Say It Loud!

Great Speeches on Civil Rights and African American Identity

Catherine Ellis, Stephen Drury Smith, Catherine Ellis, Stephen Drury Smith

• Publisher: The New Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781595586278
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Literarische Sammlungen

Following Say It Plain, a collection of speeches that provides "a sweeping perspective on evolving issues of black identity in the struggle for equality" ( Booklist ). In "full-throated public oratory, the kind that can stir the soul", Say It Plain collected and transcribed speeches by some of the twentieth century's leading African American cultural, literary, and political figures. Many of the speeches were never before available in printed form ( Minneapolis Star-Tribune ). Following the success of that groundbreaking volume, the Say It Loud! book adds new depth to the history of the modern struggle for racial equality and civil rights—focusing directly on the pivotal questions black America grappled with during the past four decades of resistance. With recordings unearthed from libraries and sound archives, and made widely available here for the first time, Say It Loud! includes powerful speeches by Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Martin Luther King Jr., James H. Cone, Toni Morrison, Colin Powell, and many others. Bringing the rich immediacy of the spoken word to a vital historical and intellectual tradition, Say It Loud! illuminates the diversity of ideas and arguments pulsing through the black freedom movement.

1.

MALCOLM X

(1925–1965)

“The Ballot or the Bullet”

King Solomon Baptist Church, Detroit, Michigan—April 12, 1964

Malcolm X was one of the most dynamic, dramatic, and influential figures of the civil rights era. He was an apostle of black nationalism, self-respect, and uncompromising resistance to white oppression. Malcolm X was a polarizing figure who both energized and divided African Americans, while frightening and alienating many whites. He was an unrelenting truth teller who declared that the mainstream civil rights movement was naïve in hoping to secure freedom through integration and nonviolence. The blazing heat of Malcolm X’s rhetoric sometimes overshadowed the complexity of his message, especially for those who found him threatening in the first place. Malcolm X was assassinated at age thirty-nine, but his political and cultural influence grew far greater in the years after his death than when he was alive.

Malcolm X is now popularly seen as one of the two great martyrs of the twentieth-century black freedom struggle, the other being his ostensible rival the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. But in the spring of 1964, when Malcolm X gave his “Ballot or the Bullet” speech, he was regarded by a majority of white Americans as a menacing character. Malcolm X never directly called for violent revolution, but he warned that African Americans would use “any means necessary”—especially armed self-defense—once they realized just how pervasive and hopelessly entrenched white racism had become.1

He was born Malcolm Little in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. His father, Earl, was a Baptist preacher and follower of the black nationalist Marcus Garvey. Earl Little’s political activism provoked threats from the Ku Klux Klan. After the family moved to Lansing, Michigan, white terrorists burned the Littles’ home. A defiant Earl Little shot at the arsonists as they got away. In 1931, Malcolm’s father was found dead. His family suspected he’d been murdered by white vigilantes. Malcolm’s mother, Louise, battled mental illness and struggled to care for her eight children during the Great Depression. She was committed to a state mental institution when Malcolm was twelve. He and the other young children were scattered among foster families. After completing the eighth grade, Malcolm Little dropped out when a teacher told him that his dream of becoming a lawyer was unrealistic for a “nigger.”2

As a teenager, Malcolm Little made his way to New York, where he took the street name Detroit Red and became a pimp and petty criminal. In 1946, he was sent to prison for burglary. He read voraciously while serving time and converted to the Black Muslim faith. He joined the Nation of Islam (NOI) and changed his name to Malcolm X, eliminating that part of his identity he called a white-imposed slave name.

Malcolm X was released in 1952 after six years in prison. With his charisma and eloquence, Malcolm rose rapidly in the Nation of Islam. He became the chief spokesman and field recruiter for NOI leader Elijah Muhammad. As historian Peniel Joseph describes it, NOI’s unorthodox interpretation of Islam was mixed with a doctrine of black personal responsibility and economic self-sufficiency, along with “theological fundamentalism, anti-white mythology, and total racial separation as the means to black redemption.”3 Wearing impeccable suits, maintaining an air of fierce dignity, and adhering to a strict code of moral propriety, Malcolm X was a living demonstration of how the NOI could save a wayward people from racial submission and personal self-destruction.

The Nation dismissed the conventional civil rights movement—with its protest marches and demands for equal rights legislation—as impotent and misguided. As Malcolm X declared in this speech, the only effective solution to racial inequality was black economic and social separatism.

As Malcolm X’s national prominence grew, so did a rift between him and Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm X far overshadowed his mentor in the public sphere. He also grew disillusioned by Elijah Muhammad’s scandalous personal behavior; the Messenger fathered several children through affairs with his secretaries. The conflict deepened when Muhammad suspended Malcolm X for saying that President John F. Kennedy’s assassination represented “the chickens coming home to roost” because of the war in Vietnam.4 Finally, in March 1964, Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam and charted his own course of militant black nationalism.

On April 12, 1964, one month after splitting with the NOI, Malcolm X gave his “Ballot or the Bullet” speech at King Solomon Baptist Church in Detroit (he’d given the address nine days earlier in Cleveland, but the Detroit version is regarded by some scholars as definitive).5 It was the fullest declaration of his black nationalist philosophy. Mainstream black ministers in Detroit tried to block Malcolm X from using the church, saying “separatist ideas can do nothing but set back the colored man’s cause.” But the church hall had already been rented out for the event.6

“The Ballot or the Bullet” became one of Malcolm X’s most recognizable phrases, and the speech was one of his greatest orations. Two thousand people—including some of his opponents—turned out to hear him speak in Detroit. President Lyndon Johnson was running for reelection in 1964, and Malcolm X declared it “the year of the ballot or the bullet.” He outlined a new, global sensibility in the fight for racial justice: “We intend to expand [the freedom struggle] from the level of civil rights to the level of human rights.”

Malcolm was now free of the NOI’s ban on members participating in the mainstream civil rights movement. He encouraged black militants to get involved in voter registration drives and other forms of community organizing to redefine and expand the movement.7

The day after his Detroit speech, Malcolm X embarked on an overseas tour that included a life-changing pilgrimage to the Muslim holy city of Mecca. Known as the hajj, the pilgrimage must be carried out at least once in a lifetime by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so. The racial diversity he experienced in the Middle East, especially among Muslims, led him to discard his strict notions of black separatism for a wider, more inclusive movement against white supremacy and colonialism. In the summer of 1964, Malcolm X announced a new effort, the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).

In the last months of his life, Malcolm X’s conflict with the Nation of Islam grew increasingly bitter. Elijah Muhammad and the NOI had a long history of using violence and intimidation against members who strayed. In February 1965, Malcolm X’s home was firebombed. He publicly blamed the Nation of Islam and predicted he would be killed. Malcolm X was shot to death on February 21, 1965, as he prepared to speak at an OAAU rally at the Audubon Ballroom in New York. Three black men, all members of the NOI, were convicted and sent to prison for the murder.

In an editorial after his death, the New York Times described Malcolm X as “an extraordinary and twisted man, turning many true gifts to evil purpose.” 8 Actor and activist Ossie Davis eulogized him as “our own black shining prince.”9 In death, he became a seminal figure to an increasingly militant generation of young African Americans, a beacon for activists in the 1960s Black Power and Black Arts movements.

In assessing Malcolm X’s impact, theologian James Cone wrote: “More than anyone else he revolutionized the black mind, transforming docile Negroes and self-effacing colored people into proud blacks and self-confident African-Americans.”10 By the end of the twentieth century, Malcolm X was recognized in mainstream culture as a hero of the civil rights era. The militant radical whose image once provoked fear and hatred among many white Americans was celebrated in mainstream movie theaters, on Black History Month posters in elementary school classrooms, and on a 1999 postage stamp issued by the United States government.

MR. MODERATOR, Reverend Cleage, brothers and sisters and friends, and I see some enemies. [laughter/applause] In fact, I think we’d be fooling ourselves if we had an audience this large and didn’t realize that there were some enemies present.

This afternoon we want to talk about the ballot or the bullet. The ballot or the bullet explains itself. But before we get into it, since this is the year of the ballot or the bullet, I would like to clarify some things that refer to me personally, concerning my own personal position.

I’m still a Muslim. That is, my religion is still Islam. [applause] My religion is still Islam. I still credit Mr. Muhammad for what I know and what I am. He’s the one who opened my eyes. [applause] At present I am the minister of the newly founded Muslim Mosque Incorporated, which has its offices in the Theresa Hotel right in the heart of Harlem, that’s the Black Belt in New York City. And we realize that Adam Clayton Powell is a Christian minister, he has Abyssinian Baptist Church, but at the same time he’s more famous for his political struggling. And Dr. King is a Christian minister from Atlanta, Georgia, or in Atlanta, Georgia, but he’s become more famous for being involved in the civil rights struggle. There’s another in New York, Reverend Galamison. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him out here. He’s a Christian minister from Brooklyn, but has become famous for his fight against the segregated school system in Brooklyn. Reverend Cleage, right here, is a Christian minister here in Detroit, he’s head of the Freedom Now Party. All of these are Christian ministers. [applause] All of these are Christian ministers, but they don’t come to us as Christian ministers, they come to us as fighters in some other category.

I am a Muslim minister. The same as they are Christian ministers, I’m a Muslim minister. And I don’t believe in fighting today on any one front, but on all fronts. [applause] In fact, I’m a Black Nationalist freedom fighter. [applause] Islam is my religion but I believe my religion is my personal business. [applause] It governs my personal life, my personal morals. And my religious philosophy is personal between me and the God in whom I believe, just as the religious philosophy of these others is between them and the God in whom they believe. And this is best this way. Were we to come out here discussing religion, we’d have too many differences from the out start and we could never get together.

So today, though Islam is my religious philosophy, my political, economic, and social philosophy is Black Nationalism. You and I—[applause] As I say, if we bring up religion, we’ll have differences, we’ll have arguments, and we’ll never be able to get together. But if we keep our religion at home, keep our religion in the closet, keep our religion between ourselves and our God, but when we come out here we have a fight that’s common to all of us against an enemy who is common to all of us. [applause]

The political philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community. The time when white people can come in our community and get us to vote for them so that they can be our political leaders and tell us what to do and what not to do is long gone. [applause]

By the same token, the time when that same white man, knowing that your eyes are too far open, can send another Negro in the community, and get you and me to support him, so that he can use him to lead us astray, those days are long gone too. [applause]

The political philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that if you and I are going to live in a black community—and that’s where we’re going to live, ’cause as soon as you move into one of their … soon as you move out of the black community into their community, it’s mixed for a period of time, but they’re gone and you’re right there all by yourself again. [applause]

We must, we must understand the politics of our community, and we must know what politics is supposed to produce. We must know what part politics play in our lives. And until we become politically mature, we will always be misled, led astray, or deceived or maneuvered into supporting someone politically who doesn’t have the good of our community at heart. So the political philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that we will have to carry on a program, a political program, of reeducation—to open our people’s eyes, make us become more politically conscious, politically mature. And then, we will—whenever we are ready to cast our ballot, that ballot will be cast for a man of the community, who has the good of the community at heart. [applause]

The economic philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that we should own and operate and control the economy of our community. You would never have found—you can’t open up a black store in a white community. White man won’t even patronize you. And he’s not wrong. He got sense enough to look out for himself. It’s you who don’t have sense enough to look out for yourself. [applause]

The white man, the white man is too intelligent to let someone else come and gain control of the economy of his community. But you will let anybody come in and control the economy of your community, control the housing, control the education, control the jobs, control the businesses, under the pretext that you want to integrate. Nah, you’re out of your mind. [applause]

The political … the economic philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that we have to become involved in a program of reeducation, to educate our people into the importance of knowing that when you spend your dollar out of the community in which you live, the community in which you spend your money becomes richer and richer, the community out of which you take your money becomes poorer and poorer. And because these Negroes, who have been misled, misguided, are breaking their necks to take their money and spend it with the Man, the Man is becoming richer and richer, and you’re becoming poorer and poorer. And then what happens? The community in which you live becomes a slum. It becomes a ghetto. The conditions become run-down. And then you have the audacity to complain about poor housing in a run-down community, while you’re running down yourselves when you take your dollar out. [applause]

And you and I are in a double trap, because not only do we lose by taking our money someplace else and spending it, when we try and spend it in our own community, we’re trapped because we haven’t had sense enough to set up stores and control the businesses of our community. The man who is controlling the stores in our community is a man who doesn’t look like we do. He’s a man who doesn’t even live in the community. So you and I, even when we try and spend our money on the block where we live or the area where we live, we’re spending it with a man who, when the sun goes down, takes that basket full of money to another part of the town. [applause]

So we’re trapped, trapped, double-trapped, triple-trapped. Any way we go, we find that we’re trapped. And every kind of solution that someone comes up with is just another trap. But the political and economic philosophy of Black Nationalism … the economic philosophy of Black Nationalism shows our people the importance of setting up these little stores and developing them and expanding them into larger operations. Woolworth didn’t start out big like they are today; they started out with a dime store, and expanded, and expanded, and expanded until today they are all over the country and all over the world, and they getting some of everybody’s money.

Now this is what you and I—General Motors, the same way, it didn’t start out like it is. It started out just a little rat-race type operation. And it expanded and it expanded until today it’s where it is right now. And you and I have to make a start. And the best place to start is right in the community where we live. [applause]

So our people not only have to be reeducated to the importance of supporting black business, but the black man himself has to be made aware of the importance of going into business. And once you and I go into business, we own and operate at least the businesses in our community. What we will be doing is developing a situation wherein we will actually be able to create employment for the people in the community. And once you can create some employment in the community where you live, it will eliminate the necessity of you and me having to act ignorantly and disgracefully, boycotting and picketing some cracker someplace else trying to beg him for a job. [applause]

Anytime you have to rely upon your enemy for a job, you’re in bad shape. [applause] When you—and he is your enemy. You wouldn’t be in this country if some enemy hadn’t kidnapped you and brought you here. [applause] On the other hand, some of you think you came here on the Mayflower. [laughter]

So as you can see, brothers and sisters, today—this afternoon it is not our intention to discuss religion. We’re going to forget religion. If we bring up religion we’ll be in an argument. And the best way to keep away from arguments and differences, as I said earlier, put your religion at home, in the closet, keep it between you and your God. Because if it hasn’t done anything more for you than it has, you need to forget it anyway. [laughter and applause]

Whether you are a Christian or a Muslim or a Nationalist, we all have the same problem. They don’t hang you because you’re a Baptist; they hang you ’cause you’re black. [applause] They don’t attack me because I’m a Muslim. They attack me ’cause I’m black. They attacked all of us for the same reason. All of us catch hell from the same enemy. We’re all in the same bag, in the same boat.

We suffer political oppression, economic exploitation, and social degradation. All of ’em from the same enemy. The government has failed us. You can’t deny that. Any time you’re living in the twentieth century, 1964, and you walking around here singing “We Shall Overcome,” the government has failed you. [applause] This is part of what’s wrong with you, you do too much singing. [laughter] Today it’s time to stop singing an...