Malcolm Little, a man forgotten in time

Springfield MO

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We all know the names, Dr. King, Rosa Parks and Muhammad Ali when they are brought up in the news, but little is said about another martyr of the Civil Rights movement, who's name was Malcolm Little also known as Malcolm X. Malcolm stood against what was expected from African Americans at the time, especially from the Democratic party. Here is a window into the thinking of Black Americans at the time and what they thought about American politics. Like Martin Luther King, Malcolm was assassinated. King was assassinated because of his religious beliefs, but Malcolm was assassinated by the religion that he believed. Here are his quotes about politics. One of the most prominent twentieth-century figures in the struggle for African-American civil rights, Malcolm X is best known for being a minister in the Nation of Islam and a fierce advocate of Black Nationalism. That being said, he developed his ideology significantly over the course of his life. Malcolm Little was born in Omaha, Nebraska on May 19, 1925. His father was a Baptist minister and an outspoken civil rights leader in his own right, and he died when his son was still a child. Though his death was officially ruled an accident, it is possible that he was killed as a result of his civil rights work. Soon afterward, Malcolm’s mother was placed in a mental institution. After spending much of his childhood in foster care, he became involved in criminal activity. In his early twenties, he was sentenced to prison for burglary. During his imprisonment (1946-1952) he displayed a voracious interest in reading and he was also introduced to the Nation of Islam. Malcolm was infatuated with the ideas of Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam. Muhammad taught that white Americans consistently worked against the interests of African Americans, and that blacks could only succeed by developing themselves apart from wider American society. Dropping his “slave name” and assuming the name “Malcolm X,” he was paroled in 1952. After leaving prison, he became a minister and spokesperson for the Nation of Islam. Many of the most legendary Malcolm X speeches were given during this period. Disillusionment with the Nation of Islam By the early 1960s, Malcolm had become disillusioned with the Nation of Islam; he was disappointed by the moral failings of Elijah Muhammad and corruption within the organization’s ranks. While participating in the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca known as the Hajj, he met and interacted with white Muslims sympathetic to his ideas. This caused him to question his black separatist ideology. Soon thereafter, the Malcolm X assassination occurred. Who killed Malcolm X is no mystery—they were Talmadge Haier, Norman Butler, and Thomas Johnson, three members of the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X Quotes on freedom “When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won’t do to get it, or what he doesn’t believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn’t believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire…or preserve his freedom.” “You don’t have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.” “I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation.” “You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.” “If you’re not ready to die for it, put the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary.” “Don’t be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn’t do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn’t know what you know today.” “My alma mater was books, a good library… I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.” “Stumbling is not falling.” “There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance next time.” “Without education, you’re not going anywhere in this world.” Quotes on violence “We are nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with us.” “Concerning nonviolence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.” “There is nothing in our book, the Koran, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone, but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That’s a good religion.” “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.” “Early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.” “I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.” “The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.” “It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.” “I feel like a man who has been asleep somewhat and under someone else’s control. I feel that what I’m thinking and saying is now for myself. Before it was for and by the guidance of Elijah Muhammad. Now I think with my own mind, sir!” “The thing that you have to understand about those of us in the Black Muslim movement was that all of us believed one hundred percent in the divinity of Elijah Muhammad. We believed in him. We actually believed that God, in Detroit, by the way, that God had taught him and all of that. I always believed that he believed in himself. And I was shocked when I found out that he himself didn’t believe it.” “…I shall never rest until I have undone the harm that I did to so many well-meaning, innocent Negroes who through my own evangelistic zeal now believe in him even more fanatically and more blindly than I did.” Malcolm X death quotes “It’s liberty or death. It’s freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody.” “I want to be remembered as someone who was sincere. Even if I made mistakes, they were made in sincerity.” “To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal.” Quotes on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Dr. King wants the same thing I want. Freedom.” “I want Dr. King to know that I didn’t come to Selma to make his job difficult. I really did come thinking I could make it easier. If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King.” Quotes on beliefs “A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.” “A race of people is like an individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself.” “Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner. You must be eating some of what’s on that plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American.” “The common goal of 22 million Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being. Our common goal is to obtain the human rights that America has been denying us. We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognized as citizens there until we are first recognized as humans.” “I am not a racist. I am against every form of racism and segregation, every form of discrimination. I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color.” “I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they’ll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action.” “We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us.” This work has in part, been taken from a collaboration between the man himself and writer Alex Haley, who is perhaps best known for his later work Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Sources “Biography.” Malcolm X, www.malcolmx.com/biography/. “Malcolm X Biography.” Biography, A&E Networks Television, 12 Feb. 2015, www.biography.com/activist/malcolm-x. History.com Editors. “Malcolm X.” History.com, 29 Oct. 2009, www.history.com/topics/black-history/malcolm-x. “Malcolm X.” The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/Malcolm-x. 2 Malcolm X, a man forgotten in time Quotes on Politics. 1. The white liberal is the worst enemy to America, and the worst enemy to the black man. 2. The liberal is more deceitful than the conservative. 3. The liberal is more hypocritical than the conservative. 4. Liberal is a nasty name. 5. Liberal represent hypocrisy. 6. That white person that you see calling himself a liberal is the most dangerous thing in the Western hemisphere, he's the most deceitful. 7. The white liberals are nothing but political hypocrites who use our people as political footballs only to get bills passed that will increase their own power. 8. If the Negro wasn't taken, tricked, or deceived by the white liberal then Negros would get together and solve our own problems. 9. The worst enemy that the Negro have is this white man that runs around here drooling at the mouth professing to love Negros, and calling himself a liberal, and it is following these white liberals that has perpetuated problems that Negros have. 10. The white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro’s friend and benefactor; and by winning the friendship, allegiance, and support of the Negro, the white liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or tool in this political football game. 11. Most black leaders are puppets for the white liberals. 12. In deceiving and exploiting the politics of the American Negro, those white liberals have the willing cooperation of the Negro civil rights leaders. Those “leaders sell out our people for just a few crumbs of token recognition and token gains. 13. The white liberals control the Negroes and the Negro vote by controlling the Negro civil rights leaders. 14. The Democrats get Negro support, yet the Negroes get nothing in return. 15. The Negroes put the Democrats first, yet the Democrats put the Negroes last. 16. It was the 80 percent support that Kennedy got from the black man in this country that enabled him to sit in the White House. He sat down there four years and the Negro is still in the dog house. 17. John F Kennedy promised all of the so called American Negros who vote what he would going to do for them when he got into office, and has yet to do the first thing that he promised. 18. Kennedy has paid off the Negro leadership so that they are silent and say nothing about the promises that he made to get Negros to vote for him. 19. The Negro vote helped put the Democrats in the white house and the Negro is still in the dog house. 20. The present Democratic administration has been down there for four years, yet no meaningful legislation has been passed by them that's supposed to benefit black people in this country. 21. The Democrats control two-thirds of the government and it's the Negro who put him in position to control the government yet they give the Negro nothing in return. 22. In Washington D.C., in the House of Representatives, there are 257 who are Democrats; only 177 are Republican. In the Senate there are 67 Democrats; only 33 are Republicans. The Party that you backed controls two-thirds of the House of Representatives and the Senate, and still they can’t keep their promise to you, because cause you’re a chump. Anytime you throw your weight behind a political party that controls two-thirds of the government, and that Party can’t keep the promise that it made to you during election time, and you’re dumb enough to walk around continuing to identify yourself with that Party, you’re not only a chump, but you’re a traitor to your race. 23. Kennedy ran on a platform as a white liberal three years ago and said all he had to do was take out his fountain pen and put his name on some paper and our problem would be solved, and it was three years in office before he found where his fountain pen was, and the problem isn’t solved yet. 24. John Kennedy is a trickster, even if he's the President that doesn't stop him from being a trickster if he's making tricks. Anytime a president a man running for President tells Negroes what he's going to do for them when he gets in office, and after he gets in office he has time to do something for everybody else except the people that put him in office, he tricked the people who put him in office. 25. Kennedy was a deceitful man, and the only time Kennedy took any action to even look like he identified with Negroes was when he was forced to. 26. Kennedy the man was a deceiver. He was deceitful and I will never bite my tongue in saying that. I don’t think he was anything but a politician, and he used Negroes to get elected and to get votes. 27. Most politicians don’t want to wake Negroes up. They want Negroes to register and stay asleep, so they can hitch the Negro vote to their particular wagon. But you never hear any of the Negro leaders talking about waking the Negro up, make him intellectually and politically mature. They just say, “Get him to register.” And if he registers in the mental condition that he is now, any politician can come along and use him. 28. Negroes of national stature aren’t really leaders of the Negro community, and they don’t go along with anything that’s really designed to solve the problem for the Negro community. They’re controlled, their salaries are paid by what you call white liberals who are the most dangerous things in America, these things who call themselves white liberals. 29. The Democrats they got a con game going on, a political con game, and you are in the middle. 30. I'm questioning their sincerity, and some of the strategy that they've been using on our people by promising them promises that they don't intend to keep. 31. This is the year of politics, this is the year when all of the white politicians are going to come into the Negro community. You never see them until election time, you can't find them until election time. They are going to come in with false promises, and as they make these false promises they are going to feed our frustrations and this will only serve to make matters worse. 32. This government has failed the Negro. This so-called democracy has failed the Negro, and all these white liberals have definitely failed the Negro. 33. Roosevelt he could have solved many problems, and all he did was took Negroes off welfare, or first he put them onto welfare. If it hadn’t been for Hitler going on the rampage, Negroes would still be on the welfare. 34. Eleanor Roosevelt could easily have told Negroes the deceitful maneuvering of the United States government that was going on behind the scenes. She never did it. In my opinion she was just another white woman whose profession was to make it appear that she was on the Negro’s side. You have a lot of whites who are in this category. Therefore, they are made Negro loving a profession. They are what I call professional liberals who take advantage of the confidence that Negroes place in them and, therefore, this enhances their own prestige and it gives them key roles to play in the politics of this country. 35. I only cite these things to show you that in America the history of the white liberal has been nothing but a series of trickery designed to make Negros think that the white liberal was going to solve our problems. Our problems will never be solved by the white man. These Malcolm X quotes are from his speeches called the Black Revolution, God judgement on America, The Ballot or the Bullet, Malcolm X interview at the University of California, Malcolm X interview with Austin Clarke, Malcolm X speech at Ford Hall forum 1963, Malcolm X at Columbia University, and Malcolm X interview with Robert Penn Warren. The transcript to the Black Revolution http://malcolmxfiles.blogspot.com/2013/... -1964.html Malcolm X interview with Austin Clarke audio https://archive.org/details/MalcolmXInt... ldsHiSTORY Transcript to the Ballot or the Bullet http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_t... &psid=3624 Transcript to God Judgement on America https://genius.com/Malcolm-x-gods-judge... -annotated Transcript to Malcolm X speech at Ford Hall forum 1963. https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/1107... q7FnejU%3D Transcript to Malcolm X speech at Columbia University http://malcolmxfiles.blogspot.com/2013/... -1963.html Transcript to Malcolm X interview with Robert Penn Warren http://malcolmxfiles.blogspot.com/2013/... olm-x.html Malcolm X interview at the University of California video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2VDub9L2ls Malcolm X said that the liberal is the most deceitful thing video https://www.youtube.com/watc