Black Nationalism and Black Pride: The Ballot or the Bullet
Reading by Malcolm X
While media attention focused on civil rights activities in the South, many African Americans were increasingly drawn to the Black nationalist themes of the Nation of Islam and, in particular, its most compelling spokesperson, Malcolm X (1925- 1965). Born Malcolm Little, he began to study the teachings of the Nation of Islam and became a Muslim while in prison in the late 1940s. By the time he was paroled in 1952, he was a devoted follower and was appointed as a minister and national spokesman for the Nation of Islam (NOI). He was largely credited with increasing membership in the NOI from 500 in 1952 to 30,000 in 1963.
By the end of 1963 he had broken with Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, made a pilgrimage to Mecca, and begun to develop his own movement. In 1964 he founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity to bring the case of American racism before the United Nations.
The speech excerpted here was delivered in Cleveland in April 1964, during this last period of his life. On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated while speaking in Harlem.
Black Panthers drilling before a Free Huey rally, De Fremery Park, Oakland, July 28, 1968. © 1968 Pirkle Jones
Although I am still a Muslim, I’m not here tonight to discuss my religion. I’m not here to try and change your religion. I’m not here to argue or discuss anything that we differ about because it’s time for us to submerge our differences and realize that it is best for us to first see that we have the same problem; a common problem; a problem that will make you catch hell whether you’re a Baptist, or a Methodist, or a Muslim, or a nationalist. Whether you’re educated or illiterate, whether you live on the boulevard or in the alley, you’re going to catch hell just like I am. We’re all in the same boat and we all are going to catch the same hell from the same man. He just happens to be a white man. All of us have suffered here, in this country, political oppression, at the hands of the white man; economic exploitation at the hands of the white man; and social degradation at the hands of the white man.
Now in speaking like this, it doesn’t mean that we’re antiwhite, but it does mean we’re antiexploitation, we’re antidegradation, we’re antioppression. And if the white man doesn’t want us to be anti-him, let him stop oppressing and exploiting and degrading us. Whether we are Christians or Muslims or nationalists or agnostics or atheist[s], we must first learn to forget our differences. If we have differences, let us differ in the closet; when we come out in front let us not have anything to argue about until we get done arguing with the man. If the late Pres. Kennedy could get together with Khrushchev, exchange some wheat, we certainly have more in common with each other than Kennedy and Khrushchev had with each other.
Malcolm X. Ed Ford, World Telegraph & Sun, Library of Congress 95516971
If we don’t do something real soon, I think you’ll have to agree that we’re going to be forced either to use the ballot or the bullet. It’s one or the other in 1964. It isn’t that time is running out — time has run out! 1964 threatens to be the most explosive year America has witnessed. The most explosive year. Why? It’s also a political year. It’s the year when all of the white politicians will be back in the so-called Negro community jiving you and me for some votes. The year when all of the white political crooks will be back in your and my community with their false promises that they don’t intend to keep. As they nourish these dissatisfactions, it can only lead to one thing, an explosion; and now we have the type of Black man on the scene in America today who just doesn’t intend to turn the other cheek any longer.
Don’t let anybody tell you anything about the odds against you. If they draft you, they send you to Korea and make [you] face 800 million Chinese. If you can be brave over there, you can be brave right here. These odds aren’t as great as those odds. And if you fight here, you will at least know what you’re fighting for.
I’m not a politician, not even a student of politics; in fact, I’m not a student of anything. I’m not a Democrat, I’m not a Republican and I don’t even consider myself an American. If you and I were Americans, there’d be no problem. Those Hunkies that just got off the boat, they’re already Americans; Polacks are already Americans; the Italian refugees are already Americans. Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren’t Americans yet.
Well, I am one who doesn’t believe in deluding myself. I’m not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on the plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. Why, if birth made you an American, you wouldn’t need legislation, you wouldn’t need amendments to the Constitution, you wouldn’t be faced with civil rights filibustering in Washington, D.C. right now. They don’t have to pass civil rights legislation to make a Polack an American.
No, I’m not an American. I am one of the 22 million Black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million Black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver; no, not I. I am speaking to you as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare. . . .
We need new friends; we need new allies. We need to expand the civil rights struggle to a higher level to the level of human rights. Whenever you are in a civil rights struggle, whether you know it or not, you are confining yourself to the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam. No one on the outside can speak out in your behalf as long as your struggle is a civil rights struggle. Civil rights comes within the domestic affairs of this country. All of our African brothers and our Asian brothers and our Latin American brothers cannot open their mouths and interfere in the domestic affairs of the United States. And as long as it’s civil rights, this comes under the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam.
Right now, in this country, you and I, 22 million African Americans that’s what we are Africans who are in America. You’re nothing but Africans. Nothing but Africans. In fact, you’d get farther calling yourself African instead of Negro.
Africans don’t catch hell. You’re the only one catching hell. They don’t have to pass civil rights bills for Africans. An African can go anywhere he wants right now. All you’ve got to do is tie your head up. That’s right, go anywhere you want. Just drop being a Negro. Change your name to Hoogagagooba. That’ll show you how silly the white man is. You’re dealing with a silly man. A friend of mine who’s very dark put a turban on his head and went in a restaurant in Atlanta before they called themselves desegregated. He sat down and they served him, and he said, “What would happen if a Negro came in here?” And here he’s sitting, Black as night, but because he had his head wrapped up the waitress looked back at him and says, “Why, there wouldn’t be no n----- dare come in here.”. . .
The political philosophy of Black nationalism means that the Black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community; no more. The Black man in the community has be to re-educated into the science of politics so he will know what politics is supposed to bring him in return. Don’t be throwing out any ballots. A ballot is like a bullet. You don’t throw your ballots until you see a target, and if that target is not within your reach, keep your ballot in your pocket. The political philosophy of Black nationalism is being taught in the Christian church. It’s being taught in the NAACP. It’s being taught at CORE meetings. It’s being taught in the SNCC meetings. It’s being taught in Muslim meetings. It’s being taught where nothing but atheists and agnostics come together. It’s being taught everywhere. Black people are fed up with the dillydallying, pussyfooting, compromising approach that we’ve been using toward getting our freedom. We want our freedom now, but we’re not going to get it saying, “We Shall Overcome.” We’ve got to fight until we overcome. . . .
It’s time for you and me to stop sitting in this country, letting some cracker senators, Northern crackers and Southern crackers, sit there in Washington, D.C. and come to a conclusion in their mind that you and I are supposed to have civil rights. There’s no white man going to tell me anything about my rights. Brothers and sisters, always remember, if it doesn’t take senators and congressmen and presidential proclamations or Supreme Court decisions to give freedom to the white man, it is not necessary for legislation or proclamations or Supreme Court decisions to give freedom to the Black man. You let that white man know, if this country is of freedom, let it be a country of freedom; and if it’s not a country of freedom, change it.
We will work with anybody, anywhere, at any time, who is genuinely interested in tackling the problem head-on, nonviolently as long as the enemy is nonviolent, violent when the enemy gets violent.