Integration is the method toward obtaining that goal. And what he Negro leader has done is gotten himself wrapped up in the method and has forgotten what the goal is.
If you're born in America with a black skin, you're born in prison, and the masses of black people in America today are beginning to regard our plight or predicament in this society as one of a prison inmate.
Any time the negro becomes involved in mature political action, then the resistance of the politicians who benefit from the exploited political system as it now stands will be forced to put, exercise more violent action to deprive the negro of his mature political action.
The black man in America is the same as the Jews were in bondage under Pharaoh. We are strangers in a land that is not ours. We are rejected by this type of modern Pharaoh or pharohnic society.
Anybody who rapes, and plunders, and enslaves, and steals, and drops hell bombs on people... anybody who does these things is nothing but a devil.
We're not Americans, we're Africans who happen to be in America. We were kidnapped and brought here against our will from Africa. We didn't land on Plymouth Rock -- that rock landed on us.
I think as an intelligent person you would agree that when you are teaching among oppressed people that they should be relieved of their oppression not 100 or 10 years from now, but right now, you're going to find your talk is going to fall upon sympathetic ears.
My black brothers and sisters -- of all religious beliefs, or of no religious beliefs -- we all have in common the greatest binding tie we could have. We are all black people!
The Negro's so-called 'revolt' is merely an asking to be accepted into the existing system!
Of all our studies, it is history that is best qualified to reward our research.
Longer Version:
Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research. And when you see that you've got problems, all you have to do is examine the historic method used all over the world by others who have problems similar to yours. And once you see how they got theirs straight, then you know how you can get yours straight.
I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner.
Any time you put too many sparks around a powder keg, the thing is going to explode, and if the things that explodes is still inside the house, then the house will be destroyed.
A Negro just can't be whipped by somebody white and return with his head up in the neighborhood, especially in those days, when sports and, to a lesser extent show business, were the only fields open to Negroes, and when the ring was the only place a Negro could whip a white man and not be lynched.
Like Samson, I am ready to pull down the white man's temple, knowing full well that I will be destroyed by the falling rubble.
I refer to a negro politician as a negro who is selected by Negroes and who is backed by Negroes.
I don't know -- too much about Robert Williams tactics, but if he was trying to defend himself, he was within his God-given rights and within -- and he was also within his natural right, because first law of nature is self-preservation.
A hundred years ago the American white men used to put on a white sheet and use a bloodhound against Negroes. Today they have taken off the white sheet and put on police uniforms and traded in the bloodhounds for police dogs, and they're still doing the same thing.
Give us some separate territory in this country where our people can go and do something for ourselves. And provide us with everything that we need to keep that new territory going, until we are self-sufficient.
Much of what I say might sound bitter, but it's the truth. Much of what I say might sound like it's stirring up trouble, but it's the truth. Much of what I say might sound like its hate, but it's the truth.
Much of what I say might sound like it's stirring up trouble, but it's the truth!
The white people who are guilty of white supremacy are trying to hide their own guilt by accusing The Honorable Elijah Muhammad of teaching black supremacy when he tries to uplift the mentality, the social, mental and economic condition of the black people in America.
Even after the child, the life of the black child was saved, but that same white man will have to toss him right back into the discriminate, into discrimination, segregation, and these other things.
Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate.
Longer Version:
Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner. You must be eating some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American.
The problem of the twenty-two million Afro-Americans is so broad that it's going to take the inner working of all organizations.
I look at the problem of the twenty-two million Afro-Americans as being a problem that's so broad in scope that it's almost impossible for any organization to see it in its entirety.
I am not an American; I am one of twenty-two million black people who are victims of Americanism.
They call me a teacher, a fomenter of violence. I would say point blank, That is a lie. I'm not for wanton violence, I'm for justice.
These were African-Arab-Asian values. The only section of Europe that had a high value system during the Dark Ages was the, were those on the Iberian Peninsula in the Spanish-Portuguese area, southern France.
The young people are the ones who most quickly identify with the struggle and the necessity to eliminate the evil conditions that exist.
I had blind faith in him. My faith in Elijah Muhammad was more blind and more uncompromising than any faith that any man has ever had for another man. And so I didn't try and see him as he actually was.
The day that the black man takes an uncompromising step and realizes that he's within his rights, when his own freedom is being jeopardized, to use any means necessary to bring about his freedom or put a halt to that injustice, I don't think he'll be by himself.
I don't believe in any form of unjustified extremism! But when a man is exercising extremism -- a human being is exercising extremism -- in defense of liberty for human beings it's no vice, and when one is moderate in the pursuit of justice for human beings I say he is a sinner.
Anytime there's a fire in a negro community and it's burning out of control, you send any one of them, send Whitney Young in to put it out.
I think, again, that that does the whole problem a, a disservice. It's not a case of our wanting to mix socially with whites. And when you -- and the whites are right in the South when they say that getting a cup of coffee in a restaurant is not going to solve -- is all right.
Learn the language that they understand, and when they come upon our doorstep to talk we can talk, and they will get the point. There will be a dialog, there will be some communication, and I am quite certain that then there will be some understanding.
My family was so poor we were close to eating the holes inside of doughnuts.
I've had enough of someone else's propaganda… I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.
I, for one, will join in with anyone -- I don't care what color you are -- as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth.
The only persons who really changed history are those who changed men's thinking about themselves.
I live like a man who's dead already! I have no fear whatsoever of anybody or anything.
We can't teach what we don't know, and we can't lead where we can't go.
So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.
Always, every now and then, I had given her a hard time, just to keep her in line. Every once in a while a woman seems to need, in fact wants this too.
Nobody can give you freedom, nobody can give you equality or justice. If you are a man, you take it.
Even Samson, the world's strongest man, was destroyed by the woman who slept in his arms. she was the one whose words hurt him.
Mankind's history has proved from one era to another that the true criterion of leadership is spiritual. Men are attracted by spirit. By power, men are forced. Love is engendered by spirit. By power, anxieties are created.
I have more respect for a man who let me know where he stands, even if he's wrong, than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil.
Here was one of the white man's most characteristic behavior patterns -- where black men are concerned. He loves himself so much that he is startled if he discovers that his victims don't share his vainglorious self-opinion.
I actually believed that after living as fully as humanly possible, one should then die violently. I expected then as I still expect today.
I am a Muslim, because it's a religion that teaches you an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It teaches you to respect everybody, and treat everybody right. But it also teaches you if someone steps on your toe, chop off their foot. And I carry my religious axe with me all the time.
Yes, I'm an extremist. The Black race here in North America is in extremely bad condition. You show me a Black man who isn't an extremist and I'll show you one who needs psychiatric attention.
It has taken us that long to get the deaf, dumb, and blind black men in the wilderness of North America to wake up and understand who they are.
Those who would hunt a man need to remember that a jungle also contains those who hunt the hunters.
Right now, in every big city ghetto, tens of thousands of yesterday's and today's school dropouts are keeping body and soul together by some form of hustling in the same way I did.
In the hectic pace of the world today, there is no time for meditation, or for deep thought. A prisoner has time that he can put to good use. I'd put prison second to college as the best place for a man to go if he needs to do some thinking. If he's motivated, in prison he can change his life.
In any organization, someone must be the boss. If it's even just one person, you've got to be the boss of yourself.
You can't hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree.
Longer Version:
You can't hate your origin and not end up hating yourself.
Why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from
Birth must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient.
No, there is plenty wrong with Negroes. They have no society. They're robots, automatons. No minds of their own. I hate to say that about us, but it's the truth. They are a black body with a white brain.
Anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you're both engaged in the same business -- you know they're doing something that you aren't.
I remember one night at Muzdalifa with nothing but the sky overhead I lay awake amid sleeping Muslim brothers and I learned that pilgrims from every land -- every color, and class, and rank; high officials and the beggar alike -- all snored in the same language.
White individuals that have been going to jail. Segregation still exists; discrimination still exists. A few isolated white people whose individual acts are designed to eliminate this, that or, or the next thing but, yet, it is never eliminated is in no way impressive to me.
The black nation of Egypt is the only country that has a science named after its culture: Egyptology.
I might add how in the world can you say, or can anyone say, that it will dignify the American Negro to beg in or wade ? in or plead in when the people in Hungary didn't beg in? They were freedom fighters. And they fought for their freedom.
I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions, too much panty-raiding, fraternities, and boola-boola and all of that.
All I had done was to improve on their strategy, and it was the beginning of a very important lesson in life -- that anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you're both engaged in the same business -- you know they're doing something that you aren't.
The white man's system has been imposed upon non-white peoples all over the world.
They used as a reason for my transfer from one prison to another that I refused to take some kind of shots, an innoculation or something.
I don't think anybody ever got more out of going to prison than I did.
The F.B.I. and the C.I.A. and the I.R.S. all combined can't turn up a thing I got, beyond a car to drive and a seven-room house to live in.
I hadn't hustled in the streets for years for nothing. I knew when I was being set up.
I could tell the impact of this upon them. They had been aware that the plight of the black man in America was bad, but they had not been aware that it was inhuman, that it was psychological castration.
They called me 'the angriest Negro in America.' I wouldn't deny that charge. I spoke exactly as I felt. 'I believe in anger. The Bible says there is a time for anger.'
And just because you have colleges and universities doesn't mean you have education.
Our unity shocked them and we should continue to shock the white man by working together.
The whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, will see the handwriting on the wall and many of them will turn to the spiritual path of truth.
The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities -- he is only reacting to four hundred years of the conscious racism of the American whites.