NARRATOR
In the struggle for racial equality, not all black people accepted Martin Luther King Jr.’s message of love and nonviolence. Soon after the 1963 March on Washington, in which King spoke of his “dream,” four black girls were killed in the bombing of a Birmingham church. For Malcolm X, who grew up in a northern ghetto, spent time in prison, and became a Muslim, this pointed to the limitations of the civil rights movement. That fall, Malcolm X addressed a meeting in Detroit. Two years later he would be assassinated.
MALCOLM X
As long as the white man sent you to Korea you bled. He sent you to Germany, you bled. He sent you to the South Pacific to fight the Japanese, you bled. You bleed for white people, but when it comes to seeing your own churches being bombed and little black girls murdered, you haven’t got any blood. You bleed when the white man says bleed; you bite when the white man says bite, and you bark when the white man says bark. I hate to say this about us, but it’s true. How are you going to be nonviolent in Mississippi, as violent as you were in Korea? How can you justify being nonviolent in Mississippi and Alabama, when your churches are being bombed, and your little girls are being murdered?
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.
Right at that time Birmingham had exploded…. That’s when Kennedy sent in the troops, down in Birmingham. After that, Kennedy got on the television and said “this is a moral issue.” That’s when he said he was going to put out a civil rights bill. And when he mentioned civil rights bill and the Southern crackers started talking bout how they were going to boycott or filibuster it, then the Negroes started talking—about what? That they were going to march on Washington, march on the Senate, march on the White House, march on the Congress, and tie it up, bring it to a halt, not let the government proceed. They even said they were going out to the airport and lay down on the runway and not let any airplanes land. I’m telling you what they said. That was revolution. That was revolution. That was the black revolution.
It was the grass roots out there in the street. It scared the white man to death, scared the power structure in Washington, D.C., to death; I was there. When they found out that this black steamroller was going to come down on the capital they called in Wilkins, they called in Randolph, they called in these national Negro leaders that you respect and told them, “Call it off,” Kennedy said. “Look you are letting this thing go too far.” And Old Tom said, “Boss, I can’t stop it because I didn’t start it.” I’m telling you what they said. They said, “I’m not even in it, much less at the head of it.” They said, “These Negroes are doing things on their own.”