February 21st marked the 60th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X , one of the most influential political figures of the 20th century. Malcolm X was shot dead as he spoke before a packed audience at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem on February 21, 1965. Malcolm X had just taken the stage when shots rang out, riddling his body with bullets. He was 39 years old.

Malcolm X was a leading Black Nationalist revolutionary in the USA. He was part of the Nation of Islam for a time before falling out over political differences with its leader. He was an advocate of revolutionary struggle and was critical of those parts of the civil rights movement that only focussed on non-violence. 

Whilst he was ultimately a Black separatist (arguing that Black people in the USA should return to Africa) which is not a position that ACR agrees with, he was also someone who advocated socialism as a necessary struggle against both racism and capitalism. Malcolm X was clear – “You can’t have capitalism without racism” and despite some gains our movement has made since Malcolm X was murdered, the same struggle confronts us today. 

ACR will be publishing a series of Malcolm X’s speeches. Here is the first one:

Malcolm X on non-violence and the civil rights struggle

The following is part of a speech given by Malcolm X on December 31, 1964 at the Hotel Theresa. In his audience were 37 teenagers from McComb, Mississippi who were on an eight day trip to New York. The trip was sponsored by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for those youth who had been outstanding in the civil rights struggle in their area. 

One of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn is how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself. Then you can come to an intelligent decision for yourself. If you form the habit of going by what you hear others say about someone, or going by what others think about someone, instead of searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself, you will be walking west when you think you’re going east, and you will be walking east when you think you’re going west. This generation, especially of our people, has a burden, more so than any other time in history. The most important thing that we can learn to do today is think for ourselves. 

It’s good to keep wide-open ears and listen to what everybody else has to say, but when you come to make a decision, you have to weigh all of what you’ve heard on its own, and place it where it belongs, and come to a decision for yourself; you’ll never regret it. But if you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out for yourself, you’ll find that other people will have you hating your friends and loving your enemies. This is one of the things that our people are beginning to learn today— that it is very important to think out a situation for yourself. If you don’t do it, you’ll always be maneuvered into a situation where you are never fighting your actual enemies, where you will find yourself fighting your own self. I think our people in this country are the best examples of that. Many of us want to be nonviolent and we talk very loudly, you know, about being nonviolent. Here in Harlem, where there are probably more black people concentrated than any place in the world, some talk that nonviolent talk too. But we find that they aren’t nonviolent with each other. You can go out to Harlem Hospital, where there are more black patients than any hospital in the world, and see them going in there all cut up and shot up and busted up where they got violent with each other. 

My experience has been that in many instances where you find Negroes talking about nonviolence, they are not nonviolent with each other, and they’re not loving with each other, or forgiving with each other. Usually when they say they’re nonviolent, they mean they’re nonviolent with somebody else. I think you understand what I mean. They are nonviolent with the enemy. A person can come to your home, and if he’s white and wants to heap some kind of brutality on you, you’re nonviolent; or he can come to take your father and put a rope around his neck, and you’re nonviolent. But if another Negro just stomps his foot, you’ll rumble with him in a minute. Which shows you that there’s an inconsistency there. 

I myself would go for nonviolence if it was consistent, if everybody was going to be nonviolent all the time. I’d say, okay, let’s get with it, we’ll all be nonviolent. But I don’t go along with any kind of nonviolence unless everybody’s going to be nonviolent. If they make the Ku Klux Klan nonviolent, I’ll be nonviolent. If they make the White Citizens Council nonviolent, I’ll be nonviolent. But as long as you’ve got somebody else not being nonviolent, [ don’t want anybody coming to metalking any nonviolent talk. I don’t think it is fair to tell our people to be nonviolent unless someone is cut there making the Klan and the Citizens Council and these other groups also be nonviolent. 

Now, I’m not criticizing those here who are nonviolent. I think everybody should do it the way they feel is best, and I congratulate anybody who can be nonviolent in the face of all that kind of action in that part of the world. I don’t think that in 1965 you will find the upcoming generation of our people, especially those who have been doing some thinking, who will go along with any form of nonviolence unless nonviolence is going to be practiced all the way around. 

If the leaders of the nonviolent movement can go into the white community and teach nonviolence, good. I’d go along with that. But as long as I see them teaching nonviolence only in the black community, we can’t go along with that. We believe in equality, and equality means that you have to put the same thing over here that you put over there. And if black people alone are going to be the ones who are nonviolent, then it’s not fair. We throw ourselves off guard. In fact, we disarm ourselves and make ourselves defenseless…

The Organization of Afro-American Unity is a nonreligious group of black people who believe that the problems confronting our people in this country need to be re-analyzed and a new approach devised toward trying to get a solution. Studying the problem, we recall that prior to 1939 all of our people, in the North, South, East and West, no matter how much education we had, were segregated. We were segregated in the North just as much as we were segregated in the South. Even now there’s as much segregation in the North as there is in the South. There’s some worse segregation right here in New York City than there is in McComb, Mississippi; but up here they’re subtle and tricky and deceitful, and they make you think you’ve got it made when you haven’t even begun to make it yet. 

Prior to 1939, our people were in a very menial position or condition. Most of us were waiters and porters and bellhops and janitors and waitresses and things of that sort. It was not until war was declared with Germany, and America became involved in a manpower shortage in regards to her factories plus her army, that the black man in this country was permitted to make a few strides forward. It was never out of some kind of moral enlightenment or moral awareness on the part of Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam only let the black man take a step forward when he himself had his back to the wall. 

In Michigan, where I was brought up at that time, I recall that the best jobs in the city for blacks were waiters out at the country club. In those days if you had a job waiting table in the country club, you had it made. Or if you had a job at the State House. Having a job at the State House didn’t mean that you were a clerk or something of that sort; you had a shoeshine stand at the state house. Just by being there you could be around all those big-shot politicians —that made you a big-shot Negro. You were shining shoes, but you were a big-shot Negro because you were around big-shot white people and you could bend their ear and get up next to them. And ofttimes you were chosen by them to be the voice of the Negro community. 

Around that time, 1939 or ’40 or ’41, they weren’t drafting Negroes in the army or the navy. A Negro couldn’t join the navy in 1940 or ’41. They wouldn’t take a black man in the navy except to make him a cook. He couldn’t just go and join the navy, and I don’t think he could just go and join the army. They weren’t drafting him when the war first started. This is what they thought of you and me in those days. For one thing, they didn’t trust us; they feared that if they put us in the army and trained us in how to use rifles and other things, we might shoot at some targets that they hadn’t picked out. And we would have. Any thinking man knows what target to shoot at. If a man has to have someone else to choose his target, then he isn’t thinking for himself — they’re doing the thinking for him.  

The Negro leaders in those days were the same type we have today. When the Negro leaders saw all the white fellows being drafted and taken into the army and dying on the battlefield, and no Negroes were dying because they weren’t being drafted, the Negro leaders came up and said, “We’ve got to die too. We want to be drafted too, and we demand that you take us in there and let us die for our country too.” That was what the Negro leaders did back in 1940, I remember. A. Philip Randolph was one of the leading Negroes in those days who said it, and he’s one of the Big Six right now; and this is why he’s one of the Big Six. 

So they started drafting Negro soldiers then, and started letting Negroes get into the navy. But not until Hitler and Tojo and the foreign powers were strong enough to put pressure on this country, so that it had its back to the wall and needed us, [did] they let us work in factories. Up until that time we couldn’t work in the factories; I’m talking about the North as well as the South. And when they let us work in the factories, at first they let us in only as janitors. After a year or so passed by, they let us work on machines. We became machinists, got a little more skill. If we got a little more skill, we made a little more money, which enabled us to live in a little better neighborhood. When we lived in a little better neighborhood, we went to a little better school, got a little better education and could come out and get a little better job. So the cycle was broken somewhat.

But the cycle was not broken out of some kind of sense of moral responsibility on the part of the government. No, the only time that cycle was broken even to a degree was when world pressure was brought to bear on the United States government. They didn’t look at us as human beings —they just put us into their system and let us advance a little bit farther because it served their interests. They never let us advance a little bit farther because they were interested in us as human beings. Any of you who have a knowledge of history, sociology, or political science, or the economic development of this country and its race relations—go back and do some research on it and you’ll have to admit that this is true. 

It was during the time that Hitler and Tojo made war with this country and put pressure on it [that] Negroes in this country advanced a little bit. At the end of the war with Germany and Japan, then Joe Stalin and Communist Russia were a threat. During that period we made a little more headway. Now the point that I’m making is this: Never at any time in the history of our people in this country have we made advances or progress in any way based upon the internal good will of this country. We have made advancement in this country only when this country was under pressure from forces above and beyond its control. The internal moral consciousness of this country is bankrupt. It hasn’t existed since they first brought us over here and made slaves out of us. They make it appear they have our good interests at heart, but when you study it, every time, no matter how many steps they take us forward, it’s like we’re standing on— what do you call that thing?— a treadmill. The treadmill is moving backwards faster than we’re able to go forward in this direction. We’re not even standing still— we’re going backwards. 

In studying the process of this so-called progress during the past twenty years, we of the Organization of AfroAmerican Unity realized that the only time the black man in this country is given any kind of recognition, or even listened to, is when America is afraid of outside pressure, or when she’s afraid of her image abroad. So we saw that it was necessary to expand the problem and the struggle of the black man in this country until it went above and beyond the jurisdiction of the United States . . . 

I was fortunate enough to be able to take a tour of the African continent during the summer. I went to Egypt, then to Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia and Algeria. I found, while I was traveling on the African continent, I had already detected it in May, that someone had very shrewdly planted the seed of division on this continent to make the Africans not show genuine concern with our problem, just as they plant seeds in your and my minds so that we won’t show concern with the African problem . . .. 

I also found that in many of these African countries the head of state is genuinely concerned with the problem of the black man in this country; but many of them thought if they opened their mouths and voiced their concern that they would be insulted by the American Negro leaders. Because one head of the state in Asia voiced his support of the civil-rights struggle in 1963| and a couple of the Big Six had the audacity to slap his face and say they weren’t interested in that kind of help—which in my opinion is asinine. So the African leaders only had to be convinced that if they took an open stand at the governmental level and showed interest in the problem of black people in this country, they wouldn’t be rebuffed.  

And today you’ll find in the United Nations, and it’s not an accident, that every time the Congo question or anything on the African continent is being debated, they couple it with what is going on, or what is happening to you and me, in Mississippi and Alabama and these other places. In my opinion, the greatest accomplishment that was made in the struggle of the black man in America in 1964 toward some kind of real progress was the successful linking together of our problem with the African problem, or making our problem a world problem. Because now, whenever anything happens to you in Mississippi, it’s not just a case of somebody in Alabama getting indignant, or somebody in New York getting indignant. The same repercussions that you see all over the world when an imperialist or foreign power interferes in some section of Africa—you see repercussions, you see the embassies being bombed and burned and overturned — nowadays, when something happens to black people in Mississippi, you’ll see the same repercussions all over the world. 

I wanted to point this out to you because it is important for you to know that when you’re in Mississippi, you’re not alone. As long as you think you’re alone, then you take a stand as if you’re a minority or as if you’re outnumbered, and that kind of stand will never enable you to win a battle. You’ve got to know that you’ve got as much power on your side as that Ku Klux Klan has on its side. And when you know that you’ve got as much power on your side as the Klan has on its side, you’ll talk the same kind of language with that Klan as the Klan is talking with you . . . . 

I think in 1965, whether you like it, or I like it, or they like it, or not, you will see that there is a generation of black people becoming mature to the point where they feel that they have no more business being asked to take a peaceful approach than anybody else takes, unless everybody’s going to take a peaceful approach. 

So we here in the Organization of Afro-American Unity are with the struggle in Mississippi one thousand per cent. We’re with the efforts to register our people in Mississippi to vote one thousand per cent. But we do not go along with anybody telling us to help nonviolently. We think that if the government says that Negroes have a right to vote, and then some Negroes come out to vote, and some kind of Ku Klux Klan is going to put them in the river, and the government doesn’t do anything about it, it’s time for us to organize and band together and equip ourselves and qualify ourselves to protect ourselves. And once you can protect yourself, you don’t have to worry about being hurt . . . . 

If you don’t have enough people down there to do it, we’ll come down there and help you do it. Because we’re tired of this old runaround that our people have been given in this country. IFor a long time they accused me of not getting involved in politics. They should’ve been glad [ didn’t get involved in politics, because anything I get in, I’m in it all the way. If they say we don’t take part in the 

Mississippi struggle, we will organize brothers here in New York who know how to handle these kind of affairs, and they’ll slip into Mississippi like Jesus slipped into Jerusalem. 

That doesn’t mean we’re against white people, but we sure are against the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Councils; and anything that looks like it’s against us, we’re against it. Excuse me for raising my voice, but this thing, you know, gets me upset. Imagine that— a country that’s supposed to be a democracy, supposed to be for freedom and all of that kind of stuff when they want to draft you and put you in the army and send you to Saigon to fight for them —and then you’ve got to turn around and all night long discuss how you’re going to just get a right to register and vote without being murdered. Why, that’s the most hypocritical government since the world began! . . .

I hope you don’t think I’m trying to incite you. Just look here: Look at yourselves. Some of you are teen-agers, students. How do you think I feel —and I belong to a generation ahead of you—how do you think I feel to have to tell you, “We, my generation, sat around like a knot on a wall while the whole world was fighting for its human rights—and you’ve got to be born into a society where you still have that same fight.” What did we do, who preceded you? I’ll tell you what we did: Nothing. And don’t you make the same mistake we made . . . . 

You get freedom by letting your enemy know that you’ll do anything to get your freedom; then you’ll get it. It’s the only way you’ll get it. When you get that kind of attitude, they’ll label you as a “crazy Negro,” or they’ll call you a “crazy nigger”— they don’t say Negro. Or they’ll call you an extremist or a subversive, or seditious, or a red or a radical. But when you stay radical long enough, and get enough people to be like you, you’ll get your freedom . . . . 

So don’t you run around here trying to make friends with somebody who’s depriving you of your rights. They’re not your friends, no, they’re your enemies. Treat them like that and fight them, and you’ll get your freedom; and after you get your freedom, your enemy will respect you. And we’ll respect you. And [ say that with no hate. I don’t have hate in me. I have no hate at all. I don’t have any hate. I’ve got some sense. I’m not going to let somebody who hates me tell me to love him. I’m not that wayout. And you, young as you are, and because you start thinking, you’re not going to do it either. The only time you’re going to get in that bag is if somebody puts you there. Somebody else, who doesn’t have your welfare at heart…

I want to thank all of you for taking the time to come to Harlem and especially here. I hope that you’ve gotten a better understanding about me. I put it to you just as plain as I know how to put it; there’s no interpretation necessary. And I want you to know that we’re not in way trying to advocate any kind of indiscriminate, unintelligent action. Any kind of action that you are ever involved in that’s designed to protect the lives and property of mistreated people in this country, we’re with you one thousand per cent. And if you don’t feel you’re qualified to do it, we have some brothers who will slip in, as I said earlier, and help train you and show you how to equip yourself and let you know how to deal with the man who deals with you.