Be nonviolent only with those who are nonviolent to you. And when you can bring me a nonviolent racist…then I’ll get nonviolent… It’s hard for a racist to be nonviolent. It’s hard for anyone intelligent to be nonviolent. Everything in the universe does something when you start playing with his life, except the American Negro If they don’t want you and me to get violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don’t teach us nonviolence while those crackers are violent. Those days are over. ~Malcolm X, 1964

“Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and our people rediscover their identity and thereby increase their self respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today.” ~ Malcolm X, 1964

There were two kinds of slaves, the house Negro and the field Negro. The house Negroes – they lived in the house with master, they dressed pretty good…. And if you came to the house Negro and said, “Let’s run away, let’s escape, let’s separate.” The house Negro would look at you and say, “Man, you crazy. What you mean, separate? Where is there a better house than this? Where can I wear better clothes than this? Where can I eat better food than this?” That was that house Negro. In those days he was called a “house nigger.” And that’s what we call them today, because we’ve still got some house niggers running around here. This modern house Negro loves his master. He wants to live near him. He’ll pay three times as much as the house is worth just to live near his master, and then brag about “I’m the only Negro out here.” “I’m the only one on my job.” So now you have a twentieth-century-type of house Negro. A twentieth-century Uncle Tom. He’s just as much an Uncle Tom today as Uncle Tom was 100 and 200 years ago… “I ain’t left nothing in Africa,” that’s what you say. Why, you left your mind in Africa. ~Malcolm X, 1965

‘We’re not against people because they’re white. But we’re against those who practice racism’ ~Malcolm X, 1965

‘Civil rights legislation will never solve our problems. The white liberals are nothing but political hypocrites who use our people as political footballs only to get bills passed that will increase their own power’ ~Malcolm X, 1965

What does a white man call a black man with a Ph.D., A nigger with a Ph.D. ~Malcolm X, 1965