BY MALCOLM X
As part of the Militant's commemoration of Black history month, we are printing below excerpts from two speeches given by Malcolm X in the three weeks before his assassination on February 21, 1965.
On February 4, during a visit to Selma, Alabama, Malcolm spoke to 300 young civil rights fighters at Brown Chapel AME Church. The excerpt printed here is taken from February 1965: The Final Speeches, where it appears under the title "The house Negro and the field Negro."
The second selection is from a speech Malcolm X gave at the London School of Economics on February 11 to a meeting organized by the school's Africa Society. In it he spoke against U.S. military intervention against liberation forces in the Congo (today Zaire)-a theme he returned to often in the final months of his life.
Washington backed the proimperialist government of Moise Tshombe, who in January 1961 had helped overthrow and murder the leader of the Congo's first independent government, Patrice Lumumba. In 1964, after Tshombe was installed as prime minister, Lumumba's followers led a revolt. Belgian troops and hired mercenaries, including U.S. planes flown by U.S. pilots, were sent to crush the uprising. The selection here is taken from Malcolm X Talks to Young People.
Both speeches are copyright of Pathfinder and are reprinted with permission.
BY MALCOLM X
If the federal government does not find it within its power and ability to investigate a criminal organization such as the Klan, then you and I are within our rights to wire Secretary- General U Thant of the United Nations and charge the federal government in this country, behind Lyndon B. Johnson, with being derelict in its duty to protect the human rights of twenty-two million Black people in this country. And in their failure to protect our human rights, they are violating the United Nations Charter, and they are not qualified to continue to sit in that international body and talk about what human rights should be done in other countries on this earth. [Applause].
I have to say this, then I'll sit down. Back during slavery, when Black people like me talked to the slaves, they didn't kill 'em, they sent some old house Negro along behind him to undo what he said. You have to read the history of slavery to understand this.
There were two kinds of Negroes. There was that old house Negro and the field Negro. And the house Negro always looked out for his master. When the field Negroes got too much out of line, he held them back in check. He put 'em back on the plantation.
The house Negro could afford to do that because he lived better than the field Negro. He ate better, he dressed better, and he lived in a better house. He lived right up next to his master - in the attic or the basement. He ate the same food his master ate and wore his same clothes. And he could talk just like his master - good diction. And he loved his master more than his master loved himself. That's why he didn't want his master hurt.
If the master got sick, he'd say, "What's the matter, boss, we sick?" [Laughter] When the master's house caught afire, he'd try and put the fire out. He didn't want his master's house burned. He never wanted his master's property threatened. And he was more defensive of it than the master was. That was the house Negro.
But then you had some field Negroes, who lived in huts, had nothing to lose. They wore the worst kind of clothes. They ate the worst food. And they caught hell. They felt the sting of the lash. They hated their master. Oh yes, they did.
If the master got sick, they'd pray that the master died. [Laughter and applause] If the master's house caught afire, they'd pray for a strong wind to come along. [Laughter] This was the difference between the two.
And today you still have house Negroes and field Negroes. [Applause]
I'm a field Negro. If I can't live in the house as a human being, I'm praying for a wind to come along. If the master won't treat me right and he's sick, I'll tell the doctor to go in the other direction. [Laughter] But if all of us are going to live as human beings, as brothers, then I'm for a society of human beings that can practice brotherhood. [Applause]
But before I sit down, I want to thank you for listening to me. I hope I haven't put anybody on the spot. I'm not intending to try and stir you up and make you do something that you wouldn't have done anyway. [Laughter and applause]
I pray that God will bless you in everything that you do. I pray that you will grow intellectually, so that you can understand the problems of the world and where you fit into, in that world picture. And I pray that all the fear that has ever been in your heart will be taken out, and when you look at that man, if you know he's nothing but a coward, you won't fear him. If he wasn't a coward, he wouldn't gang up on you. He wouldn't need to sneak around here. [Applause] This is how they function. They function in mobs - that's a coward. They put on a sheet so you won't know who they are - that's a coward.
No! The time will come when that sheet will be ripped off. If the federal government doesn't take it off, we'll take it off.
***
Another example of how this imagery is mastered, at the
international level, is the recent situation in the Congo.
Here we have an example of planes dropping bombs on
defenseless African villages. When a bomb is dropped on an
African village, there's no way of defending the people from
the bomb. The bomb doesn't make a distinction between men and
women. That bomb is dropped on men, women, children, and
babies. Now it has not been in any way a disguised fact that
planes have been dropping bombs on Congolese villages all
during the entire summer. There is no outcry. There is no
concern. There is no sympathy. There is no urge on the part of
even the so-called progressive element to try and bring a halt
to this mass murder. Why?
Because all the press had to do was use that shrewd propaganda word that these villages were in "rebel-held" territory. "Rebel-held," what does that mean? That's an enemy, so anything that they do to those people is all right. You cease to think of the women and the children and the babies in the so-called rebel-held territory as human beings. So that anything that is done to them is done with justification. And the progressives, the liberals don't even make any outcry. They sit twiddling their thumbs, as if they were captivated by this press imagery that has been mastered here in the West also.
They refer to the pilots that are dropping the bombs on these babies as "American-trained, anti-Castro Cuban pilots." As long as they are American-trained, this is supposed to put the stamp of approval on it, because America is your ally. As long as they are anti-Castro Cubans, since Castro is supposed to be a monster and these pilots are against Castro, anybody else they are against is also all right. So the American planes with American bombs being piloted by American-trained pilots, dropping American bombs on Black people, Black babies, Black children, destroying them completely - which is nothing but mass murder - goes absolutely unnoticed....
They take this man Tshombe - I guess he's a man - and try and make him acceptable to the public by using the press to refer to him as the only one who can unite the Congo. Imagine, a murderer - not an ordinary murderer, a murderer of a prime minister, the murderer of the rightful prime minister of the Congo - and yet they want to force him upon the people of the Congo, through Western manipulation and Western pressures. The United States, the country that I come from, pays his salary. They openly admit that they pay his salary....
If you recall reading in the paper, they never talked about the Congolese who were being slaughtered. But as soon as a few whites, the lives of a few whites were at stake, they began to speak of "white hostages," "white missionaries," "white priests," "white nuns" - as if a white life, one white life, was of such greater value than a Black life, than a thousand Black lives. They showed you their open contempt for the lives of the Blacks, and their deep concern for the lives of the whites. This is the press....
No African troops win victories for Tshombe. They never have. The only war, the only battles won by the African troops, in the African revolution, in the Congo area, were those won by the freedom fighters from the Oriental province. They won battles with spears, stones, twigs. They won battles because their heart was in what they were doing. But Tshombe's men from the central Congo government never won any battles. And it was for this reason that he had to import these white mercenaries, the paid killers, to win some battles for him. Which means that Tshombe's government can only stay in power with white help, with white troops.
Well, there will come a time when he won't be able to recruit any more mercenaries, and the Western powers, who are really behind him, will then have to commit their own troops openly. Which means you will then be bogged down in the Congo the same as you're bogged down over there now in South Vietnam. And you can't win in the Congo. If you can't win in South Vietnam, you know you can't win in the Congo.
Just let me see. You think you can win in South Vietnam? The French were deeply entrenched. The French were deeply entrenched in Vietnam for a hundred years or so. They had the best weapons of warfare, a highly mechanized army, everything that you would need. And the guerrillas come out of the rice paddies with nothing but sneakers on and a rifle [Laughter] and a bowl of rice, nothing but gym shoes - tennis shoes - and a rifle and a bowl of rice. And you know what they did in Dien Bien Phu.(1) They ran the French out of there....
The African revolution must proceed onward, and one of the reasons that the Western powers are fighting so hard and are trying to cloud the issue in the Congo is that it's not a humanitarian project. It's not a feeling or sense of humanity that makes them want to go in and save some hostages, but there are bigger stakes.
They realize not only that the Congo is a source of mineral wealth, minerals that they need. But the Congo is so situated strategically, geographically, that if it falls into the hands of a genuine African government that has the hopes and aspirations of the African people at heart, then it will be possible for the Africans to put their own soldiers right on the border of Angola and wipe the Portuguese out of there overnight.
So that if the Congo falls, Mozambique and Angola must fall. And when they fall, suddenly you have to deal with Ian Smith.(2) He won't be there overnight once you can put some troops on his borders. [Applause] Oh yes. Which means it will only be a matter of time before they will be right on the border with South Africa, and then they can talk the type of language that the South Africans understand. And this is the only language that they understand. [Applause]
I might point out right here and now - and I say it bluntly - that you have had a generation of Africans who actually have believed that they could negotiate, negotiate, negotiate, and eventually get some kind of independence. But you're getting a new generation that is being born right now, and they are beginning to think with their own mind and see that you can't negotiate upon freedom nowadays. If something is yours by right, then you fight for it or shut up. If you can't fight for it, then forget it. [Applause]
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1. In 1954 the French army suffered a decisive defeat at the hands of Vietnamese liberation forces at Dien Bien Phu. The U.S. government moved in, however, to replace France as the dominant imperialist power in the region.
2. Ian Smith was the prime minister of the white-minority regime administering the British colony of Southern Rhodesia, today Zimbabwe.