This fall Pathfinder Press will issue a new expanded edition of Malcolm X Talks to Young People, as well as the first-ever Spanish-language edition, Malcolm X habla a la juventud.

Printed below is the preface to the new edition by Steve Clark, the book’s editor, and two excerpts from talks by Malcolm X that appear in the book. The first is from a speech given in Harlem on Jan. 1, 1965, to a visiting group of high school civil rights fighters from McComb, Mississippi. The second piece is taken from remarks by Malcolm as part of a debate at Oxford University in the United Kingdom on Dec. 3, 1964. Copyright © by Betty Shabazz and Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission.
 

Malcolm seized every occasion to address and talk with young people. They "are the ones who most quickly identify with the struggle and the necessity to eliminate the evil conditions that exist. And here in this country," he emphasized--referring to the United States--"it has been my observation that when you get into a conversation on racism and discrimination and segregation, you will find young people more incensed over it--they feel more filled with an urge to eliminate it."

Four talks from the last year of Malcolm X’s life, and a January 1965 interview for the Young Socialist magazine, are presented in this expanded 2002 edition of Malcolm X Talks to Young People, which also features an enlarged display of photographs. It is being released together with the first-ever Spanish-language edition, Malcolm X habla a la juventud, which will be produced simultaneously by Pathfinder and by Casa Editora Abril, the publishing house of the Union of Young Communists in Cuba.

Well before Malcolm X gave these talks in 1964–65, he had already become a revolutionary advocate of Black liberation and an intransigent opponent of American imperialism and its government. Seeking a way to carry out "militant action, uncompromising action" to advance that political perspective, as Malcolm explains in a January 1965 speech in this book, he broke with the Nation of Islam in March 1964 and helped launch the Muslim Mosque, Inc. He and his collaborators, however, soon recognized that "there was a problem confronting our people in this country that had nothing to do with religion and went above and beyond religion"--a problem that because of its magnitude "a religious organization couldn’t attack." So in June they formed "another group that had nothing to do with religion whatsoever"--the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), open to all Blacks committed to Malcolm’s social and political goals. During the final months of 1964 and early 1965, Malcolm X spoke out more and more directly about the need for revolution--in the United States and worldwide--and about the capitalist roots of racism, of exploitation, and of imperialist oppression.

The speeches and interview in this collection reflect the political evolution of Malcolm X, a process still under way when he was assassinated in February 1965. They also reflect the extraordinarily wide hearing he was winning on several continents among young people and others of various races and religions. During the year before his death, he made two extensive trips to Africa and the Middle East and several short trips to Europe, and had scheduled more. One of the five talks in this collection was given in Africa and two in the United Kingdom.

During that year the influence of Malcolm X’s ideas also spread in the United States among young fighters against racism, imperialist war, and other social injustices. One of the discussions recorded here is his meeting with high school–age civil rights militants from McComb, Mississippi, whom he met with on New Year’s Day 1965 in Harlem. Later that month he also agreed to the request by the leadership of the Young Socialist Alliance to give the interview included here.

Much of the material in these pages had never before been in print prior to the first book-length edition of Malcolm X Talks to Young People in 1991. That is the case with the speeches at Oxford University and the London School of Economics, only a few paragraphs of which had previously been published. The entire speech to the McComb youth and the question-and-answer period appeared here for the first time. Excerpts from that talk were published in 1965 as a Young Socialist pamphlet entitled Malcolm X Talks to Young People. That pioneering pamphlet, which has been kept in print to this day by Pathfinder, contains two other items also appearing in this book: the January 1965 Young Socialist interview with Malcolm X, as well as the tribute to the revolutionary leader by Jack Barnes presented shortly after Malcolm’s assassination at a March 1965 memorial meeting hosted by the Militant Labor Forum at its hall in Lower Manhattan. Just a couple of months earlier Barnes, who was then national chairman of the Young Socialist Alliance, had interviewed and talked with Malcolm on two occasions. An article by Barnes describing those meetings, published in the Militant newspaper on the one-year anniversary of Malcolm’s death, is included in this expanded edition of Malcolm X Talks to Young People for the first time. Barnes is today national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party.

The May 1964 speech by Malcolm X at the University of Ghana first appeared in the book Where To, Black Man? An American Negro’s African Diary by Ed Smith (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1967), but has long been out of print. Smith provided additional information about the Ghana trip, as did Alice Windom, who helped schedule Malcolm’s activities during his week-long visit there. Among the highlights were his meetings with the country’s parliament and Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah, as well as a farewell dinner in Malcolm’s honor hosted by the Cuban embassy. Pathfinder would also like to thank Alice Windom for supplying photographs from the Ghana trip.
 

"One of the first things I think young people...should learn how to do is see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself," Malcolm told the McComb students at the opening of 1965. "Then you can come to an intelligent decision for yourself."

This book shows how hard Malcolm X worked to do just that--to help young people step outside the bourgeois influences that surround them and come to decisions for themselves. What’s more, it demonstrates how important an element working with young people was in Malcolm’s own decision to commit his life to building an internationalist revolutionary movement in the United States that could join in the fight worldwide to wipe racism, exploitation, and oppression off the face of the earth.

August 2002
 

In Harlem, January 1965

The following is an excerpt from a talk given at the headquarters of the Organization of Afro-American Unity in the Hotel Theresa in Harlem to thirty-seven high school–age youth from McComb, Mississippi, who had been involved in civil rights battles there. They had come to New York City on an eight-day trip sponsored by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). McComb was where SNCC had begun its voter registration project and organized Mississippi’s first sit-in to desegregate public facilities in 1961. During the 1964 voter registration effort racists had bombed or set afire more than fifteen churches, homes, and businesses in McComb.

One of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn how to do is see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself. Then you can come to an intelligent decision for yourself. But 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 going and searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself, you’ll be walking west when you think you’re going east, and you’ll be walking east when you think you’re going west. So this generation, especially of our people, have a burden upon themselves, more so than at any other time in history. The most important thing we can learn how 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 then 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 own 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, then you’ll always be maneuvered into actually--You’ll never fight your enemies, but you will find yourself fighting your own self.

I think our people in this country are the best examples of that. Because many of us want to be nonviolent. We talk very loudly, you know, about being nonviolent. Here in Harlem, where there are probably more Black people concentrated than any place else in the world, some talk that nonviolent talk too. And when they stop talking about how nonviolent they are, we find that they aren’t nonviolent with each other. At Harlem Hospital, you can go out here on Friday night, which--today is what, Friday? yes--you can go out here to Harlem Hospital, where there are more Black patients in one hospital than any hospital in the world--because there’s a concentration of our people here--and find Black people who claim they’re nonviolent. But you see them going in there all cut up and shot up and busted up where they got violent with each other.

So my experience has been that in many instances where you find Negroes always talking about being nonviolent, they’re not nonviolent with each other, and they’re not loving with each other, or patient 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 he wants to heap some kind of brutality upon you, you’re nonviolent. Or he can come put a rope around your neck, you’re nonviolent. Or he can come to take your father out and put a rope around his neck, you’re nonviolent. But now if another Negro just stomps his foot, you’ll rumble with him in a minute. Which shows you there’s an inconsistency there.

So I myself would go for nonviolence if it was consistent, if it was intelligent, if everybody was going to be nonviolent, and if we were 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--and I’m just telling you how I think--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.¹ But as long as you’ve got somebody else not being nonviolent, I don’t want anybody coming to me talking any kind of nonviolent talk. I don’t think it is fair to tell our people to be nonviolent unless someone is out 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 that I read about in that part of the world. But 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, then we can’t go along with that. We believe in equality, and equality means you have to put the same thing over here that you put over there. And if just 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.

Now to try and give you a better understanding of our own position, I guess you have to know something about the Black Muslim movement, which is supposed to be a religious movement in this country, which was extremely militant, vocally militant, or militantly vocal. The Black Muslim movement was supposed to be a religious group. And because it was supposed to be a religious group, it never involved itself in civic matters, so it claimed. And by not getting involved in civic matters, what it did, being militant, it attracted the most militant Negroes, or Afro-Americans, in this country, which it actually did. The Black Muslim movement attracted the most dissatisfied, impatient, and militant Black people in this country.

But when it attracted them, the movement itself, by never involving itself in the real struggle that’s confronting Black people in this country, in a sense has gotten maneuvered into a sort of a political and civic vacuum. It was militant, it was vocal, but it never got into the battle itself.

And though it professed to be a religious group, the people from the part of the world whose religion it had adopted didn’t recognize them or accept them as a religious group. So it was also in a religious vacuum. It was in a vacuum religiously, by claiming to be a religious group and by having adopted a religion which actually rejected them or wouldn’t accept them. So religiously it was in a vacuum. The federal government tried to classify it as a political group, in order to maneuver it into a position where they could label it as seditious, so that they could crush it because they were afraid of its uncompromising, militant characteristics. So for that reason, though it was labeled a political group and never took part in politics, it was in a political vacuum. So the group, the Black Muslim movement itself, actually developed into a sort of a hybrid, a religious hybrid, a political hybrid, a hybrid-type organization.

Getting all of these very militant Black people into it, and then not having a program that would enable them to take an active part in the struggle, it created a lot of dissatisfaction among its members. It polarized into two different factions--one faction that was militantly vocal, and another faction that wanted some action, militant action, uncompromising action. Finally the dissatisfaction developed into a division, the division developed into a split, and many of its members left. Those who left formed what was known as the Muslim Mosque, Inc., which is authentically a religious organization that is affiliated with and recognized by all of the official religious heads in the Muslim world. This was called the Muslim Mosque, Inc., whose offices are here.

But this group, being Afro-American or being Black American, realized that although we were practicing the religion of Islam, still there was a problem confronting our people in this country that had nothing to do with religion and went above and beyond religion. A religious organization couldn’t attack that problem according to the magnitude of the problem, the complexity of the problem itself. So those in that group, after analyzing the problem, saw the need, or the necessity, of forming another group that had nothing to do with religion whatsoever. And that group is what’s named and is today known as the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

The Organization of Afro-American Unity is a nonreligious group of Black people in this country who believe that the problems confronting our people in this country need to be reanalyzed and a new approach devised toward trying to get a solution. Studying the problem, we recall that prior to 1939 in this country, 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. And even right now, today, 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 that you’ve got it made when you haven’t even begun to make it yet.

In the United Kingdom,
December 1964

Below are the concluding remarks from a talk given during a program sponsored by the Oxford Union, a student debating society at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. The debate was televised to an audience of millions by the British Broadcasting Corporation. The proposition under debate was "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue," a statement made by Barry Goldwater in his 1964 speech accepting the Republican Party nomination for president of the United States. Malcolm X was the fifth of six speakers, and the second of three who defended the above proposition. The other two speaking for it were Eric Abrahams, a student from Jamaica and president of the Oxford Union, and Hugh McDiarmid, a Scottish poet and member of the Communist Party. The audience, which included many students originally from Africa and Asia, greeted Malcolm’s remarks with enthusiastic applause.

Any time you live in a society supposedly based upon law, and it doesn’t enforce its own law because the color of a man’s skin happens to be wrong, then I say those people are justified to resort to any means necessary to bring about justice where the government can’t give them justice. [Prolonged applause]

I don’t believe in any form of unjustified extremism. But I believe that when a man is exercising extremism, a human being is exercising extremism in defense of liberty for human beings, it’s no vice. And when one is moderate in the pursuit of justice for human beings, I say he’s a sinner.

And I might add, in my conclusion--In fact, America is one of the best examples, when you read its history, about extremism. Old Patrick Henry said, "Liberty or death!" That’s extreme, very extreme. [Laughter and applause]

I read once, passingly, about a man named Shakespeare. I only read about him passingly, but I remember one thing he wrote that kind of moved me. He put it in the mouth of Hamlet, I think it was, who said, "To be or not to be"--he was in doubt about something. [Laughter] "Whether it was nobler in the mind of man to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune"--moderation--"or to take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them."

And I go for that. If you take up arms, you’ll end it. But if you sit around and wait for the one who’s in power to make up his mind that he should end it, you’ll be waiting a long time.

And in my opinion the young generation of whites, Blacks, browns, whatever else there is--you’re living at a time of extremism, a time of revolution, a time when there’s got to be a change. People in power have misused it, and now there has to be a change and a better world has to be built, and the only way it’s going to be built is with extreme methods. And I for one will join in with anyone, I don’t care what color you are, as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth. Thank you [Applause]

¹White Citizens’ Councils were racist organizations formed in the South in the mid-1950s to carry out night riding attacks and other terrorist activity against Blacks in response to growing demands to desegregate schools and other public facilities.  
 
 
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