Malcolm X at University of Ghana (May 13, 1964)

I intend for my talk to be very informal, because our position in America is an informal position, and I find that it is very difficult to use formal terms to describe a very informal position. No condition of any people on earth is more deplorable than the condition, or plight, of the twenty-two million Black people in America. And our condition is so deplorable because we are in a country that professes to be a democracy and professes to be striving to give justice and freedom and equality to everyone who is born under its constitution. If we were born in South Africa or in Angola or some part of this earth where they don’t profess to be for freedom, that would be another thing; but when we are born in a country that stands up and represents itself as the leader of the Free World, and you still have to beg and crawl just to get a chance to drink a cup of coffee, then the condition is very deplorable indeed.


So tonight, so that you will understand me and why I speak as I do, it should probably be pointed out at the outset that I am not a politician. I don’t know anything about politics. I’m from America but I’m not an American. I didn’t go there of my own free choice. If I were an American there would be no problem, there’d be no need for legislation or civil rights or anything else. So I just try to face the fact as it actually is and come to this meeting as one of the victims of America, one of the victims of Americanism, one of the victims of democracy, one of the victims of a very hypocritical system that is going all over this earth today representing itself as being qualified to tell other people how to run their country when they can’t get the dirty things that are going on in their own country straightened out.

So if someone else from America comes to you to speak, they’re probably speaking as Americans, and they speak as people who see America through the eyes of an American. And usually those types of persons refer to America, or that which exists in America, as the American Dream. But for the twenty million of us in America who are of African descent, it is not an American dream; it’s an American nightmare.

I don’t feel that I am a visitor in Ghana or in any part of Africa. I feel that I am at home. I’ve been away for four hundred years, but not of my own volition, not of my own will. Our people didn’t go to America on the Queen Mary, we didn’t go by Pan American, and we didn’t go to America on the Mayflower. We went in slave ships, we went in chains. We weren’t immigrants to America, we were cargo for purposes of a system that was bent upon making a profit. So this is the category or level of which I speak. I may not speak it in the language many of you would use, but I think you will understand the meaning of my terms.

When I was in Ibadan at the University of Ibadan last Friday night, the students there gave me a new name, which I go for — meaning I like it. “Omowale,” which they say means in Yoruba — if I am pronouncing that correctly, and if I am not pronouncing it correctly it’s because I haven’t had a chance to pronounce it for four hundred years — which means in that dialect, “The child has returned.” It was an honor for me to be referred to as a child who had sense enough to return to the land of his forefathers — to his fatherland and to his motherland. Not sent back here by the State Department, but come back here of my own free will.

I am happy and I imagine, since it is the policy that whenever a Black man leaves America and travels in any part of Africa, or Asia, or Latin America and says things contrary to what the American propaganda machine turns out, usually he finds upon his return home that his passport is lifted. Well, if they had not wanted me to say the things I am saying, they should never have given me a passport in the first place. The policy usually is the lifting of the passport. Now I am not here to condemn America, I am not here to make America look bad, but I am here to tell you the truth about the situation that Black people in America find themselves confronted with. And if truth condemns America, then she stands condemned.

This is the most beautiful continent that I’ve ever seen; it’s the richest continent I’ve ever seen, and strange as it may seem, I find many white Americans here smiling in the faces of our African brothers like they have been loving them all of the time. The fact is, these same whites who in America spit in our faces, the same whites who in America club us brutally, the same whites who in America sic their dogs upon us, just because we want to be free human beings, the same whites who turn their water hoses upon our women and our babies because we want to integrate with them, are over here in Africa smiling in your face trying to integrate with you.

I had to write a letter back home yesterday and tell some of my friends that if American Negroes want integration, they should come to Africa, because more white people over here — white Americans, that is — look like they are for integration than there is in the entire American country. But actually what it is, they want to integrate with the wealth that they know is here — the untapped natural resources which exceed the wealth of any continent on this earth today.

When I was coming from Lagos to Accra Sunday, I was riding on an airplane with a white man who represented some of the interests, you know, that are interested in Africa. And he admitted — at least it was his impression — that our people in Africa didn’t know how to measure wealth, that they worship wealth in terms of gold and silver, not in terms of the natural resources that are in the earth, and that as long as the Americans or other imperialists or twentieth-century colonialists could continue to make the Africans measure wealth in terms of gold and silver, they never would have an opportunity to really measure the value of the wealth that is in the soil, and would continue to think that it is they who need the Western powers instead of thinking that it is the Western powers who need the people and the continent that is known as Africa. The thing is, I hope I don’t mess up anybody’s politics or anybody’s plots or plans or schemes, but then I think that it can be well proved and backed up.

Ghana is one of the most progressive nations on the African continent primarily because it has one of the most progressive leaders and most progressive presidents. The president of this nation has done something that no American, no white American, wants to see done — well, I should say “no American” because all the Americans over there are white Americans.

President Nkrumah is doing something there that the government in America does not like to see done, and that is he’s restoring the African image. He is making the African proud of the African image; and whenever the African becomes proud of the African image and this positive image is projected abroad, then the Black man in America, who up to now has had nothing but a negative image of Africa — automatically the image that the Black man in America has of his African brothers changes from negative to positive, and the image that the Black man in America has of himself will also change from negative to positive.

And the American racists know that they can rule the African in America, the African-American in America, only as long as we have a negative image of ourselves. So they keep us with a negative image of Africa. And they also know that the day that the image of Africa is changed from negative to positive, automatically the attitude of twenty-two million Africans in America will also change from negative to positive.

And one of the most important efforts to change the image of the African is being made right here in Ghana. And the Ghanaian personality can be picked right out of any group of Africans anywhere on this planet, because you see nothing in him that reflects any kind of feeling of inferiority or anything of that sort. And as long as you have a president who teaches you that you can do anything that anybody else under the sun can do, you got a good man.

Not only that, we who live in America have learned to measure Black men: the object we use to measure him is the attitude of America toward him. When we find a Black man who’s always receiving the praise of the Americans, we become suspicious of him. When we find a Black man who receives honors and all kinds of plaques and beautiful phrases and words from America, we immediately begin to suspect that person. Because it has been our experience that the Americans don’t praise any Black man who is really working for the benefit of the Black man, because they realize that when you begin to work in earnest to do things that are good for the people on the African continent, all the good you do for people on the African continent has got to be against someone else, because someone else up to now has benefited from the labor and the wealth of the people on this continent. So our yardstick in measuring these various leaders is to find out what the Americans think about them. And these leaders over here who are receiving the praise and pats on the back from the Americans, you can just flush the toilet and let them go right down the drain.

This president here is disliked. Don’t think that it’s just the American press, it’s the government. In America when you find a concerted effort of the press to always speak in a bad way about an African leader, usually that press is actually reflecting government opinion. But America is a very shrewd government. If it knows that its own governmental position will cause a negative reaction from the people that it wants to continue to exploit, it will pretend to have a free press and at the same time sic that free press on a real African leader and stand on the sideline and say that this is not government policy. But everything that happens in America is government policy.

Not only is the president of this country disliked, the president of Algeria, Ben Bella, is disliked because he is revolutionary, he’s for freedom of everybody. Nasser is disliked because he’s for freedom of everybody. All of them are referred to as dictators. As soon as they get the mass of their people behind them, they’re a dictator. As soon as they have unity of their people in their country, they’re a dictator. If there is no division, fighting, and squabbling going on, the leader of that country is a dictator if he is an African; but as long as it is in America, he’s just an American president who has the support of the people.

I am coming to America in a minute, but I just want to comment on our relations I’ve noticed since being here. I heard that there is a conflict among some of our brothers and sisters over here concerning whether or not it’s advisable for the government to play such a prominent role in guiding the education — the curriculum and what not — of the people of the country and in the various universities. Yes, any time you have a people who have been colonized for as long as our people have been colonized, and you tell them now they can vote, they will spend all night arguing and never get anywhere. Everything needs to be controlled until the colonial mentality has been completely destroyed, and when that colonial mentality has been destroyed at least to the point where they know what they are voting for, then you give them a chance to vote on this and vote on that. But we have this trouble in America, as well as other areas where colonialism has existed, the only way they can practice or apply democratic practices is through advice and counsel.

So my own honest, humble opinion is, anytime you want to come out from under a colonial mentality, let the government set up the educational system and educate you in the direction or way they want you to go in; and then after your understanding is up to the level where it should be, you can stand around and argue or philosophize or something of that sort.

There is probably no more enlightened leader on the African continent than President Nkrumah, because he lived in America. He knows what it is like there. He could not live in that land as long as he did and be disillusioned, or confused, or be deceived. Anytime you think that America is the land of the free, you come there and take off your national dress and be mistaken for an American Negro, and you will find out you’re not in the land of the free. America is a colonial power. She is just as much a colonial power in 1964 as France, Britain, Portugal, and all these other European countries were in 1864. She’s a twentieth-century colonial power; she’s a modern colonial power, and she has colonized twenty-two million African-Americans. While there are only eleven million Africans colonized in South Africa, four or five million colonized in Angola, there are twenty-two million Africans colonized in America right now on May 13, 1964. What is second-class citizenship if nothing but twentieth-century colonialism? They don’t want you to know that slavery still exists, so rather than call it slavery they call it second-class citizenship.

Either you are a citizen or you are not a citizen at all. If you are a citizen, you are free; if you are not a citizen, you are a slave. And the American government is afraid to admit that she never gave freedom to the Black man in America and won’t even admit that the Black man in America is not free, is not a citizen, and doesn’t have his rights. She skillfully camouflages it under these pretty terms of second-class citizenship. It’s colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism.

One of our brothers just landed here today from New York. He told me that when he left New York, the police were walking in Harlem six abreast. Why? Because Harlem is about to explode. You know what I mean by “Harlem”? Harlem is the most famous city on this earth; there is no city on the African continent with as many Africans as Harlem. In Harlem they call it little Africa, and when you walk through Harlem, you’re in Ibadan, everyone there looks just like you. And today the police were out in force, with their clubs. They don’t have police dogs in Harlem, ‘cause those kind of people who live in Harlem don’t allow police dogs to come in Harlem. That’s the point, they don’t allow police dogs to come in Harlem.

They are troubled with the existence of little gangs who have been going around killing people, killing white people. Well now, they project it abroad as an anti-white gang. No, it’s not an anti-white gang, it’s an anti-oppression gang. It’s an anti-frustration gang. They don’t know what else to do. They’ve been waiting for the government to solve their problems; they’ve been waiting for the president to solve their problems; they’ve been waiting for the Senate and the Congress and the Supreme Court to solve their problems; they’ve been waiting for Negro leaders to solve their problems; and all they hear are a lot of pretty words. So they become frustrated and don’t know what to do. So they do the only thing they know how: they do the same thing the Americans did when they got frustrated with the British in 1776 — liberty or death.

This is what the Americans did; they didn’t turn the other cheek to the British. No, they had an old man named Patrick Henry who said, “Liberty or death!” I never heard them refer to him as an advocate of violence; they say he’s one of the Founding Fathers, because he had sense to say, “Liberty or death!”

And there is a growing tendency among Black Americans today, who are able to see that they don’t have freedom — they are reaching the point now where they are ready to tell the Man no matter what the odds are against them, no matter what the cost is, it’s liberty or death. If this is the land of the free, then give us some freedom. If this is the land of justice, then give us some justice. And if this is the land of equality, give us some equality. This is the growing temper of the Black American, of the African-American, of which there are twenty-two million.

Am I justified in talking like this? Let me see. I was in Cleveland, Ohio, just two months ago when this white clergyman was killed by the bulldozer. I was in Cleveland, I was there. Now you know if a white man in the garb, in the outfit, the costume, or whatever you want to call it, of a priest...if they run over him with a bulldozer, what will they do to a Black man? They run over someone who looks like them who is demonstrating for freedom, what chance does a Black man have? This wasn’t in Mississippi, this was in Cleveland in the North. This is the type of experience the Black man in America is faced with every day.

Letter From Mecca (April 20, 1964)

Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as practiced by people of all colors and races here in this Ancient Holy Land, the home of Abraham, Muhammad and all other prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colors.

I have been blessed to visit the Holy City of Mecca. I have made my seven circuits around the Ka’ba, led by a young Mutawaf named Muhammad. I drank water from the well of Zem Zem. I ran seven times back and forth between the hills of Mt. Al-Safa and Al-Marwah. I have prayed in the ancient city of Mina, and I have prayed on Mt. Arafat. There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black skin Africans. But we were all participating in the same rituals, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had lead me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white. America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem.

Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have considered ‘white’— but the ‘white’ attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together, irrespective of their color.

You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to re-arrange much of my thought patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experiences and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth. During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed, (or on the same rug)—while praying to the same God—with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the same words and in the actions and in the deeds of the ‘white’ Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan and Ghana.

We were truly all the same (brothers)—because their belief in one God had removed the ‘white’ from their minds, the ‘white’ from their behavior, and the ‘white’ from their attitude. I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man—and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their differences in color. With racism plaguing America like an incurable cancer, the so-called ‘Christian’ white American heart should be more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive problem. Perhaps it could be in time to save America from imminent disaster—the same destruction brought upon Germany by racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves.

Each hour here in the Holy Land enables me to have greater spiritual insights into what is happening in America between black and white. The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities—he is only reacting to four hundred years of conscious racism of the American whites. But as racism leads America up the suicide path, I do believe, from the experience that I have had with them, that the whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, will see the handwriting on the wall and many of them will turn to the spiritual path of truth—the only way left to America to ward off the disaster that racism inevitably must lead to.

Never have I been so highly honored. Never have I been made to feel more humble and unworthy. Who would believe the blessings that have been heaped upon an American Negro? A few nights ago, a man who would be called in America a ‘white’ man, a United Nations diplomat, an ambassador, a companion of kings, gave me his hotel suite, his bed. By this man, His Excellency Prince Faisal who rules this Holy Land, was made aware of my presence here in Jedda. The very next morning, Prince Faisal’s son, in person, informed me that by the will and decree of his esteemed father, I was to be a State Guest. The deputy Chief of Protocol himself took me before the Hajj Court. His Holiness Sheikh Muhammad Harkon himself okayed my visit to Mecca. His Holiness gave me two books on Islam, with his personal seal and autograph, and he told me that he prayed that I would be a successful preacher of Islam in America. A car, a driver, and a guide, have been placed at my disposal, making it possible for me to travel about this Holy Land almost at will. The government provides air conditioned quarters and servants in each city that I visit. Never would I have even thought of dreaming that I would ever be a recipient of such honors—honors that in America would be bestowed upon a King—not a Negro. All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of all the Worlds.

Sincerely, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X)

The Ballot or the Bullet (April 3, 1964)

Mr. Moderator, Brother Lomax, brothers and sisters, friends...and enemies. I just can’t believe everyone in here is a friend, and I don’t want to leave anybody out. The question tonight, as I understand it, is “The Negro Revolt, and Where Do We Go From Here?” or “What Next?” In my little humble way of understanding it, it points toward either the ballot or the bullet. Before we try and explain what is meant by the ballot or the bullet, I would like to clarify something concerning myself.

I’m still a Muslim; my religion is still Islam. That’s my personal belief. Just as Adam Clayton Powell is a Christian minister who heads the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York, but at the same time takes part in the political struggles to try and bring about rights to the black people in this country; and Dr. Martin Luther King is a Christian minister down in Atlanta, Georgia, who heads another organization fighting for the civil rights of black people in this country; and Reverend Galamison, I guess you’ve heard of him, is another Christian minister in New York who has been deeply involved in the school boycotts to eliminate segregated education; well, I myself am a minister, not a Christian minister, but a Muslim minister; and I believe in action on all fronts by whatever means necessary.

Although I’m still a Muslim, I’m not here tonight to discuss my religion. I’m not here to try and change your religion. I’m not here to argue or discuss anything that we differ about, because it’s time for us to submerge our differences and realize that it is best for us to first see that we have the same problem, a common problem, a problem that will make you catch hell whether you’re a Baptist, or a Methodist, or a Muslim, or a nationalist.

Whether you’re educated or illiterate, whether you live on the boulevard or in the alley, you’re going to catch hell just like I am. We’re all in the same boat and we all are going to catch the same hell from the same man. He just happens to be a white man. All of us have suffered here, in this country, political oppression at the hands of the white man, economic exploitation at the hands of the white man, and social degradation at the hands of the white man.

Now in speaking like this, it doesn’t mean that we’re anti-white, but it does mean we’re anti-exploitation, we’re anti-degradation, we’re anti-oppression. And if the white man doesn’t want us to be anti-him, let him stop oppressing and exploiting and degrading us. Whether we are Christians or Muslims or nationalists or agnostics or atheists, we must first learn to forget our differences. If we have differences, let us differ in the closet; when we come out in front, let us not have anything to argue about until we get finished arguing with the man. If the late President Kennedy could get together with Khrushchev and exchange some wheat, we certainly have more in common with each other than Kennedy and Khrushchev had with each other.

If we don’t do something real soon, I think you’ll have to agree that we’re going to be forced either to use the ballot or the bullet. It’s one or the other in 1964. It isn’t that time is running out—time has run out!

1964 threatens to be the most explosive year America has ever witnessed. The most explosive year. Why? It’s also a political year. It’s the year when all of the white politicians will be back in the so-called Negro community jiving you and me for some votes. The year when all of the white political crooks will be right back in your and my community with their false promises, building up our hopes for a letdown, with their trickery and their treachery, with their false promises which they don’t intend to keep. As they nourish these dissatisfactions, it can only lead to one thing, an explosion; and now we have the type of black man on the scene in America today—I’m sorry, Brother Lomax—who just doesn’t intend to turn the other cheek any longer.

Don’t let anybody tell you anything about the odds are against you. If they draft you, they send you to Korea and make you face 800 million Chinese. If you can be brave over there, you can be brave right here. These odds aren’t as great as those odds. And if you fight here, you will at least know what you’re fighting for.

I’m not a politician, not even a student of politics; in fact, I’m not a student of much of anything. I’m not a Democrat. I’m not a Republican, and I don’t even consider myself an American. If you and I were Americans, there’d be no problem. Those Honkies that just got off the boat, they’re already Americans; Polacks are already Americans; the Italian refugees are already Americans. Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren’t Americans yet.

Well, I am one who doesn’t believe in deluding myself. I’m not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on that plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn’t need any legislation; you wouldn’t need any amendments to the Constitution; you wouldn’t be faced with civil-rights filibustering in Washington, D.C., right now. They don’t have to pass civil-rights legislation to make a Polack an American.

No, I’m not an American. I’m one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver—no, not I. I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.

These 22 million victims are waking up. Their eyes are coming open. They’re beginning to see what they used to only look at. They’re becoming politically mature. They are realizing that there are new political trends from coast to coast. As they see these new political trends, it’s possible for them to see that every time there’s an election the races are so close that they have to have a recount. They had to recount in Massachusetts to see who was going to be governor, it was so close. It was the same way in Rhode Island, in Minnesota, and in many other parts of the country. And the same with Kennedy and Nixon when they ran for president. It was so close they had to count all over again. Well, what does this mean? It means that when white people are evenly divided, and black people have a bloc of votes of their own, it is left up to them to determine who’s going to sit in the White House and who’s going to be in the dog house.


lt was the black man’s vote that put the present administration in Washington, D.C. Your vote, your dumb vote, your ignorant vote, your wasted vote put in an administration in Washington, D.C., that has seen fit to pass every kind of legislation imaginable, saving you until last, then filibustering on top of that. And your and my leaders have the audacity to run around clapping their hands and talk about how much progress we’re making. And what a good president we have. If he wasn’t good in Texas, he sure can’t be good in Washington, D.C. Because Texas is a lynch state. It is in the same breath as Mississippi, no different; only they lynch you in Texas with a Texas accent and lynch you in Mississippi with a Mississippi accent. And these Negro leaders have the audacity to go and have some coffee in the White House with a Texan, a Southern cracker—that’s all he is—and then come out and tell you and me that he’s going to be better for us because, since he’s from the South, he knows how to deal with the Southerners. What kind of logic is that? Let Eastland be president, he’s from the South too. He should be better able to deal with them than Johnson.

In this present administration they have in the House of Representatives 257 Democrats to only 177 Republicans. They control two-thirds of the House vote. Why can’t they pass something that will help you and me? In the Senate, there are 67 senators who are of the Democratic Party. Only 33 of them are Republicans. Why, the Democrats have got the government sewed up, and you’re the one who sewed it up for them. And what have they given you for it? Four years in office, and just now getting around to some civil-rights legislation. Just now, after everything else is gone, out of the way, they’re going to sit down now and play with you all summer long—the same old giant con game that they call filibuster. All those are in cahoots together. Don’t you ever think they’re not in cahoots together, for the man that is heading the civil-rights filibuster is a man from Georgia named Richard Russell. When Johnson became president, the first man he asked for when he got back to Washington, D.C., was “Dicky”—that’s how tight they are. That’s his boy, that’s his pal, that’s his buddy. But they’re playing that old con game. One of them makes believe he’s for you, and he’s got it fixed where the other one is so tight against you, he never has to keep his promise.

So it’s time in 1964 to wake up. And when you see them coming up with that kind of conspiracy, let them know your eyes are open. And let them know your eyes are something else that’s wide open too. It’s got to be the ballot or the bullet. The ballot or the bullet. If you’re afraid to use an expression like that, you should get on out of the country; you should get back in the cotton patch; you should get back in the alley. They get all the Negro vote, and after they get it, the Negro gets nothing in return. All they did when they got to Washington was give a few big Negroes big jobs. Those big Negroes didn’t need big jobs, they already had jobs. That’s camouflage, that’s trickery, that’s treachery, window-dressing. I’m not trying to knock out the Democrats for the Republicans. We’ll get to them in a minute. But it is true; you put the Democrats first and the Democrats put you last.

Look at it the way it is. What alibis do they use, since they control Congress and the Senate? What alibi do they use when you and I ask, “Well, when are you going to keep your promise?” They blame the Dixiecrats. What is a Dixiecrat? A Democrat. A Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat in disguise. The titular head of the Democrats is also the head of the Dixiecrats, because the Dixiecrats are a part of the Democratic Party. The Democrats have never kicked the Dixiecrats out of the party. The Dixiecrats bolted themselves once, but the Democrats didn’t put them out. Imagine, these lowdown Southern segregationists put the Northern Democrats down. But the Northern Democrats have never put the Dixiecrats down. No, look at that thing the way it is. They have got a con game going on, a political con game, and you and I are in the middle. It’s time for you and me to wake up and start looking at it like it is, and trying to understand it like it is; and then we can deal with it like it is.

The Dixiecrats in Washington, D.C., control the key committees that run the government. The only reason the Dixiecrats control these committees is because they have seniority. The only reason they have seniority is because they come from states where Negroes can’t vote. This is not even a government that’s based on democracy. lt is not a government that is made up of representatives of the people. Half of the people in the South can’t even vote. Eastland is not even supposed to be in Washington. Half of the senators and congressmen who occupy these key positions in Washington, D.C., are there illegally, are there unconstitutionally.

I was in Washington, D.C., a week ago Thursday, when they were debating whether or not they should let the bill come onto the floor. And in the back of the room where the Senate meets, there’s a huge map of the United States, and on that map it shows the location of Negroes throughout the country. And it shows that the Southern section of the country, the states that are most heavily concentrated with Negroes, are the ones that have senators and congressmen standing up filibustering and doing all other kinds of trickery to keep the Negro from being able to vote. This is pitiful. But it’s not pitiful for us any longer; it’s actually pitiful for the white man, because soon now, as the Negro awakens a little more and sees the vise that he’s in, sees the bag that he’s in, sees the real game that he’s in, then the Negro’s going to develop a new tactic.

These senators and congressmen actually violate the constitutional amendments that guarantee the people of that particular state or county the right to vote. And the Constitution itself has within it the machinery to expel any representative from a state where the voting rights of the people are violated. You don’t even need new legislation. Any person in Congress right now, who is there from a state or a district where the voting rights of the people are violated, that particular person should be expelled from Congress. And when you expel him, you’ve removed one of the obstacles in the path of any real meaningful legislation in this country. In fact, when you expel them, you don’t need new legislation, because they will be replaced by black representatives from counties and districts where the black man is in the majority, not in the minority.

If the black man in these Southern states had his full voting rights, the key Dixiecrats in Washington, D. C., which means the key Democrats in Washington, D.C., would lose their seats. The Democratic Party itself would lose its power. It would cease to be powerful as a party. When you see the amount of power that would be lost by the Democratic Party if it were to lose the Dixiecrat wing, or branch, or element, you can see where it’s against the interests of the Democrats to give voting rights to Negroes in states where the Democrats have been in complete power and authority ever since the Civil War. You just can’t belong to that Party without analyzing it.

I say again, I’m not anti-Democrat, I’m not anti-Republican, I’m not anti-anything. I’m just questioning their sincerity, and some of the strategy that they’ve been using on our people by promising them promises that they don’t intend to keep. When you keep the Democrats in power, you’re keeping the Dixiecrats in power. I doubt that my good Brother Lomax will deny that. A vote for a Democrat is a vote for a Dixiecrat. That’s why, in 1964, it’s time now for you and me to become more politically mature and realize what the ballot is for; what we’re supposed to get when we cast a ballot; and that if we don’t cast a ballot, it’s going to end up in a situation where we’re going to have to cast a bullet. It’s either a ballot or a bullet.

In the North, they do it a different way. They have a system that’s known as gerrymandering, whatever that means. It means when Negroes become too heavily concentrated in a certain area, and begin to gain too much political power, the white man comes along and changes the district lines. You may say, “Why do you keep saying white man?” Because it’s the white man who does it. I haven’t ever seen any Negro changing any lines. They don’t let him get near the line. It’s the white man who does this. And usually, it’s the white man who grins at you the most, and pats you on the back, and is supposed to be your friend. He may be friendly, but he’s not your friend.

So, what I’m trying to impress upon you, in essence, is this: You and I in America are faced not with a segregationist conspiracy, we’re faced with a government conspiracy. Everyone who’s filibustering is a senator—that’s the government. Everyone who’s finagling in Washington, D.C., is a congressman—that’s the government. You don’t have anybody putting blocks in your path but people who are a part of the government. The same government that you go abroad to fight for and die for is the government that is in a conspiracy to deprive you of your voting rights, deprive you of your economic opportunities, deprive you of decent housing, deprive you of decent education. You don’t need to go to the employer alone, it is the government itself, the government of America, that is responsible for the oppression and exploitation and degradation of black people in this country. And you should drop it in their lap. This government has failed the Negro. This so-called democracy has failed the Negro. And all these white liberals have definitely failed the Negro.

So, where do we go from here? First, we need some friends. We need some new allies. The entire civil-rights struggle needs a new interpretation, a broader interpretation. We need to look at this civil-rights thing from another angle—from the inside as well as from the outside. To those of us whose philosophy is black nationalism, the only way you can get involved in the civil-rights struggle is give it a new interpretation. That old interpretation excluded us. It kept us out. So, we’re giving a new interpretation to the civil-rights struggle, an interpretation that will enable us to come into it, take part in it. And these handkerchief-heads who have been dillydallying and pussy footing and compromising—we don’t intend to let them pussyfoot and dillydally and compromise any longer.

How can you thank a man for giving you what’s already yours? How then can you thank him for giving you only part of what’s already yours? You haven’t even made progress, if what’s being given to you, you should have had already. That’s not progress. And I love my Brother Lomax, the way he pointed out we’re right back where we were in 1954. We’re not even as far up as we were in 1954. We’re behind where we were in 1954. There’s more segregation now than there was in 1954. There’s more racial animosity, more racial hatred, more racial violence today in 1964, than there was in 1954. Where is the progress?

And now you’re facing a situation where the young Negro’s coming up. They don’t want to hear that “turn the-other-cheek” stuff, no. In Jacksonville, those were teenagers, they were throwing Molotov cocktails. Negroes have never done that before. But it shows you there’s a new deal coming in.
There’s new thinking coming in. There’s new strategy coming in. It’ll be Molotov cocktails this month, hand grenades next month, and something else next month. It’ll be ballots, or it’ll be bullets. It’ll be liberty, or it will be death. The only difference about this kind of death—it’ll be reciprocal. You know what is meant by “reciprocal”? That’s one of Brother Lomax’s words. I stole it from him. I don’t usually deal with those big words because I don’t usually deal with big people. I deal with small people. I find you can get a whole lot of small people and whip hell out of a whole lot of big people. They haven’t got anything to lose, and they’ve got every thing to gain. And they’ll let you know in a minute: “It takes two to tango; when I go, you go.”

The black nationalists, those whose philosophy is black nationalism, in bringing about this new interpretation of the entire meaning of civil rights, look upon it as meaning, as Brother Lomax has pointed out, equality of opportunity. Well, we’re justified in seeking civil rights, if it means equality of opportunity, because all we’re doing there is trying to collect for our investment. Our mothers and fathers invested sweat and blood. Three hundred and ten years we worked in this country without a dime in return—I mean without a dime in return. You let the white man walk around here talking about how rich this country is, but you never stop to think how it got rich so quick. It got rich because you made it rich.

You take the people who are in this audience right now. They’re poor. We’re all poor as individuals. Our weekly salary individually amounts to hardly anything. But if you take the salary of everyone in here collectively, it’ll fill up a whole lot of baskets. It’s a lot of wealth. If you can collect the wages of just these people right here for a year, you’ll be rich—richer than rich. When you look at it like that, think how rich Uncle Sam had to become, not with this handful, but millions of black people. Your and my mother and father, who didn’t work an eight-hour shift, but worked from “can’t see” in the morning until “can’t see” at night, and worked for nothing, making the white man rich, making Uncle Sam rich. This is our investment. This is our contribution, our blood.

Not only did we give of our free labor, we gave of our blood. Every time he had a call to arms, we were the first ones in uniform. We died on every battlefield the white man had. We have made a greater sacrifice than anybody who’s standing up in America today. We have made a greater contribution and have collected less. Civil rights, for those of us whose philosophy is black nationalism, means: “Give it to us now. Don’t wait for next year. Give it to us yesterday, and that’s not fast enough.”

I might stop right here to point out one thing. Whenever you’re going after something that belongs to you, anyone who’s depriving you of the right to have it is a criminal. Understand that. Whenever you are going after something that is yours, you are within your legal rights to lay claim to it. And anyone who puts forth any effort to deprive you of that which is yours, is breaking the law, is a criminal. And this was pointed out by the Supreme Court decision. It outlawed segregation.

Which means segregation is against the law. Which means a segregationist is breaking the law. A segregationist is a criminal. You can’t label him as anything other than that. And when you demonstrate against segregation, the law is on your side. The Supreme Court is on your side.

Now, who is it that opposes you in carrying out the law? The police department itself. With police dogs and clubs. Whenever you demonstrate against segregation, whether it is segregated education, segregated housing, or anything else, the law is on your side, and anyone who stands in the way is not the law any longer. They are breaking the law; they are not representatives of the law. Any time you demonstrate against segregation and a man has the audacity to put a police dog on you, kill that dog, kill him, I’m telling you, kill that dog. I say it if they put me in jail tomorrow, kill that dog. Then you’ll put a stop to it. Now, if these white people in here don’t want to see that kind of action, get down and tell the mayor to tell the police department to pull the dogs in. That’s all you have to do. If you don’t do it, someone else will.

If you don’t take this kind of stand, your little children will grow up and look at you and think “shame.” If you don’t take an uncompromising stand, I don’t mean go out and get violent; but at the same time you should never be nonviolent unless you run into some nonviolence. I’m nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me. But when you drop that violence on me, then you’ve made me go insane, and I’m not responsible for what I do. And that’s the way every Negro should get. Any time you know you’re within the law, within your legal rights, within your moral rights, in accord with justice, then die for what you believe in. But don’t die alone. Let your dying be reciprocal. This is what is meant by equality. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

When we begin to get in this area, we need new friends, we need new allies. We need to expand the civil-rights struggle to a higher level—to the level of human rights. Whenever you are in a civil-rights struggle, whether you know it or not, you are confining yourself to the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam. No one from the outside world can speak out in your behalf as long as your struggle is a civil-rights struggle. Civil rights comes within the domestic affairs of this country. All of our African brothers and our Asian brothers and our Latin-American brothers cannot open their mouths and interfere in the domestic affairs of the United States. And as long as it’s civil rights, this comes under the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam.

But the United Nations has what’s known as the charter of human rights; it has a committee that deals in human rights. You may wonder why all of the atrocities that have been committed in Africa and in Hungary and in Asia, and in Latin America are brought before the UN, and the Negro problem is never brought before the UN. This is part of the conspiracy. This old, tricky blue eyed liberal who is supposed to be your and my friend, supposed to be in our corner, supposed to be subsidizing our struggle, and supposed to be acting in the capacity of an adviser, never tells you anything about human rights. They keep you wrapped up in civil rights. And you spend so much time barking up the civil-rights tree, you don’t even know there’s a human-rights tree on the same floor.

When you expand the civil-rights struggle to the level of human rights, you can then take the case of the black man in this country before the nations in the UN. You can take it before the General Assembly. You can take Uncle Sam before a world court. But the only level you can do it on is the level of human rights. Civil rights keeps you under his restrictions, under his jurisdiction. Civil rights keeps you in his pocket. Civil rights means you’re asking Uncle Sam to treat you right. Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth. And any time any one violates your human rights, you can take them to the world court.

Uncle Sam’s hands are dripping with blood, dripping with the blood of the black man in this country. He’s the earth’s number-one hypocrite. He has the audacity—yes, he has—imagine him posing as the leader of the free world. The free world! And you over here singing “We Shall Overcome.” Expand the civil-rights struggle to the level of human rights. Take it into the United Nations, where our African brothers can throw their weight on our side, where our Asian brothers can throw their weight on our side, where our Latin-American brothers can throw their weight on our side, and where 800 million Chinamen are sitting there waiting to throw their weight on our side.

Let the world know how bloody his hands are. Let the world know the hypocrisy that’s practiced over here. Let it be the ballot or the bullet. Let him know that it must be the ballot or the bullet.

When you take your case to Washington, D.C., you’re taking it to the criminal who’s responsible; it’s like running from the wolf to the fox. They’re all in cahoots together. They all work political chicanery and make you look like a chump before the eyes of the world. Here you are walking around in America, getting ready to be drafted and sent abroad, like a tin soldier, and when you get over there, people ask you what are you fighting for, and you have to stick your tongue in your cheek. No, take Uncle Sam to court, take him before the world.


By ballot I only mean freedom. Don’t you know—I disagree with Lomax on this issue—that the ballot is more important than the dollar? Can I prove it? Yes. Look in the UN. There are poor nations in the UN; yet those poor nations can get together with their voting power and keep the rich nations from making a move. They have one nation—one vote, everyone has an equal vote. And when those brothers from Asia, and Africa and the darker parts of this earth get together, their voting power is sufficient to hold Sam in check. Or Russia in check. Or some other section of the earth in check. So, the ballot is most important.


Right now, in this country, if you and I, 22 million African-Americans—that’s what we are—Africans who are in America. You’re nothing but Africans. Nothing but Africans. In fact, you’d get farther calling yourself African instead of Negro. Africans don’t catch hell. You’re the only one catching hell. They don’t have to pass civil- rights bills for Africans. An African can go anywhere he wants right now. All you’ve got to do is tie your head up. That’s right, go anywhere you want. Just stop being a Negro. Change your name to Hoogagagooba. That’ll show you how silly the white man is. You’re dealing with a silly man. A friend of mine who’s very dark put a turban on his head and went into a restaurant in Atlanta before they called themselves desegregated. He went into a white restaurant, he sat down, they served him, and he said, “What would happen if a Negro came in here? And there he’s sitting, black as night, but because he had his head wrapped up the waitress looked back at him and says, “Why, there wouldn’t no nigger dare come in here.”

So, you’re dealing with a man whose bias and prejudice are making him lose his mind, his intelligence, every day. He’s frightened. He looks around and sees what’s taking place on this earth, and he sees that the pendulum of time is swinging in your direction. The dark people are waking up. They’re losing their fear of the white man. No place where he’s fighting right now is he winning. Everywhere he’s fighting, he’s fighting someone your and my complexion. And they’re beating him. He can’t win any more. He’s won his last battle. He failed to win the Korean War. He couldn’t win it. He had to sign a truce. That’s a loss.

Any time Uncle Sam, with all his machinery for warfare, is held to a draw by some rice eaters, he’s lost the battle. He had to sign a truce. America’s not supposed to sign a truce. She’s supposed to be bad. But she’s not bad any more. She’s bad as long as she can use her hydrogen bomb, but she can’t use hers for fear Russia might use hers. Russia can’t use hers, for fear that Sam might use his. So, both of them are weapon-less. They can’t use the weapon because each’s weapon nullifies the other’s. So the only place where action can take place is on the ground. And the white man can’t win another war fighting on the ground. Those days are over The black man knows it, the brown man knows it, the red man knows it, and the yellow man knows it. So they engage him in guerrilla warfare. That’s not his style. You’ve got to have heart to be a guerrilla warrior, and he hasn’t got any heart. I’m telling you now.

I just want to give you a little briefing on guerrilla warfare because, before you know it, before you know it... It takes heart to be a guerrilla warrior because you’re on your own. In conventional warfare you have tanks and a whole lot of other people with you to back you up—planes over your head and all that kind of stuff. But a guerrilla is on his own. All you have is a rifle, some sneakers and a bowl of rice, and that’s all you need—and a lot of heart. The Japanese on some of those islands in the Pacific, when the American soldiers landed, one Japanese sometimes could hold the whole army off. He’d just wait until the sun went down, and when the sun went down they were all equal. He would take his little blade and slip from bush to bush, and from American to American. The white soldiers couldn’t cope with that. Whenever you see a white soldier that fought in the Pacific, he has the shakes, he has a nervous condition, because they scared him to death.
 The same thing happened to the French up in French Indochina. People who just a few years previously were rice farmers got together and ran the heavily-mechanized French army out of Indochina. You don’t need it—modern warfare today won’t work. This is the day of the guerrilla. They did the same thing in Algeria. Algerians, who were nothing but Bedouins, took a rifle and sneaked off to the hills, and de Gaulle and all of his highfalutin’ war machinery couldn’t defeat those guerrillas. Nowhere on this earth does the white man win in a guerrilla warfare. It’s not his speed. Just as guerrilla warfare is prevailing in Asia and in parts of Africa and in parts of Latin America, you’ve got to be mighty naive, or you’ve got to play the black man cheap, if you don’t think some day he’s going to wake up and find that it’s got to be the ballot or the bullet.

I would like to say, in closing, a few things concerning the Muslim Mosque, Incorporated, which we established recently in New York City. It’s true we’re Muslims and our religion is Islam, but we don’t mix our religion with our politics and our economics and our social and civil activities—not any more We keep our religion in our mosque. After our religious services are over, then as Muslims we become involved in political action, economic action and social and civic action. We become involved with anybody, any where, any time and in any manner that’s designed to eliminate the evils, the political, economic and social evils that are afflicting the people of our community.

The political philosophy of black nationalism means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community; no more. The black man in the black community has to be re-educated into the science of politics so he will know what politics is supposed to bring him in return. Don’t be throwing out any ballots. A ballot is like a bullet. You don’t throw your ballots until you see a target, and if that target is not within your reach, keep your ballot in your pocket.

The political philosophy of black nationalism is being taught in the Christian church. It’s being taught in the NAACP. It’s being taught in CORE meetings. It’s being taught in SNCC Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee meetings. It’s being taught in Muslim meetings. It’s being taught where nothing but atheists and agnostics come together. It’s being taught everywhere. Black people are fed up with the dillydallying, pussyfooting, compromising approach that we’ve been using toward getting our freedom. We want freedom now, but we’re not going to get it saying “We Shall Overcome.” We’ve got to fight until we overcome.

The economic philosophy of black nationalism is pure and simple. It only means that we should control the economy of our community. Why should white people be running all the stores in our community? Why should white people be running the banks of our community? Why should the economy of our community be in the hands of the white man? Why? If a black man can’t move his store into a white community, you tell me why a white man should move his store into a black community. The philosophy of black nationalism involves a re-education program in the black community in regards to economics. Our people have to be made to see that any time you take your dollar out of your community and spend it in a community where you don’t live, the community where you live will get poorer and poorer, and the community where you spend your money will get richer and richer. 
Then you wonder why where you live is always a ghetto or a slum area. And where you and I are concerned, not only do we lose it when we spend it out of the community, but the white man has got all our stores in the community tied up; so that though we spend it in the community, at sundown the man who runs the store takes it over across town somewhere. He’s got us in a vise.

So the economic philosophy of black nationalism means in every church, in every civic organization, in every fraternal order, it’s time now for our people to become conscious of the importance of controlling the economy of our community. If we own the stores, if we operate the businesses, if we try and establish some industry in our own community, then we’re developing to the position where we are creating employment for our own kind. Once you gain control of the economy of your own community, then you don’t have to picket and boycott and beg some cracker downtown for a job in his business.

The social philosophy of black nationalism only means that we have to get together and remove the evils, the vices, alcoholism, drug addiction, and other evils that are destroying the moral fiber of our community. We our selves have to lift the level of our community, the standard of our community to a higher level, make our own society beautiful so that we will be satisfied in our own social circles and won’t be running around here trying to knock our way into a social circle where we’re not wanted. So I say, in spreading a gospel such as black nationalism, it is not designed to make the black man re-evaluate the white man—you know him already—but to make the black man re-evaluate himself.

Don’t change the white man’s mind—you can’t change his mind, and that whole thing about appealing to the moral conscience of America—America’s conscience is bankrupt. She lost all conscience a long time ago. Uncle Sam has no conscience.

They don’t know what morals are. They don’t try and eliminate an evil because it’s evil, or because it’s illegal, or because it’s immoral; they eliminate it only when it threatens their existence. So you’re wasting your time appealing to the moral conscience of a bankrupt man like Uncle Sam. If he had a conscience, he’d straighten this thing out with no more pressure being put upon him. So it is not necessary to change the white man’s mind. We have to change our own mind. You can’t change his mind about us. We’ve got to change our own minds about each other. We have to see each other with new eyes. We have to see each other as brothers and sisters. We have to come together with warmth so we can develop unity and harmony that’s necessary to get this problem solved ourselves. How can we do this? How can we avoid jealousy? How can we avoid the suspicion and the divisions that exist in the community? I’ll tell you how.

I have watched how Billy Graham comes into a city, spreading what he calls the gospel of Christ, which is only white nationalism. That’s what he is. Billy Graham is a white nationalist; I’m a black nationalist. But since it’s the natural tendency for leaders to be jealous and look upon a powerful figure like Graham with suspicion and envy, how is it possible for him to come into a city and get all the cooperation of the church leaders? Don’t think because they’re church leaders that they don’t have weaknesses that make them envious and jealous—no, everybody’s got it. It’s not an accident that when they want to choose a cardinal, as Pope I over there in Rome, they get in a closet so you can’t hear them cussing and fighting and carrying on.

Billy Graham comes in preaching the gospel of Christ. He evangelizes the gospel. He stirs everybody up, but he never tries to start a church. If he came in trying to start a church, all the churches would be against him. So, he just comes in talking about Christ and tells everybody who gets Christ to go to any church where Christ is; and in this way the church cooperates with him. So we’re going to take a page from his book.

Our gospel is black nationalism. We’re not trying to threaten the existence of any organization, but we’re spreading the gospel of black nationalism. Anywhere there’s a church that is also preaching and practicing the gospel of black nationalism, join that church. If the NAACP is preaching and practicing the gospel of black nationalism, join the NAACP. If CORE is spreading and practicing the gospel of black nationalism, join CORE. Join any organization that has a gospel that’s for the uplift of the black man. And when you get into it and see them pussyfooting or compromising, pull out of it because that’s not black nationalism. We’ll find another one.

And in this manner, the organizations will increase in number and in quantity and in quality, and by August, it is then our intention to have a black nationalist convention which will consist of delegates from all over the country who are interested in the political, economic and social philosophy of black nationalism. After these delegates convene, we will hold a seminar; we will hold discussions; we will listen to everyone. We want to hear new ideas and new solutions and new answers. And at that time, if we see fit then to form a black nationalist party, we’ll form a black nationalist party. If it’s necessary to form a black nationalist army, we’ll form a black nationalist army. It’ll be the ballot or the bullet. It’ll be liberty or it’ll be death.

It’s time for you and me to stop sitting in this country, letting some cracker senators, Northern crackers and Southern crackers, sit there in Washington, D.C., and come to a conclusion in their mind that you and I are supposed to have civil rights. There’s no white man going to tell me anything about my rights. Brothers and sisters, always remember, if it doesn’t take senators and congressmen and presidential proclamations to give freedom to the white man, it is not necessary for legislation or proclamation or Supreme Court decisions to give freedom to the black man. You let that white man know, if this is a country of freedom, let it be a country of freedom; and if it’s not a country of freedom, change it.

We will work with anybody, anywhere, at any time, who is genuinely interested in tackling the problem head-on, non-violently as long as the enemy is non-violent, but violent when the enemy gets violent. We’ll work with you on the voter-registration drive, we’ll work with you on rent strikes, we’ll work with you on school boycotts; I don’t believe in any kind of integration; I’m not even worried about it, because I know you’re not going to get it anyway; you’re not going to get it because you’re afraid to die; you’ve got to be ready to die if you try and force yourself on the white man, because he’ll get just as violent as those crackers in Mississippi, right here in Cleveland. But we will still work with you on the school boycotts because we’re against a segregated school system. A segregated school system produces children who, when they graduate, graduate with crippled minds. But this does not mean that a school is segregated because it’s all black. A segregated school means a school that is controlled by people who have no real interest in it whatsoever.

Let me explain what I mean. A segregated district or community is a community in which people live, but outsiders control the politics and the economy of that community. They never refer to the white section as a segregated community. It’s the all-Negro section that’s a segregated community. Why? The white man controls his own school, his own bank, his own economy, his own politics, his own everything, his own community; but he also controls yours. When you’re under someone else’s control, you’re segregated. They’ll always give you the lowest or the worst that there is to offer, but it doesn’t mean you’re segregated just because you have your own. You’ve got to control your own. Just like the white man has control of his, you need to control yours.

You know the best way to get rid of segregation? The white man is more afraid of separation than he is of integration. Segregation means that he puts you away from him, but not far enough for you to be out of his jurisdiction; separation means you’re gone. And the white man will integrate faster than he’ll let you separate. So we will work with you against the segregated school system because it’s criminal, because it is absolutely destructive, in every way imaginable, to the minds of the children who have to be exposed to that type of crippling education.

Last but not least, I must say this concerning the great controversy over rifles and shotguns. The only thing that I’ve ever said is that in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it’s time for Negroes to defend themselves. Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun. It is constitutionally legal to own a shotgun or a rifle. This doesn’t mean you’re going to get a rifle and form battalions and go out looking for white folks, although you’d be within your rights—I mean, you’d be justified; but that would be illegal and we don’t do anything illegal. If the white man doesn’t want the black man buying rifles and shotguns, then let the government do its job. That’s all. And don’t let the white man come to you and ask you what you think about what Malcolm says—why, you old Uncle Tom. He would never ask you if he thought you were going to say, “Amen!” No, he is making a Tom out of you. So, this doesn’t mean forming rifle clubs and going out looking for people, but it is time, in 1964, if you are a man, to let that man know.

If he’s not going to do his job in running the government and providing you and me with the protection that our taxes are supposed to be for, since he spends all those billions for his defense budget, he certainly can’t begrudge you and me spending $12 or $15 for a single-shot, or double-action. I hope you understand. Don’t go out shooting people, but any time—brothers and sisters, and especially the men in this audience; some of you wearing Congressional Medals of Honor, with shoulders this wide, chests this big, muscles that big—any time you and I sit around and read where they bomb a church and murder in cold blood, not some grownups, but four little girls while they were praying to the same God the white man taught them to pray to, and you and I see the government go down and can’t find who did it.

Why, this man—he can find Eichmann hiding down in Argentina somewhere. Let two or three American soldiers, who are minding somebody else’s business way over in South Vietnam, get killed, and he’ll send battleships, sticking his nose in their business. He wanted to send troops down to Cuba and make them have what he calls free elections—this old cracker who doesn’t have free elections in his own country.

No, if you never see me another time in your life, if I die in the morning, I’ll die saying one thing: the ballot or the bullet, the ballot or the bullet.

If a Negro in 1964 has to sit around and wait for some cracker senator to filibuster when it comes to the rights of black people, why, you and I should hang our heads in shame. You talk about a march on Washington in 1963, you haven’t seen anything. There’s some more going down in ‘64.

And this time they’re not going like they went last year. They’re not going singing “We Shall Overcome.” They’re not going with white friends. They’re not going with placards already painted for them. They’re not going with round-trip tickets. They’re going with one way tickets. And if they don’t want that non-nonviolent army going down there, tell them to bring the filibuster to a halt.

The black nationalists aren’t going to wait. Lyndon B. Johnson is the head of the Democratic Party. If he’s for civil rights, let him go into the Senate next week and declare himself. Let him go in there right now and declare himself. Let him go in there and denounce the Southern branch of his party. Let him go in there right now and take a moral stand—right now, not later. Tell him don’t wait until election time. If he waits too long, brothers and sisters, he will be responsible for letting a condition develop in this country which will create a climate that will bring seeds up out of the ground with vegetation on the end of them looking like something these people never dreamed of. In 1964, it’s the ballot or the bullet. Thank you.

Milton Henry interviews Malcolm X (April 12, 1964)

Milton Henry: Once again the GOAL Show microphones have with us our brother, Malcolm X. This time we are on the other side of the world. We're at Cairo, Egypt, where the independent African states have met in serious confrontation for the last week. One of the significant additions to the confrontation here was the presence of Malcolm X as a black American delegate to the conference of black peoples here in Africa. Malcolm, would you tell us something about the conference? First of all, we'd like to know about your appearance how did it happen that you as an American were permitted to appear at this conference of African people?

Malcolm X: First, I want to point out that we are sitting here along the banks of the Nile, and the last time I spoke to you we were in Harlem. Here along the banks of the Nile it's not much different from Harlem same people, same feeling, same pulse.

About my appearing here at the conference: At first it did create a great deal of controversy, and, as you probably know, apprehension on the part of the powers that be in America, because they realize that if any direct contact, communication and understanding and working agreement are ever developed between the 22 million or 30 million Afro-Americans and the Africans here on the continent, there's nothing we couldn't accomplish. When I arrived here, there was a great deal of publicity in all of the press over here concerning my coming. It was historic in a sense because no American Negroes had ever made any effort in the past to try and get their problems placed in the same category as the African problems, nor had they tried to internationalize it. So this was something new, it was unique, and everyone wondered what the reaction of the Africans would be.

It is true that at first there were stumbling blocks placed in my path in regards to being accepted into the conference, or into the meetings. But I'd rather not say what happened in specific details. Thanks to Allah, I was admitted as an observer and I was able to submit a memorandum to each one of the heads of state, which was read and thoroughly analyzed by them. It pointed out the conditions of our people in America and the necessity of something being done and said at this conference toward letting the world know, at least letting the United States know, that our African brothers over here identified themselves with our problems in the States.

Milton Henry: Now, Malcolm, I have read the speech which was presented. Basically, as you say, it did deal with the abuses that the American Negroes have suffered in America and it asked the consideration of the African states of this problem. Now, will you tell us, was this actually passed upon, and did any action come out of the Cairo conference with reference to the American Negro?

Malcolm X: Yes, a resolution came out, acknowledging the fact that America has passed a civil-rights bill, but at the same time pointing out that, despite the passage of the civil-rights bill, continued abuses of the human rights of the black people in America still existed. And it called upon I forget the wording; when I read the resolution it was 2:30 in the morning, under very adverse conditions; but I was so happy to read it. In essence, I remember that it outright condemned the racism that existed in America and the continued abuses that our people suffered despite the passage of the civil-rights bill. It was a very good resolution.

Milton Henry: In other words, this type of resolution coming out of a conference of thirty-four African states should certainly make the United States take a new look at the American Negro?

Malcolm X: Well, I have to say this, that the United States has been looking at the American Negro. When I arrived here I did a great deal of lobbying. I had to do a great deal of lobbying between the lobby of the Hotel Hilton, the lobby of the Shepherd and even the lobby of the " Isis," the ship where the African liberation movement was housed. Lobbying was necessary because the various agencies that the United States has abroad had success fully convinced most Africans that the American Negro in no way identified with Africa, and that the African would be foolish to involve himself in the problems of the American Negroes. And some African leaders were saying this.

So in the memorandum I submitted to them at the conference I pointed out to them that as independent heads of states we looked upon them as the shepherds not only of the African people on the continent, but all people of African descent abroad; and that a good shepherd is more concerned with the sheep that have gone astray and fallen into the hands of the imperialist wolf than the sheep that are still at home. That the 22 million or 30 million, whatever the case may be, Afro-Americans in the United States were still Africans, and that we felt that the African heads of state were as much responsible for us as they were responsible for the people right here on the continent. This was a sort of a challenge to them and I think that most of them realize it today, more so than they did prior to the conference.

Milton Henry: Malcolm, I think you are to be greatly applauded because actually you were the only American recognized as a participant of the conference, and of course you had the badge which permitted you access to all of the rooms and so forth. The Americans here, including myself, did not have that privilege, but you had the privilege of actually being with the other black brothers. I had the feeling that there will be a great change in emphasis because you have been here, and because you presented our position the position of the black man in America so well, in a way that no one but an American could.

Malcolm X: One thing that made most Africans see the necessity of their intervening on our behalf was  the historic steps since 1939 in the so-called rise of the black American. It was the world pressure, brought about by Hitler, that enabled the Negro to rise above where he was. After Hitler was destroyed, there was the threat of Stalin, but it was always the world pressure that was upon America that enabled black people to go forward. It was not the initiative internally that the Negro put forth in America, nor was it a change of moral heart on the part of Uncle Sam it was world pressure.

Once this is realized as a basic fact, then the present American Negro leaders will be more aware that any gain, even in token form, that they get, isn't coming from any goodness out of Washington, D.C., or from their own initiative it is coming because of the international situation. And when they see it like this, in cold facts, then they will see the necessity of placing their problem at the world level, internationalizing the Negro struggle and calling upon our brothers and sisters in Africa and Asia and Latin America, and even in some of the European countries, to bring pressure upon the United States government in order to get our problems solved. And this was only the first of a series of steps that the OAAU has in mind to internationalize the black man's problem, and make it not a Negro problem or an American problem, but a world problem, a problem for humanity.

Milton Henry: I think of another real benefit from this conference, Malcolm. You are living in a very advantageous spot, because it so happens, as you intimated just a minute ago, that you are living with all of the freedom fighters from all of the liberated and unliberated parts of the world down there on the "Isis" is that the name of the boat?

Malcolm X: Well, I don't know if I should say this, but it is true. The "Isis," a beautiful yacht that floats on the Nile River, was set aside for all the liberation movements that exist on the African continent. The leaders of these movements from places like Angola, the Angola freedom fighters; freedom fighters from Mozambique; freedom fighters from Zambia, known as Northern Rhodesia, which is just on its way toward independence; freedom fighters from Zimbabwe, known in America as Southern Rhodesia; freedom fighters from Southwest Africa; from Swaziland; Basutoland; and South Africa itself all of the representatives of these different groups of freedom fighters were housed on this yacht called the "Isis."

I was very honored to be permitted to be housed right along with them. Spending so much time with them gave me a real feeling of the pulse of a true revolutionary, and it gave me an opportunity also to listen to them tell of the real brutal atmosphere in which they live in these colonized areas. It also gave me somewhat of a better idea of our problem in America, and what is going to be necessary to bring an end to the brutality and the suffering that we undergo every day.

Milton Henry: I think that this is one of the advantages of a conference like the one we have just experienced. The fact is that it is important for people to get together to exchange ideas. Even apart from the speeches and the organizational activities which go on with the formal organization, it would seem that, as you indicated, the opportunity for the leaders of each of these parts of the world to get together becomes an invaluable asset to the total freedom struggle. Because without this, leaders very often feel they work by themselves; and with it, they can see the whole picture.

Malcolm X: Yes, this is one thing that I have learned since being out of the Black Muslim movement. It's difficult to look at a thing through the narrow scope of an organizational eye ofttimes and see it in its proper perspective. If the various groups in America had been less selfish and had permitted different representatives from the groups to travel into foreign countries, and broaden their own scope, and come back and educate the movements they represented, not only would this have made the groups to which they belonged more enlightened and more worldly in the international sense, but it also would have given the independent African states abroad a better understanding of the groups in the United States, and what they stand for, what they represent.

In my opinion, a very narrow, backward, almost childish approach has been made by the groups in the United States, and especially the religious groups; very narrow minded. Whenever you belong to a group that just can't work with another group, then that group itself is selfish. Any group, any group that can't work with all other groups, if they are genuinely interested in solving the problems of the Negro collectively why, I don't think that that group is really sincerely motivated toward reaching a solution. This Organization of African Unity, this summit conference, is the best example of what can be accomplished when people come together and their motives aren't selfish.

Milton Henry: Yes, it doesn't seem that it should be so difficult for Negroes, if they are sincere, to get together.

Malcolm X: If they are sincere, it is easy for them to get together.

Milton Henry: Perhaps those leaders will be passed by now, in the events as they move forward. I am enthused about the OAAU, and I expect that there will be some very concrete things happening with respect to that organization that will make the so-called civil-rights movement just a thing of the past almost.

Malcolm X: Well, one of the main objectives of the OAAU is to join the civil-rights struggle and lift it above civil rights to the level of human rights. As long as our people wage a struggle for freedom and label it civil rights, it means that we are under the domestic jurisdiction of Uncle Sam continually, and no outside nation can make any effort whatsoever to help us. As soon as we lift it above civil rights to the level of human rights, the problem becomes internationalized; all of those who belong to the United Nations automatically can take sides with us and help us in condemning, at least charging, Uncle Sam with violation of our human rights.

Milton Henry: Yes, Malcolm, there is one other thing before we leave. What do you think of this city of Cairo?

Malcolm X: Cairo is probably one of the best examples for the American Negro. More so than any other city on the African continent, the people of Cairo look like the American Negroes in the sense that we have all complexions, we range in America from the darkest black to the lightest light, and here in Cairo it is the same thing; throughout Egypt, it is the same thing. All of the complexions are blended together here in a truly harmonious society. You know, if ever there was a people who should know how to practice brotherhood, it is the American Negro and it is the people of Egypt. Negroes just can't judge each other according to color, because we are all colors, all complexions. And as Mrs. W. E. B. DuBois pointed out, the problems today are too vast. Just as on the African continent, you have this wide range of complexions so much so that you can't call it a brown struggle, a red struggle, or a black struggle.

Milton Henry: By the way, Brother Malcolm, before we close, did you receive any promises of assistance or help from any of the African nations?

Malcolm X: Oh, yes, several of them promised officially that, come the next session of the UN, any effort on our part to bring our problem before the UN... I think it is the Commission on Human Rights...will get support and help from them. They will assist us in showing us how to bring it up legally. So I am very, very happy over the whole result of my trip here.

Milton Henry: So this conference has been an unqualified success from all standpoints?

Malcolm X: From all standpoints it has been an unqualified success, and one which should change the whole direction of our struggle in America for human dignity as well as human rights.

Milton Henry: Thank you very much, Brother Malcolm.

The Black Revolution (April 8, 1964)

Mr. Moderator, ladies and gentlemen, friends and enemies. Tonight I hope that we can have a little fireside chat with as few sparks as possible being tossed around. Especially because of the very explosive condition that the world is in today. Sometimes, when a person’s house is on fire and someone comes in yelling fire, instead of the person who is awakened by the yell being thankful, he makes the mistake of charging the one who awakened him with having set the fire. I hope that this little conversation tonight about the black revolution won’t cause many of you to accuse us of igniting it when you find it at your doorstep.

I am still a Muslim. That is, my religion is still Islam. I still believe that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad is the Apostle of Allah. That just happens to be my personal religion, but in the capacity that I'm functioning in today, I have no intention to mix my religion, with the problems of 22 million black people in this country. just as it's possible for a great man, whom I greatly respect, Ben Bella, to be a Muslim and still be a nationalist, and another one whom I greatly respect, Gamal Nasser, to be a Muslim and still be a nationalist, and Sukharno, of Indonesia, to be a Muslim and still be a nationalist, it was nationalism that enabled them to gain freedom for their people. I'm still a Muslim but I'm also a nationalist, meaning that my political philosophy is black nationalism, my economic philosophy is black nationalism, my social philosophy is black nationalism, and when I say that this philosophy of black nationalism...to me, this means, that the political philosophy of black nationalism is that which is designed to encourage our people, black people, to gain complete control over the politics and politicians of our own community. Our economic philosophy is that we should gain control over the economy of our community, the businesses and other things that create employment so that we can provide jobs for our own people instead of having to picket and boycott and beg someone else for a job. And in short our social philosophy only means that we feel it is time to get together among our own kind and eliminate the evils that are destroying the moral fiber of our society like drug addiction, drunkeness, welfare problems. We believe that we should lift the level or the standard of our own society to a higher level wherein we will be satisfied and then not inclined towards pushing ourselves into other societies where we're not wanted. All of that aside, tonight we're dealing with the black revolution.

During recent years there has been much talk about a population explosion. Whenever they are speaking of the population explosion, in my opinion, they are referring to the people primarily in Asia or in Africa— the black, brown, red, and yellow people. It is seen by people of the West that, as soon as the standard of living is raised in Africa and Asia, automatically the people begin to reproduce abundantly. And there has been a great deal of fear engendered by this in the minds of the people of the West, who happen to be, on this earth, a very small minority.

In fact, in most of the thinking and planning of whites in the West today, it’s easy to see that fear in their minds, conscious minds and subconscious minds, that the masses of dark people in the East, who already outnumber them, will continue to increase and multiply and grow until they eventually overrun the people of the West like a human sea, a human tide, a human flood. And the fear of this can be seen in the minds, and in the actions, of most of the people here in the West in practically everything that they do. It governs their political views, it governs their economic views and it governs most of their attitudes toward the present society.

I was listening to Dirksen, the senator from Illinois, in Washington D.C. filibustering the Civil Rights Bill and one of the things that he kept stressing over and over and over was that if this bill is passed, it will change the social structure of America. Well, I know what he’s getting at, and I think that most other people today, and especially our people, know what is meant when these whites, who filibuster these bills, express fears of changes in the social structure. Our people are beginning to realize what they mean.

Just as we can see that all over the world one of the main problems facing the West is race, likewise here in America today, most of your Negro leaders as well as the whites agree that 1964 itself appears to be one of the most explosive years yet in the history of America on the racial front, on the racial scene. Not only is this racial explosion probably to take place in America, but all of the ingredients for this racial explosion in America to blossom into a world-wide racial explosion present themselves right here in front of us. America’s racial powder keg, in short, can actually fuse or ignite a world- wide racial powder keg.

And whites in this country who are still complacent when they see the possibilities of racial strife getting out of hand. You are complacent simply because you think you outnumber the racial minority in this country; what you have to bear in mind is wherein you might outnumber us in this country, you don’t outnumber us all over the earth.

Any kind of racial explosion that takes place in this country today, in 1964, is not a racial explosion that can be confined to the shores of America. It is a racial explosion that can ignite the racial powder keg that exists all over the planet that we call Earth. Now, I think that anybody would agree that the dark masses of Africa and Asia and Latin America are already seething with bitterness, animosity, hostility and unrest, and impatience with the racial intolerance that they themselves have experienced at the hands of the white West.

And just as they themselves have the ingredients of hostility toward the West in general, here we also have 22 million African-Americans, black, brown, red, and yellow people, in this country who are also seething with bitterness and impatience and hostility and animosity over the racial intolerance not only of the white West but of white America in particular.

And by the hundreds of thousands today we find that our own people have become impatient, and turning away from your white nationalism, which you call democracy, toward the militant, uncompromising philosophy of black nationalism. And I might point out right here that as soon as we announced we were going to start a black nationalist party in this country, we received mail from coast to coast, especially from young people at the college level, the university level, who expressed complete sympathy and support and a desire to take an active part in any kind of political action based upon black nationalism, designed to correct or eliminate immediately the evils that our people have suffered here for 400 years.

The black nationalists, to many of you, may represent only a minority in the community. And therefore you might have a tendency to classify them as something insignificant. But just as the fuse is the smallest part or the smallest piece in the powder keg, it is yet that little fuse that ignites the entire powder keg. The black nationalists, to you, may represent a small minority in the so-called Negro community. But yet they just happen to be composed of the type of ingredients necessary to fuse or ignite the entire black community.

And this is one thing that whites—whether you call yourselves liberals or conservatives or racists or whatever you might choose to be—one thing that you have to realize is that, where the black community is concerned, although the large majority that you come in contact with may impress you as being moderate and patient and loving and long-suffering and all that kind of stuff, the minority whom you consider to be Muslims or nationalists happen to be made of the type of ingredient that can easily spark the black community. This should be understood. Because to me a powder keg is nothing without a fuse. 

1964 will be America’s hottest year; her hottest year yet; a year of much racial violence and much racial bloodshed. But it won’t be blood that’s going to flow only on one side. The new generation of black people that have grown up in this country during recent years are already forming the opinion, and it’s a just opinion, that if there is to be bleeding, it should be reciprocal—bleeding on both sides.

It should also be understood that the racial sparks that are ignited here in America today could easily turn into a flaming fire abroad, which only means it could engulf all the people of this earth into a giant race war. You can't confine it to one little neighborhood, or one little community, or one little country. What happens to a black man in America today happens to the black man in Africa. What happens to the black man in America and Africa happens to the black man in Asia and to the man down in Latin America. What happens to one of us today happens to all of us. And when this is realized, I think that the whites who are intelligent—even if they aren’t moral or aren’t just or aren’t impressed by legalities—those who are intelligent will realize that when they touch this one, they are touching all of them, and this in itself will have a tendency to be a checking factor.

The seriousness of this situation must be faced up to. I was in Cleveland last night, Cleveland, Ohio. In fact I was there Friday, Saturday and yesterday. Last Friday the warning was given that this is a year of bloodshed, that the black man has ceased to turn the other cheek, that he has ceased to be nonviolent, that he has ceased to feel that he must be confined by all these restraints that are put upon him by white society in struggling for what white society says he was supposed to have had a hundred years ago. So today, when the black man starts reaching out for what America says are his rights, the black man feels that he is within his rights—when he becomes the victim of brutality by those who are depriving him of his rights—to do whatever is necessary to protect himself. An example of this was taking place last night at this same time in Cleveland, where the police were putting water hoses on our people there and also throwing tear gas at them—and they met a hail of stones, a hail of rocks, a hail of bricks. A couple of weeks ago in Jacksonville, Florida, a young teenage Negro was throwing Molotov cocktails.

Now, Negroes didn’t do this ten years ago. But what you should learn from this is that they are waking up. It was stones yesterday, Molotov cocktails today, it will be hand grenades tomorrow and whatever else is available the next day. The seriousness of this situation must be faced up to. You should not feel that I am inciting someone to violence. I’m only warning of a powder-keg situation. You can take it or leave it. If you take the warning, perhaps you can still save yourself. But if you ignore it or ridicule it, well, death is already at your doorstep. There are 22 million African-Americans who are ready to fight for independence right here. When I say fight for independence right here, I don’t mean any nonviolent fight, or turn-the-other-cheek fight. Those days are gone. Those days are over.

If George Washington didn’t get independence for this country nonviolently, and if Patrick Henry didn’t come up with a nonviolent statement, and you taught me to look upon them as patriots and heroes, then it’s time for you to realize that I have studied your books well. Our people, 22 million African-Americans are fed up with America's hypocritical democracy. And today we care nothing about the odds that are against us. Every time a black man gets ready to defend himself some Uncle Tom starts telling us, how can you win? That's Tom talking, don't listen to him. This is the first thing we hear, the odds are against us. You're dealing with black people who don't care anything about odds. We care nothing about odds. Again, I go right back to the people who founded and who secured the independence of this country from the colonial powers of England. When George Washington and the others got ready to come up with a Declaration of Independence, they didn't care anything about the odds of the British Empire. They were fed up with taxation without representation. And you've got 22 million black people in this country today, 1964, who are fed up with taxation without representation and will do the same thing. Who are ready, willing and justified to do the same thing today to bring about independence for our people that your forefathers did to bring about independence for your people. And I say your people, because I certainly couldn't include myself among those for whom independence was fought in 1776. How in the world can a negro talk about the Declaration of Independence and he's still singing "We Shall Overcome." Our people increasingly are developing the opinion that we just have nothing to lose but the chains of segregation and the chains of second-class citizenship.

So 
1964 will see the Negro revolt evolve and merge into the worldwide black revolution that has been taking place on this earth since 1945. The so-called revolt will become a real black revolution. Now the black revolution has been taking place in Africa and Asia and Latin America; when I say black, I mean non-white—black, brown, red or yellow. Our brothers and sisters in Asia, who were colonized by the Europeans, our brothers and sisters in Africa, who were colonized by the Europeans, and in Latin America, the peasants, who were colonized by the Europeans, have been involved in a struggle since 1945 to get the colonialists, or the colonizing powers, the Europeans, off their land, out of their country.

This is a real revolution. Revolution is always based on land. Revolution is never based on begging somebody for an integrated cup of coffee. Revolutions are never fought by turning the other cheek. Revolutions are never based upon love-your-enemy and pray-for-those-who-despitefully-use-you. And revolutions are never waged singing “We Shall Overcome.” Revolutions are based on bloodshed. Revolutions are never compromising. Revolutions are never based upon negotiations. Revolutions are never based upon any kind of tokenism whatsoever. Revolutions are never even based upon that which is begging a corrupt society or a corrupt system to accept us into it. Revolutions overturn systems. And there is no system on this earth which has proven itself more corrupt, more criminal, than this system that in 1964 still colonizes 22 million African-Americans, still enslaves 22 million Afro-Americans. There is no system more corrupt than a system that represents itself as the example of freedom, the example of democracy, and can go all over this earth telling other people how to straighten out their house, when you have citizens of this country who have to use bullets if they want to cast a ballot.

The greatest weapon the colonial powers have used in the past against our people has always been divide-and-conquer. America is a colonial power. She has colonized 22 million Afro-Americans by depriving us of first-class citizenship, by depriving us of civil rights, actually by depriving us of human rights. She has not only deprived us of the right to be a citizen, she has deprived us of the right to be human beings, the right to be recognized and respected as men and women. And in this country the black can be fifty years old and he is still a “boy.”
 I grew up with white people. I was integrated before they invented the word and I have never met white people yet—if you are around them long enough—who won’t refer to you as a “boy” or a “gal,” no matter how old you are no matter what school you came out of, no matter what your intellectual or professional level is. In this society we remain “boys.”

So America’s strategy is the same strategy as that which was used in the past by the colonial powers: divide and conquer. She plays one Negro leader against the other. She plays one Negro organization against the other. She makes us think that we have different objectives, different goals. As soon as one Negro says something, she runs to this Negro and asks him, “What do you think about what he said?”  Why, anybody can see through that today—except some of the Negro leaders.

All of our people have the same goals, the same objective: freedom, justice, equality. All of us want recognition and respect as human beings. We don’t want to be integrationists. Nor do we want to be separationists. We want to be human beings. Integration is only a method that is used by some groups to obtain freedom, justice, equality and respect as human beings. Separation is only a method that is used by other groups to obtain freedom, justice, equality or human dignity.

Our people have made the mistake of confusing the methods with the objectives. As long as we agree on objectives, we should never fall out with each other just because we believe in different methods or tactics or strategy to reach a common objective.

We have to keep in mind at all times that we aren't fighting for integration, nor are we fighting for separation. We are fighting for recognition as human beings. We are fighting for the right to live as free humans in this society. In fact, we are actually fighting for rights that are even greater than civil rights and that is, human rights. We are fighting for human rights in 1964. This is a shame. The civil rights struggle has failed to produced concrete results because it has kept us barking up the wrong tree. It has made us put the cart ahead of the horse. We must have human rights before we can secure civil rights. We must be respected as humans before we can be recognized as citizens.

Among the so-called Negroes in this country. As a rule the civil rights groups, those who believe in civil rights, spend most of their time trying to prove they are Americans. Their thinking is usually domestic, confined to the boundaries of America, and they always look upon themselves as a minority. When they look upon themselves on the American stage, the American stage is a white stage. So a black man standing on that stage in America automatically is in the minority. He is the underdog, and in his struggle he always uses an approach that's a begging, hat-in-hand, compromising approach.

Whereas the other segment or section in America, known as the black nationalists, are more interested in human rights than they are in civil rights. And they place more stress on human rights than they do on civil rights. The difference between the thinking and the scope of the Negroes who are involved in the human-rights struggle and those who are involved in the civil-rights struggle is that those so-called Negroes involved in the human-rights struggle don’t look upon themselves as Americans. They look upon themselves as a part of dark mankind. They see the whole struggle, not within the confines of the American stage, but they look upon the struggle on the world stage. And, in the world context, they see that the dark man outnumbers the white man. On the world stage the white man is just a microscopic minority.

So in this country you find two different types of Afro-Americans—the type who looks upon himself as a minority and you as the majority, because his scope is limited to the American scene; and then you have the type who looks upon himself as part of the majority and you as part of a microscopic minority. And this one uses a different approach in trying to struggle for his rights. He doesn’t beg. He doesn’t thank you for what you give him, because you are only giving him what he should have had a hundred years ago. He doesn’t think you are doing him any favors.

He doesn’t see any progress that he has made since the Civil War. He sees not one iota of progress because, number one, if the Civil War had freed him, he wouldn’t need civil-rights legislation today. If the Emancipation Proclamation, issued by that great shining liberal called Lincoln, had freed him, he wouldn’t be singing “We Shall Overcome” today. If the amendments to the Constitution had solved his problem, his problem wouldn’t still be here today. And if the Supreme Court desegregation decision of 1954 was genuinely and sincerely designed to solve his problem, the problem wouldn’t be with us today. 

So this kind of black man is thinking. He can see where every maneuver that America has made, supposedly to solve this problem, has been nothing but political trickery and treachery of the worst order. So today he doesn’t have any confidence in these so-called liberals. I know that all that have come in here tonight don’t call yourselves liberals. Because that’s a nasty name today. It represents hypocrisy. So these two different types of black people exist in the so-called Negro community and they are beginning to wake up and their awakening is producing a very dangerous situation.

So you have whites in the community who express sincerity when they say they want to help. Well, how can they help? How can a white person help the black man solve his problem? Number one, you can’t solve it for him. You can help him solve it, but you can’t solve it for him today. One of the best ways that you can help him solve it is to let the so-called Negro, who has been involved in the civil-rights struggle, see that the civil-rights struggle must be expanded beyond the level of civil rights to the level of human rights. Once it is expanded beyond the level of civil rights to the level of human rights, it opens the door for all of our brothers and sisters in Africa and Asia, who have their independence, to come to our rescue.

Why? When you go to Washington, D.C., expecting those crooks down there—and that’s what they are—to pass some kind of civil-rights legislation to correct a very criminal situation, what you are doing is encouraging the black man, who is the victim, to take his case into the court that’s controlled by the criminal that made him the victim. It will never be solved in that way. It's like running from the wolf to the fox.

The civil-rights struggle involves the black man taking his case to the white man’s court. But when he fights it at the human-rights level, it is a different situation. It opens the door for him to take Uncle Sam to the world court. The black man shouldn’t have to go to court to be free. Uncle Sam should be taken to court and made to tell why the black man is not free in a so-called free society. Uncle Sam should be taken into the United Nations and charged with violating the UN charter of human rights.

You can forget civil rights. How are you going to get civil rights with men like Eastland and men like Dirksen and men like Johnson? It has to be taken out of their hands and taken into the hands of those whose power and authority exceeds theirs. Washington has become too corrupt. Uncle Sam has become bankrupt when it comes to a conscience—it's impossible for Uncle Sam to solve the problem of 22 million black people in this country. It is absolutely impossible to do it in Uncle Sam’s courts— whether it's the Supreme Court or any other kind of court that comes under Uncle Sam’s jurisdiction.

The only alternative that the black man in America has today is to take it out of Senator Dirksen’s and Senator Eastland’s and President Johnson’s jurisdiction and take it downtown on the East River and place it before that body of men who represent international law, and let them know that the human rights of black people are being violated in a country that professes to be the moral leader of the free world.

Any time you have a filibuster in America, in the Senate, in 1964 over the rights of 22 million black people, over the citizenship of 22 million black people, or that will affect the freedom and justice and the equality of 22 million black people, it’s time for that government itself to be taken before a world court. How can you condemn South Africa? There's only 11 million of our people in South Africa, there are 22 million of them here. And we are receiving an injustice which is just as criminal as that which is being done to the black people of South Africa.

So today those whites who profess to be liberals— and as far as I am concerned it’s just lip-profession—you understand why our people don’t have civil rights. You’re white. You can go and hang out with another white liberal and see how hypocritical they are. Why a lot of you sitting right here know that you’ve seen whites up in a Negro’s face with flowery words, and as soon as that Negro walks away you listen to how your white friend talks. We have black people who can pass as white. We know how you talk.

We can see that it is nothing but a governmental conspiracy to continue to deprive the black people in this country of their rights. And the only way we will get those rights restored is by taking it out of Uncle Sam’s hands. Take him to court and charge him with genocide, the mass murder of millions of black people in this country—political murder, economic murder, social murder, mental murder. This is the crime that this government has committed, and if you yourself don’t do something about it in time, you are going to open the doors for something to be done about it from outside forces.

I read in the paper yesterday where one of the Supreme Court justices, Goldberg, was crying about the violation of human rights of three million Jews in the Soviet Union. Imagine this. I haven’t got anything against the Jews, but that’s their problem. How in the world are you going to cry about problems on the other side of the world and you haven’t got the problems straightened out here? How can the plight of three million Jews in Russia be qualified to be taken to the United Nations by a man who is a justice in this Supreme Court, and is supposed to be a liberal, supposed to be a friend of black people, and hasn’t opened up his mouth one time about taking the plight of black people down there to the United Nations?

Our people are becoming more politically mature. Their eyes are coming open. They're beginning to see the trends in all of the American politics today. They notice that every time there's an election, it's so close among whites that they have to count the votes over again. This happened in Massachusetts when they were running for Governor. It happened in Rhode Island. It happened in Minnesota and many other places and it happened in the election between Kennedy and Nixon. Things are so close that any minority who has a bloc vote can swing it either way. And I think most of the students of political science agree that it was the 80 per cent support that Kennedy got from the black man in this country that enabled him to sit in the White House. He sat down there four years and the Negro is still in the dog house. Same ones that we put in the white house have continued to keep us in the dog house. The Negro can see that he holds the balance of power in this country politically. It is he who puts in office the one who gets in office. Yet when the Negro helps that person get in office the Negro gets nothing in return. All he gets is a few appointments, a few handpicked, Uncle Tom, handkerchief head Negroes are given big jobs in Washington D.C. And then those Negroes come back and try and make us think that administration is going to lead us to the promised land of integration. And the only ones whose problem has been solved have been those hand-picked Negroes. A few big Negroes got jobs who didn't even need the job. They already were working. But the masses of black people are still unemployed.

The present administration, the Democratic administration has been down there for four years, yet no meaningful legislation has been passed by them that's supposed to benefit black people in this country. Despite the fact that in the House they have 257 Democrats and only 177 are Republican, they control two-thirds of the house in the Senate there are 67 Democrats and only 33 Republicans, the Democrats control two-thirds of the government and it's the Negro who put him in position to control the government yet they give the Negro nothing in return but a few handouts in the form of appointments that are only used as window dressing to make it appear that the problem is being solved.

No, something is wrong. And when these black people wake up and find out for real the trickery and the treachery that has been heaped upon us, you're going to have revolution. And when I say a revolution, I don't mean that stuff they were talking about last year, about "We Shall Overcome." That's no revolution. The Democrats get Negro support, yet the Negroes get nothing in return. The Negroes put the Democrats first, yet the Democrats put the Negroes last. And the alibi that the Democrats use, they blame the Dixiecrats. A Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat in disguise. You show me a Dixiecrat and I'll show you a Democrat. And chances are, you show me a Democrat and I'll show you a Dixiecrat. Because Dixie in reality means all that territory south of the Canadian border. There are sixteen senatorial committees that run this government. Of the sixteen senatorial committees that run the government, ten of them are controlled by chairmen who are from the south. Of the twenty congressional committees that help run the government, twelve of them are controlled by southern segregationists. Think of this. Ten of the senatorial committees are in the hands of the Dixiecrats. Twelve of the twenty congressional committees are in the hands of the Dixiecrats. These committees control the government. And you gonna tell us that the south lost the Civil War. The south controls the government. And they control it because they have seniority. And they have seniority because in the states that they come from, they deny Negroes the right to vote. 

If Negroes could vote south of the—yes, if Negroes could vote south of the Canadian border—south South, if Negroes could vote in the southern part of the South, Ellender wouldn’t be the head of the Agricultural and Forestry Commission, Richard Russell wouldn’t be head of the Armed Services Commission, Robertson of Virginia wouldn’t be the head of the Banking and Currency Committee. Imagine that, all of the banking and currency of the government is in the hands of a cracker.

In fact, when you see how many of these committee men who control the government are from the South, you can see that we have nothing but a cracker government in Washington, D.C. And their head is a cracker president. I said a cracker president. Texas is just as much a cracker state as Mississippi. Even more so. In Texas, they lynch you with a Texas accent, in Mississippi, they lynch you with a Mississippi accent.

The first thing this man did when he came in office was invite all the big Negroes down for coffee. James Farmer was one of the first ones, the head of CORE. I have nothing against him. He’s all right—Farmer, that is. But could that same president have invited James Farmer to Texas for coffee? And if James Farmer went to Texas, could he have taken his white wife with him to have coffee with the president? Any time you have a man who can’t straighten out Texas, how can he straighten out the country? No, you’re barking up the wrong tree.

If Negroes in the South could vote, the Dixiecrats would lose power. When the Dixiecrats lost power, the Democrats would lose power. A Dixiecrat lost is a Democrat lost. Therefore the two of them have to conspire with each other to stay in power. The Northern Dixiecrat puts all the blame on the Southern Dixiecrat. It’s a con game, a giant political con game. The job of the Northern Democrat is to make the Negro think that he is our friend. He is always smiling and wagging his tail and telling us how much he can do for us if we vote for him. But at the same time that he’s out in front telling us what he’s going to do, behind the door he’s in cahoots with the Southern Democrat setting up the machinery to make sure he’ll never have to keep his promise.

This is the conspiracy that our people have faced in this country for the past one hundred years. And today you have a new generation of black people who have come on the scene, who have become disenchanted with the entire system, who have become disillusioned over the system, and who are ready now and willing to do something about it.


So, in my conclusion, in speaking about the black revolution, America today is at a time or in a day or at an hour where she is the first country on this earth who can actually have a bloodless revolution. In the past, revolutions have been bloody. Historically you just don’t have a peaceful revolution. Revolutions are bloody, revolutions are violent, revolutions cause bloodshed and death follows in their paths. America is the only country in history in a position to bring about a revolution without violence and bloodshed. But America is not morally equipped to do so.

Why is America in a position to bring about a bloodless revolution? Because the Negro in this country holds the balance of power, and if the Negro in this country were given what the Constitution says he is supposed to have, the added power of the Negro in this country would sweep all of the racists and the segregationists out of office. It would change the entire political structure of the country. It would wipe out the Southern segregationism that now controls America’s foreign policy, as well as America’s domestic policy.

And the only way without bloodshed that this can be brought about is that the black man has to be given full use of the ballot in every one of the fifty states. But if the black man doesn’t get the ballot, then you are going to be faced with another man who forgets the ballot and starts using the bullet.

Revolutions are fought to get control of land, to remove the absentee landlord and gain control of the land and the institutions that flow from that land. The black man has been in a very low condition because he has had no control whatsoever over any land. He has been a beggar economically, a beggar politically, a beggar socially, a beggar even when it comes to trying to get some education. In the past type of mentality, that was developed in this colonial system among our people, that today is being overcome. And as the young ones come up, they know what they want. And as they listen to your beautiful preaching about democracy and all those other flowery words, they know what they’re supposed to have.

So you got a people today who not only know what they want, but also know what they are supposed to have. And they themselves are creating another generation that is coming up that not only will know what it wants and know what it should have, but also will be ready and willing to do whatever is necessary to see that what they should have materializes immediately. Thank you.

* * *

[Question about the accuracy of The Militant]

Malcolm X: I’ve never found any misquote in The Militant of us, and I think any white newspaper, and I guess that’s what it is, that can quote a black man correctly is certainly a militant newspaper.

[Question about school integration and the Freedom Now Party]

Malcolm X: If I understood you correctly you asked two questions: Number one—am I in favor of integration in the public schools? And number two—am I in favor of the Freedom Now Party? Insofar as integration in the public schools is concerned, I don’t know anywhere in America where they have an integrated school system, North or South. If they don’t have it in New York City, they definitely never will have it in Mississippi. And anything that won’t work I’m not in favor of. Anything that’s not practical I’m not in favor of.

This doesn’t mean I’m for a segregated school system. We are well aware of the crippled minds that are produced by a segregated school system, and when Rev. Galamison was involved in a boycott against this segregated school system, we supported it. This doesn’t make me an integrationist, nor does it make me believe that integration is going to work; but Galamison and I agree that a segregated school system is detrimental to the academic diet, so-called diet, of the children who go to that school. But a segregated school system isn’t necessarily the same situation that exists in an all-white neighborhood. A school system in an all-white neighborhood is not a segregated school system. The only time it’s segregated is when it is in a community that is other than white, but at the same time is controlled by the whites.

So my understanding of a segregated school system, or a segregated community, or a segregated school, is a school that’s controlled by people other than those that go there. But in an all-white neighborhood, where you have an all-white school, that’s not a segregated school. Usually they have a high-caliber education. Anytime someone else can put on you what they want, naturally you’re going to have something that’s inferior. So the schools in Harlem are not controlled by the people in Harlem, they’re controlled by the man downtown. And the man downtown takes all of the tax dollars and spends them elsewhere, but he keeps the schools, the school facilities, the schoolteachers, and the schoolbooks, material, in Harlem at the very lowest level. So this produces a segregated education, which doesn’t do our people any good. On the other hand, if we can get an all-black school, that we can control, staff it ourselves with the type of teachers that have our good at heart, with the type of books that have in them many of the missing ingredients that have produced this inferiority complex in our people, then we don’t feel that an all-black school is necessarily a segregated school. It’s only segregated when it’s controlled by someone from outside.

I hope I’m making my point. I just can’t see where if white people can go to a white classroom and there are no Negroes present and it doesn’t affect the academic diet they’re receiving, then I don’t see where an all-black classroom can be affected by the absence of white children. If the absence of black children doesn’t affect white students, I don’t see how the absence of whites is going to affect the blacks. So, what the integrationists, in my opinion, are saying, when they say that whites and blacks must go to school together, is that the whites are so much superior that just their presence in a black classroom balances it out. I can’t go along with that. Yes, ma’am?

[Question again about the Freedom Now Party]

Malcolm X: The Freedom Now Party—I don’t know too much about it, but what I know about it, I
like.

[Question about whites too being hurt by Congressional filibusters]

Malcolm X: If I understood you correctly, you were saying that those white senators and congressmen there that are filibustering and other things have done whites as much harm as they’ve done blacks. I just can’t quite go along with that. You see, it’s the black man who sits on the hot stove. You might stand near it but you don’t sit on it.

[Questions in writing—about white radicals and African misleaders]

Malcolm X: A question sent up: “Can black people achieve their freedom without the help of white radicals, who have more experience at fighting?” And the second question is—this is from a real white liberal, “Some black leaders, even in Africa, are misleading their people,” and he says, “I mean Nasser too.” I know this is from a liberal. I can even tell what geographic area he’s from. In regard to the first question—Can black people achieve their freedom without the help of white radicals, who have more experience at fighting?—all of the freedom that white people have gotten in this country and elsewhere: they haven’t gotten it just fighting themselves. You’ve always had someone else to do your fighting for you. You perhaps haven’t realized it. England became powerful because she had others to fight for her. She used the African against the Asian and the Asian against the African. France used the Senegalese. All these white powers have had some little lackeys to do their fighting for them, and America has had 22 million African-Americans to do your fighting for you. It is we who have fought your battles for you, and have picked your cotton for you. We built this house that you’re living in. It was our labor that built this house. You sat beneath the old cotton tree telling us how long to work or how hard to work, but it was our labor, our sweat and our blood that made this country what it is, and we’re the only ones who haven’t benefited from it. All we’re saying today is, it’s payday—retroactive.

And where this gentleman said some black leaders in Africa also mislead their people, I guess you’re talking about black leaders like Tshombe, but not—One of the greatest black leaders was Lumumba. Lumumba was the rightful ruler of the Congo. He was deposed with American aid. It was America, the State Department of this country, that brought Kasavubu to this country, interceded for him at the UN, used its power to make certain that Kasavubu would be seated as the rightful or recognized ruler of the Congo. And as soon as Kasavubu, with American support, became the ruler of the Congo, he went back to the Congo, and his first act upon returning home was to turn Lumumba over to Tshombe. So you can easily see whose hand it was behind the murder of Lumumba. And chickens come home to roost.

And then you mention Nasser. Well, I think that’s a subjective, subconscious reaction on your part, the fact that you included Nasser’s name—I know who you are. Before the Egyptian revolution, Farouk was a monarch in Egypt who had exploited the people with the aid of the West. Naguib and Nasser brought about a revolution, and those who have visited the African continent today will tell you, if they are objective in their observations, that Egypt is one of the most highly industrialized nations on the African continent—the only other nation is a white nation and that’s South Africa. But under Nasser the Egyptians have become a highly industrialized nation; they’re trying to elevate the standard of living of their people.

You’ll find that there’s a tendency in the West to have the attitude toward any African leader who has the mass support of his people—usually the West classifies him as a dictator. And I can name them. Nkrumah is called a dictator because he has his people with him; Nasser is called a dictator, Ben Bella is a dictator, Sekou Toure is called a dictator—all of these people who are called dictators by the West usually are classified by the West as anti-West, because the West can’t tell them what to do. Yes, ma’am?

[Question about going to the United Nations]

Malcolm X: And this is one of the reasons why— the lady asked do we have any feasible plan of bringing this fight to the UN. The very fact that there has been a civil rights struggle, since 1954 actually, and at no time have any of the Negro civil rights leaders made any effort to take it before the United Nations—that right there should give you a hint that there’s a conspiracy involved. When every other underdog on this earth—I mean some of the underdogs way out in the South Pacific— have had their plight taken to the UN; people who don’t even know where the UN is—still the UN is arguing about their situation. And here we have 22 million black people surrounding the UN, and nothing concerning their plight is taken to the UN. Don’t tell me that it’s not an atrocity. Any time a church is bombed—there’s no more outright example of the violation of human rights than when you are sitting in church and have it bombed, and four little black babies are murdered. And [when] that still doesn’t reach the UN, then I say there’s a conspiracy.

So our contention is that the white liberals, so-called liberals, infiltrated the civil rights movement, and got the black people barking up the wrong tree. Because white people are intelligent enough to know that the problem will never be solved in Washington, D.C. There are crooks there, but you can take the crooks who are in Washington, D.C., downtown before the world court. If they know that you can take them to court, they’ll start acting right. That’s the only time they’ll act right. And then they won’t be acting right because they believe in legality or morality or anything like that—they have none of that in them. They’ll only be acting right because they don’t want you to take them to court.

So, yes, there’s a machinery being set up right now. And many of our brothers and sisters from Africa and Asia and in other parts of this earth, whose nations have emerged and become independent, are capable and well qualified to lend all of the support at their disposal to the problem of the black people in this country, once it gets into the UN. But they cannot become involved in it as long as it’s called a civil rights struggle—because protocol keeps them from becoming involved in any of America’s domestic affairs. Civil rights is domestic. Human rights is international.

Now, if you consider yourself a true liberal—and me, I haven’t found one. When I say that, I’m bearing in mind I haven’t met all white people, but among those that I’ve met I haven’t met one yet that would pass the test; I might meet somebody else tomorrow—

[James Wechsler, New York Post editor, takes floor and begins to speak before being called on.]

Malcolm X: Sir, why didn’t you put up your hand and wait until I called on you? No, why didn’t you find out? Why didn’t you put up your hand till I called on you? You’re being rude. You’re proving my point. [Calls on someone else.] Yes, sir?

[Question about Karl Marx]

Malcolm X: Number one, I don’t know too much about Karl Marx. That’s number one—I just don’t know too much about Karl Marx. However, it is true that when a nation loses its markets, no matter how capitalistic or highly industrialized it is or how much goods it can produce, when it loses those markets, it’s in trouble. And this is one of the basic factors behind America’s problem. She has lost her world markets. It’s not just automation that’s putting her out, giving her a headache. She has no markets. There was a time when the whole world was her market. But today she’s hated. Not only is she losing her markets because she’s hated, but the European nations are industrialized—they can produce goods cheaper than America can. Japan produces goods cheaper than she and undersells her. And the nations of Africa and Asia would rather buy their manufactured or finished products from other than America.

So it is not so much that automation is causing the unemployment situation—which affects the Negro first and foremost because he’s the last hired and has to be the first fired. But it’s just the fact that America has run out of markets. And it is impossible for her to find new markets anywhere, unless there’s some customers on the moon or on some other planet. And as long as this situation exists, America’s economy is going to continue to go down, her dollar will continue to lose its value, and when her dollar loses its value she’s lost all her friends. Because the only friends she has are those whom she has bought.

And one further comment is this: as I said, I don’t know too much about Karl Marx, but there was this man who wrote The Decline of the West, Spengler—he had another book that’s a little lesser known, called The Hour of Decision. In fact, someone gave me the book out in front of this place one night, a couple of years ago, because I had never heard of it either. I imagine it might be someone who’s in this audience or who had that type of thinking. It was at a meeting like this.

And in Spengler’s Hour of Decision, it’s about world revolution, and his thesis is that the initial stages of the world revolution would make people be forced to line up along class lines. But then after a while the class lines would run out and it would be a lineup based upon race. Well, I think he wrote this in the early thirties. And it has actually taken place. Even when the United Nations was put together, the blocs were divided up along class or some kind of economic philosophy. But today the blocs that exist in the UN are based on race, along color lines. You have your Arab-Afro-Asian bloc—they are all black, brown, red, or yellow. You have your other blocs and your other blocs, but when you find those blocs you usually find everybody in them has something in common and the most that they have in common usually is the color of their skin, or the absence of color from their skin. Yes, sir?

[Question about the role of whites]

Malcolm X: Well, if you noticed when I was speaking I said the whites can help, if they’re progressive-minded. But my observation and analysis of the kind of help they’ve been giving makes me very cautious about the help that they offer. And I say that because of this: as I said, I grew up with whites. Most of them are intelligent. At least they used to be. No white person would go about fighting for freedom in the same manner that he has helped me and you to fight for our freedom. No, none of them would. When it comes to black freedom, then the white man freedom-rides and sits in, he’s nonviolent, he sings “We Shall Overcome” and all that stuff. But when the property of the white man himself is threatened, or the freedom of the white man is threatened, he’s not nonviolent. He’s only nonviolent when he’s on your side. But when he’s on his side he loses all that patience and nonviolence.

So, if the whites are sincere in this struggle they will show the black man how to employ or use better tactics, tactics that will get results—and not results a hundred years from now. Our people aren’t going to wait ten years. If this house is a house of freedom and justice and equality for all, if that’s what it is, then let’s have it. And if we can’t all have it, none of us will have it.

[Question in writing—about the ballot]

Malcolm X: Question: “Do you really think the Negro can win with the ballot? If not, why not?” The Negro in this country, before he can win with the ballot, has to be made more politically mature. Now many Negroes don’t like to be criticized—they don’t like for it to be said that we’re not ready. They say that that’s a stereotype. We have assets—we have liabilities as well as assets. And until our people are able to go in a closet, put you out, and analyze ourselves and discover our own liabilities as well as our assets, we never will be able to win any struggle that we become involved in. As long as the black community and the leaders of the black community are afraid of criticism and want to classify all criticism, collective criticism, as a stereotype, no one will ever be able to pull our coat. So, first we have to go in the closet and find out where we are lacking, and what we need to replace that which we are lacking, [or] we never will be able to be successful. We can win with the ballot only when we make our people become politically mature.

Those whose philosophy is black nationalism are involved right now, and will become involved, with any group—green, blue, yellow, pink—that is set up with an organizational apparatus designed to get more of our people involved as registered voters. We’re involved in that; we will cooperate with that. But at the same time we won’t tell them to register as a Democrat or a Republican. Any Negro who registers as a Democrat or a Republican is a traitor to his own people.

Registering is all right. That only means “load your gun.” Just because you load it doesn’t mean you have to shoot it. You wait until you get a target and make certain that you’re in a position to put that thing up next to the target, and then you pull the trigger. And just as you don’t waste bullets at a target that’s out of reach, you don’t throw ballots just to be throwing ballots. Our people need to get registered, need to pile up political power, but they need to hold it in abeyance and throw it when they know that throwing it is going to get results. Don’t just throw it because you’ve got it.

[Question in writing—about concrete political plans]

Malcolm X: This question: “Do you have any immediate concrete plans to take over politics and politicians in black communities?” Yes, and when you’ve got concrete plans, the best way to keep them concrete is to keep them to yourself.

[Question in writing—about SNCC and the UN]

Malcolm X: The other question written—“Excuse me, but the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee appealed to the United Nations following the Birmingham murders and picketed the UN demanding action for several days.”

That’s not how you get it—you don’t get it picketing the UN. In fact I have never seen anybody get anything yet picketing. I haven’t seen anything that was gotten picketing. You get what you’re going to get either one way or the other. I might add to that. You don’t get anything on the agenda of the UN through picketing.

Plus, when the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was picketing the UN based upon the murders in Binningham, it was still civil rights. They didn’t have enough sense to realize—excuse me for saying they didn’t have enough sense, but evidently they didn’t—to realize that as long as they took it from a civil rights level the UN can’t accept it. It must be human rights. So the best thing for you to do, who are liberals, is to go to the UN and get all of the books on human rights.

Do you know that the United States has never signed the Covenant on Human Rights? It signed the Declaration of Human Rights, but it couldn’t sign the Covenant because in order to sign the Covenant, they’d have to have it ratified by the Congress and the Senate. And how’re they going to get ‘a covenant ratified by the Congress and the Senate on human rights when they can’t even get one through on civil rights? No! And Eleanor Roosevelt, supposedly a liberal, was chairman of the Commission on Human Rights. She knew all of this. Why didn’t ultra-liberal Eleanor tell these Negroes about the UN section on human rights that would enable us to get our problem before the world? No, that’s why I say I haven’t met a white liberal. This gentleman over here who thinks I’m going to discriminate [against] him— [Recognizes James Wechsler]

[Question about Rev. Bruce Klunder, who was killed by a bulldozer while demonstrating against school segregation in Cleveland]

Malcolm X: I was in Cleveland last night, yesterday, in fact, when this thing took place—[Wechsler speaks again] Sir? I didn’t put him under the bulldozer either. Uncle Sam put him under the bulldozer. The Supreme Court put him under the bulldozer. [Wechsler again.] His death still didn’t desegregate the school system.

We’re not going to stand up and applaud any contribution made by some individual white person when 22 million black people are dying every day. What he did—good, good, great. What he did- good. Hooray, hooray, hooray. Now Lumumba was murdered, Medgar Evers was murdered, Mack Parker was murdered, Emmett Till was murdered, my own father was murdered. You tell that stuff to somebody else. It’s time that some white people started dying in this thing. If you’ll forgive me, forgive me for saying so, but many more beside he are going when the wagon comes. Yes, sir?

[Question about the religion of Islam and the partition of India]

Malcolm X: If I understand you correctly, number one—you wanted to know why do we, black people, turn to Islam. The religion that many of our forefathers practiced before we were kidnapped and brought into this country by the American white man was the religion of Islam. This has been destroyed in textbooks of the American educational system to try and make it appear that we were nothing but animals or savages before we were brought here, to hide the criminal acts that they had to perpetuate upon us in order to bring us down to the level of animals that we’re on today. But when you go back, you’ll find that there were large Muslim empires that stretched all the way down into equatorial Africa, the Mali Empire, Guinea. All these places—their religion was Islam.

So here in America today when you find many of us who are accepting Islam as our religion we are only going back to the religion of our forefathers. Plus, we believe that this is the religion that will do more to reform us of our weaknesses that we’ve become addicted to here in Western society than any other religion. Secondly, we can see where Christianity has failed us 100 percent. They teach us to turn the other cheek, but they don’t turn it.

And concerning the partition of India and Pakistan—I think that’s what you meant—I’m not too familiar with it other than the fact that I do know that for many years the subcontinent of India was ruled by the British, by the colonial powers from Europe. The strategy of the colonial powers has always been to divide and conquer. As a rule you’ll find that people in the East, in the Orient, can pretty well live together. And I believe when you find them fighting each other, you [should] look for that man that’s turning them one against the other—divide and conquer. In fact, if Pakistan and India had not been at each other’s throats, so to speak, for the past ten or so years, they probably could have developed much faster and made more progress than they have, and could do something more concrete toward helping us solve most of our problems. So these divisions are dangerous.

[Question about racial divisions in American society]

Malcolm X: Well, we have. And you don’t have to demand it. It’s already divided on racial lines. Go to Harlem. All we’re saying now is since we’re already divided, the least the government can do is let us control the areas where we live. Let the white people control theirs, let us control ours—that’s all we’re saying. If the white man can control his, and actually what he’s using to control it is white nationalism, let us control ours with black nationalism. You find white nationalism in the white communities whether they are Catholic, whether they are Jews, whether they are Protestant—they still practice white nationalism. So all we’re saying to our people is to forget our religious differences. Forget all the differences that have been artificially created by the whites who have been over us, and try and work together in unity and harmony with the philosophy of black nationalism, which only means that we should control our own economy, our own politics, and our own society. Nothing is wrong with that.

And then, after we control our society, we’ll work with any segment of the white community towards building a better civilization. But we think that they should control theirs and we should control ours. Don’t let us try and mix with each other because every time that mixture takes place we always find the black man low man on the totem pole—low man on the totem pole. If he’s not low man, he’s no man at all. Yes, ma’am?

[Question about the possibilities of support from Africa]

Malcolm X: You’ll find that here today in 1964 there are enough independent nations in the UN from Africa and Asia who have become politically mature and also have enough independence to do what is necessary to see that some results are gotten from any plea, bona fide plea, that’s made on the part of our people. It was the control that the United States had in the UN that enabled them to get Lumumba murdered and have his murder covered up. But here’s a thing our people are beginning to see: as soon as the United States gets through with a stooge, she drops him. She dropped Tshombe; when she couldn’t use Tshombe anymore, she dropped him. When she couldn’t use the two brothers over in Saigon—what’s their names?—Diem and Nhu, she dropped them. When she couldn’t use Syngman Rhee anymore, she dropped him. When she couldn’t use Menderes anymore, she dropped him. Well, you see, this pattern is being studied by these other Uncle Toms. And they’re beginning to see that if they keep on going, they’re going to get dropped too. Yes, ma’am?

[Question about the common interest of old age pensioners and black people]

Malcolm X: I don’t see how you can compare their situation with the plight of 22 million African- Americans. Our people were outright slaves—outright slaves. We pulled plows like horses. We were bought and sold from one plantation to another like you sell chickens or like you sell a bag of potatoes. I read in one book where George Washington exchanged a black man for a keg of molasses. Why, that black man could have been my grandfather. You know what I think of old George Washington. You can’t compare someone on old age assistance with the plight of black people in this country. No comparison whatsoever. And what they can do is not comparable to what we can do—not those old folks. Yes, sir—way in the back

[Question about why the audience should stand in honor of Rev. Klunder]

Malcolm X: Let’s rise in the honor of Lumumba, let’s rise in the honor of Medgar Evers, let’s rise in the honor—No, look; good, what the man did is good. But the day is out when you’ll find black people who are going to stand up and applaud the contribution of whites at this late date.

One hundred million Africans were uprooted from the African continent—where are they today? One hundred million Africans were uprooted, 100 million Africans, according to the book Anti-Slavery, by Professor Dwight Lowell Dumond—excuse me for raising my voice—were uprooted from the continent of Africa. At the end of slavery you didn’t have 25 million Africans in the Western Hemisphere. What happened to those 75 million? Their bodies are at the bottom of the ocean, or their blood and their bones have fertilized the soil of this country. Why, don’t you ever think I would use my energy applauding the sacrifice of an individual white man. No, that sacrifice is too late.

[Question in writing—about black nationalism, separatism, integration and assimilation...”A pamphlet, Freedom Now, is on sale in the back and it contains the statement, “All separatists are nationalists, but not all nationalists are separatists.”]

Malcolm X: I don’t know anything about that.

Question: “What is your view on this? Can one be a black nationalist even though not interested in a separate independent black nation? Similarly, is every integrationist necessarily an assimilationist?”

Malcolm X: Well, as I said earlier, the black people I know don’t want to be integrationists, nor do they want to be separationists—they want to be human beings. Some of them choose integration, thinking that this method will bring them respect as a human being, and others choose separation, thinking that that method or tactic will bring them respect as a human being. But they’ve had so much trouble attaining their objectives that they’ve gotten their methods mixed up with their objectives, And now, instead of calling themselves human beings, they’re calling themselves integrationists and separationists, and they don’t have either one—no. So I don’t know about the integrationists and the assimilationists and the separationists, but I do know about the segregationists—that’s the Americans. Yes, sir?

[Question about Malcolm’s attitude to Robert F. Williams]

Malcolm X: Well, Robert Williams was exiled to Cuba for advocating guns for Negroes. He made some mistakes in carrying out his program, which left the door open that allowed the FBI to make him appear to be the criminal that he actually is not. When someone in front of you makes a mistake, you should learn and benefit from those mistakes.

The black man in this country is within his constitutional rights to have a rifle. The white man is, too. The Constitution gives you the right to have a rifle or a shotgun. You shouldn’t go out shooting people with it; you shouldn’t become involved in acts of aggression that you initiate. But, in this country where we have a government, a law enforcement agency at the federal, local, and state level- in areas where those agencies show that they are unable or unwilling to defend Negroes, Negroes should defend themselves. That’s all: should defend themselves. And he’s within his lawful right. This doesn’t mean that he should use arms to initiate acts of aggression. But if it costs me my life in the morning I will tell you tonight that the time has come for the black man to die fighting. If he’s going to die, die fighting. I have a rifle; I’ve shown my wife how to work it. And if anybody puts his foot on my step, he’s dead. Whether I’m home or not, he’s dead.

This doesn’t mean that we want to live in a society like this. But when you’re living in a society of criminals and the law fails to do its duty what must one do? Continue to turn the other cheek? Medgar Evers turned his. Those four little girls, who were bombed in a church, turned theirs. Negroes have done nothing but seen each other turn the other cheek. This generation won’t do it, won’t do it any longer. May I just say this, sir? America is faced with a situation where in every Negro community in this country, the racial animosity that is developing and the disillusionment in the minds of Negroes toward white society is such that these communities, these ghettos, these slums that we live in, will eventually develop into the same type of Casbah situation that you have in Algeria and these other countries—where you won’t be able to set your foot in that neighborhood, unless you’ve got a guide to show you the way. This is true.

And what else should we do? How can we continue to live in a community that’s turned into a police state? Where the police are not there to protect us but are there only to protect the property of the merchant who doesn’t even live in our community, who has his store there and his house somewhere else. They’re there to protect his property. And as Negroes over the years see this, we also see that they don’t protect us: in fact, sometimes we need protection against them.

This doesn’t mean that the police are always wrong—I’m saying this too. In New York, where Negroes are concerned, so-called Negroes, it has been my experience in traveling from coast to coast to notice that in Harlem the police officer, at least in the past three years up to a short while ago, exercised more care in dealing with incidents that could explode into a racial situation than is used by police officers in most of the large cities of the North. In 1960, ‘61, ‘62, along in there, the police department here did use more caution in incidents that were outright involving race. But the recent statement by the police commissioner, this man, this Irishman Murphy, is very dangerous, because those commissioners who preceded him exercised more intelligence in statements that they made, and they were very careful never to make a statement that would inflame the white officer against the black community. But Murphy is making statements that seem deliberately designed to make the average cop on the beat think that he can bust any Negro upside his head and not be reprimanded for it. This is dangerous because today when you put a club in the direction of a Negro’s head, he’s going to do his best to get that club, whether you’ve got a uniform or not.

[Question, a general attack on Malcolm, followed by a complaint that the speaker wants to make a statement rather than ask a question.]

Malcolm X: You can comment right here, this is a meeting.

[After the speaker denounces Malcolm further, some members of the audience begin to protest.]

Malcolm X: Let him have his say—go ahead, doctor.

[The speaker goes ahead.]

Malcolm X: I’ll take just two minutes to comment on what you’ve said. You notice you kept using the expression “talk back” or “have their say.” Now you know how our people have felt for 400 years. And your attitude right now is the type of attitude that makes Uncle Sam a hated country. You reflect the collective attitudes of the American whites.

There are some—he [pointing to the chairman] doesn’t reflect the collective attitude. He reflects the unique attitude—he’s quiet, he’s listening, he’s taking it all in, he’s analyzing it. And when he stands up to speak, he’s going to speak in a much more intelligent manner than you and will win more friends than you. Now I might say this right here—in saying this about him, I’m not saying this to jive him or pat him on the back. You know me, I think you know me, better than that. If I say positive things about him, I mean it. He will probably get some of you saved, but you will get most of you killed.

I just want to say one more comment on his remark about me being bloodthirsty. I’m not bloodthirsty. I’m one of 22 million black people in this country who’s tired of being the victim of hypocrisy by a country that supposedly practices democracy. Any black man—you had your say, please be quiet—any black man who will stand up and tell you exactly how he feels is doing you a favor because most of them don’t tell you how they feel.

I want to thank the Militant Labor Forum for the invitation to speak here this evening. I think, as I said earlier, the paper is one of the best that I’ve read. We always encourage those who live in Harlem to buy it when we see it up there, or wherever else we may see it. It’s a very good paper. I hope they continue to have success, make progress. They can probably straighten out a lot of white people. Let us straighten out the black people. That’s all I’m saying.