Malcolm X: With regard to The Saturday Evening Post article, it’s just about what you would expect from a nationally circulated magazine that is writing about a group of black people not under the influence or control of the white man. To me the magazine article was, by and large, a great deal of propaganda. The very fact that it is named “Merchants of Hate” gives a clue to the purpose or objective that the people who were responsible for the article had in mind. I think that the white man has a great deal of nerve to refer to any black people as merchants of hate in the face of the hell that black people have caught in this country at the hands of the white man, even at a time when the whites are admitting that they have brutalized black people for four hundred years. They kidnapped us and brought us here; they deprived us of our rights; they made us slaves; they sold our people from one plantation to another, from one auction block to another. And even right now, 1963, they have to confess they are still depriving the black people here in America, not only of civil rights, but even of human rights. And behind all of this mistreatment and abuse that whites have inflicted upon the black people in this country, again I say, I think that a white man in a magazine published by white people has a whole lot of nerve charging black people with teaching some kind of hate about them. If black people in this country behind the deeds they have experienced at the hands of the white man don’t hate him because of what they have wasting his time trying to teach someone hate behind that. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad doesn’t teach hate, he teaches black people to love each other.
Moderator: Was there anything in that article, Malcolm X, relative to the Muslims that was true?
Malcolm X: There could have been. I think when it says that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us to reform ourselves of the vices and evils of this society, drunkenness, dope addiction, how to work and provide a living for our family, take care of our children and our wives—when it pointed out these aspects it was speaking truth, but this is a thing that black people have to guard against. Oftentimes a propagandist who is shrewd will tell just enough truth to make you believe that he is being objective and to get you to listen and then he starts injecting the negative side, and this is where we become resentful.
Moderator: They did make some mention in the article, however, of the growing strength of the Black Muslims.
Malcolm X: Not because they wanted to but because they had to. I think the white man has to face the fact that black people in this country are tired of sitting around waiting for the white man to make up his mind that we are human beings. Therefore, the type of so-called Negro leadership that represents this hat-in-hand, patient, wait-another-hundred-years approach, that type of leadership is losing its grip on the mind of the masses of people. So when a man like the Honorable Elijah Muhammad steps forth in the midst of the so-called Negroes and calls it just like it is, and shows the black people that we don’t have to compromise with the white man because we are right—right is on our side—and when right is on your side, and when what a man is doing to you is wrong, you don’t have to sit around and give him another hundred years to get his house in order. It is this type of approach that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is using that makes the masses of black people see that he is the man for them. And it is also helping his growth.
Moderator: Mention was made in the article of the business prospects, of progress made by the Muslims, and in so doing accusations were made in the article that most of the businesses of the Black Muslims are very small neighborhood businesses. Is that true?
Malcolm X: Well, sir, when the white man himself was starting out his businesses in this country they all started out as neighborhood businesses. Woolworth started out with one store and over the years he has developed a chain into a tremendous economic enterprise. Sears, Roebuck—all of your big chain businesses or your industries that the white man has today were started as small businesses. Any business that you can point out started out small, and this is where the Negro has made his mistake. He wants to start out right now exactly as the white man is. He doesn’t realize that you have to start out small and develop into that which you ultimately will become. And the Honorable Elijah Muhammad has actually showed his business ingenuity by showing how to start out small and develop our businesses—make them grow—and then our business ability grows right along with that business. And there is nothing wrong with that. And also that article did point out the fact that most of the businesses aren’t owned by the Nation of Islam or the Muslim group per se, but rather most of the businesses are owned by the individual Muslims, and this is true. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad encourages every so-called Negro that respects the religion of Islam to stand on his own two feet and start doing something for himself. So the money that we used to throw away when we were Christians—nightclubbing and drinking and smoking and participating in these other acts of immorality—the money that we save when we become Muslims—we channel it into these small business enterprises and try to develop them to where they can provide some job opportunities for the rest of our people. And I can cite a good example in New York where we have one particular brother who, when he was a Christian, was a drunkard. He was a mechanic. He used to work for the white man. And when he came to Muhammad’s Mosque in New York he immediately stopped drinking and he started saving his money and he opened up a little two-by-four, or two-bit, garage in a store on 115th Street, and within three or four years he had saved up enough money to buy himself a home on Long Island plus expand his small business into a five-story garage, where he now employs fifty or so persons. Which means he is now in a position to create employment for Negroes. And he has done this only since becoming a Muslim. He is only an example of what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad has taught black men to do across the country. Instead of begging the white man for what he has, he says we should get together and start doing something for ourselves. As long as a lot of these Negroes want to continue to beg from the white man and sit around and wait for the crumbs to fall from the white man’s table, they don’t like what Mr. Muhammad is forcing them to do: stand on their own two feet. So they slip up to the white man and whisper in his ear and make the white man think—the gullible white man think—that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is teaching hate and trying to develop some kind of an army to overthrow the white man. And as long as the white man listens to that type of Negro he will end up overthrowing himself.
Moderator: Malcolm, I understand that you were at the Irvine Auditorium at the University of Pennsylvania today as a guest of the youth chapter of the NAACP and the report that I received was that you had better than three thousand people out there, with a number of people standing outside who were not able to gain entrance. Is that true?
Malcolm X: That is correct.
Moderator: I am wondering what your subject was and I what you talked about out there.
Malcolm X: Well, before I tell you the subject I want to comment on that crowd. You’ll find that this is a pattern that we run into across the country. Wherever a Muslim makes an appearance and gives a lecture, no matter what type of crowd comes out, even a capacity crowd, very seldom will you read too much about it in the press. Very seldom will you get any indication from the press that the people in that city or in that community or in that college or in that university are showing any genuine interest in what the Muslim has to say. But when an integrationist like King or someone else comes into the city, if he talks to five people this will be blown up in the press and it will be made to appear that this is the man who represents the black masses, and that all of the black masses endorse the type of peaceful-suffering, hat-in-hand, tongue-in-cheek doctrine that is usually displayed on those occasions. So basically one of the reasons why you never hear too much about occasions like this is because of that fact. Now, my subject today dealt with primarily two different Negroes: the old Negro and the new Negro.
Moderator: Will you tell us something about it?
Malcolm X: I will. This is the thing that whites need to be made aware of, that there is an old Negro and a new Negro. The old Negro is the one that the white man is familiar with. The new Negro is the one that has resulted from the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and the whites in this country are not too familiar with this type. Back in slavery they also had two types, and to understand the types today you have to understand the two types that existed during slavery. During slavery, historians agree, there were what were known as the house Negro and the field Negro. The house Negro was the one who lived in the master’s house, ate the master’s food, at the master’s table usually—after the master had finished with it. He dressed like the master, which means he wore the same type of clothing that the master did, but usually it was clothing handed down to him by the master. He identified the master’s house as his own. If the master said, “We have a fine house here,” the house Negro would say, “Yes, our house is a fine house.” Whenever the master said, “We,” he said, “We.” If the master said, “We have good food on our table,” the house Negro would chime in and say, “Yes, we have plenty of food, boss, on our table.” The house Negro would also identify himself so closely with his master that when the master was sick the house Negro would say, “What’s the matter, boss, we’s sick?” When the master was sick he was sick. If the master’s house caught on fire the house Negro would fight harder to put the flames out or keep the flames from enveloping the master’s house than the master would himself. If someone were to come to the...
Moderator: He would naturally say, “We’s sick,” because the master was sick?
Malcolm X: Oh yes, he would say, “We’s sick” or “We’s in trouble.” If the master was in trouble, he would say, “Boss, we is sure in trouble.”
Moderator: Well, I can understand where he might be in trouble if the master was in trouble, but I can’t understand how he could be sick if the master was sick!
Malcolm X: Oh, yes. This type of Negro loved the master so much—he never felt pain for himself; he only was in pain when his master was in pain. And this is very important to understand because you cannot understand the present-day twentieth century house Negro or twentieth century Uncle Tom until you have a real understanding of the Uncle Tom who lived on the plantation before the Emancipation Proclamation. And that type of Negro never identified himself with the other slaves. He always thought he was above the field Negroes. The field Negroes were the masses. The house Negroes were the minority whereas the field Negroes were in the majority.
Now, sir, if someone came to that house Negro and said, “Let’s separate, let’s run,” the house Negro would look at that person like he was crazy and tell him, “Run where? How would I live, how would I sleep if I leave my master’s house? How would I eat if my master didn’t feed me? How would I clothe myself if my master wasn’t here to give me some clothes?” Well, that’s the house Negro. Now you have the other type of Negro—the field Negro. The field Negro was the one who really caught hell. He was the one who was dissatisfied. He was the one who was oppressed. He was the one who was downtrodden and exploited most. He was the one who felt the brunt of the master’s whip, the lash of the master’s whip—and he hated his master. If his master got sick, he didn’t say, “Are we sick?” He prayed that his master would die. If his master’s house caught on fire he prayed for a strong wind to come up and burn the plantation down. He never identified himself with his master in any way whatsoever. And if someone came to that Negro, that field Negro, that mass element, and said, “Let’s go, let’s separate, let’s leave the master and strike out on our own,” he wouldn’t even ask where. He would leave. He wouldn’t even ask you how. He would leave. He wouldn’t ask you any questions at all. As soon as you said, “Come on, let’s go,” he’d be gone.
Now just as you have the house Negro and the field Negro a hundred years ago, in America today you have a house Negro and a field Negro. You have the modern counterpart of that slavery-time Uncle Tom, only the one today is a twentieth century Uncle Tom. He doesn’t wear a handkerchief around his head, sir. He wears a top hat. He speaks with a Harvard accent or a Howard accent. Sometimes he is a lawyer or a judge or a doctor or he is an ambassador to the UN. He represents the government in all the international conferences. He runs to the Congo and tries to settle differences there, but he can’t go to Mississippi and settle differences that his own people are confronted with in the face of these Mississippi southerners. This is the twentieth-century house Negro. He wants to live with his master. He wants to force his way into his master’s neighborhood. He wants to force his way into his master’s schools. He wants to force his way into his master’s industry. He identifies himself with his master so much that when his master says, “Our society,” he says, “Yes boss, our society.” When his master says, “Our army, our armed forces,” or “Our astronauts are floating around the earth,” he says, “Yes.” Now here is a Negro, mind you, talking about his astronauts floating around in space someplace or talking about his industry out here called General Motors or talking about his mayor in City Hall or his President in the White House. Every time the white man says, “We” that type of Negro says, “Yes, we.” Now when he hears the white man say how rich we are, that Negro runs around talking about how rich we are, how enlightened we are, how educated we are, or this is the free world or this is a free country, and at the same time he is begging the white man for civil rights and integration and all that kind of stuff he doesn’t have. He is a twentieth century Uncle Tom. He is a house Negro. He is no different from that house Negro during slavery other than that he is living in the twentieth century. But he identifies himself with the white man. He is never sick until the white man is sick. If you attack the white man, that Negro will open up his mouth to defend the white man better than the white man can defend himself.
Now then, you have the masses of black people in this country who are the offshoot of the field Negro, during slavery. They are the masses. They are the ones who are jobless. They are the last hired and the first fired. They are the ones who are forced to live in the ghetto and the slum. They are the ones who are not allowed to integrate. They are not the handpicked Negroes who benefit from token integration. They are not the bourgeoisie who get the crumbs that fall from the white man’s table. They are not the ones who can slip into the White House or these big hotels when the doors are opened up. These are the ones who still are forced to live in the ghetto or forced to live in the slum or forced to get a third-rate education or forced to work in the worst form of job. They benefit in no way, shape, or form whatsoever from this thing that is called democracy. And that type of Negro—when you come to him—field Negro, this mass level type of so-called Negro—and tell him, “Let’s separate,” he doesn’t ask you anything about “Where shall we go?” He doesn’t question Mr. Muhammad’s method of bringing about separation. He just says, “OK, let’s separate. We are catching hell in this system we are in now. Let’s separate.” He has the same reaction to what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is teaching today that the field Negroes would have if a man came during slavery and told those slaves, “Come on, let’s go.”
This was emphasized at the University of Pennsylvania today, to make the white people see that they are dealing with two different types of Negro. This integrationist Negro is the one who doesn’t want to be black—he is ashamed to be black—and he knows that he can’t be white. So he calls himself a Negro— an American Negro—which means he is neither black nor white. He doesn’t want to be black and can’t be white, so he is called a Negro. And since he is living in this American society he is always seeking a role for himself on the American stage. And since he knows that America is a white country and all of the economy, the politics, the civic life of America is controlled by the white man—the whole stage is controlled by the white man—whenever he sees himself on the American stage, he sees himself as a minority in the company of a white majority. So he is the underdog, and as an underdog he regards himself as a minority. He adopts the beggar role—the role of a beggar. And for everything that type of Negro seeks for himself he takes a begging attitude, a condescending attitude. So also, sir, he never looks at himself on the world stage. Usually his knowledge is limited to right here, to America, and he thinks of himself as an American in the American context which always keeps him in the role of a minority. But now when it comes to the international stage he can’t see it. He is not interested in a role on the international stage. He only wants a minority role in America.
But there is another type of Negro on the scene. This type doesn’t call himself a Negro. He calls himself a black man. He doesn’t make any apology for his black skin. He doesn’t make any apology for being in America because he knows he was brought here forcibly by the white man. It’s the white man’s fault that he is here. It’s the white man who created the problem here in America that they call a race problem. This type of black man sees that. So he doesn’t apologize for being here; he doesn’t apologize for the problem that his presence confronts the white man with. He doesn’t walk around bragging that he is an American or that he wants to be a part of the American society. This particular type of black man has been exposed to the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and having been exposed to the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad his thinking is international. He sees the world. He doesn’t see America. He sees the entire world. And when he sees the world he sees that the majority of people on this earth are dark people and these dark people outnumber the whites. So he doesn’t think of himself as a minority, but he thinks of himself as part of this vast dark majority who outnumber the whites, and therefore he doesn’t have to beg the white man for anything. He takes his role on the international stage and that’s not the role of a beggar, that’s the role that he was automatically born for.
While I was at the University of Pennsylvania this afternoon, or this evening, I was trying to point out to them, to make them see the importance of recognizing the fact that there are two different types of Negroes in America today, and as long as they try and do business, we might say, only with this integrationist-type Negro, the problem can never be solved. We should take into consideration the fact that the Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, repeatedly, recently, has been pointing out that America’s number one problem, domestic problem, is the race problem, and that failure to solve this problem is destroying America’s image among the dark masses of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Also, failure to solve this problem has serious repercussions on the American economy, as well as upon America’s foreign policy. Even a recent speech by the governor of North Carolina lends added emphasis to the importance of solving this serious race problem. North Carolina is a state where the so-called Negro has been brutalized from the time he was brought there, and even the governor of that state realizes the importance of this race problem. So much so that that governor was on television recently, pointing out to the people of America the importance of doing something to solve this problem. And then last week an interfaith religious conference of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish groups which was held in Chicago, dealing with the race problem, that conference also broke up. And it broke up with the problems of racism still unsolved. In fact when one reads the results of that religious conference one has to agree that it succeeded only in highlighting their inability to eliminate white racism from their own churches and synagogues. So I was pointing out there at the University of Pennsylvania that no group or council or conference would ever solve the race problem until they first recognized and included the Honorable Elijah Muhammad as an active participant in all of their discussions and in all of their plans.
Why? Because the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the only black man in America who can speak for the oppressed and dissatisfied black masses who are impatient and tired of sitting around and waiting for the white man to make up his mind to do something to solve this problem. Plus the fact that these other so-called Negro leaders that are usually up in the white man’s face are Negroes whom the white man himself has set up as leaders, and they don’t represent any of the black masses. They don’t speak for the dissatisfied black people or the impatient black people. Usually they know exactly what the white man wants to hear them say, and they say it in the exact manner that the white man expects them to say it. And by listening to these Negroes the problem never gets solved, it only gets worse. Also, racial unrest never occurs among the satisfied, bourgeois class of Negroes. They can easily be appeased and controlled and influenced just by continuing to drop crumbs on their table—the crumbs of tokenism. And this type of Negro that the so-called Negro leadership represents is a type that can be appeased and can be controlled with the crumbs of token integration. But the racial explosions never take place among that type. Racial explosions always erupt among the oppressed, dissatisfied black masses, and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the only black man today that is speaking out in behalf of the black masses.
I read out there at the University of Pennsylvania an article that was in the Detroit News quoting a chaplain, Rev. Malcolm Boyd, a white Episcopalian chaplain at Wayne State University who pointed out that the conference in Chicago—the Interfaith Conference in Chicago—was a failure. In the Detroit News he said, and I quote him: “Although 650 leaders of American churches have gathered here, nothing has been brought out and nothing ever will unless the basic ideas of such a gathering as this are changed.” The conference centered on the failure of religion to aid racial integration. Now Rev. Boyd pointed out, and again I quote: “My chief criticism was of the speakers selected to address the conference. They are leaders in the field of religion, highly articulate and persuasive, but they are not saying anything new or anything that will help solve the real problem for us.”
Rev. Boyd believes that the conference might have accomplished much good if the speakers had included a white supremacist and a Negro race leader, preferably a top man in the American Black Muslim movement. And he went on to say, and I quote: “A debate between them (meaning this white racist and a Black Muslim) would undoubtedly be bitter, but it would accomplish one thing: it would get some of the real issues out into the open. In this conference we have not done that. The money spent to bring these people here has been wasted. We have done nothing to solve the race problem either in our churches or in our communities.” Now the statements from this element that attended this interfaith conference on religion in Chicago have not been given wide coverage in the press. The press has used its outlet or its ability to reach the public to make the public think that an honest effort was put forth out there to listen to the gripes and grievances of the dissatisfied Negroes or to solve the problem. But those who attended admit, and the current Jet magazine points out, that the conference was a failure. So all of this was put forth at the University of Pennsylvania, and it was pointed out to them that the only way the white man can solve his problem is to realize the existence of two different, distinct types of Negroes. This is the old type and the new type: that old type who is the Uncle Tom and wants to continue to beg white people to accept him or to force himself into the white society; then this new type of black man who wants to think for himself, speak for himself, stand on his own feet, and walk for himself. This type is following the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. If he is not an outright follower of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad he is in sympathy with the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and he believes that the only way our problem can be solved is that, instead of sitting around waiting for the white man to solve it, the black people have to come together. We have to forget our differences. We have to forget our religious differences, our economic differences, our social differences. We have to submerge our differences and get together behind the door and formulate some kind of plan, come to some kind of conclusions of what we can do to solve the problem of our ever increasing number of black people across the nation. And it was also pointed out to the students at the University of Pennsylvania this afternoon that the only way they can understand the thinking of this new type of black man is to realize what he sees when he opens his eyes and looks around this world. And this new type of black man realizes that, in the past, dark mankind was ruled by white mankind. This is a fact. Right up until today, recent history, black, brown, red, and yellow man was ruled by the white man—which means European colonialism. This is what they call it, but in essence European colonialism meant that the white man was ruling the black, brown, red, and yellow people of this earth—which is, in reality, white supremacy. Now these same dark people who were ruled by the European minority were actually in the majority. It means that in the past the European minority, the white minority, was able to come together both by hook and by crook and rule the dark majority by practicing divide and conquer.”
When the black, brown, red, and yellow man of Africa and Asia realized what was going on, they had a conference in Indonesia which has come to be known as the Bandung Conference. And what they did at that Bandung Conference actually changed the course of history. They had many differences: they had religious differences, economic differences, all types of differences. But at the Bandung Conference the black, brown, red, and yellow man agreed to submerge their differences and come together against the common enemy, the thing that all of them had in common: that they were all being exploited by the white man, they were all being oppressed by the white man. They called him European, but actually he was a white man.
So once they reached a conclusion that they had oppression in common, exploitation in common, they were able to identify a common enemy, and this enabled them to unite against the common enemy; and out of this grew what we today know as the African-Asian-Arab bloc. They have differences among themselves, yet they work together. Their working unity enabled them to free the dark nations of Africa. The fast emerging independence of the nations in Africa has taken place since the Bandung Conference. As these nations in Africa began to get their independence and come into the United Nations they had a vote, they had a voice, and they soon were able to outvote the white man, outvote the European, outvote the colonial powers. And by being able to outvote the colonial powers their vote was sufficient to produce a power that forced the people of Europe to turn loose the black man in Tanganyika, the black man in the Congo, the black man in what we today know as the former French West African territories. All of this stems from the unity of the black, brown, red, and yellow man in the United Nations. It created a new era. It created a new world. And it created a situation where the only people who were able to sit at the helm of the United Nations were no longer white or European or Christian or in the person of Trygve Lie or Dag Hammarskjold or some of the others. Right after the black man, brown man, red man, yellow man agreed to submerge their differences and come together in unity, their unified force was sufficient to make it almost impossible today for a white man to be elected to the helm of the United Nations or for a Christian to be elected to the helm of the United Nations or for a European to be elected to the helm of the United Nations. Everyone that you see now sitting in the top seat of authority in the UN is either an African, an Asian, or an Arab, or he is either a Hindu, a Buddhist, or a Muslim. And all of this is the result of the ability of these black, brown, red, and yellow people to forget their little differences and come together against the common foe, against the common enemy, the oppressor.
And this is a good example that the black people in America can copy if we want to bring about freedom, justice, equality, and human dignity of the black people in this country. It was also pointed out today at the University of Pennsylvania that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s program is designed to make black, brown, red, and yellow people here in America, the so-called Negro, forget our differences. Any differences that we have we should take them behind the door, or any argument that we want to engage in among ourselves should be done behind the door. Instead, we need to present a common front against a common enemy, and the common enemy of the black, brown, red, and yellow man is anyone standing in the way of our freedom. Anyone standing in the way of our justice or equality. Anyone who deprives the black man in America of civil rights is an enemy to the black man. Anyone who deprives the black man of citizenship in America is an enemy to the black man. And when the black people in this country learn how to recognize the enemy, the common enemy, then the black people can get together in unity and harmony and do whatever is necessary to solve our own problems. We won’t be sitting around here waiting for the white man to issue some kind of emancipation proclamation. We won’t be waiting for the Senate or Congress. We won’t be waiting for any Supreme Court. Our unity will be sufficient to bring about human dignity, to bring about freedom, justice, and equality, and to bring about whatever the black man needs to enable him to stand on his own feet like a man.
It was also pointed out to them, so they wouldn’t think hard of me in saying that their world was coming to an end, that their world was decreasing, that their power was on the downgrade, that they were losing out all over the world I reminded them of a speech that was made by Prime Minister Macmillan on April 26, 1962, at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City, to the leading publishers and editors of America, at which time Prime Minister Macmillan himself pointed out that in his own lifetime a change, a new world, has come into existence. He said that when he was a boy the world was a white world. Britain’s power extended so far across this planet that they used to brag that the sun would never set on the British Empire. In Macmillan’s own lifetime, the power of the Englishman, the white man in England, has decreased so much, or the British Empire has decreased so much, that today when the sun rises you can hardly find the British Empire. And this is all symbolic of the decrease in power that the white man has suffered just in recent years. Just as Britain has dwindled down to nothing in prestige and influence in the face of the rising dark nations of this earth, all of your white nations have done the same thing.
France has dwindled down to nothing. She has lost her possessions in Asia and, after she lost her possessions in Asia, I think called Indo-China, it affected her economy so much that she didn’t have enough strength, economic strength, to keep in existence an army large enough to dominate the large West African territories. She had to turn them loose, and finally she had to turn Algeria loose, I just in our own lifetime, just in this present generation. Not only did this happen to England and France, but the Netherlands had to give up Indonesia. And as soon as the Netherlands turned loose the brown man’s lands in Indonesia, the economy of the Netherlands dwindled down so that you hardly hear of the Dutch. You hardly hear of Belgium. Belgium used to be a power on this earth, as I long as she could dictate to the black people in the Congo. But as soon as Belgium had to turn loose the Congolese, within a matter of months, the loss of the free and cheap mineral resources that the white man from Belgium in Europe was getting from the black man’s lands in Africa affected the Belgium economy so much they had a collapse in the Belgium government. And all of this is a pattern that the white man’s whole world, his whole kingdom, has had to face up to in recent times, during your and my generation. So I pointed these things out to the white students at the University of Pennsylvania so that they could see themselves that their world is shrinking, that their world is coming to an end. And the thing that is bringing about an end to their world is the awakening of the dark world. As the dark world awakens, the dark world is rising. And as the dark world rises and increases, the power of the white world decreases. So when the Honorable Elijah Muhammad mentions to us, the so-called Negroes here in America, that we are living at the end of the world, all that means is that we are living at the end of the white world. When he says we are living at the end of time, all that means is that we are living at the end of the white man’s time. The time that the white man could exercise unilateral and dictatorial power over the destiny of black people, brown people, red people, and yellow people on this earth has come to an end. And when the Honorable Elijah Muhammad says this they call him a black supremacist, they call him a racist, while at the same time in the halls of the United Nations Prime Minister Macmillan and all of the international diplomats are getting on the podium at the UN and crying the blues because they can see the handwriting on the wall.
And just like it took Daniel in Babylon to read the handwriting on the wall for that slave master or the descendants of Nebuchadnezzar, it takes the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, a little ex-slave here in America, to stand up here in this House of Bondage today and read the handwriting on the wall and let the white man know that his time is up, that his days are numbered, that he has been weighed in the balance and all of the seeds of injustice that he has sown in the past are coming home to plague him today. All of the injustices committed by past generations of whites the present generation of Englishmen is suffering because it breaks them up to see themselves lose their empire. But still they are losing their empire because of seeds sown by their own foreparents in England and the present generation of Englishmen has to face that as a fact. The seeds of their forefathers have come home to plague this generation of Englishmen that live on this earth today.
Likewise, here in America, what has the American white man got to realize? That a crime was committed against the so-called Negro. And I think that the most important thing that was pointed out to the students of the University of Pennsylvania today was that a crime was committed against the so-called American Negro when our people were brought here. And today the white man, not realizing, not being capable of facing up to the fact, that a crime was actually committed, thinks he is doing the so-called Negro a favor when he opens the door to freedom. And I pointed out to the students: when someone sticks a knife into my back nine inches and then pulls it out six inches they haven’t done me any favor. And if they pull that knife which they stuck in my back all the way out they still have not done me any favor. They should not have stabbed me in the back in the first place. Likewise, it was pointed out to them that when you take a man and frame him up, an innocent man and frame him up, and put him in prison—and because he rebels against this illegal and unjust framing and imprisonment he then is placed in solitary confinement within the prison to keep him from rebelling against the laws of the penal institution—after his spirit is broken in solitary confinement—why, the warden isn’t doing that man any favor by taking him out of solitary confinement and then giving him more freedom within the confines of the prison wall. He shouldn’t be imprisoned in the first place. And if they break down the prison walls completely and let that man out they still aren’t doing that man any favor because they imprisoned him illegally and unjustly in the first place.
Now the Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that the white man captured millions of black people and brought us into prison, a prison house called America. They called it slavery; it was prison. And during the slavery or imprisonment of the black man in this country they inflicted the most extreme form of brutality against us to break our spirit, to break our will to resist, to destroy our manhood, to take the bone out of our back, to destroy our backbone. And after destroying our will, making us docile and humble, so that today we will turn the other cheek to those who are brutalizing us, after they did all of this to us for 310 years, then they come up with some so- called Emancipation Proclamation supposedly bringing us out of what we would call solitary confinement and giving us more freedom here within the prison walls of America.
And today the white man actually runs around here thinking he is doing the black people a favor because he gives us a little degree of freedom or justice or equality, or because he lets another one or two or three Negroes go to school with white people. The white man has the audacity to imply that he is doing black people a favor. What the white man should be made to realize is that his forefathers committed a crime by bringing our people here to this country. They committed a crime when they murdered our people throughout America. They committed a crime when they sold us from one plantation to another plantation like chattel or like merchandise or like common property. This was a crime and all of those crimes that were committed during the 310 years against the black people in this country are the crimes that have come home to roost today on this present generation of whites. And the only black man in America, the only black leader in America, the only black spokesman in America who will sit down and talk to the white man like a man, like a black man to a white man, and spell it out the way it is, is the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
If the white man wants to solve his problem, if the white man wants to solve the race problem, if the white man wants to eliminate racial tension, then the white man should do the same thing that Pharaoh did who was the ruler of the House of Bondage in the days of Egypt. He was not able to solve his problem until he sat down and talked with Moses. Nebuchadnezzar wasn’t able to solve his problems until he sat down and talked with Daniel. And today, here in America, this white man will never solve his problems until he sits down and talks with the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad will tell him the same thing that Moses told Pharaoh: Let my people go. Not let my people integrate with you, but let my people separate from you. Let us go to ourselves and solve our own problems and build up some kind of society, some system, some kind of agricultural system, so that we can feed and clothe and shelter our own people, an economic system so that we can provide the necessities of life for our own people, and have our own government, our own flag, our own everything. The white man can stay to himself and we can stay to ourselves. Perhaps then we can get some kind of solution to the problem.
But they’ll never solve the problem listening to these handpicked, Uncle Tom, bourgeois, upper-class Negroes whose only desire is to sit down in the white man’s house or in the white man’s neighborhood or in the white man’s school. Some of them now even insist upon dying and being buried in the white man’s cemetery. That’s foolish, and the masses of black people in this country don’t think that this in anyway is a solution to our problem.
So all of these things were pointed out to the students of the University of Pennsylvania this afternoon, not with any animosity or any hostility but in the language of frankness. And I think they listened very objectively and very intelligently. Sometimes there were little temporary disturbances by some—I guess they were white segregationists, I don’t know whether they were segregationists or integrationists—who were sitting up in one part of the balcony. They were trying to do a little heckling, but it is impossible for a white man to heckle a Muslim. There is nothing that he can come up with that surprises a Muslim or in any way phases a Muslim. We are not interested in his heckling. All we are interested in is spelling out the problem. And if he is man enough to listen then perhaps he will get a better understanding of it.
So in this lecture this afternoon at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the lecture at Michigan State University on Wednesday, our primary objective and purpose was to show the white man that just dealing with the integrationist-minded Negro will never solve the problem If you read this week’s Jet, the one that is on the newsstand right now, the observers who attended this interfaith religious conference in Chicago all agreed that it was impossible for the type of Negro leadership that was represented there to sit down and hold any kind of discussion with whites and really get to the root, to the nitty-gritty of the problem. The only way that the root of the problem can be gotten to is to have someone in those conferences who represents the masses.
You read about the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. One of the things that’s always pointed out even by his critics is that the intellectual Negro doesn’t follow Mr. Muhammad; they say that the educated Negro doesn’t follow Mr. Muhammad; they say that the Negro with the high income bracket doesn’t follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. What they always emphasize is that the only Negroes that follow Muhammad are those who don’t have too much education, those who are oppressed, unemployed, and dissatisfied. Well, what they are doing right there, then, is admitting that it is the masses who follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, because the masses of black people in this country are unemployed. Even the job that they have is the same as no job, because their wages are so small that it is the same as not having any job at all.
Question: Mr. Malcolm X says that we are so-called Negroes. I have been raised and taught that I am a Negro and now I have to file applications and they say what nationality are you. I would like for Mr. Malcolm X to tell me what shall I put down after this question when they ask me.
Malcolm X: We put down Asiatic. Asiatic in this sense: the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that originally this entire planet today known as Earth was called Asia. When you read some of the so-called great historians they even point out that the entire earth was once known as Asia and all of the people on it at that time were Asiatic. The only people here were black, brown, red, and yellow. At that time there were no white people here at all. We refer to ourselves as the Asiatic black man. On my draft card it says Asiatic. And anything that anybody puts in front of me that wants to know what is my race or my nationality, any Muslim will put down Asiatic and that ends it. But never put down Negro. The worst thing that you can call yourself is a Negro. If you don’t think so just call yourself that and immediately you will find all the doors closed. But at the same time the blackest man from Africa comes here and he rejects the term Negro. You can’t call him a Negro. He will tell you he is an African and every door is open. Last year Kennedy made a special point in Maryland and Virginia to tell all those whites down there: don’t do anything to practice discrimination against the African. Now at the same time he wouldn’t make any statements concerning the American Negro, but he did come out and make a statement about the Africans. Which shows you that there is a difference between being Negro and being black. The African proudly calls himself black. But now when you call yourself a Negro that is when you encounter all these racial indignities.
Question: The Muslims seem to have a great deal of answers to many of the problems that seem to surround the Negro neighborhoods. Now, why is it they don’t have enough of their men who can go around, help work, and solve some of the problems, not only in Philadelphia, but nationwide. The Muslims seem to be doing a very fine job of recruiting men and turning them over from vice and crime into a better way of life. If the Negroes in our society who can see this group would come about to work with them, even if they don’t follow a religious program, I think, as he said, we should put away our differences and seek a way to a better understanding.
Malcolm X: That’s a good question. An incident that happened recently right here in Philadelphia pretty well answers that. The local president of the local NAACP, Attorney Moore, came out and began to take a militant, uncompromising stand in behalf of the black people, and immediately he was accused of being a Muslim, from what I read in the paper. Instead of giving him credit for showing leadership, for showing the dynamic necessary to approach this problem and get it solved, all of the other elements, from what I understand, banded against him and attacked him. Now as Muslims it is an admitted fact by the critics of Mr. Muhammad that he is able to eliminate the vice, the immorality, the dope addiction. All the things they accuse the Negro of being guilty of, Mr. Muhammad is able to eliminate. And you would think that all these organizations would try to work with him. But instead of trying to work with him, as he would like to work with them, they can’t do it because usually they don’t have that much independence. Most of these Negro leaders have been put in their positions as leaders by the white man, and the only other black people that they can work with are black people who are approved also by the white man. And since the Muslims, Mr. Muhammad and his followers, are not on the approved list of the white man, this type of Negro leadership is afraid to openly identify or sympathize with what Mr. Muhammad is doing even though they know that what he is doing is good for the problems that our people are confronted with.
Question: Sir, what I wanted to know is, being that he has just asked the question that the Muslims have men that will go out to work with organizations like NAACP regardless of religions, their creed—they won’t accept these members of the Muslim sect to do this, would he suggest that those who are qualified should infiltrate and perhaps try to influence them in the religion of Muhammad?
Malcolm X: He struck up a good point. I think you’ll find, brother, that there are Muslims everywhere. Wherever you find militancy today among so-called Negroes, watch real closely. You’re liable to be looking at a Muslim. This is by now what the white man is beginning to be afraid of. Every time he sees a Negro who speaks without compromise he swears that this man must be a Muslim. That’s why I used Cecil Moore as an example. As long as you have a local man here in Philadelphia who can be maneuvered and manipulated and frightened by the white liberal, all these other Negro leaders will fall right in line and go along with him. But as soon as you get a black man who will stand up—I don’t care whether he is in the NAACP or CORE or in any other organization—if he starts taking an uncompromising stand whether the white man likes it or not, you’ll find that the Uncle Tom leadership will rally against him and classify him or charge him or signify or insinuate that he must be a Black Muslim. And you’ll never make progress as long as you have those kinds of Negroes around. The only time the Negro leaders show any tendency in trying to get together in unity is when they want to attack another Negro. But those same Negroes who unite against one Negro, you can’t get them to unite together on any problem under the sun except against another Negro.
Question: I feel that the American Negroes have enough money to get together and build, but they just won’t do it. As you say, they’ll fight each other and still bicker among themselves. So I can see what you are talking about there. But I also would like to know what he thinks about the real white man.
Moderator: I don t know what he means by the real white man. Is there an unreal white man?
Malcolm X: The real one is probably the one he sees after his eyes come open. I might comment on something that he said that was very important, about the Negro having enough money to actually solve his problems. Anytime the so-called Negro has access to twenty billion dollars a year and you don’t find him able to provide job opportunities himself, this is a sign of sickness. And the Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that if this so-called Negro would channel his wealth into business enterprises and create employment or create businesses that would provide employment then our problem would be solved. But as a rule, sir, in most Negro communities across the country the only thing you’ll find Negroes building are Negro churches. An example: In Long Island the white man bought a city block. He built a huge supermarket on it. It creates job opportunities for about three or four hundred people. Now in the next block, believe it or not, the Negroes got together and bought it and built a million-dollar church. Now here this church provides a job only for the preacher; it provides clothing and shelter only for this Negro preacher. Now if this Negro preacher has the ingenuity that it takes to raise a million dollars or to finance a million-dollar project, but the only thing he can finance is a church, it’s a problem. If you notice, white people in their neighborhoods build factories, they build schools, they build everything, and then they also build churches. But the Negro leadership, especially the religious leadership, has actually committed a crime almost in encouraging our people to build churches. But at the same time we never build schools; we never build factories; we never build businesses; we never build housing and things that will solve our problem.
Question: Do you approve of the Cubans coming to this country when we have so much unemployment already?
Malcolm X: I don’t get involved in politics. But it does make the black people in this country who are jobless and unemployed and standing in the welfare line very much discouraged to see a government that can’t solve our problem, can’t provide job opportunities for us, and at the same time not only Cubans but Hungarians and every other type of white refugee imaginable can come to this country and get everything this government has to offer. But the Negro, this faithful soldier during wartime and servant during peace time, is always the last one in line when it comes to having some of his problems solved. It is not surprising that Hungarians and Polacks and Cubans can come to this country—who have never fought for this country, who have never contributed anything to this country’s economy, who have never contributed to the defense of this democracy—can come here and get all the benefits of it. But the black man who has contributed with his life blood and his sweat for four hundred years is still the last hired and the first fired, and the only time they recognize him first is when it comes time to draft him into the army in defense of his country. I think first things first. And the first law of nature is self-preservation. And we are interested in the black man in this country. And the white man—if he has got all that money to be given away all over the world—should be doing something toward correcting the condition that his own crime created when he brought our people here and made us slaves.
Question: I would like Malcolm X to explain what he thinks about all this talk about birth control. Who is it for?
Malcolm X: The white man is worried today the same way that Pharaoh was worried when you read the first chapter of Exodus in the Bible. The slaves under Pharaoh had begun to multiply so fast and Pharaoh and his people were almost becoming sterile. It tells you in there that because these Hebrew slaves were multiplying so fast Pharaoh had to devise a scheme whereby the fertile women and the babies that they were producing would be destroyed. And all this birth control that you hear the white man talking about today, it is not birth control. It is sterilization designed to make this productive, fertile black woman stop producing. As the previous listener pointed out, they never tell you the real number of black people in this country. When you look around here in Philadelphia and New York and Chicago and other cities why you can hardly go into any community without seeing a large number of black faces. Negroes are multiplying, they are increasing too swiftly. And just as Pharaoh had to do something to stop the growth of his slaves, today the American white man must do something to stop the rapid increase of the so-called Negroes. Already the Negro is the balance of power in any political election. The Negro holds the balance of power. In anything that goes on in this country, the ever-increasing number of Negroes holds the balance of power. So something must be done to stop that growth or else it has to be controlled. And it cannot be done the legal way or ethical way so they use underhanded measures or underhanded methods in so doing.
Question: I want to comment on the magazine article, number one. The Saturday Evening Post did the same thing when Nkrumah, if you’ll remember, took over Ghana. He took the image of the Queen of England out of the Parliament. He took their image off his currency and he replaced them with their own portraits so that they could stimulate black honor and black dignity in their people. Now The Saturday Evening Post is doing the same thing now. That’s one thing I want to point out. Now I want to ask Malcolm X this: Is it true that in your Elijah Muhammad speech two weeks ago you said that the struggle in the Congo was a struggle to recreate world colonialism and to control the resources of the Congo, because 86 and 2/10 percent of the copper is used in America and the gold deposits and also the stuff of which they make atomic bombs. If that is cut off America will suffer. And why are they spending $10,500,000 per month to kill people in Africa when they won’t spend $10,500,000 a month to help the people right here in America?
Malcolm X: Sir, you’re a man after my own heart. I’m glad that you were able to see how the white press immediately turned against Nkrumah when they found out that they couldn’t control him and use him as an agent as they use many others over there. And it is true that Katanga Province is one of the richest sources of minerals, vital minerals, that exists on this earth. And if you were to do some research and find out who it is who has money invested in Katanga—some of them who are sitting in high positions in this government right now in this country, and some of them who are accepted by Negroes in this country as liberals in shining armor—when you find out who among the wealthy whites or powerful whites have money invested in the Congo or in Katanga, then you will see behind the struggle over there and why there is so much support for this man Tshombe and for trying to keep him in power. Anything you read in our newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, you can bet that it is true. If it wasn’t truth they would stop us from printing it. And it is the only black paper in this country that will give you the raw truth that is taking place anywhere in which black people are involved on this earth. Did I answer all his questions?
Moderator: I think so. He used some figures.
Malcolm X: It was true, and I wanted to point out, as a preacher, this man shows great intelligence in being able to analyze the news and show how the white press, as soon as the black man begins to take a militant and uncompromising stand, whether it be in America or Africa, will begin to project that man either as a dictator or as a black supremacist or teacher of hate.
Question: I would like to know whether it is true that Malcolm X was arrested within the past four weeks and I how much bond he had to pay to get out of jail.
Malcolm X: I have never been arrested since I became a Muslim. What you are probably talking about is when two of our brothers were arrested in Times Square in New York on Christmas Day, selling newspapers, selling our newspaper in Times Square. In this particular paper there was an article about Congressman Nix, a local congressman from right here in this city, in which he himself took a stand, an open stand, against police brutality. And by the brothers selling the paper in the Times Square area a white policeman took offense and tried to stop them and arrested them and charged the two brothers with assaulting the cop. This is what police always do in cases of police brutality. They brutalize the black man and then turn around and charge the black man with attacking them. So we all went to court on that. But I didn’t go as an arrested person. I went as a Muslim who was interested in seeing that my brother got justice. No sir, I have never been arrested since I have been a follower of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. But that doesn’t mean I am afraid to be arrested, and it doesn’t mean that I am afraid of jail or prison. When it comes to telling the truth about what the white man is doing to the black people in this country I’ll tell it and go to jail myself. They don’t have to take me, I will go. So they can never hold that thing in front of me as a kind of threat. That is one of the things that the white man uses to make Negroes afraid to take a stand. You don’t have to go behind bars to be in jail in this country. If you are born in this country with black skin you are already in jail, you are already confined, you are already watched over by a warden who poses as your mayor and poses as your governor and poses as your President. He is nothing but your warden keeping you in confinement. Don’t ever talk that jail talk to me. I’ll go faster than anybody in this country for the truth and be proud to go and be proud to die for the truth that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is teaching us. And any other Muslim will be just as proud to do so, and will do it just as fast.
Question: Mr. X claims that our spending power is about twenty billion dollars. Is that true?
Malcolm X: Yes sir, according to the government economists.
Question: Well, all the speeches you make, or anyone else makes, is not going to make any difference in the world to the American Negro until he learns to hold onto that money. As fast as he gets it in his hands he runs around the corner and hands it back to the white man. The American Negro has got to put that money to use and build schools and build businesses.
Malcolm X: Sir, I agree with everything you say. Everything you say is 100 percent true, and if you notice the Muslims have set up schools. If you’ll read this Saturday Evening Post article, they don’t like it. The white man doesn’t like it but the Honorable Elijah Muhammad has set up a school in Detroit, a school in Chicago, and schools elsewhere, and it is in these schools that the racial dignity of the black man is taught to our children. We don’t have any dropouts. We don’t have any delinquency. We don’t have any crime rate. We don’t have the problems that the white man accuses the Negroes of allowing to exist in the Negro community. Insofar as the twenty billion dollars are concerned, we don’t blame the white man because we are not able to take advantage of this money. We blame ourselves. And this is what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad says. That instead of us sitting around here begging the white man for a job in his factory or a house in his neighborhood, what we need to do is get together and unite. Pool our resources, pool our talent, and do something for ourselves. But what you have to understand is that the white man is afraid. The white man has a guilt complex and the white people today are so afraid since they know what they have done to the black people in this country. Their secret fear is that if the black man ever gets independent, if he ever gets able to stand on his own feet, the fear on the part of the whites is that you and I will retaliate against him. So the whites don’t want the Negro to become involved in any kind of program that is going to make them independent of whites. They want the Negro to launch a program that the whites can still control or that the whites can still influence or in which they can still offer their guidance. But they do not want us to separate from them and go out on our own as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is teaching us to.
Question: What does Mr. X think about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King?
Malcolm X: I think that any black man who goes among so-called Negroes today who are being brutalized, spit upon in the worst fashion imaginable, and teaches those Negroes to turn the other cheek, to suffer peacefully, or love their enemy is a traitor to the Negro. Everybody on this earth has the right to defend himself. Everybody on this earth who defends himself is respected. Now the only people who are encouraged to love their enemy is the American Negro. The only people who are encouraged to adopt this old passive resistance or wait-until-you-change-your-mind-and-then-let-me philosophy is the American Negro. And any man that propagates that kind of doctrine among Negroes is a traitor to those people. It is time for the black people in this country to come together and unite and do whatever is necessary to gain the recognition and respect of the world. And you know what Patrick Henry had to do to get some respect: he said liberty or death. He didn’t talk any kind of peaceful suffering or passive resistance. George Washington didn’t talk peaceful suffering or passive resistance. No hero who is respected by whites ever tried to propagate some kind of peaceful suffering or passive resistance. The Hungarian Freedom Fighters fought against the Russians. The odds were against them. They were greatly outnumbered, the odds were against them, but because they took a stand and were willing to die for what they believed in, those same freedom fighters can come to this country and get respect and recognition and work on jobs and live in communities that these Negro, what do you call ‘em, Freedom Riders, sit-inners, haven’t been able to do yet. So anytime you will show that you are willing to die for what you believe then you will get respect and recognition and this is what the black man has to learn. If it is all right for black people to be drafted and sent to Korea or South Vietnam or Laos or Berlin or someplace else to fight and die for the white man, then there is nothing wrong with that same black man doing the same thing when he is under the brutality in this country at the hands of the white man.
Question: I was down South recently, in South Carolina, in Georgia, in Florida, and whatever the signs say about desegregating, my wife and I were refused a bathroom, we were refused liquor. What I want to know is: Does he talk the same way down there as he does up here?
Malcolm X: I preach what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches me in Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, and throughout the South. I am scheduled to be in Charlotte, North Carolina, next Wednesday. I’ve been to Birmingham. We have a large mosque, a group of Muslims, in Birmingham, in Tuscaloosa. No, the South is no different from the North. Let me tell you the only difference. The white man in the South is a wolf. You know where he stands. When he opens his mouth and you see his teeth he looks vicious. Well, the only difference between the white man in the South and the white man in the North is that one is a wolf and this one is a fox. The fox will lynch you and you won’t even know you have been lynched. The fox will Jim Crow you and you don’t even know you’re Jim Crowed. And this is the basic difference between the southern white man and the northern white man.
Moderator: In other words, the northern white man is foxier than the southern white man.
Malcolm X: He is foxy. When he opens his mouth and shows you his teeth you think he is smiling and when you look at a fox you think a fox is smiling, but actually the objective of the fox and the wolf is the same. They want to exploit you, they want to take advantage of you. Both are canine, both are dogs—there is no difference. Their methods might differ, but their objective is the same, and the southern white man and the northern white man are in the same category.
Moderator: To answer the gentleman’s question, the answer is that you speak the same in the South as you do in the North.
Malcolm X: Oh, yes, no different. Muslims speak the same everywhere, North, South, East, or West.
Question: I want to ask Malcolm X that he says it is the white man’s fault that many of the Negroes have turned against Negroes by them going around killing each other, robbing from each other. And if I am correct I think you said that the white man had driven many of the Negroes to doing what they have done.
Malcolm X: Oh definitely, definitely. When you see Negroes fighting and shooting and killing each other, all this is a throwback from slavery. There has always been open season on Negroes. A Negro can punch a white man in the mouth and the hunting season is always there. If you notice, sir, there is only a certain season when you can kill a bear or a rabbit.
Moderator: You have to have a license to kill an animal.
Malcolm X: You have to have a license. But there are only certain seasons that you can kill that animal. But you don’t need a license to kill a Negro and you can shoot one out of season—anytime—and you won’t get any time. By Negroes knowing this, what the white man has done is set up a psychological situation where the average Negro thinks he can do anything to another Negro and get away with it. And this has made us antagonistic toward one another, hostile toward one another, and very disrespectful toward one another. And this is what makes Negroes continue to fight and kill each other.
Question: I am a doctor in the city and this refers to the statements by Malcolm X about the white brutality against the Negroes and the general type of campaign which he seems to state that we have against the Negroes. A great deal of my time is spent in the emergency ward treating whites and blacks, and I must say that the greater percentage of patients who commit brutality to each other are the black to the black. Much of our time is spent suturing up these people, and treating very serious injuries, which shows the great brutality among themselves. And until they can show the whites that they treat themselves in a more humane fashion, I don’t think they will develop the respect that they wish. The main thing I wish to say is that they should be improving themselves, as he stated, and they shouldn’t speak of wanting money from government and whites, as he did in referring to the Cuban situation.
Malcolm X: I think that the doctor brought out a very good point. It is true that Negroes kill Negroes but this is because the white man himself has taught Negroes to hate Negroes. The Negro hates another Negro because this was taught to us during slavery and the Negro hates everything about himself. And what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is doing is teaching our people to love ourselves, respect ourselves, and uplift ourselves. And if the white man would realize that what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is doing is actually correcting the myth that the white man has made, then the white man should stop harassing Mr. Muhammad and propagandizing against him and misrepresenting him in his news media, and instead thank him for the good work that he is doing.
Moderator: Thank you, Mr. Malcolm X.
Moderator: Was there anything in that article, Malcolm X, relative to the Muslims that was true?
Malcolm X: There could have been. I think when it says that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us to reform ourselves of the vices and evils of this society, drunkenness, dope addiction, how to work and provide a living for our family, take care of our children and our wives—when it pointed out these aspects it was speaking truth, but this is a thing that black people have to guard against. Oftentimes a propagandist who is shrewd will tell just enough truth to make you believe that he is being objective and to get you to listen and then he starts injecting the negative side, and this is where we become resentful.
Moderator: They did make some mention in the article, however, of the growing strength of the Black Muslims.
Malcolm X: Not because they wanted to but because they had to. I think the white man has to face the fact that black people in this country are tired of sitting around waiting for the white man to make up his mind that we are human beings. Therefore, the type of so-called Negro leadership that represents this hat-in-hand, patient, wait-another-hundred-years approach, that type of leadership is losing its grip on the mind of the masses of people. So when a man like the Honorable Elijah Muhammad steps forth in the midst of the so-called Negroes and calls it just like it is, and shows the black people that we don’t have to compromise with the white man because we are right—right is on our side—and when right is on your side, and when what a man is doing to you is wrong, you don’t have to sit around and give him another hundred years to get his house in order. It is this type of approach that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is using that makes the masses of black people see that he is the man for them. And it is also helping his growth.
Moderator: Mention was made in the article of the business prospects, of progress made by the Muslims, and in so doing accusations were made in the article that most of the businesses of the Black Muslims are very small neighborhood businesses. Is that true?
Malcolm X: Well, sir, when the white man himself was starting out his businesses in this country they all started out as neighborhood businesses. Woolworth started out with one store and over the years he has developed a chain into a tremendous economic enterprise. Sears, Roebuck—all of your big chain businesses or your industries that the white man has today were started as small businesses. Any business that you can point out started out small, and this is where the Negro has made his mistake. He wants to start out right now exactly as the white man is. He doesn’t realize that you have to start out small and develop into that which you ultimately will become. And the Honorable Elijah Muhammad has actually showed his business ingenuity by showing how to start out small and develop our businesses—make them grow—and then our business ability grows right along with that business. And there is nothing wrong with that. And also that article did point out the fact that most of the businesses aren’t owned by the Nation of Islam or the Muslim group per se, but rather most of the businesses are owned by the individual Muslims, and this is true. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad encourages every so-called Negro that respects the religion of Islam to stand on his own two feet and start doing something for himself. So the money that we used to throw away when we were Christians—nightclubbing and drinking and smoking and participating in these other acts of immorality—the money that we save when we become Muslims—we channel it into these small business enterprises and try to develop them to where they can provide some job opportunities for the rest of our people. And I can cite a good example in New York where we have one particular brother who, when he was a Christian, was a drunkard. He was a mechanic. He used to work for the white man. And when he came to Muhammad’s Mosque in New York he immediately stopped drinking and he started saving his money and he opened up a little two-by-four, or two-bit, garage in a store on 115th Street, and within three or four years he had saved up enough money to buy himself a home on Long Island plus expand his small business into a five-story garage, where he now employs fifty or so persons. Which means he is now in a position to create employment for Negroes. And he has done this only since becoming a Muslim. He is only an example of what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad has taught black men to do across the country. Instead of begging the white man for what he has, he says we should get together and start doing something for ourselves. As long as a lot of these Negroes want to continue to beg from the white man and sit around and wait for the crumbs to fall from the white man’s table, they don’t like what Mr. Muhammad is forcing them to do: stand on their own two feet. So they slip up to the white man and whisper in his ear and make the white man think—the gullible white man think—that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is teaching hate and trying to develop some kind of an army to overthrow the white man. And as long as the white man listens to that type of Negro he will end up overthrowing himself.
Moderator: Malcolm, I understand that you were at the Irvine Auditorium at the University of Pennsylvania today as a guest of the youth chapter of the NAACP and the report that I received was that you had better than three thousand people out there, with a number of people standing outside who were not able to gain entrance. Is that true?
Malcolm X: That is correct.
Moderator: I am wondering what your subject was and I what you talked about out there.
Malcolm X: Well, before I tell you the subject I want to comment on that crowd. You’ll find that this is a pattern that we run into across the country. Wherever a Muslim makes an appearance and gives a lecture, no matter what type of crowd comes out, even a capacity crowd, very seldom will you read too much about it in the press. Very seldom will you get any indication from the press that the people in that city or in that community or in that college or in that university are showing any genuine interest in what the Muslim has to say. But when an integrationist like King or someone else comes into the city, if he talks to five people this will be blown up in the press and it will be made to appear that this is the man who represents the black masses, and that all of the black masses endorse the type of peaceful-suffering, hat-in-hand, tongue-in-cheek doctrine that is usually displayed on those occasions. So basically one of the reasons why you never hear too much about occasions like this is because of that fact. Now, my subject today dealt with primarily two different Negroes: the old Negro and the new Negro.
Moderator: Will you tell us something about it?
Malcolm X: I will. This is the thing that whites need to be made aware of, that there is an old Negro and a new Negro. The old Negro is the one that the white man is familiar with. The new Negro is the one that has resulted from the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and the whites in this country are not too familiar with this type. Back in slavery they also had two types, and to understand the types today you have to understand the two types that existed during slavery. During slavery, historians agree, there were what were known as the house Negro and the field Negro. The house Negro was the one who lived in the master’s house, ate the master’s food, at the master’s table usually—after the master had finished with it. He dressed like the master, which means he wore the same type of clothing that the master did, but usually it was clothing handed down to him by the master. He identified the master’s house as his own. If the master said, “We have a fine house here,” the house Negro would say, “Yes, our house is a fine house.” Whenever the master said, “We,” he said, “We.” If the master said, “We have good food on our table,” the house Negro would chime in and say, “Yes, we have plenty of food, boss, on our table.” The house Negro would also identify himself so closely with his master that when the master was sick the house Negro would say, “What’s the matter, boss, we’s sick?” When the master was sick he was sick. If the master’s house caught on fire the house Negro would fight harder to put the flames out or keep the flames from enveloping the master’s house than the master would himself. If someone were to come to the...
Moderator: He would naturally say, “We’s sick,” because the master was sick?
Malcolm X: Oh yes, he would say, “We’s sick” or “We’s in trouble.” If the master was in trouble, he would say, “Boss, we is sure in trouble.”
Moderator: Well, I can understand where he might be in trouble if the master was in trouble, but I can’t understand how he could be sick if the master was sick!
Malcolm X: Oh, yes. This type of Negro loved the master so much—he never felt pain for himself; he only was in pain when his master was in pain. And this is very important to understand because you cannot understand the present-day twentieth century house Negro or twentieth century Uncle Tom until you have a real understanding of the Uncle Tom who lived on the plantation before the Emancipation Proclamation. And that type of Negro never identified himself with the other slaves. He always thought he was above the field Negroes. The field Negroes were the masses. The house Negroes were the minority whereas the field Negroes were in the majority.
Now, sir, if someone came to that house Negro and said, “Let’s separate, let’s run,” the house Negro would look at that person like he was crazy and tell him, “Run where? How would I live, how would I sleep if I leave my master’s house? How would I eat if my master didn’t feed me? How would I clothe myself if my master wasn’t here to give me some clothes?” Well, that’s the house Negro. Now you have the other type of Negro—the field Negro. The field Negro was the one who really caught hell. He was the one who was dissatisfied. He was the one who was oppressed. He was the one who was downtrodden and exploited most. He was the one who felt the brunt of the master’s whip, the lash of the master’s whip—and he hated his master. If his master got sick, he didn’t say, “Are we sick?” He prayed that his master would die. If his master’s house caught on fire he prayed for a strong wind to come up and burn the plantation down. He never identified himself with his master in any way whatsoever. And if someone came to that Negro, that field Negro, that mass element, and said, “Let’s go, let’s separate, let’s leave the master and strike out on our own,” he wouldn’t even ask where. He would leave. He wouldn’t even ask you how. He would leave. He wouldn’t ask you any questions at all. As soon as you said, “Come on, let’s go,” he’d be gone.
Now just as you have the house Negro and the field Negro a hundred years ago, in America today you have a house Negro and a field Negro. You have the modern counterpart of that slavery-time Uncle Tom, only the one today is a twentieth century Uncle Tom. He doesn’t wear a handkerchief around his head, sir. He wears a top hat. He speaks with a Harvard accent or a Howard accent. Sometimes he is a lawyer or a judge or a doctor or he is an ambassador to the UN. He represents the government in all the international conferences. He runs to the Congo and tries to settle differences there, but he can’t go to Mississippi and settle differences that his own people are confronted with in the face of these Mississippi southerners. This is the twentieth-century house Negro. He wants to live with his master. He wants to force his way into his master’s neighborhood. He wants to force his way into his master’s schools. He wants to force his way into his master’s industry. He identifies himself with his master so much that when his master says, “Our society,” he says, “Yes boss, our society.” When his master says, “Our army, our armed forces,” or “Our astronauts are floating around the earth,” he says, “Yes.” Now here is a Negro, mind you, talking about his astronauts floating around in space someplace or talking about his industry out here called General Motors or talking about his mayor in City Hall or his President in the White House. Every time the white man says, “We” that type of Negro says, “Yes, we.” Now when he hears the white man say how rich we are, that Negro runs around talking about how rich we are, how enlightened we are, how educated we are, or this is the free world or this is a free country, and at the same time he is begging the white man for civil rights and integration and all that kind of stuff he doesn’t have. He is a twentieth century Uncle Tom. He is a house Negro. He is no different from that house Negro during slavery other than that he is living in the twentieth century. But he identifies himself with the white man. He is never sick until the white man is sick. If you attack the white man, that Negro will open up his mouth to defend the white man better than the white man can defend himself.
Now then, you have the masses of black people in this country who are the offshoot of the field Negro, during slavery. They are the masses. They are the ones who are jobless. They are the last hired and the first fired. They are the ones who are forced to live in the ghetto and the slum. They are the ones who are not allowed to integrate. They are not the handpicked Negroes who benefit from token integration. They are not the bourgeoisie who get the crumbs that fall from the white man’s table. They are not the ones who can slip into the White House or these big hotels when the doors are opened up. These are the ones who still are forced to live in the ghetto or forced to live in the slum or forced to get a third-rate education or forced to work in the worst form of job. They benefit in no way, shape, or form whatsoever from this thing that is called democracy. And that type of Negro—when you come to him—field Negro, this mass level type of so-called Negro—and tell him, “Let’s separate,” he doesn’t ask you anything about “Where shall we go?” He doesn’t question Mr. Muhammad’s method of bringing about separation. He just says, “OK, let’s separate. We are catching hell in this system we are in now. Let’s separate.” He has the same reaction to what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is teaching today that the field Negroes would have if a man came during slavery and told those slaves, “Come on, let’s go.”
This was emphasized at the University of Pennsylvania today, to make the white people see that they are dealing with two different types of Negro. This integrationist Negro is the one who doesn’t want to be black—he is ashamed to be black—and he knows that he can’t be white. So he calls himself a Negro— an American Negro—which means he is neither black nor white. He doesn’t want to be black and can’t be white, so he is called a Negro. And since he is living in this American society he is always seeking a role for himself on the American stage. And since he knows that America is a white country and all of the economy, the politics, the civic life of America is controlled by the white man—the whole stage is controlled by the white man—whenever he sees himself on the American stage, he sees himself as a minority in the company of a white majority. So he is the underdog, and as an underdog he regards himself as a minority. He adopts the beggar role—the role of a beggar. And for everything that type of Negro seeks for himself he takes a begging attitude, a condescending attitude. So also, sir, he never looks at himself on the world stage. Usually his knowledge is limited to right here, to America, and he thinks of himself as an American in the American context which always keeps him in the role of a minority. But now when it comes to the international stage he can’t see it. He is not interested in a role on the international stage. He only wants a minority role in America.
But there is another type of Negro on the scene. This type doesn’t call himself a Negro. He calls himself a black man. He doesn’t make any apology for his black skin. He doesn’t make any apology for being in America because he knows he was brought here forcibly by the white man. It’s the white man’s fault that he is here. It’s the white man who created the problem here in America that they call a race problem. This type of black man sees that. So he doesn’t apologize for being here; he doesn’t apologize for the problem that his presence confronts the white man with. He doesn’t walk around bragging that he is an American or that he wants to be a part of the American society. This particular type of black man has been exposed to the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and having been exposed to the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad his thinking is international. He sees the world. He doesn’t see America. He sees the entire world. And when he sees the world he sees that the majority of people on this earth are dark people and these dark people outnumber the whites. So he doesn’t think of himself as a minority, but he thinks of himself as part of this vast dark majority who outnumber the whites, and therefore he doesn’t have to beg the white man for anything. He takes his role on the international stage and that’s not the role of a beggar, that’s the role that he was automatically born for.
While I was at the University of Pennsylvania this afternoon, or this evening, I was trying to point out to them, to make them see the importance of recognizing the fact that there are two different types of Negroes in America today, and as long as they try and do business, we might say, only with this integrationist-type Negro, the problem can never be solved. We should take into consideration the fact that the Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, repeatedly, recently, has been pointing out that America’s number one problem, domestic problem, is the race problem, and that failure to solve this problem is destroying America’s image among the dark masses of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Also, failure to solve this problem has serious repercussions on the American economy, as well as upon America’s foreign policy. Even a recent speech by the governor of North Carolina lends added emphasis to the importance of solving this serious race problem. North Carolina is a state where the so-called Negro has been brutalized from the time he was brought there, and even the governor of that state realizes the importance of this race problem. So much so that that governor was on television recently, pointing out to the people of America the importance of doing something to solve this problem. And then last week an interfaith religious conference of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish groups which was held in Chicago, dealing with the race problem, that conference also broke up. And it broke up with the problems of racism still unsolved. In fact when one reads the results of that religious conference one has to agree that it succeeded only in highlighting their inability to eliminate white racism from their own churches and synagogues. So I was pointing out there at the University of Pennsylvania that no group or council or conference would ever solve the race problem until they first recognized and included the Honorable Elijah Muhammad as an active participant in all of their discussions and in all of their plans.
Why? Because the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the only black man in America who can speak for the oppressed and dissatisfied black masses who are impatient and tired of sitting around and waiting for the white man to make up his mind to do something to solve this problem. Plus the fact that these other so-called Negro leaders that are usually up in the white man’s face are Negroes whom the white man himself has set up as leaders, and they don’t represent any of the black masses. They don’t speak for the dissatisfied black people or the impatient black people. Usually they know exactly what the white man wants to hear them say, and they say it in the exact manner that the white man expects them to say it. And by listening to these Negroes the problem never gets solved, it only gets worse. Also, racial unrest never occurs among the satisfied, bourgeois class of Negroes. They can easily be appeased and controlled and influenced just by continuing to drop crumbs on their table—the crumbs of tokenism. And this type of Negro that the so-called Negro leadership represents is a type that can be appeased and can be controlled with the crumbs of token integration. But the racial explosions never take place among that type. Racial explosions always erupt among the oppressed, dissatisfied black masses, and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the only black man today that is speaking out in behalf of the black masses.
I read out there at the University of Pennsylvania an article that was in the Detroit News quoting a chaplain, Rev. Malcolm Boyd, a white Episcopalian chaplain at Wayne State University who pointed out that the conference in Chicago—the Interfaith Conference in Chicago—was a failure. In the Detroit News he said, and I quote him: “Although 650 leaders of American churches have gathered here, nothing has been brought out and nothing ever will unless the basic ideas of such a gathering as this are changed.” The conference centered on the failure of religion to aid racial integration. Now Rev. Boyd pointed out, and again I quote: “My chief criticism was of the speakers selected to address the conference. They are leaders in the field of religion, highly articulate and persuasive, but they are not saying anything new or anything that will help solve the real problem for us.”
Rev. Boyd believes that the conference might have accomplished much good if the speakers had included a white supremacist and a Negro race leader, preferably a top man in the American Black Muslim movement. And he went on to say, and I quote: “A debate between them (meaning this white racist and a Black Muslim) would undoubtedly be bitter, but it would accomplish one thing: it would get some of the real issues out into the open. In this conference we have not done that. The money spent to bring these people here has been wasted. We have done nothing to solve the race problem either in our churches or in our communities.” Now the statements from this element that attended this interfaith conference on religion in Chicago have not been given wide coverage in the press. The press has used its outlet or its ability to reach the public to make the public think that an honest effort was put forth out there to listen to the gripes and grievances of the dissatisfied Negroes or to solve the problem. But those who attended admit, and the current Jet magazine points out, that the conference was a failure. So all of this was put forth at the University of Pennsylvania, and it was pointed out to them that the only way the white man can solve his problem is to realize the existence of two different, distinct types of Negroes. This is the old type and the new type: that old type who is the Uncle Tom and wants to continue to beg white people to accept him or to force himself into the white society; then this new type of black man who wants to think for himself, speak for himself, stand on his own feet, and walk for himself. This type is following the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. If he is not an outright follower of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad he is in sympathy with the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and he believes that the only way our problem can be solved is that, instead of sitting around waiting for the white man to solve it, the black people have to come together. We have to forget our differences. We have to forget our religious differences, our economic differences, our social differences. We have to submerge our differences and get together behind the door and formulate some kind of plan, come to some kind of conclusions of what we can do to solve the problem of our ever increasing number of black people across the nation. And it was also pointed out to the students at the University of Pennsylvania this afternoon that the only way they can understand the thinking of this new type of black man is to realize what he sees when he opens his eyes and looks around this world. And this new type of black man realizes that, in the past, dark mankind was ruled by white mankind. This is a fact. Right up until today, recent history, black, brown, red, and yellow man was ruled by the white man—which means European colonialism. This is what they call it, but in essence European colonialism meant that the white man was ruling the black, brown, red, and yellow people of this earth—which is, in reality, white supremacy. Now these same dark people who were ruled by the European minority were actually in the majority. It means that in the past the European minority, the white minority, was able to come together both by hook and by crook and rule the dark majority by practicing divide and conquer.”
When the black, brown, red, and yellow man of Africa and Asia realized what was going on, they had a conference in Indonesia which has come to be known as the Bandung Conference. And what they did at that Bandung Conference actually changed the course of history. They had many differences: they had religious differences, economic differences, all types of differences. But at the Bandung Conference the black, brown, red, and yellow man agreed to submerge their differences and come together against the common enemy, the thing that all of them had in common: that they were all being exploited by the white man, they were all being oppressed by the white man. They called him European, but actually he was a white man.
So once they reached a conclusion that they had oppression in common, exploitation in common, they were able to identify a common enemy, and this enabled them to unite against the common enemy; and out of this grew what we today know as the African-Asian-Arab bloc. They have differences among themselves, yet they work together. Their working unity enabled them to free the dark nations of Africa. The fast emerging independence of the nations in Africa has taken place since the Bandung Conference. As these nations in Africa began to get their independence and come into the United Nations they had a vote, they had a voice, and they soon were able to outvote the white man, outvote the European, outvote the colonial powers. And by being able to outvote the colonial powers their vote was sufficient to produce a power that forced the people of Europe to turn loose the black man in Tanganyika, the black man in the Congo, the black man in what we today know as the former French West African territories. All of this stems from the unity of the black, brown, red, and yellow man in the United Nations. It created a new era. It created a new world. And it created a situation where the only people who were able to sit at the helm of the United Nations were no longer white or European or Christian or in the person of Trygve Lie or Dag Hammarskjold or some of the others. Right after the black man, brown man, red man, yellow man agreed to submerge their differences and come together in unity, their unified force was sufficient to make it almost impossible today for a white man to be elected to the helm of the United Nations or for a Christian to be elected to the helm of the United Nations or for a European to be elected to the helm of the United Nations. Everyone that you see now sitting in the top seat of authority in the UN is either an African, an Asian, or an Arab, or he is either a Hindu, a Buddhist, or a Muslim. And all of this is the result of the ability of these black, brown, red, and yellow people to forget their little differences and come together against the common foe, against the common enemy, the oppressor.
And this is a good example that the black people in America can copy if we want to bring about freedom, justice, equality, and human dignity of the black people in this country. It was also pointed out today at the University of Pennsylvania that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s program is designed to make black, brown, red, and yellow people here in America, the so-called Negro, forget our differences. Any differences that we have we should take them behind the door, or any argument that we want to engage in among ourselves should be done behind the door. Instead, we need to present a common front against a common enemy, and the common enemy of the black, brown, red, and yellow man is anyone standing in the way of our freedom. Anyone standing in the way of our justice or equality. Anyone who deprives the black man in America of civil rights is an enemy to the black man. Anyone who deprives the black man of citizenship in America is an enemy to the black man. And when the black people in this country learn how to recognize the enemy, the common enemy, then the black people can get together in unity and harmony and do whatever is necessary to solve our own problems. We won’t be sitting around here waiting for the white man to issue some kind of emancipation proclamation. We won’t be waiting for the Senate or Congress. We won’t be waiting for any Supreme Court. Our unity will be sufficient to bring about human dignity, to bring about freedom, justice, and equality, and to bring about whatever the black man needs to enable him to stand on his own feet like a man.
It was also pointed out to them, so they wouldn’t think hard of me in saying that their world was coming to an end, that their world was decreasing, that their power was on the downgrade, that they were losing out all over the world I reminded them of a speech that was made by Prime Minister Macmillan on April 26, 1962, at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City, to the leading publishers and editors of America, at which time Prime Minister Macmillan himself pointed out that in his own lifetime a change, a new world, has come into existence. He said that when he was a boy the world was a white world. Britain’s power extended so far across this planet that they used to brag that the sun would never set on the British Empire. In Macmillan’s own lifetime, the power of the Englishman, the white man in England, has decreased so much, or the British Empire has decreased so much, that today when the sun rises you can hardly find the British Empire. And this is all symbolic of the decrease in power that the white man has suffered just in recent years. Just as Britain has dwindled down to nothing in prestige and influence in the face of the rising dark nations of this earth, all of your white nations have done the same thing.
France has dwindled down to nothing. She has lost her possessions in Asia and, after she lost her possessions in Asia, I think called Indo-China, it affected her economy so much that she didn’t have enough strength, economic strength, to keep in existence an army large enough to dominate the large West African territories. She had to turn them loose, and finally she had to turn Algeria loose, I just in our own lifetime, just in this present generation. Not only did this happen to England and France, but the Netherlands had to give up Indonesia. And as soon as the Netherlands turned loose the brown man’s lands in Indonesia, the economy of the Netherlands dwindled down so that you hardly hear of the Dutch. You hardly hear of Belgium. Belgium used to be a power on this earth, as I long as she could dictate to the black people in the Congo. But as soon as Belgium had to turn loose the Congolese, within a matter of months, the loss of the free and cheap mineral resources that the white man from Belgium in Europe was getting from the black man’s lands in Africa affected the Belgium economy so much they had a collapse in the Belgium government. And all of this is a pattern that the white man’s whole world, his whole kingdom, has had to face up to in recent times, during your and my generation. So I pointed these things out to the white students at the University of Pennsylvania so that they could see themselves that their world is shrinking, that their world is coming to an end. And the thing that is bringing about an end to their world is the awakening of the dark world. As the dark world awakens, the dark world is rising. And as the dark world rises and increases, the power of the white world decreases. So when the Honorable Elijah Muhammad mentions to us, the so-called Negroes here in America, that we are living at the end of the world, all that means is that we are living at the end of the white world. When he says we are living at the end of time, all that means is that we are living at the end of the white man’s time. The time that the white man could exercise unilateral and dictatorial power over the destiny of black people, brown people, red people, and yellow people on this earth has come to an end. And when the Honorable Elijah Muhammad says this they call him a black supremacist, they call him a racist, while at the same time in the halls of the United Nations Prime Minister Macmillan and all of the international diplomats are getting on the podium at the UN and crying the blues because they can see the handwriting on the wall.
And just like it took Daniel in Babylon to read the handwriting on the wall for that slave master or the descendants of Nebuchadnezzar, it takes the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, a little ex-slave here in America, to stand up here in this House of Bondage today and read the handwriting on the wall and let the white man know that his time is up, that his days are numbered, that he has been weighed in the balance and all of the seeds of injustice that he has sown in the past are coming home to plague him today. All of the injustices committed by past generations of whites the present generation of Englishmen is suffering because it breaks them up to see themselves lose their empire. But still they are losing their empire because of seeds sown by their own foreparents in England and the present generation of Englishmen has to face that as a fact. The seeds of their forefathers have come home to plague this generation of Englishmen that live on this earth today.
Likewise, here in America, what has the American white man got to realize? That a crime was committed against the so-called Negro. And I think that the most important thing that was pointed out to the students of the University of Pennsylvania today was that a crime was committed against the so-called American Negro when our people were brought here. And today the white man, not realizing, not being capable of facing up to the fact, that a crime was actually committed, thinks he is doing the so-called Negro a favor when he opens the door to freedom. And I pointed out to the students: when someone sticks a knife into my back nine inches and then pulls it out six inches they haven’t done me any favor. And if they pull that knife which they stuck in my back all the way out they still have not done me any favor. They should not have stabbed me in the back in the first place. Likewise, it was pointed out to them that when you take a man and frame him up, an innocent man and frame him up, and put him in prison—and because he rebels against this illegal and unjust framing and imprisonment he then is placed in solitary confinement within the prison to keep him from rebelling against the laws of the penal institution—after his spirit is broken in solitary confinement—why, the warden isn’t doing that man any favor by taking him out of solitary confinement and then giving him more freedom within the confines of the prison wall. He shouldn’t be imprisoned in the first place. And if they break down the prison walls completely and let that man out they still aren’t doing that man any favor because they imprisoned him illegally and unjustly in the first place.
Now the Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that the white man captured millions of black people and brought us into prison, a prison house called America. They called it slavery; it was prison. And during the slavery or imprisonment of the black man in this country they inflicted the most extreme form of brutality against us to break our spirit, to break our will to resist, to destroy our manhood, to take the bone out of our back, to destroy our backbone. And after destroying our will, making us docile and humble, so that today we will turn the other cheek to those who are brutalizing us, after they did all of this to us for 310 years, then they come up with some so- called Emancipation Proclamation supposedly bringing us out of what we would call solitary confinement and giving us more freedom here within the prison walls of America.
And today the white man actually runs around here thinking he is doing the black people a favor because he gives us a little degree of freedom or justice or equality, or because he lets another one or two or three Negroes go to school with white people. The white man has the audacity to imply that he is doing black people a favor. What the white man should be made to realize is that his forefathers committed a crime by bringing our people here to this country. They committed a crime when they murdered our people throughout America. They committed a crime when they sold us from one plantation to another plantation like chattel or like merchandise or like common property. This was a crime and all of those crimes that were committed during the 310 years against the black people in this country are the crimes that have come home to roost today on this present generation of whites. And the only black man in America, the only black leader in America, the only black spokesman in America who will sit down and talk to the white man like a man, like a black man to a white man, and spell it out the way it is, is the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
If the white man wants to solve his problem, if the white man wants to solve the race problem, if the white man wants to eliminate racial tension, then the white man should do the same thing that Pharaoh did who was the ruler of the House of Bondage in the days of Egypt. He was not able to solve his problem until he sat down and talked with Moses. Nebuchadnezzar wasn’t able to solve his problems until he sat down and talked with Daniel. And today, here in America, this white man will never solve his problems until he sits down and talks with the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad will tell him the same thing that Moses told Pharaoh: Let my people go. Not let my people integrate with you, but let my people separate from you. Let us go to ourselves and solve our own problems and build up some kind of society, some system, some kind of agricultural system, so that we can feed and clothe and shelter our own people, an economic system so that we can provide the necessities of life for our own people, and have our own government, our own flag, our own everything. The white man can stay to himself and we can stay to ourselves. Perhaps then we can get some kind of solution to the problem.
But they’ll never solve the problem listening to these handpicked, Uncle Tom, bourgeois, upper-class Negroes whose only desire is to sit down in the white man’s house or in the white man’s neighborhood or in the white man’s school. Some of them now even insist upon dying and being buried in the white man’s cemetery. That’s foolish, and the masses of black people in this country don’t think that this in anyway is a solution to our problem.
So all of these things were pointed out to the students of the University of Pennsylvania this afternoon, not with any animosity or any hostility but in the language of frankness. And I think they listened very objectively and very intelligently. Sometimes there were little temporary disturbances by some—I guess they were white segregationists, I don’t know whether they were segregationists or integrationists—who were sitting up in one part of the balcony. They were trying to do a little heckling, but it is impossible for a white man to heckle a Muslim. There is nothing that he can come up with that surprises a Muslim or in any way phases a Muslim. We are not interested in his heckling. All we are interested in is spelling out the problem. And if he is man enough to listen then perhaps he will get a better understanding of it.
So in this lecture this afternoon at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the lecture at Michigan State University on Wednesday, our primary objective and purpose was to show the white man that just dealing with the integrationist-minded Negro will never solve the problem If you read this week’s Jet, the one that is on the newsstand right now, the observers who attended this interfaith religious conference in Chicago all agreed that it was impossible for the type of Negro leadership that was represented there to sit down and hold any kind of discussion with whites and really get to the root, to the nitty-gritty of the problem. The only way that the root of the problem can be gotten to is to have someone in those conferences who represents the masses.
You read about the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. One of the things that’s always pointed out even by his critics is that the intellectual Negro doesn’t follow Mr. Muhammad; they say that the educated Negro doesn’t follow Mr. Muhammad; they say that the Negro with the high income bracket doesn’t follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. What they always emphasize is that the only Negroes that follow Muhammad are those who don’t have too much education, those who are oppressed, unemployed, and dissatisfied. Well, what they are doing right there, then, is admitting that it is the masses who follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, because the masses of black people in this country are unemployed. Even the job that they have is the same as no job, because their wages are so small that it is the same as not having any job at all.
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Question: Mr. Malcolm X says that we are so-called Negroes. I have been raised and taught that I am a Negro and now I have to file applications and they say what nationality are you. I would like for Mr. Malcolm X to tell me what shall I put down after this question when they ask me.
Malcolm X: We put down Asiatic. Asiatic in this sense: the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that originally this entire planet today known as Earth was called Asia. When you read some of the so-called great historians they even point out that the entire earth was once known as Asia and all of the people on it at that time were Asiatic. The only people here were black, brown, red, and yellow. At that time there were no white people here at all. We refer to ourselves as the Asiatic black man. On my draft card it says Asiatic. And anything that anybody puts in front of me that wants to know what is my race or my nationality, any Muslim will put down Asiatic and that ends it. But never put down Negro. The worst thing that you can call yourself is a Negro. If you don’t think so just call yourself that and immediately you will find all the doors closed. But at the same time the blackest man from Africa comes here and he rejects the term Negro. You can’t call him a Negro. He will tell you he is an African and every door is open. Last year Kennedy made a special point in Maryland and Virginia to tell all those whites down there: don’t do anything to practice discrimination against the African. Now at the same time he wouldn’t make any statements concerning the American Negro, but he did come out and make a statement about the Africans. Which shows you that there is a difference between being Negro and being black. The African proudly calls himself black. But now when you call yourself a Negro that is when you encounter all these racial indignities.
Question: The Muslims seem to have a great deal of answers to many of the problems that seem to surround the Negro neighborhoods. Now, why is it they don’t have enough of their men who can go around, help work, and solve some of the problems, not only in Philadelphia, but nationwide. The Muslims seem to be doing a very fine job of recruiting men and turning them over from vice and crime into a better way of life. If the Negroes in our society who can see this group would come about to work with them, even if they don’t follow a religious program, I think, as he said, we should put away our differences and seek a way to a better understanding.
Malcolm X: That’s a good question. An incident that happened recently right here in Philadelphia pretty well answers that. The local president of the local NAACP, Attorney Moore, came out and began to take a militant, uncompromising stand in behalf of the black people, and immediately he was accused of being a Muslim, from what I read in the paper. Instead of giving him credit for showing leadership, for showing the dynamic necessary to approach this problem and get it solved, all of the other elements, from what I understand, banded against him and attacked him. Now as Muslims it is an admitted fact by the critics of Mr. Muhammad that he is able to eliminate the vice, the immorality, the dope addiction. All the things they accuse the Negro of being guilty of, Mr. Muhammad is able to eliminate. And you would think that all these organizations would try to work with him. But instead of trying to work with him, as he would like to work with them, they can’t do it because usually they don’t have that much independence. Most of these Negro leaders have been put in their positions as leaders by the white man, and the only other black people that they can work with are black people who are approved also by the white man. And since the Muslims, Mr. Muhammad and his followers, are not on the approved list of the white man, this type of Negro leadership is afraid to openly identify or sympathize with what Mr. Muhammad is doing even though they know that what he is doing is good for the problems that our people are confronted with.
Question: Sir, what I wanted to know is, being that he has just asked the question that the Muslims have men that will go out to work with organizations like NAACP regardless of religions, their creed—they won’t accept these members of the Muslim sect to do this, would he suggest that those who are qualified should infiltrate and perhaps try to influence them in the religion of Muhammad?
Malcolm X: He struck up a good point. I think you’ll find, brother, that there are Muslims everywhere. Wherever you find militancy today among so-called Negroes, watch real closely. You’re liable to be looking at a Muslim. This is by now what the white man is beginning to be afraid of. Every time he sees a Negro who speaks without compromise he swears that this man must be a Muslim. That’s why I used Cecil Moore as an example. As long as you have a local man here in Philadelphia who can be maneuvered and manipulated and frightened by the white liberal, all these other Negro leaders will fall right in line and go along with him. But as soon as you get a black man who will stand up—I don’t care whether he is in the NAACP or CORE or in any other organization—if he starts taking an uncompromising stand whether the white man likes it or not, you’ll find that the Uncle Tom leadership will rally against him and classify him or charge him or signify or insinuate that he must be a Black Muslim. And you’ll never make progress as long as you have those kinds of Negroes around. The only time the Negro leaders show any tendency in trying to get together in unity is when they want to attack another Negro. But those same Negroes who unite against one Negro, you can’t get them to unite together on any problem under the sun except against another Negro.
Question: I feel that the American Negroes have enough money to get together and build, but they just won’t do it. As you say, they’ll fight each other and still bicker among themselves. So I can see what you are talking about there. But I also would like to know what he thinks about the real white man.
Moderator: I don t know what he means by the real white man. Is there an unreal white man?
Malcolm X: The real one is probably the one he sees after his eyes come open. I might comment on something that he said that was very important, about the Negro having enough money to actually solve his problems. Anytime the so-called Negro has access to twenty billion dollars a year and you don’t find him able to provide job opportunities himself, this is a sign of sickness. And the Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that if this so-called Negro would channel his wealth into business enterprises and create employment or create businesses that would provide employment then our problem would be solved. But as a rule, sir, in most Negro communities across the country the only thing you’ll find Negroes building are Negro churches. An example: In Long Island the white man bought a city block. He built a huge supermarket on it. It creates job opportunities for about three or four hundred people. Now in the next block, believe it or not, the Negroes got together and bought it and built a million-dollar church. Now here this church provides a job only for the preacher; it provides clothing and shelter only for this Negro preacher. Now if this Negro preacher has the ingenuity that it takes to raise a million dollars or to finance a million-dollar project, but the only thing he can finance is a church, it’s a problem. If you notice, white people in their neighborhoods build factories, they build schools, they build everything, and then they also build churches. But the Negro leadership, especially the religious leadership, has actually committed a crime almost in encouraging our people to build churches. But at the same time we never build schools; we never build factories; we never build businesses; we never build housing and things that will solve our problem.
Question: Do you approve of the Cubans coming to this country when we have so much unemployment already?
Malcolm X: I don’t get involved in politics. But it does make the black people in this country who are jobless and unemployed and standing in the welfare line very much discouraged to see a government that can’t solve our problem, can’t provide job opportunities for us, and at the same time not only Cubans but Hungarians and every other type of white refugee imaginable can come to this country and get everything this government has to offer. But the Negro, this faithful soldier during wartime and servant during peace time, is always the last one in line when it comes to having some of his problems solved. It is not surprising that Hungarians and Polacks and Cubans can come to this country—who have never fought for this country, who have never contributed anything to this country’s economy, who have never contributed to the defense of this democracy—can come here and get all the benefits of it. But the black man who has contributed with his life blood and his sweat for four hundred years is still the last hired and the first fired, and the only time they recognize him first is when it comes time to draft him into the army in defense of his country. I think first things first. And the first law of nature is self-preservation. And we are interested in the black man in this country. And the white man—if he has got all that money to be given away all over the world—should be doing something toward correcting the condition that his own crime created when he brought our people here and made us slaves.
Question: I would like Malcolm X to explain what he thinks about all this talk about birth control. Who is it for?
Malcolm X: The white man is worried today the same way that Pharaoh was worried when you read the first chapter of Exodus in the Bible. The slaves under Pharaoh had begun to multiply so fast and Pharaoh and his people were almost becoming sterile. It tells you in there that because these Hebrew slaves were multiplying so fast Pharaoh had to devise a scheme whereby the fertile women and the babies that they were producing would be destroyed. And all this birth control that you hear the white man talking about today, it is not birth control. It is sterilization designed to make this productive, fertile black woman stop producing. As the previous listener pointed out, they never tell you the real number of black people in this country. When you look around here in Philadelphia and New York and Chicago and other cities why you can hardly go into any community without seeing a large number of black faces. Negroes are multiplying, they are increasing too swiftly. And just as Pharaoh had to do something to stop the growth of his slaves, today the American white man must do something to stop the rapid increase of the so-called Negroes. Already the Negro is the balance of power in any political election. The Negro holds the balance of power. In anything that goes on in this country, the ever-increasing number of Negroes holds the balance of power. So something must be done to stop that growth or else it has to be controlled. And it cannot be done the legal way or ethical way so they use underhanded measures or underhanded methods in so doing.
Question: I want to comment on the magazine article, number one. The Saturday Evening Post did the same thing when Nkrumah, if you’ll remember, took over Ghana. He took the image of the Queen of England out of the Parliament. He took their image off his currency and he replaced them with their own portraits so that they could stimulate black honor and black dignity in their people. Now The Saturday Evening Post is doing the same thing now. That’s one thing I want to point out. Now I want to ask Malcolm X this: Is it true that in your Elijah Muhammad speech two weeks ago you said that the struggle in the Congo was a struggle to recreate world colonialism and to control the resources of the Congo, because 86 and 2/10 percent of the copper is used in America and the gold deposits and also the stuff of which they make atomic bombs. If that is cut off America will suffer. And why are they spending $10,500,000 per month to kill people in Africa when they won’t spend $10,500,000 a month to help the people right here in America?
Malcolm X: Sir, you’re a man after my own heart. I’m glad that you were able to see how the white press immediately turned against Nkrumah when they found out that they couldn’t control him and use him as an agent as they use many others over there. And it is true that Katanga Province is one of the richest sources of minerals, vital minerals, that exists on this earth. And if you were to do some research and find out who it is who has money invested in Katanga—some of them who are sitting in high positions in this government right now in this country, and some of them who are accepted by Negroes in this country as liberals in shining armor—when you find out who among the wealthy whites or powerful whites have money invested in the Congo or in Katanga, then you will see behind the struggle over there and why there is so much support for this man Tshombe and for trying to keep him in power. Anything you read in our newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, you can bet that it is true. If it wasn’t truth they would stop us from printing it. And it is the only black paper in this country that will give you the raw truth that is taking place anywhere in which black people are involved on this earth. Did I answer all his questions?
Moderator: I think so. He used some figures.
Malcolm X: It was true, and I wanted to point out, as a preacher, this man shows great intelligence in being able to analyze the news and show how the white press, as soon as the black man begins to take a militant and uncompromising stand, whether it be in America or Africa, will begin to project that man either as a dictator or as a black supremacist or teacher of hate.
Question: I would like to know whether it is true that Malcolm X was arrested within the past four weeks and I how much bond he had to pay to get out of jail.
Malcolm X: I have never been arrested since I became a Muslim. What you are probably talking about is when two of our brothers were arrested in Times Square in New York on Christmas Day, selling newspapers, selling our newspaper in Times Square. In this particular paper there was an article about Congressman Nix, a local congressman from right here in this city, in which he himself took a stand, an open stand, against police brutality. And by the brothers selling the paper in the Times Square area a white policeman took offense and tried to stop them and arrested them and charged the two brothers with assaulting the cop. This is what police always do in cases of police brutality. They brutalize the black man and then turn around and charge the black man with attacking them. So we all went to court on that. But I didn’t go as an arrested person. I went as a Muslim who was interested in seeing that my brother got justice. No sir, I have never been arrested since I have been a follower of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. But that doesn’t mean I am afraid to be arrested, and it doesn’t mean that I am afraid of jail or prison. When it comes to telling the truth about what the white man is doing to the black people in this country I’ll tell it and go to jail myself. They don’t have to take me, I will go. So they can never hold that thing in front of me as a kind of threat. That is one of the things that the white man uses to make Negroes afraid to take a stand. You don’t have to go behind bars to be in jail in this country. If you are born in this country with black skin you are already in jail, you are already confined, you are already watched over by a warden who poses as your mayor and poses as your governor and poses as your President. He is nothing but your warden keeping you in confinement. Don’t ever talk that jail talk to me. I’ll go faster than anybody in this country for the truth and be proud to go and be proud to die for the truth that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is teaching us. And any other Muslim will be just as proud to do so, and will do it just as fast.
Question: Mr. X claims that our spending power is about twenty billion dollars. Is that true?
Malcolm X: Yes sir, according to the government economists.
Question: Well, all the speeches you make, or anyone else makes, is not going to make any difference in the world to the American Negro until he learns to hold onto that money. As fast as he gets it in his hands he runs around the corner and hands it back to the white man. The American Negro has got to put that money to use and build schools and build businesses.
Malcolm X: Sir, I agree with everything you say. Everything you say is 100 percent true, and if you notice the Muslims have set up schools. If you’ll read this Saturday Evening Post article, they don’t like it. The white man doesn’t like it but the Honorable Elijah Muhammad has set up a school in Detroit, a school in Chicago, and schools elsewhere, and it is in these schools that the racial dignity of the black man is taught to our children. We don’t have any dropouts. We don’t have any delinquency. We don’t have any crime rate. We don’t have the problems that the white man accuses the Negroes of allowing to exist in the Negro community. Insofar as the twenty billion dollars are concerned, we don’t blame the white man because we are not able to take advantage of this money. We blame ourselves. And this is what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad says. That instead of us sitting around here begging the white man for a job in his factory or a house in his neighborhood, what we need to do is get together and unite. Pool our resources, pool our talent, and do something for ourselves. But what you have to understand is that the white man is afraid. The white man has a guilt complex and the white people today are so afraid since they know what they have done to the black people in this country. Their secret fear is that if the black man ever gets independent, if he ever gets able to stand on his own feet, the fear on the part of the whites is that you and I will retaliate against him. So the whites don’t want the Negro to become involved in any kind of program that is going to make them independent of whites. They want the Negro to launch a program that the whites can still control or that the whites can still influence or in which they can still offer their guidance. But they do not want us to separate from them and go out on our own as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is teaching us to.
Question: What does Mr. X think about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King?
Malcolm X: I think that any black man who goes among so-called Negroes today who are being brutalized, spit upon in the worst fashion imaginable, and teaches those Negroes to turn the other cheek, to suffer peacefully, or love their enemy is a traitor to the Negro. Everybody on this earth has the right to defend himself. Everybody on this earth who defends himself is respected. Now the only people who are encouraged to love their enemy is the American Negro. The only people who are encouraged to adopt this old passive resistance or wait-until-you-change-your-mind-and-then-let-me philosophy is the American Negro. And any man that propagates that kind of doctrine among Negroes is a traitor to those people. It is time for the black people in this country to come together and unite and do whatever is necessary to gain the recognition and respect of the world. And you know what Patrick Henry had to do to get some respect: he said liberty or death. He didn’t talk any kind of peaceful suffering or passive resistance. George Washington didn’t talk peaceful suffering or passive resistance. No hero who is respected by whites ever tried to propagate some kind of peaceful suffering or passive resistance. The Hungarian Freedom Fighters fought against the Russians. The odds were against them. They were greatly outnumbered, the odds were against them, but because they took a stand and were willing to die for what they believed in, those same freedom fighters can come to this country and get respect and recognition and work on jobs and live in communities that these Negro, what do you call ‘em, Freedom Riders, sit-inners, haven’t been able to do yet. So anytime you will show that you are willing to die for what you believe then you will get respect and recognition and this is what the black man has to learn. If it is all right for black people to be drafted and sent to Korea or South Vietnam or Laos or Berlin or someplace else to fight and die for the white man, then there is nothing wrong with that same black man doing the same thing when he is under the brutality in this country at the hands of the white man.
Question: I was down South recently, in South Carolina, in Georgia, in Florida, and whatever the signs say about desegregating, my wife and I were refused a bathroom, we were refused liquor. What I want to know is: Does he talk the same way down there as he does up here?
Malcolm X: I preach what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches me in Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, and throughout the South. I am scheduled to be in Charlotte, North Carolina, next Wednesday. I’ve been to Birmingham. We have a large mosque, a group of Muslims, in Birmingham, in Tuscaloosa. No, the South is no different from the North. Let me tell you the only difference. The white man in the South is a wolf. You know where he stands. When he opens his mouth and you see his teeth he looks vicious. Well, the only difference between the white man in the South and the white man in the North is that one is a wolf and this one is a fox. The fox will lynch you and you won’t even know you have been lynched. The fox will Jim Crow you and you don’t even know you’re Jim Crowed. And this is the basic difference between the southern white man and the northern white man.
Moderator: In other words, the northern white man is foxier than the southern white man.
Malcolm X: He is foxy. When he opens his mouth and shows you his teeth you think he is smiling and when you look at a fox you think a fox is smiling, but actually the objective of the fox and the wolf is the same. They want to exploit you, they want to take advantage of you. Both are canine, both are dogs—there is no difference. Their methods might differ, but their objective is the same, and the southern white man and the northern white man are in the same category.
Moderator: To answer the gentleman’s question, the answer is that you speak the same in the South as you do in the North.
Malcolm X: Oh, yes, no different. Muslims speak the same everywhere, North, South, East, or West.
Question: I want to ask Malcolm X that he says it is the white man’s fault that many of the Negroes have turned against Negroes by them going around killing each other, robbing from each other. And if I am correct I think you said that the white man had driven many of the Negroes to doing what they have done.
Malcolm X: Oh definitely, definitely. When you see Negroes fighting and shooting and killing each other, all this is a throwback from slavery. There has always been open season on Negroes. A Negro can punch a white man in the mouth and the hunting season is always there. If you notice, sir, there is only a certain season when you can kill a bear or a rabbit.
Moderator: You have to have a license to kill an animal.
Malcolm X: You have to have a license. But there are only certain seasons that you can kill that animal. But you don’t need a license to kill a Negro and you can shoot one out of season—anytime—and you won’t get any time. By Negroes knowing this, what the white man has done is set up a psychological situation where the average Negro thinks he can do anything to another Negro and get away with it. And this has made us antagonistic toward one another, hostile toward one another, and very disrespectful toward one another. And this is what makes Negroes continue to fight and kill each other.
Question: I am a doctor in the city and this refers to the statements by Malcolm X about the white brutality against the Negroes and the general type of campaign which he seems to state that we have against the Negroes. A great deal of my time is spent in the emergency ward treating whites and blacks, and I must say that the greater percentage of patients who commit brutality to each other are the black to the black. Much of our time is spent suturing up these people, and treating very serious injuries, which shows the great brutality among themselves. And until they can show the whites that they treat themselves in a more humane fashion, I don’t think they will develop the respect that they wish. The main thing I wish to say is that they should be improving themselves, as he stated, and they shouldn’t speak of wanting money from government and whites, as he did in referring to the Cuban situation.
Malcolm X: I think that the doctor brought out a very good point. It is true that Negroes kill Negroes but this is because the white man himself has taught Negroes to hate Negroes. The Negro hates another Negro because this was taught to us during slavery and the Negro hates everything about himself. And what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is doing is teaching our people to love ourselves, respect ourselves, and uplift ourselves. And if the white man would realize that what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is doing is actually correcting the myth that the white man has made, then the white man should stop harassing Mr. Muhammad and propagandizing against him and misrepresenting him in his news media, and instead thank him for the good work that he is doing.
Moderator: Thank you, Mr. Malcolm X.
