercenaries; think of it, hired killers from Cuba. Hired by whom? The Americans. All of you living in our country are going to pay for the sins that it has committed.

They “blew up the rebels’ warehouse headquarters and killed the mortar crew... yet more Chinese-made mortar shells are still arriving.” See, they throw this Chinese thing in there to make you prejudiced. They don’t know whether they’re Chinese mortars, but this is how the press does it. It always has words to justify their destruction of the people they’re destroying. “At 7 a.m. troops with Belgian mercenary armor and the Congo Army’s 'Diablos' (Black Devils) paratroops roared into the gunpowder-keg native city of Belge. The troops spotted rebels preparing to open fire from a house”—now, pick up on this—“and smashed their way in, battering down doors and dragging out men, women and children.” Now, there weren’t rebels in the house, these were just black Congolese in the house. And to justify going in and dragging them out and murdering them on the spot, they’ve got to call them rebels.

This is the kind of operation that’s going on in the Congo, and you don’t hear these Negro leaders saying anything about it. I know you don’t like me to use the word Negro, but when I use it, that’s what I’m talking about, knee-grow leaders—because that’s what they are. These aren’t Afro-American leaders, these are Negro leaders. N-E-G-R, capital O.

“A Belgian colonel snatched the camera from Express photographer Reginald Lancaster and said: 'You are both under house arrest and we will deport you on the next plane.'” Why didn’t they want pictures taken? They didn’t want pictures taken of what they were doing. “The column moved on and by noon 10,000 men, women and children were crushed neck to neck under a blazing sun and ringed by Congo Army troops armed with tommy guns. To protect them from the trigger-happy Congo Army there were white bandages around 10,000 heads. For this is a black and white city.” Think about this: “Anyone without the bandage is usually shot.” The bandage distinguishes those already screened or about to be given the treatment, and there are mounds of dead bodies everywhere to indicate those found wanting. Meaning, any Congolese without the bandage around his head was shot on sight, indiscriminately. And this is being written by a white reporter who is not pro-Congolese at all—he’s just telling the story as it actually is. Mass murder, wholesale murder of black people by the white people who are using some black mercenaries.

“I saw one mercenary... gun down four Congolese who burst out of the bush near the airport as I landed. They may or may not have been Simbas. All died. Yet men like Lieutenant John Peters from Wightman Road, Harringay, London, are capable of strong compassion. Today two starving dogs seized No. 7 Commandos’ pet Nigger, a little black kid goat.”

This white mercenary had a little black goat that he named “Nigger.” That’s what they do, anything black they name it nigger. They named you nigger, didn’t they? I see one coming right now. Here comes my nigger, Dick Gregory. Say, Dick, come on up here. We’re going to get Dick investigated. I heard Dick on the Les Crane Show the other night talking about niggers. Say, Dick, look what it says here, here’s my name, just look at it [holding up a copy of Gregory’s book, Nigger]. Come on, I’m going to get him investigated. Get him, brother, don’t let him get away. He’s going to lose all his jobs now. You won’t get another booking—you’ll have to work in Harlem the rest of your life.

Look what it says: “Today, two starving dogs seized No. 7 Commandos’ pet Nigger, a little black kid goat. When we got there, Nigger was dying and John Peters shot him. He turned away and covered his eyes.” Here’s a white mercenary that has been killing so many Congolese they had to stop him up; with no compassion at all, he shot them down. But as soon as his little black goat was bitten by some dogs, he cried. He had more feeling—this is a white man, an Englishman—had more feeling in his heart for a dead goat that was black than he had for all those stacks and stacks and stacks of Congolese who looked just like you and me and Dick Gregory.

So I say, brothers and sisters, it’s not a case of worrying about what’s going on in Africa before we get things straight over here. It’s a case of realizing that the Afro-American problem is not a Negro problem, or an American problem, but a human problem, a problem for humanity. When you realize that, when you look at your and my problem in the context of the entire world and see that it is a world problem, and that there are other people on this earth who look just like you do who also have the same problem, then you and I become allies and we can put forth our efforts in a way to get the best results.

As I announced earlier, Dick, I told them that a friend of mine from Africa who is a real dyed-in-the- wool human revolutionary was on his way here. Then you walked in; they thought I was talking about you. Well, Dick wasn’t the one I was talking about, but Dick is a revolutionary. And Dick is a dyed-in-the-wool African; he doesn’t want to be, but he is. I don’t mean dyed-in-the-wool, I mean African. Dick is one of the foremost freedom fighters in this country. I say that in all sincerity. Dick has been on the battlefront and has made great sacrifices by taking the stand that he has. I’m quite certain that it has alienated many of the people who weren’t alienated from him before he began to take this stand. Whenever you see a person, a celebrity, who is as widely known and as skilled in his profession as Dick, and at the same time has access to almost unlimited bookings which provide unlimited income, and he will jeopardize all of that in order to jump into the frontlines of the battle, then you and I will have to stand behind him. I want Dick also to hear our brother who’s coming, but before he gets here, I think Dick had better talk to us. Come on, Dick. Dick Gregory—without the cigarette.

[Dick Gregory speaks.]

I’m very thankful that Dick has been able to come out with us tonight. As I said, he is a freedom fighter, you see him on the forefront of the battle lines. And in this country, wherever a black man is, there is a battle line. Whether it’s in the North, South, East or West, you and I are living in a country that is a battle line for all of us. And tonight, I’m more than honored with the presence of a person who has been credited with being responsible for correcting the governmental system in an area of this earth where the system wasn’t so good prior to the efforts put forth by him.

Many of you have heard of the island called Zanzibar. Zanzibar was famous for its headquarters as a slave-trading post; in fact, many of us probably passed through there on our way to America 400 years ago. And it was on this island some time last year, I think it was, that the government was overturned when the African element on the island got fed up with the situation that existed.

Overnight they did what was necessary to bring about a change. So today Zanzibar is free. And as soon as it got its freedom, it got together with Tanganyika, where President Nyerere is. And the combination of Zanzibar and Tanganyika recently became known as the Republic of Tanzania: two countries that united and are one of the most militant and uncompromising when it comes to the struggle for freedom for our people on the African continent, as well as over here and anywhere else on this earth.

Most of you know that my purpose for going to Cairo for the summit conference was to try and get the heads of the African states to realize that they had 22 million brothers and sisters here in America who were catching hell; and that they could put forth a great effort and give us a boost, if they would let the world know that they were on our side and with us in our struggle against this racism that we’ve been victimized by in this country for so long. The press tried to make it appear that the African countries, the African heads of state, were in no way concerned with the plight of the Afro- American. But at that conference, toward the end of it, all of the African heads of state got together, and they did pass a resolution thoroughly condemning the continued practice of racism against the Afro-Americans in this country and thoroughly supporting the struggle of the 22 million Afro-Americans in this country for human rights.

And I’m proud to state that the one who was responsible for bringing that resolution forth and getting it agreed upon by the other African heads of state was probably the last one that you and I would expect to do it, because of the image that he’s been given in this country. But the one who came forth and suggested that the African summit conference pass a resolution thoroughly condemning the mistreatment of Afro-Americans in America and also thoroughly supporting the freedom struggle for human rights of our people in this country was President Julius Nyerere. I was honored to spend three hours with him, when I was in Dar es Salaam and Tanganyika, shortly before it became known as Tanzania, for about seven days. The one who made it possible for me to see him is with us here tonight.

When the revolution took place on Zanzibar, you and I read about it in this country. They tried to make it appear that it was something that was Chinese or Soviet, or anything but what it was. They tried again to build that image that would make you and me react to it negatively. And the one the Western press said was the guiding hand behind that successful revolution is with us on the platform tonight. I have the greatest honor to introduce to you at this time the minister of cooperatives and commerce from Tanzania, a man who is very closely associated with President Julius Nyerere, the one who was responsible for bringing freedom to the people on the island of Zanzibar and linking themselves up with Tanganyika and developing it into the Republic of Tanzania. He’s known as Sheik Abdul Rahman Muhammad Babu.

And before he comes forth: He’s just left a dinner with another very good friend of ours, and I say a very good friend of ours. I want to point this out to you, I don’t let anybody choose my friends. And you shouldn’t let anybody choose your friends. You and I should practice the habit of weighing people and weighing situations and weighing groups and weighing governments for ourselves. And don’t let somebody else tell us who our enemies should be and who our friends should be.

I love a revolutionary. And one of the most revolutionary men in this country right now was going to come out here along with our friend, Sheik Babu, but he thought better of it. But he did send this message. It says:

“ Dear brothers and sisters of Harlem, I would have liked to have been with you and Brother Babu, but the actual conditions are not good for this meeting. Receive the warm salutations of the Cuban people and especially those of Fidel, who remembers enthusiastically his visit to Harlem a few years ago. United we will win.”

This is from Che Guevara. I’m happy to hear your warm round of applause in return, because it lets the man know that he’s just not in a position today to tell us who we should applaud for and who we shouldn’t applaud for. And you don’t see any anti-Castro Cubans around here—we eat them up.

Let them go and fight the Ku Klux Klan, or the White Citizens Council. Let them spend some of that energy getting their own house in order. Don’t come up to Harlem and tell us who we should applaud for and shouldn’t applaud for. Or there will be some ex-anti- Castro Cubans.

So, brothers and sisters, again at this time, a very good friend of mine. I’m honored to call him my friend. He treated me as a brother when I was in Dar es Salaam. I met his family, I met his children—he’s a family man. Most people don’t think of revolutionaries as family men. All you see him in is his image on the battle line. But when you see him with his children and with his wife and that atmosphere at home, you realize that revolutionaries are human beings too. So here is a man who’s not only a revolutionary, but he’s a husband—he could be yours; he’s a father—he could be yours; he’s a brother—he could be yours. And I say he is ours. Sheik Babu.

[Babu speaks.]

Brothers and sisters, we’re going to dismiss in five minutes. We want to thank His Excellency, Abdul Rahman Muhammad Babu, for taking the time to come up this evening to give us a good clear picture of how our people back home feel about us. It is very important, as he pointed out—please give us five minutes before you go, we’ll let you go in five minutes—it’s very important for you and me to realize that our people on the African continent are genuinely interested and concerned with the troubles of our people on this continent. It is important that we know that, and then our battle strategy, our plan of battle, will be much different. As long as we think we’re over here in America isolated and all by ourselves and underdogs, then we’ll always have that hat-in-hand begging attitude that the man loves to see us display. But when we know that all of our people are behind us—as he said, almost 500 million of us—we don’t need to beg anybody. All we need to do is remind them what they did to us; that it’s time for them to stop; that if they don’t stop, we will stop them. Yes, we will stop them.

You may say, “Well, how in the hell are we going to stop them? A great big man like this?” Brothers and sisters, always remember this. When you’re inside another man’s house, and the furniture is his, curtains, all those fine decorations, there isn’t too much action he can put down in there without messing up his furniture and his windows and his house. And you let him know that when he puts his hands on you, it’s not only you he puts his hands on, it’s his whole house, you’ll burn it down. You’re in a position to—you have nothing to lose. Then the man will act right. He won’t act right because he loves you or because he thinks you will, you know, not act right. He will only act right when you let him know that you know he has more to lose than you have. You haven’t anything to lose but discrimination and segregation.

Next Sunday night, and we will start on time next Sunday night and end on time and we want all of you to be sure and be out, we’re going deeper into the Congo question. The Organization of Afro-American Unity intends to spell out its own program in regards to how we feel we can best take advantage of the political potential of the black man in this country and also how we can work with other groups to make sure that quality education is returned to Harlem.

Also, I believe, brothers and sisters, and I say with all my heart, we should start a defense fund in Harlem. We should start a fund in Harlem so that we can offer a reward for whoever gets the head of that sheriff in Mississippi who murdered those civil-rights workers in cold blood. You may think I’m out of my mind. Anytime you have a government that will allow the sheriff, not only one sheriff but some sheriffs and their deputies, to kill in cold blood men who are doing nothing other than trying to ascertain the rights for people who have been denied their rights, and these workers are murdered, and the FBI comes up with all of that pretty-sounding language, like they’re going to arrest them and then do nothing but turn them loose—why, then it’s time for you and me to let them know that if the federal government can’t deal with the Klan, then you and I can deal with the Klan. This is the only way you are going to stop it.  The only way you’re going to stop the Ku Klux Klan is stop it yourself.

As Dick Gregory said, the government can’t stop it because the government has infiltrated the Klan and it has infiltrated the government. You and I have got to stop it ourselves. So let’s put a reward on the head of that sheriff, a reward, a dollar, for whoever gets to him first. I know what they’re going to do—if something happens, they’re going to blame me for it. I’ll take the blame.

Oxford Union Debate (December 3, 1964)

2013-07-04T11:58:00.002-07:00

Mr. Chairman, tonight is the first night that I’ve have ever had opportunity to be as near to conservatives as I am. And the speaker who preceded me, first I want to thank you for the invitation to come here to the Oxford Union, the speaker who preceded me is one of the best excuses that I know to prove our point concerning the necessity, sometimes, of extremism, in defense of liberty, why it is no vice, and why moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. I don’t say that about him personally, but that type. He’s right, X is not my real name, but if you study history you’ll find why no black man in the western hemisphere knows his real name. Some of his ancestors kidnapped our ancestors from Africa, and took us into the western hemisphere and sold us there. And our names were stripped from us and so today we don’t know who we really are. I am one of those who admit it and so I just put X up there to keep from wearing his name.

And as far as this apartheid charge that he attributed to me is concerned, evidently he has been misinformed. I don’t believe in any form of apartheid, I don’t believe in any form of segregation, I don’t believe in any form of racialism. But at the same time, I don’t endorse a person as being right just because his skin is white, and often times when you find people like this, I mean that type, when a man whom they have been taught is below them has the nerve or firmness to question some of their philosophy or some of their conclusions, usually they put that label on us, a label that is only designed to project an image which the public will find distasteful. I am a Muslim, if there is something wrong with that then I stand condemned. My religion is Islam I believe in Allah, I believe in Mohammed as the apostle of Allah, I believe in brotherhood, of all men, but I don’t believe in brotherhood with anybody who’s not ready to practice brotherhood with our people.

I just take time to make these few things clear because I find that one of the tricks of the west, and I imagine my good friend...or rather that type from the west...one of the tricks of the west is to use or create images, they create images of a person who doesn’t go along with their views and then they make certain that this image is distasteful, and then anything that that person has to say from thereon, from thereon in, is rejected. And this is a policy that has been practiced pretty well, pretty much by the west, it perhaps would have been practiced by others had they been in power, but during recent centuries the west has been in power and they have created the images, and they’ve used these images quite skillfully and quite successfully, that’s why today we need a little extremism in order to straighten a very nasty situation out, or very extremely nasty situation out.

I think the only way one can really determine whether extremism in the defense of liberty is justified, is not to approach it as an American or a European or an African or an Asian, but as a human being. If we look upon it as different types immediately we begin to think in terms of extremism being good for one and bad for another, or bad for one and good for another. But if we look upon it, if we look upon ourselves as human beings, I doubt that anyone will deny that extremism, in defense of liberty, the liberty of any human being, is a value. Anytime anyone is enslaved, or in any way deprived of his liberty, if that person is a human being, as far as I am concerned he is justified to resort to whatever methods necessary to bring about his liberty again.

But most people usually think, in terms of extremism, as something that is relative, related to someone they know or something that they’ve heard of, I don’t think they look upon extremism by itself, or all alone. They apply it to something. A good example—and one of the reasons that this can’t be too well understood today—many people who have been in positions of power in the past don’t realize that the power, the centers of power, are changing. When you’re in a position of power for a long time you get used to using your yardstick, and you take it for granted that because you’ve forced your yardstick on others, that everyone is still using the same yardstick. So that your definition of extremism usually applies to everyone, but nowadays times are changing, and the center of power is changing. People in the past who weren’t in a position to have a yardstick or use a yardstick of their own are using their own yardstick now. You use one and they use another. In the past when the oppressor had one stick and the oppressed used that same stick, today the oppressed are sort of shaking the shackles and getting yardsticks of their own, so when they say extremism they don’t mean what you do, and when you say extremism you don’t mean what they do. There are entirely two different meanings. And when this is understood I think you can better understand why those who are using methods of extremism are being driven to them.

A good example is the Congo. When the people who are in power want to, again, create an image to justify something that’s bad, they use the press. And they’ll use the press to create a humanitarian image, for a devil, or a devil image for a humanitarian. They’ll take a person whose a victim of the crime, and make it appear he’s the criminal, and they’ll take the criminal and make it appear that he’s the victim of the crime. And the Congo situation is one of the best examples that I can cite right now to point this out. The Congo situation is a nasty example of how a country because it is in power, can take it’s press and make the world accept something that’s absolutely criminal. They take pilots that they say are American trained, and this automatically lends respectability to them, and then they will call them anti-Castro Cubans, and that’s supposed to add to their respectability, and eliminate that fact that they’re dropping bombs on villages where they have no defense whatsoever against such planes, blowing to bits black women, Congolese women, Congolese children, Congolese babies, this is extremism, but it is never referred to as extremism because it is endorsed by the west, it is financed by America, it’s made respectable by America, and that kind of extremism is never labeled as extremism. Because it’s not extremism in defense of liberty, and if it is extremism in defense of liberty as this type just pointed out, it is extremism in defense of liberty for the wrong type of people.

I am not advocating that kind of extremism, that’s cold blooded murder. But the press is used to make that cold blooded murder appear as an act of humanitarianism. They take it one step farther and get a man named Tshombe, who is a murderer, they refer to him as the premier, or prime minister of the Congo, to lend respectability to him, he’s actually the murderer of the rightful Prime Minister of the Congo, they never mention this.

I’m not for extremism in defense of that kind of liberty, or that kind of activity. They take this man, who’s a murderer, and the world recognizes his as a murderer, but they make him the prime minister, he becomes a paid murderer, a paid killer, who is propped up by American dollars. And to show the degree to which he is a paid killer the first thing he does is go to South Africa and hire more killers and bring them into the Congo. They give them the glorious name of mercenary, which means a hired killer, not someone that is killing for some kind of patriotism or some kind of ideal, but a man who is a paid killer, a hired killer. And one of the leaders of them is right from this country here, and he’s glorified as a soldier of fortune when he’s shooting down little black women, and black babies, and black children. I’m not for that kind of extremism, I’m for the kind of extremism that those who are being destroyed by those bombs and destroyed by those hired killers, are able to put forth to thwart it. They will risk their lives at any cost, they will sacrifice their lives at any cost, against that kind of criminal activity. I am for the kind of extremism that the freedom fighters in the Stanleyville regime are able to display against these hired killers, who are actually using some of my tax dollars which I have to pay up in the united states, to finance that operation over there. We’re not for that kind of extremism.

Now again I think you must point out that one of those who are very much involved as accessories to the crime is the press. Not so much your press, but the American press which has tricked your press into repeating what they have invented. But I was reading in one of the English papers this morning, I think it’s a paper called The Express, and it gave a very clear account of the type of criminal activity that has been carried on by the mercenaries that are being paid by United States tax dollars. And it showed where they were killing Congolese, whether they were from the central government or the Stanleyville government, it didn’t make any difference to them, they just killed them. And they had it fixed where those who had been processed had to wear a white bandage around their head, and any Congolese that they saw without their white bandage, they killed them. And this is clearly pointed out and at the beginning of last week there would have been an outcry and no one would have allowed Belgium and the united states and the others who are in cahoots with each other, to carry on the criminal activity that they did in the Congo, which I doubt anyone in the world, even here at Oxford, will accept, not even my friend.

Questioner 1: What exactly sort of extremism would you consider the killing of missionaries?

Malcolm X: I would call it the kind of extremism that was involved when America dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and killed 80,000, or over 80,000 people, men, women, children, everything. It was an act of war. I’d call it the same kind of extremism that happened when England dropped bombs on German cities and Germans dropped bombs on English cities. It was an act of war, and the Congo situation is war, and when you call it war, then anybody that dies, they die a death that is justified. But those who are, but those who are in the Stanleyville regime, sir, are defending their country, those who are coming in are invading their country. And some of the refugees that were questioned on television in this city a couple of days ago pointed out that had the paratroopers not come in they doubted that they would have been molested, they weren’t indeed molested until the paratroopers came in.

I don’t encourage any act of murder nor do I glorify in anyone’s death, but I do think that when the white public uses it’s press to magnify the fact that there are lives of white hostages at stake, they don’t say “hostages,” every paper says “white hostages.” They give me the impression that they attach more importance to a white hostage and a white death, than they do the death of a human being, despite the color of his skin. I feel forced to make that point clear, that I’m not for any indiscriminate killing, nor does the death of so many people go by me without creating some kind of emotion. But I think that white people are making the mistake, and if they read their own newspapers they will have to agree that they, in clear cut language, make a distinction between the type of dying according to the color of the skin. And when you begin thinking in terms of death being death, no matter what type of human being it is, then we all will probably be able to sit down as human beings and get rid of this extremism and moderation. But as long as the situation exists as it is, we’re going to need some extremism, and I think some of you will need some moderation too.

So why would such an act in the Congo, which is so clearly criminal, be condoned? It’s condoned primarily because it has been glorified by the press and has been made to look beautiful, and therefore the world automatically sanctions it. And this is the role that the press plays, if you study back in history different wars, always the press, whenever a country that’s in power wants to step in unjustly and invade someone else’s property, they use the press to make it appear that the area that they are about to invade is filled with savages, or filled with people who have gone berserk, or they are raping white women, molesting nuns, they use the same old tactic year in and year out. Now there was a time when the dark world, people with dark skin, would believe anything that they saw in the papers that originated in Europe. But today, no matter what is put in the paper, they stop and look at it two or three times and try and figure out what is the motive of the writer. And usually they can determine what the motive of the writer is. The powers that be use the press to give the devil an angelic image and give the image of the devil to the one who’s really angelic. They make oppression and exploitation and war actually look like an act of humanitarianism. This is not the kind of extremism that I support or that I go along with.

One of the reasons that I think it is necessary for me to clarify my own point, personally, I was in a conversation with a student here, on the campus, yesterday, and she, after we were, I think we had coffee or dinner or something, there were several of us, I have to add that in for those minds of yours that run astray. And she asked me, she told me that “We’ll I’m surprised that you’re not what I expected,” and I said what do you mean. And she said “well I was looking for your horns”, and so I told her I have them, but I keep them hidden, unless someone draws them out. As my friend, or that type, it takes certain types to draw them out. And this is actually true, usually when a person is looked upon as an extremist, anything that person does in your eyesight is extreme. On the other hand, if a person is looked upon as conservative, just about anything they do is conservative. And this again comes through the manipulating of images. When they want you to think of a certain area or certain group as involved in actions of extremism, the first thing they do is project that person in the image of an extremist. And then anything he does from then on is extreme, you know it doesn’t make any difference whether it is right or wrong, as far as your concerned if the image is wrong, whatever they do is wrong. And this has been done by the western press, and also by the American press, and it has been picked up by the English press and the European press. Whenever any black man in America shows signs of an uncompromising attitude, against the injustices that he experiences daily, and shows no tendency whatsoever to compromise with it, then the American press characterizes him as a radical, as an extremist someone who’s irresponsible, or as a rabble-rouser or someone who doesn’t rationalize in dealing with the problem.

Question: I wonder if you could consider, just briefly, ah, that you have projected, rather successfully, a quite upsetting image of a “type”.

Malcolm X: It depends on what angle [booing against questioner], no let the gentleman bring out his point. It depends on which angle you look at it sir. I never try and hide what I am.

Question: I am referring to your treatment of the previous speaker.

Malcolm X: You are referring to my treatment of the previous speaker? You make my point! That as long as a white man does it, it’s alright, a black man is supposed to have no feelings . But when a black man strikes back he’s an extremist, he’s supposed to sit passively and have no feelings, be nonviolent, and love his enemy no matter what kind of attack, verbal or otherwise, he’s supposed to take it. But if he stands up in any way and tries to defend himself, then he’s an extremist.

No, I think that the speaker who preceded me is getting exactly what he asked for. My reason for believing in extremism, intelligently directed extremism, extremism in defense of liberty, extremism in quest of justice, is because I firmly believe in my heart, that the day that the black man takes an uncompromising step, and realizes that he’s within his rights, when his own freedom is being jeopardized, to use any means necessary to bring about his freedom, or put a halt to that injustice, I don’t think he’ll be by himself. I live in America where there are only 22 million blacks against probably 160 million whites. One of the reasons that I am in no way reluctant or hesitant to do whatever is necessary to see that black people do something to protect themselves, I honestly believe that the day that they do, many whites will have more respect for them, and there’ll be more whites on their side than there are now on their side with these little wishy-washy “love thy enemy” approach that they have been using up until now. And if I am wrong than you are racialist.

As I said earlier, in my conclusion, I’m a Muslim. I believe in Allah, I believe in Mohammed, I believe in all of the prophets, I believe in fasting, prayer, charity, and that which is incumbent on a Muslim to fulfill in order to be a Muslim. In April I was fortunate to make the Hajj to Mecca, and went back again in September, to try and carry out my religious functions and requirements, but at the same time that I believe in that religion, I have to point out that I am an American Negro. And I live in a society whose social system is based upon the castration of the black man, whose political system is based upon castration of the black man, and whose economy is based upon the castration of the black man.

A society which, in 1964, has more subtle, deceptive, deceitful methods to make the rest of the world think that it’s cleaning up it’s house, while at the same time, the same things are happening to us in 1964 that happened in 1954, 1924 and 1884. They came up with a civil rights bill in 1964, supposedly to solve our problem, and after the bill was signed, three civil rights workers were murdered in cold blood. And the FBI head, Hoover, admits that they know who did it, they’ve known ever since it happened, and they’ve done nothing about it. Civil rights bill down the drain. No matter how many bills pass, black people in that country, where I’m from, still our lives are not worth two cents. And the government has shown it’s inability, or either it’s unwillingness to do whatever is necessary to protect black property where the black citizen is concerned. So my contention is that whenever a people come to the conclusion that the government, which they have supported, proves itself unwilling, or proves itself unable to protect our lives and protect our property, because we have the wrong color skin, we are not human beings unless we ourselves band together and do whatever, however, whenever, is necessary to see that our lives and our property is protected, and I doubt that any person in here would refuse to do the same thing if he were in the same position, or I should say were he in the same condition.

Just one step farther to see if I am justified in this stance, and I am speaking as a black man from America which is a racist society, no matter how much you hear it talk about democracy it’s as racist as South Africa or as racist as Portugal or as racist as any other racialist society on this earth. The only difference between it and South Africa, South Africa preaches separation and practices separation, America preaches integration and practices segregation. This is the only difference, they don’t practice what they preach, whereas South Africa practices and preaches the same thing. I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he’s wrong, than the one comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil.

The system of government that America has consists of committees, there are sixteen senatorial committees that govern the country and twenty congressional committees. Ten of the sixteen senatorial committees are in the hands of southern racialists, senators who are racialists. Thirteen of the twenty, this is before the last election I think it is even more so now, ten of the sixteen senatorial committees are in the hands of senators who are southern racialists, thirteen of the twenty congressional committees were in the hands of southern congressmen who are racialists. Which means out of the thirty-six committees that govern the foreign and domestic direction of that government, twenty-three are in the hands of southern racialists. Men who in no way believe in the equality of man. And men who do anything within their power to see that the black man never gets to the same seat, or to the same level that they’re on. The reason that these men, from that area, have that type of power is because America has a seniority system, and these who have this seniority have been there longer than anyone else because the black people in the areas where they live, can’t vote. And it is only because the black man is deprived of his vote that puts these men in positions of power that gives them such influence in the government beyond their actual intellectual or political ability, or even beyond the number of people from the areas that they represent. 

So we can see, in that country, that no matter what the federal government professes to be doing, the power of the federal government lies in these committees and any time a black man or any type of legislation is proposed to benefit the black man, or give the black man his just due, we find that it is locked up in these committees right here. And when they let something through these committees, usually it is so chopped up and fixed up that by the time it becomes law, it is a law that can’t be enforced.

Another example is the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision that was handed down in 1954. This is a law, and they have not been able to implement this law in New York City or in Boston or in Cleveland or Chicago or the northern cities. And my contention is that any time you have a country, supposedly a democracy, supposedly the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” and it can’t enforce laws, even in the northern most cosmopolitan and progressive part of it, that will benefit a black man, if those laws can’t be enforced, how much heart do you think we will get when they pass some civil rights legislation which only involves more laws. If they can’t enforce this law, they’ll never enforce those laws.

So my contention is, we are faced with a racialistic society, a society in which they are deceitful, deceptive, and the only way we can bring about a change is speak the language that they understand. The racialists never understands a peaceful language, the racialists never understands the nonviolent language, the racialist has spoken his type of language to us for over four hundred years. We have been the victim of his brutality, we are the ones who face his dogs, who tear the flesh from our limbs, only because we want to enforce the Supreme Court decision. We are the ones who have our skulls crushed, not by the Ku Klux Klan, but by policeman, all because we want to enforce what they call the Supreme Court decision. We are the ones upon whom waterhoses are turned on, practically so hard that it rips the clothes from our back, not men, but the clothes from the backs of women and children, you’ve seen it yourself. All because we want to enforce what they call the law. Well any time you live in a society supposedly and it doesn’t enforce it’s own laws, because the color of a man’s skin happens to be wrong, then I say those people are justified to resort to any means necessary to bring about justice where the government can’t give them justice.

I don’t believe in any form of unjustified extremism. But I believe that when a man is exercising extremism, a human being is exercising extremism, in defense of liberty for human beings, it’s no vice. And when one is moderate in the pursuit of justice for human beings, I say he’s a sinner.
And I might add in my conclusion, in fact, America is one of the best examples, when you read its history, about extremism. Ol’ Patrick Henry said “liberty of death”—that’s extremism.

I read once, passingly, about a man named Shakespeare. I only read about him passingly, but I remember one thing he wrote, that kind of moved me. He put it in the mouth of Hamlet, I think it was, who said “to be or not to be”. He was in doubt about something. Whether it was nobler, in the mind of man, to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune— moderation—or to take up arms against the sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them. And I go for that; if you take up arms you’ll end it, but if you sit around and wait for the one who is in power to make up his mind that he should end it, you’ll be waiting a long time. And in my opinion, the young generation of whites, blacks, browns, whatever else there is, you’re living at a time of extremism, a time of revolution, a time when there’s got to be a change, people in power have misused it, and now there has to be a change. And a better world has to be built and the only way it’s going to be built is with extreme methods. And I, for one, will joint in with anyone—don’t care what color you are—as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth. Thank you.

Les Crane Interviews Malcolm X (December 2, 1964)

2013-07-04T11:49:00.003-07:00

Les Crane: My next guest is Mr. Malcolm X, ladies and gentleman. This interview is going to be a little difficult for me to do, because I know Malcolm. We've done shows together before. He's been a guest of mine on a couple of different occasions. We've had telephone conversations of length and interest. And—so to get the story, I'm going to make believe that we've never met, okay?

Malcolm X: That's fine. That's the best way.

Crane: All right. Let's start from the beginning. First of all, what is the Black Muslim movement?

Malcolm X: Well, as you know, I'm not in the Black Muslim movement. But the Black Muslim movement is an organization in this country that's headed by Elijah Muhammad.

Crane: That's all?

Malcolm X: It's an organization that's headed by Elijah Muhammad. It says it's a religious organization and that its religion is Islam. But the people in the world of Islam don't accept it as an orthodox Islamic religious organization.

Crane: In other words, they claim to be a branch, an American branch, of the Muhammadan religion.

Malcolm X: No, not the Muhammadan. The real Muslim never refers to his religion as the Muhammadan religion. His religion is Islam.

Crane: Muhammad being the prophet of that...

Malcolm X: Muhammad is one of the prophets of that religion. The people who believe in that religion believe in all of the prophets—Moses, Abraham, Jesus, all of them. But they believe in Muhammad ibn Abd Allah as the last of the prophets. And Elijah Muhammad in this country says that he is also teaching that religion. But that religion is a religion of brotherhood. It advocates the brotherhood of man, all men.

Crane: That's the Muslim religion?

Malcolm X: Yes. This is the...well, those who practice the religion of Islam call themselves Muslims. In this country they're referred to as Moslems.

Crane: Now, you consider yourself to be a Moslem in this country?

Malcolm X: I'm a Muslim. I believe in the religion of Islam.

Crane: And you are no longer a member of the Black Muslims?

Malcolm X: No, no.

Crane: Now what caused that split?

Malcolm X: Well actually, I don't think that it's any...that it contributes anything constructive to go into what caused the split. I'm not in it. I was inseparable from it while I was in it. But now I'm not. I leave it in the past.

Crane: Well, I don't know how valuable it would be...you know, it was inconceivable to think of the Black Muslim movement in this country without thinking of Malcolm X. You were Elijah Muhammad's right-hand man and his leading spokesman, as well as the head of the mosque in New York, which is the largest Black Muslim mosque in the country, as I understood it. And there were certain things that the Black Muslims represented, at least in my mind through your speeches, that I think are worthy of discussion.

Malcolm X: Well, yes. I represented him probably more diligently than all of the rest of his representatives combined. And this somewhat led to the eventual split. Human nature being what it is.

Crane: Sort of like a power play almost?

Malcolm X: Human nature being what it is.

Crane: Call it politics. We'll call it that.

Malcolm X: Yes.

Crane: But also you said that your trip to Africa has changed your thinking and your position to a great extent.

Malcolm X: Yes. One thing...travel always broadens one's scope. Travel does. Twice this year I visited both Africa and the Middle East. The first time I went was in April and May. I went to Mecca. I went primarily to get a better understanding of Islam. There were things that happened between me and Elijah Muhammad that caused me to greatly question his ability as a man, much less as a religious leader. And, based upon that doubt, I went in search of an understanding of the religion of Islam. I made the Hajj or the pilgrimage to Mecca. While I was...one of the things that Elijah Muhammad always taught us was that Islam is a religion of God. It was a religion in which no whites could participate. And he used...to prove his point, he told us that Mecca was a forbidden city. A city that was forbidden to non-Muslims. And since a white person couldn't be a Muslim in his teaching, he said that no white could enter Mecca. Well, I went to Mecca in May...rather, in April...and everyone was there. In fact one member of the Turkish parliament, who had brought busloads, several hundred busloads, from Turkey to make the pilgrimage, was standing with me on the steps of the hotel in Mina, which is a short distance from Mecca. And he pointed out at that time that Mecca, during the Hajj season, or the pilgrimage season, would be an anthropologist's paradise, because every specimen of humanity is represented there. It's an absolute brotherhood. So that when I saw this with my own eyes, and saw that people of all colors could practice brotherhood, it was at that point that I wrote back and pointed out that I believed in Islam as a religion of brotherhood. But this belief in brotherhood doesn't alter the fact that I'm also an Afro-American, or American Negro as you wish, in a society which has very serious and severe race problems which no religion can blind me to.

Crane: Well, what's interesting to me, there are words that you never used to use in the past in our discussions. You never used to use the word Negro. That word offended you. You used to say "the so-called Negro."

Malcolm X: Well, I said Afro-American or American Negro, as you will.

Crane: And you believed also that brotherhood was impossible at one point.

Malcolm X: Let me explain. The reason I say...Afro-American is a term that our people in this country increasingly are beginning to use to identify themselves. But in using it, I take into consideration that many people don't know what is meant by Afro-American, so I use the word Negro to let you know I was still talking about us.

Crane: Integration offends you. You don't believe in the use of that word. You prefer to think of it as brotherhood which is, for the purposes of our discussion, going to be the same thing. But in the old days you didn't believe in brotherhood, you believed in pure strict separation, didn't you?

Malcolm X: Whenever I opened my mouth, I always said that Elijah Muha...the Honorable Elijah Muhammad...teaches us thus and so. And I spoke for him. I represented him. I represented an organization and organizational thinking. Many of my own views that I had from personal experience I kept to myself. I was faithful to that organization and to that man. Since things came about that made me doubt his integrity, I thought...I think for myself, I listen as much as I can to everyone and try and come up with a capsule opinion, capsulized opinion. I believe that it is possible for brotherhood to be brought about among all people, but I don't delude myself into dreaming or falling for a dream that this exists before it exists. Some of the American...some of the leaders of our people in this country always say that they, you know, they believe in this dream. But while they're dreaming, our people are having a nightmare, and I don't think that you can make a dream come true by pretending that that dream exists when it doesn't.

Crane: You've been a critic of some of the Negro leadership in this country—Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, Abernathy, and others—have you changed in your feelings toward them of late?

Malcolm X: I think all of us should be critics of each other. Whenever you can't stand criticism you can never grow. I don't think that it serves any purpose for the leaders of our people to waste their time fighting each other needlessly. I think that we accomplish more when we sit down in private and iron out whatever differences that may exist and try and then do something constructive for the benefit of our people. But on the other hand, I don't think that we should be above criticism. I don't think that anyone should be above criticism.

Crane: Violence or the threat of violence has always surrounded you. Speeches that you've made have been interpreted as being threats. You have made statements reported in the press about how the Negroes should go out and arm themselves, form militias of their own. I read a thing once, a statement I believe you made that every Negro should belong to the National Rifle Association.

Malcolm X: No, I said this: That in areas of this country where the government has proven its...either its inability or its unwillingness to protect the lives and property of our people, then it's only fair to expect us to do whatever is necessary to protect ourselves. And in situations like Mississippi, places like Mississippi where the government actually has proven its inability to protect us...and it has been proven that ofttimes the police officers and sheriffs themselves are involved in the murder that takes place against our people...then I feel, and I say that anywhere, that our people should start doing what is necessary to protect ourselves. This doesn't mean that we should buy rifles and go out and initiate attacks indiscriminately against whites. But it does mean that we should get whatever is necessary to protect ourselves in a country or in an area where the governmental ability to protect us has broken down.

Crane: Therefore you do not agree with Dr. King's Gandhian philosophy.

Malcolm X: My belief in brotherhood would never restrain me in any way from protecting myself in a society from a people whose disrespect for brotherhood makes them feel inclined to put my neck on a tree at the end of a rope.

Crane: Well, it sounds as though you could be preaching a sort of an anarchy.

Malcolm X: No, no. I respect government and respect law. But does the government and the law respect us? If the FBI, which is what people depend upon on a national scale to protect the morale and the property and the lives of the people, can't do so when the property and lives of Negroes and whites who try and help Negroes are concerned, then I think that it's only fair to expect elements to do whatever is necessary to protect themselves. And this is no departure from normal procedure, because right here in New York City you have vigilante committees that have been set up by groups who see where their neighborhood community is endangered and the law can't do anything about it. So—and even their lives aren't at stake. So—but the fear, Les, seems to come into existence only when someone says Negroes should form vigilante committees to protect their lives and their property. I'm not advocating the breaking of any laws. But I say that our people will never be respected as human beings until we react as other normal, intelligent human beings do. And this country came into existence by people who were tired of tyranny and oppression and exploitation and the brutality that was being inflicted upon them by powers higher than they, and I think that it is only fair to expect us, sooner or later, to do likewise.

Crane: One last question. You don't preach separatism anymore and I assume you don't want to set up a Black African state in this country anymore. What is your main effort toward now?

Malcolm X: Well, the...one of the organizations which we've now formed, the Organization of Afro-American Unity, has reached the conclusion, after a careful analysis of the problem, that approaching our problem just on the level of civil rights and keeping it within the jurisdiction of the United States will not bring a solution. It's not a Negro problem or an American problem any longer. It's a world problem, it's a human problem. And so we're striving to lift it from the level of civil rights to the level of human rights. And at that level it's international. We can bring it into the United Nations and discuss it in the same tone and in the same language as the problems of people in other parts of the world also is discussed.

Crane: I'm afraid the clock has caught us. It has been interesting. Thank you so much for coming up.

Malcolm X: You're welcome.

OAAU Homecoming Rally (November 29, 1964)

2013-07-04T11:39:00.000-07:00

Asalaam Alaikum, all my brothers and sisters. Well, I hardly know how to get started, but I can let you know in advance that we’re not going to keep you here tonight very long. I first have to make a confession—I almost didn’t get here tonight; something came up, a situation developed where we were going to almost have to postpone our little brief talk until next Sunday. But thanks to the one that created the universe—some call him God; some call him a whole lot of things; I call him Allah—I’m thankful to be able to be here.
Now, brothers and sisters, all I would like to do tonight, and I beg your forgiveness, is to give you a brief sketch or outline on some experiences that I’ve had during the past eighteen weeks. It’s certainly good to be back, although I don’t know how a black man can leave a black continent and come back to a white continent and say it’s good to be back I would like to give a brief sketch to you concerning some of the experiences that I’ve had, some of the things I’ve seen, some of the things I’ve heard, so that you can evaluate them with your own mind.

The reason that it has to be brief is that I have to leave the country again this week I’ll be back next Sunday, but I’m involved in a debate at Oxford University in England, outside of London, on Thursday. I have to go there for that, and then come back here for a rally which we’re going to have next Sunday night, at which time we are going to try and get some experts to come and give us an outline of exactly what has taken place in the Congo, so that the black people in Harlem won’t have to be involved in a situation where we’ll be sitting on the log, wondering what’s going on. I think that you and I should realize that the time has come for us to let the world know that we’re not only interested in some kind of integrated situation in the United States, but we’re interested in taking our place on the world stage, and we’re interested in anything that involves black people anywhere on this earth.

It would be a crime for you and me to be in a city that has more black people in it than any other city on this earth, New York City, and be silent in the face of the criminal action of the United States government in conjunction with Belgium in the Congo. I mean criminal, criminal action that this government has involved itself in. Lyndon B. Johnson—he said it today, he’s to blame. He doesn’t have to say it; we know he’s to blame before he said it. He waited until the people had voted for him and he got in, and things got cut and dried. Then he got in cahoots with Belgium—one of the worst racist governments that has ever existed on the face of the earth, Belgium. This government, in conjunction with that government, is dropping paratroopers in the Congo under the pretext that it’s some kind of humanitarian operation.

So next Sunday night we are going to try and get some of our African brothers and some of our Afro- American brothers who are well versed in the facts concerning the history of the Congo to tell how the white man happened to be over there in the first place, why he is over there still and finds it so difficult to leave, and most important of all, what are the factors behind the deep-rooted hostility that seems to lie in the hearts of our Congolese brothers toward them. We want to know if our brothers are savage, as they keep implying, or are they justified in the feelings that they’ve been displaying toward these people who are over there in their land, not by their invitation?

I don’t want to get on that, but this is what we want next Sunday night, and we’re going to try and get some help in outlining the incidents that led up to the present situation in the Congo today. But never believe what you read in the newspapers—they’re not going to tell you the truth. The truth isn’t in them. Not when it comes to the Congo; they can’t tell the truth. I was on the radio with a man the other night, and he had the nerve to tell on the air about some Congolese atrocities, and the benevolence of the Belgian government, and how Belgian atrocities never took place. I didn’t believe that a white man, so intelligent, would have so much nerve in 1964. I could see him taking that stand in 1924, or even 1944, or maybe 1954, but not 1964.

So, brothers and sisters, when I left here on the 9th of July, it was primarily because I had just been successful in starting a new religious organization which many of you have heard about, the Muslim Mosque, Incorporated, and we had also just been successful in organizing a new nonreligious organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity. One of the main reasons for undertaking the journey was to lay a foundation. It is impossible for any black group in America to become involved in any kind of religion that doesn’t have roots directly connected with some source in the East. And it is impossible for any black group in America to become involved in any kind of political organization that doesn’t have some roots directly connected with our roots on the African continent. This is the era of revolution.

Now I must just take time to clarify what I mean before some of these pencil-scratchers misquote me, which they’re going to do anyway. You notice two years ago the American press was calling your and my struggle a revolution—“Negro revolution, Negro revolution.” Now, they didn’t mind calling it that, and they didn’t mind you referring to it as that, because they knew that what was happening was no revolution. But when you start using the word "evolution" in its real sense, then they get shaky. They start classifying you as a fanatic, or something subversive or seditious, or other than a law-abiding person. But today we’re living in an era of revolution, which means an era of change, when people who are being oppressed want a change. And they don’t want a gradual change. They don’t want the change that comes year by year, or week by week, or month by month. They want a change right now.

Cairo is one of the cities on this earth that has the headquarters for more revolutionary movements, I imagine, than any other city. By the way, when I got there, as you know, they were having the African summit conference. All of our brothers were over there, getting together, discussing the problems of the world. It was a beautiful sight, especially when you live in a country where you and I don’t have any chance to discuss anything but an integrated cup of coffee, or how to integrate some toilet in Mississippi. When you go and find independent African nations, headed by their leaders, their heads of state, sitting down and discussing problems of the world, the economic, political, and social problems of the world, why, it makes you feel good, it makes you get a new lease on life.

When I got there, there was a great deal of pressure already being put on various segments of the African community to not open any doors, and these pressures were being put down by this government. I started not to say this government, but I’m going to tell the truth the way it is, let the chips fall where they may.

They had their men over there running around like mad with their money, trying to make it impossible for any American Negro to be included in any way in any conference dealing with Africans, or dealing with international affairs. They try to give the impression over there that you and I aren’t interested in international affairs, that you and I are interested only in integrating Mississippi. This is the image that is very skillfully spread abroad of the American Negro, that you and I cannot see beyond the shores of America—that our minds and our thoughts and our desires and our hopes are limited to everything right here.

Naturally, any African who would believe this is shocked when he sees an Afro-American coming to an international conference, especially a conference that’s composed just of independent African states. Some of them this government has tried to give the impression over there that you and I don’t even identify with Africa. And some of them get shocked when they see you and me turning in their direction.

I’m telling you, they’ve done a vicious job. This thing they call the USIS, the United States Information Service, is one of the most vicious organs that has ever been put together and sent anywhere by any country. It will make that propaganda machine that Goebbels had, under Hitler, look like child’s play.

Why, in every African country the USIS window has pictures in it, showing the passage of the civil rights bill to make it look like the problems of every Negro over here have been solved. Go in any African country, and you know before you get there what’s going to be in the window. They use the passage of the civil rights bill to make it appear that Negroes aren’t being lynched any more, that Negroes’ voting rights aren’t being trampled upon any more, that police aren’t busting Negroes’ heads with clubs any more, nor are they using dogs and violence and water hoses to wash us down the drain. They make it appear that the civil rights bill created a paradise in the United States for the 22 million Negroes. This is the thing they call USIS. It does a very bad job of creating the wrong image and giving the wrong impression.

To show you how vicious they are—I’m within my rights to attack it; actually I’m not attacking it, I’m only analyzing it. On the 4th of November, the date that the election was over, the USIS circulated a document on me throughout the African continent—knocking me, you know. Here I am, just a little old poor so-called Negro from Harlem, and they’re going to waste all their paper trying to tell Africans, “Don’t listen to what that man says, because he doesn’t represent anything, and doesn’t represent anybody, and has always been discredited.” That’s your USIS. I say a prayer for them.

I want to say this too, in passing, for the benefit of our Muslim brothers and sisters who might be here from some of the Muslim countries, and might get a bit nervous over what I’m saying, and the way I’m saying it. This is not a religious meeting. When I come to a meeting sponsored by the OAAU, which is the Organization of Afro-American Unity, I put my religion in this pocket right here, and keep it here. And when I talk like this, it doesn’t mean I’m less religious, it means I’m more religious.

I believe in a religion that believes in freedom. Any time I have to accept a religion that won’t let me fight a battle for my people, I say to hell with that religion. That’s why I am a Muslim, because it’s a religion that teaches you an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It teaches you to respect everybody, and treat everybody right. But it also teaches you if someone steps on your toe, chop off their foot. And I carry my religious axe with me all the time.

You know they have freedom movements on the African continent. There are many liberation movements; there are movements of Africans from South Africa, from Mozambique, from South-West Africa, Bechuanaland, Swaziland, Angola. In every country, in every area on the African continent that has not tossed aside the shackles of colonialism, they have developed a liberation movement, and the purpose of these liberation movements is to throw aside the oppressor.

After the summit conference, the most respected groups were these freedom fighters. The heads of the various liberation movements from the different parts of the African continent were all housed on a ship that was anchored in the Nile River—a ship called the Isis. They were placed there so that they could all be together, and discuss the problems that they had in common. At the same time it was excellent for security purposes, because you can’t get on a boat so easily.

I was blessed with the opportunity to live on that boat with the leaders of the liberation movements, because I represented an Afro-American liberation movement—Afro-American freedom fighters. And all of us were on there together. It gave me an opportunity to study, to listen and study the type of people involved in the struggle—their thinking, their objectives, their aims and their methods. It opened my eyes to many things. And I think I was able to steal a few ideas that they used, and tactics and strategy, that will be most effective in your and my freedom struggle here in this country.

Some of them were nonviolent—I didn’t listen too long to any of those. And others really want freedom. When a person places a proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won’t do to get it, or what he doesn’t believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn’t believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire or achieve his freedom, and he will do anything under the sun to preserve his freedom. And the only reason you and I here in America don’t yet have freedom is we haven’t yet matured to that stage where we can see this is the real price, or the real attitude, or the real approach that one must make.

I was, as I said, in Egypt, the United Arab Republic, for two months, and then left and went to Mecca, where I was for about a week; I was in Saudi Arabia for about a week, and Mecca a couple of days. I left there and went to Kuwait, where all the oil is, on the Persian Gulf, and from there to Beirut in Lebanon. After spending two months there, in the Middle East, then I went on into other parts of Africa, the first stop being Khartoum where, since then, they’ve had a whole lot of trouble—which they should have had. Now everything is all settled; they had a revolution, and got people that didn’t belong in power out of power—that’s how you do it. And that’s what they did, the students.

The students all over the world are the ones who bring about a change; old people don’t bring about a change. I mean I’m not saying this against anybody that’s old—because if you’re ready for some action you’re not old, I don’t care how old you are. But if you’re not ready for some action, I don’t care how young you are, you’re old. As long as you want some action, you’re young. But any time you begin to sit on the fence, and your toes start shaking because you’re afraid too much action is going down, then you’re too old; you need to get on out of the way. Some of us get too old while we’re still in our teens.

So, I went through Khartoum to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which is a wonderful country. It has its problems, and it’s still a wonderful country. Some of the most beautiful people I’ve seen are in Ethiopia, and most intelligent and most dignified, right there in Ethiopia. You hear all kinds of propaganda about Ethiopia. But any time a person tries to tell you, as they’ve told you and me, that Ethiopians don’t think they’re the same as we are, that’s some of that man’s manufacturing. He made that up. You know who I mean when I say “that man.” They’re just as friendly toward us as anybody else is.

 I was there for about a week, and went on into Kenya, a place which really knocked me out. If ever I saw any Africans who looked like they have the potential for explosion, it’s our good Kikuyu brothers in Kenya. I was discussing my opinion of the people of Kenya, especially in Nairobi, with some friends while I was there, and I told them that I was looking at the faces of these people, and they looked like they can explode. And they do; they look like they can explode, more so than any place I went on the continent. You can just see, right in their faces, energy. Now if you channel it in the right direction, it goes in the right direction; if you let it go in the wrong direction, it goes in the wrong direction—but they’ve got the energy, that’s the most important thing.

And as proof that they can explode, they exploded the other day. When the United States, with her criminal action in the Congo—and that’s what it is, criminal action in the Congo—they marched on the embassy there in Nairobi, tore it up. And that shows you what the Africans feel. They don’t like to see anybody exploiting another African or oppressing another African; they stick together, and you and I can learn that’s what we’re supposed to do. When something happens in Mississippi, we don’t have to go to Mississippi—they’ve got some people that look just like those in Mississippi, right here.

My contention is, those up here are just as much responsible for what’s happening down there as those down there. And when you and I let them know that we hold all of them responsible, then all of them will start acting right. They’ll keep those others in line. But as long as you and I make them think they can pass the buck, then they will be passing the buck, they’ll be telling us, you know, “Mississippi,” and they’re doing the same thing right here.

So, when I left Kenya, I went to Zanzibar and Tanganyika; now it’s called Tanzania. And I never went anywhere that has pleased me more than that place. It’s beautiful—all of Africa is beautiful—but in Tanganyika, it’s a very beautiful place. It’s hot, it’s like Miami, Miami is hot, and if these people pay as much money as they do to live in Miami, why, you know, the entire African continent where I went is just like Miami Beach. And they’re always telling you and me, you know, how difficult a time we would have trying to adjust if we went over there. I’m telling you, if you want to integrate, go to Africa. There are more white people over there than there are over here. That’s where they all are. They’re over there living like kings, basking in the sun.

And when we go back in that sense, then this spiritual bond that is created makes us inseparable, and they can see that our problem is their problem, and their problem is our problem. Our problem is not solved until theirs is solved, theirs is not solved until ours is solved. And when we can develop that kind of relationship, then it means that we will help them solve their problems, and we want them to help us solve our problems. And by both of us working together, we’ll get a solution to that problem. We will only get that problem solved by working together.

This was the essence of every discussion—that the problems are one, that the destiny is the same, the origin is the same. Even the experiences are the same; they catch hell, we catch hell. And no matter how much independence they’ve got, on that land, on the mother continent, if we don’t have it over here, and don’t have respect over here, when they come over here they are mistaken for one of us and they are disrespected too. So in order to be respected, we must be respected.

And I say, brothers and sisters, they’re beginning to see this. They’re beginning to see that the problems are one. They are interested in our problems, but they were shocked to learn that we were also interested in their problems. And if I would have any advice to give to our people here in the Western Hemisphere, I would say that it has been almost criminal on our part, all the organizations that we have, for us not to have tried to make some kind of direct contact, direct communication, with our brothers on the African continent before.

We should never let the white man represent us to them, and we should never let him represent them to us. It is our job today to represent ourselves, as they are representing themselves. We don’t need someone else representing us. We don’t want anybody to tell somebody how we think We will let the world know how we think We don’t want any handkerchief-head set up by the State Department as a spokesman for us, telling the world how we think; we want the world to know how we think We want the world to know we don’t like what Sam is doing in the Congo to our brothers and sisters.

I must say this, in brief. I was talking to a brother from the Congo, who was very angry. I was in Tanganyika, he had just come from Leopoldville, and he was very angry because he told me that out of all of the paratroopers, or eighty paratroopers—you’ll have to stop handing me these things while I’m up here, it’s getting like Grand Central Station, you send my mind somewhere else. He was telling me that he was very angry at American Negroes. And he was talking about us, you know, like a dog. Not me, because he knows what I represent. The best thing the white man ever did for me was to make me look like a monster all over the world. Because I can go any place on the African continent and our African brothers know where I stand.

He was angry because he said that most of the paratroopers, the American soldiers that were guarding these transports that Tshombe was using, were American Negroes; that they put American soldiers in there. I never had a chance to check it out. Normally I wouldn’t stand up in a public meeting and say it, but when I first heard it, and I heard it from an Afro-American who works over there, I went to track this brother from the Congo down. He’s a very intelligent fellow, and he said "Yes," and he was hot, you know. And so I sat down to let him know that all of us don’t think like that. That they had to go all over the United States with a microscope and find that many Negroes dumb enough to let themselves be sent to the Congo—imagine, a Negro that lets himself be sent to the Congo!—in a uniform, against people who look just like he does. Why, he should be shot. So I let him know that that wasn’t us, that was somebody else.

Also, brothers and sisters, you know Tshombe. You’ve heard of him. From what I understand, Tshombe arrives in the United States on Tuesday. He’s got a whole lot of nerve. The best thing they did for him in Cairo was when they locked him up. That protected him. Because Tshombe can’t go to any country where there are true black men, true black men, and walk the street in safety. This is the worst African that was ever born. The worst African that was ever born. This is the man who in cold blood, cold blood, committed an international crime—murdered Patrice Lumumba, murdered him in cold blood. The world knows that Tshombe murdered Lumumba. And now he’s a bed partner for Lyndon B. Johnson. Yes, a bed partner. They’re sleeping together, they’re sleeping together. When I say sleeping together, I don’t mean that literally. But beyond that they’re in the same bed. Johnson is paying the salaries, paying the government, propping up Tshombe’s government, this murderer. It is the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, the man you voted for—you were insane, out of your mind, out of your head, to vote for a man like that; drunk But I don’t blame you, you just were tricked. I told you a fox will always get business.

So Tshombe arrives here on Tuesday. And many of our brothers that belong to the African student association plan to give him a welcome. Shucks, I have a religion that believes in hospitality. Everybody should be welcome—according to their just desserts. So the brother that’s involved in this, I think Sidi Ali—where is he? Sidi Ali, come and give this announcement. This is our brother, Sidi Ali of Ghana.

[Sidi Ali speaks.]

Brothers and sisters, I have some quick announcements.

Next week the Audubon is not available, so our next meeting will be on the 13th, which will be two weeks from tonight. At that time the topic will be "The Congo Crisis." I imagine the crisis won’t be over. Because it’s of such nature that they’re in there now and they can’t come out with clean hands. It’s almost impossible for them to pull out. They went in there and killed people; now, when they pull back out, what do you think will happen? They can’t get out of it like that.

One thing you must always bear in mind, as our brother pointed out, these young brothers that are in the Stanleyville area, Oriental Province, are not rebels, as the press continues to refer to them. They call themselves Simbas, which means lions, you know, meaning they’ve got it. They’re freedom fighters, and your and my heart should be with theirs. They are men, they are men, the proof of which is they are dying to get their freedom. They’re killing too, but so what? They’ve been killed themselves—all they do is believe in equality. What’s good for the goose is good for the goose.

Also, always bear in mind, that the only Congolese soldiers that are winning any battles, or that have won any battles, have been those brothers who are the freedom fighters. The Congolese soldiers that fight for Tshombe don’t win battles. They were giving up in the face of the freedom fighters. They were giving up the entire Congo. They were evacuating the place and the United States got desperate. That’s why they went and got Tshombe, went all the way up in Spain, where Tshombe had retired, had given up, was living the life, and they talked him into going back to the Congo and becoming the premier.

As soon as they got him back into position as premier, the first thing he did was bring in some white mercenaries, murderers—because that’s what a mercenary means, it means a hired killer. And this government, the United States government, supplies the salaries for these hired killers from your tax dollars. Every time you pay your taxes you are paying the salary for those white blue-eyed murderers there in the Congo who are killing the Congolese. There’s nobody in the State Department can deny it.

In fact, I read in the paper today where Lyndon B. Johnson said he’d take full responsibility. He should take full responsibility. He’s pulling the same kind of an act over there in the Congo that they’ve been pulling in Texas on you and me for the past two or three hundred years. That’s a Texas act. You know what kind of act goes on in Texas. But they can’t win because the only way Tshombe can remain premier is with help from the outside. He must get white help. So, as long as Tshombe remains the premier of the Congo, it means the white man is going to have to continue sending white soldiers in there to rescue him. And he’ll lose every white soldier he has, he’ll lose them in there.
So, those brothers know what they’re doing—in fact, what you and I need to do. What you and I need to do. Many of us are vets, we’ve had all kind of experience. You’ve seen all kinds of action, haven’t you? But you’ve never seen any action for yourself, and you’ve never seen any action for anybody who is of your own land. Many of you are unemployed. We might put on a drive right here in Harlem to raise up some black mercenaries to take over there to show them what to do.

You see, there’s some kind of cultural, psychological block in the minds of our brothers there, or these white mercenaries wouldn’t have the advantage. All they have is the psychological advantage. They wouldn’t have that on you and me. You and I don’t have that block, we don’t have that cultural block because they destroyed our culture. We can think just like they think now. We can do the same thing they can do. You just give me ten black ones and we’ll eat up fifty of those white ones. Eat them up.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Why? Because this government, this same government has recruited what they call “anti-Castro Cubans.” Which means they’re American. And this government sends them over there to bomb the Congolese. But they’re afraid to say that they’re American pilots, so they say they’re anti-Castro Cuban pilots. Okay, we’ve got black people who can fly planes—we’ve been flying them for the man. Instead of you sitting around here driving a bus, remember how you used to fly a plane for him, get on over there and get with it on the right side. If they can send white ones against black ones, we can recruit and send black ones against white ones. I frankly believe that it would be most exciting. I know a whole lot of Afro-Americans would go for free—would go for fun. We don’t need any money, we just want to get even.

Now, I’m going to tell you what they’re going to do, because I know them. In the paper tomorrow you’re going to read that a whole lot of frantic, you know, statements were made. As long as there are white people going over there shooting black people, nothing is said—they glorify them. But when you and I start talking like we want to do the same thing to some of them, then we’re fanatics, we’re bloodthirsty. But I think then the white man should know one thing—when I say white man, I’m not saying all of you, whatever you are, because some of you might be all right. And whichever one of you acts all right with me, you’re all right with me, as long as you act all right. But if you don’t act all right, you’re not all right. All you’ve got to do to be all right with me is act all right. But don’t come thinking you’re all right just because you’re white.  I think that point has to be made because if you don’t clarify it, they go out of here saying you’re a racist, that you’re against all white people. We’re not against all white people. We’re against all those that aren’t right, all of them that aren’t right.

We purposely aren’t going to have any question and answer period tonight. I don’t think we need one. But we are going to take up a collection because we pay for this hall and we won’t be able to get back here two weeks from now unless we pay for it. And when I say we pay for it, you know, we. Just let me take five minutes right now real quick before I forget while the brothers are coming to take up a collection.

And again, as soon as you start taking up a collection, you’ll read in the papers tomorrow morning: "what they did—they took up a collection." They write like they’re out of their mind. They always are intelligent until they come around us. When you read what they write someplace else, they write intelligently. But when we let them in here and let them write, then they write things that aren’t even of interest. [Shouts from the audience.] You say, “Why let them in?” Sometime I’ll tell you why I let them in. But if you don’t want them in here, then keep them out.

[During the collection, Malcolm makes further announcements. He reports the arrival of an African Muslim teacher from Mecca and tells when and where he will be speaking. To offset any feeling of religious favoritism, he offers “to make an announcement for (any) church you belong to, church or synagogue.” He promises an effort will be made to get scholars and experts from the United Nations to speak at the next rally, “So we won’t have to go by what we read in the newspapers.” Then he continues:]

I think our brother, Sidi Ali, did a wonderful job in destroying that myth about cannibalism. The man is always trying to make it look like our people are cannibals. The only cannibal I’ve ever seen, the only persons I’ve ever seen who eat up people, are those people. Not our people, those people. I’m not saying who those people are, whoever fits "those." And usually they end up trying to put all those characteristics on us to hide their own guilt. They shouldn’t do that. It should be emphasized over and over and over by you and me that we aren’t racists. One of the worst categories to let them put you in is the category of racist.

I’m not a racist. I don’t judge a man because of his color. I get suspicious of a lot of them and cautious around a lot of them—from experience. Not because of their color, but because of what experience has taught me concerning their overall behavior toward us. So, please don’t ever go away saying that we are against people because of their color. We are against them because of what they do to us and because of what they do to others. All they have to do to get our good will is to show their good will and stop doing all those dirty things to our people. Is that understood?

Also, within the next couple of weeks we will spell out the type of support we got on our effort to bring the United States into the United Nations and charge her with violating our human rights. You and I must take this government before a world forum and show the world that this government has absolutely failed in its duty toward us. It has failed from Washington, D.C., all the way in to New York City. They have failed in their duty toward you and me. They have failed to protect us, they have failed to represent us, they have failed to respect us. And since they have failed, either willingly or because of their inability, we think that they should be brought up there so the world can see them as they actually are.

Now, if this government doesn’t want to have her linen washed in public, then we give her a week or two to get her house in order. And if she can’t get it in order in two weeks, then get on out there with South Africa and Portugal and the rest of those criminals who have been exploiting and abusing dark-skinned people now for far too long. We’re all fed up. Right? Right.

[Malcolm introduces Jesse Gray, who suggests that the place to send black mercenaries is Mississippi, and concludes: “It’s always very easy for us to be ready to move and ready to talk and ready to act, but unless we truly get down into the heart of the ghetto and begin to deal with the problems of jobs, schools, and the other basic questions, we are going to be unable to deal with any revolutionary perspective, or with any revolution for that matter.” Malcolm then says:]

That was our brother Jesse Gray, the leader of the Harlem rent strikes, and what he said is true. When I speak of some action for the Congo, that action also includes Congo, Mississippi. But the point and thing that I would like to impress upon every Afro-American leader is that there is no kind of action in this country ever going to bear fruit unless that action is tied in with the overall international struggle.

You waste your time when you talk to this man, just you and him. So when you talk to him, let him know your brother is behind you, and you’ve got some more brothers behind that brother. That’s the only way to talk to him, that’s the only language he knows. Why do I say, “Make sure your brother is behind you”? Because you’re going to have to fight this man, believe me, yes, you’re going to have to fight him. You’re going to have to fight him. He doesn’t know any other language.

You can go and talk that old pretty talk to him, he doesn’t even hear you. He says yes, yes, yes. You know, you can’t communicate if one man is speaking French and the other one is speaking German. They’ve both got to speak the same language. Well, in this country you’re dealing with a man who has a language. Find out what that language is. Once you know what language he speaks in, then you can talk to him. And if you want to know what his language is, study his history. His language is blood, his language is power, his language is brutality, his language is everything that’s brutal.

And if you can’t talk that talk, he doesn’t even hear you. You can come talking that old sweet talk, or that old peace talk, or that old nonviolent talk—that man doesn’t hear that kind of talk. He’ll pat you on your back and tell you you’re a good boy and give you a peace prize. How are you going to get a peace prize when the war’s not over yet? I’m for peace, but the only way you’re going to preserve peace is be prepared for war.

Never let anybody tell you and me the odds are against us—I don’t even want to hear that. Those who think the odds are against you, forget it. The odds are not against you. The odds are against you only when you’re scared. The only things that makes odds against you is a scared mind. When you get all of that fright off of you, there’s no such thing as odds against you. Because when a man knows that when he starts playing with you, he’s got to kill you, that man is not going to play with you. But if he knows when he’s playing with you that you’re going to back up and be nonviolent and peaceful and respectable and responsible, why, you and me will never come out of his claws.

Let him know that you’re peaceful, let him know that you’re respectful and you respect him, and that you’re law-abiding, and that you want to be a good citizen, and all those right-thinking things. But let him know at the same time that you’re ready to do to him what he’s been trying to do to you. And then you’ll always have peace. You’ll always have it. Learn a lesson from history, learn a lesson from history.

I must say this once before we close. I don’t want you to think that I’m coming back here to rabble-rouse, or to get somebody excited. I don’t think you have to excite our people; the man already has excited us. And I don’t want you to think that I’m ready for some unintelligent action, or some irresponsible action, or for just any old thing just to be doing something. No. I hope that all of us can sit down with a cool head and a clear mind and analyze the situation, in the back room, anywhere, analyze the situation; and after we give the proper analysis of what we’re confronted by, then let us be bold enough to take whatever steps that analysis says must be taken. Once we get it, then let’s do it, and we’ll be able to get some kind of result in this freedom struggle.

But don’t let anybody who is oppressing us ever lay the ground rules. Don’t go by their game, don’t play the game by their rules. Let them know now that this is a new game, and we’ve got some new rules, and these rules mean anything goes, anything goes. Are you with me, brothers? I know you’re with me.

So, again I thank you and we will look for all of you out here, if possible, two weeks from tonight on the 13th of December. By the way, I want to tell you, I was in Paris Monday night before Alioune Diop’s group, Presence Africaine. Many of our people in Paris, as well as from the African continent, are organizing, and they are just as concerned with what is going on over here as you and I are. You and I have to link up with our people who are in Paris—when I say our people, you know, us—we have to link up with our people who are in London, England. We’ve got a whole lot of them over there, brothers, I saw them.

We’ve got to link up with our people who are in the Caribbean, in Trinidad, in Jamaica, in all the islands, and we’ve got to link up with our people who are in Central America and South America. Everywhere you see someone who looks like us, we’ve got to get together. And once we get together, brothers, we can get some action, because we’ll find we are not the underdog. All those odds this man’s talking about don’t exist. He put them in our minds—right or wrong? Very good. So we thank you, and we’ll see you in two weeks. May Allah bless you.

Letter to the Egyptian Gazette (August 25, 1964)

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I am not a racist, and I do not subscribe to any of the tenets of racism. But the seed of racism has been firmly planted in the hearts of most American whites ever since the beginning of that country. This seed of racism has rooted itself so deeply in the subconsciousness of many American whites that they themselves ofttimes are not even aware of its existence, but it can be easily detected in their thoughts, their words, and in their deeds.

In the past I permitted myself to be used by Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the sect known as the Black Muslims, to make sweeping indictments of all white people, the entire white race, and these generalizations have caused injuries to some whites who perhaps did not deserve to be hurt. Because of the spiritual enlightenment which I was blessed to receive as the result of my recent pilgrimage to the Holy City of Mecca, I no longer subscribe to sweeping indictments of anyone race.

My religious pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca has given me a new insight into the true brotherhood of Islam, which encompasses all the races of mankind. The pilgrimage broadened my scope, my mind, my outlook, and made me more flexible in approaching life’s many complexities and in my reactions to its paradoxes.

At Mecca I saw the spirit of unity and true brotherhood· displayed by tens of thousands of people from all over the world, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans. This served to convince me that perhaps some American whites can also be cured of the rampant racism which is consuming them and about to destroy that country.

I am now striving to live the life of a true Sunni Muslim.

In the future I intend to be careful not to sentence anyone who has not first been proven guilty. I must repeat that I am not a racist nor do I subscribe to the tenets of racism. I can state in all sincerity that I wish nothing but freedom, justice, and equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all people.

However, the first law of nature is self-preservation, so my first concern is with the oppressed group of people to which I belong, the 22 million Afro-Americans, for we, more than any other people on earth today, are deprived of these inalienable human rights.

But time is running out for America. The 22 million Afro-Americans are not yet filled with hate or a desire for revenge, as the propaganda of the segregationists would have people believe. The universal law of justice is sufficient to bring judgment upon the American whites who are guilty of racism. The same law will also punish those who have benefited from the racist practices of their forefathers and have done nothing to atone for the “sins of their fathers.” Just look around on this earth today and see the increasing troubles this generation of American whites is having. The “sins of their fathers” are definitely being visited upon the heads of this present generation. Most intelligent American whites will admit freely today without hesitation that their present generation is already being punished and plagued for the evil deeds their forefathers committed when they enslaved millions of Afro-Americans in that country.

But it is not necessary for their victim—the Afro- American—to seek revenge. The very conditions the American whites created are already plaguing them into insanity and death. They are reaping what their forefathers have sown. “Their chickens are coming home to roost.” And we, the 22 million Afro-Americans, their victims, need only to spend more time removing the “scars of slavery” from the backs and the mind of our own people, physical and mental scars left by four hundred years of inhuman treatment there in America at the hands of white racists.

The key to our success lies in united action. Lack of unity among the various Afro-American groups involved in our struggle has always been the reason we have failed to win concrete gains in our war against America’s oppression, exploitation, discrimination, segregation, degradation, and humiliation. Before the miserable condition of the 22 million “second-class citizens” can be corrected, all the groups in the Afro-American community must form a united front.

Only through united efforts can our problems there be solved.  How can we get the unity of the Afro-American community? Ignorance of each other is what has made unity impossible in the past. Therefore we need enlightenment. We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity. Once we have more knowledge (light) about each other we will stop condemning each other and a united front will be brought about.

 All 22 million Afro-Americans have the same basic goal, the same basic objective. We want freedom, justice, and equality, we want recognition and respect as human beings. We are not divided over objectives, but we have allowed our racist enemies to divide us over the methods of attaining these common objectives. Our enemy has magnified our minor points of difference, then maneuvered us into wasting our time debating and fighting each other over insignificant and irrelevant issues.

The common goal of 22 million Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being. Our common goal is to obtain the human rights that America has been denying us. We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognized as citizens there until we are first recognized as humans.

The present American “system” can never produce freedom for the black man. A chicken cannot lay a duck egg because the chicken’s “system” is not designed or equipped to produce a duck egg. The system of the chicken was produced by a chicken egg and can therefore reproduce only that which produced it.

The American “system” (political, economic, and social) was produced from the enslavement of the black man, and this present “system” is capable only of perpetuating that enslavement.

In order for a chicken to produce a duck egg its system would have to undergo a drastic and painful revolutionary change...or REVOLUTION. So be it with America’s enslaving system.

In the past the civil rights groups in America have been foolishly attempting to obtain constitutional rights from the same Government that has conspired against us to deny our people these rights. Only a world body (a world court) can be instrumental in obtaining those rights which belong to a human being by dint of his being a member of the human family. 

As long as the freedom struggle of the 22 million Afro-Americans is labeled a civil rights issue it remains a domestic problem under the jurisdiction of the United States, and as such, bars the intervention and support of our brothers and sisters in Africa, Asia, Latin America, as well as that of the well-meaning whites of Europe. But once our struggle is lifted from the confining civil rights label to the level of human rights, our freedom struggle has then become internationalized.

Just as the violation of human rights of our brothers and sisters in South Africa and Angola is an international issue and has brought the racists of South Africa and Portugal under attack from all-other independent governments at the United Nations, once the miserable plight of the 22 million Afro-Americans is also lifted to the level of human rights our struggle then becomes an international issue, and the direct concern of all other civilized governments, we can then take the racist American Government before the World Court and have the racists in it exposed and condemned as the criminals that they are.

Why should it be necessary to go before a world court in order to solve America’s race problem? One hundred years ago a civil war was fought supposedly to free us from the Southern racists. We are still the victims of their racism. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was supposedly to free us. We are still crying for freedom. The politicians fought for amendments to the Constitution supposedly to make us first-class citizens. We are still second-class citizens.

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court itself issued a historic decision outlawing the segregated school system, and ten years have passed and this law is yet to be enforced even in the Northern states.
If white America doesn’t think the Afro-American, especially the upcoming generation, is capable of adopting the guerrilla tactics now being used by oppressed people elsewhere on this earth, she is making a drastic mistake. She is underestimating the force that can do her the most harm.

A real honest effort to remove the just grievances of the 22 million Afro-Americans must be made immediately or in a short time it will be too late.

Speech to The Second African Summit Conference (August 21, 1964)

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Every effort by the American press to play down the importance and the success of the Second African Summit Conference held recently here in the ancient African city of Cairo could well be a drastic mistake for the Western powers, and especially for America

The entire continent of Africa and her awakening people is the richest prize yet in the key struggle for the “balance of power” currently waged between East and West. Not only her unlimited supplies of untapped mineral resources, but also her strategic geographic position makes her extremely vital in the present world struggle.

Why does the press of the Western powers constantly ridicule and play down the idea of a United States of Africa? They know that a divided Africa is a weak Africa, and they want to keep her a dependent target of Western “philanthropy,” or what is being increasingly described here as “benevolent” colonialism. The neocolonialists who would “woo and rule” Africa today must skillfully disguise their selfish aims within their generous offers of unlimited “economic aid, Peace Corpism or crossroadism,” all of which is nothing but the modem counterpart of the nineteenth-century “missionaryism.”

A united Africa is a strong and independent Africa, an Africa that can stand on its own feet, walk for itself, and avoid the snares and pitfalls devised by the “benevolent” imperialists to keep the mother continent divided, weak, and dependent upon the “philanthropic” West for economic “aid,” political “guidance,” and military “protection.”

During the Second African Summit Conference any unbiased observer could easily see that Africa is making every effort today to stand on her own feet and speak with her own voice. Africa seeks only her rightful place in the sun. The degree to which the well-meaning element in the American public realizes that “to be independent and self-sustaining” is Africa’s only aim, will determine the attitude and the degree of pressure the American public will put upon the politicians at home in order to keep the American Government’s foreign policy toward Africa a policy of genuine assistance instead of the thinly disguised “benevolent” colonialism, “philanthropic” imperialism or what many of the more “cautious recipients” of American economic aid are beginning to label as American dollarism. 

I refer to the importance of the well-meaning element of American society being properly informed and having the correct understanding of Africa’s aims and efforts because America today is the leading Western power, and the attitude of the American public can play a vital role in determining whether there will be a positive or negative reaction of the West in the face of Africa’s efforts toward a united and independent continent.

The American people must be made to understand that this vast continent is aflame with the spirit of revolution; not a negative or destructive revolution based on revenge, but a revolution designed to produce the constructive social changes that will bring positive benefits to the long-neglected African people.

The bloodless revolution here in Cairo that dethroned and sent into exile the despotic former King Farouk, and Egypt’s steady progress toward positive social changes during the past twelve years, has made the United Arab Republic and its militant President Gamal Abdel Nasser the cornerstone and pattern of the overall African Revolution.

Despite the distorted picture painted of the United Arab Republic by anti-African propagandists, President Nasser and his able assistants have made great progress in his “step by step” program to bring the benefits of modernization to his people. He has skillfully guided them away from the antiquated liabilities of their past, while at the same time showing them how to retain and harness the assets of their ancient and glorious civilization.

The successful industrialization of the United Arab Republic in just twelve years since the revolution and the thirst he has since inspired within the Egyptian masses to educate themselves in the free schools set up throughout Egypt since the revolution are only a few of the many revolutionary accomplishments that have served as a cornerstone and pattern for the spirit of economic, political, and intellectual independence that has been sweeping this entire mother continent these past twelve years.

And the revolutionary spirit he has inspired here on this continent among his fellow Africans has leaped across the Atlantic Ocean and entered into the heart and mind of 22 million of our people in America who are also of African origin.

The spirit of brotherly understanding and unity in which President Gamal Abdel Nasser opened and conducted the Second African Summit Conference held recently here in Cairo inspired all others with the same spirit of willingness to recognize the necessity for changes, and successfully laid the groundwork for serious discussions toward the formation of a truly independent and United States of Africa.

The success of this Second Summit Conference is not only an overwhelming victory for the people here on the mother continent, but it is also a victory for the 22 million brothers and sisters in America who are of African origin...for we awakening Afro-Americans are well aware today that a united Africa is a strong Africa, and it is only in the strength of our African brothers that we in America will ever realize a true solution to our own struggle for independence and the recognition and respect of our own human rights.

The time has come when the awakened voice of Africa is being heard with a tremendous impact throughout the world, and the ever increasing importance and influence of the voice can be traced to the First African Summit Conference, which was held in Addis Ababa in May of 1963.

It was this First African Summit Conference that laid the foundation for the crushing blow, physically and psychologically, to the schemes of the European and American neo-imperialists to weaken Africa by keeping her artificially divided into “Africa above the Sahara and Africa below the Sahara, Arab Africa and ‘African,’ Muslim Africa and non-Muslim Africa, light-skinned and darkskinned Africa.”
The Summit Conference in Addis Ababa was the first step taken by Africans themselves to destroy these divisive concepts that had been skillfully created and propagated by the American and European neo-imperialists. These successful steps toward unity which were set in motion at the First Summit Conference made the enemies of African unity quite ill and desperate to create new countermeasures to forestall African unity. But the fortunes spent by the neo-imperialists in their divisive propaganda has been like pouring money down the drain because their former African “concubine” has awakened and the illicit honeymoon between Mother Africa and her former European “lovers” is now over forever.

The sunlight of mutual understanding that shined forth brilliantly from the First Summit Conference created a new climate here on the mother continent, ushering in an atmosphere of brotherliness among the various heads of the independent African states. Personality conflicts that formerly kept some of them narrow-minded, shortsighted, and apart were submerged into the background and de-emphasized; and instead areas and topics of common concern, common benefit, and common agreement were emphasized and discussed. The good of Africa was put above the personal feelings of a few individuals.

Yes, the First Summit was indeed an accomplishment within itself. No one selfishly argued that it should be held in Lagos, Accra, Monrovia, Algiers, Khartoum, or Conakry instead of Addis Ababa. They showed respect for Emperor Haile Selassie, even though he was an absolute monarch and most of the others were from anti-monarchy republics. This first Summit brought together the African monarchs, kings, and presidents on the same level...it created a “working atmosphere” between monarchies, kingdoms, and republics, between the big countries and the small ones, those rich in natural resources and those that were almost barren.

Thus, the first Summit created the climate for unity. But it was here in Cairo at the Second African Summit Conference that the real unity of action began to take form, when all the heads of the independent African states denounced imperialism and racism in all of its forms including even the passage of a resolution condemning the continued racist oppression of the 22 million Afro-Americans in the United States. And many of them for the first time joined in denouncing Israel as a base and tool of neo-imperialism, and they openly supported the right of the Arab refugees to return to their Palestine homeland. They could easily see that since over 80 per cent of the Arab world is on the African continent, Arab problems are inseparable from African problems.

The spirit of brotherhood was so strong at this Second Summit Conference that the heads of state not only agreed on the necessity of a united Africa, but they vigorously discussed the problems also of restoring liberty and dignity to the mother continent as a whole. They recognized the Government of Zambia and the Government-in-exile of Angola, accepting both heads of state (Kenneth Kaunda and Robert Holden) as full participants at the Summit Conference. They gave full support to the freedom fighters of the Africa Liberation movement, and expressed concrete plans to assist their freedom struggle both morally and materially, even if it necessitated supplying weapons for an open, bloody revolt against the remaining racist diehards.

Although many of them recognized that Israel is nothing but a base here on the northeast tip of the mother continent for the twentieth-century form of “benevolent colonialism,” they felt that the most pressing problem facing the continent is the openly racist Government occupying South Africa, the remnant of the nineteenth-century colonialism represented by the forced rule of the European minority over the African majority. The collective decisions and resolutions by the Conference to bring strict sanctions against the racist Government of South Africa were agreed to by all of the African heads of state, and thus there is no doubt that this firm stand to support the African majority’s struggle for liberty in that area will step up their efforts to throw out the racist European minority that is forcibly ruling their country.

They also recognized the seriousness of our problem in America, its relationship to the African continent, and their moral obligation to give us their all-out support in our struggle for human rights-and thus my coming to the Summit Conference was not in vain as some elements in the American press have tried to “suggest,” but instead my coming proved to be very fruitful for our freedom struggle in America, and especially for our plan to take our problems before the United Nations. I had traveled over six thousand miles from America to attend this African Summit Conference as an observer. The Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) had sent me to present the true plight and the feelings of 22 million Afro-Americans to these heads of independent African states.

Upon my arrival in Cairo I was met with open arms by the African leaders and their various delegations. I found no doors closed to me. They asked me to prepare a memorandum on the real status of our people in America, explaining how we are also victimized by neo-imperialism in its racist American form, and they urged me to present my memorandum to the Conference so they could take action on it in our behalf.

I tried to summarize our plight in as few words as possible, but my memorandum of continued atrocities against the Afro-American by racists in the United States still stretched into nine pages. It charged America with practicing a worse form of organized racism than South Africa, and described how this racist element in the State Department had skillfully alienated us from the natural sympathy and support of our African brothers in our freedom struggle by using white “liberals” to gain our friendship and confidence in order to “advise” and maneuver us into a twelve-year fight for our civil rights, knowing that as long as our freedom struggle was labeled “civil rights” it would be considered by the African nations as American “domestic” affairs and our plight would remain within the sole jurisdiction of the American Federal Government for a “solution.”

My memorandum charged that this same racist element in the State Department knew that our newly formed Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) was planning to internationalize America’s race problem by lifting it from the level of civil rights to a struggle for the universally recognized human rights, and on these grounds we could then bring America before thc United Nations and charge her with violating the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights and thereby of also violating the U.N. Charter itself.

In order to keep the Organization of Afro- American Unity (OAAU) from gaining the interest, sympathy, and support of the independent African states in our effort to bring the miserable plight of the 22 million Afro-Americans before the U.N., the racist element in the State Department very shrewdly gave maximum worldwide publicity to the recent passage of the Civil Rights Bill which was actually only a desperate attempt to make the African states think America was sincerely trying to correct the continued injustices done to us, and thereby maneuver the African Government into permitting America to keep her racism “domestic” and still within her sole jurisdiction.

This racist element within the State Department realizes that if any intelligent, truly militant Afro- American is ever permitted to come before the United Nations to testify in behalf of the 22 million mistreated Afro-Americans, our dark-skinned brothers and sisters in Africa, Asia, and Latin America would then see America as a “brute beast,” even more cruel and vulturous than the colonial powers of Europe and South Africa combined. I was relieved and delighted to learn how easily most of the African heads of state and their advisers could see through the tricks of the American racists. One of them told me he knew the Civil Rights Bill was only a “political maneuver” to capture the Negro votes in the coming elections, and he stressed that it could hardly have been accidental that passage of the bill came to fruition during this crucial election year.

Another described it as a beautiful document on paper but agreed that it was a document that could never be implemented. Another said it was like the novocaine a dentist gives a patient who has a rotten, abscessed tooth without ever pulling the tooth—or treating the condition while ignoring the cause.

All of them with whom I was able to establish personal contact agreed with my contention that our problem was one of human rights instead of only civil rights. They also agreed that we needed and deserved the full support of the entire world in our struggle for human rights.

Thus, these enlightened heads of the thirty-three independent African states at the Second Summit Conference passed a resolution condemning the continued brutal treatment of the Afro-American in the United States, and they voiced full sympathy and support in our struggle to break the yoke of American racism. This resolution had so many frightening implications for America’s future image and position in the world, especially for her foreign policy in this crucial election year; it is not surprising that the American press completely smothered the fact that the Second Summit Conference passed such a resolution, despite the fact that it was sent out over UPI wire services to all the American news outlets. Right up to this moment the American public has never been told that the Second African Summit passed a resolution condemning the mistreatment of the Afro-Americans and voicing full support of our freedom struggle. The voice of Africa is becoming stronger every day.

The spirit of unity here in Cairo during this Second Summit Conference, and their agreement that there is no room here on the mother continent for imperialism any more in any form—and by the time these heads of state convene their Third Summit Conference in Accra next year, most of the remaining strongholds of imperialism are sure to have fallen under the crushing weight of a rising, United Africa!

MALCOLM X

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THE BLACK PANTHER COLLECTION

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

"Racism: The Cancer That is Destroying America" - Egyptian Gazette, Cairo, Egypt (August 25, 1964)

On Afro-American History (January 24, 1965)

Stan Bernard Interviews Malcolm X (February 18, 1965)

Not Just an American Problem, But a World Problem (Feb. 16, 1965)

There's A Worldwide Revolution Going On (Feb. 15, 1965)

After the Firebombing (Feb. 14, 1965)

London School of Economics (February 11, 1965)

Pierre Berton interviews Malcolm X (January 19, 1965)

Prospects for Freedom in 1965 (January 7, 1965)

Speech to Civil Rights Workers from Mississippi (Jan. 1, 1965)

Claude Lewis Interviews Malcolm X (December, 1964)

Bernice Bass Interviews Malcolm X (December 27, 1964)

Malcolm X Introduces Fannie Lou Hamer (December 20, 1964)

Malcolm X on The Power of Africa (Audubon Ballroom, December 20, 1964)

Harvard Law School Forum (December 16, 1964)

Malcolm X with Dick Gregory At the Audubon Ballroom (Dec. 13, 1964)

Oxford Union Debate (December 3, 1964)

Les Crane Interviews Malcolm X (December 2, 1964)

OAAU Homecoming Rally (November 29, 1964)

Letter to the Egyptian Gazette (August 25, 1964)

Speech to The Second African Summit Conference (August 21, 1964)

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4,000 Pages of FBI Files

Malcolm X Collected Speeches Volume 1 (355 pages)

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