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Addressing the mass meeting Malcolm X reportedly shouted: “I don’t advocate violence, but if a man steps on my toes, I’ll step on his.”…“Whites
“That was a bad scene, brother. The sickness and madness of those days—I’m glad to be free of them. It’s a time for martyrs now. And if I’m to be one, it will be in the cause of brotherhood. That’s the only thing that can save this country. I’ve learned it the hard way—but I’ve learned it….”
Recalling the incident of the young white college girl who had come to the Black Muslim restaurant and asked “What can I do?” and he told her “Nothing,” and she left in tears, Malcolm X told Gordon Parks, “Well, I’ve lived to regret that incident. In many parts of the African continent I saw white students helping black people. Something like this kills a lot of argument. I did many things as a Muslim that I’m sorry for now. I was a zombie then—like all Muslims—I was hypnotized, pointed in a certain direction and told to march. Well, I guess a man’s entitled to make a fool of himself if he’s
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The Daily Times of Lagos, in Nigeria, had said: “Like all mortals, Malcolm X was not without his faults…but that he was a dedicated and consistent disciple of the movement for the emancipation of his brethren, no one can doubt…Malcolm X has fought and died for what he believed to be right. He will have a place in the palace of martyrs.”
“Death is a private matter between Allah and the deceased.”)
America profits directly or indirectly from his position vis-à-vis Negroes, profits from racism even though he does not practice it or believe in it. He also knew that every Negro who did not challenge on the spot every instance of racism, overt or covert, committed against him and his people, who chose instead to swallow his spit and go on smiling, was an Uncle Tom and a traitor, without balls or guts, or any other commonly accepted aspects of manhood!
And most of all, in the area of race relations, he still delighted in twisting the white man’s tail, and in making Uncle Toms, compromisers, and accommodationists—I deliberately include myself—thoroughly ashamed of the urbane and smiling hypocrisy we practice merely to exist in a world whose values we both envy and despise.
