When we send our children to school, they learn nothing about us other than we used to be cotton pickers. Why, your grandfather was Nat Turner; your grandfather was Toussaint L'Ouverture; your grandfather was Hannibal. It was your grandfather's hands who forged civilization and it was your grandmother's hands who rocked the cradle of civilization. But the textbooks tell our children nothing.
Malcolm XYou have the upper class Negroes who are the modern day Uncle Toms or the 20th century Uncle Toms. They don't wear a handkerchief anymore. They wear top hats. They're called Doctor, they're called - Reverend, but they're still - they play the same role today that Uncle Tom played on the plantation.
Malcolm XYou have, you can only answer it this way: by turning it around. Can the negro - who is the victim of the system - escape the collective stigma that is placed upon all Negroes in this country?
Malcolm XAn English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, โWhatโs your alma mater?โ I told him, โBooks.
Malcolm XThe true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks.
Malcolm XI believe that it would be almost impossible to find anywhere in America a black man who has lived further down in the mud of human society than I have; or a black man who has been any more ignorant than I have; or a black man who has suffered more anguish during his life than I have. But it is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come; it is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.
Malcolm XI think that any black man who teaches black people to turn the other cheek and suffer peacefully after they've been turning the cheek and suffering peacefully for 400 years in a land of bondage, under the most cruel, inhuman and wicked slavemaster that any people have ever been under, he is doing those people an injustice, and he's a traitor to his own people.
Malcolm X