Malcolm X | "By Any Means Necessary" Speech (1964)
Speech · Black Liberation · January 1, 1964 · 07:39
Malcolm X
Summary
In this 1964 speech, Malcolm X addresses an audience in Harlem, detailing his break from the Nation of Islam and his pilgrimage to Mecca, which broadened his perspective. He criticizes the slow progress of civil rights in the U.S. compared to rapid African independence, and announces the formation of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, inspired by the Organization of African Unity, to unite people of African descent in the Western Hemisphere. He emphasizes the right to self-defense and the need to use "any means necessary" to achieve freedom, rejecting reliance on white allies and calling for black unity and self-determination.
Transcript
Malcolm X: Salaam alaikum. Mr. Moderator, our distinguished guests, brothers and sisters, our friends and our enemies. Everybody is here. As many of you know, last March, when it was announced that I was no longer in the black Muslim movement, it was pointed out that it was my intention to work among the 22 million non-Muslim Afro-Americans and to try and form some type of organization or create a situation where the young people our young people, the students and others, could study the problems of our people for a period of time and then come up with a new analysis and give us some new ideas and some new suggestions as to how to approach a problem that too many other people had been playing around with for too long. And that we would have some kind of meeting and determine at a later date whether to form a black nationalist party or a black nationalist army. There have been many of our people across the country from all walks of life who have taken it upon themselves to try and pool their ideas and to come up with some kind of solution to the problem that confronts all of our people. And tonight we are here to try and get an understanding of what it is they've come up with. Also, recently, when I was blessed to make a trip or a pilgrimage, a religious pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, where I met many people from all over the world, plus spent many weeks in Africa trying to broaden my own scope and get more of an open mind to look at the problem as it actually is, One of the things that I realized, and I realized this even before going over there, was that our African brothers have gained their independence faster than you and I here in America have. They've also gained recognition and respect as human beings much faster than you and I. Just 10 years ago on the African continent, our people were colonized. They were suffering all forms of colonization, oppression, exploitation, degradation, humiliation, discrimination, and every other kind of Asian. a short time they have gained more independence, more recognition, more respect as human beings than you and I have. And you and I live in a country which is supposed to be the citadel of education, freedom, justice, democracy, and all of those other pretty sounding words. So it was our intention to try and find out what was our African brothers doing to get results so that you and I could study what they had done and perhaps gain from that study or benefit from their experiences. And my traveling over there was designed to help to find out how. One of the first things that the independent African nations did was to form an organization called the Organization of African Unity, the purpose of our organization of Afro-American unity, which has the same aim and objective, to fight whoever gets in our way. to bring about the complete independence of people of African descent here in the Western Hemisphere and first here in the United States and bring about the freedom of these people by any means necessary. That's our motto. The purpose of our organization is to start right here in Harlem, which has the largest concentration of people of African descent that exists anywhere on this earth. There are more Africans here in Harlem than exist in any city on the African continent, because that's what you and I are, Africans. that the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights are the principles in which we believe, and that these documents, if put into practice, represent the essence of mankind's hopes and good intentions, Desirous that all Afro-American people and organizations should henceforth unite so that the welfare and well-being of our people will be assured, we are resolved to reinforce the common bound of purpose between our people by submerging all of our differences in establishing nonsectarian, constructive programs for human rights. We hereby present this charter, number one, the establishment, The Organization of Afro-American Unity shall include all people of African descent in the Western Hemisphere. In essence, what did it think? Instead of you and me running around here seeking allies in our struggle for freedom in the Irish neighborhood or the Jewish neighborhood or the Italian neighborhood, we need to seek some allies among people who look something like we do. And once we get their allies, It's time out for you and me to stop running away from the wolf right into the arms of the fox looking for some kind of help. That's a drag. Number two, self defense. Since self preservation is the first law of nature. We assert the Afro-American's right to self-defense. The Constitution of the United States of America clearly affirms the right of every American citizen to bear arms. And, as Americans, we will not give up a single right guaranteed under the Constitution. The history The history of unpunished violence against our people clearly indicates that we must be prepared to defend ourselves or we will continue to be a defenseless people at the mercy of a ruthless and violent racist mob.