BY MALCOLM X  
I was fortunate enough to be able to take a tour of the African continent during the summer. I went to Egypt, then to Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia and Algeria. I found, while I was traveling on the African continent, I had already detected it in May, that someone had very shrewdly planted the seed of division on this continent to make the Africans not show genuine concern with our problem, just as they plant seeds in your and my minds so that we won’t show concern with the African problem….

I also found that in many of these African countries the head of state is genuinely concerned with the problem of the black man in this country; but many of them thought if they opened their mouths and voiced their concern that they would be insulted by the American Negro leaders. Because one head of state in Asia voiced his support of the civil-rights struggle [in 1963] and a couple of the Big Six had the audacity to slap his face and say they weren’t interested in that kind of help—which in my opinion is asinine. So the African leaders only had to be convinced that if they took an open stand at the governmental level and showed interest in the problem of black people in this country, they wouldn’t be rebuffed.

And today you’ll find in the United Nations, and it’s not an accident, that every time the Congo question or anything on the African continent is being debated, they couple it with what is going on, or what is happening to you and me, in Mississippi and Alabama and these other places. In my opinion, the greatest accomplishment that was made in the struggle of the black man in America in 1964 toward some kind of real progress was the successful linking together of our problem with the African problem, or making our problem a world problem. Because now, whenever anything happens to you in Mississippi, it’s not just a case of somebody in Alabama getting indignant, or somebody in New York getting indignant. The same repercussions that you see all over the world when an imperialist or foreign power interferes in some section of Africa—you see repercussions, you see the embassies being bombed and burned and overturned—nowadays, when something happens to black people in Mississippi, you’ll see the same repercussions all over the world.

I wanted to point this out to you because it is important for you to know that when you’re in Mississippi, you’re not alone. As long as you think you’re alone, then you take a stand as if you’re a minority or as if you’re outnumbered, and that kind of stand will never enable you to win a battle. You’ve got to know that you’ve got as much power on your side as that Ku Klux Klan has on its side. And when you know that you’ve got as much power on your side as the Klan has on its side, you’ll talk the same kind of language with that Klan as the Klan is talking with you….

I think in 1965, whether you like it, or I like it, or they like it, or not, you will see that there is a generation of black people becoming mature to the point where they feel that they have no more business being asked to take a peaceful approach than anybody else takes, unless everybody’s going to take a peaceful approach.

So we here in the Organization of Afro-American Unity are with the struggle in Mississippi one thousand per cent. We’re with the efforts to register our people in Mississippi to vote one thousand per cent. But we do not go along with anybody telling us to help nonviolently. We think that if the government says that Negroes have a right to vote, and then some Negroes come out to vote, and some kind of Ku Klux Klan is going to put them in the river, and the government doesn’t do anything about it, it’s time for us to organize and band together and equip ourselves and qualify ourselves to protect ourselves. And once you can protect yourself, you don’t have to worry about being hurt….

If you don’t have enough people down there to do it, we’ll come down there and help you do it. Because we’re tired of this old runaround that our people have been given in this country. For a long time they accused me of not getting involved in politics. They should’ve been glad I didn’t get involved in politics, because anything I get in, I’m in it all the way. If they say we don’t take part in the Mississippi struggle, we will organize brothers here in New York who know how to handle these kind of affairs, and they’ll slip into Mississippi like Jesus slipped into Jerusalem.

That doesn’t mean we’re against white people, but we sure are against the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Councils; and anything that looks like it’s against us, we’re against it. Excuse me for raising my voice, but this thing, you know, gets me upset. Imagine that—a country that’s supposed to be a democracy, supposed to be for freedom and all of that kind of stuff when they want to draft you and put you in the army and send you to Saigon to fight for them—and then you’ve got to turn around and all night long discuss how you’re going to just get a right to register and vote without being murdered. Why, that’s the most hypocritical government since the world began! …

You get freedom by letting your enemy know that you’ll do anything to get your freedom; then you’ll get it. It’s the only way you’ll get it. When you get that kind of attitude, they’ll label you as a “crazy Negro,” or they’ll call you a “crazy nigger”—they don’t say Negro. Or they’ll call you an extremist or a subversive, or seditious, or a red or a radical. But when you stay radical long enough, and get enough people to be like you, you’ll get your freedom….  
 
 
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