Vol. 71/No. 6      February 12, 2007

BY MALCOLM X  
So I think in 1965—whether you like it, or I like it, or we like it, or they like it, or not—you will see that there is a generation of Black people born in this country who become 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, we’re with the struggle in Mississippi 1,000 percent. We’re with the efforts to register our people in Mississippi to vote 1,000 percent. But we do not go along with anybody telling us to help nonviolently. We think if the government says that Negroes have a right to vote, and then when Negroes go out to vote 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. [Applause] And once you can protect yourself, you don’t have to worry about being hurt. That’s it. [Applause]… .

And if you don’t have enough of them down there to do it, we’ll come down there and help you do it. Because we are tired of this old runaround that our people have been given in this country.

For a long time they accused me of not getting involved in politics. They should’ve been glad I didn’t get involved in politics, because anything I get in, I’m in it all the way. Now if they say that we don’t take part in the Mississippi struggle, we will organize brothers here in New York who know how to handle these kinds of affairs, and they’ll slip into Mississippi like Jesus slipped into Jerusalem. [Laughter and applause]

This doesn’t mean that we’re against white people, but we sure are against the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Councils. Anything that looks like it’s against us, we’re against it.

Excuse me for raising my voice, but this thing, you know, it gets me upset. Even being involved in a discussion in a country that’s supposed to be a democracy. Imagine that, in a country that’s supposed to be a democracy, supposed to be for freedom and all of that kind of stuff that they tell you 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 governmental half-truth that has ever been invented since the world was the world… .

I hope that you don’t think that I’m trying to incite you. But look here, just look at yourselves. Some of you all are teenagers, students. Now how do you think I feel—and I belong to a generation ahead of you—how do you think I feel having to tell you, “We, my generation, sat around like a knot on the wall while the whole world was actually fighting for what were 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 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. You’ll get it. It’s the only way you’ll get it. Then, 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. They say, “That nigger’s crazy.” Or they’ll call you an extremist or they’ll call you a subversive, or seditious, or a Red, or a radical. But when you stay radical long enough, and get enough people to be just 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. [Applause] He will respect you.

I say that with no hate. I have no hate in me. I have no hate at all. I don’t have any hate. But I’ve got some sense. [Laughter] I think I’ve got some sense. I’m not going to let somebody who hates me tell me to love him. I’m not that way-out. 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 kind of bag is if somebody puts you in there, somebody else, who doesn’t have your welfare at heart.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home