  “Come and see and hear the most fearless black man in America today; the man who is going to defy the Ku Klux Klan!” This is the way the Black Muslims billboarded Elijah Muhammad’s now-famous “Atlanta Speech” of 1961. For when it was announced that Muhammad was to speak in Atlanta, the Klan issued a statement that they, too, would hold a rally and a march on the same day, at the same time. The Black Muslims’ propaganda machinery went into action, and the Atlanta Speech was advertised as a major confrontation between Elijah and the Klan. Something a little different from that is what actually occurred. Malcolm X flew into Atlanta several days before the scheduled meeting and began talks with police and other city officials. Malcolm was assured that the police would enforce law and order, that the Black Muslims could proceed with their meeting without fear of trouble from the Klan or anyone else. Even so, the Black Muslims took advantage of every opportunity to dramatize their presence and activities. The expectation mounted as word came that Muhammad had landed at the airport; several minutes later it was announced that Muhammad was taking a few moments of ease at the home of the local minister; then word came that The Honorable Elijah Muhammad was en route to the temple. The Fruit of Islam formed themselves into a double column that stretched from the platform inside the auditorium, out the front door, down the steps, and across the sidewalk to the curb where Elijah would disembark. As the crowd cheered, a long black limousine pulled up to the auditorium and Elijah Muhammad—a five-foot-five, unimpressive little man—along with a retinue of some six members of his family swept into the building down the corridor formed by The Fruit. The applause inside the temple was loud and sustained; nervously adjusting his bow tie, Elijah Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, took several bows before the people resumed their seats. After a long and impassioned introduction by Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad rose to speak. Most of that long, rambling lecture follows. It is a full statement of Black Muslim doctrine replete with attacks on Negro leaders—Negro preachers in particular. Herein we will find a detailed account of how the evil black scientist Yakub created Of particular interest, at least to me, is the Paulinean stance Elijah Muhammad assumes in this speech. He begins by offering greetings of peace and the good life; then he goes on to thank his local minister, Jeremiah X, for having arranged this meeting. This done, Muhammad links the Black Muslims with the “725 million more brothers and sisters in the World of Islam,” and issues a special note of thanks to those of his followers who have come from as far away as California. Finally, I wish to underscore the closing of this speech: “I am God’s last Messenger to you. You must accept Allah as God.” This is the only time I have encountered the doctrine of Elijah as the last Messenger. But it bolsters my suggestion that when he dies, Muhammad will still be “The Messenger” and that the new leader of the movement will be a younger man, a titular head, while strong men like Malcolm X and Raymond Sharrieff carry the load. As-salaam-alaikum: In the name of Allah, the most Merciful God, to whom all holy praises are due, the Lord of all the worlds; the most Merciful Finder (of) and Lifegiver to the Lost-found, mentally dead so-called Negroes here in the Wilderness of North America. My Beloved Brothers and Sisters: I am more than honored by your presence here this afternoon and your sincere welcome to me and to my followers here in this great city of Atlanta. Year after year I receive letters from many converts here in Atlanta, and I know that the Word of Allah is spreading rapidly among our people here in the South because of the ever increasing volume of your letters to me. And, my beloved people, I want you to know that those of you here in Atlanta and in other parts of the South who accept Islam, which is the true religion of Almighty God, are not alone. Not only do you have a fast-growing number of brothers and sisters in all of the Northern cities, but you have 725 million more brothers and sisters in the World of Islam. I am also thankful to my followers who have traveled here to Atlanta to be with me today from my various temples throughout America, and especially the caravan of young Muslims who motored over 2,000 miles all the way from Los Angeles, California, to be here on this grand occasion. My followers are with me wherever I go, and it is wonderful to have such sincere people who will follow you all around the country like this because it shows unity, and it also shows there is no religion that can produce unity like the unity produced by Islam. Yes, today the Muslims are in all the major cities of America, and if you look around in the smaller cities you will find us there also. Just walk around saying, “As-Salaam-Alaikum,” and pretty soon someone will reply, “Wa-Alaikum-Salaam.” Beloved brothers and sisters, again I must thank Allah for permitting me to be in your presence here in Atlanta this afternoon. I am thankful also to the Atlanta Police Islam is not a new religion. Islam is not a religion that has been organized by the white man. Islam is the religion of God Himself, and Islam is the religion of all the prophets of God, from Adam to Muhammad (the last). Islam was the religion of Moses, Noah, Abraham, and Jesus. Islam will be the last of the three great religions (Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam) that now dominate the earth. Islam must be the last of these three great religions because God Himself is the Author of Islam, and Islam is to bring peace and contentment after this war and trouble-making world which you now know has been destroyed ... and you can see that this trouble-making world is already on its way out. Islam has not made great progress for the past 6,000 years because this is the religion that God Himself would spread in the “last days.” If Islam had been forced upon all the people of the earth during the past 6,000 years there would not have been any “World of Christianity,” there would not have been any “World of Buddhism” ... and there would never have been anything like the “Caucasian World.” Islam would have prevented their progress. God Himself has held Islam “in check” to give these other “worlds” free reign during the past 6,000 years. But, Islam was the religion of the black people who lived before Adam was made, as far back as 66 trillion According to the word of Allah to me, one of our wise black scientists was upset over the dialect the people were speaking, and he wanted to change the language and make all of the people speak the same dialect. He became angry because he could not get the others to go along with him, and when he saw that he could not accomplish what he wanted, he drilled a huge shaft into this planet for about four or five thousand miles deep, and filling that hole with high explosives he set it off, with the intention of destroying all civilization. He thought he would get rid of us. That part of the planet which we call “moon” today was blasted 12,000 miles from its original pocket that it had been rotating in at the time of the explosion, and this part that we call “earth” today dropped 36,000 miles from that pocket and found another pocket and started rotating again ... (it all happened in the twinkling of an eye) ... and that part (moon) that was blasted away dropped all of its water upon this part (earth), and this is why three-fourths of the earth’s surface today is covered by water, and also why there is no life on the moon. We are the people who devised that great destruction of our planet. That part (moon) that you see up there in the sky shining at night was once joined with this part (earth) that we now five on. Before the explosion the entire planet was then called “moon.” (Not really by the word “moon” that we use today, but by a word in Arabic that means practically the same thing.) We will have another great destruction, and we will provide that one too. We ourselves (the black nation) are a people who can never be destroyed. There never was a time when we (the black nation) didn’t exist. We don’t have any birth record of the black nation. We have no beginning and we have no ending. Again I say, we are happy to be in Atlanta today, the capital of Georgia ... my birth state. I was born in this state, and grew up in this state. I was a grown man, married and the father of children even before I left this state. So don’t try and make me acquainted with Georgia. I am already acquainted with Georgia. This great city of Atlanta with its five colleges, institutions of learning, is one of America’s most important cities, and is even the gateway to the South. We thank the city for permitting us to enter it, and the courtesy of the police department, and the mayor of this great city, and the governor of the state. We are happy to be called one of your own state-borned sons. My beloved people, I am one of your brothers; I am not a foreigner, but I have a Divine Message from the Lord of the Worlds that sounds foreign to you because you have not heard it before. I want you to know that we so-called Negroes are the people who have been on this planet for trillions of years. I say so-called Negro because you are not a Negro. You are members of the Asiatic Nation, from the Tribe of Shabazz. There is no such thing as a race of Negroes. This is a false name given you during slavery by your slave master, who, after robbing you completely of your knowledge of your homeland, your parents, and your culture, called you “Negro” or Nigger because that word means something that is “NEUTER” or “NEUTRAL.” Therefore you are now a little group of people on this earth who stand out because you have become neutralized by ignorance of yourself and your own kind, and of your enemy. You are “neutral” ... not united with yourselves, among yourselves, nor are you united with your own people of your own world. This is why you are called NEGRO. The slave master gave you this name because he understood the meaning of it, although Webster has cunningly kept you away from the true meaning of it by saying it refers to black people ... and especially the black African who has no education or independence. My dear brothers and sisters, and distinguished educators of Atlanta, you have often wondered why you had to call yourselves by this name “Negro.” It has been due to the fact that you didn’t know its origin and you didn’t know your origin. You have been asleep. You don’t know whom you are from, where you are from, where you are going, how you should stand, how you should sit ... you know nothing at all but what your slave master chooses to tell you, and since he tells you only that which will benefit himself and his own kind, you have been made into a NEUTRAL person ... a shiftless, helpless NEGRO. If the white man says to you, “Johnny, go back home, I have no work for you today,” you go back home and sit down and wait for the white man to send for you (when he sees fit) to come back and work on his job. You don’t try to create a job for yourself. You are shiftless because the lack of “proper” education and self-knowledge has left you lifeless (mentally, economically, and otherwise). I am not making fun of you. I am trying to lead you to the point where you can see the basic cause of your condition. I am one of you. I came through the same trials and tribulation and the same hell that you did. What I say about you I am also saying it about myself. I am your You must learn to make jobs for yourselves so that the next time “boss” tells you he does not have any work for you, you can tell him that you are going to do some work for yourself. Three hundred years under the persecution of your slave master has made you into a blind, deaf, and dumb ... and an absolutely “dead” people. He has taught you to eat the rotten and worse type of foods, even the flesh of that poisonous animal, the swine (pork) ... filling your stomach with this poison meat (pork) has deteriorated you physically, mentally as well as morally. The Arab word for the pig is “Khainsuer.” (“khain” means “I see,” and “suer” means “very foul.”) This word thus means “I see something that is very foul, filthy, diseased” ... something that is not fit to be eaten by intelligent, civilized people. Your slave master reared you on this poisonous meat, which has dulled your brains, and you ceased to think about your past history, and then you were deprived easily of the knowledge of your own God and your own religion. Thus it became easy for the slave master to deprive you also of the knowledge of your own kind, and the knowledge of his kind. Now you don’t know the way back to your own kind, and his kind won’t accept you ... so they call you Nigger or Negro, which means deaf, dumb, and blind ... neutral, dead, lifeless. We, the Nation of Islam, who believe in freedom, justice and equality stand not only before you today, but before the entire world as we declare this truth about the American so-called Negroes. The nations of earth are faced today with a worse problem than has ever presented itself in the history of mankind, and the primary ingredient of this great “world problem” involves the condition and position This problem is so delicate and complicated that only God Himself can solve it. I am not a man who has grabbed a suitcase with a bible in it upon my own impulses. No! I stand before you as a man who has been chosen for you by God Himself. I did not choose myself. This must be made clear! The Divine Revelation which I have received and which I am preaching to you and to the entire world came to me from the Mouth of God. I did not see Him in a vision and receive my mission in a vision as others before me received theirs. I was in the Presence of God for over three years, and I received what I am teaching you directly from His Mouth. Let the infidels curse and swear at me. Let the infidels go on the warpath of propaganda against Elijah, but I warn you: “You better listen today to him who has received his instructions directly from the Mouth of Almighty God.” I did not receive this gospel from a paper, nor a book, nor from a vision, nor from an angel, but directly from the Mouth of Almighty God Himself. My beloved people: I know your problems and your burdens; I know your problems and your burdens; I know what you go through; you don’t have to tell me ... for I have the ABSOLUTE CURE for all your problems and ailments. All you have to do is listen to what I say, and then jump up on your feet and follow me. Beloved brothers and sisters: after receiving this Divine Revelation that I am teaching you from the Mouth of God, I have not stopped one day for the last twenty-nine years. I have been standing, preaching to you throughout these past twenty-nine years, while I was free and even while I was in bondage. I spent three and one-half years in the federal penitentiary and also over a year in the city jail for teaching this truth. I was also deprived of a father’s love for his family for seven long years while I was running from hypocrites and other enemies of this word and revelation of God, and which will give life to you and put you on the same level with all other civilized and independent nations of this earth ... and this is the greatest desire of Almighty God Allah and Elijah Muhammad. This afternoon I want to teach the so-called American Negroes the true knowledge of themselves that will lift them from the bottom and place them back at the top of civilization. I know how you feel. I know how you think. You think as Ezekiel says of you. Ezekiel says, “This whole House of Israel, they say their hope was lost and they were cut off from their fathers.” You are a people who are all hopeless because you think there is no hope for you. You think that because you have been cut off from your own people for so long there is no chance of you ever uniting or of ever This Truth that I am teaching will raise you up from the grave, not out of the earthly grave, but out of the “grave of ignorance.” You just need the knowledge of yourself, your own God and your own religion. God has missioned me to give you this Truth: freedom, justice, and equality. These are the things I must teach you about: freedom first, because you have never been free here in America. You know nothing about the pleasures or happiness of a free person. You know nothing about justice. You know nothing about equality, or being equal with other civilized nations of earth. I know you and your thoughts about me and what I teach. Inwardly, some of you are with me 100 per cent, but outwardly you are not. Why? Because you have the greatest enemy over you a man can have, and that is “FEAR.” Fear is your greatest enemy. You were filled with fear of your slave master when you were little babies, over 400 years ago when our fathers were brought in chains to the Western Hemisphere on a slave ship that was named “The Good Ship Jesus.” The captain of that ship was an English Christian named John Hawkins. The American white people had come to this country from Europe and had already begun to subdue the Indians. We were brought here to a people who could not speak our language nor could we speak theirs. Thus the language of our forefathers was soon destroyed, and you know nothing about it today. The language of the slave master was forced upon our foreparents, and they were brought up also wearing the names of the slave masters. During 300 long years of slavery you were deprived of the privilege of even going to church, and there were no such things as schools for you in those days. Besides depriving you of education the slave master did not teach you about God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost that he is now teaching you about today. You were never allowed to sit with them in their churches until just a few years ago. Beloved brothers and sisters, think over this: for over 400 years you had no knowledge of yourselves, no knowledge of your own religion, and no knowledge of the biblical prophecies and predictions pertaining to the “lost people” who would be on this planet until the last days, and whom God Himself would have to search for and then save them from the clutches of their enemies. You have never been given a knowledge of that because your slave master knew those prophecies were speaking about you (the American so-called Negroes). For less than 100 years now a little bit of the Christian religion has been taught to you in a diluted form, but never the full text of it. You have never learned the prophetic fate of Christianity, nor do you know anything about the Caucasian people who have translated the bible into their language. Yet, you are a people who think you know all about the bible, and all about Christianity, and you are even foolish enough to believe that nothing is right but Christianity. Your slave master tampered with the words of the bible; he “translated” it; he “revised” it; he fixed the reading of it to make you a worse slave than your foreparents were. The slave master is the “god” who “sent” some of your fellow slaves to preach to you. Their favorite text was, “Servant, obey your master.” But he didn’t really have to preach that because the lashes of the whip upon the backs But, my beloved brothers and sisters, the Christian religion you now are believing in so strongly came down to you from your slave masters. They kept that religion and its secrets guarded from your parents’ ears for 300 years. What was then so sacred in Christianity? What was so sacred in the bible which they kept locked away from the slaves? What was so sacred about these things that the slave master did not want his slaves to read or even hear preached? If it was so good, why didn’t he want his slave to hear this good then? Why didn’t he want his slave to believe in God then? First of all, the slave master did not want the slaves to know the truth about God nor about His true religion, fearing that the slave would then begin looking for his God to deliver him from his white oppressors. I know some of you are afraid to listen to this truth but I am going to preach it to you until you are free of that fear. A man told me a few years ago that I would be wasting my time to come to Georgia. He said that the Negroes in Georgia were more afraid of white people than you will find anywhere else on this earth. I told him that I myself was born in Georgia and did not see why they should be afraid of the white man. I told him that I was a grown man, married and with two children when I left Georgia. I also told him that they need not fear the white man; the only thing they need to fear is the fear within themselves. I say to you that your fear of the white man is THE GREAT EVIL. Fear is of such nature that it will make you deprive yourself of your own salvation. Fear is the enemy that will make you stoop and bring yourself to disgrace before the world. Fear is the real enemy that you and I should throw into the garbage can. You say Christianity is the right religion and that you believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. You believe that this Jesus is God’s son, and that He gave His son to save you. You say that the Holy Ghost “overpowered” a virgin girl named Mary, yet you don’t call the child the son of the Holy Ghost, you call the child “the son of God.” You charge God with being the father of this virgin girl’s child. My beloved brothers and sisters, how could you accept a religion that teaches you to believe the God of Righteousness was responsible for making a virgin girl in Palestine pregnant with a child 2,000 years ago, called this child his “son,” and let this “son” die for the sins of the wicked world? When a man is not married to a woman and he commits such a sinful act it is called adultery. God is not married to a woman, and if He commits such a sinful act that produces a child out of wedlock, which actually opens the gateway of adultery to the entire world, then it is a shame to ask me to believe in that god. We in Islam do not ascribe “sonship” to Almighty God, because He has no son. All of us are His “spiritual” children, but He has no physical son. To say that God has produced a physical son out of wedlock (without being married to the mother of that son), and then placed this son before our eyes and said, “This is my beloved son; all who believe in him and follow him shall be saved,” actually opens the gateway for all kinds of adultery and other indecent acts. This just could not have been done if God was a spirit. If He was a spirit He could not father a flesh and blood son. He would have to have a son like Himself. If He was a spirit, then His son would have to be a spirit too. And, if He did beget a son by Mary, then all other women would be justified in producing sons that same way, by committing adultery and then blaming it on the “spirit.” The Western World is always defending Christianity and they mock me and other Islamic teachers. They do not want Islam preached to you, but the reason you are hearing it today is because it is time. This preaching of Islam to you today cannot be stopped; it is like the rising of the sun ... right on time. Here in America there are also three and one-half million indirect believers in Islam, in the secret order called Shriners, or Higher Masons. When you take the thirty-third degree in masonry you are no longer called a Mason; you are then called a Moslem Son, and in that order (or degree) you are taught the prayers of the Moslems and you come under the teachings of Islam. In that High Degree you are taught to turn your face Eastward, toward the Holy City of Mecca in Arabia. All of this is part of the Moslem religion, Islam. Today, Islam must be taught to the so-called American Negroes. You must learn about this religion, because there can be no judgment of the devil and his wicked world We are not trying to force you to accept Islam, but we are trying to make you realize that we know what is in store for the world; we know what tomorrow will bring. Therefore, we are not in fear of losing our lives, but we will lay down our lives this very minute for the truth. We are not running from death; we are running only to save lives ... YOUR LIVES!!! You must have freedom, justice, and equality. You cannot be free as long as you are calling yourselves by your slave master’s name; you cannot be free as long as you do not know who you are; you cannot be free as long as you do not know your own people; you cannot be free as long as you don’t know how to even ask for freedom. Beloved brothers and sisters, God has given me the key that will open the door of freedom, justice, and equality that has been locked against you. You must be taught a knowledge of your own God. My mission is to make you acquainted with Him, to prepare you to meet Him face to face. God is not a mystery today; He is not something invisible. He is not a spirit. He is not something other than flesh and blood; He is in the flesh and in the blood. God is a human being! God would have no joy or pleasure in humans (us) if He Himself were something other than a human being. God would have no joy or pleasure in the material universe if He Himself were other than material. The devil is also a flesh and blood human being. The devil is not an invisible spirit. The bible and the Holy Quran both plainly state that God is going to destroy the devil in a Lake of Fire in “the last days.” If the devil was There is no such thing as seeing God or the devil after you die. There is no such thing as a heaven up in the sky or a hell down in the ground. All of that is fantasy, false stories made up by your slave master to further enslave you. God is a man! The devil is a man! Heaven and hell are two conditions, and both are experienced in this life right here on this earth. You have already suffered the worse kind of hell in the hands of the only real devil! It is the devil who did not want you to know this truth that God has missioned me to teach my people. He is afraid that when you learn his real identity you will then separate yourselves from him and thereby escape the fiery destruction God has prepared for him. He wants to keep you from your salvation in the hereafter. He knows that without this truth that I am teaching you, you could never avoid the fire that God has ordained for him and enter into the Hereafter. And by HEREAFTER, we mean the Kingdom of Righteousness that God will establish “here” on this earth “after” the devil has been destroyed in the Divine Lake of Fire. Beloved brothers and sisters, it has been predicted by all the prophets that God is coming. Well, if God is coming (and He must be coming because the whole world claims to be “looking” for Him), then He must be something visible. If He is an invisible spirit then the world wouldn’t be “looking” for Him to come. The world couldn’t say, “We will see Him” ... because we don’t “look” for a spirit, we feel for a spirit. If God is a spirit and He says He made Adam in His own image and likeness, then I say to you Adam would have been a spirit. But God did not make a spirit; He made Man acts like God; he acts with power. Man does not just sit down and wait for the wheat to grow itself, harvest itself, make itself into flour, bake itself, and then bring itself to him to eat, does he? No!!! Man plants the wheat, man cultivates it, man threshes it, man grinds it into flour, man bakes the bread, and then man eats it. If man sits all day in the house waiting for a spirit to produce that bread he would starve to death. No spirit in heaven or in hell will bring you bread ... and no spirit in heaven or in hell will bring you freedom, justice, or equality. I say to you, my beloved brothers and sisters, your slave master and his imps (the Negro preachers) have blinded you by such ignorant teachings and today you are still foolishly sending your praises and your prayers to an invisible God who is supposed to be somewhere out in space, and who cannot be found by you until after you die. And, this same ignorant doctrine has you believing there is an invisible devil down in the earth somewhere beneath your feet ... while in reality the devil is right here on top of the earth, walking around on two feet like you are, and you are looking at him every day. God is a man, a flesh and blood being, but He is a Divine Being. Why do we call God a Divine Being? Because He is a being like we are but His wisdom, power, and other capabilities and attributes are Supreme ... making Him the Highest Power, the Supreme in Power, or Supreme Power. He is a being like ourselves, but He has the Divine Capacity of exercising His Power or to project through His Power the powers of the Universe ... and therefore we call Him the Supreme Being and the God of the Universe. He has the Divine Power to will whatever He wishes and to bring it into existence with His Divine Will. But He is I would defy any spirit outside the spirit that is in a man to do anything for me or to me. I would defy any devil that is outside of a man to do anything for me or to me. But I do recognize the devil in these that can do us harm and have done us harm. No spirit independent of man can do us harm or good. Beloved brothers and sisters, let us bring our minds out of the sky; let us stop being spooky; let us learn to face reality; let us look around here on this earth as other intelligent and civilized people are doing. Here in Atlanta is the seat of education for the so-called Negroes in this country. Yet most Negroes here are still locked into the most crowded and undesirable areas. Therefore, I would like to know what are our educated people doing with this education to elevate the living standards of your own people, and to eliminate the misery and poverty yet suffered by the so-called Negro masses who do not have education? You who are college graduates, and you who are educators and instructors here in Atlanta, Georgia: I would like for you to tell me what you are doing with this education you have received from the white man toward making your own people more independent? What are you doing for your people with your education? Should not you take that education to unite your people and bring them up out of the “mud of ignorance,” and make them an independent people? But with all your education you yourself are still dependent upon your slave master for a job, and for your food, clothing and shelter. With your education, you have enough land and farmers to do something about the condition of the so-called American Negro. But you must first agree that the most important ingredient has been omitted from your education, and that is the knowledge of God, the devil, of yourself, and of your In the unity and harmony and Brotherhood created by the religion of Islam, it is easy for us to pool our knowledge and finance to set up farms and grow food to feed our people; we can set up factories to manufacture our own necessities, and other businesses with which we can establish trade and commerce and become independent as other civilized people are. Then, in this way you will be using your education to bring your people out of the slums and the breadlines. They will cease to be the “last hired and the first fired,” when you use your education to make jobs for them. I thank you, my beloved brothers and sisters, for being here this afternoon, and listening so attentively to this truth. I am God’s last Messenger to you. You must accept Allah as God. You must know that Islam is your religion. Come and follow me; let me teach you, and I will put 20 million so-called American Negroes overnight on the road to success ... on the road toward complete independence in a home of your own, where you will never any more have to beg anyone for freedom, justice, or equality. Thank you, my beloved brothers and sisters. May Allah forever bless you, as I leave you with the greetings of the peaceful and the righteous: As-Salaam-Alaikum ... which means, “Peace be unto you.” This 1960 speech, delivered by Malcolm X before a jam-packed Harvard Law School Forum, comes from what I have called the Black Muslims’ “rasping” period. These were their early days on the national scene, and it would be interesting to find out if Malcolm would make just such a speech now. Malcolm is clearly on the defensive in the first half of his long talk; he is responding to criticism rather than spreading his own gospel. It is only after he has answered charges that the Black Muslims are not orthodox Muslims; only after he has denied that the Black Muslims teach hate; and after he has put the Negro middle class in their place for their criticism of him—only after all this does Malcolm get down to what he really went to Harvard to say. In essence it is this: The American Negro must have a separate state. This is the only way white men can atone for their sins and escape destruction; this is the only way Negroes can return to their own. The Harvard Speech is the best statement—and defense—of the proposed all-Negro state that the Black Muslims Mr. chairman, ladies and gentlemen: We thank you for inviting us here to the Harvard Law School Forum this evening to present our views on this timely topic: THE AMERICAN NEGRO; PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS. But to understand our views, the views of the Black Muslims, you must first realize that we are a religious group, and you must also know something about our religion, the religion of ISLAM. The Creator of the Universe, whom many of you call God or Jehovah, is known to the Muslims by the name ALLAH. Since the Muslims believe there is but ONE GOD, and that all the prophets came from this ONE GOD, we believe also that all prophets taught the same religion, and that they themselves called that religion ISLAM, an Arabic word that means the complete submission and obedience to the will of ALLAH. One who practices this Divine Obedience is called a MUSLIM (commonly known, spelled, and referred to here in the West as Moslem). There are over 725 million Muslims on this earth, predominantly in Africa and Asia, the non-white world ... and we here in America who are under the Divine Leadership of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, are an integral A unique situation faces the 20 million ex-slaves here in America because of our unique condition, thus our acceptance of Islam, and into Islam, affects us uniquely ... differently than all other Muslim “converts” anywhere else on this earth. Mr. Elijah Muhammad is our Divine Leader and Teacher here in America. Mr. Muhammad believes in and obeys God 100 per cent, and is teaching and working among our people to fulfill God’s Divine Purpose today. I am here at this Harvard Law School Forum this evening to represent Mr. Elijah Muhammad, the spiritual head of the fastest-growing group of Black Muslims in the Western Hemisphere. We who follow Mr. Muhammad know that he has been divinely taught and sent to us by God Himself. We believe that the miserable plight of the 20 million black people in America is the fulfillment of divine prophecy. We believe that the serious race problem that our presence here poses for America is also the fulfillment of divine prophecy. We also believe that the presence today in America of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, his teachings among the 20 million so-called Negroes, and his naked warning to America concerning her treatment of these 20 million ex-slaves is all the fulfillment of divine prophecy. Therefore, when Mr. Muhammad declares that the only solution to America’s serious race problem is complete SEPARATION of the two races, he is fulfilling that which was predicted by all of the biblical prophets to take place in this day. But, because Mr. Muhammad takes this uncompromising stand, those of you who don’t understand biblical prophecy wrongly label him as a racist, a hate teacher, or of being anti-white, and of teaching black supremacy. Many of you who classify yourselves as “white” express surprise and shock at this truth that Mr. Muhammad is teaching among your 20 million ex-slaves here in America, but you should be neither surprised nor shocked. As students, scholars, professors and scientists you should be well aware that we are living in a world and at a time when great changes are taking place. New ideas are replacing the old ones. Old governments are collapsing, and new nations are being born. The entire “old system” which has held the Old World together has lost its effectiveness, and now that Old World is going out. A new system or New World must replace the Old World. Just as the old ideas must be removed to make way for the new, God has declared to Mr. Muhammad that the evil features of this wicked Old World must be exposed, faced up to, and removed in order to make way for the New World that God Himself is getting ready to establish. The Divine Mission of Mr. Muhammad here in America today is to prepare us for this New World of Righteousness, by delivering to us a message that will give us a better understanding of this Old World’s many defects ... and then we will all agree that God must remove this wicked Old World. We see by reports in the daily press that even many of you who are scholars and scientists think that this message of Islam that is being taught here in America among your 20 million ex-slaves is “new,” or that it is something Mr. Muhammad himself has made up. Mr. Muhammad’s religious message is not “new.” All of the scientists and prophets of old predicted that a man It is also written in your own scriptures that this prophetic figure would not be raised up from the midst of the educated class, but that God would make His choice of a man from among the lowly, uneducated, downtrodden and oppressed masses ... among the lowest element of America’s 20 million ex-slaves. Just as it was in the days when God raised up Moses from among the lowly Hebrew slaves, and missioned him to separate his oppressed people from a slave master named Pharaoh, and Moses found himself opposed by the scholars and scientists of that day, who are symbolically described in the bible as “Pharaoh’s Magicians.”... And just as Jesus, himself a lowly carpenter, was also missioned by God in that day to find his people (the “lost sheep”) and separate them from their Gentile enemies, and restore them back among their own people ... Jesus also found himself opposed by the scholars and scientists of his day, who are symbolically described in the bible as “scribes, priests, and pharisees.” Just as the learned class of those days disagreed and opposed both Moses and Jesus primarily because of their humble origin and status, today Mr. Elijah Muhammad is likewise being opposed by the learned, educated intellectuals from among his own kind primarily because of his humble origin and status in their eyesight, and efforts are made by these modern-day “magicians, scribes, and Pharisees” to ridicule Mr. Muhammad by magnifying the humble origin of his many followers. Moses was raised up among his enslaved people at a time when God was planning to remove the power of the slave master and bring about a great change by placing Jesus was sent among his people again at a time when God was planning to bring about a great change. The new dispensation preached by Jesus 2,000 years ago ushered in a new type of civilization, the Christian civilization, better known as the Christian world. The Holy Prophet Muhammad (may the peace and blessings of ALLAH be upon him) came 600 years after Jesus with another dispensation that did not destroy or remove the Christian civilization, but it did put a dent in it, a wound that has lasted even until today. Now today, God has sent Mr. Elijah Muhammad among the downtrodden and oppressed so-called American Negroes to warn us that God is again about to bring about another great change ... only this time, it will be a FINAL CHANGE! This is the day and the time for a COMPLETE CHANGE. Mr. Muhammad is teaching that the religion of Islam is the only solution to the problems confronting our people here in America, but he also warns us that it is even more important for us to know the base or foundation of that which we must build upon tomorrow. Therefore, the way in which Mr. Muhammad teaches us the religion of Islam, and the particular kind of Islam he teaches us, may appear to be different from that which is taught in the Old World of Islam, but the basic principles and practices are the same. You must remember: the condition of America’s 20 million ex-slaves is uniquely pitiful. But, just as the old religious leaders in the days of Moses and Jesus refused to accept Moses and Jesus as religious reformers, today many of the religious leaders in the Old Muslim World We are 4,000 years from the time of that great change which took place in Moses’ day ... we are 2,000 years from the time of that great change that took place in Jesus’ day ... and if you will but look around you on this earth today it will be as clear as the five fingers on your hand that we are again living at the time of a great change right now. God has come to close out the entire Old World ... the Old World in which for the past 6,000 years practically the entire earth has been deceived, conquered, colonized, ruled, enslaved, oppressed and exploited by the CAUCASIAN RACE. When Pharaoh’s civilization had reached its peak, and his time to rule over the slaves was up, God appeared unto Moses and revealed to him that He had something different for his people. Likewise, God has told Mr. Muhammad that He has something different for his People (the so-called Negroes) here in America today, something that up until now has never before been revealed ... Mr. Muhammad teaches us that this Old World has seen nothing yet ... the REAL THING is yet to come. The Black Muslims who follow Mr. Muhammad are not only making our exit out of the door of the Old World, but the door to the New World is yet to be opened ... and what is inside that door is yet to be revealed. This present teaching among the so-called American Negroes is designed only to show proof to us why we should give up this wicked Old House. The roof is leaking; the walls are collapsing, and we find it is no longer able to support the tremendous weight caused by our continued presence in it. And since the knowledge of the deterioration and eventual collapse of this Old Building has come to Mr. Muhammad from Almighty God Himself, whose proper name is ALLAH, the Lord of all the Worlds, the Master of the Judgment Day ... The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is pointing these dangerous present conditions and future events out to you who have enslaved us, as well as to us. With the proper support and guidance our people can get out of this sagging Old Building before it collapses. But this support and guidance that we need actually consists of being taught: a thorough knowledge of the origin, history and nature of the Caucasian race, as well as a thorough knowledge of our own black nation. We must have a knowledge of the true origin and history and the white man’s Christian religion, as well as an understanding of the Islamic religion that prevails primarily among our brothers and sisters in Africa and Asia. You will probably ask us: Why then, if this Old House is going to collapse or go up in smoke, are the Black Muslims asking for some states to be set aside for us right here in this country ... it’s like asking for a chance to retain rooms in a house that you claim is doomed for total destruction? God is giving America every opportunity to repent and atone for the crime she committed when she enslaved our We are asking you for territory here only because of the great opposition we receive from this government in our efforts to awaken our people, unite them, separate them from their oppressors, and return them to our own land and people. You should never make the drastic mistake of thinking that Mr. Muhammad has no place to take his followers in the World of Islam. No sir! He is not shut out there like many of you wish to believe. All who accept Islam and follow him have been offered a home in the Muslim World. Our people have been oppressed and exploited here in America for 400 years, and now with Mr. Muhammad we can leave this wicked land of bondage, but our former slave master is yet opposing his efforts and is unjustly persecuting his followers who have left the Christian church and accepted the religion of Islam. This is further proof that our Caucasian slave master does not want us or trust us to leave him and live elsewhere on this earth, and yet if we stay here among them he continues to keep us at the very lowest level of his society. Pick up any daily paper or magazine and examine the anti-Muslim propaganda and the false charges leveled against our beloved religious leader by some of America’s leading reporters. This only points up the fact that the Caucasian race is never willing to let any black man who is not their puppet or parrot speak for our people or lead our people out of their enslaving clutches without giving him great opposition. The Caucasian slave master has opposed all such leaders in the past, and even today he sanctions and supports only those Negro spokesmen who parrot his doctrines, his ideas The Christian world has failed to give the black man justice. This Christian government has failed to give 20 million ex-slaves justice for our 310 years of free slave labor. Despite this, we have been better Christians even than those who taught us Christianity. We have been America’s most faithful servants during peace time, and her bravest soldiers during war time. And still, white Christians have been unable to recognize us and accept us as fellow human beings. Today we can see that the Christian religion of the Caucasian race has failed us. Thus the black masses are turning away from the church back to the religion of Islam. The government sends its agents among our people to tell lies: they have a well-organized all-out effort to harass them, in an effort to frighten those of our people in this country who wish to accept the religion of Islam, and unite under the spiritual guidance and divine leadership of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Therefore, Mr. Muhammad has declared to you, and to your government, that if you don’t want your 20 million ex-slaves to leave you and return to our own land and people ... and since your actions have proved that the Caucasian race will not accept these 20 million ex-slaves here among them as complete equals ... then let us separate ourselves from you right here, into a separate territory that we can call our own, and on which we can do something for ourselves and for our own kind. Since we cannot live among the Caucasians in peace, and there is not enough time left for us (this new Negro) to wait for the Caucasian race to be “re-educated” and freed of their racial prejudices, and their inbred beliefs and practices of white supremacy ... I repeat: Let our According to recent news dispatches appearing in daily papers throughout this nation: In prisons all over the country the wardens are unjustly persecuting the inmates who want to change from the Christian religion and accept the religion of Islam and follow the spiritual guidance of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad. These prison wardens even admit that when the inmates change from Christianity to Islam they become model prisoners, but despite this they are being persecuted and prevented from reading the Holy Quran, the same Holy Book that is read daily by hundreds of millions of our darker brothers and sisters in Africa and Asia. When the true facts about this religious persecution are made known among the 725 million Muslims in the World of Islam, that strategic area that stretches from the China Seas to the shores of West Africa, how do you think the American Caucasians will then look in the eyes of those non-white people there? The very fact that there is a concerted effort against Islam by wardens across the country is proof that the American government is trying to stamp out the religion of Islam here in a frantic effort to keep it from spreading among her 20 million ex-slaves whom she continues to confine to the lowly role of second-class citizenship. Further proof of this is the fact that these 20 million so-called Negroes have never even been taught about the religion of Islam during the entire 400 years since the Caucasian first brought our people here away from our African Muslim culture in chains ... and despite the fact that Islam is, and always has been, the prevailing religion among our people in Africa. Now the American Caucasian, in a last act of desperation, Also, the American Caucasian today loves to print glaring headlines saying that the orthodox Muslims don’t recognize or accept Mr. Muhammad and his Black Muslims as true Muslims. “Divide and rule” has long been the Caucasian strategy to continue their colonization of dark people. The American Caucasian actually has colonized 20 million black people here in this country simply by dividing us from our African brothers and sisters for 400 years, converting us to his Christian religion, and then by teaching us to call ourselves “Negroes” ... and telling us we were no longer African ... (I guess he says this because our exposure to this “superior” white culture makes us “different” ... so-called “civilized.”) As hundreds of thousands of the ex-slaves here in America today refuse to attend the church of the Caucasians who enslaved us, shunning all further use of the word “Negro,” and because we are accepting ALLAH as our God, Islam as our religion, and The Honorable Elijah Muhammad as our religious leader and teacher ... now the Americans who enslaved us are reverting back to the old trick of their fellow colonialists ... “divide and rule” ... by trying to separate us from the Muslim World, thinking that they can in this way alienate us from our people in Africa and Asia who also serve and follow Almighty God, ALLAH. There are probably 100,000 of what you (whites) call orthodox Muslims in America, who were born in the Muslim World, and who willingly migrated here. But, despite the fact that Islam is a propagating religion, all of these On the other hand, they see that Mr. Muhammad, all by himself, has hundreds of thousands of his fellow ex-slaves turning Eastward toward Mecca five times daily giving praises to the Great God ALLAH. No true Muslim, in his right mind, would denounce or deny this meek and humble little black man, who was himself born in Georgia, the very worst part of this country, as a leader, a defender of the faith, a propagator of the faith, who has rekindled the light of Islam here in the West. His Caucasian opposers have never gotten even one responsible Muslim official to criticize or denounce Mr. Muhammad. They succeed only in getting some jealous or envious little peddler or merchant who migrated here and wants to be recognized as some sort of leader himself, and who will therefore accept the Caucasian’s thirty pieces of silver to attack this man of God. How would Mr. Muhammad ever make a trip into the forbidden areas of Arabia, and visit the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina ... being welcomed and honored by its most respected religious leaders ... the great Imams themselves ... if he himself was not recognized as a great religious man, and a man of God, doing miraculous works by spreading ALLAH’s name here in the West among the 20 million ex-slaves of America? How could Mr. Muhammad visit the capitals of the Muslim World, and be received by its respected leaders, if he too was not recognized and respected as a Muslim leader by them? He visited Al-Azhar, the oldest Mosque and Muslim University in the world, and had tea with the Chief Imam, the Grand Sheikh Shaltuat, who kissed him on his forehead in true Muslim fashion ... yet the American Caucasians, Again you will say: Why then don’t he and his followers leave this house of bondage right now, and go and live in the Muslim World? All of the Black Muslims can live in the Muslim World tomorrow, but The Honorable Elijah Muhammad wants justice for the entire 20 million so-called Negroes. You and your Christian government make the problem even more complicated. You don’t want your 20 million ex-slaves to leave you, yet you won’t share equal justice with them right here. Since you don’t want them to leave this country with us, and you won’t give them equal justice among your kind ... then we will agree only if you let us separate ourselves from you right here. Just give us a portion of this country that we can call our own. Put us in it. Then give us everything we need to start our own civilization here ... that is, support us for 20 to 25 years, until we are able to go for ourselves. This is God’s plan. This is God’s solution. This is justice, and compensation for our 310 years of free slave labor. Otherwise America will reap the full fury of God’s wrath, for her crimes against our people here are many. As your bible says: “He that leads into captivity shall go into captivity; he that kills with the sword shall be killed by the sword.” This is the law of justice and this is in your own Christian scriptures. The black masses are shaking off the drugs, or narcotic effect of the token integration promises. A cup of tea in a white restaurant is not sufficient compensation for 310 years of free slave labor. The black masses as represented by the Black Muslims will never be satisfied until we have some land that we can call our own. Again I repeat: we are not asking for territory here Token integration will not solve our problem. This is a false solution. A “token” solution. It is a hypocritical approach to the problem, a tricky scheme devised by you, and propagated by your Negro puppets whom you yourself have appointed as our “leaders” and “spokesmen.” Integration is not good for either side. It will destroy your race, and your government knows it will also destroy ours ... and the problem will still remain unsolved. God has declared that these 20 million ex-slaves must have a home of their own. After 400 years here among the Caucasians, we are absolutely convinced that we can never live together in peace, unless we are willing to remain subservient to our former masters ... therefore, immediate and complete separation is the only solution. NAACP Attorney Thurgood Marshall has admitted publicly that six years since the Supreme Court decision on DESEGREGATION of the schools, only 6 per cent desegregation has taken place. This is an example of integration! A kidnaper, a robber, an enslaver, a lyncher is just another common criminal in the sight of God, and the above-mentioned criminal acts have been committed on a mass scale for 400 years by your race against America’s 20 million so-called Negroes. It is true that today America professes to be sorry for her crimes against our people, and she says she wants to Many of these downtrodden victims want to forgive America; they want to forget the crimes you have committed against them, and some are even willing to accept the formula of “token integration” that you yourself have devised as the solution to correct the problems created by your criminal acts against them. In a court of justice the criminal can confess his crimes and throw himself on the mercy of the court if he has truly repented, but neither the criminal nor his victims have any say-so in suggesting the sentence that is to be passed upon the guilty ... or the price that the confessed criminal must pay. This is left in the hands of the Judge. We are living in the Day of Judgment right now. God is the Judge that our American slave master must now answer to. God is striking this great country with tornadoes, storms, floods, rain, hail, snow ... and terrific earthquakes are yet to come. Your people are being afflicted with increasing epidemics of illness and disease, divine plagues that God is striking you with because of your criminal acts against the 20 million ex-slaves ... and today instead of repenting and truly compensating our people for their 310 years of free slave labor that built up this great country for you, you buy out the Negro leaders with 30 pieces of silver and get them to sell our people on accepting your “token integration.” When one uses a “token” on the bus or streetcar that “token” is a substitute for the real money. Token means “a substitute,” that which takes the place of the real thing. Token integration takes the place of the real thing. Two black students at Georgia University is TOKEN integration. Four black children in New Orleans white schools is TOKEN integration. A handful of black students in the The white man’s violent rebellion, and relentless struggle against TOKEN integration is sufficient to prove what would happen if the Negro leaders demanded REAL INTEGRATION. Also, according to the above-mentioned rate of speed since the desegregation decisions of the Supreme Court, it will take us another thousand years to get the white man in the South sufficiently “re-educated” to accept our people in their midst as equals ... and if the rest of the truth is told, it will also take the white man here in the North, West and East just as long as his brother in the South ... if the frightened Uncle Tom leadership ever stops accepting his master’s “tokens” and begins to demand the real thing. To many of you here at the Harvard Law School Forum this evening, this sounds ridiculous; to some it even sounds insane. But these 20 million black people here in America now number a nation in their own right. Do you believe a nation within another nation can be successful? Especially when they both have equal education? Once the slave has his master’s education, the slave wants to be like his master, wants to share his master’s property, and even wants to exercise the same privileges as his master even while he is yet in his master’s house. This is the CORE of America’s troubles today; and there will be no peace for America as long as 20 million so-called Negroes are here BEGGING for the rights which America knows she will never grant us. Even this limited education America has granted her ex-slaves has already produced great unrest ... and Almighty God says the only way for America to ever have any future peace or prosperity is for her 20 million ex-slaves If we receive equal education, how long do you expect us to remain your passive servants, or second-class citizens? There is no such thing as a second-class citizen. We are FULL CITIZENS or we are not citizens at all. When you teach a man the science of government he wants an equal part (or position) in that government ... or else he wants a government himself. He begins to demand equality with his master. No man with equal education will serve you. The only way you can continue to rule us is with a superior knowledge, or by continuing to withhold equal education from our people. America has not given us equal education, but she has given us enough to make us want more ... and to make us demand equality of opportunity ... and this is causing unrest ... plus international embarrassment ... thus the only solution is immediate SEPARATION. As your colleges and universities turn out an ever increasing number of so-called Negro graduates with education equal to yours, they will automatically increase their demands for equality in EVERYTHING else. This equal education will increase their spirit of equality and make them feel that they should have EVERYTHING that you have, and their increasing demands will become a perpetual headache for you ... and continue to cause you international embarrassment. In fact, the same Negro students you are turning out today will soon be demanding the same things you now hear being demanded by Mr. Muhammad and the Black Muslims. In my conclusion: I must remind you that since your own Christian bible states that God is coming in the “last days,” Do justice by your faithful ex-slaves. Give us some land of our own right here, some SEPARATE STATES, so we can separate ourselves from you ... then everyone will be satisfied, and perhaps we will all be able to then live happily ever after, as your own Christian bible says ... “every one under his own vine and fig tree.” Otherwise: all of you who are sitting here, your government, and your entire race will be destroyed and removed from this earth by Almighty God, ALLAH. I thank you. Malcolm X delivered this speech at a so-called “unity” rally on the streets of Harlem early in the spring of 1960. As the text indicates, politics was in the air, and the Black Muslims were calling for “unity” among Negro leaders. The stage was set for the rally when the Black Muslims telegraphed some fifteen outstanding Negro leaders, asking them to participate in the affair. None of them came, but this did not stop Malcolm X from unburdening himself. Here again we see Malcolm X on the defensive, but in a somewhat different way. In the first half of the speech Malcolm is pulling in his horns; he is saying “unity,” “freedom,” “peace.” He is suggesting a summit meeting of Negro leaders. “Let’s have our arguments behind closed doors,” Malcolm shouts, “but let’s come out unified.” At that juncture, however, nobody was willing to practice summitry with the Black Muslims. Malcolm used this speech to point up the Black Muslim concern for morality; he attacks the dope, crime, and prostitution As expected, Malcolm concludes with the call for a separate state; he restates his Harvard offer: the white race can be spared from destruction if they give the Negro a separate state. The rally lasted five hours; thirteen black nationalist groups were represented, and some four thousand people blocked off 125th Street and Seventh Avenue at the peak of the rally. As-salaam-alaikum, beloved brothers and sisters, welcome to our harlem freedom rally. When we say “our” we do not mean Muslim nor Christian, Catholic nor Protestant, Baptist nor Methodist, Democrat nor Republican, Mason nor Elk. By “our” Harlem Freedom, we mean the black people of Harlem, the black people of America, and the black people all over this earth. The largest concentration of black people on earth is right here in Harlem, so we are gathered here today in Harlem Square to a Freedom Rally, of black people, by black people, and for the benefit of black people. We are not here at this Rally because we have already gained freedom. No! We are gathered here rallying for the freedom which we have long been promised, but have as yet not received. This Rally is for that perfect freedom which up until now this government has not granted us. There would be no need to protest to the government if we were already free. Freedom is essential to life itself. Freedom is essential to the development of the human being. If we don’t have freedom we can never expect justice and equality. Only after we have freedom do justice and equality become a reality. Many of these leaders have suddenly become “experts on Harlem” and as such are often regarded by the white man as the “voice of Harlem.” If this must be the case, then we want the voice of these leaders to ring sometimes in Harlem too. Leaders have differences, and these differences ofttimes cause serious division among the masses. But the HOUR is too short today for black people to afford the luxury of “differences.” Again I repeat, we are not gathered here today because we are Muslims or Christians, Protestants or Catholics, Baptists or Methodists, Democrats or Republicans, Masons or Elks ... but because as a collective mass of black people we have been colonized, enslaved, lynched, exploited, deceived, abused, etc. As a collective mass of black people we have been deprived, not only of civil rights, but even our human rights, the right to human dignity ... the right to be a human being! This Freedom Rally is to be a united effort by all our leaders. We have set aside all petty differences, and in the Spirit of Bandung we have come together on this same platform, wherein each one can voice his personal feelings and his personal solution to this grave crisis we face. The Western World today faces a great catastrophe. It stands on the brink of disaster. Mr. Muhammad says the only way our people can avoid the fiery destruction that God Himself will soon unleash upon this wicked world is for our people to come together among themselves in unity The Western World, filled with evil and wickedness, is groping and stumbling blindly through spiritual darkness toward its inevitable doom. Mr. Muhammad says we must qualify ourselves so that God’s spiritual light will guide us past the pitfalls of destruction. The Western World is filled with drunkenness, dope addiction, lying, stealing, gambling, adultery, fornication, prostitution and hosts of other evils. These evils must be removed if the world is to have peace. These evils are the primary cause of troubles all over the earth. These evils promote greed and lust, increase wickedness and unrest, and destroy all hopes for peace. You want peace. I want peace. Everyone craves for a world of peace. Mr. Muhammad says anyone who will submit to the God of Peace will have peace. Even the white man himself can prolong his time today if he will submit to the God of Peace, and give freedom, justice, and equality to the “people of God” ... the so-called Negroes here in America. The city of Nineveh in the bible to whom Jonah was sent to warn is a good prophetic example of today. They were actually spared because they repented when the warning came to them from God. God will spare our slave master today too if he will repent. The whole dark world wants peace. When I was in Africa last year I was deeply impressed by the desire of our African Brothers for peace, but even they agree that there can be no peace without freedom from colonialism, foreign domination, oppression and exploitation. The God of Peace and Righteousness is about to set up His kingdom of peace and righteousness here on this earth. The American so-called Negroes must recognize each other as brothers and sisters ... stop carrying guns and knives to harm each other, stop drinking whiskey, taking dope, reefers, and even cigarettes. No more gambling! Save your money. Stop fornication, adultery and prostitution. Elevate the black woman; respect her and protect her. Let us rid ourselves of immoral habits and God will be with us to protect and guide us. Then, we must form a platform that will be good for all of our own people, as well as for others. As black people we must unite. We must recognize and give intelligent active support to our political leaders who fight for us unselfishly, sincerely, and fearlessly. But, to prove their sincerity and their right for the support of the black masses, these leaders must first display fearlessness, intelligence, and unity among themselves. They must stop their public bickering with each other. They must stop attacking each other in front of the white man, and for the benefit of the white man. If the black leaders must have differences of opinion, learn to go into the closet with each other, but when you come from behind closed doors, show a united front in the face of the one who is a common enemy to all of us. Mr. Muhammad has invited all of the leaders here today for that purpose. He wants our people united, but unity will never exist among the black masses as long as our leaders are not united. We want to get behind leaders who will fight for us ... leaders who are not afraid to demand freedom, justice, and equality. We do not want leaders who are hand picked for us by the white man. We don’t want any more Uncle Toms. We want brave leaders as our spokesmen, who are not afraid to state our case, who can intelligently demand what we need, what we want, and what is rightfully ours. We don’t want leaders who are beggars, who feel they must compromise with the enemy. And we don’t want leaders who are selfish or greedy ... who will sell us out for a few pieces of silver. A big election is coming up this year. What kind of leaders do we want in office? Which ones will the black masses get behind? Mr. Muhammad has thousands of followers, and millions of sympathizers. He will place his weight behind any fearless black leaders who will stand up and help the so-called American Negroes get complete and immediate freedom. If these black leaders are afraid that to be identified with us they will irk the white man, or lose the white man’s favor or his support, then they can no longer expect the support of the black masses. They call us racial extremists. They call Jomo Kenyatta also a racial extremist and Tom Mboya a moderate. It is only the white man’s fear of men like Kenyatta that makes him listen to men like Mboya. If it were not for the extremists, the white man would ignore the moderates. To be called a “moderate” in this awakening dark world today, that is crying for freedom, is to receive the “kiss of death” as spokesmen or leaders of the masses ... for the masses are ready to burst the shackles of slavery whether the “moderates” will stand up or not. We have many black leaders who are unafraid, especially when they know the black masses stand behind them. Many of them are qualified to represent us not only in this United States government, but could also represent us in this government if we are given 100 per cent citizenship We, the black masses, don’t want these leaders who seek our support coming to us representing a certain political party. They must come to us today as black leaders representing the welfare of black people. We won’t follow any leader today who comes on the basis of political party. Both parties (Democrat and Republican) are controlled by the same people who have abused our rights, and who have deceived us with false promises every time an election rolls around. Mr. Muhammad grieves over the disunity that exists even among the intellectuals and professional so-called Negroes. It is these “educated” so-called Negroes who should be leading us out of this maze of misery and want. They possess the academic know-how, great amounts of technical skills ... but they can’t use it for the benefit of their own kind simply because they themselves are also disunited. If these intellectuals and professional so-called Negroes would unite, not only Harlem would benefit, but it will benefit our people all over the world. Mr. Muhammad says disunity is our number one stumbling block, and this disunity exists only because we lack knowledge of SELF (our own kind). So-called Negro “intellectuals” seem to think integration is the answer. But, is it? “Integrate” means to become as one unit. How can these “intellectuals” expect the white man to accept us into his social unit, political unit, or economic unit when we are not yet in unity (as a unit) among our own kind? We, the Muslims, are for “Brotherhood,” but not for integration! What is the difference? Brotherhood is based on love, which automatically produces voluntary acts of “sincere benevolence.” But integration produces hypocrisy. It forces the white man to pose as a “liberal,” to be pretensive Your thirst for integration makes the white man think you want only to marry his daughter. We (Muslims) who follow Mr. Muhammad don’t think God ever intended for black men to marry white women. Mr. Muhammad and his followers are violently opposed to intermarriage. This is conveniently and purposely misinterpreted by our enemies to mean that we are anti-white, anti-Christian, and anti-American (simply because we refuse to chase after the white man’s women!). Let the white man keep his women, and let us keep ours. Some Negroes who love race-mixing, and want white women, are angry at Mr. Muhammad because he teaches against race-mixing ... so they slip around and make the white man think we are anti-white. (I’m surprised that the white man is dumb enough to believe these Uncle Toms, who stoop so low, like JUDAS, to be stool pigeons against their own kind.) We have oceans of dark people on this earth: in Africa, Asia, and even here in America. Our women are the most beautiful, like a bouquet of flowers. Why should we chase white women? In this “changing” world today, what would we do married to a white woman? Her people don’t want you in their neighborhood around them, and our fast awakening people don’t want you to bring her back into our neighborhood any more to live around us. Thus, you both become a “misfit” ... unwelcomed and unwanted in either society ... where can you go? Because we Muslims look at this as it is and face reality does not mean we are anti-white. We don’t want his white mother, his white sister, nor his white daughter. We want Why do we want some land of our own? Because land is essential to freedom. How else can 20 million black people who now constitute a nation in our own right, a NATION WITHIN A NATION, expect to survive forever in a land where we are the last ones hired and the first ones fired ... simply because we have no land of our own? For over 400 years we have been very faithful to our American slave masters. Now God is warning them through Mr. Muhammad that they should be nice enough to give us some land so we can separate ourselves from them and get started for ourselves. This is no more than what the white man should do. It is in complete accord with the Christian religion. Their bible says that when a slave is set free, his slave master should give him something to help him get started on his own ... never send him away empty-handed. If the Hebrews in the bible numbered only 600,000 in the land of their bondage, and God was concerned with giving them freedom in a land of their own, a land “flowing with milk and honey” ... then what about 20 million so-called Negroes here in America, who have the “freedom” only to look for a job? Can you not see that our former “leaders” have been fighting for the wrong thing ... the wrong kind of freedom? Mr. Muhammad says we must have some land where we can work hard for ourselves, make ourselves equal, and live in dignity. Then and only then we won’t have to beg the white man for the crumbs that fall occasionally from his table. No one respects or appreciates a beggar. Since we say Lincoln freed us, let us avail ourselves of that freedom by uniting together and doing something for We Muslims don’t want to be a burden on America any longer. God has given Mr. Muhammad a divine message, program, and solution. WE MUST HAVE SOME LAND! The white man should be glad to give his loyal “slaves” some land so we can get out of his way and go for ourselves. We will then set up our own farms, factories, business, and schools ... and show him how much we appreciate the education he has given us, by using it to become self-sustaining ... economically and otherwise. We want some land where we can create unity, harmony and brotherhood ... and live together in peace. Since America now sees that this false show of integration and intermarriage will not work, she should make immediate steps to set aside a few of these states for us, and put us there to ourselves. If America will repent and do this, God will overlook some of our wicked deeds (as in the days of Nineveh) ... but if America refuses to give Mr. Muhammad what God instructed him to ask for ... then, like the biblical houses of Egypt and Babylon (slave empires of the bible), God will erase the American government and the entire race that it favors and represents, from this planet ... and God will then give the whole earth back to the original owners, the black man! The following is Malcolm X’s “university speech,” a long lecture he used in the hope of converting students—particularly Negroes—on various university campuses during 1961-1962. It is of some interest that this speech was given at Atlanta University, the great citadel of Negro learning in the Deep South, and Dr. Lonnie Cross, chairman of the department of mathematics, not only joined the movement but became assistant to Jeremiah X, minister of the Atlanta Temple. This lecture contains a unique passage. It will be recalled that in his Harvard speech Malcolm chastised Moslems from the East who had migrated to America but failed to gather converts. In this speech he goes further; in a stinging passage Malcolm flatly accuses Moslems from the East of attempting to turn “our slave masters” (the American white man) into good Moslems. He accuses orthodox Moslems of “passing us by” and attempting to proselytize the foes of the Negro rather than the Negro himself. This is without doubt the strongest position any Muslim Islam, the natural religion of black mankind, is sweeping through and resurrecting black America like a “flaming fire,” under the Divine Guidance of Messenger Elijah Muhammad. Fools try to ignore facts, but wise men must face facts to remain wise. Fools refuse to change from their silly ways and beliefs, but the mental powers of the wise man encourage mental flexibility and enable him to keep an OPEN MIND. This gives him the ability to re-adjust himself whenever it becomes necessary for a CHANGE. As fast as added “light” increases the wise man’s ability to understand, he changes his “course” or his “pace” according to the newly revealed facts before him. Fools, however, just blunder on, blindly, heedless of the ever-changing conditions on the road over which they must travel ... thus, the BLIND DRIVERS and their “cars” usually end up in the DITCH. In the past, the “religious roads” leading through black America presented smooth sailing for the “Old Touring Cars” (Churches) of Christianity. They met few obstacles and had little opposition or competition. The “drivers” (preachers) had it easy. Their “course” was never challenged. They ruled supreme on the religious roads of black America. However, today time is making a great CHANGE. The religious roads of black America have suddenly become Islam poses both a challenge and a threat because Islam is the “resurrecting power.” Thousands of so-called Negroes are beginning for the first time to think for themselves, since turning away from the segregated Christian church, and are rejoining the ranks of their black brothers and sisters of the East. Their age-old faith is the religion of Islam, the religion of our foreparents, the true religion of black mankind. The Spiritual Leader and Teacher of the many thousands of “New Believers” here in black America is Messenger Elijah Muhammad. Before we heard the teachings of Messenger Muhammad, we (American so-called Negroes) were in the grave of ignorance. We had been taught by our Christian slave master, as well as by our own ignorant religious leaders, that God had cursed us black and sentenced us to a lifetime of servitude to the Christian white race. The same slave master’s Christian religion promised us that we (Negroes) would sprout wings after death and fly up into the sky where God would have a place especially prepared for us. Since we poor “cursed” slaves were not to get anything on earth while we were alive, we soon learned to expect it only after death, “up in the sky.” Thus, this earth, and all its vast riches which we ourselves originally owned, was left to the deceitful maneuverings of the white race, for them to build a heaven for themselves and their own kind “in THIS life.” Such religious teachings were purposely designed to Messenger Muhammad has taught us how we eventually became like the beggar Lazarus of the bible (Luke 16:20): Our condition became very sore. We sat here amid the rubbish of the Western World, at the feet of the rich, white Christians ... begging for the crumbs (civil rights and token integration) to fall from their table. But from this very same slave master whom our foreparents had made rich, by giving freely of their slave labor for nearly 400 years (Gen. 15:13), we received only the hardest and dirtiest jobs at the lowest wages; the poorest houses in the ghettos at the highest rent; the poorest food and clothing at the highest prices. Our schools were like shacks, and were staffed by teachers who knew and could teach only that which the slave master dictated to them. Messenger Muhammad has taught us how we (so-called Negroes) were kidnaped from the East by the white Christian slave master, brought to America in chains, and robbed of our own God, His religion, our language, culture, names, flag, and even our own nationality. After robbing us of all that we originally could proudly call our own, then the slave master taught us to call ourselves “Negroes.” He told us that we were to be called “Negroes” because he found us along the banks of the Niger River. Messenger Muhammad asks us today: “Since when does one’s nationality originate from a river?” This same slave master taught us that “negro” means “black” in Spanish. Messenger Muhammad again asks us why, then, do not the dark, Spanish-speaking people in Spain, South and Central America accept it (Negro) as their nationality too? Messenger Muhammad says that we too should get our NATIONality The bible speaks of how we were purposely cut off from our own kind after being robbed of our identity by the cruel Christian slave master (Ezekiel 37:11; Psalms 137:1-9, 83:4). The slave master then took our names, language, and religion from us so we would have to accept his, obey him, and worship him (Dan. 1:6-7). Messenger Muhammad has given us many scriptures to prove his teachings to us are true and in accord with the prophecies of the bible. He says it is we (so-called Negroes) in America who were robbed and made deaf, dumb, and blind to the knowledge of our own God and of our own selves; so that today we are like DRY BONES IN THE VALLEY (spiritually dead, and in a mental grave of ignorance). We are now able to speak only the slave master’s tongue, and are still being called the same “slave names” given to our fathers during slavery by the slave master ... names such as Jones, Smith, Powell, King, Bunche, Diggs, Dawson, etc. These are all SLAVE NAMES, names of the very same slave master who has shown characteristics of his beast-like nature in his treatment of us. The original names of our foreparents were cut off from them, kept secret from us by the “beast” (Rev. 15:2), and therefore today we do not know what our real names should be. We have really been robbed! All other people have their own religion, which teaches them of a God with whom they themselves can associate. A God who at least looks like one of their own kind. But, we (so-called Negroes), after 400 years of masterful brainwashing by the slave master, picture our “god” with the same blond hair, pale skin, and cold blue eyes of our murderous slave master. His Christian religion teaches us that black is a curse; Messenger Muhammad says that the teachers and religious leaders of our own kind here in America were as blind to the REAL TRUTH as we; therefore, they themselves were not even qualified to lead us beyond that which the slave master had falsely taught them. HOW CAN THE BLIND LEAD THE BLIND? Thus, we remained in the DITCH (the GRAVE of spiritual ignorance, mental bondage) which was dug for us to fall into by our white Christian slave master. Not only did our own preachers and educators here fail to give us the truth, our darker brothers who were born in the East came here from the East and neglected to convert us back to the original religion (ISLAM) of our foreparents. Many of our brothers from the East even failed to recognize us as their long-lost brothers (“lost sheep”) who had been kidnaped from the Nation of Islam 400 years ago, and made to dwell here in this strange land, among these wicked people who are not of our own kind (Gen. 15:13), nor of our own choice. Our brothers from the East passed us by, and instead, tried to lecture on Islam to our slave master, thinking, so foolishly, that they would be able to turn the slave master into a righteous Muslim ... knowing all the time that the same slave master was the very one who had kidnaped, robbed, enslaved, and lynched (murdered) their long-lost brothers. Yes, our brothers from the East came here and Messenger Muhammad teaches us that Almighty God, ALLAH, is all-powerful and independent. ALLAH needs no one to apologize for Him. Islam, His True Religion, is not a religion of compromise. Islam is truth itself, and this truth has long been kept a secret from us. For 400 years, we (so-called Negroes) were deprived of Islam (life) by our white slave master, who in turn indoctrinated (brainwashed) us with his false religion of Christianity ... and like the biblical Lazarus, we soon became so dead mentally and spiritually, that our attitude (disposition) became offensive (stank) in the nostrils of the intelligent and civilized world. Our kind in the East failed to recognize us as their long-lost brothers (the lost sheep). Our people in the East forgot us completely, and we, too, soon forgot our blood-ties with them. But Almighty God ALLAH forgets not. As He promised in the Old Testament (Mal. 4:5) that He would send ELIJAH to the “lost sheep” (the so-called Negroes of America) in the “last days” (of the white man’s world), to teach us the truth that would free us from our white slave master, and turn our hearts and minds back toward our own kind (our fathers in the East). And, in the last days of this wicked world, the hearts of our people in the East would be turned once again toward us (Isaiah 43:5). We who have been raised by ELIJAH from the “grave” that was dug for us by the slave master, bear witness that this same ELIJAH, who was predicted to come, has been raised from our midst today and is even now with us here in America in the person of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He is the “first begotten” from this grave of ignorance, from the midst of we (so-called Negroes) who have long been a mentally dead people. He is the “First Fruit” raised Examine his works among us, for his works are sufficient testimony to his identity. Only a fool, or an envious person, would fail to see the greatness of this man after examining his work. We who have been raised from the grave by him bear witness of his work. In a short time, Messenger Muhammad is accomplishing what our educators and religious leaders here failed to do for 100 years, and what our brothers from the East neglected to do. Messenger Muhammad has brought our minds out of the sky (where the ignorant preachers had sent it), and has made us better able to face the reality of living. He has restored life (truth) to our long-lost dead people. Who else other than Almighty God, ALLAH, could have given Messenger Muhammad the power to do what all others have failed to do? “And Allah sent down WATER from above, and therewith gives life to the dead earth after its death. Surely there is a SIGN in this for a people who listen.” (Quran 16:65.) Praise be to ALLAH! Who would have believed it? An ex-slave, a man like Moses (Deut. 18:18), to whom ALLAH has given sufficient power to stand up and speak the truth so boldly here in the land of our bondage, facing not only the wrath of the wicked slave master (modern Pharaoh), but also the wrath of his own kind, who are ignorant of the truth. They are too blind to see what is good for them. There are those also who are jealous and envious of his Wisdom and his Divine Mission. Messenger Muhammad’s teachings have really inspired us with a thirst today for truth. We who follow him are filled with an enthusiastic desire to wear the Crown of Life, the jewels of which are: Wisdom, Knowledge, Understanding ... Freedom, Justice, Equality ... Food, Clothing, These are the very essentials of life, and they adorn the Crown of Life which we shall all wear in ALLAH’s Paradise, the Kingdom of God, which shall soon be set up on this earth, for us to enjoy while we are living. Almighty God, ALLAH, has a religion of life, not of death, that teaches us to live, the importance of living, and how to live. ALLAH is the God of the living, and not the God of the dead. All praise is due to ALLAH! We who once followed foolishly and blindly after the slave master’s plurality of gods (TRINITY) and sought to have our heaven (the necessities of life) up in the sky after we die, are no longer fooled today by the slave master’s lies. Today, we know there is but ONE GOD. There is no God but ALLAH! And, we bear witness that The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is His last and greatest Messenger to us here in North America. Yes, we who were once dead (mentally, morally, socially, politically, and economically), lying at the rich white man’s feet here in the grave of ignorance, are being raised today from this “death.” We are being made upright ... PERPENDICULAR ... by the WORD of this Noble Messenger of Almighty God, ALLAH. He has the Message of Life for 20,000,000 so-called Negroes here in America. “The people (Negroes) that walked in darkness (ignorance) have seen a great light (Islam): they that dwell in the land (of bondage) in the shadow of death (the Cross) upon them has the light shined” (Isaiah 9:2). Examine our previous condition, then judge Messenger Muhammad according to his work among us. We who are striving to carry his teachings into practice today are well on the road to mental, moral and financial independence. Thanks to His Message we are well aware today of the importance of Freedom, Justice, Equality ... Wisdom, Even you must bear witness that Messenger Muhammad is without question the most fearless and uncompromising representative of Almighty God, ALLAH, and His Religion of Islam. Messenger Muhammad doesn’t offer any apology to this wicked race, nor to the fearful and unbelieving “Uncle Toms” among our own kind. He has a Message from God. It is a warning of condemnation of the wicked, and despite all opposition he goes right ahead, boldly delivering his message. He says (as Noah, Lot, and Moses did before him) that you can take it or leave it. So many of you will say that you believe in Almighty God, ALLAH; but, yet you hesitate to teach the naked truth, for fear of hurting the tender feelings of this wicked white race. Since you are filled with fear of the beast (Rev. 21:8), instead of standing in the way, holding up progress, hardening your hearts with envy, jealousy, and unbelief ... step out of his way so he can prove to the world that there is no God but ALLAH, and that this Great God ALLAH has come to redeem His long-lost people ... the so-called Negroes of America (Rev. 7:2). According to the bible, destruction of the slave master by Almighty God can no longer be avoided nor delayed. And, oh how well the slave master (modern Pharaoh) knows this. Yes, this government, which was founded upon the slavery and suffering of God’s “chosen people,” is quite upset today because of the teachings of Messenger Muhammad Government agents have visited and questioned me so persistently and thoroughly that I spent many a sleepless night wondering what it is about the presence of this little meek and humble man that has them so terribly concerned and upset. Yes, they visited and questioned many of his followers, but the more they visit and question us the more clearly we are able to see and know that this is indeed a Divine Man, God-sent to us poor slaves (Exodus 3:6-10), with truth that forever frees us from fear of this wicked, modern Pharaoh. This little black man has not been to college; his formal education in the slave master’s school system is very limited, and he is not eloquent in his speech (Ex. 4:10), whereas these government agents who question us are highly trained and well schooled in all the modern sciences of life. They are well learned, yet the teachings of this little “unlearned” man has them hurt, confused, and upset. The average unlearned man cannot upset a learned person ... unless he has been given something by the MOST LEARNED ONE, the All-Knowing One, Almighty God, ALLAH Himself. All praise is due to ALLAH! How well He has enabled us to see that this little meek and humble man is he of whom the bible says: “How knoweth this man letters (such great wisdom) having never learned (being unlearned) ...” (John 7:15). No man in history has ever fit such a prophetic picture more perfectly than this little “unlearned” man who is teaching us today with such great authority. Yes, he may be “unlearned” according to the educational standards of the slave master, but he has been well schooled by Almighty God, ALLAH Himself ... for he tells us constantly that his doctrine (message) is not his All praise is due ALLAH! A man born in Georgia, mentally blind, deaf, and dumb, as ignorant as all the rest of us. Yet we see him today upsetting the slave master’s health, just as biblical Moses did in ancient times to the slave master of that day (Ex. 5:2), simply by declaring God’s plan to give these poor slaves (America’s so-called Negroes) a land of our own, wherein we won’t have to beg any slave master any more for “civil rights,” for we shall then have in our own land a righteous government, wherein FREEDOM, JUSTICE, and EQUALITY and all the other essentials of life will be natural products, flowing for us and to us ... like “milk and honey.” In the Holy Quran it says: “He it is who raised from among the ILLITERATES a Messenger from among themselves, who recites to them the book and the wisdom ... although they were before in manifest error.” (62:2.) Also, “Those who follow the Messenger-Prophet, the ILLITERATE ONE, whom they find in the Torah and the Gospel. He enjoins them good, and forbids them evil, and makes lawful to them good things and prohibits for them impure things, and removes from them their burden and the shackles which were on them. So those who believe in Him and help Him, these are the successful.” (7:157.) I, myself, being one who was lost and dead, buried here in the rubbish of the West, in the thickest darkness of sin and ignorance, hoodwinked completely by the false teaching of the slave master, am able to stand upright today, PERPENDICULAR, on the square with my God, ALLAH, and my own kind (in the East) ... able for the first time in 400 years to SEE and HEAR. I bear witness that Almighty God, ALLAH, is the Finder of the lost sheep (American Negroes) and the Life-Giver to the dead. He, ALLAH, is the only Saviour for the 20,000,000 Also, I bear witness that Messenger Elijah Muhammad has been taught (raised) by this Great God of the Universe, the Architect of the Universe, the Supreme Being Himself, ALLAH. And I bear witness that Messenger Elijah Muhammad is in turn raising us from the dead today, teaching us TRUTH, and raising us from the dead level of ignorance. Mr. Muhammad Speaks is the official newspaper of the Black Muslim movement. It is a highly charged, well-edited propaganda sheet of some thirty-six pages. One recent edition carried the full text of a speech Malcolm X delivered at Queens College in New York. More interesting than the speech—at least I feel so—is the way the editors of the paper led into the text. Here is a clear example of how Black Muslims are informed about what their leaders are doing. The paper had a circulation of over fifty thousand a year ago, and I suspect it has all but doubled that now. The picture painted here is that of their second-in-command, Malcolm X, issuing words of wisdom in the places of higher learning. Of particular interest is the description of students skipping class to question Malcolm. I was not at Queens College, but I have been with Malcolm—most of the time to debate with him—at other universities. And I know this scene to be valid. Whether people believe Malcolm X is one thing, but there can be
We thank you for inviting us here today to present our views on this topic: “The Negro’s Position in the Recent American Society.” But, to understand our views you must first know something about our religion, Islam. The Creator of the Universe, whom many of you call God or Jehovah, is known to the Muslims by the name ALLAH. Since the Muslims believe all prophets came from that ONE GOD and therefore all taught one and the same religion, rightly called ISLAM, which means the complete submission and obedience to ALLAH. One who practices this Divine Obedience is called a Muslim (commonly known, spelled, and referred to here in the West as Moslem). There are over 600 million Muslims on this earth, predominantly in Africa and Asia, and we here in America A unique situation faces the black man here in America because of his unique condition, thus his acceptance of Islam and into Islam affects him uniquely ... differently than all other converts to Islam. Mr. Elijah Muhammad is our Divine Leader and Teacher here in America. He believes in and obeys God 100 per cent and is teaching and working among us to fulfill God’s Divine Purpose. What is this purpose? God’s purpose today (just as it was in biblical days) is the complete SEPARATION of the so-called Negroes from their slave master ... as the bible says concerning today: “Let every man be under his own vine and fig tree.” The best biblical example of this is the enslavement of the Hebrews in the land of Egypt under Pharaoh ... a free man and some slaves who were “strangers in a land not their own,” and how Jehovah chose Moses to SEPARATE them from their slave master. Since the slave master today declares his “former” slaves are free, Mr. Muhammad says that for the betterment of our future and that of our former slave master God has declared we also must be SEPARATED. To many of you here in this college auditorium, this sounds ridiculous; to some it even sounds insane. But 20 million black people here in America now number a nation in their own right. Do you believe a nation WITHIN another nation can be successful? Especially when they both have equal education? Once the slave has his master’s education, the slave wants to be like his master, wants to share his master’s property, and wants to exercise the same privileges as his master. Even the limited education America has granted her ex-slaves has already produced great unrest ... and Almighty God says the only way for America to ever have peace is for us to be SEPARATED from her ... and therefore Mr. Muhammad teaches us that we must have some land of our own. If we receive equal education, how long do you expect us to remain your passive servants, or second-class citizens? There is no such thing as second-class citizens. We are FULL CITIZENS or we are not citizens at all! When you teach a man the science of government he wants an equal part (or position) in that government ... or else he wants to be a master in that government himself. He demands equality with his master. No man with equal education will serve you. The only way you can continue to rule us is with a superior knowledge, or by continuing to hold equal education from our people. America has not given us equal education, but she has given us enough to make us want more ... and to make us demand equality of opportunity ... which is causing great unrest. Thus, the only SOLUTION is complete SEPARATION! You believe in the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, that a great DAY OF SEPARATION is coming, and that the knowledge of truth will cause this SEPARATION. We are living at that time today! You are not common people here in this college audience. You are students, scholars, professors; you have education enough to weigh current events as well as history against the truth of what Mr. Muhammad is teaching. They were taught by their educated white masters that they were born inferiors ... born to serve the whites ... “superior” whites who restricted them without citizenship even after the so-called emancipation proclamation. Today Mr. Muhammad sees nothing but the DESTRUCTION of both races if they stay together. INTEGRATION will cause DISINTEGRATION of both. A child stays within the mother until the time of birth. When the time of birth arrives, the child must be SEPARATED, or it will DESTROY its mother and itself. The mother can’t carry that child after its time. The child wants to be free; it cries for a world of its own. If the mother will not give it up NATURALLY, the doctors must forcibly take it from her ... which sometimes causes her death. If she can set it free naturally and easily, so much the better ... if not, it must be TAKEN. Twenty million so-called Negroes in America today number a nation WITHIN a nation and are crying for FREEDOM. We must be freed. We must be born. We must be SEPARATED ... or cause the DESTRUCTION of both! SEPARATION is the only solution today. Is this insane? Is this so ridiculous? During slavery our parents would have been put to death for advocating integration with the white man ... and now that God has declared this is the DAY OF SEPARATION, the white man wants (or at least is TALKING about) integration with his ex-slave. America can solve her present problems and avoid a worse crisis by setting up some SEPARATE STATES for us right here in America. Remember the Hebrews in biblical Egypt ... after their Thus it cost the slave master his own freedom, his country, and his life for opposing God’s Plan to SEPARATE His people from their slave master and set them in a land of their own. God would not have DESTROYED the slave master if he would have listened ... but just as America is today, the biblical slave master (Pharaoh) was also too rich, too strong, and too proud to listen to Moses ... whom they contemptuously looked upon only as an inarticulate ex-slave. Mr. Muhammad is opposed today, both by his own people and by whites, simply because he advocates complete FREEDOM, JUSTICE, and EQUALITY for America’s 20 million so-called Negroes. America is a free nation. Why should America oppose Mr. Muhammad for teaching FREEDOM for her 20 million so-called Negroes? He is not asking for an “integrated society” which would only lead to the dreaded INTERMARRIAGE with America’s white sons and daughters ... he is demanding complete SEPARATION where we will have complete FREEDOM, JUSTICE, and EQUALITY in a land of our own. And, if God is with Mr. Muhammad today to SEPARATE us and put us in a land wherein we can form our own nation equal with other civilized nations ... would you want God to DESTROY your country like he did biblical Egypt ... for opposing HIS DIVINE PLAN? Speaking, as always, in behalf of “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad,” Malcolm X journeyed to Yale University in 1962 to debate with Herbert Wright, then National Youth Secretary of the NAACP. The first third of this Yale Speech is Malcolm’s attempt to put the Black Muslims’ doctrine in world perspective. One may dispute, as Herbert Wright did, the lessons Malcolm draws from current history, but this lecture shows once again how the Black Muslims are struggling to give their doctrine the advantages of learning and information. Malcolm’s point is that the world situation demands that the American Negro have a separate state and that even such threats as the Communist take-over in Cuba will not subside until that all-Negro state is brought into being. This talk has a particularly scorching indictment of middle-class Negroes. Several people who were present at the debate have told me that Herbert Wright became difficult at times, for Malcolm, and that Malcolm responded with an unusual amount of bile. This was one of a series of debates Remembering that the Black Muslims have a prohibition against voting, the reader will be particularly interested in Malcolm’s arguments as to why the majority of American Negroes do not vote. He sees this apathy at the polls as a rebellion against “integration-minded” Negro leadership. And this may be a commentary on why the Muslims have themselves decided to enter politics. In behalf of my beloved leader and teacher, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and the many young Muslims who follow him, we wish to thank you for this opportunity to explain our position today in what we feel to be the only solution to the serious race problems confronting America and the entire troubled Western World. In this crucial hour in which we live today, it is essential that our minds constantly be kept open to reality. We have both races here in this Yale Law School Auditorium tonight. Let us not be emotional. Let us be governed and guided only by facts. I represent Mr. Elijah Muhammad, the spiritual head of the fastest-growing group of Black Muslims in the Western Hemisphere. We who follow him know that he has been divinely taught and sent to us by God Himself. We believe that the miserable plight of the 20 million black people in America is the fulfillment of divine prophecy. We believe that the serious race problem that our presence here poses for America is also the fulfillment of divine prophecy. We also believe the presence today in America of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, his teachings among the so-called Negroes, and his naked warning to America concerning her treatment of these so-called Negroes is all the fulfillment of divine prophecy. Studying world conditions in the light of facts, facing reality as grown men and women ... seeing things not as we would like them to be, but as they really are ... only then can we determine the rightness, the validity, the divine origin of Mr. Muhammad and the solution which he offers as the only hope for America’s 20 million so-called Negroes, and also as the only hope for this troubled Western World. If Mr. Muhammad’s solution is from God, is it in time to save 20 million so-called Negroes? Is it in time to save America? Is it in time to save the Western World? Let us look closely and see. The Western World finds itself today constantly engulfed in crisis after crisis. The ingredients for disaster lurk constantly on all sides ... both at home and abroad. The Western World’s leading diplomats are whispering in the halls of the UN that catastrophe can come any moment, any hour, any second. Whether this grave crisis be studied at the international level, the national level, or the local level, we will discover the primary ingredient always encountered, in one form or another, is the race issue ... the race question ... the race problem. Whether it is the Congo, Algeria, South Africa, China, Cuba, or Panama. But many of you may be asking yourselves: “Why should we listen to this little so-called Negro ... this little Georgia-born ex-slave? What can he do? What can he tell us?” Well, my friends, the Western World’s most learned diplomats have failed to solve this grave race problem. Her learned politicians have failed. Her learned theologians have failed. Her learned legal experts have failed. Her sociologists have failed. Her civil leaders have failed. Her fraternal leaders have even failed. Since the Western World’s most skillful scientists and scholars have failed to solve this race problem, it is time for us to sit down tonight and reason together, and I’m certain we will be forced to agree that it takes God Himself to solve this grave racial dilemma. When we face these facts, we see the necessity for DIVINE intervention ... we see the necessity for a DIVINE SOLUTION. If God is going to intervene, will He come Himself, or will He send someone with His solution? Will we be able to accept this divine solution when it comes? How will we know if the Messenger who brings us the solution is really a man from God? What yardstick will we use to measure him? Will this man of God be someone from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Howard, or Tuskegee? Will this man of God be a black man or a white man? Will he be a theologian or preacher from one of the prevailing religions of the Western World? Will he be a politician from one of the major political parties? What type of man do you think God would choose to deliver His solution to this troubled Western World? How are we to determine Let us not be emotional; let us reason together. Look around us at the condition of the world. Never before has man had in his hands the power to destroy human life on such a vast scale. Never before has there been such propaganda, mass lies, mass suspicion, mass confusion, mass dissatisfaction, mass unrest, mass hatreds ... and the ingredients for such mass bloodshed. Never before has America made so many crucial blunders, one after another, and suffered such great loss of prestige in the eyes of the world, despite the advice of her expert advisors. The U-2 spy plane incident caused the President of the strongest country on earth to be tricked, trapped and exposed before the whole world as a liar ... despite the advice of expert advisors. At the Paris Summit Conference, the same President was cursed, ridiculed, and humiliated again before the eyes of the entire world ... despite the advice of his expert advisors. In Korea, students, mere children, toppled the government of Syngman Rhee, the best friend America had in the Far East, despite the advice of her expert advisors. In Turkey, children toppled the government of Menderes, America’s best friend in the Middle East ... despite the advice of expert advisors. In Tokyo, students, mere children again, defied the President to come to Japan, and blocked him from entering after he had traveled thousands of miles from home and had arrived at their back door ... a most humiliating insult ... despite the advice of his expert advisors. And Cuba, a little midget island-government in the Caribbean, is challenging Giant America, accusing her of economic My friends, if the expert politicians, the expert theologians, the expert diplomats and other scientists, professors and scholars have failed to devise a solution to these grave world problems, surely you will agree that it is now time for God to send us someone with a solution from Himself. Is Mr. Muhammad from God? Is he on time? Does his divine solution fit the events of today? Look at the racial volcano that has erupted in the Congo, with the ingredients present for an even greater racial explosion building up into what could easily touch off the dreaded 3rd World War ... and once again the diplomats in the UN are whispering that Western Civilization is tottering on the brink of disaster. Why are the Africans in the Congo rising against the white Belgian oppressors? Why are the Africans in Kenya rising against their white British oppressors? Why are the Africans in Angola rising against their white Portuguese oppressors? Why are the Africans in Algeria rising against their white French oppressors? In short: Why is the black man today all over Africa rising up against his white European overlords? In the Congo, Central Africa, the black man is saying, “We must have our own land.” In Kenya, East Africa, the black man is saying, “We must have our own land.” In Angola, West Africa, the black man is saying, “We must have our own land.” In Algeria, North Africa, the black man is saying, “We must have our own land.” Even deep into South Africa, all over the entire African continent, the only solution in the minds of the awakening black man is: “We must have our own land.” If Mr. Muhammad says “some land of our own” is God’s solution to this grave race problem, why land? Why is land so important to everyone today? The white man in Great Britain could once boast that his control extended over so much of the black man’s land that the sun never set on the British Empire. Today, when the sun rises, we can hardly find the British Empire. How important is land? Well, look what happened to the British Empire when she lost the lands she had colonized in Asia: lands like India, China, Burma, Malaya, etc. ... her inability to continue robbing Asia of the natural resources produced by the land almost wrecked the British economy, decreased her military strength and her political prestige so low she could no longer use “force” to hold her African colonies. As her grip on the black man’s land loosened, Britain dwindled. Loss of land meant loss of Empire ... loss of wealth, power, and of prestige. As the black men in Africa and Asia regain control over their lands, the French, Belgians, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and all other European Empires also begin to crumble and topple downward.... As we face these facts, we are forced to agree that the economy of white Europe, the military power of white Europe, and the political prestige of white Europe was The combined powers of white Europe have not been able to stem this black tide in Africa that is sweeping aside the shackles of colonial slavery. The Africans have become militant and are marching toward freedom. Africa is the only continent where a new nation is being born every day ... and these new nations are taking their seats in the family of other independent nations symbolized by the United Nations. And, this fast-growing black block formed by these newly born African nations, united with our Darker Brothers in Asia, can already easily out-vote the white colonial powers in the UN who had formerly enslaved them. These newly born independent black nations can also take a firm stand in behalf of other black people all over the world who are still enslaved, persecuted, exploited ... or deprived of their basic rights. As the rise of these newly independent black nations collapses the economic, military, and political strength of America’s allies in white Europe, what effect does this have upon white America? Does white America face the same black web in which the colonial powers of white Europe find themselves entangled? And, if so, how will this affect America’s attitude toward the black people of Africa? How will this affect America’s attitude toward the 20 million black people who are yet suffering the bondage of so-called second-class citizenship right here in America ... 20 million so-called Negroes who have also been deprived of freedom, justice, and equality ... 20 million so-called Negroes who not only have been deprived of their civil rights, but who have even been deprived of their HUMAN RIGHTS ... the right to hold their heads up, and to live in dignity like other human beings. Will the Divine Solution that God has given Mr. Elijah Muhammad help white America avert the racial dilemma in which the awakening dark nations of Africa and Asia have already placed America’s allies in white Europe? Before we can intelligently decide to accept or reject Mr. Muhammad’s solution, let us take a closer look at America itself: America is the richest and most powerful nation on this earth. Her President is almost like a “god,” for he has in his hands almost every other country on this earth. Therefore, every four years, when a new President, or “god,” is about to be selected, the eyes of even the foreign nations are turned toward the American elections ... for they too are wondering who, what type of man, will be the next “god.” Yet, at the two great political conventions in which the two candidates are selected, despite America’s need to impress, and favorably influence the foreign nations, foreign policy is never the great controversial issue ... the controversial issue is always over domestic policy ... the CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE ... in which the so-called American Negro is the primary figure ... the STAR on the world stage ... for it is he who holds the balance of power in all elections ... it is he who can easily determine “who” will be the next “god.” Therefore, this great political drama not only stars the Negro, but all the political schemes are designed primarily to woo him, to please him, to tempt him, ensnare him, to get his allegiance and capitalize upon his political support. The Negro’s position is most strategic, but his mental condition is too pathetic for him to take intelligent advantage of this vital position “fate” has placed him in. The The Western World is sick. America is sick ... but the Negro in America is the sickest of them all. The sickening condition of the Negro in America is infecting Uncle Sam’s entire body and endangering the security and future of the whole Western World. Mr. Muhammad says that only after the American Negro’s condition is “corrected” will Uncle Sam’s health improve ... for only then will Uncle Sam look “healthy” in the inquiring eyes of the fast-awakening dark world. Since we see the vital necessity of correcting the miserable condition of the American Negro, and we must also agree that all other efforts to solve this problem have failed, will Mr. Muhammad’s “prescription” cure the ailments of these 20 million second-class citizens? Many of you will say: “No! Muhammad is a Black Supremist. He is an extremist. He stresses race too much. He is a racist.” My friends: If you were to see a man attired in white, with a sharp instrument in his hands, bending over someone who is prostrate on a table, your lack of understanding might compel you to shout, “murderer!” But when you know the place is a hospital, the sleeping man is a patient, the man attired in white is a surgeon, and the sharp instrument must be used to perform some surgery that is necessary to save the patient’s life ... you can then accept the fact that although the operation is very painful, it must be performed. Uncle Sam is sick, because he has a black “lump” growing in his white body that doesn’t belong there, and this black “growth” is getting larger every day, and increasing Uncle Sam’s internal pains. God Himself has ordained that this surgery must be performed, for if the 20 million rapidly God has given Mr. Muhammad some sharp truth. It is like a two-edged sword. It cuts into you. It causes you great pain, but if you can take it, it will cure you and save you from what otherwise would be CERTAIN DEATH. In your mental anguish many of you will emotionally insist that Mr. Muhammad is not teaching the real religion of Islam. You will still insist that he is teaching a racial, economic, and political philosophy. My friends, Islam is the religion taught by all of the prophets: Noah, Lot, Abraham, Moses, and even Jesus. Islam is the true name of the religion God gave to the prophets in the past to cure their people of whatever moral or spiritual ailments that were afflicting them in that day. Since we have examined the ailments of the crumbling Western World, and the ills that are infecting America ... let us look more closely at the miserable condition of the American Negro: Here are 20 million people who have lost their original identity; they cannot even speak their own mother tongue. How can 20 million people lose their language? What happened to it? What was it? Why don’t they at least know what it was? Why don’t the educated Negroes know something about their own history, their own culture, the last names of their forefathers, their own nationality, their own country, their own flag, their own religion, and their own God? My friends, surely you will agree that no other people in history, biblical or otherwise, have been so completely stripped and robbed by their slave master of all knowledge concerning their own kind ... and because of this, no other people in history, biblical or otherwise, have ever presented The New York Tribune, in an editorial (Feb. 5, 1960), pointed out that out of 11 million qualified Negro voters, only 2,700,000 actually took time to vote. This means that, roughly speaking, only 3 million of the 11 million Negroes who are qualified to vote take an active part ... and the remaining 8 million remain voluntarily inactive, and yet it it is this small minority of Negro voters who help determine who will be the next President. If who will be the next President can be influenced by 3 million Negro voters, it is easy to see why the presidential candidates of both political parties put on such a false show with the civil rights bill, and with promises of integration. They must woo or impress the 3 million voting Negroes who are the actual “integration seekers.” If so much fuss is made over these 3 million “integration seekers,” what would the presidential candidates have to do to appease the 8 million non-voting Negroes if they ever decided to become politically active in this election year? Who are the 8 million non-voting Negroes, what do they want, and why don’t they vote? The 3 million voters are the so-called middle- (or high-) class Negroes, referred to by Howard University Sociology Professor E. Franklin Frazier, as the “BLACK BOURGEOISIE,” who have been educated to think as patriotic individualists, with no racial pride ... who believe in, and look forward to, the future “integrated-intermarried” society promised them by the Negro politicians ... and therefore, this “integration-minded” 3 million remain an active part of the white-controlled political parties. But it must never be overlooked, that these 3 million integration seekers are only a small minority of the 11 million qualified voters. The clergy-politician leadership does not speak for the Negro majority; they don’t speak for the black masses. They speak for the “BLACK BOURGEOISIE,” the “brainwashed” (white-minded) middle-class minority ... who, because they are ashamed of black, and don’t want to be identified with black or as being black, are seeking to lose this “identity” by mingling, mixing, intermarrying, and integration with the white man. The race problem cannot be solved by listening to this white-minded (brainwashed) minority. The white man must try to learn what does the majority want. The next President would be wise to try and learn what the black masses want. And, the only way to find this out is by listening to the man who speaks for the black masses of America. I declare to you and to the entire world, that the man here in America who speaks for the majority, the downtrodden, dissatisfied black masses ... is this same man whom so many thousands of our people are flocking toward to see and hear ... this same Mr. Muhammad who is labeled by you as a Black Supremist, and as a Racist! If the 3 million middle-class Negroes are casting their ballots for integration and intermarriage ... what do the non-voting black masses who are in the minority want? Find out what the black masses want, and then perhaps America’s grave race problem can be solved. The black masses are tired of following these hand-picked Negro “leaders” who sound like professional beggars, as they cry year after year for white America to accept us as first-class citizens. We have accepted your invitation to come here to Yale University Law School this evening to let you know first hand why 20 million so-called Negroes cannot integrate with white America ... why white America, after 100 years of religious hypocrisy and political trickery will never accept us as first-class citizens here ... and why we must therefore seek some separate territory of our own. In your blind emotion, again many of you will cry out that this is wrong, that this is not religion, that this is not Islam ... that this is just another economic-political philosophy. I must remind you to keep an open mind. Let your own Christian bible be the judge: You credit Moses with being a religious man, a man of God, doing God’s work. Yet, what did Moses actually do? What did Moses teach? Moses freed his people from their slave master. Moses told the oppressor of his people: “Let my people go.” Moses separated his people from their masters, and then led them into a separate territory of their own. You admit Moses was a man of God, yet you will have to agree Moses did not teach integration. Moses taught separation. Moses didn’t take time to dwell on religious practices. He just let his people know that he represented the God of their forefathers, whose desire it was for them to be separated from their slave master and placed in a Many of you will cry out that you don’t go by what Moses said or did, but rather by what Jesus said. You claim that Jesus taught love and that Mr. Muhammad teaches hate. But, my friends, have you really read the bible? Are you familiar with Luke 14:26 where Jesus taught: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yes, and even his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” In other words, Jesus taught that you must hate everyone in your family, even your own self ... and Muhammad teaches us to love our brothers and sisters ... yet you say Muhammad teaches hate and that Jesus taught love. Many of you will say that Jesus was no respecter of persons, that he came to all the world. You say Muhammad bars white people, therefore he can’t be from God. My friends, Jesus told his followers to go not the way of the Gentiles, go only to the “lost sheep.” He definitely advised his followers to discriminate and make a distinction between the Gentiles and the “lost sheep.” But you still cry out that Jesus is coming back at the end of the world to make us all the same, make us one people ... integrate us. No, my friends, Jesus himself did not even advocate integration. He referred to the end of this world as that great “HARVEST TIME.” He likened the people of today as “wheat and tares,” who would be allowed to “grow together,” or integrated, until God comes at the end of this world and separates the people Himself ... then He would cause one to be burned in a Lake of Fire, and those whom He chooses for Himself He would save. Jesus did not advocate integration; he advocated SEPARATION! Noah’s solution was not integration; in his day it was also a message of separation. Lot’s solution was separation. And, remember, my friends, Jesus warned that “as it was in the days of Noah and Lot, so shall it be these last days” ... not integration, but complete separation of the two races ... or DESTRUCTION! Surely you can now see that Mr. Muhammad’s message, or solution, is the same as that of Noah, Lot, Moses, and Jesus. How can you still doubt if Mr. Muhammad is from God? What you really should be concerned about is has Mr. Muhammad come in time to save you; and what must you do now to save yourselves. When Mr. Muhammad says that we must have some of these states, before you flinch and hold up your hands in “mock shock,” let us look and see if 20 million so-called Negroes deserve such a solution. If I were to collect the combined wages of everyone in this Yale University Law School auditorium tonight for just one week, I would have plenty of money. If I could work all of you for nothing for just one year I would be extremely rich. Well, what about the millions of black people who worked here in America as your slaves for over 300 years without one payday? What happened to their wages? Who collected the profits, or amassed the fortunes received from their free labor? Facing these unpleasant facts, surely you can easily see now how America became so rich so fast. How will 20 million so-called Negroes today receive a “just compensation”? We have hundreds of years’ “back The American government has appropriated billions of dollars to pay the Indians for lands taken from their foreparents by your foreparents. Again I say, my friends, let us reason together: surely you will agree that God is more just than your government ... yet your government has felt morally and legally obligated to pay billions of dollars to the Indians for the crime committed against them. What about the 20 million so-called Negroes! If the Indians must be paid for land taken from them, what about the free labor and lives of our foreparents that were taken from us for over 300 years? If the white politicians have agreed that the Indians should be paid for their lands ... what price or payment will the GOD OF JUSTICE demand for 20 million black people who were robbed of our labor, lives, identity, culture, history ... and even our human dignity? What will God’s price be? What will God’s solution be? Can America pay God’s price? And, if not, what will be the alternative? The handwriting is on the wall for America. As America faces crisis after crisis ... as America sees dangerous troubles mounting on all sides ... and as America stares with stubborn blindness, refusing to read the handwriting on the wall ... since her “experts” have shown they are unable to read its meaning, will America now accept an ambassador from God, a Divine Messenger, a Warner, to read the handwriting for her and tell her what solution she must accept...? Or, will America blindly reject God’s Messenger, and in so doing bring on her own Divine Destruction? I trust you will weigh well these words. |
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