“Message to the Grass Roots” was a public speech delivered by Malcolm X on November 10, 1963, at the Northern Negro Grass Roots Leadership Conference, which was held at King Solomon Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan. Malcolm X described the difference between the “Black revolution” and the “Negro revolution”, he contrasted the “house Negro” and the “field Negro” during slavery and in the modern age, and he criticized the 1963 March on Washington. “Message to the Grass Roots” was ranked 91st in the top 100 American speeches of the 20th century by 137 leading scholars of American public address.
“What you and I need to do is learn to forget our differences. When we come together, we don’t come together as Baptists or Methodists. You don’t catch hell ’cause you’re a Baptist, and you don’t catch hell ’cause you’re a Methodist… You don’t catch hell because you’re a Democrat or a Republican. You don’t catch hell because you’re a Mason or an Elk. And you sure don’t catch hell ’cause you’re an American; ’cause if you was an American, you wouldn’t catch no hell. You catch hell ’cause you’re a Black man. You catch hell, all of us catch hell, for the same reason.”
“We have a common enemy. We have this in common: We have a common oppressor, a common exploiter, and a common discriminator. But once we all realize that we have this common enemy, then we unite on the basis of what we have in common. And what we have foremost in common is that enemy — the white man. He’s an enemy to all of us. I know some of you all think that some of them aren’t enemies. Time will tell.”
“…What we need to do in the community, and in the city, and in the state. We need to stop airing our differences in front of the whyte man. Put the whyte man out of our meetings, number one, and then sit down and talk shop with each other. [That’s] all you gotta do.”
“If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it’s wrong to be violent defending Black women and Black children and Black babies and Black men, then it’s wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.”
“When I was in prison, I read an article — don’t be shocked when I say I was in prison. You’re still in prison. That’s what America means: prison.”
“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.”
“A revolution is bloody. Revolution is hostile. Revolution knows no compromise. Revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way.”
“When you want a nation, that’s called nationalism… Black nationalism. A revolutionary is a Black nationalist. He wants a nation.”
“I’m a field Negro. The masses are the field Negroes. When they see this man’s house on fire, you don’t hear these little Negroes talking about ‘our government is in trouble’. They say, ‘The government is in trouble.'”
“Just as the slavemaster of that day used Tom, the house Negro, to keep the field Negroes in check, the same old slavemaster today has Negroes who are nothing but modern Uncle Toms, 20th century Uncle Toms, to keep you and me in check, keep us under control, keep us passive and peaceful and nonviolent. That’s Tom making you nonviolent. It’s like when you go to the dentist, and the man’s going to take your tooth. You’re going to fight him when he starts pulling. So he squirts some stuff in your jaw called novocaine, to make you think they’re not doing anything to you. So you sit there and ’cause you’ve got all of that novocaine in your jaw, you suffer peacefully. Blood running all down your jaw, and you don’t know what’s happening. ’Cause someone has taught you to suffer — peacefully.”
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_to_the_Grass_Roots
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