Malcolm X [Speech before founding rally of OAAU, June 28, 1964] When a person is a drug addict, he's not the criminal; he's a victim of the criminal. The criminal is the man downtown who brings the drug into the country. Negroes can't bring drugs into this country. You don't have any boats. You don't have any airplanes. You don't have any diplomatic immunity. It is not you who is responsible for bringing in drugs. You're just a little tool that is used by the man downtown. The man that controls the drug traffic sits in city hall or he sits in the state house ( Malcolm X, 1970 p 51-2). [Page number refers to the reprint edition]


Malcolm X [Speech before founding rally of OAAU, June 28, 1964] It is no accident that such a high state of culture existed in Africa and you and I know nothing about it. Why, the man knew that as long as you and I thought we were somebody, he could never treat us like we were nobody. So he had to invent a system that would strip us of everything about us that we could use to prove we were somebody. And once he had stripped us of all human characteristics – stripped us of our language, stripped us of our history, stripped us of all cultural knowledge, and brought us down to the level of an animal – he then began to treat us like an animal, selling us from one plantation to another, selling us from one owner to another, breeding us like you breed cattle ( Malcolm X, 1970 p 54). [Page number refers to the reprint edition]


Malcolm X [Speech before second rally of OAAU, July 5, 1964] If we need white allies in this country, we don't need those kind who compromise. We don't need those kind who encourage us to be polite, responsible, you know. We don't need those kind who give us that kind of advice. We don't need those kind who tell us how to be patient. ( Malcolm X 1970 p 82). [Page number refers to the reprint edition]


Malcolm X [Speech before second rally of OAAU, July 5, 1964] And it was only after the spirit of the black man was completely broken and his desire to be a man was completely destroyed, then they had to use different tricks. They just took the physical chains from his ankles and put them on his mind....Proof of which, of the people who just got off the boat yesterday in this country, from the various so-called Iron Curtain countries, which are supposedly an enemy to this country, and no civil rights legislation is needed to bring them into the mainstream of the American way of life, then you and I should just stop and ask ourselves, why is it needed for us? They're actually slapping you and me in the face when they pass a civil rights bill. It's not an honor; it's a slap in the face. They're telling you that you don't have it, and at the same time they're telling you that they have to legislate before you can get it. Which in essence means they're telling you that since you don't have it and yet you're born here, there must be something about you that makes you different from everybody else who's born here; something about you that actually, though you have the right of birth in this land, you're still not qualified under their particular system to be recognized as a citizen.

Yet the Germans, that they used to fight just a few years ago, can come here and get what you can't get. The Russians, whom they're supposedly fighting right now, can come here and get what you can't get without legislation; don't need legislation. The Polish don't need legislation. Nobody needs it but you. Why? ( Malcolm X 1970 p 80-1). [Page number refers to the reprint edition]

 



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