Malcolm X - "The Ku Klux Klan are Cowards" (mid 1960s)
Malcolm X's father was a black preacher whom, when Malcolm was a child, was severely beaten and then laid across railway tracks by Klu Klux Klan members. Was almost split in half. This was after a period of constant persecution and harrassment for being an "uppity nigger" because he called for the abuse of African Americans to end.
Malcolm doesn't bring this up in the speech but check his e
More..xpression. Also, remember he was saying this during a very violent period in American History -- the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s.
***
Excerpts from "Autobiography of Malcolm X" (1965)
--- "When my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, a party of hooded Ku Klux Klan riders galloped up to our home in Omaha, Nebraska, one night. Surrounding the house, brandishing their shotguns and rifles, they shouted for my father to come out. My mother went to the front door and opened it. Standing where they could see her pregnant condition, she told them that she was alone with her three small children, and that my father was away, preaching in Milwaukee. The Klansmen shouted threats and warnings at her that we had better get out of town because "the good Christian white people" were not going to stand for my father's "spreading trouble" among the "good" Negroes of Omaha with the "back to Africa" preachings of Marcus Garvey."
--- "After his family were threatened by the Ku Klux Klan in Omaha, Earl Little moved his family to Lansing, Michigan:
My father bought a house and soon, as had been his pattern, he was doing free-lance Christian preaching in local Negro Baptist churches, and during the week he was roaming about spreading word of Marcus Garvey.
This time, "the get out of town" came from a local hate society called The Black Legion. They wore black robes instead of white. Soon, nearly everywhere my father went, Black Legionnaires were reviling him as an "uppity nigger" for wanting to own a store, for living outside the Lansing Negro district for spreading unrest and dissension among "the good niggers".
Shortly after my youngest sister was born came the nightmare night of 1929, my earliest vivid memory. I remember being suddenly snatched awake into a frightening confusion of pistol shots and shouting and smoke and flames. My father had shouted and shot at the two white men who had set the fire and were running away. Our home was burning down around us. We were lunging and bumping and tumbling all over each other trying to escape. My mother, with the baby in her arms, just made it into the yard before the house crashed in, showing sparks."
--- "I don't speak against the sincere, well-meaning, good white people. I have learned that there are some. I have learned that not all white people are racists. I am speaking against and my fight is against the white racists. I believe that Negroes have the right to fight against these racists, by any means that are necessary."
<a href=""http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmalcolmX.htm"" target="_blank">click here for more excerpts</a>
***
"The common goal of 22 million Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being. Our common goal is to obtain the human rights that America has been denying us. We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognized as citizens there until we are first recognized as humans." -- (Malcolm X to newspaper Egyptian Gazette, August 25, 1964) Less..
Added: Sep 26 2007 In: education
By: lasrever Premium 
- Views: 5843 |
- Votes: 12 |
- Recommendations: 1 |
- Comments: 36
