A Gift From Malcolm X

May 19, 1925 - February 21, 1965


Thinking For Yourself.......


……… I am very pleased to see so many who have come out to always see for yourself, where you can hear for yourself, and then think for yourself. Then you'll be in a better position to make an intelligent judgment for yourself. But if you form the habit of listening to what others say about something or some one or reading what someone else has written about someone, somebody can confuse you and misuse you. So as Afro-Americans or Black people here in the Western Hemisphere, you and I have to learn to weigh things for ourselves. No matter what the man says, you better look into it.

And a good example of why it's so important to look into things for yourself: I was on a plane between Algiers and Geneva and it just happened that two other Americans were sitting in the two seats next to me. None of us knew each other and the other two were white, one a male, the other a female. And after we had been flying along for about forty minutes, the lady, she says, "Could I ask you a personal question?"

I said, '"Yes." She said, "Well--" she had been looking at my briefcase, and she said, "Well, what does that X--" she says, "What kind of last name could you have that begins with X?" So I said, "That's it -- X." And she said, "Well, what does the 'M' stand for?" I said, "Malcolm." So she was quiet for about ten minutes, and she turned to me and she says, "You're not Malcolm X?"

You see, we had been riding along in a nice conversation like three human beings, you know, no hostility, no animosity, just human. And she couldn't take this, she said, "Well you're not who I was looking for," you know. And she ended up telling me that she was looking for horns and all that, and for someone who was out to kill all white people, as if all white people could be killed. This was her general attitude, and this attitude had been given her -- this image had been given [to] her by the press.


excerpt from After the Bombing

speech, February 14, 1965

Why Hilary Keeps Running

Hilary Clinton won't quit. She knows that she can count on America's lingering color line, the immense privileges that she can reap as a white candidate running against a black man. Hilary knows that Obama can not escape the burden of race. On numerous occasions Obama has had to duck and dodge attacks along the color line. Obama is not exactly innocent himself. He has run on a race-neutral campaign as he hopes to convince America that we are in a new era.

Maybe Clinton will drop out tomorrow, next week, next month----or never. She knows and understands the power of race in America.