--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-- NA --

Front Matter
Title Page and Credits
MalcolmX

THE LAST SPEECHES

Edited by Bruce Perry

PATHFINDER

New York London Sydney Toronto

-- NA --

Copyright © 1989 Betty Shabazz, Bruce Perry, Pathfinder Press

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 89-61591

ISBN 0-87348-543-2 paper; ISBN 0-87348-544-0 cloth

Manufactured in the United States of America

First edition, 1989

Cover and book design by Toni Gorton.

Cover photo by John Launois/Black Star.

The publisher gratefully acknowledges Robert Haggins, who has

provided photos, some of which appear for the first time in this book.

Pathfinder

410 West Street, New York, New York, 10014

Distributors:

Africa, Europe, and the Middle East:

Pathfinder, 47 The Cut, London, SE1 8LL, England

Asia, Australia, and the Pacific:

Pathfinder, P.O. Box 153, Glebe, Sydney, NSW 2037, Australia

Canada:

Pathfinder, 410 Adelaide St. West, Suite 400, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 1S8, Canada

Caribbean, Latin America, and United States:

Pathfinder, 410 West Street, New York, N.Y. 10014

New Zealand:

Pathfinder, Box 8730, Auckland, New Zealand

-- NA --

Contents
Acknowledgments 6
Introduction by Bruce Perry 7
Publisher's foreword by Steve Clark 11
Chronology 21
PART 1: Two 1963 university speeches 23
Twenty million Black people in a political, economic, and mental prison January 23, 1963 25
America's gravest crisis since the Civil War October 11, 1963 59
PART 2: Two December 1964 interviews 81
Whatever is necessary to protect ourselves Interview with Les Crane December 2, 1964 83
Our people identify with Africa Interview with Bernice Bass December 27, 1964 91
PART 3: Two speeches delivered during the last week of Malcolm X's life 109
There's a worldwide revolution going on February 15, 1965 111
Not just an American problem, but a world problem February 16, 1965 151
Index 183

-- 6 --

Acknowledgments

FOR THEIR assistance in helping to make this book possible, the publisher and editor are indebted to C. Eric Lincoln, Minnie Clayton, Merlin Duncan, Richard Nesmith, Terry Denbow, Richard Hafner, and Nelson Lavergne. Special thanks are due to Abdullah Abdur-Razzaq and to Mark Brown, who checked several typed transcripts against the tape recordings from which they were made.

-- 7 --

Introduction
by Bruce Perry

FINDING James 67X Shabazz, who supplied the tape recordings of most of the speeches that appear in this book, was not easy. None of his former colleagues seemed to know where he was. His name was not listed in any New York City phone book, despite the fact he reportedly lived in Brooklyn. Hard as I tried, I couldn't ascertain his whereabouts from any of the usual sources. Mr. Shabazz -- now Abdullah Abdur-Razzaq -- had dropped out of sight.

Then, around 1974, someone told me I might be able to locate him through the St. John's Recreational Center in Brooklyn. I drove there one Sunday and asked a friendly supervisor named Al Welch if anyone knew Mr. Abdur-Razzaq. Mr. Welch called over Bilal Abdullah and Abdul Malik. One of them -- it's been so long, I forget which one -- said he knew the man I was seeking. I wrote my name, address, and phone number on a scrap of paper, and asked him to forward them to Mr. Abdur-Razzaq. When I telephoned two or three weeks later, I learned that one of my would-be conduits had been killed in a confrontation with some of Elijah Muhammad's followers. The other, understandably, declined further involvement.

So I was back to square one. I stayed there three more years. Then I learned that Abdullah's wife had established a school for young children. When I finally located it in mid-1977, I was ecstatic, for Abdullah had been one

-- 8 --
of Malcolm X's chief aides.

My joy turned to despair when Abdullah's wife told me he had moved to South America and carved a farm out of virgin rain forest. The despair became depression when I learned that the nearest telephone facilities were several days' journey from his Guyana farm.

So I wrote. Abdullah's first letter, dated March 13, 1978, arrived eighteen days later. (Other letters took far longer.) He explained that his farm is about twenty-five miles from what used to be Jonestown. The nearest river port or airport -- the only efficient method of travel in rural Guyana is by water or air -- is thirty-one miles away. The roads are unpaved; even sturdy trucks cannot negotiate the enormous craters in them. So the only way to reach Abdullah's farm is to walk or hitch a bone-breaking ride on the tractor-drawn mail wagon that makes the trek about once a week.

For the better part of a year, Abdullah and I corresponded. I explained that I was writing a biography of Malcolm, and that I had interviewed his mother, four brothers, two sisters, most of his childhood neighbors and playmates, the majority of his former teachers, and scores of his ex-classmates, ex -- prison mates, and former political associates. Finally, Abdullah agreed to meet me on the Caribbean island of Grenada, where Malcolm's mother had been raised. I was hoping to make contact with her Grenadian relatives. Eventually, I did. But that's another story.

During the spring of 1979 -- just a few weeks after Maurice Bishop's New Jewel Movement overthrew Eric Gairy's oppressive regime -- Abdullah and I spent six days together in Grenada. Revolution was still in the air. One afternoon, as I was scribbling notes on my battered clipboard, a man approached us. He asked me where I was from. I asked him why he wanted to know, and Abdullah and I resumed our conversation.

But not for long. Suddenly, other men approached.

-- 9 --
Abdullah, who must have realized what was happening, began sidling off in another direction. But it was too late. Yet providence was kind; the threatening cordon gave way to Police Superintendent Jerome Honoré, who addressed us courteously and identified himself. His cultivated manner and French accent made me feel as if I were chatting with a Sorbonne professor, not an officer of the law.

Vaguely, I remember what I was later told about Superintendent Honoré. Several years earlier, he had resigned from Grenada's police force because of his disenchantment with the Gairy administration. After the revolution, he had rejoined the force. It was a good thing for us that he had. He asked me what we were doing in Grenada. I explained that I was writing a biography of Malcolm X. I also explained why I had chosen to interview Abdullah in Grenada. Mr. Honoré apologized to us, but told us we had to come to police headquarters. Since Abdullah was scheduled to return to Guyana the following day, I asked Honoré if he would allow us to stay together, so that I could continue interviewing Abdullah at police headquarters. He assured me that we would not be separated.

As I recall, police headquarters was located in or very near the massive stone fort that lies atop the hill overlooking the lovely harbor of St. George's, Grenada's capital. Few suspected spies receive the courteous welcome that awaited us there. We joked with the secretaries. We continued the interview; that is, until Abdullah was taken into another room for questioning.

The police released us after questioning me. Since the stores were about to close and Abdullah wanted to purchase some things that he needed to take back to Guyana (where most manufactured items are prohibitively expensive), Honoré drove us downtown in his own car. As we shook hands and parted, he apologized once more. After I returned to the U.S., I often wondered what happened to him, and whether he was harmed by America's bullylike

-- 10 --
1983 invasion of the virtually defenseless, tiny island. About a year ago, I was relieved to learn he is well.

More than ten years have elapsed since Abdullah and I parted company and left Grenada. At intervals, we communicate, as best we can, by mail. Some time ago, he sent me several tape-recorded speeches, portions of which appear in this book. Its subject needs no introduction, for Malcolm X was the standard-bearer for an entire generation of Black militants. He was anathema to most American whites, at least until his martyrdom and the publication of his best-selling autobiography. But even his detractors acknowledge that he was one of the foremost American political figures and political orators of the mid-twentieth century.

This collection of Malcolm's speeches is the result of a team effort. Pathfinder Press has its political views and I have mine, which differ substantially. Pathfinder's political assessment of Malcolm is also different from mine. But one thing we do agree about is that Malcolm's views should be heard.

Hence this book. With Abdullah's help and the help of others, I have provided the tape recordings of Malcolm's speeches and the editorial commentary preceding each section. Pathfinder has provided the money for publication. It has also prepared the written transcripts of each tape recording and has done nearly all the real editing.

-- 11 --

Publisher's Foreword
HAVING long been an uncompromising foe of the racist oppression of Blacks, Malcolm X went through a rapid political evolution to carefully thought-out anti-imperialist and anticapitalist positions during the last year of his life. That process was cut short by his brutal assassination on February 21, 1965.

This political evolution places the works of Malcolm X on Pathfinder's list of published writings and speeches alongside those of Fidel Castro, Ernesto Che Guevara, Maurice Bishop, Nelson Mandela, Thomas Sankara, and Carlos Fonseca. These leaders, too, each in their particular way, traveled the road through hard-fought national liberation struggles to broader internationalist perspectives and revolutionary action. In doing so, they led millions of workers and farmers in changing the world.

This has been a clear pattern of the world revolution since World War II. Malcolm X is thus far the outstanding representative of this pattern to emerge from the working class in the United States.

Because of the importance of Malcolm X's ideas and activity to the renewal of revolutionary leadership on a world scale, Pathfinder moved quickly following his assassination in February 1965 to publish the writings and speeches in which he presented his rapidly evolving views. This publishing effort produced Two Speeches by

-- 12 --
Malcolm X (1965), Malcolm X Talks to Young People (1965), Malcolm X Speaks (1965), Malcolm X on Afro-American History (1967), By Any Means Necessary: Speeches, Interviews and a Letter by Malcolm X (1970), and more recently the Spanish-language Habla Malcolm X (1984). These books largely exhausted the pool of writings and speeches by Malcolm from this period that were known to be available for publication.

Understandably, then, Pathfinder was pleased to be approached by Dr. Bruce Perry to publish several speeches and interviews that he had tracked down (by efforts described in his introduction to this volume) while writing a biography of Malcolm X that is scheduled to be published in 1990. Some of these items were transcribed from tape recordings obtained from James 67X Shabazz. Shabazz was a co-leader with Malcolm X of the Muslim Mosque, Inc., and Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).

There are no startling revelations in these new materials. 1 They do not appreciably alter the political legacy left by Malcolm X, nor could they. Like other great modern revolutionists, Malcolm sought a wide variety of platforms from which to explain his ideas to the widest possible public. And he sought to collaborate with and learn from others who were thinking and acting as revolutionists. Malcolm X's views can be read and studied in the collections cited above.

-- 13 --

At the same time, the new materials collected here are not just "more speeches" by Malcolm X. This volume includes two of his last public speeches, given during the final week of his life. One was delivered in Harlem on February 15 to a meeting of the Organization of Afro-American Unity; the other the following night to an audience in Rochester, New York. Two other items are important radio interviews from December 1964 that shed light on how Malcolm X began to articulate the evolution of his thinking in light of experiences during his second extended trip to the Middle East and Africa from July through November of that year.

It is easier to understand the development of Malcolm X's political perspectives during his final months by knowing something about the far-reaching conclusions he had already come to prior to his public break with the Nation of Islam in March 1964. Both the continuity and change are illuminated in two speeches, from early and late 1963, that are published here for the first time.

Many views that Malcolm X maintained to his dying day are presented powerfully in these 1963 speeches: steadfast opposition to Jim Crow segregation; fierce pride in the African roots of Black people; refusal to speak about himself as an "American" or about the U.S. government and armed forces as "our" government and "our" army; emphasis on the need to look at all events "in the international context"; recognition of the Democratic and Republican parties as organizations of the racist and imperialist oppressors; support for the right of self-defense against racist terror, including armed self-defense where necessary; identification with national liberation struggles throughout Africa, Asia, and the Americas; repudiation of the illusion that justice can ever be advanced by relying on the good-heartedness of the oppressors and exploiters, or some common humanity shared with them.

At the same time, reading these 1963 speeches in conjunction with the 1964 interviews and the two 1965

-- 14 --
public talks serves to underline the changes that his political views had undergone in the months prior to the assassination. The reader will learn firsthand about Malcolm X's political evolution on a broad range of questions:

1. Who are the racist oppressors. In 1963 Malcolm X expressed the view that the "black, brown, red, and yellow" peoples of the earth "had an oppressor in common, an exploiter in common -- the European," that is, whites, regardless of their deeds. In his Rochester speech, on February 16, 1965, he presented a different view:

"We don't judge a man because of the color of his skin. We don't judge you because you're white; we don't judge you because you're black; we don't judge you because you're brown. We judge you because of what you do and what you practice. . . . So we're not against people because they're white. But we're against those who practice racism. We're against those who drop bombs on people because their color happens to be of a different shade than yours."

2. Anti-imperialism. During his final months, Malcolm X began to present a clear explanation of who he had in mind in speaking of "those who practice racism" and "those who drop bombs on people because [of] their color."

In his December 27, 1964, radio interview, Malcolm X hailed those United Nations representatives who were "openly accusing the United States," as well as the European colonial powers, "of being an imperialist power and of practicing racism." In his Harlem speech on February 15, 1965, he expanded on this theme. "There's a world-wide revolution going on," Malcolm said. "[W]hat is it revolting against? The power structure. . . . An international power structure consisting of American interests, French interests, English interests, Belgian interests, European interests. . . . A structure, a house that has ruled the world up until now."

3. Internationalism and Black liberation. The evolution in Malcolm X's views on these matters led him to new

-- 15 --
political conclusions about the road forward for Black liberation. In his Rochester speech he summarized the position he had come to during the previous several months:

"Any kind of movement for freedom of Black people based solely within the confines of America is absolutely doomed to fail. . . . So one of the first steps that we became involved in, those of us who got into the Organization of Afro-American Unity, was to come up with a program that would make our grievances international and make the world see that our problem was no longer a Negro problem or an American problem but a human problem. A problem for humanity. And a problem that should be attacked by all elements of humanity."

(Malcolm X's views on marriages between Blacks and whites were another reflection of his evolving internationalism and changing outlook on who is responsible for racist oppression. In the January 23, 1963, speech published here and in others given during that earlier period, Malcolm put substantial emphasis on the Nation of Islam's opposition to such marriages. During the last months of his life Malcolm publicly changed his opinion. In a January 1965 interview cited in Malcolm X Speaks (p. 197), he explained: "I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being -- neither white, black, brown, or red; and when you are dealing with humanity as a family there's no question of integration or intermarriage. It's just one human being marrying another human being, or one human being living around and with another human being. I may say, though, that . . . I don't think the burden to defend any position should ever be put upon the black man, because it is the white man collectively who has shown that he is hostile toward integration and toward intermarriage and toward these other strides toward oneness.")

4. Political action. Those who had split away from the Nation of Islam, Malcolm explained in the Rochester

-- 16 --
speech, "were the real activists of the movement who were intelligent enough to want some kind of program that would enable us to fight for the rights of all Black people here in the Western Hemisphere." In the Nation, he said, "[B]ecause we were never permitted to take part in politics, we were in a vacuum politically. We were in a religious vacuum; we were in a political vacuum. We were actually alienated, cut off from all type of activity with even the world that we were fighting against. We became sort of a religious-political hybrid, all to ourselves. Not involved in anything but just standing on the sidelines condemning everything. But in no position to correct anything because we couldn't take action.

"Yet at the same time, the nature of the movement was such that it attracted the activists," Malcolm X explained. "Those who wanted action. Those who wanted to do something about the evils that confronted all Black people."

5. Civil rights struggles. This shift toward political action changed the approach taken by Malcolm X to the mass civil rights movement that, through a decade of hard-fought and bloody battles, succeeded in battering down the Jim Crow system of segregation by the mid-1960s. In his October 1963 speech he was still referring to this movement in largely derisive terms. For example, he spoke of the mass August 1963 civil rights mobilization of 100,000 people in the U.S. capital as "the recent ridiculous march on Washington."

In his February 15, 1965, speech, however, Malcolm X explained that the U.S. government was so upset about his break from the Nation of Islam because "all those militants who formerly were in it and were held in check would immediately become involved in the civil rights struggle, and they would add the same kinds of energy to the civil rights struggle that they gave to the Black Muslim movement."

Malcolm X himself had just returned from the civil

-- 17 --
rights encampment in Selma, Alabama. As he told the audience in his Harlem speech to the OAAU, "I promised the brothers and sisters in Alabama when I was there that we'd be back. I'll be back, you'll be back, we'll be back."

6. Religion and political organization. These conclusions convinced Malcolm X that -- while he himself remained a devout and practicing Muslim and continued his work in the Muslim Mosque, Inc. -- a new kind of independent and secular political organization had to be constructed. This organization had to be open to all Blacks, regardless of religious or other secular beliefs, who agreed on the need to organize a fight around common political goals. Even while still in the Nation of Islam, he said in the Rochester speech, those who shared his dissatisfaction had become less and less "concerned with the religion of the Black man. Because whether he was a Methodist or a Baptist or an atheist or an agnostic, he caught the same hell."

With this in mind, the Organization of Afro-American Unity was launched in June 1964. The OAAU, as Malcolm X explained in the Rochester speech, "is a nonreligious organization . . . structured organizationally to allow for active participation of any Afro-American, any Black American, in a program that is designed to eliminate the negative political, economic, and social evils that our people are confronted by in this society."

7. Women's political and social advancement. Just as Malcolm X's evolving perspective necessitated reaching out to fellow fighters on a political basis regardless of their views on religious matters, it also meant recognizing the need to involve women on an equal footing in the battles. In his 1963 speeches, Malcolm X was still presenting a view of women as subordinate to men, with their place restricted to hearth and home. By December 1964, however, he had this to say:

"One thing I noticed in both the Middle East and Africa,

-- 18 --
in every country that was progressive, the women were progressive. In every country that was underdeveloped and backward, it was to the same degree that the women were undeveloped, or underdeveloped, and backward. . . . [I]t's noticeable that in these type of societies where they put the woman in a closet and discourage her from getting a sufficient education and don't give her the incentive by allowing her maximum participation in whatever area of the society where she's qualified, they kill her incentive. . . . So in the African countries where they opt for mass education, whether it be male or female, you find that they have a more valid society, a more progressive society."

Many other examples of Malcolm X's political evolution can be traced through these pages. Readers will also need to go to other collections of his writings and speeches to learn about the development of his views on a number of additional important matters: his growing anticapitalism, his decision in the last months of his life to no longer define his viewpoint as "Black nationalism," the question of alliances between political organizations of Blacks such as the OAAU and other organizations of the oppressed and exploited.

The speeches collected for this volume by Bruce Perry, then, make an important addition to our knowledge of the political ideas of Malcolm X and the experiences that shaped their development. The importance of making this material available was well explained some twentythree years ago at a March 1965 memorial meeting for Malcolm X sponsored by the Militant Labor Forum in New York City. Appropriately, the speaker was James 67X Shabazz, who provided a number of the speeches published here. 2 Shabazz said:

"Malcolm's body lies in a grave. His words lie neatly

-- 19 --
couched on papers and mysteriously captured on recording tapes, but Malcolm's thoughts, like invisible seeds, have been planted in the minds of oppressed peoples in America, in Africa, in the Middle East, and in Europe. And many men in different places, at different times, and in different languages will clothe these thoughts in the garments that are necessary for them to fit the different conditions. Malcolm's thoughts will only die when all people -- especially of African origin -- are free as Malcolm wanted us to be."

Steve Clark

February 1989

-- 21 --

Chronology
May 19, 1925 Malcolm Little born in Omaha, Nebraska
February 1946 Sentenced in Massachusetts to 8-10 years imprisonment for burglary; serves 6½ years
1948-1949 Conversion to Islam
August 1952 Paroled from prison
1953 Having renamed himself "Malcolm X," he becomes an assistant minister of the Nation of Islam's Temple Number 1, located in Detroit
June 1954 Becomes minister of Harlem, New York, temple
1959 First trip to the Middle East and Africa
April 1963 Confronts Elijah Muhammad about his adultery
December 1963-February 1964 Elijah Muhammad orders Malcolm to remain silent, allegedly because of his barbed, unauthorized remarks about President Kennedy's assassination. Malcolm becomes isolated within his own movement
March 1964 Announces founding of Muslim Mosque, Inc.
April-May 1964 Second trip to Africa and the Middle East
June 1964 First public meeting of the Organization of Afro-American Unity
July-November 1964 Third trip to Africa
February 14, 1965 A firebomb lays waste to Malcolm's home
February 21, 1965 Assassinated in New York City

-- 23 --

Part 1: Two 1963 university speeches
[Introduction]
By 1963, the differences between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad had come to a head. But Malcolm chose, for a variety of personal and political reasons, not to leave the Nation of Islam. In January, he spoke at Michigan State University. Throughout his speech, which attested to his unique ability to captivate the very whites he pilloried, he repeatedly stressed that the views he was presenting were Mr. Muhammad's. He said: "Now, in . . . professing to speak for Black people by representing the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. . . ."

In October, Malcolm spoke at the University of California at Berkeley. Over and over, he stated that the views he was presenting were those of Mr. Muhammad, whom he characterized as a "modern Moses." But the exaggerated praise masked secret opposition. Fear that the opposition might become open prompted Mr. Muhammad, in early December, to use Malcolm's unauthorized remarks about President Kennedy's assassination as an excuse to forbid him from making any more public statements. Malcolm had characterized the assassination as a case of "chickens coming home to roost."

-- NA --

-- 25 --

Twenty million Black people in a political, economic, and mental prison
IT SHOULD be pointed out at the outset that I represent the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, whose followers are known as the Muslims here in America and actually are the fastest growing group -- fastest growing religious group -- among Black people anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. And it is our intention to try and spell out what the philosophy and aims and motivations of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad happen to be and his solution to this very serious problem that America finds herself confronted with.

And I might point out, too, that if you don't think that the problem is serious, then you need only to listen to the attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy. In almost every speech he's been involved in, especially during the past few months and even today, he has pointed out that the race problem is America's most serious domestic problem. And since the problem is so serious, it's time to take some serious steps to get to the factors that create this problem.

And again I want to thank the African Students Association and the campus NAACP for displaying the unity necessary to bring a very controversial issue before the students here on campus. The unity of Africans abroad and the unity of Africans here in this country can bring about practically any kind of achievement or accomplishment that Black people want today.

-- 26 --

When I say the Africans abroad and the Africans here in this country -- the man that you call Negro is nothing but an African himself. Why, some of them have been brainwashed into thinking that Africa is a place with no culture, no history, no contribution to civilization or science. So many of these Negroes, they take offense when they're identified with their homeland. But today we want to point out the different types of Negroes that you have to deal with. Then once you know there's more than one type, then you won't come up with just one type solution.

And to point out how timely the invitation is or was -- I don't want to read newspapers to you, but in the Detroit News dated Thursday, January 17, it told about the Interfaith Council of Religion that was held in Chicago last week. And the topic of their conversation was the race problem here in America. And it pointed out that all of the time that they spent and money that they spent, actually they didn't get to the meat of the issue. And in this particular copy of the paper, on page three, the chaplain at Wayne State University actually criticized the efforts of these Protestants, Catholics, and Jews in Chicago last week for failing to bring spokesmen to that conference who really would speak for Black people and spell out issues that were not being spelled out by the others.

And I just want to read a recommendation that he made. Mr. [Malcolm] Boyd believes that the conference might have accomplished much good if the speakers had included a white supremacist and a Negro race leader, preferably a top man in the American Black Muslim movement. He said that a debate between them would undoubtedly be bitter, but it would accomplish one thing. It would get some of the real issues out into the open. And I think that the man is right. Most of the so-called Negroes that you listen to on the race problem usually don't represent any following of Black people. Usually

-- 27 --
they are Negroes who have been put in that position by the white man himself. And when they speak they're not speaking for Black people, they're saying exactly what they know the white man who put them in that position wants to hear them say.

So again, I think that it was very progressive and objective on the part of these two sponsoring groups to give us an opportunity to tell you how Black people really think and how Black people really feel and how dissatisfied Black people have become -- increasingly so -- with the conditions that our people find ourselves in here in this country.

Now in speaking as a -- professing to speak for Black people by representing the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, you want to know who does he represent. Who does he speak for? There are two types of Negroes in this country. There's the bourgeois type who blinds himself to the condition of his people, and who is satisfied with token solutions. He's in the minority. He's a handful. He's usually the handpicked Negro who benefits from token integration. But the masses of Black people who really suffer the brunt of brutality and the conditions that exist in this country are represented by the leadership of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

So when I come in here to speak to you, I'm not coming in here speaking as a Baptist or a Methodist or a Democrat or a Republican or a Christian or a Jew or -- not even as an American. Because if I stand up here -- if I could stand up here and speak to you as an American we wouldn't have anything to talk about. The problem would be solved. So we don't even profess to speak as an American. We are speaking as -- I am speaking as a Black man. And I'm letting you know how a Black man thinks, how a Black man feels, and how dissatisfied Black men should have been 400 years ago. So, and if I raise my voice you'll forgive me or excuse me, I'm not doing it out of disrespect. I'm speaking from my heart, and you get it exactly as the

-- 28 --
feeling brings it out.

When I pointed out that there are two kinds of Negroes -- some Negroes don't want a Black man to speak for them. That type of Negro doesn't even want to be Black. He's ashamed of being Black. And you'll never hear him refer to himself as Black. Now that type we don't pretend to speak for. You can speak for him. In fact you can have him. [Laughter]

But the ones that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad speaks for are those whose pattern of thinking, pattern of thought, pattern of behavior, pattern of action is being changed by what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is teaching throughout America. These are that mass element, and usually when you hear the press refer to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, they refer to him as a teacher of hate or an advocator of violence or -- what's this other thing? -- Black supremacist.

Actually this is the type of propaganda put together by the press, thinking that this will alienate masses of Black people from what he's saying. But actually the only one whom that type of propaganda alienates is this Negro who's always up in your face begging you for what you have or begging you for a chance to live in your neighborhood or work on your job or marry one of your women. Well that type of Negro naturally doesn't want to hear what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is talking about. But the type that wants to hear what he's saying is the type who feels that he'll get farther by standing on his own feet and doing something for himself towards solving his own problem, instead of accusing you of creating the problem and then, at the same time, depending upon you to do something to solve the problem.

So you have two types of Negro. The old type and the new type. Most of you know the old type. When you read about him in history during slavery he was called "Uncle Tom." He was the house Negro. And during slavery you had two Negroes. You had the house Negro and the field

-- 29 --
Negro. The house Negro usually lived close to his master. He dressed like his master. He wore his master's secondhand clothes. He ate food that his master left on the table. And he lived in his master's house -- probably in the basement or the attic -- but he still lived in the master's house. So whenever that house Negro identified himself, he always identified himself in the same sense that his master identified himself.

When his master said, "We have good food," the house Negro would say, "Yes, we have plenty of good food." "We" have plenty of good food. When the master said that "we have a fine home here," the house Negro said, "Yes, we have a fine home here." When the master would be sick, the house Negro identified himself so much with his master he'd say, "What's the matter boss, we sick?" His master's pain was his pain. And it hurt him more for his master to be sick than for him to be sick himself. When the house started burning down, that type of Negro would fight harder to put the master's house out than the master himself would.

But then you had another Negro out in the field. The house Negro was in the minority. The masses -- the field Negroes were the masses. They were in the majority. When the master got sick, they prayed that he'd die. [Laughter] If his house caught on fire, they'd pray for a wind to come along and fan the breeze.

If someone came to the house Negro and said, "Let's go, let's separate," naturally that Uncle Tom would say, "Go where? What could I do without boss? Where would I live? How would I dress? Who would look out for me?" That's the house Negro. But if you went to the field Negro and said, "Let's go, let's separate," he wouldn't even ask you where or how. He'd say, "Yes, let's go." And that one ended right there.

So today you have a twentieth-century-type of house Negro. A twentieth-century Uncle Tom. He's just as much an Uncle Tom today as Uncle Tom was 100 or 200 years

-- 30 --
ago. Only he's a modern Uncle Tom. That Uncle Tom wore a handkerchief around his head. This Uncle Tom wears a top hat. He's sharp. He dresses just like you do. He speaks the same phraseology, the same language. He tries to speak it better than you do. He speaks with the same accents, same diction. And when you say, "your army," he says, "our army." He hasn't got anybody to defend him, but anytime you say "we" he says "we." "Our president," "our government," "our Senate," "our congressmen," "our this and our that." And he hasn't even got a seat in that "our" even at the end of the line. So this is the twentieth-century Negro. Whenever you say "you," the personal pronoun in the singular or in the plural, he uses it right along with you. When you say you're in trouble, he says, "Yes, we're in trouble."

But there's another kind of Black man on the scene. If you say you're in trouble, he says, "Yes, you're in trouble." [Laughter] He doesn't identify himself with your plight whatsoever.

And this is the thing that the white people in America have got to come to realize. That there are two types of Black people in this country. One who identifies with you so much so he will let you brutalize him and still beg you for a chance to sit next to you. And then there's one who's not interested in sitting next to you. He's not interested in being around you. He's not interested in what you have. He wants something of his own. He wants to sit someplace where he can call his own. He doesn't want a seat in your restaurant where you can give him some old bad coffee or bad food. He wants his own restaurant. And he wants some land where he can build that restaurant on, in a city that it can go in. He wants something of his own.

And when you realize that this type of thinking is existing and developing fastly or swiftly behind the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad among the so-called Negroes, then I think that you'll also realize

-- 31 --
that this whole phony effort at integration is no solution. Because the most you can do with this phony effort toward integration is to put out some token integration. And whereas this Uncle Tom will accept your token effort, the masses of Black people in this country are no more interested in token integration than they would be if you offered them a chance to sit inside a furnace somewhere. The only one who'll do that is this twentieth-century Uncle Tom. And you can always tell him because he wants to be next to you. He wants to eat with you. He wants to sleep with you. He wants to marry your woman, marry your mother, marry your sister, marry your daughter. And if you watch him close enough he's even after your wife. [Laughter]

This type has blind faith -- in your religion. He's not interested in any religion of his own. He believes in a white Jesus, white Mary, white angels, and he's trying to get to a white heaven. When you listen to him in his church singing, he sings a song, I think they call it, "Wash me white as snow." He wants to be -- he wants to be turned white so he can go to heaven with a white man. It's not his fault; it's actually not his fault. But this is the state of his mind. This is the result of 400 years of brainwashing here in America. You have taken a man who is black on the outside and made him white on the inside. His brain is white as snow. His heart is white as snow. And therefore, whenever you say, this is ours, he thinks he's white the same as you, so what's yours he thinks is also his. Even right on down to your woman.

Now many of them will take offense at my implying that he wants your woman. They'll say, "No, this is what Bill Bowen, Talmadge, and all of the White Citizens' Councils say." They say that to fool you. If this is not what they want, watch them. And if you find evidence to the contrary, then I'll take back my words. But all you have to do is give him the chance to get near you, and you'll find that he is not satisfied until he is sitting next to your

-- 32 --
woman, or closer to her than that.

And this type of Negro, usually he hates Black and loves white. He doesn't want to be Black, he wants to be white. And he'll get on his bended knees and beg you for integration, which means he would rather live -- rather than live with his own kind who love him, he'll force himself to live in neighborhoods around white people whom he knows don't mean him any good. And again I say, this is not his fault. He is sick. And as long as America listens to this sick Negro, who is begging to be integrated into American society despite the fact that the attitude and actions of whites are sufficient proof that he is not wanted, why then you are actually allowing him to force you into a position where you look just as sick as he looks.

If someone holds a gun on a white man and makes him embrace me -- put his hand, arm, around me -- this isn't love nor is it brotherhood. What they are doing is forcing the white man to be a hypocrite, to practice hypocrisy. But if that white man will put his arm around me willingly, voluntarily, of his own volition, then that's love, that's brotherhood, that's a solution to the problem.

Likewise, as long as the government has to get out here and legislate to force Negroes into a white neighborhood or force Negroes into a white school or force Negroes into white industry -- and make white people pretend that they go for this -- all the government is doing is making white people be hypocrites. And rather than be classified as a bigot, by putting a block, the average white person actually would rather put up a hypocritical face, the face of a hypocrite, than to tell the Black man, "No, you stay over there and let me stay over here." So that's no solution.

As long as you force people to act in a hypocritical way, you will never solve their problem. It has to be -- the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that a solution has to be devised that will be satisfactory, completely

-- 33 --
satisfactory to the Black man and completely satisfactory to the white man. And the only thing that makes white people completely satisfied and Black people completely satisfied, when they're in their right mind, is when the Black man has his own and the white man has his own. You have what you need; we have what we need. Then both of us have something, and even the Bible says, "God bless the child that has his own." And the poor so-called Negro doesn't have his own name, doesn't have his own language, doesn't have his own culture, doesn't have his own history. He doesn't have his own country. He doesn't even have his own mind. And he thinks that he's Black 'cause God cursed him. He's not Black 'cause God cursed him. He's Black because -- rather he's cursed because he's out of his mind. He has lost his mind. He has a white mind instead of the type of mind that he should have.

So, when these so-called Negroes who want integration try and force themselves into the white society, which doesn't solve the problem -- the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that that type of Negro is the one that creates the problem. And the type of white person who perpetuates the problem is the one who poses as a liberal and pretends that the Negro should be integrated, as long as he integrates someone else's neighborhood. But all these whites that you see running around here talking about how liberal they are, and we believe everybody should have what they want and go where they want and do what they want, as soon as a Negro moves into that white liberal's neighborhood, that white liberal is -- well he moves out faster than the white bigot from Mississippi, Alabama, and from someplace else.

So we won't solve the problem listening to that Uncle Tom Negro, and the problem won't be solved listening to the so-called white liberal. The only time the problem is going to be solved is when a Black man can sit down like a Black man and a white man can sit down like a white man. And make no excuses whatsoever with each other in

-- 34 --
discussing the problem. No offense will stem from factors that are brought up. But both of them have to sit down like men, on one side and on the other side, and look at it in terms of Black and white. And then take some kind of solution based upon the factors that we see, rather than upon that which we would like to believe.

And when I said that this Negro wants to force his way into the white man's family, this integrationist-minded Negro wants to force his way into the white man's family, some don't believe that. Some take issue with that. But you take all of the integrationists, all of those who are used to finance the program of the integrationists, the average so-called Negro celebrity, put all of them in one pile. And as fast as you name them off, you'll find that every one of them is married either to a white woman or a white man. From Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, Sammy Davis, and you could name 'em all night long, they -- although they say that this is not what we want -- that's what they've done. That's what they have. And we don't -- the Black masses don't want what Lena Horne wants or what Sammy Davis wants or what who's-his-name, the rest of them want.

Usually you'll find that before Sammy Davis and Lena Horne and Eartha Kitt and Harry Belafonte become involved in a mixed marriage you could go into the Negro community, any one across the country, and find those stars with records on the jukeboxes in the Negro community. You can't walk into a Negro community today and find anybody that the Negro community knows is involved in a mixed marriage with their records being popular in the Negro community. Subconsciously a Negro doesn't have any respect or regard or confidence, nor can he be moved by, another Black man, a Black man who marries a white woman or a Black woman who marries a white man.

And when they put out that picture to you that all of us want your woman, no, just that twentieth-century Uncle

-- 35 --
Tom. He wants her. But, then when you fulfill -- think you're going to solve your problem by pleasing him, you're only making the problem worse. You have to go back and listen to the problem as it is presented by the masses of Black people, not by these handpicked, handful of Uncle Toms who benefit from token integration.

Also this type of so-called Negro, by being intoxicated over the white man, he never sees beyond the white man. He never sees beyond America. He never looks at himself or where he fits into things on the world stage. He only can see himself here in America, on the American stage or the white stage, where the white man is in the majority, where the white man is the boss. So this type of Negro always feels like he's outnumbered or he's the underdog or he's the minority. And it puts him in the role of a beggar -- a cowardly, humble, Uncle Tomming beggar on anything that he says is -- that should be his by right. [Commotion]

Whereas there is -- he wants to be an American rather than to be Black. He wants to be something other than what he is. And knowing that America is a white country, he knows he can't be Black and be an American too. So he never calls himself Black. He calls himself an American Negro -- a Negro in America. And usually he'll deny his own race, his own color, just to be a second-class American. He'll deny his own history, his own culture. He'll deny all of his brothers and sisters in Africa, in Asia, in the East, just to be a second-class American. He denies everything that he represents or everything that was in his past, just to be accepted into a country and into a government that has rejected him ever since he was brought here.

For this Negro is sick. He has to be sick to try and force himself amongst some people who don't want him, or to be accepted into a government that has used its entire political system and educational system to keep him relegated to the role of a second-class citizen. Therefore

-- 36 --
he spends a lifetime begging for acceptance into the same government that made slaves of his people. He gives his life for a country that made his people slaves and still confines them to the role of second-class citizens. And we feel that he wastes his time begging white politicians, political hypocrites, for civil rights or for some kind of first-class citizenship.

He is like a watchdog or a hound dog. You may run into a dog -- no matter how vicious a dog is, you find him out in the street, he won't bite you. But when you get him up on the porch, he will growl, he'll take your leg. Now that dog, when he's out in the street, only his own life is threatened, and he's never been trained to protect himself. He's only been trained by his master to think in terms of what's good for his master. So when you catch him in the street and you threaten him, he'll go around you. But when you come up on the -- through the gate when he's sitting on the master's porch, then he'll bare his fangs and get ready to bite you. Not because you're threatening him, but because you threaten his master who has trained him not to protect himself but to protect the property of the master.

And this type of twentieth-century Uncle Tom is the same way. He'll never attack you, but he'll attack me. I can run into him out on the street and blast him; he won't say a word. But if I look like I'm about to blast you in here, he'll open up his mouth and put up a better defense for you than you can put up for yourself. Because he hasn't been trained to defend himself. He has only been trained to open up his mouth in defense of his master. He hasn't been educated, he's been trained. When a man is educated, he can think for himself and defend himself and speak for himself. But this twentieth-century Uncle Tom Negro never opens up his mouth in defense of a Black man. He opens up his mouth in defense of the white man, in defense of America, in defense of the American government. He doesn't even know where his government

-- 37 --
is, because he doesn't know that he ever had one. He doesn't know where his country is, because he doesn't know that he ever had one.

He believes in exactly what he was taught in school. That when he was kidnapped by the white man, he was a savage in the jungle someplace eating people and throwing spears and with a bone in his nose. And the average American Negro has that concept of the African continent. It is not his fault. This is what has been given to him by the American educational system.

He doesn't realize that there were civilizations and cultures on the African continent at a time when the people in Europe were crawling around in the caves, going naked. He doesn't realize that the Black man in Africa was wearing silk, was wearing slippers -- that he was able to spin himself, make himself at a time when the people up in Europe were going naked.

He doesn't realize that he was living in palaces on the African continent when the people in Europe were living in caves. He doesn't realize that he was living in a civilization in Africa where science had been so far advanced, especially even the astronomical sciences, to a point where Africans could plot the course of the stars in the universe when the people up in Europe still thought the earth was round, the planet was round -- or flat.

He doesn't realize the advancement and the high state of his own culture that he was living in before he was kidnapped and brought to this country by the white man. He knows nothing about that. He knows nothing about the ancient Egyptian civilization on the African continent. Or the ancient Carthaginian civilization on the African continent. Or the ancient civilizations of Mali on the African continent. Civilizations that were highly developed and produced scientists. Timbuktu, the center of the Mali Empire, was the center of learning at a time when the people up in Europe didn't even know what a book was. He doesn't know this, because he hasn't been

-- 38 --
taught. And because he doesn't know this, when you mention Africa to him, why he thinks you're talking about a jungle.

And I went to Africa in 1959 and didn't see any jungle. And I didn't see any mud huts until I got back to Harlem in New York City. [Laughter and applause]

So you're familiar with that type of Negro. And the Black man that you're not familiar with is the one that we would like to point out now.

He is the new -- he is the new type. He is the type that the white man seldom ever comes in contact with. And when you do come in contact with him, you're shocked, because you didn't know that this type of Black man existed. And immediately you think, well here's one of those Black supremacists or racists or extremists who believe in violence and all of that kind of -- well that's what they call it. [Laughter]

This new type of Black man, he doesn't want integration; he wants separation. Not segregation, separation. To him, segregation, as we're taught by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, means that which is forced upon inferiors by superiors. A segregated community is a Negro community. But the white community, though it's all white, is never called a segregated community. It's a separate community. In the white community, the white man controls the economy, his own economy, his own politics, his own everything. That's his community. But at the sametime while the Negro lives in a separate community, it's a segregated community. Which means its regulated from the outside by outsiders. The white man has all of the businesses in the Negro community. He runs the politics of the Negro community. He controls all the civic organizations in the Negro community. This is a segregated community.

We don't go for segregation. We go for separation. Separation is when you have your own. You control your own economy; you control your own politics; you control

-- 39 --
your own society; you control your own everything. You have yours and you control yours; we have ours and we control ours.

They don't call Chinatown in New York City or on the West Coast a segregated community, yet it's all Chinese. But the Chinese control it. Chinese voluntarily live there, they control it. They run it. They have their own schools. They control their own politics, control their own industry. And they don't feel like they're being made inferior because they have to live to themselves. They choose to live to themselves. They live there voluntarily. And they are doing for themselves in their community the same thing you do for yourself in your community. This makes them equal because they have what you have. But if they didn't have what you have, then they'd be controlled from your side; even though they would be on their side, they'd be controlled from your side by you.

So when we who follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad say that we're for separation, it should be emphasized we're not for segregation; we're for separation. We want the same for ourselves as you have for yourself. And when we get it, then it's possible to think more intelligently and to think in terms that are along peaceful lines. But a man who doesn't have what is his, he can never think always in terms that are along peaceful lines.

This new type rejects the white man's Christian religion. He recognizes the real enemy. That Uncle Tom can't see his enemy. He thinks his friend is his enemy and his enemy is his friend. And he usually ends up loving his enemy, turning his other cheek to his enemy. But this new type, he doesn't turn the other cheek to anybody. He doesn't believe in any kind of peaceful suffering. He believes in obeying the law. He believes in respecting people. He believes in doing unto others as he would have done to himself. But at the same time, if anybody attacks him, he believes in retaliating if it costs him his life. And it is good for white people to know this. Because if white

-- 40 --
people get the impression that Negroes all endorse this old turn-the-other-cheek cowardly philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King, then whites are going to make the mistake of putting their hands on some Black man, thinking that he's going to turn the other cheek, and he'll end up losing his hand and losing his life in the try. [Commotion and laughter]

So it is always better to let someone know where you stand. And there are a large number of Black people in this country who don't endorse any phase of what Dr. Martin Luther King and these other twentieth-century religious Uncle Toms are putting in front of the public eye to make it look like this is the way, this is the behavior, or this is the thought pattern of most of our people.

Also this new type, you'll find, he doesn't look upon it as being any honor to be in America. He knows he didn't come here on the Mayflower. He knows he was brought here in a slave ship. But this twentieth-century Uncle Tom, he'll stand up in your face and tell you about when his fathers landed on Plymouth Rock. His father never landed on Plymouth Rock; the rock was dropped on him [Laughter] but he wasn't dropped on it. [Applause]

So this type doesn't make any apology for being in America, nor does he make any apology for the problem his presence in America presents for Uncle Sam. He knows he was brought here in chains, and he knows he was brought here against his will. He knows that the problem itself was created by the white man and that it was created because the white man brought us here in chains against our will. It was a crime. And the one who committed that crime is the criminal today who should pay for the crime that was committed. You don't put the crime in jail, you put the criminal in jail. And kidnapping is a crime. Slavery is a crime. Lynching is a crime. And the presence of 20 million Black people in America against their will is a living witness, a living testimony of the crime that Uncle Sam committed, your forefathers

-- 41 --
committed, when our people were brought here in chains.

And the reason the problem can't be solved today is you try and dress it up and doctor it up and make it look like a favor was done to the Black man by having brought the Black man here. But when you realize that it was a crime that was committed, then you approach the solution to that problem in a different light and then you can probably solve it. And as long as you think Negroes are running around here of the opinion that you're doing them a favor by letting them have some of this and letting them have some of that, why naturally every time you give a little bit more justice or freedom to the Black man, you stick out your chest and say, "See, we're solving the problem."

You're not doing the Black man any favor. If you stick a knife in my back, if you put it in nine inches and pull it out six inches, you haven't done me any favor. If you pull it all the way out, you haven't done me any favor. And this is what you have to realize. If you put a man in jail against his will -- illegally, he's not guilty -- you frame him up, and then because he resents what you've done to him, you put him in solitary confinement to break his spirit, then after his spirit is broken, you let him out a little bit and give him the general run of the prison, you haven't done him any favor. If you let him out of prison completely, you haven't done him any favor, because you put him in there unjustly and illegally in the first place.

Now you have 20 million Black people in this country who were brought here and put in a political, economic, and mental prison. This was done by Uncle Sam. And today you don't realize what a crime your forefathers have committed. And you think that when you open the door a few cracks, and give this little integration-intoxicated Negro a chance to run around in the prison yard -- that's all he's doing -- that you're doing him a favor. But as long as he has to look up to someone who doesn't represent him and doesn't speak for him, that person only represents the warden, he doesn't represent some kind of

-- 42 --
president or mayor or governor or senator or congressman or anything else.

So this new type -- the fact has to be faced that he exists. Especially since he's in the house. And he didn't come here because it was his will. So you have to take the blame for his being here. And once you take the blame, then its more easy. Its easier for you to approach the problem more sensibly and try and get a solution. And the solution can never be based upon hypocrisy. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that this solution has to be based upon reality. Tokenism is hypocrisy. One little student in the University of Mississippi, that's hypocrisy. A handful of students in Little Rock, Arkansas, is hypocrisy. 3 A couple of students going to school in Georgia is hypocrisy.

-- 43 --

Integration in America is hypocrisy in the rawest form. And the whole world can see it. All this little tokenism that is dangled in front of the Negro and then he's told, "See what we're doing for you, Tom." Why the whole world can see that this is nothing but hypocrisy. All you do is make your image worse; you don't make it better.

So again, this new type, as I say, he rejects the white man's Christian religion. You find in large numbers they're turning toward the religion of Islam. They are becoming Muslims, believing in one God, whose proper name is Allah, in Muhammad as his apostle, in turning toward Mecca, praying five times a day, fasting during Ramadan, and all the other principles that are laid out by the religion of Islam. He's becoming a Muslim and just as -- I think it was Dr. Billy Graham who made a crusade through Africa and came back and said that Islam is sweeping through Africa, outnumbering Christianity in converts eleven to one, which means every time one African becomes a Christian, eleven of them become a Muslim. And then that one who became a Christian, he forgets it and goes on and be a Muslim, too. [Laughter]

So that -- and Bishop Pike pointed out the same thing in Look magazine in December 1960 and then Time magazine, heaven forbid that I should mention that magazine, [Laughter and applause] but Time magazine mentioned it, two weeks ago, that Islam is sweeping throughout Africa. And just as it is sweeping throughout the Black people of Africa, it is sweeping throughout the Black people right here in America. Only the one who's teaching it here in America is the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He is the religious leader, the religious teacher. He is the one who is spreading the religion of Islam among the slaves, ex-slaves, here in America.

You have Muslims who have come to this country from the Muslim world. There are probably 200,000 Muslims in this country from the Muslim world, who were born in the Muslim world. And all of them combined have never

-- 44 --
been able to convert a hundred Americans to the religion of Islam. Yet it is the nature of Islam to propagate the faith, to spread the faith, to make everyone bear witness that there's no God but Allah and Muhammad is his apostle.

And if you find all of the Muslims of the Muslim world who come here, unable or incapable of turning the American people toward Allah and toward Mecca and toward Islam, and then this little Black man from the cotton fields of Georgia is able to stand up and get Black people by the hundreds of thousands to turn toward Mecca five times a day and give praise to Allah and come together in unity and harmony, why you'd have to be out of your mind to think the people of the Muslim world don't recognize the wonderful religious and spiritual accomplishment that's being achieved here among the so-called Negroes by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

And I take time to mention that because the propagandists try and convey the picture that we're not Muslims, we're not religiously motivated, and that we are in no way identified or recognized or connected with our people of the Muslim world. Well if they didn't recognize us, we wouldn't care. We're not particularly looking for recognition. We're looking for recognition from Allah, from God, and if Allah accepts you as a Muslim, you're accepted. It's not left to somebody walking around here on this earth. But those people over there would be out of their minds, when they find themselves unable to spread the religion of Islam and then they see this little Black man here in America spreading it, why they'd be out of their mind to reject him. And you'll find if you take the time to look, that you don't find any Muslim today who rejects another Muslim.

You might find some who come over here, who operate stores or some kind of little business in the white neighborhood, the Christian neighborhood, and they want to get along with all the white people, with all the Christians.

-- 45 --
They might say some words to please you. But they're only trying to get your money.

So the followers of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad look to him and what he teaches, his program and his message, as our only solution. And they see separation as our only salvation.

We don't think as Americans any more, but as a Black man. With the mind of a Black man, we look beyond America. And we look beyond the interests of the white man. The thinking of this new type of Negro is broad. It's more international. This integrationist always thinks in terms of an American. But you find the masses of Black people today think in terms of Black. And this Black thinking enables them to see beyond the confines of America. And they look all over the world. They look at the happenings in the international context.

By this little integrationist Negro thinking locally, by his thinking and desires being confined to America, he's limited. He's the underdog. He's a minority. But the masses of Black people who have been exposed to the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, their thinking is more international. They look on this earth and they see that the majority of the people on this earth are dark. And by seeing that the majority of the people on this earth are dark, they don't regard themselves as a minority in America, but rather they regard themselves as part of that vast, dark majority.

So therefore, when you run into that type of Black man, he doesn't speak as an underdog. He doesn't speak like you outnumber him, or he doesn't speak like there's any harm that you can do to him. He speaks as one who outnumbers you. He sees that the dark world outnumbers the white world. That the odds have turned today and are in his favor, are on his side. He sees that the people of this earth are on his side. That time is on his side. That history is on his side. And most important of all, he sees that God is on his side toward getting him some kind of

-- 46 --
solution that's immediate, and that's lasting, and that is no way connected or concerned or stems from the goodwill or good conscience in any way, shape, 'soever of the man who created -- who committed the crime and created the problem in the first place.

I would like to point out, quickly and briefly -- no I won't, I think my time is up.

Voice: Just about.

Well Dr. here says my time is up, and I'm telling him his time is short. [Laughter] So I think what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

DISCUSSION PERIOD

[Following an extended comment by someone in the audience, there were questions from the floor.]

Question: Do you consider Elijah Muhammad as a prophet or as a leader?

Malcolm X: We never refer to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad as a prophet. He never refers to himself as that, and he teaches us that the world has no need for prophets today. But he's a leader, he's a leader of the Black people here in this country against the oppression and exploitation that our people have suffered for 400 years. And we need a leader from among ourselves, because our people back home never came and tried to relieve us of the suffering that we've undergone.

Question: I'm a white man --

Malcolm X: You're not a white man.

Question: If I was a white man, do you accept him to attend your mosque, to worship God with you?

Malcolm X: If the -- all of the Muslims in this country from Egypt and elsewhere have not been successful in getting the white man to turn toward the religion of Islam and they are born in the Muslim world, well we find we'd be wasting our time trying to convert the white man ourself. Mr. Muhammad is primarily concerned with the condition of the Black man in this country.

Now if the other Muslims who come here from abroad

-- 47 --
want to set up some kind of mosque and let the white man in it and teach him how to be a Muslim and get him to say, "No God but Allah," then they can do that. But they shouldn't criticize us for not doing it, because they haven't succeeded in doing it.

Question: Will you accept me in your mosque?

Malcolm X: Sir, you're not white.

Question: I'm asking you if a white man, many people are white men and they are Muslim too.

Malcolm X: I answered you. Mr. Muhammad's concern is not with the white man. His concern is with the Black man. . . . Islam means to submit to the will of one God whose personal and proper name is Allah. What you forget, if you're in the Muslim world practicing Islam, you're not faced with the same problem of Black people who have been kidnapped from the Muslim world and have been deprived of Islam.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: You have to ask the white man that. He's the one who segregates us. Segregation is done by him. You have to ask him that question. . . . Sir, I just want to add some light to your question.

We are brothers. Mr. Muhammad's youngest son attends al-Azhar, and his brother-in-law, in Egypt too. We are brothers, I was in Egypt. I lived in Egypt, I stayed in Egypt, and I was among brothers and I felt the spirit of brotherhood. But an Egyptian who comes to America should realize the problem confronted by Black people in this country. And when you see us being chased by a dog, the best thing for you to do is wait until the dog stops chasing us and then ask us some questions. Especially when you should have come a long time ago and helped your little brothers whip the dog. [Applause]

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: There are many different ways to understand politics. Number one, we're not a political group. We are not politically inclined or motivated nor are our

-- 48 --
political aims in any way connected with the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. But when you study the science of politics, or study it as it's practiced in the UN at the international level, you'll find usually on questions you have those who say yes, those who say no, those who don't say anything.

Those who don't say anything usually are the neutrals. And by abstaining they have just as much political power, if not more so, than those who take an active part in all situations. Where the Negro in America is concerned, he's been without the ballot so long, today when he gets the ballot, he's ballot-happy. He's like the man to whom you give a gun, and he just starts shooting to let everybody know he's got a gun. He doesn't aim at anything.

Well, we believe in shooting, too. But we first believe that we should have a target and then when that target gets within our reach, then we'll put the bullet where it belongs. Or the ballot where it belongs. Whatever you call it, where it belongs. We don't see at this point where the Black man gains anything in politics.

Let me just give you an example. In the last presidential election, whites were evenly divided between Kennedy and Nixon. It was the Negro who went for Kennedy, 80 percent, and put Kennedy in the White House. And they went for him based upon the promises -- false promises, by the way -- that he made. Well, facts are facts. He said he [Applause] -- I think everybody has a right to his opinion. [Laughter] And I'm quite certain those who are familiar with Kennedy's promises to the Negro know what he said he could do with the stroke of his pen. And he was in office for two years before he found where his fountain pen was [Laughter and applause] where the Negro was concerned. [Applause]

And the excuse that he used was that he first had to change the attitude of southern segregationists. Now he didn't tell you that when he asked you to vote for him. But once he got in, then he had to tell you what problems he

-- 49 --
was facing. He didn't want to take a stand against the southern segregationists. But he did take a stand against U.S. Steel, which is the strongest corporation on this earth. He threw down the gauntlet. He threw down the gauntlet to Cuba. He has thrown down the gauntlet to anybody he desires. But when it comes to the Negro, he's always got an alibi that puts him off until a little while later. This is why we don't believe in any white politicians or anything like that can solve our problem. We'll get together among ourselves, with these students who go to these colleges and get equipped and solve the problem for ourselves. . . .

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: Whenever you send 15,000 troops and spend six or seven million dollars just to put one Negro in the midst of some yapping wolves, you haven't done that Negro nor the masses of Black people any favor, nor have you solved the problem. If it's legal and just and right for Meredith to be at the University of Mississippi according to Robert Kennedy, the attorney general, and all of the others, then every other Black man in Mississippi has just as much right to be there. So if you're going to spend all that money and all that manpower putting one in there, why not just go in and take the criminals who are responsible for keeping the masses out, and take them down off their posts and then open the doors to everybody. That would be a solution, but they're not going to do that. They always want to use methods that push one Negro at a time, then they use him to turn around and tell the masses, "You see, we're solving the problem." And the problem is still unsolved. . . .

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says the only way to solve the problem of the so-called Negro is complete separation in the United States. . . . The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says, every effort on the part of the government up till now to solve this problem by bringing about a just, equitable situation between whites and

-- 50 --
Blacks mixed up together here in this house has failed. Has failed absolutely. So he says that since you can't give the Negro justice in your house, let us leave this house and go back home.

Now at the same time that he says let us go back home to our own people and our own homeland, the government itself is the leading opposer toward any mass element of Black people becoming orientated in the direction of home. They put forth the effort to stop this. So what he says is, since you can't give it to us here mixed up in your house, and you don't want us to go home back to our own people, then the only alterantive is to separate the house. Give us part of this country and let us live in that part. [Laughter]

You've asked me to explain. Now you want me to proceed? You may think its funny, but one of these days you won't. [Applause] . . . He says that in this section that will be set aside for Black people, that the government should give us everything we need to start our own civilization. They should give us everything we need to exist for the next twenty-five years. And when you stop and consider the -- you shouldn't be shocked, you give Latin America $20 billion and they never fought for this country. They never worked for this country. You send billions of dollars to Poland and to Hungary, they're Communist countries, they never contributed anything here. [Applause]

This is what you should realize. The greatest contribution to this country was that which was contributed by the Black man. If I take the wages, just a moment, if I take the wages of everyone here, individually it means nothing, but collectively all of the earning power or wages that you earned in one week would make me wealthy. And if I could collect it for a year, I'd be rich beyond dreams. Now, when you see this, and then you stop and consider the wages that were kept back from millions of Black people, not for one year but for 310 years, you'll see how

-- 51 --
this country got so rich so fast. And what made the economy as strong as it is today. And all that, and all of that slave labor that was amassed in unpaid wages, is due someone today. And you're not giving us anything when we say that it's time to collect.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: Up until a few years ago, the whole dark world, which was then the majority, was ruled by Europe -- the white man, who was actually a minority.

And realizing that they were only ruled because of the scientific effort put forth to divide and conquer by the European whites, all of the people black, brown, red, and yellow in Africa got together in what was known as the Bandung Conference. 4 They realized that they had religious differences, economic differences, educational differences, even cultural differences. And they agreed to submerge all of their differences because they had one thing in common -- oppression, exploitation. And they had an oppressor in common, an exploiter in common -- the European. Once they realized they had this in common, they had a common enemy and they reached the agreement not to fight among themselves anymore.

And just by being able to submerge their own differences and come together in a spirit of unity, the Bandung Conference produced the condition by which all of the nations in Africa that are independent today were able to secure their independence. And so they have come into the UN. Now they are in a position they can outvote the white man. And it has actually created an accomplishment.

-- 52 --
Whereas in the past you had European, white Christians always at the helm in the UN, today the black, brown, red, and yellow people of Africa and Asia so greatly outnumber the white man, they can't get a white, Christian European elected to any position of power. Usually, the secretariat and the president's chair stays in the hands of an African, an Asian, a Muslim, a Hindu, or a Christian. This is what unity is able to do.

And here in America, the Negro, the so-called Negroes, all we have to do is forget our differences. Usually whites cite things to try and divide us, and then use us one against the other. They try and use the NAACP against the Muslims, Muslims against CORE; they try and keep them all fighting one another. And as we fight one another, they continue to rule. So what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad says is what you and I should do is forget all of our differences and put first things first. Get at the one who's holding both of us down and we can talk to each other later on.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: The South African whites are, number one, on a continent where they don't belong and have no business there and won't be there that much longer. [Laughter and applause] The Black people in South Africa outnumber the whites there about eleven to one. [Applause] The Blacks in South Africa outnumber the whites. Enough to get rid of them when the time comes. Now, their type of separation is not the type of separation that we're looking for. We're looking for a separation in which we have our own. We can either go back home and practice it or we can stay here and practice it. But we are not going to sit around with this integration hypocrisy that whites are talking about which will take another hundred years. The only thing you can bring about in the morning is complete separation. It has no connection or comparison whatsoever with that which is being practiced in South Africa.

-- 53 --

South African apartheid is segregation. It's not separation. And they are afraid to let those Africans build up a society of their own in which they will become equal or just as powerful politically, economically, and otherwise as the whites are in their parts. They don't want that. No, no comparison whatsoever. Theirs is something of the past, it's outmoded and it's on its way out. Ours is riding on the wave of the future. . . .

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: If you can't receive justice in a man's house, that man deprives you of justice, he should let you leave. And if he doesn't want you to leave his house, yet he can't give you justice in the house, he'll end up losing the whole house himself. This is what America is faced with.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: No, the Fruit -- you asked another question within that -- the Fruit of Islam are the brothers who have been reformed, rehabilitated; who don't drink, don't smoke, don't commit fornication or adultery, don't become involved in any kind of crime. Who learn how to respect their women -- to respect the Black woman, who has never had any respect or protection in this society. These are the brothers who have actually reformed themselves and they set an example of what the religion of Islam will do for others of the so-called Negroes. And these brothers will give you respect when you respect them.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: No, they don't comprise a small army. But an army in this sense -- army only means a lot of people. They don't comprise an army in the sense that they are looking for violence. But you will find this: that a Muslim brother, whenever he's attacked, he'll defend himself.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: No, I'll answer the last question first. No, there's no such thing as a sincere white liberal -- listen I'm giving you my answer. You can hiss all night, that's what the snake did in the Garden of Eden. [Laughter and

-- 54 --
applause] Usually you'll find, sir, that in any integrated group that the so-called Negro has, if you examine its composition, where the whites are concerned, they end up leading it, they end up ruling it, they end up controlling it.

I'll give you an example. The NAACP is one of the leading organizations that Negroes have. It has been in existence for fifty-four years, and the Black people in the NAACP have never had enough power in there to elect a Black man as the national president. They have an election every year. Which means they have had an election fifty-four times in fifty-four years. And every time, they've had to elect a white man. The man who is the president of it now, Arthur Spingarn, has been president of it for twenty-four consecutive years.

Now if -- I'm not knocking the NAACP -- but if the NAACP -- I'm just, uhm, analyzing it. [Laughter] If the NAACP in fifty-four years cannot get a Black man qualified to be its national president, then it leads me to believe either they are failing to create and develop the proper leadership caliber among the Black people in it, or else they are practicing the same discrimination that they accuse the white man of.

Where CORE is concerned -- the Urban League is another famous Negro organization that's integrated. It has a white president. It has never had a Black president. CORE has a Negro national director; but he's a Negro who's married to a white woman. James Farmer, he's married to a white woman and that almost makes him a white man. Although they have a Black -- they have a white president also. It's true -- Farmer, in 1945, divorced his Black wife and married a white woman.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: In the UN with the Lebanese or Arabs -- in the UN you have the Afro-Asian-Arab bloc. Now a lot of Arabs might like for you to think that they are white, but whenever you see them involved in the international

-- 55 --
picture, they are lined up with the dark world. Those who are making progress are lined up with the dark world. Afro-Asian-Arab. They can come around here and pose as white. But when they get back home, they're not white. . . .

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: You never heard me today refer to myself as a Black Muslim. This is what the press says. We call ourselves Muslim. Just a moment. We call ourselves Muslim -- we don't call ourselves Black Muslims. This is what the newspapers call us. This is what Dr. Eric Lincoln calls us. We are Muslims. Black, brown, red, and yellow.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: Now you say that we come here and use Islam for political purposes because we reject the white man. When the Algerians refused to integrate with the French, did that make, mean that they weren't Muslims? When the Arabs refused to integrate with the Israelis, does that mean they're not Muslims? When the Pakistanis refused to integrate with the Hindus, does that mean they're not Muslims? No, just a moment. The Algerians have the right to reject the French, who exploited them. The Arabs have the right to reject the Israelis, whom they feel exploit them. The Pakistanis have the right to reject the Hindus, whom they feel exploit them. The Algerians are still Muslims. The Arabs are still Muslims and the Pakistanis are still Muslims. There are 20 million Black people in this country who have been here for 400 years. And who have suffered the worst form of abuse ever perpetrated on a people in the twentieth century. Now when we accept Islam as our religion, that doesn't mean that we are religiously wrong to reject the man who has exploited us and colonized us here in this country.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: It's not wrong to expect justice. It's not

-- 56 --
wrong to expect freedom. It's not wrong to expect equality. If Patrick Henry and all of the Founding Fathers of this country were willing to lay down their lives to get what you are enjoying today, then it's time for you to realize that a large, ever-increasing number of Black people in this country are willing to die for what we know is due us by birth.

The white man is being given a favor, when you give him a chance today to solve a problem that stems from a crime that he committed himself. You ask me -- like I'm committing a crime or asking for something that's ethically wrong or morally wrong when we seek a solution to this problem right now. A problem that has the government all tied up all over this earth. What you need to realize, you from India, you from Iraq, you from Egypt, and you from right here in America, and we who are enslaved -- that a crime has been committed against the Negro. Some of you from over there, you knew we were over here and never come over here to help us, and now when we stand up and are ready to help ourselves, don't come with your criticism. Help us.

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: Would you think that I was wrong if I asked: how are you going to integrate? If the Supreme Court says integrate, and they can't do it, and that's the highest court -- we're not rejecting anything. We reserve -- I said no, he asked me was I rejecting, were we rejecting violence or were we rejecting peaceful methods. We don't reject any methods. We leave -- we reserve the right to use whatever method that will bring about a solution to the problem and then when -- and the reason that I haven't -- Sir, I don't think you would give me credit. If you have a lamb inside of a wolf's den and you need to get that lamb out of the clutches of that wolf, you don't stand up and tell the lamb, how are you going to take him, or where you're going to take him, while he's still in the clutches of the wolf, or while he's still under

-- 57 --
the jurisdiction of the wolf. . . .

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: As you say, [Uncle] Tom always was a good actor. And where the white man thinks we're dangerous to him, Tom is more dangerous to the white man than anyone, because Tom has him fooled.

The white man knows where we stand; but Tom today is waking up the same as anybody else. Well, you won't get any argument out of me. It is true that many Negroes in prominent positions who have been known Uncle Toms in the past today are waking up, and their allegiances and other aims are very much camouflaged still, as they were then. . . .

[Question unintelligible]

Malcolm X: We'll do it the same way the Jews got what they wanted. They got their own state, their own country. No, they got it, and yeah, well you're right, it was given to them by England and Truman. But, sir, no the Jews are the ones who usually represent themselves as white liberals. More so probably than any other segment of this society. Now if the Jews are genuinely liberal and they want to help the Negro, then they should show the Negro how to use the same kind of strategy and tactics to solve his problem that they used to solve their problems. And you'll find that all over this country, wherever the Jews have been segregated and Jim Crowed, they haven't sat-in, they haven't been sit-in or Freedom Riders, they usually go and use the economic weapon. They bought Atlantic City, and now they can go there. They bought Miami Beach and now they can go there. [Laughter and applause]

-- 59 --

America's gravest crisis since the Civil War
MR. MODERATOR, students and faculty here at the University of California, brothers and sisters, friends and enemies. [Laughter] The bell up there took so long to stop ringing, I began to suspect that it was probably being manipulated by an integrationist. [Laughter and applause]

Recently the state of California, the Supreme Court here, denied Negro inmates who had become converted to the religion of Islam while serving time in these penal institutions of this state, denied them the right to receive qualified Muslim religious instructors from the outside on the ground that the Muslims who follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad are not an authentic religious group.

At the same time, the state's esteemed body of educators here at the University of California barred me from speaking on this campus on the grounds that we do represent an authentic religious group. [Laughter] It meant that your top judicial body deprives us of our religious rights by saying we aren't a bona fide religious group, and your top body of educators -- I think that's what they'd be called -- deprive us of our religious rights by saying we are a bona fide religious group.

Well, I'm happy and thankful to our God, Allah, for enabling them to come to some kind of conclusion as to what we actually are. Because it confused us to see how two important branches of your state government could

-- [60] --
logically come to opposite conclusions on the same subject.

Or is it that in this state you are permitted the type of intellectual flexibility that enables your state government to speak out of both sides of its mouth in this manner at the same time? And to make certain that there'd be no clarification of the misunderstanding about our religion, I read in the -- I think the San Francisco Chronicle, or one of your papers, yesterday -- that I was permitted to speak here as long as I didn't get into religion, or stuck to what they call secular matters.

So it's not my intention to discuss the Muslim religious group today nor the Muslim religion, but I am a Muslim. But I intend to stick to secular problems. It's like inviting a Catholic priest or bishop here to speak but forbidding him to mention Catholicism or the pope. Or inviting Billy Graham and telling him not to mention Christ. Or a member of the Kennedy family and expecting him not to mention politics.

It boils down to inviting a Muslim minister to speak on what you call secular problems but denying him the right to speak religiously or from a religious point of view. It's like telling a bird to fly without his wings. Or a race horse to run without his legs. Then you condemn that bird that you have crippled yourself and condemn the horse that you've also crippled because it can't keep up. This is very hypocritical. But tomorrow, or Sunday, rather, it's our intention to hold a meeting at the Civic Center in Richmond, at 1:00 p.m. at which time we intend to spell out our religious beliefs, our religious motives, and our religious objectives.

Today during the time that we have, we would like to point out that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that America is faced with her gravest crisis since the Civil War. Wherever we look today, whether it be in the South, the North, the East, or the West, we see ever-increasing racial tensions.

-- 61 --

We see the increase of racial animosity, the increase of racial hostility, and the increase of outright racial hatred. We see masses of Black people who have lost all confidence in the false promises of the hypocritical white politicians. We see masses of Black people who are thoroughly fed up with the deceit of the so-called white liberals, or the white so-called liberals. White liberals who have posed as our friends, white liberals who have been eager to point out what the white man in the South is doing to our people there, while they themselves are doing the same thing to us here in the North.

They have been making a great fuss over the South only to blind us to what is happening here in the North. And now that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad has opened the eyes of America's 20 million Blacks, we can easily see that this white fox here in the North is even more cruel and more vicious than the white wolf in the South. The southern wolves always let you know where you stand. But these northern foxes pose as white liberals. They pose as your friend, as your benefactor, as your employer, as your landlord, as your neighborhood merchant, as your lawyer. They use integration for infiltration. They infiltrate all your organizations, and in this manner, by joining you, they strangle your militant efforts toward true freedom.

Throughout America, here in the North, as well as the South, masses of Black people are demonstrating against the oppression and exploitation of the American white man. Our people have lost all fear of the white man. They have ceased to waste their love on the white man, and they have ceased turning their nonviolent cheek to the violent white man. And because of this new fearless, more militant attitude on the part of our people, we see the increase of violence and bloodshed between the white oppressor and the oppressed, the white exploiter and the exploited, the white former slavemaster and his 20 million ex-slaves.

-- 62 --

The question that is asked, where will all of this end? I repeat, America is faced with her worst domestic crisis since the Civil War. The worst crisis since the Revolutionary War. For America now faces a race war. The entire country is on the verge of erupting into racial violence and bloodshed simply because 20 million ex-slaves here in America are demanding freedom, justice, and equality from their former slavemasters.

Twenty million so-called Negroes, second-class citizens, seeking nothing but human dignity and human rights, the right to live in dignity as a human being. And rather than give genuine sincere respect to your cry for human rights, the American white man answers your nonviolence with violence. He answers your prayers and freedom songs with false promises, deceitful maneuvers, and outright bloodshed.

According to what we were taught from the white man's textbooks in school, the Revolutionary War and the Civil War were two wars fought on American soil supposedly for freedom and democracy. But if these two wars were really fought for freedom and human dignity of all men, why are 20 million of our people still confined and enslaved here in America by second-class citizenship? The truth is that the Revolutionary War was fought on American soil to free the American white man from the English white man. The Revolutionary War was never fought to provide freedom and a democracy in this white country for the Black man. Our people remained slaves here in America even after the Declaration of Independence was signed. In fact most of the white Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence were slave owners themselves.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that it is sheer ignorance, insanity, for our people to celebrate the Fourth of July as Independence Day, while white America denies us the first-class citizenship that goes with independence. And it is nothing but hypocrisy on the part of

-- 63 --
the American white man to pretend that the Revolutionary War was truly a war of independence as long as 20 million Black people here in America are denied the privileges of an independent people.

The Civil War was fought on this continent, but not to free the Black slaves as is commonly taught in the white man's schools. The Civil War was actually fought to preserve the Union, to keep the country intact for white people.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that in essence this means the American white man fought the Revolutionary War to get this country for himself. He then fought the Civil War to keep this country intact for himself. And today he will now fight a race war to keep from having to share this country on an equal basis with anyone else but himself. Especially on an equal basis with his 20 million former slaves.

So again I ask, where will these demonstrations end? And who dares to say that our people are not justified in demonstrating our resentment over the injustice and mistreatment that our people have suffered these 400 years at the hands of this cruel, inhuman American white man?

The Black masses are crying out, "What have we to lose but our chains? What have we to lose but the hell that we experience every day living in these rat-filled slums that we're relegated to?" The worst housing conditions in America always exist in the so-called Negro community. Yet the white liberals, who own these run-down houses, force us to pay the highest rent. Faced with this high overhead, we are forced to take in roomers in order to help make up our rent. Our apartments are filled with both relatives and strangers. Our communities soon become overcrowded. These overcrowded conditions under which our people are forced to live eliminate all chances for a normal life, a clean life, or a healthy life.

Because our children grow up in this overcrowded

-- 64 --
atmosphere, the lack of much-needed privacy destroys their sense of shame. It lowers their moral standards and leaves them exposed to every form of indecency and vice imaginable. Our young girls, our daughters, our baby sisters become unwed mothers before they are hardly out of their teens. Our community has thousands of unmarried mothers, mothers who have no hope of ever getting a husband. And our community has tens of thousands of little babies who have no father to act as their provider or protector. In fact the only provider many of our children know is the white welfare agent or the white social worker. Many of our children actually mistake the welfare agent or the white social worker for their father. And oftentimes this is true. [Commotion and applause]

The overcrowded homes of our community force us to live under some of the worst sanitary conditions imaginable. It becomes almost impossible to practice the rules of good hygiene. And therefore tuberculosis, syphilis, gonorrhea, and other destructive social diseases are on the rampage throughout our community.

Our people in the Negro community are trapped in a vicious cycle of ignorance, poverty, disease, sickness, and death. There seems to be no way out. No way of escape. The wealthy, educated Black bourgeoisie, those uppity Negroes who do escape, never reach back and pull the rest of our people out with them. The Black masses remain trapped in the slums.

And because there seems to be no hope or no other escape, we turn to wine, we turn to whiskey, and we turn to reefers, marijuana, and even to the dreadful needle -- heroin, morphine, cocaine, opium -- seeking an escape.

Many of us turn to crime, stealing, gambling, prostitution. And some of us are used by the white overlords downtown to push dope in the Negro community among our own people. Unemployment and poverty have forced many of our people into a life of crime. But the real criminal is in the City Hall downtown, in the State

-- 65 --
House, and in the White House in Washington, D.C. The real criminal is the white liberal, the political hypocrite. And it is these legal crooks who pose as our friends, force us into a life of crime, and then use us to spread the white man's evil vices in our community among our own people.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that our people are scientifically maneuvered by the white man into a life of poverty. Because we are forced to live in the poorest sections of the city, we attend inferior schools. We have inferior teachers and we get an inferior education. The white power structure downtown makes certain that by the time our people do graduate, we won't be equipped or qualified for anything but the dirtiest, heaviest, poorest-paying jobs. Jobs that no one else wants.

We are trapped in a vicious cycle of economic, intellectual, social, and political death. Inferior jobs, inferior housing, inferior education which in turn again leads to inferior jobs. We spend a lifetime in this vicious circle. Or in this vicious cycle going in circles. Giving birth to children who see no hope or future but to follow in our miserable footsteps.

So we thank God for the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. We who are Muslims saw no way out until we accepted the religion of Islam and the spiritual guidance of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. We saw no solution to our problems. We saw no real leader among our people.

But today the whole world is talking about the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the divine solution he received from the God of our forefathers. Not your God but from the God of our forefathers. Not a temporary solution which will benefit only the handpicked upper-class Negroes, but a solution divinely designed to solve the plight of the Black masses in this country permanently and forever.

The government does not want our people to listen and understand the solution that God has given the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. The government is against Mr.

-- 66 --
Muhammad because the government is against our God. In order to trick our people away from God's true solutions, the government is trying to deceive our people with a false solution, a phony solution, a deceitful solution called token integration. I may add, whenever you get on the bus or the subway or the streetcar and you have to use a token, that token is not the real thing but it is a substitute for the real thing. And wherever you have a token, you have a substitute. And wherever you have token integration, you don't have anything but a substitute for integration and there's no real integration anywhere in North America -- North, South, East, or West, not even in San Francisco, Oakland, or Berkeley. [Applause]

Has the government effort to bribe our people with token integration made our plight better, or has it made it worse? When you tried to integrate the white community in search of better housing, the whites there fled to the suburbs. And the community that you thought would be integrated soon deteriorated into another all-Black slum. What happened to the liberal whites? Why did they flee? We thought that they were supposed to be our friends. And why did the neighborhood deteriorate only after our people moved in?

It is the tricky real estate agents posing as white liberal friends who encourage our people to force their way into white communities, and then they themselves sell these integrated houses at such high prices that our people again are forced to take in roomers to offset the high house notes. This creates in the new area the same overcrowded conditions, and the new community soon deteriorates into the same slum conditions from which we thought we had escaped. The only one who has benefited is the white real estate agent who poses as our friend, as a liberal, and who sells us the house in a community destined by his own greedy schemes to become nothing but a high-priced slum area.

-- 67 --

Today our people can see that integrated housing has not solved our problems. At best it was only a temporary solution. One in which only the wealthy, handpicked Negroes found temporary benefit.

After the 1954 Supreme Court desegregation decision, the same thing happened when our people tried to integrate the schools. All the white students disappeared into the suburbs. Now the caliber of what our people thought was to be an integrated school has fallen to the same level of the slum school from which we thought we had escaped. Just as efforts to integrate housing failed miserably, efforts to integrate schools have been an even more miserable failure.

Having failed to get integrated housing and failed to get integrated schools, now the Negro leaders are demanding integrated jobs. That is they are demanding a certain quota, or percentage, of white people's jobs.

First the Negro leadership demanded the white man's house, and the whites vacated their run-down houses for us and built new homes for themselves out in the suburbs. Then the Negro leaders demanded seats for our children in the white man's schools. The whites evacuated the schools as our children moved in and they built modern schools for themselves in the suburbs. But now the Negro leadership is demanding the white man's job. Can the whites vacate their jobs like they did their homes and their schools and move to the suburbs and create more jobs? No. Not without violence and bloodshed. The same white liberals who used to praise our people for their patient nonviolent approach have now become openly impatient and violent themselves in defense of their own jobs. Not only in the South but also in the North. Even here in the Bay Area.

For thirty-three years the Honorable Elijah Muhammad has been warning us that the time would come when the white man would not have enough jobs for himself much less enough jobs for our people. So the present

-- 68 --
demand of our people for more of the white man's jobs must lead to violence and bloodshed. It may even lead to a race war -- a bloody race war. And it is the government itself that is now pressing the people of this country into a racial bloodbath.

But the white man is misjudging the times and he is underestimating the American so-called Negro because we're living in a new day. Our people are now a new people. That old Uncle Tom -- type Negro is dead. Our people have no more fear of anyone, no more fear of anything. We are not afraid to go to jail. We are not afraid to give our very life itself. And we're not afraid to take the lives of those who try to take our lives. We believe in a fair exchange. [Applause]

We believe in a fair exchange. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A head for a head and life for a life. If this is the price of freedom, we won't hesitate to pay the price. [Applause]

By trying to oppose the divine solution that God has given to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the American government will actually provoke another Civil War. That is, this government -- and especially that present administration in Washington, D.C. -- will provoke a civil war among whites by trying to force them to give up their jobs and homes and schools to our people. And our people will provoke a race war by trying to take the white man's jobs and his schools and his home away from him.

This racial dilemma poses a serious problem for white America. Civil war between whites on the one hand, a race war between the whites and their 20 million ex-slaves on the other hand. And the entire dark world is watching, waiting to see what the American government will do to solve this problem once and for all.

We must have a permanent solution. A temporary solution won't do. Tokenism will no longer suffice. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad has the only permanent solution. Twenty million ex-slaves must be permanently

-- 69 --
separated from our former slavemaster and placed on some land that we can call our own. Then we can create our own jobs. Control our own economy. Solve our own problems instead of waiting on the American white man to solve our problems for us.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that on our own land we can set up farms, factories, businesses. We can establish our own government and become an independent nation. And once we become separated from the jurisdiction of this white nation, we can then enter into trade and commerce for ourselves with other independent nations. This is the only solution.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that in our own land we can establish our own agricultural system. We can grow food to feed our own people. We can raise cattle and use the hides, the leather, and the wool to clothe our people. We can dig the clay from the earth and make bricks to build homes for our people. We can turn the trees into lumber and furnish the homes for our own people.

He says that we can dig the natural resources from the earth once we are in our own land. Land is the basis of all economic security. Land is essential to freedom, justice, and equality. Land is essential to true independence. And the Honorable Elijah Muhammad says we must be separated from the American white man, returned to our own land where we can live among our own people. This is the only true solution.

For just as the biblical government of Egypt under Pharaoh was against Moses because Moses had been directed by God to separate the Hebrew slaves from Pharaoh and lead them out of the house of bondage to a land of their own, today this modern house of bondage under the authority of the American government opposes this modern Moses. Opposes the Honorable Elijah Muhammad's efforts to separate our people, who have been made slaves here in this country, and lead us to a land of our own.

-- 70 --

The government opposes the Honorable Elijah Muhammad's efforts to wake us up, clean us up, and stand us on our own feet so we can follow him out of this house of bondage to our own land where we can live among our own people. Just as the government of biblical Egypt was against the God of the Hebrew slaves, today the American government is against the God of her Negro slaves, the God of our forefathers. And just as that Pharaoh tried to trick the Hebrew slaves into rejecting the offers of salvation from their God by deceiving them with false promises through hired magicians and carefully staged demonstrations like the recent ridiculous march on Washington, 5 today this government is paying certain elements of the Negro leadership to deceive our people into thinking that we're going to get accepted soon into the mainstream of American life.

The government is deceiving our people with false promises so we won't want to return to our own land and people. The government is saying, "Stay here, don't listen to this Muhammad, we will desegregate the lunch counters and the theaters and the parks and the toilets" -- meaning this public accommodation thing where you can sit on a toilet with a white person or in a toilet with a white person. [Applause]

"We'll give you more civil rights bills. We won't give you civil rights, but we'll give you civil rights bills." The government promises our people this only to keep you from listening to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and to stop us from waking up. They know that if we listen to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad long enough, we will begin to do our own thinking. He'll make us see, hear, think, and able to speak for ourselves.

-- 71 --

Whenever you become fed up in this country with the white man's brutality and you get set to take matters in your own hands in order to defend yourself and your people, the same government -- and again I repeat, especially that Catholic administration in Washington, D.C. -- tries to pacify our people with deceitful promises of tricky civil rights legislation that is never designed to be a true solution to our problem. Civil rights legislation will never solve our problems. The white liberals are nothing but political hypocrites who use our people as political footballs only to get bills passed that will increase their own power.

The present proposed civil rights legislation will give the present administration dictatorial powers and make America a legal police state, but still won't solve the race problem. The present administration is only using civil rights as a political football to gain more legislation and power for itself. Our people are being used as pawns in the game of power politics by political hypocrites. They don't want our people to listen to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad because they know he will make them -- make us see them as they really are.

So I say in my conclusion, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad's message and solution is simple. He says: "Since we are not wanted in this country, let's pack our bags and go back home to our own people, to our own land." The propaganda of the American government is skillfully designed to make our people think that our people back home don't want us. Government propagandists tell us constantly, "Africa is a jungle. Africans are savage and backward. They have no modern conveniences and you're too much like us white folks. How could you live comfortably back there?"

This propaganda is government strategy against the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, realizing that his mission is to teach our people the truth about our own kind, clean us up, and then return us to our own land and unite us

-- 72 --
with our own people. The American government turns us against our own kind in order to keep us from making a mass exodus out of this country where we can live at home among our own people.

Therefore, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad says, American propaganda is designed to make us think that no matter how much hell we catch here, we're still better off in America than we'd be anywhere else. They want us to think we have no place else to go. And many of our so-called intellectuals who pose as our leaders and spokesmen actually believe that we have no place else to go. So their solution to our problem is that we stay here and continue to catch hell from the American white man.

But the only permanent solution is complete separation or some land of our own in a country of our own. All other courses will lead to violence and bloodshed. It will lead to the destruction of America, and it will also lead to the destruction of our people who fall for it. So his message is flee for your lives and save yourselves. And I thank you. [Applause]

DISCUSSION PERIOD

Question: In the last issue of Muhammad Speaks there was an article telling of the elimination of racial discrimination in Cuba; telling how Afro- and Latin-Cubans lived in harmony. How does this jibe with the devil concept of the white man and that the idea that freedom can only be achieved through separation? [Applause]

Malcolm X: The Cubans don't refer to themselves either as white people or Black people. They refer to themselves as people. You find the American white man is the one who has laid such stress on being white or being black. When you become a Muslim, you don't look at a man as being black, brown, red, or yellow. You look upon him as being a man. And this is something that is foreign to the American concept.

I don't know anything about Cuba. The article was written by Howard, a UN correspondent who spent time

-- 73 --
in Cuba along with the son of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad when all of the students went. And they did say that they found a great deal of equality, freedom, and justice among the people of Cuba. So I think that in that direction Castro has made a great accomplishment and contribution, but I haven't been there myself.

Now, when you try and bring the same thing about between the American white man and the American Black man, you're dealing with a man who used to have as total possession over the Black people in this country as a farmer has possession over his cow, his chickens, his horse. And this has created an attitude among American whites that they themselves find almost impossible to eliminate. And unless it is eliminated and until it is eliminated the problem will get worse instead of better. I personally don't think it will ever be eliminated. . . .

Question: How do you intend to gain possession of this land that you want and how do you intend to get there?

Malcolm X: That's a good question. Number one, we didn't have any trouble getting to America because the white man -- [Laughter and applause] By that I mean we weren't Pilgrims. We didn't come on the Mayflower, and we didn't come from Europe, and we didn't come of our own volition. We were brought here in chains at the bottom of a slave ship. And since we didn't pay transportation here, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that the contribution that the Black man made in this country, which amounts to 310 years of slave labor for which we have never been given a dime or a cent, places a burden upon the American white man today for which the government should pay. And he says that our people should be allowed to go back to our own homeland, that the government itself should supply us with the transportation.

And that they should supply us with the machinery and the tools necessary that will enable us to dig the soil and develop our own agricultural system and feed ourselves

-- 74 --
for the next twenty to twenty-five years until we are in a position to be completely independent and stand on our own feet. And he says that if the government does not want a mass exodus of Black people from this country back to our own homeland, since we cannot live in peace, together, mixed up on this continent, the alternative to that solution is to divide a separate part of this country into which our people can migrate.

For your clarification, because this has been brought up, some people say, "Well, why should the government do this?" If this government can send billions of dollars to Communist countries like Poland and Yugoslavia and to neutralist countries in Asia and Africa, who have never made any contribution whatsoever to the sum, net worth of this economy and country, and at the same time, this government feels that it is too much to set about something real to solve the problem for the slaves who made a greater contribution than even your people did, why the government doesn't even deserve to continue to function as a government. [Applause]

Question: You mentioned again, just now, land set aside for your people, sir. What land is available that's not already possessed by others?

Malcolm X: When you came to this country the land was inhabited by the Indians and you didn't have any problem then. [Applause]

Question: Actually, I have two questions. The first one I would like to ask you: Do you believe in Islam just because it gives you dignity as a Black man living in America? Or do you believe in Islam as a whole? So, if you believe in Islam as a whole, you know that Islam believes in socialism rather than capitalism. This is the first question. The second question: You said that Muhammad taught you that you should have your own land so you can find all, to do what you want in it. Will you please give me one statement either from the Koran or from Muhammad's speeches which says, you know, asks for this

-- 75 --
situation. [Applause]

Malcolm X: If I understood my Muslim brother correctly, I hope that he's aware of the fact that my opening statement pointed out that the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle, I think it was, told me that the only way I could come here and speak was to speak on secular matters rather than religious, and for that reason I pointed out at the outset that I wasn't going to get onto the religion of Islam. Since you, as a student I imagine, brought it up, it does open the door for me to reply and I thank you for it. [Applause]

Number one, Islam is a word which means in Arabic complete submission to the will of God. Complete obedience to the will of God. And this means -- and the Jews referred to this God as Jehovah. They're monotheistic. The Christians referred to him, I think, as Christ. Only they're polytheistic, and it's difficult to give one name to their many gods. [Applause]

So that in Islam, since we believe that there is one God, we believe that all of the prophets who came forth on this earth taught the same religion. Abraham was a Muslim; Moses was a Muslim; Jesus was a Muslim. And as Black men in America, we accept the religion of Islam because we recognize it as the true religion of God. This is why I'm a Muslim. I am a Muslim because the Honorable Elijah Muhammad has taught me that Islam is God's only religion. And it does say in the Holy Koran that this religion will overcome all other religions.

We believe that we're living in the day and the time and at the hour when God intends to make this religion, Islam, overcome all other religions. This is why we're Muslims. And we want to separate ourselves from America, because we believe that when God comes to establish the religion of Islam or the kingdom of Islam or the world of Islam, he can't do so without first destroying all other religions, governments, nations, and worlds that stand in his way. All governments that won't accept one religion

-- 76 --
and practice the principles of brotherhood, freedom, justice, and equality among all people, regardless of color, regardless of race or anything else involved, we believe that they'll be destroyed today, and we don't think that you can get the American people to accept the religion of Islam. I have no knowledge of socialism. That's something else. [Applause]

Question: Sir, you seem to interchange the term white liberal with hypocritical politician. I don't believe this is true. I don't believe that our