You waste your time involving yourself in any kind of organization that is not directly connected with our brothers and sisters on the African continent. Can I prove it? Yes. There was a time in this country when they used to use the expression about Chinese, "He doesn't have a Chinaman's chance." Remember when they used to say that about the Chinese? You don't hear them saying that nowadays. Because the Chinaman has more chance now than they do....
It was not until China became independent and strong that Chinese people all over the world became respected.... Once China became independent and strong and feared, then wherever you saw a Chinaman, he was independent, he was strong, he was feared and he was respected.
It's the same way with you and me.... You and I have to get our people behind us, our people in our own motherland and fatherland. Just as a strong China has produced a respected Chinaman, a strong Africa will produce a respected Black man anywhere that Black man goes on this earth. It's only with a strong Africa, an independent Africa and a respected Africa that wherever those of African origin or African heritage or African likeness go, they will be respected....
And all thinking people today who have been oppressed are revolutionary. Any time you find somebody today who's afraid of the word "revolution," get him on out of your way. He's living in the wrong era. He's behind the times. He hasn't awakened yet. This is the era of revolution....
You notice two years ago the American press was calling your and my struggle a revolution - "Negro revolution, Negro revolution." Now, they didn't mind calling it that, and they didn't mind you referring to it as that, because they knew that what was happening was no revolution. But when you start using the word "revolution" in its real sense, then they get shaky. They start classifying you as a fanatic, or something subversive or seditious, or other than a law-abiding person. But today we're living in an era of revolution, which means an era of change, when people who are being oppressed want a change. And they don't want a gradual change....
You know they have freedom movements on the African continent. There are many liberation movements; there are movements of Africans from South Africa, from Mozambique, from South-West Africa, Bechuanaland, Swaziland, Angola. In every country, in every area on the African continent that has not tossed aside the shackles of colonialism, they have developed a liberation movement, and the purpose of these liberation movements is to throw aside the oppressor....
My main theme, while I was traveling with our brothers abroad, on the African continent, was to try and impress upon them that 22 million of our people here in America consider ourselves inseparably linked with them, that our origin is the same and our destiny is the same, and that we have been kept apart now for too long.
This doesn't mean that we're getting ready to pack up our bags and take a boat back to Africa....That's not necessary. But what is necessary is that we have to go back mentally, we have to go back culturally, we have to go back spiritually, and philosophically, and psychologically....
This was the essence of every discussion - that the problems are one, that the destiny is the same, the origin is the same. Even the experiences are the same; they catch hell, we catch hell....
Never let anybody tell you and me the odds are against us - I don't even want to hear that. Those who think the odds are against you, forget it. The odds are not against you. The odds are against you only when you're scared. The only things that makes odds against you is a scared mind. When you get all of that fright off of you, there's no such thing as odds against you. Because when a man knows that when he starts playing with you, he's got to kill you, that man is not going to play with you....
I don't want you to think that I'm coming back here to rabble-rouse, or to get somebody excited.... I hope that all of us can sit down with a cool head and a clear mind and analyze the situation, in the back room, anywhere, analyze the situation; and after we give the proper analysis of what we're confronted by, then let us be bold enough to take whatever steps that analysis says must be taken. Once we get it, then let's do it, and we'll be able to get some kind of result in this freedom struggle.
But don't let anybody who is oppressing us ever lay the ground rules. Don't go by their game, don't play the game by their rules. Let them know now that this is a new game, we've got some new rules, and these rules mean anything goes....
We've got to link up with our people who are in the Caribbean, in Trinidad, in Jamaica, in all the islands, and we've got to link up with our people who are in Central America and South America. Everywhere you see someone who looks like us, we've got to get together. And once we get together, brothers, we can get some action, because we'll find we are not the underdog.