Feb. 15, 1965 | Malcolm X at Audubon Ballroom
Speech · Black Liberation · February 15, 1965 · 01:56
Malcolm X
Summary
Malcolm X addresses an audience at the Audubon Ballroom, refuting claims by the Nation of Islam that he bombed his own house. He describes the traumatic experience of standing in his driveway in the cold with a gun, waiting for help. Malcolm X expresses regret over infighting among black groups and accepts responsibility for his role in building the Nation of Islam, which he says started as a spiritual reform movement but later became a criminal organization. He officially disassociates from the movement and declares his dedication to organizing Black people for constructive action across the entire community.
Transcript
Malcolm X: The Muslims claim I bombed my house. And if anybody can find where I bombed my house, they can put a rifle bullet through my head. It was my children and my own life and my wife's life that was at stake. You know what the degree, what temperature was? It was about 15 or 20. I stood in my underwear, bare feet, in the middle of my driveway with a gun in my hand for 45 minutes waiting for the police or waiting for the fire department to come. If I want to put on a show, I can find a better way than that to put it on. And if you attack me, that's one thing. I know what to do when you start attacking me. But when you attack sleeping babies while you are lower than a guy. The only thing that I regret in all of this is that two black groups have to fight and kill each other off. I feel responsible for having played a major role in developing a criminal organization. It was not a criminal organization at the outstart. It was an organization that had the power, the spiritual power, to reform the criminal. And this is what you have to understand. As long as that strong spiritual power was in the movement, it gave the moral strength to the believer that would enable him to rise above all his negative tendencies. I know, because I went into the movement with more negative tendencies than anybody in the movement. And just faith in what I was taught made it possible for me to stop doing anything that I was doing and everything that I was doing. And by this spiritual force giving one the faith that enabled one to exercise the moral discipline, it became an organization that was to be respected as well as feared. I, for one, disassociate myself from the movement completely, and I dedicate myself to the organizing of black people into a group that are interested in doing things constructive, not for just one religious segment of the community, but for the entire black community.