Malcolm X, one of the 20th century’s outstanding revolutionary leaders, was an intransigent opponent of the U.S. government and its imperialist actions. He fought the racist oppression of Blacks and the profit-driven plunder of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. During the last year of his life Malcolm founded a political group, the Organization for Afro-American Unity (OAAU). The speech was planned to be the first of three he would give at Harlem’s Audobon Ballroom, as part of laying the political groundwork for the new program the OAAU leaders were preparing. Copyright © 1990 by Betty Shabazz and Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission. Subheadings are by the Militant.

BY MALCOLM X  
There were three people involved in the crime that was committed against us--the slave trader, the slave master, and a third one that they don’t tell you and me about, the slave maker. You’ve read about the slave trader and you’ve read about the slave master; in fact, you know the slave master--you’re still in his hands. But you never read in history the part played by the slave maker.

You can’t make a wise man a slave, you can’t make a warrior a slave. When you and I came here, or rather when we were brought here, we were brought here from a society that was highly civilized, our culture was at the highest level, and we were warriors--we knew no fear. How could they make us slaves? They had to do the same thing to us that we do to a horse. When you take a horse out of the wilds, you don’t just jump on him and ride him, or put a bit in his mouth and use him to plow with. No, you’ve got to break him in first. Once you break him in, then you can ride him. Now the man who rides him is not the man who breaks him in. It takes a different type of man to break him in than it takes to ride him. The average man that’s been riding him can’t break him in. It takes a cruel man to break him in, a mean man, a heartless man, a man with no feelings.

And this is why they took the role of the slave maker out of history. It was so criminal that they don’t even dare to write about it, to tell what was done to you and me to break us in and break us down to the level that we’re on today. Because if you find the role that that slave maker played, I’m telling you, you’ll find it hard to forget and forgive, you’ll find it hard. I can’t forgive the slave trader or the slave master; you know I can’t forgive the slave maker. [Applause]  
 
Attempts to break Africans
Our people weren’t brought right here to this country. They were first dropped off in the West Indian islands, in the Caribbean. Most of the slaves that were brought from Africa were dropped off first in the Caribbean, West Indian islands. Why? This was the breaking-in grounds. They would break them in down there. When they broke them in, then they would bring the ones whose spirit had been broken on to America. They had all kinds of tactics for breaking them in. They bred fear into them, for one thing.

I read in one book how the slave maker used to take a pregnant woman, a Black woman, and make her watch as her man would be tortured and put to death. One of those slave makers had trees that he planted in positions where he would bend them and tie them, and then tie the hand of a Black man to one, a hand to the other, and his legs to two more, and he’d cut the rope. And when he’d cut the rope, that tree would snap up and pull the arm of the Black man right out of his socket, pull him up into four different parts. I’ll show you books where you can read it, they write about it. And they made the pregnant Black women stand there and watch as they did it, so that all this grief and fear that they felt would go right into that baby, that Black baby that was yet to be born. It would be born afraid, born with fear in it. And you’ve got it in you right now--right now, you’ve still got it. When you get in front of that blue-eyed thing, you start to itching, don’t you? And you don’t know why. It was bred into you. But when you find out how they did it, you can get it out of you and put it right back in them.

Slaves used to sing that song about "My Lord’s going to move this wicked race and raise up a righteous nation that will obey." They knew what they were talking about--they were talking about the man. They used to sing a song, "Good News, a Chariot Is Coming." If you notice, everything they sang in those spirituals was talking about going to get away from here. None of them wanted to stay here. You’re the only ones, sitting around here now like a knot on a log, wanting to stay here. You’re supposed to be educated and hip, you’re supposed to know what’s happening, you know--they’re not supposed to know what’s happening. But everything they sang, every song, had a hint in it that they weren’t satisfied here, that they weren’t being treated right, that somebody had to go.  
 
 
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