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Malcolm X [Malik el-Shabazz] (1925-1965)
Malcolm Little was raised in foster homes after his father died in an accident and his mother was committed to a psychiatric institution. He moved to Harlem at 18, and committed numerous crimes. While imprisoned for larceny and burglary, he converted to Islam and changed his last name to X, representing his unknown African ancestors. He joined the Nation of Islam and became one of its leaders, championing black separatism and rejecting non-violence. He gained national publicity when profiled by CBS in “The Hate that Hate Produced.”
In 1964, he left the Nation of Islam and rejected its separationist doctrines. After a pilgrimage to Mecca, he renamed himself Malik el-Shabazz. When he returned, he formed Islamic Mosque, Inc., and urged his followers to assert their right to vote and use it to elect leaders who would help American blacks. In a speech excerpted here, which he gave in several cities, he urged followers to take up arms if whites persisted in denying voting rights.
Malcolm X’s fame diverted attention from the Nation of Islam, and several of its members plotted to silence him permanently. His car and house were firebombed. On February 21, 1965, he was assassinated by three members of the Newark mosque of the Nation of Islam at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem.
“The Ballot or the Bullet” (1964)
This afternoon, we want to talk about the ballot or the bullet. The ballot or the bullet explains itself. But before we get into it, since this is the year of the ballot, or the bullet, I would like to clarify some things that refer to me personally, concerning my own personal position.
I’m still a Muslim. That is my religion. It’s still Islam… Though Islam is my religious philosophy, my political, economic, and social philosophy is Black Nationalism….
The political philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community. The time when white people can come in our community, and get us to vote for them, so that they can be our political leaders, and tell us what to do and what not to do, is long gone….
We must understand the politics of our community. And we must know what politics is supposed to produce. We must know what role politics plays in our lives. And until we become politically mature we will always be misled, lead astray, or deceived, or maneuvered into supporting someone politically, who doesn’t have the good of our community at heart. So the political philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that we will have to carry on a political program of reeducation: to open our people’s eyes; make us become more politically conscious, politically mature; and then we will, whenever we get ready to cast our ballot, that ballot will be cast for a man of the community, who has the good of the community at heart.
The economic philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that we should own, and operate, and control the economy of our community. You can’t open up a black store in a white community. White men won’t even patronize you. And he’s not wrong! He’s got sense enough to look out for himself. It’s you who don’t have sense enough to look out for yourself.
The white man is too intelligent to let someone else come and gain control of the economy of his community. But you will let anybody come in and control the economy of your community. Control the housing. Control the education. Control the jobs. Control the businesses, under their pretext that you want to integrate. No! You out of your mind!
The economic philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that we have to become involved in a program of reeducation. To educate our people into the importance of knowing that when you spend your dollar out of the community in which you live, the community in which you spend your money becomes richer and richer. The community out of which you take your money becomes poorer and poorer. And because these Negroes who have been mislead and misguided are breaking their necks to take their money and spend it with The Man, The Man is becoming richer and richer, and you’re becoming poorer and poorer. And then what happens? The community in which you live becomes a slum. It becomes a ghetto. The conditions become rundown. And then you have the audacity to complain about poor housing, and a rundown community. While you’ll run it down yourself, when you take your dollar out.
You and I are in a double trap, because not only do we lose by taking our money someplace else and spending it, when we try and spend it in our own community, we’re trapped because we haven’t had sense enough to have set up stores and control the businesses of our community. The man who’s controlling the stores in our community is a man who doesn’t look like we do. He’s a man who doesn’t even live in the community. So you and I, even when we try and spend out money in the block where we live, or the area where we live, we’re spending it with a man who when the sun goes down, takes that basket full of money, in another part of town.
So we’re trapped. Trapped. Double trapped. Triple trapped. Anywhere we go, we’re find that we’re trapped. And every kind of solution that someone comes up with, is just another trap. But the political and economic philosophy of Black Nationalism… shows our people the importance of setting up these little stores and developing them and expanding them into larger operations. Woolworth didn’t start out big like they are today; they started out with a dime store, and expanded, and expanded, and expanded until today they are all over the country and all over the world and they getting some of everybody’s money….
So our people not only have to be reeducated to the importance of supporting black business, but the black man himself has to be made aware of the importance of going into business. And once you and I go into business, we own and operate at least the businesses in our community. What we will be doing is developing a situation wherein we will actually be able to create employment for the people in the community. And once you can create some employment in the community where you live, it will eliminate the necessity of you and me having to act ignorantly and disgracefully, boycotting and picketing some cracker someplace else trying to beg him for a job.
Anytime you have to rely upon your enemy for a job, you’re in bad shape. And he is your enemy. You wouldn’t be in this country if some enemy hadn’t kidnapped you and brought you here….
Whether you are a Christian or a Muslim or a nationalist, we all have the same problem. They don’t hang you because you’re a Baptist; they hang you because you’re black. They don’t attack me because I’m a Muslim. They attack me because I’m black. They attacked all of us for the same reason. All of us catch hell from the same enemy. We’re all in the same bag, in the same boat.
We suffer political oppression, economic exploitation and social degradation. All of them from the same enemy. The government has failed us. You can’t deny that. Any time you’re living in the 20th century, 1964, and you walking around here singing “We Shall Overcome,” the government has failed you. This is part of what’s wrong with you, you do too much singing. Today it’s time to stop singing and start swinging.
You can’t sing up on freedom. But you can swing up on some freedom. Cassius Clay can sing. But singing didn’t help him to become the heavyweight champion of the world. Swinging helped him.
So this government has failed us. The government itself has failed us. And the white liberals who have been posing as our friends have failed us. And once we see that all of these other sources to which we’ve turned have failed, we stop turning to them and turn to ourselves. We need a self-help program, a do-it-yourself philosophy, a do-it-right-now philosophy, a it’s-already-too-late philosophy. This is what you and I need to get with. And the only time, the only way we’re going to solve our problem is with a self-help program. Before we can get a self-help program started, we have to have a self-help philosophy. Black nationalism is a self-help philosophy.
What’s so good about it, you can stay right in the church where you are and still take black nationalism as your philosophy. You can stay in any kind of civic organization that you belong to and still take black nationalism as your philosophy. You can be an atheist and still take black nationalism as your philosophy. This is a philosophy that eliminates the necessity for division and argument, because if you’re black, you should be thinking black. And if you’re black and you not thinking black at this late date, well, I’m sorry for you.
Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern you change your attitude. Once you change your attitude it changes your behavior pattern. And then you go on into some action. As long as you got a sit-down philosophy you’ll have a sit-down thought pattern. And as long as you think that old sit-down thought, you’ll be in some kind of sit-down action. They’ll have you sitting in everywhere.
It’s not so good to refer to what you’re going to do as a sit-in. That right there castrates you. Right there it brings you down. What goes with it? What? Think of the image of someone sitting. An old woman can sit. An old man can sit. A chump can sit, a coward can sit, anything can sit. Well, you and I been sitting long enough and it’s time for us today to start doing some standing and some fighting to back that up.
When we look at other parts of this Earth upon which we live, we find that black, brown, red and yellow people in Africa and Asia are getting their independence. They’re not getting it by singing, ‘We Shall Overcome.” No, they’re getting it through nationalism. It is nationalism that brought about the independence of the people in Asia. Every nation in Asia gained its independence through the philosophy of nationalism. Every nation on the African continent that has gotten its independence brought it about through the philosophy of nationalism. And it will take black nationalism to bring about the freedom of 22 million Afro-Americans, here in this country, where we have suffered colonialism for the past 400 years.
America is just as much a colonial power as England ever was. America is just as much a colonial power as France ever was. In fact, America is more so a colonial power than they, because she is a hypocritical colonial power behind it…. What do you call second-class citizenship? Why, that’s colonization. Second-class citizenship is nothing but 20th century slavery. How you going to tell me you’re a second-class citizen? They don’t have second-class citizenship in any other government on this Earth. They just have slaves and people who are free! Well, this country is a hypocrite! They try and make you think they set you free by calling you a second-class citizen. No, you’re nothing but a 20th century slave.
Just as it took nationalism to remove colonialism from Asia and Africa, it’ll take black nationalism today to remove colonialism from the backs and the minds of twenty-two million Afro-Americans here in this country. And 1964 looks like it might be the year of the ballot or the bullet.
Why does it look like it might be the year of the ballot or the bullet? Because Negroes have listened to the trickery and the lies and the false promises of the white man now for too long, and they’re fed up. They’ve become disenchanted. They’ve become disillusioned. They’ve become dissatisfied. And all of this has built up frustrations in the black community that makes the black community throughout America today more explosive than all of the atomic bombs the Russians can ever invent. Whenever you got a racial powder keg sitting in your lap, you’re in more trouble than if you had an atomic powder keg sitting in your lap. When a racial powder keg goes off, it doesn’t care who it knocks out the way. Understand this, it’s dangerous.
And in 1964, this seems to be the year. Because what can the white man use, now, to fool us? After he put down that March on Washington, and you see all through that now, he tricked you, had you marching down to Washington. Had you marching back and forth between the feet of a dead man named Lincoln and another dead man named George Washington, singing, “We Shall Overcome.”
He made a chump out of you. He made a fool out of you. He made you think you were going somewhere and you end up going nowhere but between Lincoln and Washington.
So today our people are disillusioned. They’ve become disenchanted. They’ve become dissatisfied. And in their frustrations they want action. And in 1964 you’ll see this young black man, this new generation, asking for the ballot or the bullet….
When this country here was first being founded, there were thirteen colonies. The whites were colonized. They were fed up with this taxation without representation. So some of them stood up and said, “Liberty or death!” I went to a white school over here in Mason, Michigan. The white man made the mistake of letting me read his history books. He made the mistake of teaching me that Patrick Henry was a patriot, and George Washington… Wasn’t nothing non-violent about ol’ Pat, or George Washington. “Liberty or death” is was what brought about the freedom of whites in this country from the English.
They didn’t care about the odds. Why, they faced the wrath of the entire British Empire. And in those days, they used to say that the British Empire was so vast and so powerful that the sun would never set on it. This is how big it was, yet these thirteen little scrawny states, tired of taxation without representation, tired of being exploited and oppressed and degraded, told that big British Empire, “Liberty or death.” And here you have 22 million Afro-Americans, black people today, catching more hell than Patrick Henry ever saw.
And I’m here to tell you in case you don’t know it that you got a new, you got a new generation of black people in this country who don’t care anything whatsoever about odds. They don’t want to hear you ol’ Uncle Tom, handkerchief-heads talking about the odds. No! This is a new generation. If they’re going to draft these young black men, and send them over to Korea or to South Vietnam to face 800 million Chinese… If you’re not afraid of those odds, you shouldn’t be afraid of these odds….
Why does this loom to be such an explosive political year? Because this is the year of politics. This is the year when all of the white politicians are going to come into the Negro community. You never see them until election time. You can’t find them until election time. They’re going to come in with false promises. And as they make these false promises they’re going to feed our frustrations, and this will only serve to make matters worse. I’m no politician… I don’t speak as a Democrat or a Republican, nor an American. I speak as a victim of America’s so-called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy, all we’ve seen is hypocrisy.
When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism. We see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don’t see any American dream. We’ve experienced only the American nightmare. We haven’t benefited from America’s democracy. We’ve only suffered from America’s hypocrisy. And the generation that’s coming up now can see it. And are not afraid to say it. If you go to jail, so what? If you’re black, you were born in jail….
Twenty-two million black victims of Americanism are waking up and they are gaining a new political consciousness, becoming politically mature. And as they develop this political maturity, they’re able to see the recent trends in these political elections. They see that the whites are so evenly divided that every time they vote, the race is so close they have to go back and count the votes all over again. Which means that any block, any minority that has a block of votes that stick together is in a strategic position. Either way you go, that’s who gets it. You’re in a position to determine who’ll go to the White House and who’ll stay in the doghouse.
You’re the one who has that power. You can keep Johnson in Washington D.C., or you can send him back to his Texas cotton patch. You’re the one who sent Kennedy to Washington. You’re the one who put the present Democratic administration in Washington, D.C. The whites were evenly divided. It was the fact that you threw 80 percent of your votes behind the Democrats that put the Democrats in the White House.
When you see this, you can see that the Negro vote is the key factor. And despite the fact that you are in a position to be the determining factor, what do you get out of it? The Democrats have been in Washington, D.C. only because of the Negro vote. They’ve been down there four years… All other legislation they wanted to bring up they’ve brought it up, and gotten it out of the way, and now they bring up you. And now they bring up you! You put them first and they put you last. Because you’re a chump! A political chump…
Any time you throw your weight behind a political party that controls two-thirds of the government, and that party can’t keep the promise that it made to you during election-time, and you’re dumb enough to walk around continuing to identify yourself with that party, you’re not only a chump but you’re a traitor to your race.
What kind of alibi do come up with? They try and pass the buck to the Dixiecrats. Now, back during the days when you were blind, deaf and dumb, ignorant, politically immature, naturally you went along with that. But today, as your eyes come open, and you develop political maturity, you’re able to see and think for yourself, and you can see that a Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat in disguise.
You look at the structure of the government that controls this country, is controlled by 16 senatorial committees and 20 congressional committees. Of the 16 senatorial committees that run the government, 10 of them are in the hands of southern segregationists. Of the 20 congressional committees that run the government, 12 of them are in the hands of southern segregationists. And they’re going to tell you and me that the South lost the war?
You, today, are in the hands of a government of segregationists. Racists, white supremacists, who belong to the Democratic party but disguise themselves as Dixiecrats. A Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat. Whoever runs the Democrats is also the father of the Dixiecrats. And the father of all of them is sitting in the White House. I say, and I’ll say it again, you got a president who’s nothing but a southern segregationist from the state of Texas. They’ll lynch in Texas as quick as they’ll lynch you in Mississippi….
I was in Washington a couple of weeks ago while the senators were filibustering and I noticed in the back of the Senate a huge map, and on this map it showed the distribution of Negroes in America. And surprisingly, the same senators that were involved in the filibuster were from the states where there were the most Negroes. Why were they filibustering the civil rights legislation? Because the civil rights legislation is supposed to guarantee voting rights to Negroes from those states. And those senators from those states know that if the Negroes in those states can vote, those senators are down the drain. The representatives of those states go down the drain….
Up here in the North you have the same thing. The Democratic Party, they don’t do it that way. They got a thing they call gerrymandering. They maneuver you out of power. Even though you can vote they fix it so you’re voting for nobody. They got you going and coming. In the South they’re outright political wolves, in the North they’re political foxes. A fox and a wolf are both canine, both belong to the dog family. Now, you take your choice. You going to choose a northern dog or a southern dog? Because either dog you choose, I guarantee you, you’ll still be in the doghouse.
This is why I say it’s the ballot or the bullet. It’s liberty or it’s death. It’s freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody. America today finds herself in a unique situation. Historically, revolutions are bloody, oh yes they are. They have never had a bloodless revolution. Or a non-violent revolution. That don’t happen even in Hollywood. You don’t have a revolution in which you love your enemy. And you don’t have a revolution in which you are begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it. Revolutions overturn systems. Revolutions destroy systems….
I hope that the white man can see this. Because if you don’t see it you’re finished. If you don’t see it you’re going to become involved in some action in which you don’t have a chance. We don’t care anything about your atomic bomb; it’s useless, because other countries have atomic bombs. When two or three different countries have atomic bombs, nobody can use them. So it means that the white man today is without a weapon. If you want some action you’ve got to come on down to Earth, and there’s more black people on Earth than there are white people….
So it’s the ballot or the bullet. Today, our people can see that we’re faced with a government conspiracy. This government has failed us. The senators who are filibustering concerning your and my rights, that’s the government. Don’t say it’s southern senators, this is the government. This is a government filibuster. It’s not a segregationist filibuster, it’s a government filibuster. Any kind of activity that takes place on the floor of the Congress or the Senate, that’s the government. Any kind of dilly-dallying, that’s the government. Any kind of pussy-footing, that’s the government. Any kind of act that’s designed to delay or deprive you and me, right now, of getting full rights, that’s the government that’s responsible. And anytime you find the government involved in a conspiracy to violate the citizenship or the civil rights of a people in 1964, then you are wasting your time going to that government expecting redress. Instead you have to take that government to the world court and accuse it of genocide and all of the other crimes that it is guilty of today.
So those of us whose political and economic and social philosophy is black nationalism have become involved in the civil rights struggle. We have injected ourselves into the civil rights struggle. And we intend to expand it from the level of civil rights to the level of human rights. As long as you fight it on the level of civil rights, you’re under Uncle Sam’s jurisdiction. You’re going to his court expecting him to correct the problem. He created the problem. He’s the criminal! You don’t take your case to the criminal, you take your criminal to court.
When the government of South Africa began to trample upon the human rights of the people of South Africa they were taken to the U.N. When the government of Portugal began to trample upon the rights of our brothers and sisters in Angola, it was taken before the U.N. Why, even the white man took the Hungarian question to the U.N. And just this week, Justice Goldberg was crying over three million Jews in Russia, about their human rights, charging Russia with violating the U.N. Charter because of its mistreatment of the human rights of Jews in Russia. Now you tell me how can the plight of everybody on this Earth reach the halls of the United Nations and you have twenty-two million Afro-Americans whose churches are being bombed, whose little girls are being murdered, whose leaders are being shot down in broad daylight? Now you tell me why the leaders of this struggle have never taken it before the United Nations.
So our next move is to take the entire civil rights struggle, problem, into the United Nations and let the world see that Uncle Sam is guilty of violating the human rights of 22 million Afro-Americans right down to the year of 1964 and still has the audacity or the nerve to stand up and represent himself as the leader of the free world? Not only is he a crook, he’s a hypocrite…
So I say in my conclusion, the only way we’re going to solve it: we got to unite. We got to work together in unity and harmony. And black nationalism is the key. How we are going to overcome the tendency to be at each other’s throats that always exists in our neighborhood? And the reason this tendency exists, the strategy of the white man has always been divide and conquer. He keeps us divided in order to conquer us. He tells you, I’m for separation and you for integration, and keep us fighting with each other. No, I’m not for separation and you’re not for integration, what you and I are for is freedom. Only, you think that integration will get you freedom; I think that separation will get me freedom. We both got the same objective, we just got different ways of getting’ at it.
So I studied this man, Billy Graham, who preaches white nationalism. That’s what he preaches. I say, that’s what he preaches. The whole church structure in this country is white nationalism, you go inside a white church, that’s what they preaching, white nationalism. They got Jesus white, Mary white, God white, everybody white, that’s white nationalism…
Well, we going to do the same thing, only our gospel is black nationalism. His gospel is white nationalism, our gospel is black nationalism. And the gospel of black nationalism, as I told you, means you should control your own, the politics of your community, the economy of your community, and all of the society in which you live should be under your control. And once you … feel that this philosophy will solve your problem, go join any church where that’s preached. Don’t join any church where white nationalism is preached…. When you walk in a Negro church and see a white Jesus and a white Mary and some white angels, that Negro church is preaching white nationalism.
But, when you go to a church and you see the pastor of that church with a philosophy and a program that’s designed to bring black people together and elevate black people, join that church. Join that church. If you see where the NAACP is preaching and practicing that which is designed to make black nationalism materialize, join the NAACP. Join any kind of organization, civic, religious, fraternal, political or otherwise that’s based on lifting the black man up and making him master of his own community.
It will be the ballot, or it will be the bullet. It will be liberty, or it will be death. And if you’re not ready to pay that price, don’t use the word freedom in your vocabulary….