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The Ballot or the Bullet,
April 4, 1964.
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Mr. Moderator, Reverend Cleage, Brother Lomax,
brothers and sisters, and friends and I see some enemies. In fact, I think we
d
be fooling ourselves if we had an audience this large and didn
t realize that
there were some enemies present.

concerning my own personal position.
m still a Muslim. That is,
my religion is still Islam. My religion is still Islam. I still credit Mr.
Mohammed for what I know and what I am. He
s the one who opened my eyes. At present, I
m the Minister of the newly founded Muslim Mosque, Incorporated
which has its offices in the Teresa Hotel, right in the heart of Harlem 
that
s
the black belt in New York city. And when we realize that Adam Clayton Powell is
a Christian minister, he
s the 
he heads Abyssinian Baptist Church, but at the
same time, he
s more famous for his political struggling.

or from Atlanta Georgia 
or in Atlanta,
Georgia, but he
s become more famous for being involved in the civil rights
struggle. There
s another in New York, Reverend Galamison 
I don
t know if
you
ve heard of him out here 
he
s a Christian Minister from Brooklyn, but has
become famous for his fight against a segregated school system in Brooklyn.
Reverend Clee, right here, is a Christian Minister, here in Detroit. He
s the
head of the
Freedom Now Party.

All of these are Christian Ministers, but they don
t come to us as
Christian Ministers. They come to us as fighters in some other category.
m a Muslim minister 
the
same as they are Christian Ministers 
I
m a Muslim minister. And I don
t
believe in fighting today in any one front, but on all fronts.
m a black
Nationalist Freedom Fighter.
d have too many differences from the
outstart and we could never get together. So today, though Islam is my religious
philosophy, my political, economic, and social philosophy is
Black Nationalism.
You and I 
As I say, if we bring up religion we
ll have differences; we
ll
have arguments; and we
ll never be able to get together. But if we keep our
religion at home, keep our religion in the closet, keep our religion between
ourselves and our God, but when we come out here, we have a fight that
s common
to all of us against a [sic] enemy who is common to all of us.

The time 
The time when white
people can come in our community and get us to vote for them so that they can be
our political leaders and tell us what to do and what not to do is long gone.

those days are long gone too.

and that
s where we
re going to live, cause as soon as you move
into one of their 
soon as you move out of the Black community into their
community, it
s mixed for a period of time, but they
re gone and you
re right
there all by yourself again.

We must understand
the politics of our community and we must know what politics is supposed to
produce. We must know what part politics play in our lives. And until we become
politically mature we will always be mislead, lead astray, or deceived or
maneuvered into supporting someone politically who doesn
t have the good of our
community at heart.
education to open our peoples eyes, make us become more
politically conscious, politically mature, and then we will 
whenever we get
ready to cast our ballot that ballot, will be cast for a man of the community
who has the good of the community of heart.

you can
t open up a black
store in a white community. White men won
t even patronize you. And he
s not
wrong. He
s got sense enough to look out for himself. You the one who don
t have
sense enough to look out for yourself.

The white man
is too intelligent to let someone else come and gain control of the economy of
his community. But you will let anyone come in and take control of the economy
of your community, control the housing, control the education, control the jobs,
control the businesses, under the pre
text that you want to integrate. No, you
outta your mind.
the community out which
you take your money becomes poorer and poorer.
re
becoming poorer and poorer. And then what happens
The community in which you
live becomes a slum. It becomes a ghetto. The conditions become run down. And
then you have the audacity to complain about poor housing in a run
down
community. Why you run it down yourself when you take your dollar out.
track, because not only do we lose by taking our money someplace else and
spending it, when we try and spend it in our own community we
re trapped because
we haven
t had sense enough to set up stores and control the businesses of our
own community. The man who
s controlling the stores in our community is a man
who doesn
t look like we do. He
s a man who doesn
t even live in the community.
So you and I, even when we try to spend our money in the block where we live or
the area where we live, we
re spending it with a man who, when the sun goes
down, takes that basket full of money in another part of the town.
re trapped, trapped,
double
trapped, triple
rapped. Anywhere we go we find that we
re trapped. And
every kind of solution that someone comes up with is just another trap. But the
political and economic philosophy of Black Nationalism 
the economic
philosophy of Black Nationalism shows our people the importance of setting up
these little stores and developing them and expanding them into larger
operations. Woolworth didn
t start out big like they are today. They started out
with a dime store and expanded and expanded and then expanded until today,
they
re are all over the country and all over the world, and they get to some of
everybody
s money.

General Motors is same way. They didn
t start out like they it is. It started
out just a little rat race type operation. And it expanded and it expanded until
today where it is right now. And you and I have to make a start and the best
place to start is right in the community where we live.

you
re in bad shape. When you have 
he is your enemy.
Let me tell you, you wouldn
t be in this country if some enemy hadn
t kidnapped
you and brought you here.

this afternoon, it is not our intention to discuss religion.
We
re going to forget religion. If we bring up religion, we
ll be in an
argument, and the best way to keep away from arguments and differences 
as I
said earlier 
put your religion at home 
in the closet.
t done
anything more for you than it has, you need to forget it anyway.

Whether you are a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Nationalist, we all have the same
problem. They don
t hang you because you
re a Baptist; they hang you 'cause
you
re black. They don
t attack me because I
m a Muslim; they attack me 'cause
I
m black. They attack all of us for the same reason
all of us catch hell from
the same enemy. We
re all in the same bag, in the same boat. We suffer political
oppression, economic exploitation, and social degradation 
all of them from
the same enemy. The government has failed us; you can
t deny that. Anytime you
live in the twentieth century, 1964, and you walkin
around here singing
We
Shall Overcome,
the government has failed us.
s
wrong with you 
you do too much singing. Today it
s time to stop singing and
start swinging. You can
t sing up on freedom, but you can swing up on some
freedom. Cassius Clay can sing, but singing didn
t help him to become the
heavy
weight champion of the world 
swinging helped him become the
heavy
weight champion. This government has failed us
the government itself has
failed us, and the white liberals who have been posing as our friends have
failed us.
ve turned have failed, we stop turning to
them and turn to ourselves. We need a self help program, a do
it
yourself
philosophy, a do
it
right
now philosophy, a it
s
already
too
late philosophy.
This is what you and I need to get with, and the only time 
the only way we
are going to solve our problem is with a self
help program. Before we can get a
self
help program started we have to have a self
help philosophy.
Black nationalism is a self
help philosophy. What's is so
good about it? You can stay right in the church where you are and still take
black nationalism as your philosophy. You can stay in
any kind of civic organization that you belong to and still take black
nationalism as your philosophy. You can be an atheist and still take black
nationalism as your philosophy. This is a philosophy that eliminates the
necessity for division and argument. Cause if you are black you should be
thinking black, and if you are black and you not thinking black at this late
date, well I
m sorry for you.

your attitude. Once you change your attitude, it
changes your behavior pattern and then you go on into some action. As long as
you gotta sit
down philosophy, you
ll have a sit
down thought pattern, and as
long as you think that old sit
down thought you
ll be in some kind of sit
down
action. They
ll have you sitting in everywhere. It
s not so good to refer to
what you
re going to do as a sit
in. That right there castrates you. Right there
it brings you down. What 
What goes with it
What 
Think of the image of
someone sitting. An old woman can sit. An old man can sit. A chump can sit. A
coward can sit. Anything can sit. Well you and I been sitting long enough, and
it
s time today for us to start doing some standing, and some fighting to back
that up.

at other parts of this earth upon which we live, we find that black, brown, red,
and yellow people in and are getting their independence. They
re not getting it by singing
We Shall
Overcome.
No, they
re getting it through nationalism. It is nationalism that
brought about the independence of the people in.
Every nation in Asia gained its independence through the
philosophy of nationalism. Every nation on the African continent that has gotten
its independence brought it about through the philosophy of nationalism. And it
will take black nationalism 
that to bring about
the freedom of 22 million Afro
Americans here in this country where we have
suffered colonialism for the past 400 years.
s a hypocritical colonial
power behind it.

What 
What do you call second class citizenship? Why, that
s colonization.
Second class citizenship is nothing but 20th century slavery. How you
gonna tell me you
re a second class citizen. They
don
t have second class citizenship in any other government on this earth. They
just have slaves and people who are free. Well, this country is a hypocrite.
They try and make you think they set you free by calling you a second class
citizen. No, you
re nothing but a 20th century slave.

to remove colonialism from Asia and
Africa, it
ll take black nationalism today to remove colonialism from the backs and the minds of
22 million Afro
Americans here in this country.
re fed up. They
ve become disenchanted. They
ve become
disillusioned. They
ve become dissatisfied, and all of this has built up
frustrations in the black community that makes the black community throughout
today more explosive than all of the atomic bombs the Russians can ever invent.
re in more trouble than if you had an
atomic powder keg sitting in your lap. When a racial powder keg goes off, it
doesn
t care who it knocks out the way. Understand this, it
s dangerous.
We Shall Overcome.
He
made a chump out of you. He made a fool out of you. He made you think you were
going somewhere and you end up going nowhere but between Lincoln and Washington.
ve become disenchanted. They
ve become dissatisfied, and
in their frustrations they want action.
ll see
this young black man, this new generation asking for the ballot or the bullet.
That old Uncle Tom action is outdated. The young generation don
t want to hear
anything about the odds are against us. What do we
care about odds?

The whites were
colonized. They were fed up with this taxation without representation, so some
of them stood up and said
liberty or death.
Though I went to a white school
over here in Mason Michigan, the white man made the mistake of letting me read his history books. He made the
mistake of teaching me that Patrick Henry was a patriot, and George Washington,
wasn
t nothing non
violent about old Pat or George Washington.
t care about the odds. Why they faced the wrath of the entire . And in those days they used to say that the
British Empire was so vast and so powerful when the sun 
the sun
would never set on them. This is how big it was, yet these 13 little, scrawny
states, tired of taxation without representation, tired of being exploited and
oppressed and degraded, told that big British Empire
liberty or death.
American black people today catching more hell than Patrick Henry
ever saw. And I
m 
I
m here to tell you in case you don
t know it 
that you
got a new 
you got a new generation of black people in this country who don
t
care anything whatsoever about odds. They don
t want to hear you old Uncle Tom
handkerchief heads talking about the odds. No. This is a new generation. If
they
re gonna draft these young black men and send
them over to Korea or South Vietnam to face 800 million Chinese 
if you
re not
afraid of those odds, you shouldn
t be afraid of these odds.

Why
does this loom to be such an explosive political year? Because this is the year
of politics. This is the year when all of the white politicians are going to
come into the Negro community. You never see them until election time. You can
t
find them until election time. They
re going to come in with false promises, and
as they make these false promises they're gonna feed
our frustrations and this will only serve to make matters worse.
m no politician. I
m
not even a student of politics. I
m not a Republican, nor a Democrat, nor an
American, and got sense enough to know it. I
m one of the 22 million black
victims of the Democrats, one of the 22 million black victims of the
Republicans, and one of the 22 million black victims of Americanism. And when I
speak, I don
t speak as a Democrat, or a Republican, an American.
I speak as a victim of America
s
so
called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy; all we
ve seen is
hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around
America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who have 
who has enjoyed the fruits of
Americanism, we see 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. And the generation that
s
coming up now can see it and are not afraid to say it.

If you go to
jail, so what? If you black, you were born in jail. If you black, you were born
in jail, in the North as well as the South. Stop talking about the South. Long
as you south of the 
Long as you south of the Canadian border, you
re south.
t call Governor Wallace a governor; Romney is a
Dixie governor. Twenty
two million black victims of Americanism are waking up and
they
re gaining a new political consciousness, becoming politically mature. And
as they become 
develop this political maturity, they
re able to see the
recent trends in these political elections.

which means that
any block, any minority that has a block of votes that stick together is in a
strategic position. Either way you go, that
s who gets it. You
re in a position
to determine who will go to the White House, and who will stay in the dog house.
You
re the one who has that power. You can keep Johnson in Washington D.C., or you can send him back to his
Texas cotton patch. You
re the one who sent Kennedy to Washington. You
re the one who put the present
Democratic Administration in Washington D.C. The whites were evenly divided. It was
the fact that you threw 80 percent of your votes behind the Democrats that put
the Democrats in the White House.
ve
been down there four years, and there all other legislations they wanted to
bring up they brought it up and gotten it out of the way, and now they bring up
you. And now, they bring up you. You put them first, and they put you last
cause you
re a chump, a political chump.
thirds of the House of Representatives and the Senate, and still they can
t
keep their promise to you, cause you
re a chump.
Anytime you throw your weight behind the political party that controls
two
thirds of the government, and that Party can
t keep the promise that it made
to you during election time, and you
re dumb enough to walk around continuing to
identify yourself with that Party, you
re not only a chump, but you
re a traitor
to your race.
re able to see and think for yourself, and you can see that a
Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat in disguise.
s controlled by 16
senatorial committees and 20 congressional committees. Of the 16 senatorial
committees that run the government, 10 of them are in the hands of Southern
segregationists. Of the 20 congressional committees that run the government, 12
of them in the 
are in the hands of Southern segregationists. And they're
going to tell you and me that the South lost the war.

are
in the hands of a government of segregationists, racists, white supremacists who
belong to the Democratic party, but disguise themselves as Dixiecrats. A
Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat. Whoever runs the Democrats is also the father of the
Dixiecrats, and the father of all of them is sitting
in the White House. I say and I say it again: You got a President who
s nothing
but a Southern segregationist from the state of Texas.
They
ll lynch you in Texas as quick as they
ll lynch you in Mississippi.
Only in 
in Texas they lynch you with a Texas accent; in Mississippi
they lynch you with a Mississippi accent.
s alright. And those Uncle Toms can
t pass up
the coffee. They come away from the coffee table telling you and me that this
man is alright 'cause he
s from the South, and since
he
s from the South he can deal with the South. Look at the logic that they
re
using. What about Eastland? He
s from the South. Make him the President. He can

If Johnson is a good man from the 'cause he
s from Texas, and being from
Texas will enable him to deal with the South, Eastland can deal with the South
better than Johnson. Oh, I say you
ve been mislead. You been had. You been took.
s from that particular district, according
to the Constitution, is supposed to be expelled from the Congress. Now, if this
particular aspect of the Constitution was enforced, why you wouldn
t have a
cracker in Washington D.C. But what would happen when you expel
the Dixiecrat, you
re expelling the Democrat. When
you destroy the power of the Dixiecrat, you
re destroying the power 
power of the Democratic Party.
So how in the world can the Democratic Party in the South actually side with you
in sincerity, when all of its power is based in the 
in the South?
re playing a giant
con game, a political con game. You know how it goes. One of them 
one of them
comes to you and makes believe he's for you, and he
s in cahoots with the other
one that
s not for you. Why? Because neither one of them is
for you, but they got to make you go with one of them or the other. So
this is a con game. And this is what they
ve been doing with you and me all
these years.
Where
s Dicky?
You know who
Dicky
is? Dicky is old Southern cracker Richard 
Richard
Russell. Look here, yes. Lyndon B. Johnson
s best friend is the one who is the
head, who
s heading the forces that are filibustering civil rights legislation.
You tell me how in the hell is he going to be Johnson
s best friend? How can
Johnson be his friend, and your friend too? No, that
man is too tricky.
re keeping the Dixiecrats
in power. Is this true? A vote for a Democrat is nothing but a vote for a
Dixiecrat. I know you don
t like me saying that, but
I, I
m not the kind of person who come here to say what you like. I
m going to
tell you the truth, whether you like it or not.
t 
don't do it. They don
t
do it that way. They got a think that they call gerrymandering. They 
They
maneuver you out of power. Even though you vote, they fix it so you
re voting
for nobody; they
ve got you going and coming. In the South, they
re outright
political wolves. In the North, they
re political foxes. A fox and a wolf are
both canine, both belong to the dog family. Now you take your choice. You going
to choose a Northern dog or a Southern dog? Because either dog you choose I
guarantee you you
ll still be in the dog house.
s
the ballot or the bullet. It
s liberty or it
s death.
It
s freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody. America
today finds herself in a unique situation. Historically, revolutions are bloody.
Oh, yes, they are. They haven
t never had a
blood
less revolution, or a non
violent revolution. That
don
t happen even in Hollywood.
You don
t have a revolution in which you love your enemy, and you don
t have a
revolution in which you are begging the system of exploitation to integrate you
into it. Revolutions overturn systems. Revolutions destroy systems.
s the only country in history in a position
actually to become involved in a blood
less revolution. The Russian revolution
was bloody, Chinese revolution was bloody, French revolution was bloody, Cuban
revolution was bloody, and there was nothing more bloody then the American
Revolution. But today this country can become involved in a revolution that
won
t take bloodshed. All she
s got to do is give the black man in this country
everything that
s due him, everything.
t see it you
re
finished. If you don
t see it you
re going to be coming 
you
re going to
become involved in some action in which you don
t have a chance. And we don
t
care anything about your atomic bomb; it's 
it
s
useless because other countries have atomic bombs. When two or three different
countries have atomic bombs, nobody can use them, so it means that the white man
today is without a weapon. If you
re gonna 
If you want some action, you
gotta come on down to Earth. And there's more black
people on Earth than there are white people on Earth.

his days of ground victory
are over. Can I prove it? Yes. Take all the action that
s going on this earth
right now that he
s involved in 
tell me where he
s winning.
Nowhere.

some rice farmers 
some rice eaters ran him out
of Korea. Yes,
they ran him out of Korea.
Rice eaters with nothing but gym shoes, and a rifle, and a bowl of rice took him
and his tanks and his napalm, and all that other action he
s supposed to have
and ran him across the Yalu. Why? 'Cause the day
that he can win on the ground has passed.
China
those little peasants, rice growers took on the might of the French army and ran
all the Frenchmen 
you remember Dien Bien Phu.
No.

they didn
t have anything but a rifle. The French had all
these highly mechanized instruments of warfare, but they put some guerilla
action on, and a 
and a 
and a white man can
t fight a
guerilla warfare. Guerilla action takes heart, takes nerve, and he
doesn
t have that. He
s brave when he
s got tanks. He
s brave when he
s got
planes. He
s brave when he
s got bombs. He
s brave when he
s got a whole lot of
company along with him, but you take that little man from Africa and Asia, turn
him loose in the woods with a blade, with a blade 
that
s all he needs, all he
needs is a blade
and when the sun comes down 
goes down, goes down and it
s
dark, it
s even
steven
s the 
it's the
ballot or the bullet. Today our people can see that we
re faced with a
government conspiracy. This government has failed us. The senators who are
filibustering concerning your and my rights, that's the government. Don
t say
it
s Southern senators. This is the government; this is a government filibuster.
It
s not a segregationist filibuster. It
s a government filibuster. Any kind of
activity that takes place on the floor of the Congress or the Senate, it
s the
government. Any kind of dilly
dallying, that
s the government. Any kind of
pussy
footing, that
s the government. Any kind of act that
s designed to delay
or deprive you and me right now of getting full rights, that
s the government
that's responsible.

As long as you're fighting on the level of civil rights, you
re under Uncle
Sam
s jurisdiction. You
re going to his court expecting him to correct the
problem. He created the problem. He
s the criminal. You don
t take your case to
the criminal; you take your criminal to court. When the government of
South Africa began to trample upon the human
rights of the people of South Africa,
they were taken to the U.N. When the government of Portugal
began to trample upon the 
the rights of our brothers and sisters in
Angola, it was taken before the U.N. Why even
the white man took the Hungarian question to the U.N. And just this week Chief
Justice Goldberg was crying over 3 million Jews in Russia
about their human rights, charging Russia with violating the U.N. charter because of its mistreatment of the human rights
of Jews in Russia
Americans whose
choices are being bound, whose little girls are being murdered, whose leaders
are being shot down in broad daylight. Now you tell me why the leaders of this
struggle have never taken it before the United Nations. So our next move is to
take the entire civil rights struggle problems into the United Nations, and let
the world see that Uncle Sam is guilty of violating the human rights of 22
million Afro
Americans....
s a hypocrite. Here he is standing up in front of other people,
Uncle Sam, with the blood of your and mine mothers and fathers on his hands,
with the blood dripping down his jaws like a bloody
jawed wolf, and still got
the nerve to point his finger at other countries. You can
t even get civil
rights legislation. And this man has got the nerve to stand up and talk about
we
ve got to unite in unity and harmony, and black nationalism is the key. How we
gonna overcome the tendency to be at each others throats that always exists
in our neighborhoods? And the reason this tendency exists, the strategy
of the white man has always been divide and conquer. 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. Only
you think that integration would get you freedom, I think separation would get
me freedom. We both got the same objective, we just
got different ways of getting at it.
s what he preaches. I say
that
s what he preaches. The whole church structure in this country is white
nationalism. You go inside a white church that
s what they preaching is white
nationalism. They got Jesus white, Mary white, God white, everybody white 
that
s white nationalism. So what he does 
the way he 
the way he 
the way he
circumvents the 
the jealousy and envy that he ordinarily would incur among the heads
of the church, wherever he go into an area where the church already is you
going into trouble, 'cause they got that thing what you call it 
syndicated,
they got a syndicate 
just like the rest of the Racketeers have. I
m going to
say what
s on my mind 'cause the churches are, the
preachers already proved to you that they got a syndicate.
s territory, you know, they gang up on you.
And that
s the same way with you 
you ran into the same
thing. So how Billy Graham gets around that, instead of going into somebody
else
s territory, like he going to start up a new church, he don't 
he doesn
t try to
start a church. He just goes in preaching Christ. And he says everybody who
believe in Him, you go wherever 
you go wherever you find him. So this
helps all the churches and since it helps all the churches they don
t mind fight
him.
s preached.
Don
t join a church where white nationalism is preached. Now you can go to a
Negro church and be exposed to white nationalism cause
you are when you walk in a Negro church and a white Mary and some white angels

that Negro church is preaching white nationalism. But when you go to a church
and you see the pastor of that church with a philosophy and a program that
s
designed to bring black people together and elevate black people 
join that
church. Join that church. If you see where the NAACP is preaching and practicing
that which is designed to make black nationalism
materialize, join the NAACP. Join any kind of organization, civic, religious,
fraternal, political, or otherwise that
s based on
lifting the black man up and making him master of his own community.
It
ll be 
It
ll be the 
the ballot or it
ll be the bullet. It
ll be
liberty or it
ll be death. And if you
re not ready to pay that price don
t use
the word freedom in your vocabulary.
called liberal, so
called Democrat,
so
called white man, at which time he told me that our African brothers were not
interested in us in Africa. He said the Africans are not
interested in the American Negro. I knew he was lying, but during the next two
or three weeks it
s my intention and plan to make a tour of our African
homeland. And I hope that when I come back, I
ll be able to come back and let
you know how our African brothers and sisters feel toward us. And I know before
I go there that they love us. We
re one; we
re the same; the same man who has
colonized them all these years, colonized you and me too all these years. And
all we have to do now is wake up and work in unity and harmony and the battle
will be over.
ll be on the next jet right on into the
city.