A R E W E B E I N G L E D I N T O W A R

from

A S P E E C H T O M I S S I S S I P P I Y O U T H

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––––––––––––––––––––––––– Malcolm X ––––––––––––––––––––––––

One of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn is

how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself. Then you can

come to an intelligent decision for yourself. 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 searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself, you will be

walking west when you think you’re going east, and you will be walking east when

you think you’re going west. This generation, especially of our people, has a

burden, more so than any other time in history. The most important thing that we

can learn to do today is think for ourselves.…

I myself would go for nonviolence if it was consistent, if everybody was 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 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. But as long as

you’ve got somebody else not being nonviolent, I don’t want anybody coming to

me talking any 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.…

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, we can’t go along with that. We believe

in equality, and equality means that you have to put the same thing over here that

you put over there. And if 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.…

The Organization of Afro-American Unity is a non-religious group of black

people who believe that the problems confronting our people in this country need

to be re-analyzed and a new approach devised toward trying to get a solution.

Studying the problem, we recall that prior to 1939 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.

Even now 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 you’ve got it made when you haven’t even begun to make it yet.

Prior to 1939, our people were in a very menial position or condition. Most of

us were waiters and porters and bellhops and janitors and waitresses and things of

that sort. It was not until war was declared with Germany, and America became

involved in a manpower shortage in regards to her factories plus her army, that the

black man in this country was permitted to make a few strides forward.…

Around that time, 1939 or ’40 or ’41, they weren’t drafting Negroes in the army

or the navy. A Negro couldn’t join the navy in 1940 or ’41. They wouldn’t take a

black man in the navy except to make him a cook.…

When the Negro leaders saw all the white fellows being drafted and taken into

the army and dying on the battlefield, and no Negroes were dying because they

weren’t being drafted, the Negro leaders came up and said, “We’ve got to die too.

We want to be drafted too, and we demand that you take us in there and let us die

for our country too.” That was what the Negro leaders did back in 1940, I

remember.…

So they started drafting Negro soldiers then, and started letting Negroes get into

the navy. But not until Hitler and Tojo and the foreign powers were strong enough

to put pressure on this country, so that it had its back to the wall and needed us,

[did] they let us work in factories. Up until that time we couldn’t work in the

factories; I’m talking about the North as well as the South. And when they let us

work in the factories, at first they let us in only as janitors. After a year or so passed

by, they let us work on machines. We became machinists, got a little more skill. If

we got a little more skill, we made a little more money, which enabled us to live in

a little better neighborhood. When we lived in a little better neighborhood, we

went to a little better school, got a little better education and could come out and

get a little better job. So the cycle was broken somewhat.

But the cycle was not broken out of some kind of sense of moral responsibility

on the part of the government. No, the only time that cycle was broken even to a

degree was when world pressure was brought to bear on the United States

government. They didn’t look at us as human beings—they just put us into their

system and let us advance a little bit farther because it served their interests. They

never let us advance a little bit farther because they were interested in us as human

beings. Any of you who have a knowledge of history, sociology, or political

science, or the economic development of this country and its race relations—go

back and do some research on it and you’ll have to admit that this is true.

It was during the time that Hitler and Tojo made war with this country and put

pressure on it [that] Negroes in this country advanced a little bit. At the end of the

war with Germany and Japan, then Joe Stalin and Communist Russia were a

threat. During that period we made a little more headway. Now the point that I’m

making is this: Never at any time in the history of our people in this country have

we made advances or progress in any way based upon the internal good will of this

country. We have made advancement in this country only when this country was

under pressure from forces above and beyond its control. The internal moral

consciousness of this country is bankrupt. It hasn’t existed since they first brought

us over here and made slaves out of us. They make it appear they have our good

interests at heart, but when you study it, every time, no matter how many steps

they take us forward, it’s like we’re standing on a—-what do you call that thing?—

a treadmill. The treadmill is moving backwards faster than we’re able to go

forward in this direction. We’re not even standing still—we’re going backwards.…

So we here in the Organization of Afro-American Unity are with the struggle in

Mississippi one thousand per cent. We’re with the efforts to register our people in

Mississippi to vote one thousand per cent. But we do not go along with anybody

telling us to help nonviolently. We think that if the government says that Negroes

have a right to vote, and then some Negroes come out to vote, and 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. And once you can protect

yourself, you don’t have to worry about being hurt.…

If you don’t have enough people down there to do it, we’ll come down there

and help you do it. Because we’re 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. If they say we don’t take part in the

Mississippi struggle, we will organize brothers here in New York who know how

to handle these kind of affairs, and they’ll slip into Mississippi like Jesus slipped

into Jerusalem.

That doesn’t mean we’re against white people, but we sure are against the Ku

Klux Klan and the White Citizens Councils; and anything that looks like it’s against

us, we’re against it. Excuse me for raising my voice, but this thing, you know, gets

me upset. Imagine that—a country that’s supposed to be a democracy, supposed

to be for freedom and all of that kind of stuff 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

government since the world began!…

I hope you don’t think I’m trying to incite you. Just look here: Look at

yourselves. Some of you are teen-agers, students. How do you think I feel—and I

belong to a generation ahead of you—how do you think I feel to have to tell you,

“We, my generation, sat around like a knot on a wall while the whole world was

fighting for 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 you 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; then you’ll get it. It’s the only way you’ll get it.…

and Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.