Brothers and sisters, I am very, very sorry that I cannot be with you for the opening of Malcolm X Liberation University—an event I consider one of the most important in our struggle. I say that it is important because of what this institution will mean to us, the direction that it should, must, and will give to our brothers and sisters who will be studying here. And it is a landmark—it marks the first time that we have got together among ourselves, sat down, and planned the ways and means by which our young people in the United States will get a truly black education, an African education. This is also true for the Center of Black Education, which recently opened in Washington, D.C.; I understand it is a sister institution to Malcolm X Liberation University.
Malcolm X Liberation University, October, 1969. (Delivered by Howard Fuller on behalf of Stokely Carmichael.)
I have followed very closely the development of this institution through friends and co-workers who are helping to develop the school; they have sent over all the plans and information on the school, and I have taken all this information to Brother Sékou Touré, President of Guinea, and Brother Kwame Nkrumah, the legitimate President of Ghana. They, too, feel that this university represents one of the most fruitful and promising institutions inside the United States. And of course they fully support the underlying concepts that have guided and given direction to your efforts—the concept that we are all an African people, the concept that we are all working toward building a strong, united African nation wherever we may be, the concept that we must work toward the unification of Africa—in other words, the concept of Pan-Africanism.
When I look back over the past ten years of our struggle, from civil rights to Black Power, to where we are today, it becomes crystal clear to me that all of our efforts have gradually led us to where we as a people have to go, where we must go. Many of you who are present at the opening ceremonies of MXLU, and many of you who have helped develop this institution, spent many years working and organizing our people in the South—probably a good number have worked in SNCC. If we look back over those years, we remember that as we passed through all of these years we knew that what we were working on at that time was not the answer. But we had to work on programs such as sit-ins, freedom rides, freedom schools, freedom organizations, and community control just to develop political consciousness in our people and to heighten the contradictions in American society. We had to make our people see that America’s interests are not our own best interest. They never have been, they are not now, and they never will be.
In the early sixties, when we were fighting for the right to eat a hamburger next to white folks, most of us saw the sit-ins only as strategy and tactics to awaken the consciousness in our people—to get them to see what America was really about. Many of us went on to form “independent political organizations” and “freedom schools,” and we knew that, again, this was only another step in heightening the contradictions in America. We had to convince our people that there is no place in the American political system for us. We then moved on to demands for Black Power, for community control of businesses, police, and schools, and so forth—but most of us recognized that this is not really possible in America, there is no way we can operate as an independent island surrounded by a hostile white community’s police and military forces. All of these experiences and lessons have taught us that we must look only to each other in finding the solution of our problems—our solution cannot be found within America, even though those of us who live in the United States may remain there physically. We cannot look to our oppressors, those who oppress us, to liberate us or to even help in our liberation. For they will and must serve their own interest, which always involves oppressing us, the African peoples.
Now, we must recognize that black people, whether we are in Durham, San Francisco, Jamaica, Trinidad, Brazil, Europe or on the mother continent, are all an African people. We are Africans, there can be no question about that. We came from Africa, our race is African. The things that always distinguish us from white people, Europeans, are all African things. We have all suffered the same oppression at the hands of white folks, whether in Lynchburg, Virginia; Money, Mississippi; Accra, Ghana; or Johannesburg, South Africa, our oppression has been the same—we have all been colonized and dehumanized. It is also a question of our having common interests. It is in our best interest to wage an unrelenting struggle against Europe—and I include America as part of the European family—Americans, white folks, are Europeans. We must wage this struggle against the European world, since Europe and America must by definition keep us oppressed and brainwashed—if they are to survive. To keep herself alive and to support her racist, inhuman system, America must suck the lifeblood of Africa and African peoples, as she must also do in Asia and Latin America.
I would like to read some of Brother Malcolm’s words. We must listen to Malcolm very closely, because we have to understand our heroes. We cannot let them be used by other people, we cannot let them be interpreted by other people to say other things. We must know and understand what our heroes were saying to us—our heroes, not the heroes of the white left or what have you.
Malcolm said,
You cannot understand what is going on in Mississippi if you don’t understand what is going on in the Congo, and you cannot really be interested in what’s going on in Mississippi if you are not also interested in what’s going on in the Congo. They’re both the same. The same interests are at stake. The same ideas are drawn up. The same schemes are at work in the Congo that are at work in Mississippi. The same stake—no difference whatsoever.
And Brother Malcolm wrote a letter from Accra on May 11, 1964:
Upon close study one can easily see a gigantic design to keep Africans here and the African-Americans from getting together. An African official told me, “When one combines the number of people of African descent in South, Central and North America, they total well over 80,000,000. One can easily understand the attempts to keep the Africans from ever uniting with the African-Americans.” Unity between Africans of the West and the Africans of the Fatherland will well change the course of history. Being in Ghana now, the fountainhead of Pan-Africanism, the last days of my tour should be intensely interesting and enlightening. Just as the American Jew is in harmony politically, economically, and culturally with world Jewry, it is time for all African-Americans to become an integral part of the world’s Pan-Africanists, and even though we might remain in America physically while fighting for the benefits that the Constitution guarantees us, we must return to Africa philosophically and culturally, and develop a working unity in the framework of Pan-Africanism.
If we recognize and accept the truths Brother Malcolm was trying to tell us, it will be clear to us that to survive as a people we will go to war with America and Europe. Since they will do all in their power to protect their interest, this means they must oppress us and keep us in a semi-human state. We, in turn, will never be a strong, proud, free people unless we liberate Africa and take from America what America is trying to protect. Right now we are in a cold war with America and Europe. When we begin to move militarily on all fronts, it will be an all-out race war, Africa versus Europe. This may not seem pleasant to some of our brothers and sisters, but it is a question of who is going to survive—them or us. I think that the natural law of survival will answer that, even for those of us who recoil and do not want to face what is coming. I am reminded of what Brother Malcolm said in Chicago, way back in 1962: “What’s good news for some is bad news for others.”
For us to accomplish what we must accomplish and go where we must go, we are going to need skilled technicians with the political background to help us build a nation. When students come out of Malcolm X Liberation University, they will be in a position to offer their skills and services to our people wherever they are most needed, in America, Africa, the West Indies (which are really African islands, by the way), or Nova Scotia. Wherever you work, you will be contributing your efforts toward the building of a strong African nation.
The development of this institution is a living example of the development and growth of our struggle, because those of you who were the founders and gave direction to this school have all understood clearly what our struggle is all about. Through years of hard work, organizing, and learning, we have finally come full circle to recognizing the fact that we are an African people, that we must be about building a nation, that we must train and develop cadres of young brothers and sisters who will have the skills to help us do this.
The challenge that this presents to MXLU is overwhelming. Our people have waited four centuries for such people to come forth—all of our people have waited this long; some did not know that they were waiting for this, and some still do not know. Many are very slow in recognizing this fact, but they will eventually come around—the repression, oppression and depression of America will see to that.
You must never feel isolated or weak if you are attacked from outside our community or from within. The outside attacks will come from Europeans, white folks, who recognize that we have finally learned the truth about what we must do; they know that this spells their death and ushers in their funeral. The attacks from within will come from our brothers and sisters who are where many of us were at some years ago. But they will come around. It is your job, it is our job, to bring them home.
Here in Guinea, I am working very closely with Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. We are trying to aid the masses of Ghana who are striving to bring Nkrumah back to Ghana, to reinstall him as the legitimate President of Ghana, and to once again initiate a revolutionary Pan-Africanist government in that country—one that will serve as an English-speaking land base for our people in the Americas. The move must begin now and it is necessary that you give us all the support needed. In the past few years, we have seen America move against Ghana and Mali by overthrowing their governments; we have seen Brother Malcolm and Brother Patrice Lumumba assassinated by America; we have seen our revolutionary outposts dwindle down to almost nothing—all at the hands of the United States of America and her European sisters.
Guinea, one of the last remaining outposts of revolutionary African government in West Africa, is being isolated and harassed by America and Europe. There have been five attempted coups and assassination attempts against President Sékou Touré. Should such a coup ever prove successful, both Brothers Sékou Touré and Nkrumah would be wiped out—yes, wiped out. We cannot let this happen to two of our greatest leaders. They took Brother Malcolm and we did nothing. They took Patrice Lumumba and we did nothing. They took Pierre Mulele, also of the Congo, and we did nothing. We cannot sit back and allow them to off Brothers Sékou Touré and Nkrumah; we must move to give them protection and take some of the pressure off Guinea. One way we can begin to do this is to make sure that Dr. Nkrumah goes back to Ghana and reestablish another revolutionary base on the west coast of Africa. It is clear in my mind that this is a very necessary step toward the building of our nation, toward the total liberation of our people.
There is not too much more that I can say to you without going into a very lengthy discussion. Because of my work on this side of the ocean, in the motherland, I am not able to be with you today in Durham, at least not physically. I will be keeping in touch with your progress and development. As we as a people have always managed to do, we will find the ways to communicate, in spite of interference with mail, phone calls, and telegrams by “the man.” In the near future I hope to have some pamphlets written so that we may go deeper into the discussion I have touched upon lightly today. It has indeed been an honor to greet you today, from Guinea. Don’t ever think that Guinea or Africa is far away or that I have left you—we are much closer than you may think. We are moving ahead together, and we will work toward the day when we will once again walk the face of the earth as a proud, liberated, strong, and powerful people—not with just a few crumbs tossed out to us from America or control of meaningless institutions in our ghettos. We will be a unified people all over the world and on the continent. “Back to Africa” will not be just a dream, but it will be a reality. We will change the course of our history—we will get on the road to total liberation, and I am sure that Malcolm X Liberation University will become a driving force in our struggle.
With an undying love for black people wherever we may be,
Stokely