"The Ballot or the Bullet"

Malcolm X 
 
Today, 21 Feb., 2003, is the 38th anniversary of the assassination of
Malcolm X, one of many revolutionaries at home killed as part of the
US government's COINTELPRO program and its predecessors.  Below are
some excerpts from his famous speech, "The Ballot or the Bullet".
Much of what he says remains relevant today, including his views on
liberalism (e.g. the US-Euro "rift" today).

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Malcolm X: "The Ballot or the Bullet"

delivered 3 April, 1964 in Cleveland, OH

Mr. Moderator, Brother Lomax, brothers and sisters, friends and
enemies: I just can't believe everyone in here is a friend, and I
don't want to leave anybody out. The question tonight, as I
understand it, is "The Negro Revolt, and Where Do We Go From Here?"
or What Next?" In my little humble way of understanding it, it points
toward either the ballot or the bullet. 

Before we try and explain what is meant by the ballot or the bullet,
I would like to clarify something concerning myself. I'm still a
Muslim; my religion is still Islam. That's my personal belief. Just
as Adam Clayton Powell is a Christian minister who heads the
Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York, but at the same time takes
part in the political struggles to try and bring about rights to the
black people in this country; and Dr. Martin Luther King is a
Christian minister down in Atlanta, Georgia, who heads another
organization fighting for the civil rights of black people in this
country; and Reverend Galamison, I guess you've heard of him, is
another Christian minister in New York who has been deeply involved
in the school boycotts to eliminate segregated education; well, I
myself am a minister, not a Christian minister, but a Muslim
minister; and I believe in action on all fronts by whatever means
necessary.

Although I'm still a Muslim, I'm not here tonight to discuss my
religion. I'm not here to try and change your religion. I'm not here
to argue or discuss anything that we differ about, because it's time
for us to submerge our differences and realize that it is best for us
to first see that we have the same problem, a common problem, a
problem that will make you catch hell whether you're a Baptist, or a
Methodist, or a Muslim, or a nationalist. Whether you're educated or
illiterate, whether you live on the boulevard or in the alley, you're
going to catch hell just like I am. We're all in the same boat and we
all are going to catch the same hell from the same man. He just
happens to be a white man. All of us have suffered here, in this
country, political oppression at the hands of the white man, economic
exploitation at the hands of the white man, and social degradation at
the hands of the white man.

Now in speaking like this, it doesn't mean that we're anti-white, but
it does mean we're anti-exploitation, we're anti-degradation, we're
anti-oppression. And if the white man doesn't want us to be anti-him,
let him stop oppressing and exploiting and degrading us. ...

If we don't do something real soon, I think you'll have to agree that
we're going to be forced either to use the ballot or the bullet. It's
one or the other in 1964. It isn't that time is running out -- time
has run out!

1964 threatens to be the most explosive year America has ever
witnessed. The most explosive year. Why? It's also a political year.
It's the year when all of the white politicians will be back in the
so-called Negro community jiving you and me for some votes. The year
when all of the white political crooks will be right back in your and
my community with their false promises, building up our hopes for a
letdown, with their trickery and their treachery, with their false
promises which they don't intend to keep. As they nourish these
dissatisfactions, it can only lead to one thing, an explosion; and
now we have the type of black man on the scene in America today --
I'm sorry, Brother Lomax -- who just doesn't intend to turn the other
cheek any longer.

Don't let anybody tell you anything about the odds are against you.
If they draft you, they send you to Korea and make you face 800
million Chinese. If you can be brave over there, you can be brave
right here. These odds aren't as great as those odds. And if you
fight here, you will at least know what you're fighting for.

I'm not a politician, not even a student of politics; in fact, I'm
not a student of much of anything. I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a
Republican, and I don't even consider myself an American. If you and
I were Americans, there'd be no problem. Those Honkies that just got
off the boat, they're already Americans; Polacks are already
Americans; the Italian refugees are already Americans. Everything
that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an
American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren't
Americans yet.

Well, I am one who doesn't believe in deluding myself. 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,
unless you eat 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. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn't need
any legislation; you wouldn't need any amendments to the
Constitution; you wouldn't be faced with civil-rights filibustering
in Washington, D.C., right now. They don't have to pass civil-rights
legislation to make a Polack an American.

No, I'm not an American. I'm one of the 22 million black people who
are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people
who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy.
So, I'm not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a
patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver -- no, not I. I'm
speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America
through the eyes of the victim. I don't see any American dream; I see
an American nightmare. ...

... And your and my leaders have the audacity to run around clapping
their hands and talk about how much progress we're making. And what a
good president we have. If he wasn't good in Texas, he sure can't be
good in Washington, D.C. Because Texas is a lynch state. It is in the
same breath as Mississippi, no different; only they lynch you in
Texas with a Texas accent and lynch you in Mississippi with a
Mississippi accent. And these Negro leaders have the audacity to go
and have some coffee in the White House with a Texan, a Southern
cracker -- that's all he is -- and then come out and tell you and me
that he's going to be better for us because, since he's from the
South, he knows how to deal with the Southerners. What kind of logic
is that? Let Eastland be president, he's from the South too. He
should be better able to deal with them than Johnson. ...


... So it's time in 1964 to wake up. And when you see them coming up
with that kind of conspiracy, let them know your eyes are open. And
let them know you -- something else that's wide open too. It's got to
be the ballot or the bullet. The ballot or the bullet. If you're
afraid to use an expression like that, you should get on out of the
country; you should get back in the cotton patch; you should get back
in the alley. They get all the Negro vote, and after they get it, the
Negro gets nothing in return. All they did when they got to
Washington was give a few big Negroes big jobs. Those big Negroes
didn't need big jobs, they already had jobs. That's camouflage,
that's trickery, that's treachery, window-dressing. I'm not trying to
knock out the Democrats for the Republicans. We'll get to them in a
minute. But it is true; you put the Democrats first and the Democrats
put you last. ...

... So, what I'm trying to impress upon you, in essence, is this: You
and I in America are faced not with a segregationist conspiracy,
we're faced with a government conspiracy. Everyone who's
filibustering is a senator -- that's the government. Everyone who's
finagling in Washington, D.C., is a congressman -- that's the
government. You don't have anybody putting blocks in your path but
people who are a part of the government. The same government that you
go abroad to fight for and die for is the government that is in a
conspiracy to deprive you of your voting rights, deprive you of your
economic opportunities, deprive you of decent housing, deprive you of
decent education. You don't need to go to the employer alone, it is
the government itself, the government of America, that is responsible
for the oppression and exploitation and degradation of black people
in this country. And you should drop it in their lap. This government
has failed the Negro. This so-called democracy has failed the Negro.
And all these white liberals have definitely failed the Negro.

So, where do we go from here? First, we need some friends. We need
some new allies. The entire civil-rights struggle needs a new
interpretation, a broader interpretation. We need to look at this
civil-rights thing from another angle -- from the inside as well as
from the outside. To those of us whose philosophy is black
nationalism, the only way you can get involved in the civil-rights
struggle is give it a new interpretation. That old interpretation
excluded us. It kept us out. So, we're giving a new interpretation to
the civil-rights struggle, an interpretation that will enable us to
come into it, take part in it. And these handkerchief-heads who have
been dillydallying and pussy footing and compromising -- we don't
intend to let them pussyfoot and dillydally and compromise any
longer.

How can you thank a man for giving you what's already yours? How then
can you thank him for giving you only part of what's already yours?
You haven't even made progress, if what's being given to you, you
should have had already. That's not progress. And I love my Brother
Lomax, the way he pointed out we're right back where we were in 1954.
We're not even as far up as we were in 1954. We're behind where we
were in 1954. There's more segregation now than there was in 1954.
There's more racial animosity, more racial hatred, more racial
violence today in 1964, than there was in 1954. Where is the
progress?

And now you're facing a situation where the young Negro's coming up.
They don't want to hear that "turn the-other-cheek" stuff, no. In
Jacksonville, those were teenagers, they were throwing Molotov
cocktails. Negroes have never done that before. But it shows you
there's a new deal coming in. There's new thinking coming in. There's
new strategy coming in. It'll be Molotov cocktails this month, hand
grenades next month, and something else next month. It'll be ballots,
or it'll be bullets. It'll be liberty, or it will be death. The only
difference about this kind of death -- it'll be reciprocal. You know
what is meant by "reciprocal"? That's one of Brother Lomax's words. I
stole it from him. I don't usually deal with those big words because
I don't usually deal with big people. I deal with small people. I
find you can get a whole lot of small people and whip hell out of a
whole lot of big people. They haven't got anything to lose, and
they've got every thing to gain. And they'll let you know in a
minute: "It takes two to tango; when I go, you go."

The black nationalists, those whose philosophy is black nationalism,
in bringing about this new interpretation of the entire meaning of
civil rights, look upon it as meaning, as Brother Lomax has pointed
out, equality of opportunity. Well, we're justified in seeking civil
rights, if it means equality of opportunity, because all we're doing
there is trying to collect for our investment. Our mothers and
fathers invested sweat and blood. Three hundred and ten years we
worked in this country without a dime in return -- I mean without a
dime in return. You let the white man walk around here talking about
how rich this country is, but you never stop to think how it got rich
so quick. It got rich because you made it rich.

You take the people who are in this audience right now. They're poor.
We're all poor as individuals. Our weekly salary individually amounts
to hardly anything. But if you take the salary of everyone in here
collectively, it'll fill up a whole lot of baskets. It's a lot of
wealth. If you can collect the wages of just these people right here
for a year, you'll be rich -- richer than rich. When you look at it
like that, think how rich Uncle Sam had to become, not with this
handful, but millions of black people. Your and my mother and father,
who didn't work an eight-hour shift, but worked from "can't see" in
the morning until "can't see" at night, and worked for nothing,
making the white man rich, making Uncle Sam rich. This is our
investment. This is our contribution, our blood.

Not only did we give of our free labor, we gave of our blood. Every
time he had a call to arms, we were the first ones in uniform. We
died on every battlefield the white man had. We have made a greater
sacrifice than anybody who's standing up in America today. We have
made a greater contribution and have collected less. Civil rights,
for those of us whose philosophy is black nationalism, means: "Give
it to us now. Don't wait for next year. Give it to us yesterday, and
that's not fast enough." ...

... If you don't take an uncompromising stand, I don't mean go out and
get violent; but at the same time you should never be nonviolent
unless you run into some nonviolence. I'm nonviolent with those who
are nonviolent with me. But when you drop that violence on me, then
you've made me go insane, and I'm not responsible for what I do. And
that's the way every Negro should get. Any time you know you're
within the law, within your legal rights, within your moral rights,
in accord with justice, then die for what you believe in. But don't
die alone. Let your dying be reciprocal. This is what is meant by
equality. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

When we begin to get in this area, we need new friends, we need new
allies. We need to expand the civil-rights struggle to a higher level
-- to the level of human rights. Whenever you are in a civil-rights
struggle, whether you know it or not, you are confining yourself to
the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam. No one from the outside world can
speak out in your behalf as long as your struggle is a civil-rights
struggle. Civil rights comes within the domestic affairs of this
country. All of our African brothers and our Asian brothers and our
Latin-American brothers cannot open their mouths and interfere in the
domestic affairs of the United States. And as long as it's civil
rights, this comes under the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam.

But the United Nations has what's known as the charter of human
rights; it has a committee that deals in human rights. You may wonder
why all of the atrocities that have been committed in Africa and in
Hungary and in Asia, and in Latin America are brought before the UN,
and the Negro problem is never brought before the UN. This is part of
the conspiracy. This old, tricky blue eyed liberal who is supposed to
be your and my friend, supposed to be in our corner, supposed to be
subsidizing our struggle, and supposed to be acting in the capacity
of an adviser, never tells you anything about human rights. They keep
you wrapped up in civil rights. And you spend so much time barking up
the civil-rights tree, you don't even know there's a human-rights
tree on the same floor. ...

... Uncle Sam's hands are dripping with blood, dripping with the blood
of the black man in this country. He's the earth's number-one
hypocrite. He has the audacity -- yes, he has -- imagine him posing
as the leader of the free world. The free world! And you over here
singing "We Shall Overcome." Expand the civil-rights struggle to the
level of human rights. Take it into the United Nations, where our
African brothers can throw their weight on our side, where our Asian
brothers can throw their weight on our side, where our Latin-American
brothers can throw their weight on our side, and where 800 million
Chinamen are sitting there waiting to throw their weight on our side.

Let the world know how bloody his hands are. Let the world know the
hypocrisy that's practiced over here. Let it be the ballot or the
bullet. Let him know that it must be the ballot or the bullet. 

When you take your case to Washington, D.C., you're taking it to the
criminal who's responsible; it's like running from the wolf to the
fox. They're all in cahoots together. They all work political
chicanery and make you look like a chump before the eyes of the
world. Here you are walking around in America, getting ready to be
drafted and sent abroad, like a tin soldier, and when you get over
there, people ask you what are you fighting for, and you have to
stick your tongue in your cheek. No, take Uncle Sam to court, take
him before the world. ...


... Right now, in this country, if you and I, 22 million
African-Americans -- that's what we are -- Africans who are in
America. You're nothing but Africans. Nothing but Africans. In fact,
you'd get farther calling yourself African instead of Negro. Africans
don't catch hell. You're the only one catching hell. They don't have
to pass civil-rights bills for Africans. An African can go anywhere
he wants right now. All you've got to do is tie your head up. That's
right, go anywhere you want. Just stop being a Negro. Change your
name to Hoogagagooba. That'll show you how silly the white man is.
You're dealing with a silly man. A friend of mine who's very dark put
a turban on his head and went into a restaurant in Atlanta before
they called themselves desegregated. He went into a white restaurant,
he sat down, they served him, and he said, "What would happen if a
Negro came in here? And there he's sitting, black as night, but
because he had his head wrapped up the waitress looked back at him
and says, "Why, there wouldn't no nigger dare come in here."

So, you're dealing with a man whose bias and prejudice are making him
lose his mind, his intelligence, every day. He's frightened. He looks
around and sees what's taking place on this earth, and he sees that
the pendulum of time is swinging in your direction. The dark people
are waking up. They're losing their fear of the white man. No place
where he's fighting right now is he winning. Everywhere he's
fighting, he's fighting someone your and my complexion. And they're
beating him. He can't win any more. He's won his last battle. He
failed to win the Korean War. He couldn't win it. He had to sign a
truce. That's a loss.

Any time Uncle Sam, with all his machinery for warfare, is held to a
draw by some rice eaters, he's lost the battle. He had to sign a
truce. America's not supposed to sign a truce. She's supposed to be
bad. But she's not bad any more. She's bad as long as she can use her
hydrogen bomb, but she can't use hers for fear Russia might use hers.
Russia can't use hers, for fear that Sam might use his. So, both of
them are weapon-less. They can't use the weapon because each's weapon
nullifies the other's. So the only place where action can take place
is on the ground. And the white man can't win another war fighting on
the ground. Those days are over The black man knows it, the brown man
knows it, the red man knows it, and the yellow man knows it. So they
engage him in guerrilla warfare. That's not his style. You've got to
have heart to be a guerrilla warrior, and he hasn't got any heart.
I'm telling you now.

I just want to give you a little briefing on guerrilla warfare
because, before you know it, before you know it. It takes heart to be
a guerrilla warrior because you're on your own. In conventional
warfare you have tanks and a whole lot of other people with you to
back you up -- planes over your head and all that kind of stuff. But
a guerrilla is on his own. All you have is a rifle, some sneakers and
a bowl of rice, and that's all you need -- and a lot of heart. The
Japanese on some of those islands in the Pacific, when the American
soldiers landed, one Japanese sometimes could hold the whole army
off. He'd just wait until the sun went down, and when the sun went
down they were all equal. He would take his little blade and slip
from bush to bush, and from American to American. The white soldiers
couldn't cope with that. Whenever you see a white soldier that fought
in the Pacific, he has the shakes, he has a nervous condition,
because they scared him to death.

The same thing happened to the French up in French Indochina. People
who just a few years previously were rice farmers got together and
ran the heavily-mechanized French army out of Indochina. You don't
need it -- modern warfare today won't work. This is the day of the
guerrilla. They did the same thing in Algeria. Algerians, who were
nothing but Bedouins, took a rine and sneaked off to the hills, and
de Gaulle and all of his highfalutin' war machinery couldn't defeat
those guerrillas. Nowhere on this earth does the white man win in a
guerrilla warfare. It's not his speed. Just as guerrilla warfare is
prevailing in Asia and in parts of Africa and in parts of Latin
America, you've got to be mighty naive, or you've got to play the
black man cheap, if you don't think some day he's going to wake up
and find that it's got to be the ballot or the bullet. ...

... We will work with anybody, anywhere, at any time, who is genuinely
interested in tackling the problem head-on, nonviolently as long as
the enemy is nonviolent, but violent when the enemy gets violent.
We'll work with you on the voter-registration drive, we'll work with
you on rent strikes, we'll work with you on school boycotts; I don't
believe in any kind of integration; I'm not even worried about it,
because I know you're not going to get it anyway; you're not going to
get it because you're afraid to die; you've got to be ready to die if
you try and force yourself on the white man, because he'll get just
as violent as those crackers in Mississippi, right here in Cleveland.
But we will still work with you on the school boycotts be cause we're
against a segregated school system. A segregated school system
produces children who, when they graduate, graduate with crippled
minds. But this does not mean that a school is segregated because
it's all black. A segregated school means a school that is controlled
by people who have no real interest in it whatsoever.

Let me explain what I mean. A segregated district or community is a
community in which people live, but outsiders control the politics
and the economy of that community. They never refer to the white
section as a segregated community. It's the all-Negro section that's
a segregated community. Why? The white man controls his own school,
his own bank, his own economy, his own politics, his own everything,
his own community; but he also controls yours. When you're under
someone else's control, you're segregated. They'll always give you
the lowest or the worst that there is to offer, but it doesn't mean
you're segregated just because you have your own. You've got to
control your own. Just like the white man has control of his, you
need to control yours.

You know the best way to get rid of segregation? The white man is
more afraid of separation than he is of integration. Segregation
means that he puts you away from him, but not far enough for you to
be out of his jurisdiction; separation means you're gone. And the
white man will integrate faster than he'll let you separate. So we
will work with you against the segregated school system because it's
criminal, because it is absolutely destructive, in every way
imaginable, to the minds of the children who have to be exposed to
that type of crippling education.

Last but not least, I must say this concerning the great controversy
over rifles and shotguns. The only thing that I've ever said is that
in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or
unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it's time for
Negroes to defend themselves. Article number two of the
constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a
rifle or a shotgun. It is constitutionally legal to own a shotgun or
a rifle. This doesn't mean you're going to get a rifle and form
battalions and go out looking for white folks, although you'd be
within your rights -- I mean, you'd be justified; but that would be
illegal and we don't do anything illegal. If the white man doesn't
want the black man buying rifles and shotguns, then let the
government do its job. ...

... If he's not going to do his job in running the government and
providing you and me with the protection that our taxes are supposed
to be for, since he spends all those billions for his defense budget,
he certainly can't begrudge you and me spending $12 or $15 for a
single-shot, or double-action. I hope you understand. Don't go out
shooting people, but any time -- brothers and sisters, and especially
the men in this audience; some of you wearing Congressional Medals of
Honor, with shoulders this wide, chests this big, muscles that big --
any time you and I sit around and read where they bomb a church and
murder in cold blood, not some grownups, but four little girls while
they were praying to the same God the white man taught them to pray
to, and you and I see the government go down and can't find who did
it.

Why, this man -- he can find Eichmann hiding down in Argentina
somewhere. Let two or three American soldiers, who are minding
somebody else's business way over in South Vietnam, get killed, and
he'll send battleships, sticking his nose in their business. He
wanted to send troops down to Cuba and make them have what he calls
free elections -- this old cracker who doesn't have free elections in
his own country.
 
No, if you never see me another time in your life, if I die in the
morning, I'll die saying one thing: the ballot or the bullet, the
ballot or the bullet.