Malcolm

Malcolm X (Al-Hajj Malik Al Shabazz) May 19th 1925 - Feb. 22 1965

Many have tried to compare Martin Luther King to Malcom X and say King did more for black people than Malcolm did. However, Malcolm’s goal wasn’t to do for us. He wanted us to do for ourselves - and think for ourselves. So, if we still insist on making such a comparison we simply have to look in the mirror to see how successful his efforts were.

"The thing that has made the so-called Negro in America fail, more than any other thing, is your, my, lack of knowledge concerning history. We know less about history than anything else. We have black men who have mastered the field of medicine, we have black men who have mastered other fields, but very seldom do we have black men in America who have mastered the knowledge of the history of the black man himself."















"The so-called Negro are childlike people -- you're like children. No matter how old you get, or how bold you get, or how wise you get, or how rich you get, or how educated you get, the white man still calls you what? "Boy!" Why, you are a child in his eyesight! And you are a child. Anytime you have to let another man set up a factory for you and you can't set up a factory for yourself, you're a child; anytime another man has to open up businesses for you and you don't know how to open up businesses for yourself and your people, you're a child; anytime another man sets up schools and you don't know how to set up your own schools, you're a child. Because a child is someone who sits around and waits for his father to do for him what he should be doing for himself, or what he's too young to do for himself, or what he is too dumb to do for himself.

So the white man, knowing that here in America all the Negro has done -- I hate to say it, but it's the truth -- all you and I have done is build churches and let the white man build factories. You and I build churches and let the white man build schools. You and I build churches and let the white man build up everything for himself. Then after you build the church you have to go and beg the white man for a job, and beg the white man for some education. Am I right or wrong? Do you see what I mean? It's too bad but it's true."

The Black Man's History Speech, Dec., 1962.


Malcolm would have been 85 today.


"Not to know what happened before you were born is to be forever a child."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero