https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zLQLUpNGsc

On April 12, 1964, civil rights leader Malcolm X delivered a speech to an audience of about 2,000 at King Solomon Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan (“Malcolm X | The Ballot or the Bullet”). 1964 was an election year; Democratic president Lyndon B. Johnson was running for re-election against Republican candidate Barry Goldwater. In his address, Malcolm strived to enlighten his listeners on the importance of political education, consciousness, and maturity so that African-Americans would not only know who to cast their vote for, but also gain awareness of the power of their vote in influencing election results. This political independence was a central aspect of the philosophy of Black nationalism, which Malcolm avidly supported, along with separatism. His beliefs contrasted with the views of other civil rights activists at the time such as Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Milton Galamison, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., all of whom were proponents of integration, and all of whom he mentioned in the beginning of his speech (Warren).

The title of Malcolm X’s speech, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” suggests an ultimatum between voting or violence, an attempt by the speaker to convince the audience that one action or the other is absolutely necessary depending on the actions of the enemy – in this case, the U.S. government. Before this ultimatum could ever be proposed however, Malcolm faced the challenge in this speech of establishing a fundamental commonality with his audience. As one of the most prominent members of the Nation of Islam (an African-American religious movement, abbreviated as NOI) and an avid proponent of both separatism and Black nationalism, Malcolm X defined his identity in contrast to members of the Black community who identified as Christian and/or favored non-violent resistance and racial integration like the followers of Martin Luther King Jr. In March 1964 (a month before giving this speech), Malcolm publicly announced his split from the NOI, leaving his religious status in question (“Timeline of Malcolm X’s Life”).

Instead of ignoring this obvious religious divide between himself and many of his listeners, Malcolm addresses it in the very beginning of his speech, stating plainly and clearly that he remains a Muslim, but that more importantly he is not speaking to the audience as a Muslim; he is coming to the audience as a fighter. By minimizing the importance of their difference in religious beliefs and placing a towering emphasis on the struggles they share together as members of the Black community, Malcolm effectively seeks to unify his audience while using the second-person tense to directly rally them to his cause.

Using that same tactic, Malcolm goes on to unify ideologies regarding the American North and South, making powerful appeals to pathos and utilizing the ethos built atop the foundation of his earlier remarks to erase the division between them (that ethos being his credibility as someone who shares his listeners’ struggles despite their differences in religious beliefs). In grouping the North and South together, he seeks to obliterate the audience’s pre-established common view that Northern politicians were allies of the Black community while Southern politicians were their enemies. Instead, Malcolm X argues that the North and South are both one entity (the U.S. government), and that the Black community, as one, must fight for justice using either the ballot or the bullet.

“I’m still a Muslim.” Direct, clear, unabashed and unashamed, Malcolm delivers this first line of his speech to his audience at King Solomon Baptist Church.  This lays the foundation for the ethos he invents throughout his speech, signaling to his listeners that he is someone who will speak the truth about himself no matter the social difficulty, and indirectly signaling that he will do the same for all other matters. He then goes on to draw connections to Christian ministers who have also become active in the struggle for civil rights, stating that these ministers do not enter the civil rights movement as ministers, but as fighters. In his list of Christian ministers, he includes Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Milton Galamison, and, most notably, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a man whose philosophies of integration and non-violent resistance greatly differed from his own, and an activist with whom Malcolm publicly disagreed (“Malcolm X”).

By foregrounding the civil rights activism of these Christian ministers and placing himself in the same sphere (“I’m a Muslim minister – the same as they are Christian ministers”), he further breaks down the religious divide between himself and his audience, aiming to extend the audience’s trust in their ministers to now include him as well. To finally eliminate any uncertainty regarding Malcolm’s identity in this rhetorical situation, he states plainly that discussing religion would only divide them, and that religion should be kept “at home…in the closet” so that they may join to fight against a common enemy.

With the bedrock of his ethos laid, Malcolm then wastes no time in using pronouns such as “we” and “you” (i.e., the second person) when addressing his listeners. The use of “we” throughout the speech has the function of not just solidifying his place as one of the audience, but solidifying the audience’s place as his equal as well. In doing so, Malcolm includes his listeners in his dialogue; even though he is talking to and teaching them, this speech is as much a discussion between himself and them as it is a lesson from teacher to student. Indeed the audio recording, full of applause, laughter, and exclamation in response to Malcolm’s words, certainly suggests that the audience members feel like they are partaking in an equal discussion as well, as opposed to being lectured or talked down to.

The use of the second person pronoun “you” serves to place agency directly into the hands of Malcolm’s audience, squarely into the lap of the Black community. Instead of using the passive voice to describe the injustices done to the Black community (e.g., “We were failed by the government” or “You were tricked by the white man”), Malcolm employs the active voice (“The government has failed us” and “he tricked you”). In assigning full agency to both the Black community and the U.S. government/white people, Malcolm does not expand on the suffering that the Black community has experienced, and he does not try to appeal to pathos based on a reality that his audience is already well-aware of.

A contrasting example of this strategy is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech, where King begins his speech with powerful metaphors of oppression and segregation drawn from the Black experience under slavery and Jim Crow laws:

But one hundred years later, the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

King also says the following lines:

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your…quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi…to Alabama…to South Carolina…to Georgia…to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

 

In the first passage, King expands on the suffering of “the Negro,” notably not using the second-person. Instead of making direct, agency-assigning statements (e.g., “The U.S. government has manacled the Negro with the chains of segregation and discrimination” or “The white man has ensured that the Negro remains on an island of poverty while he swims in a vast ocean of material prosperity”), King utilizes extended metaphors and references to the U.S. Constitution and The Declaration of Independence to imply that the U.S. government is to blame for the situation of Black America.

In the third paragraph of his speech, King utilizes an extended metaphor of cashing a check to describe the injustice African-Americans faced, stating that the U.S.’s founders signed a “promissory note,” this “note” being the U.S. Constitution and The Declaration of Independence. King went on to state that this note was to guarantee certain unalienable rights to all Americans, but that “America has given the Negro people a bad check.” This metaphor implies that the U.S. government has wronged the Black community, but it lacks the focus on individual politicians that Malcolm X often employs in his speech. King does briefly mention that Alabama’s governor at the time (Democrat George Wallace) had his lips “dripping with the words of ‘interposition’ and ‘nullification’,” but he does not mention Mr. Wallace by name. This omission of specific entities and the choice not to directly accuse white America of wrongdoing was a strategic move to unify King’s listeners regardless of their race, and to align them with his own belief that integration and nonviolent resistance were the solutions to Black America’s civil rights issues.

Malcolm, on the other hand, states clearly and directly in his speech who is responsible for the situation of Black America, embracing the possibility of inciting feelings of indignation, injustice, and the desire for separation from white America in his audience (the latter feeling being the primary difference from the feelings incited by King’s speech).  Another interesting example of the philosophical differences between King and Malcolm is that, at the end of his “promissory note” metaphor, King states that “we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.” Here, King appeals to the conscience of white America by not only invoking the sacred founding documents, but also stating with conviction that, despite the horrific tortures and trauma that African-Americans have experienced in the U.S., he refuses to believe that white America and the U.S. government cannot be made to deliver on that long overdue justice. Malcolm, however, expresses a sharply contrasting view of white America’s conscience. In the version of “The Ballot or the Bullet” given in Cleveland, Ohio on April 3, 1964, he states the following: “America’s conscience is bankrupt. She lost all conscience a long time ago. Uncle Sam has no conscience…So you’re wasting your time appealing to the conscience of a bankrupt man like Uncle Sam” (X, The Ballot or the Bullet)^[1]. While King’s statement shows his belief in both the existence of white America’s conscience and the possibility of appealing to it (arguably a necessary prerequisite to believing in the viability of integration and nonviolent resistance), Malcolm makes no such assumptions.

After Malcolm directly states in his speech who is responsible for the situation of Black America, he chooses to laser-focus on what African-Americans can do to ameliorate their situation. This serves to shift the audience’s mindset from one of contemplation or self-pity to one of direct action, further aligning them with Malcolm’s own mindset. In the second quoted passage from King’s speech, King shifts to the second person to directly address those who have suffered in the quest for civil rights, and with that direct address, he urges them to go home with the knowledge that “somehow” the situation of black Americans “can and will be changed.” This passage comes after King urges nonviolent resistance earlier in the speech, serving not only to acknowledge the suffering of these individuals, but also to urge them to focus on continuing their work, as opposed to seeking retribution or violence. The entirety of Malcolm’s speech, on the other hand, is dedicated to the minutiae of the “somehow” that King mentions, and Malcolm’s rhetorical decision to give his audience direct agency serves to empower them with the knowledge and drive to turn that “somehow” into a clear and powerful someway.

It should be noted that Malcolm dedicates one paragraph to acknowledging the suffering of the Black community, but this is done purposely to contrast the ideals of the American dream with the true experience of Black America. Here, Malcolm says the following:

You and I have never seen democracy; all we’ve seen is hypocrisy… we see America not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism, we see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don’t see any American dream; we’ve experienced only the American nightmare. We haven’t benefited from America’s democracy; we’ve only suffered from America’s hypocrisy.

This passage serves as a segue into convincing his audience to break their affiliation with mainstream U.S. political parties and even indirectly suggesting that they separate themselves from the idea that they are Americans.

While using the second-person to place agency firmly into the hands of his audience was effective, Malcolm also needed to convince his listeners to do something with that agency. To that end, Malcolm makes strong appeals to the values of independence – political, economic, and social. In Malcolm’s own words, the “political philosophy of Black Nationalism means only that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community.” Given that 1964 was an election year, Malcolm heavily emphasized the importance of African-Americans understanding not only the politics of their communities, but also “what politics is supposed to produce,” proposing a political re-education program that would teach Black Americans how to cast their ballots for candidates with the “good of the community at heart.” The economic philosophy of Black nationalism was simply that Black Americans should open, own, operate, and patronize stores in their own communities, as opposed to spending their money with “The Man.” Malcolm explained that African-Americans should focus on opening small stores and developing them into larger operations, using Woolworth (a large retail chain company) and General Motors (a multinational vehicle manufacturer) as examples of wildly successful ventures that had started out as small operations.

As for the social philosophy of Black nationalism, Malcolm heavily advocated for African-Americans to separate from the white community. While Malcolm does imply in his speech that integration is not the solution to African-Americans’ civil rights issues (“…you don’t have a revolution in which you are begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it.”), he utilizes the majority of his address to create unity amongst his listeners by not focusing on the ongoing civil rights debate of separation vs. integration^[2]. He even goes on to state that the division experienced in Black communities is another strategy of the “white man”, and that he “keeps us divided in order to conquer us. He tells you I’m for separation and you for integration to keep us fighting with each other. No, I’m not for separation and you’re not for integration. What you and I is for is freedom.” Framing division as a tool of oppression against the Black community, and emphasizing again Malcolm’s shared goal of freedom with his audience served as an effective attempt to further unify Malcolm’s listeners.

In addition to making appeals to the value of independence, Malcolm also appeals to the value of freedom using history from both the U.S. and around the world to convince his audience to take action. He makes reference to countries in Africa and Asia that have gained their independence using the philosophy of nationalism, stating that “brown, red, and yellow people in Africa and Asia are getting their independence. They’re not getting it by singing ‘We Shall Overcome.’ No, they’re getting it through nationalism.” In mentioning the highly successful efforts of nations around the world (28 countries gained independence from Europe between 1960 and 1964 in Africa alone), Malcolm presents their victories as proof that Black America can also be victorious by employing Black nationalism (Boddy-Evans). Even more poignantly, he then reminds the audience of America’s own genesis, of thirteen “scrawny” colonies who stood against the might of the British Empire, and of Patrick Henry who demanded either “liberty or death.”

In doing so, Malcolm offers a more potent example of victory against seemingly insurmountable odds, and more importantly, a victory won by the same “enemy” that has oppressed African-Americans for over 400 years. He weaves the idea of using the enemy’s tactics to gain independence from said enemy throughout his speech, expanding on the “white man’s” economic and political habits. Economically, Malcolm says that the “white man is too intelligent to let someone else come and gain control of his community,” scolding the audience for not doing the same and establishing good business practices in their own communities. Politically, he argues that the Black vote has a great deal of power (shown by the fact that it won John F. Kennedy multiple states in the 1960 election^[3]), but that the Black community continues to be misled by the Democrats and their false promises (“Campaign of 1960”). While Malcolm does not explicitly state what promises were not kept, he was likely referring to the fact that the administration at the time had failed to pass any significant civil rights legislation. It wasn’t until June of 1963, two years after he had been elected, that John F. Kennedy proposed civil rights legislation that would address issues such as voting rights and desegregation. The result of Kennedy’s proposal, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was not signed until July 2, 1964 by Lyndon B. Johnson, approximately three months after Malcolm delivered this speech (“The Civil Rights Act of 1964”).

Fully aware of the Black community’s widespread loyalty to the Democratic party, Malcolm then undertakes the task of convincing his audience that the Democrats (associated with the North) and the “Dixiecrats” (a term for some Southern Democrats, known for supporting segregation and opposing civil rights) are actually part of one entity, one enemy—the U.S. government. He develops his argument by expanding on a simple fact: the majority of the government is controlled by Democrats, and yet none of the legislative promises made to the Black community during the previous election year have been kept. “The Democrats have been in Washington, D.C. only because of the Negro vote. They’ve been down there four years, and all other legislation they wanted to bring up they brought it up and gotten it out of the way, and now they bring up you… You put them first and they put you last.” This use of logos is further extended by listing the number of seats in the House of Representatives and in the Senate that belong to each party, and then the number of senatorial and congressional committees headed by segregationists (the majority of both houses of Congress were Democrats, but the majority of committees were headed by southern segregationists).

If Malcolm X’s appeals to logos are the vehicle of his argument however, then his use of pathos is the rocket fuel that propels it. After claiming that the majority of Congressional committees are headed by segregationists, Malcolm asks, “And they’re going to tell you and me that the South lost the war?” This witty, poignant mention of the Civil War was met with laughter and applause by the audience, but it also fulfilled the purpose of showing them that the South was not only undefeated, but controlling the very party they had believed to be their ally.

In another passage, Malcolm establishes Democratic, Texas-born president Lyndon B. Johnson as the head of the Democrats and thus, in Malcolm’s view, head of the Dixiecrats, using the deeply evocative mention of lynching to say that the only difference between being lynched in Texas and being lynched in Mississippi is “in Texas they lynch you with a Texas accent; in Mississippi they lynch you with a Mississippi accent.” This powerful appeal to pathos served to further hammer away the barrier between North and South (or more specifically Northern and Southern Democrats), arguing that a Dixiecrat is a Democrat is a Democrat, and that they are all guilty of transgressions against Black America. In another notable appeal to pathos that functions to evoke indignation or anger (the kind that then evokes self-reflection and then hopefully change), Malcolm states that voting for a Democrat as an African-American is equivalent to being a “political chump” and “a traitor to your race.”

Despite the blunt harshness of his words, or rather because of them, Malcolm takes care not to lose his hard-earned ethos throughout his speech, that inclusive “we” that he’s comfortably settled into with the audience. To this end, Malcolm briefly changes his style of speaking, most memorably in two passages in the middle of the speech. In these two notable style shifts, Malcolm re-establishes himself as a friend to the audience after a controversial statement. After declaring that Democrats and “Dixiecrats” are one and the same, Malcolm says, “Oh, I say you been misled. You been had. You been took.” By using African American Vernacular English (AAVE), a dialect of English spoken by many Black Americans, Malcolm X achieves multiple purposes. For one, he further builds ethos with the audience by speaking in a way that is familiar to them, in a dialect that is (mostly) exclusive to the Black community, indirectly reminding his audience of his credibility. Secondly, this is a humorous move to close whatever distance his previous remarks may have put between him and the audience (and a successful one at that since the audience erupted into laughter and applause at the statement).

In another notable shift only a paragraph after his humorous “you been had” line,  Malcolm uses the first person to say “I’m going to tell you the truth whether you like it or not” (again regarding the Black vote essentially keeping the “Dixiecrats” in power). The pronoun “I” is only utilized about 29 times in the entire speech (exclusive of the phrase ‘you and I’, which appears 11 times), and of those times they appear mostly in the introduction and conclusion when he is stating or reiterating his ideological stances, and in the body of the essay when narrating a personal experience. Malcolm’s use of “I” here serves to remind the audience that he is fully aware of their well-established views regarding support for the Democratic party, and that his claim that voting for any Democrat is the same as voting for a Dixiecrat may bedifficult for them to believe (or rather a claim that they may not want to believe). This brief show of sympathy, reminiscent of a parent sympathizing with a stubborn child, again serves to reaffirm his bond with the audience but, through pathos, also evokes a feeling of trustworthiness, the sense that he is telling the audience this for their own good.

As stated at the beginning of this essay, the title of Malcolm X’s speech suggests that an ultimatum will be made, that a case will be presented showing why a choice of either the ballot or the bullet is absolutely necessary. In this regard, Malcolm X’s rhetorical strategy falls short in that there is not as much expansion on the “bullet” portion of the ultimatum as there is the “ballot.” In the middle of the speech, Malcolm briefly indicates that Black America has become fed up with the “white man’s” lies and trickery, likening their boiling frustrations to an atomic bomb threatening to explode. Towards the end of the speech, Malcolm dedicates only three short paragraphs to themes of war and violence. Within those paragraphs is the proposal that America can be the first country in history to have a revolution with no bloodshed (though he stresses that all revolutions, even ones in Hollywood, are historically bloody), and references to peasants and farmers in Korea, French Indochina, and Algeria armed with nothing but blades who had defeated armies with tanks and rifles in the quest to gain their freedom. In particular, Malcolm mentions the battle of Dien Bien Phu, an engagement in which the French army lost a garrison of around fourteen thousand men, and that resulted in both the Geneva Accords of July 1954 and the end of the French presence in Indochina (Onion et al., “Battle of Dien Bien Phu.”). If Malcolm had dedicated more rhetorical space to convincing his audience of the need for violence, then the choice between voting rights or revolution would seem more inevitable (as opposed to a choice between voting rights and non-violent protest or general unrest).

In addition, if the audience is to choose “the ballot,” it is not entirely clear who they should cast their ballot for. Early in the speech, Malcolm states that adopting Black nationalism involves a political reeducation program, after which the Black community will be politically mature and conscious enough to cast their ballot “for a man of the community, who has the good of the community at heart.” Malcolm did a thoroughly effective job of establishing his claim that Democrats are certainly not that man, so the question remains: who should they vote for? Perhaps a third-party or Independent candidate who, despite being someone with the good of the community at heart, likely would not win against the much more influential Democratic or Republican parties? Or if there are no suitable candidates, should a ballot not be cast at all, and if so, would that then demand use of the bullet?

As for the lack of expansion on the “bullet” portion of his speech, it is entirely likely that Malcolm’s uneven partition of attention towards violence was purposeful. Just as he did not want to draw focus to Black suffering, perhaps he (consciously or not) did not want to push his people towards violence when there was an equally viable, non-violent solution. Indeed, Malcolm’s philosophy regarding separation from white people began to shift during the last year of his life. After a holy pilgrimage (“hajj”) to the city of Mecca, a trip during which Malcolm encountered Muslims of all different colors and ranks, he began to adopt a far more inclusive view of different races, an expansion of his definition of “we.” In a letter written to a friend on April 25 (only thirteen days after delivering his “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech), Malcolm discussed his hajj and said that he felt no racial antagonism towards white people for the first time in his life: “I have never before witnessed such sincere hospitality and the practise of true brotherhood as I have seen and experienced during this pilgrimage here in Arabia. In fact, what I have seen and experienced on this pilgrimage has forced me to ‘rearrange’ much of my own thought pattern, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions.” (“Malcolm X Pleased By Whites’ Attitude On Trip to Mecca”).

Tragically, Malcolm was assassinated less than a year later on February 21, 1965. Though the world would never see realized the endless potential he possessed, the spirit of Malcolm’s words and the deep love he had for his people lived on in the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, a movement that emphasized “racial pride, economic empowerment, and the creation of political and cultural institutions” (“Black Power”). The Black Panther Party for Self Defense (BPP), founded in October 1966 during this movement in the wake of Malcolm’s assassination, was the era’s “most influential militant black power organization” (“The Black Panther Party: Challenging Police and Promoting Social Change”). The foundation of the BPP was the Ten Point Platform and Program created by BPP founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. While all ten points existed in harmony with Malcolm X’s philosophies (or at least not in direct contradiction), none resonated with them more so than Point #1: “We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.”

Malcolm’s burgeoning ideals of inclusivity also resonate in today’s Black Lives Matter movement, an organization which began in 2013 and believes in an “inclusive and spacious movement” (“About.”). Ilyasah Shabazz, Malcolm X’s daughter, stated in a 2021 interview that Malcolm might have been struck by the diversity of the members in the 2020 protests which swept across the U.S. in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd (Hatzipanagos and Shabazz).

Even though Malcolm’s ideologies had only just begun to evolve before his death, his message, legacy, and impact had already extended far beyond the Black community. This is perhaps conveyed most effectively by lifelong Japanese-American activist Yuri Kochiyama, who shared a brief but formative friendship with Malcolm in the year before his death (Wang). In a concluding statement for an interview conducted in May of 1972, Kochiyama said the following about Malcolm:

Malcolm’s life and what he did with it, rising from the muck of enforced poverty to international recognition, is primarily a message to his own people – black people in America, Africa, and the diaspora. But the significance of his feat in transforming his life, makes him relevant to all humanity. His life is truly a lesson to prove that one can transcend adversity, hate, and lies. Through struggle, he became the symbol of fearlessness against powerful enemies, of commitment to fight racism in this society, and a motivator to seek truth.

Kochiyama went on to offer the following insight into who Malcolm was as a person:

Malcolm, as a private individual, was as admirable as he was a political figure, leader, and teacher. He was a loving and caring husband and father. He exuded love for humanity and for the ordinary people on the street; the children and the elderly; but most of all for the most rejected, degraded, and ghettoized. He was unpretentious, sincere, genuine, and humble. After he returned from Mecca with the title El Hajj Malik Shabazz, his followers asked him, “What shall we call you now?” He responded, “What did you call me before?” They said, “Brother Malcolm.” He answered, “Yes, just Brother Malcolm.”

Malcolm X’s life was a stunning example of perseverance, fearlessness, compassion, and the most fervent dedication to truth and growth, both his own and his people’s. He refused to stagnate in the comfort that comes with familiarity, leaving the Nation of Islam when he determined that he could no longer further his own goals within it (Pilgrim), and changing his long-held notions about race and inclusivity upon his hajj to Mecca. Malcolm unknowingly stood, unyielding and unafraid, at the vanguard of the Black Power movement, blazing a path for future activists that stands followed and well-trodden even to this day. He was a man of his people, for his people, who had a fantastic love for reading and, above all, an extraordinary commitment to the fight for equality and freedom that will continue to awe and inspire for generations to come (X, “Learning to Read”).

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Wang, Hansi Lo. “Not Just A ‘Black Thing’: An Asian-American’s Bond With Malcolm X.” National Public Radio, , 19 Aug. 2013, www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/08/19/209258986/the-japanese-american-internee-who-met-malcolm-x.

X, Malcolm. “Learning to Read.” The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley, by Malcolm X and Alex Haley, Ballantine Books, 1992.

X, Malcolm. “The Ballot or the Bullet”, American Studies at the University of Virginia,xroads.virginia.edu/~public/civilrights/a0146.html.

 

 NOTES

^[1] In 1967 while speaking in Stockholm, Sweden, U.S. civil rights activist Stokley Carmichael, who made famous the “Black Power” rallying slogan, said the following: “Dr. King’s policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That’s very good. He only made one fallacious assumption: In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none” (Olsson). While Carmichael adhered to the philosophy of nonviolent resistance early in his activism career (1960-1966), by May 1966, when he was elected national chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he had lost faith in the philosophy. On June 16, 1966, Carmichael gave an address in Greenwood, Mississippi in which he says, “We been saying ‘freedom’ for six years. What we are going to start saying now is ‘Black Power’” (Onion et al., “Stokely Carmichael.”).

^[2] In the version of “The Ballot or the Bullet” given in Cleveland, Ohio on April 3, 1964, Malcolm expands more on the social philosophy of Black nationalism, defining it to mean that “we have to get together and remove the evils, the vices, alcoholism, drug addiction, and other evils that are destroying the moral fiber of our community… We ourselves have to lift the level of our community… so that we will be satisfied in our own social circles and won’t be running around here trying to knock our way into a social circle where we’re not wanted… [Black nationalism] is not designed to make the black man re-evaluate the white man… but to make the black man re-evaluate himself. Don’t change the white man’s mind — you can’t change his mind” (X, The Ballot or the Bullet). This call for social separation is a sharp contrast to the sense of unity that Malcolm began to experience towards white people near the end of his life.

^[3] A few weeks before the 1960 election, King was arrested in Atlanta, Georgia while leading a protest. Then-Senator John Kennedy called Coretta Scott King, MLK’s wife, to express his concern, and his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, made phone calls to help hasten King’s release. After his release, King stated that he owed “a great debt of gratitude to Senator Kennedy and his family” (“Kennedy, John Fitzgerald”). King’s statements of gratitude, a public endorsement by Martin Luther King Sr. (MLK’s father), and Vice President Richard Nixon’s silence on King’s arrest all resulted in an outpouring of support for Kennedy in the Black community, and ultimately played a significant role in Kennedy’s election victory (Levingston, Steven; “Civil Rights Movement”).

 

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