[News] Happy birthday Malcolm X & Ho Chi Minh

[News at freedomarchives.org]

QUOTES BY MALCOLM X
http://www.cmgww.com/historic/malcolm/about/quotes_by.htm

"We are nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with us."

"Don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think 
as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn't know what you 
know today."

"My alma mater was books, a good library... I could spend the rest of my 
life reading, just satisfying my curiosity."

"Stumbling is not falling."

"There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every 
loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your 
performance next time."

"We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us."

"Concerning nonviolence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend 
himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks."

"A race of people is like an individual man; until it uses its own talent, 
takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own 
selfhood, it can never fulfill itself."

"I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what 
confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they'll create their 
own program, and when the people create a program, you get action."

"If you're not ready to die for it, put the word 'freedom' out of your 
vocabulary."

"I feel like a man who has been asleep somewhat and under someone else's 
control. I feel that what I'm thinking and saying is now for myself. Before 
it was for and by the guidance of Elijah Muhammad. Now I think with my own 
mind, sir!"

"The thing that you have to understand about those of us in the Black 
Muslim movement was that all of us believed 100 percent in the divinity of 
Elijah Muhammad. We believed in him. We actually believed that God, in 
Detroit by the way, that God had taught him and all of that. I always 
believed that he believed in himself. And I was shocked when I found out 
that he himself didn't believe it."

"I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and 
those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between 
those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who 
want to continue the systems of exploitation."

"It is a time for martyrs now, and if I am to be one, it will be for the 
cause of brotherhood. That's the only thing that can save this country." 
February 19, 1965 (2 days before he was murdered by Nation of Islam followers)

"Without education, you're not going anywhere in this world."

"...I shall never rest until I have undone the harm I did to so many 
well-meaning, innocent Negroes who through my own evangelistic zeal now 
believe in him even more fanatically and more blindly than I did." ...on 
those he encouraged to follow Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad

"When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under 
the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a 
man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you 
what he won't do to get it, or what he doesn't believe in doing in order to 
get it, he doesn't believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will 
do anything under the sun to acquire . . . or preserve his freedom."

"You don't have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to 
be an intelligent human being."

"Dr. King wants the same thing I want. Freedom."

"I want Dr. King to know that I didn't come to Selma to make his job 
difficult. I really did come thinking I could make it easier. If the white 
people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing 
to hear Dr. King." ...in a conversation with Mrs. Coretta Scott King.

"I am not a racist. I am against every form of racism and segregation, 
every form of discrimination. I believe in human beings, and that all human 
beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color."

On Lynching And The Ku Klux Klan
By Ho Chi Minh (1924)

It is well known that the Black race is the most oppressed and the most 
exploited of the human family. It is well known that the spread of 
capitalism and the discovery of the New World had as an immediate result 
the rebirth of slavery, which was for centuries a scourge for the Negroes 
and a bitter disgrace for mankind.

What everyone does not perhaps know is that after sixty-five years of 
so-called emancipation, American Negroes still endure atrocious moral and 
material sufferings, of which the most cruel and horrible is the custom of 
lynching.

The word "lynching" comes from Lynch. Lynch was the name of a planter in 
Virginia, a landlord and judge. Availing himself of the troubles of the War 
of Independence, he took the control of the whole district into his hands. 
He inflicted the most savage punishment, without trial or process of law, 
on Loyalists and Tories. Thanks to the slave traders, the Ku Klux Klan, and 
other secret societies, the illegal and barbarous practice of lynching is 
spreading and continuing widely in the States of the American Union. It has 
become more inhuman since the emancipation of the Blacks, and is especially 
directed at the latter...

 From 1899 to 1919, 2,600 Blacks were lynched, including 51 women and girls 
and ten former Great War soldiers. Among 78 Black lynched in 1919, 11 were 
burned alive, three burned after having been killed, 31 shot, three 
tortured to death, one cut into pieces, one drowned, and 11 put to death by 
various means.

Georgia heads the list with 22 victims, Mississippi follows with 12. Both 
have also three lynched soldiers to their credit. Of the 11 burned alive, 
the first State has four and the second two. Out of 34 cases of systematic, 
premeditated and organized lynching, it is still Georgia that holds first 
place with five. Mississippi comes second with three.

Among the charges brought against the victims of 1919, we note: one of 
having been a member of the League of Non-Partisans (independent farmers); 
one of having distributed revolutionary publications; one of expressing his 
opinion on lynchings too freely; one of having criticized the clashes 
between Whites and Blacks in Chicago; one of having been known as a leader 
of the cause of the Blacks; one for not getting out of the way and thus 
frightening a white child who was in a motorcar. In 1920, there were fifty 
lynchings, and in 1922 there were twenty-eight.

These crimes were all motivated by economic jealousy. Either the Negroes in 
the area were more prosperous than the Whites, or the Black workers would 
not let themselves be exploited thoroughly. In all cases, the principle 
culprits were never troubled, for the simple reason that they were always 
incited, encouraged, spurred on, then protected by politicians, financiers, 
and authorities, and above all, by the reactionary press...

The place of origin of the Ku Klux Klan is the Southern United States. In 
May, 1866, after the Civil War, young people gathered together in a small 
locality of the State of Tennessee to set up a club. A question of whiling 
away the time. This organization was given the name "kuklos", a Greek word 
meaning "club". To Americanize the word, it was changed into Ku Klux. 
Hence, for more originality, Ku Klux Klan.

After big social upheavals, the public mind is naturally unsettled. It 
becomes avid for new stimuli and inclined to mysticism. The KKK, with its 
strange garb, its bizarre rituals, its mysteries, and its secrecy, 
irresistibly attracted the curiosity of the Whites in the Southern States 
and became very popular. It consisted at first of only a group of snobs and 
idlers, without political or social purpose. Cunning elements discovered in 
it a force able to serve their political ambitions. The victory of the 
Federal Government had just freed the Negroes and made them citizens. The 
agriculture of the South - deprived of its Black labor, was short of hands. 
Former landlords were exposed to ruin.

The Klansmen proclaimed the principle of the supremacy of the white race. 
Anti Negro was their only policy. The agrarian and slaveholding bourgeoisie 
saw in the Klan a useful agent, almost a savior. They gave it all the help 
in their power. The Klan's methods ranged from intimidation to murder...

The Klan is for many reasons doomed to disappear. The Negroes, having 
learned during the war that they are a force if united, are no longer 
allowing their kinsmen to be beaten or murdered with impunity. They are 
replying to each attempt at violence by the Klan. In July 1919, in 
Washington, they stood up to the Klan and a wild mob. The battle raged in 
the capital for four days. In August, they fought for five days against the 
Klan and the mob in Chicago. Seven regiments were mobilized to restore 
order. In September the government was obliged to send federal troops to 
Omaha to put down similar strife. In various other States the Negroes 
defend themselves no less energetically.

belated birthday to Augusto Cesar Sandino 5/18


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