MALCOLM X UC BERKELEY SPEECH (October 11, 1963)

• published: 08 Sep 2014
• views: 5654

https://sellfy.com/MalcolmX https://sellfy.com/MalcolmX According to what we were taught from the white man’s textbooks in school, the Revolutionary War and the Civil War were two wars fought on American soil, supposedly for freedom and democracy. But if these two wars were really fought for freedom and human dignity of all men, why are 20 million of our people still confined and enslaved here in America by second-class citizenship? The truth is that the Revolutionary War was fought on American soil to free the American white man from the English white man. The Revolutionary War was never fought to provide freedom and democracy in this white country for the black man. Our people remained slaves here in America even after the Declaration of Independence was signed. In fact most of the white Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence were slave owners themselves. It is sheer ignorance, insanity, for our people to celebrate the Fourth of July as Independence Day, while white America denies us the first-class citizenship that goes with independence. And it is nothing but hypocrisy on the part of the American white man to pretend that the Revolutionary War was truly a war of independence as long as 20 million black people here in America are denied the privileges of an independent people. The Civil War was fought on this continent, but not to free the black slaves as is commonly taught in the white man’s schools. The Civil War was actually fought to preserve the Union, to keep the country intact, for white people. The American white man fought the Revolutionary War to get this country for himself. He then fought the Civil War to keep this country intact for himself, and today he will now fight a race war to keep from having to share this country on an equal basis with anyone else but himself. Especially on an equal basis with his 20 million former slaves. The black masses are crying out, “What have we to lose but our chains? What have we to lose but the hell that we experience every day living in these rat-filled slums that we’re relegated to?” The worst housing conditions in America always exist in the so-called Negro community. Yet the white liberals, who own these run down houses, force us to pay the highest rent. Faced with this high overhead, we are forced to take in roomers in order to help make up our rent. Our apartments are filled with both relatives and strangers. Our communities soon become overcrowded. These overcrowded conditions under which our people are forced to live eliminates all chances for a normal life, a clean life, or a healthy life. Because our children grow up in this overcrowded atmosphere, the lack of much needed privacy destroys their sense of shame. It lowers their moral standards and leaves them exposed to every form of indecency and vice imaginable. Our young girls, our daughters, our baby sisters become unwed mothers before they are hardly out of their teens. Our community has thousands of unmarried mothers, mothers who have no hope of ever getting a husband. And our community has tens of thousands of little babies who have no father to act as their provider or protector. In fact the only provider any of our children know is the white welfare agent or the white social worker. Many of our children actually mistake the welfare agent or the white social worker for their father. And ofttimes this is true. Our people in the Negro community are trapped in a vicious cycle of ignorance, poverty, disease, sickness, and death. There seems to be no way out. No way of escape. The wealthy, educated black bourgeoisie, those uppity Negroes who do escape, never reach back and pull the rest of our people out with them. The black masses remain trapped in the slums. And because there seems to be no hope or no other escape, we turn to wine, we turn to whiskey, and we turn to reefers, marijuana, and even to the dreadful needle—heroin, morphine, cocaine, opium—seeking an escape. Many of us turn to crime, stealing, gambling, prostitution. And some of us are used by the white overlords downtown to push dope in the Negro community among our own people. Unemployment and poverty have forced many of our people into a life of crime. But the real criminal is in the City Hall downtown, in the State House, and in the White House in Washington, DC. The real criminal is the white liberal, the political hypocrite. And it is these legal crooks who pose as our friends, force us into a life of crime, and then use us to spread the white man’s evil vices in our community among our own people. https://sellfy.com/MalcolmX