Malcolm X

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11: Malcolm X

Excerpt from "Message to the Grass Roots"

Speech delivered in Detroit, Michigan, on November 10, 1963.

Reprinted from Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, 1965; available online at: http:// www.csun.edu/-hcpas003/grassroots.html

Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little) sought an aggressive and militant, or combative, response to racial injustice and inequality. He differed from many African American civil rights leaders of the 1950s and early 1960s by calling for Black Revolution and Black Nationalism. As noted in his "Message to the Grass Roots," he believed: "When you want a nation, that's called nationalism." Frequently contrasted with the reverend Dr. Martin Luther Kingjr. (1929–1968), who preached peaceful, nonviolent ways to confront injustices, a method referred to as civil disobedience, Malcolm X declared: "There's no such thing as a nonviolent revolution."

"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."

Malcolm X was intent on inspiring a grass roots movement, or one organized at local levels rather than at centers of major political activity. He frequently spoke in neighborhood places where people gathered for information, worship, and entertainment. He also wrote newspaper columns and used radio and television to communicate his message. A popular and fiery public speaker, he was a spokesperson for the Nation of Islam from 1952 to 1964. Islam is a religious system based on the teachings of Mohammed (570-632), who believed he was chosen by Allah (god) to serve as his divinely inspired representative on Earth. The Nation of Islam is an Islamic sect, a group with particular beliefs or values that functions within a larger group. The Nation of Islam asserted that most African slaves brought to the Americas were Muslims (followers of Islam) and argued that African Americans should return to the Islamic faith to reclaim their heritage.

Malcolm X was born in Omaha, Nebraska, one of eight children of Earl Little, an outspoken minister, and Louise Norton Little. Earl Litde was frequendy harassed by white racists, and the family moved twice by the time Malcolm was four. After relocating to Lansing, Michigan, their home was burned to the ground, and two years later Earl Little died under suspicious circumstances. The family gradually fell apart, but Malcolm remained a strong student through junior high school. He dreamed of becoming a lawyer, but a white teacher discouraged him. As a result, Malcolm X quit school. He eventually began a life of crime. He was arrested at age twenty and imprisoned for theft and for carrying a weapon.

While in prison, Malcolm X converted to Islam and read a great deal. He joined the Nation of Islam in 1952 upon his release and quickly became a leading figure in the organization. His increasing fame contributed to tension with Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad (1897–1975). Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam in 1964.

Things to remember while reading the excerpt from "Message to the Grass Roots":

Malcolm X is seeking to persuade the audience to support his aggressive response to racial injustice. Through the early part of his speech, he builds a sense of shared experience and common purpose to emphasize the similarities among those attending the speech. Among the similarities he stresses is a shared oppression by whites, both in America and abroad.
Malcolm X tells his audience, "you were brought here by the people who came here on the 'Mayflower,' you were brought here by the so-called Pilgrims, or Founding Fathers." Although there were no slaves on the Mayflower, which landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620, slavery had been introduced in the colonies a year earlier in the Jamestown, Virginia, settlement when a Dutch slave trader exchanged his cargo of Africans for food. The Africans were called indentured servants at that time, similar to poor English people who traded several years of labor in exchange for passage to America. Yet they were essentially slaves: the term slave became more generally used in the mid-seventeenth century, about the time slavery was officially legalized in Virginia and Maryland.
In his message, Malcolm X refers to the Bandung Conference, an event that was organized in 1954 and held in April, 1955. At the gathering, twenty-nine African and Asian nations met in Bandung, Indonesia, to promote economic and cultural cooperation and to oppose being ruled or dominated by another nation. He notes that the people who attended the meeting were from various religious backgrounds. The conference participants also included: communists, people who believe in a system of social and political ideas that bans private property, makes goods available to all based on their needs, and distributes these goods by a central governing system; socialists, people who believe in a system where the means of production are owned and administrated by all of society; and capitalists, people who practice an economic system of private ownership where the prices of goods, services, and labor are determined by supply and demand. Malcolm X observes that "despite their economic and political differences, they came together."
Malcolm X carefully defines the word "revolution" as a violent uprising to gain control over land and form a nation. He contends that significant social change will occur only when injustice is met with aggression. He refers to the peaceful March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963), which occurred less than three months before he made this speech, to contrast his more militant approach to injustice with those of the marchers. "Whoever heard of a revolution where they lock arms … singing 'We Shall Overcome?'" In a true revolution, according to Malcolm X, "You don't do any singing, you're too busy swinging."
Voicing his concern about whether nonviolent protest is effective, Malcolm X asks: "How are you going to be nonviolent in Mississippi and Alabama, when your churches are being bombed, and your little girls are being murdered." He is referring to the many bombings that took place in Birmingham, Alabama, against blacks during the civil rights movement. Specifically, more than fifty bombings of African American homes, churches, and businesses occurred in Birmingham between 1947 and 1965. He is also drawing attention to the murder of four black girls that occurred two months before his speech. On September 15, 1963, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley were killed when a bomb exploded in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. The bomb was set by members of the Ku Klux Klan, a group believing in the superiority of whites, who terrorized blacks in the United States for many years.
To highlight his differences with the civil rights movement, Malcolm X calls his strategy a "Black Revolution" and the strategy of civil disobedience demonstrated by those who marched on Washington a "Negro Revolution." Negro was the term applied to African Americans by whites. During this period of the early 1960s, many African Americans preferred to refer to themselves as blacks—a term they selected as opposed to a term that others used to categorize them.

Excerpt from "Message to the Grass Roots"

We want to have just an off-the-cuff chat between you and me, us. We want to talk right down to earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand. We all agree tonight, all of the speakers have agreed, that America has a very serious problem. Not only does America have a very serious problem, but our people have a very serious problem. America's problem is us. We're her problem. The only reason she has a problem is she doesn't want us here. And every time you look at yourself, be you black, brown, red or yellow, a so-called Negro, you represent a person who poses such a serious problem for America because you're not wanted. Once you face this as a fact, then you can start plotting a course that will make you appear intelligent, instead of unintelligent.
What you and I need to do is learn to forget our differences. When we come together, we don't come together as Baptists or Methodists. You don't catch hell because you're a Baptist, and you don't catch hell because you're a Methodist. You don't catch hell because you're a Methodist or Baptist, you don't catch hell because you're a Democrat or a Republican, you don't catch hell because you're a Mason or an Elk, and you sure don't catch hell because you're an American; because if you were an American, you wouldn't catch hell. You catch hell because you're a black man. You catch hell, all of us catch hell, for the same reason.
So we're all black people, so-called Negroes, second-class citizens, ex-slaves. You're nothing but an ex-slave. You don't like to be told that. But what else are you? You are ex-slaves. You didn't come here on the "Mayflower." You came here on a slave ship. In chains, like a horse, or a cow, or a chicken. And you were brought here by the people who came here on the "Mayflower," you were brought here by the so-called Pilgrims, or Founding Fathers. [They] were the ones who brought you here.
We have a common enemy. We have this in common: We have a common oppressor, a common exploiter, and a common discriminator. But once we all realize that we have a common enemy, then we unite—on the basis of what we have in common. And what we have foremost in common is that enemy—the white man. He's an enemy to all of us. I know some of you all think that some of them aren't enemies. Time will tell.
In Bandung back in, I think, 1954, was the first unity meeting in centuries of black people. And once you study what happened at the Bandung Conference, it actually serves as a model for the same procedure you and I can use to get our problems solved. At Bandung all the nations came together, the dark nations from Africa and Asia. Some of them were Buddhists, some of them were Muslims, some of them were Christians, some were Confucianists, some were atheists. Despite their religious differences, they came together. Some were communists, some were socialists, some were capitalists—despite their economic and political differences, they came together. All of them were black, brown, red or yellow.
The number one thing that was not allowed to attend the Bandung Conference was the white man. He couldn't come. Once they excluded the white man, they found that they could get together. Once they kept him out, everybody else fell right in and fell in line. This is the thing that you and I have to understand. And these people who came together didn't have nuclear weapons, they didn't have jet planes, they didn't have all of the heavy armaments [weapons] that the white man has. But they had unity.
They were able to submerge their petty little differences and agree on one thing: That [though] one African came from Kenya and was being colonized [taken over and controlled] by the Englishman, and another African came from the Congo and was being colonized by the Belgian, and another African came from Guinea and was being colonized by the French, and another came from Angola and was being colonized by the Portuguese. When they came to the Bandung Conference, they looked at the Portuguese, and the Frenchman, and the Englishman, and at the Dutchman, and learned or realized the one thing that all of them had in common—they were all from Europe, they were all Europeans, blond, blue-eyed and white skins. They began to recognize who their enemy was. The same man that was colonizing our people in Kenya was colonizing our people in the Congo. The same one in the Congo was colonizing our people in South Africa, and in Southern Rhodesia, and in Burma, and in India, and in Afghanistan, and in Pakistan. They realized all overthe world where the dark man was being oppressed, he was being oppressed by the white man; where the dark man was being exploited, he was being exploited by the white man. So they got together on this basis—that they had a common enemy.
And when you and I here in Detroit and in Michigan and in America who have been awakened today look around us, we too realize here in America we all have a common enemy, whether he's in Georgia or Michigan, whether he's in California or New York. He's the same man—blue eyes and blond hair and pale skin—the same man. So what we have to do is what they did. They agreed to stop quarreling among themselves. Any little spat that they had, they'd settle it among themselves, go into a huddle—don't let the enemy know that you've got a disagreement.
Instead of airing our differences in public, we have to realize we're all the same family. And when you have a family squabble, you don't get out on the sidewalk. If you do, everybody calls you uncouth, unrefined, uncivilized, savage. If you don't make it at home, you settle it at home; you get in the closet, argue it out behind closed doors, and then when you come out on the street, you pose a common front, a united front. And this is what we need to do in the community, and in the city, and in the state. We need to stop airing our differences in front of the white man, put the white man out of our meetings, and then sit down and talk shop with each other. That's what we've got to do.
I would like to make a few comments concerning the difference between the Black Revolution and a Negro Revolution? First, what is a revolution? Sometimes I'm inclined to believe that many of our people are using this word "revolution" loosely, without taking careful consideration of what this word actually means, and what its historic characteristics are. When you study the historic nature of revolutions, the motive of a revolution, the objective of a revolution, the result of a revolution, and the methods used in a revolution, you may change words. You may devise another program, you may change your goal and you may change your mind.
Look at the American Revolution in 1776. That revolution was for what? For land. Why did they want land? Independence. How was it carried out? Bloodshed. Number one, it was based on land, the basis of independence. And the only way they could get it was bloodshed. The French Revolution—what was it based on? The landless against the landlord. What was it for? Land. How did they get it? Bloodshed. Was no love lost, was no compromise, was no negotiation. I'm telling you—you don't know what a revolution is. Because when you find out what it is, you'll get back in the alley, you'll get out of the way.
The Russian Revolution—what was it based on? Land; the landless against the landlord. How did they bring it about? Bloodshed. You haven't got a revolution that doesn't involve bloodshed. And you're afraid to bleed. I said, you're afraid to bleed.
As long as the white man sent you to Korea, you bled. He sent you to Germany, you bled. He sent you to the South Pacific to fight the Japanese, you bled. You bleed for white people, but when it comes to seeing your own churches being bombed and little black girls murdered, you haven't got any blood. You bleed when the white man says bleed; you bite when the white man says bite; and you bark when the white man says bark. I hate to say this about us, but it's true. How are you going to be nonviolent in Mississippi and Alabama, when your churches are being bombed, and your little girls are being murdered, and at the same time you are going to get violent with Hitler, and Tojo, and somebody else you don't even know?
If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country….
There's no such thing as a nonviolent revolution. The only kind of revolution that is nonviolent is the Negro revolution. The only revolution in which the goal is loving your enemy is the Negro revolution. It is the only revolution in which the goal is a desegregated lunch counter, a desegregated theater, a desegregated park, and a desegregated public toilet; you can sit down next to the white folks—on the toilet. That's no revolution. Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis for all independence. Land is the basis of reedom, justice, and equality.
The white man knows what a revolution is. He knows that the black revolution is world-wide in scope and in nature. The Black Revolution is sweeping Asia, is sweeping Africa, is rearing its head in Latin America. The Cuban Revolution—that's a revolution. They overturned the system. Revolution is in Asia, revolution is in Africa, and the white man is screaming because he sees revolution in Latin America. How do you think he'll react to you when you learn what a real revolution is? You don't know what a revolution is. If you did, you wouldn't use that word.
Revolution is bloody, revolution is hostile, revolution knows no compromise, revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way. And you, sitting around here like a knot on the way, saying, "I'm going to love these folks no matter how much they hate me." No, you need a revolution. Whoever heard of a revolution where they lock arms … singing "We Shall Overcome?" You don't do that in a revolution. You don't do any singing, you're too busy swinging. It's based on land. A revolutionary wants land so he can set up his own nation, an independent nation. These Negroes aren't asking for any nation—they're trying to crawl back on the plantation.
When you want a nation, that's called nationalism. When the white man became involved in a revolution in this country against England, what was it for? He wanted this land so he could set up another white nation. That's white nationalism. The American Revolution was white nationalism. The French Revolution was white nationalism…. All the revolutions that are going on in Asia and Africa today are based on what?—black nationalism. A revolutionary (today) is a black nationalist. He wants a nation … If you're afraid of black nationalism, you're afraid of revolution. And if you love revolution, you love black nationalism.

What happened next …

Less than two weeks after this speech by Malcolm X, U.S. President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963; served 1961–63) was assassinated. When Malcolm X responded insensitively to the assassination and blamed Kennedy for not having done enough to stop violence, he met with an angry public response and was ordered not to speak publicly for ninety days by Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. The relationship between the two men was already strained, and Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam a few months later.

In April of 1964, Mai com X made his haji, a pilgrimage to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, that is a customary journey every Muslim undertakes sometime in life. He returned with a new name, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and a more inclusive ideology, or a way of thinking that included a wider range of people. This belief system was based on human rights. The experience also led him to change some of his ideas about race. He acknowledged that some whites were sincere toward blacks and civil rights. He began working on his autobiography with journalist Alex Haley (1921–1992).

Meanwhile, tensions between Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam worsened. His New York City home was firebombed on February 14, 1965, and a week later Malcolm X was killed shordy after beginning a speech in Manhattan, a section of New York City. The firebombing was an unsolved case, but the assassination was linked to the Nation of Islam when one of its members was convicted of the killing. The case remains controversial because more than five people have been accused of taking some part in the secret plot to kill Malcolm X.

The legacy of Malcolm X is strong. His militant approach was adopted by other black leaders and organizations, and he remains a major figure for study and research. The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published in 1965, with Haley recreating conversations he had with Malcolm X to tell his story in his own words. Time magazine would later include it as one of the ten most important nonfiction books of the twentieth century. Noted filmmaker Spike Lee adapted the autobiography for his 1992 film, Malcolm X, starring Denzel Washington.

Did you know …

In his autobiography, Malcolm X explained why he changed his name from Malcolm Litde: "To take one's 'X' is to take on a certain mystery, a certain possibility of power in the eyes of one's peers and one's enemies." He added: "The 'X' announced what you had been and what you had become: Ex-smoker, Ex-drinker, Ex-Christian, Ex-slave."
Famed boxer Muhammad Ali (1942–) converted to Islam in 1963 through the influence of Malcolm X He was born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., in 1942.
Malcolm X quickly became better known to the general public than Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. His popularity and the controversy he created made him a major focus in a week-long CBS News television special in 1959 called "The Hate That Hate Produced."

Consider the following …

In his "Message to the Grassroots" speech, Malcolm X describes differences between the Black Revolution and the Negro Revolution. Research the civil rights movement of the early 1960s and write about whether the distinction accurately describes the situation then, and whether it still applies today.
Consider and write about whether "Message to the Grass Roots" has the same power today as it did in 1963.

For More Information

BOOKS

Alkalimat, Abdul. Malcolm X for Beginners. New York: Writers and Readers, 1990.

Carson, Claybourne, et al., eds. The Eyes on the Prize: A Civil Rights Reader. New York: Penguin, 1991.

Jenkins, Robert L. The Malcolm X Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002.

Malcolm X. Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements. Edited by George Breitman. New York: Merit Publishers, 1965. Reprint, New York: Grove/Atlantic, 1990.

Malcolm X and Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Grove, 1965. Reprint, New York: Ballantine Books, 1992.

Shabazz, Ilyasah. Growing Up X. New York: One World, 2002.