BY MALCOLM X  
Mr. Chairman (who’s one of my brothers), ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters: It is an honor to me to come back to the Militant Labor Forum again this evening. It’s my third time here. I was just telling my brother up here that probably tomorrow morning the press will try to make it appear that this little chat that we’re having here this evening took place in Peking or someplace else. They have a tendency to discolor things in that way, to try and make people not place the proper importance upon what they hear, especially when they’re hearing it from persons they can’t control, or, as my brother just pointed out, persons whom they consider “irresponsible.”

It’s the third time that I’ve had the opportunity to be a guest of the Militant. Labor Forum. I always feel that it is an honor and every time that they open the door for me to do so, I will be right here. The Militant newspaper is one of the best in New York City. In fact, it is one of the best anywhere you go today because everywhere I go I see it. I saw it even in Paris about a month ago; they were reading it over there. And I saw it in some parts of Africa where I was during the summer. I don’t know how it gets there. But if you put the right things in it, what you put in it will see that it gets around.

Tonight, during the few moments that we have, we’re going to have a little chat, like brothers and sisters and friends, and probably enemies too, about the prospects for peace—or the prospects for freedom in 1965. As you notice, I almost slipped and said peace. Actually you can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom. You can't separate the two—and this is the thing that makes 1965 so explosive and so dangerous….

In 1964, 97 percent of the black American voters supported Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, and the Democratic Party. Ninety-seven percent! No one minority group in the history of the world has ever given so much of its uncompromising support to one candidate and one party. No one people, no one group, has ever gone all the way to support a party and its candidate as did the black people in America in 1964….

And the first act of the Democratic Party, Lyndon B included, in 1965, when the representatives from the state of Mississippi who refused to support Johnson came to Washington, D. C., and the black people of Mississippi sent representatives there to challenge the legality of these people being seated—what did Johnson say? Nothing! What did Humphrey say? Nothing! What did Robert Pretty-Boy Kennedy say? Nothing! Nothing! Not one thing! These are the people that black people have supported. This is the party that they have supported. Where were they when the black man needed them a couple days ago in Washington, D.C.? They were where they always are—twiddling their thumbs someplace in the poolroom, or in the gallery.

Black people in 1965 will not be controlled by these Uncle Tom leaders, believe me; they won't be held in check, they won't be held on the plantation by these overseers, they won't be held on the corral, they won't be held back at all.

The frustration of these black representatives from Mississippi, when they arrived in Washington, D.C., the other day, thinking, you know, that the Great Society was going to include them—only to see the door closed in their face like that—that’s what makes them think. That’s what makes them realize what they’re up against. It is this type of frustration that produced the Mau Mau. They reached the point where they saw that it takes power to talk to power. It takes power to make power respect you. It takes madness almost to deal with a power structure that's so corrupt, so corrupt.

So in 1965 we should see a lot of action. Since the old methods haven’t worked, they'll be forced to try new methods….  
 
 
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