The following is Malcolm X’s “university speech,” a long lecture he used in the hope of converting students—particularly Negroes—on various university campuses during 1961-1962. It is of some interest that this speech was given at Atlanta University, the great citadel of Negro learning in the Deep South, and Dr. Lonnie Cross, chairman of the department of mathematics, not only joined the movement but became assistant to Jeremiah X, minister of the Atlanta Temple.
This lecture contains a unique passage. It will be recalled that in his Harvard speech Malcolm chastised Moslems from the East who had migrated to America but failed to gather converts. In this speech he goes further; in a stinging passage Malcolm flatly accuses Moslems from the East of attempting to turn “our slave masters” (the American white man) into good Moslems. He accuses orthodox Moslems of “passing us by” and attempting to proselytize the foes of the Negro rather than the Negro himself.
This is without doubt the strongest position any Muslim has ever taken against the orthodox Moslem movement and further underscores my contention that the Black Muslims are not really concerned about orthodox Islam. They need the façade of world-wide Islam, of course, but the Black Muslim movement is a home-grown operation with home-grown aims and ideas. Nowhere is that more clearly stated than in this “university speech.”
Islam, the natural religion of black mankind, is sweeping through and resurrecting black America like a “flaming fire,” under the Divine Guidance of Messenger Elijah Muhammad.
Fools try to ignore facts, but wise men must face facts to remain wise. Fools refuse to change from their silly ways and beliefs, but the mental powers of the wise man encourage mental flexibility and enable him to keep an OPEN MIND. This gives him the ability to re-adjust himself whenever it becomes necessary for a CHANGE.
As fast as added “light” increases the wise man’s ability to understand, he changes his “course” or his “pace” according to the newly revealed facts before him.
Fools, however, just blunder on, blindly, heedless of the ever-changing conditions on the road over which they must travel ... thus, the BLIND DRIVERS and their “cars” usually end up in the DITCH.
In the past, the “religious roads” leading through black America presented smooth sailing for the “Old Touring Cars” (Churches) of Christianity. They met few obstacles and had little opposition or competition. The “drivers” (preachers) had it easy. Their “course” was never challenged. They ruled supreme on the religious roads of black America.
However, today time is making a great CHANGE. The religious roads of black America have suddenly become blocked by a ROCKY BARRIER, and all the black and white preachers combined are incapable of removing it. The firm, down-to-earth, thought-provoking teachings of the religion of Islam are now obstructing this path over which it was once easy sailing for these preachers of white man’s Christianity.
Islam poses both a challenge and a threat because Islam is the “resurrecting power.” Thousands of so-called Negroes are beginning for the first time to think for themselves, since turning away from the segregated Christian church, and are rejoining the ranks of their black brothers and sisters of the East. Their age-old faith is the religion of Islam, the religion of our foreparents, the true religion of black mankind.
The Spiritual Leader and Teacher of the many thousands of “New Believers” here in black America is Messenger Elijah Muhammad.
Before we heard the teachings of Messenger Muhammad, we (American so-called Negroes) were in the grave of ignorance. We had been taught by our Christian slave master, as well as by our own ignorant religious leaders, that God had cursed us black and sentenced us to a lifetime of servitude to the Christian white race.
The same slave master’s Christian religion promised us that we (Negroes) would sprout wings after death and fly up into the sky where God would have a place especially prepared for us.
Since we poor “cursed” slaves were not to get anything on earth while we were alive, we soon learned to expect it only after death, “up in the sky.” Thus, this earth, and all its vast riches which we ourselves originally owned, was left to the deceitful maneuverings of the white race, for them to build a heaven for themselves and their own kind “in THIS life.”
Such religious teachings were purposely designed to make us (so-called Negroes) feel inferior to the white Christian slave master. Soon he was successful in making us fear him, obey him, and worship him ... instead of the true Supreme Being, the God of our own foreparents, Almighty God, ALLAH.
Messenger Muhammad has taught us how we eventually became like the beggar Lazarus of the bible (Luke 16:20): Our condition became very sore. We sat here amid the rubbish of the Western World, at the feet of the rich, white Christians ... begging for the crumbs (civil rights and token integration) to fall from their table. But from this very same slave master whom our foreparents had made rich, by giving freely of their slave labor for nearly 400 years (Gen. 15:13), we received only the hardest and dirtiest jobs at the lowest wages; the poorest houses in the ghettos at the highest rent; the poorest food and clothing at the highest prices. Our schools were like shacks, and were staffed by teachers who knew and could teach only that which the slave master dictated to them.
Messenger Muhammad has taught us how we (so-called Negroes) were kidnaped from the East by the white Christian slave master, brought to America in chains, and robbed of our own God, His religion, our language, culture, names, flag, and even our own nationality. After robbing us of all that we originally could proudly call our own, then the slave master taught us to call ourselves “Negroes.” He told us that we were to be called “Negroes” because he found us along the banks of the Niger River.
Messenger Muhammad asks us today: “Since when does one’s nationality originate from a river?” This same slave master taught us that “negro” means “black” in Spanish. Messenger Muhammad again asks us why, then, do not the dark, Spanish-speaking people in Spain, South and Central America accept it (Negro) as their nationality too? Messenger Muhammad says that we too should get our NATIONality from the NATION that our foreparents originated (as do all other recognized peoples).
The bible speaks of how we were purposely cut off from our own kind after being robbed of our identity by the cruel Christian slave master (Ezekiel 37:11; Psalms 137:1-9, 83:4). The slave master then took our names, language, and religion from us so we would have to accept his, obey him, and worship him (Dan. 1:6-7).
Messenger Muhammad has given us many scriptures to prove his teachings to us are true and in accord with the prophecies of the bible. He says it is we (so-called Negroes) in America who were robbed and made deaf, dumb, and blind to the knowledge of our own God and of our own selves; so that today we are like DRY BONES IN THE VALLEY (spiritually dead, and in a mental grave of ignorance).
We are now able to speak only the slave master’s tongue, and are still being called the same “slave names” given to our fathers during slavery by the slave master ... names such as Jones, Smith, Powell, King, Bunche, Diggs, Dawson, etc. These are all SLAVE NAMES, names of the very same slave master who has shown characteristics of his beast-like nature in his treatment of us. The original names of our foreparents were cut off from them, kept secret from us by the “beast” (Rev. 15:2), and therefore today we do not know what our real names should be. We have really been robbed!
All other people have their own religion, which teaches them of a God with whom they themselves can associate. A God who at least looks like one of their own kind. But, we (so-called Negroes), after 400 years of masterful brainwashing by the slave master, picture our “god” with the same blond hair, pale skin, and cold blue eyes of our murderous slave master.
His Christian religion teaches us that black is a curse; thus, we who accepted the slave master’s religion found ourselves loving and respecting everything and everyone except black, and could picture God as being anything else but BLACK. In fact, many so-called Negroes would rather believe that God is INVISIBLE, a “colorless spirit,” than to admit even the possibility of his being black. Yet Daniel saw Him with kinky hair (like lamb’s wool) in the seventh chapter of Daniel, ninth verse. How grossly deceived we have been!
Messenger Muhammad says that the teachers and religious leaders of our own kind here in America were as blind to the REAL TRUTH as we; therefore, they themselves were not even qualified to lead us beyond that which the slave master had falsely taught them. HOW CAN THE BLIND LEAD THE BLIND? Thus, we remained in the DITCH (the GRAVE of spiritual ignorance, mental bondage) which was dug for us to fall into by our white Christian slave master.
Not only did our own preachers and educators here fail to give us the truth, our darker brothers who were born in the East came here from the East and neglected to convert us back to the original religion (ISLAM) of our foreparents. Many of our brothers from the East even failed to recognize us as their long-lost brothers (“lost sheep”) who had been kidnaped from the Nation of Islam 400 years ago, and made to dwell here in this strange land, among these wicked people who are not of our own kind (Gen. 15:13), nor of our own choice.
Our brothers from the East passed us by, and instead, tried to lecture on Islam to our slave master, thinking, so foolishly, that they would be able to turn the slave master into a righteous Muslim ... knowing all the time that the same slave master was the very one who had kidnaped, robbed, enslaved, and lynched (murdered) their long-lost brothers. Yes, our brothers from the East came here and seemed to be apologists for Islam, instead of rightly spreading it, or defending it from the sly insults of the unbelieving slave master.
Messenger Muhammad teaches us that Almighty God, ALLAH, is all-powerful and independent. ALLAH needs no one to apologize for Him. Islam, His True Religion, is not a religion of compromise. Islam is truth itself, and this truth has long been kept a secret from us.
For 400 years, we (so-called Negroes) were deprived of Islam (life) by our white slave master, who in turn indoctrinated (brainwashed) us with his false religion of Christianity ... and like the biblical Lazarus, we soon became so dead mentally and spiritually, that our attitude (disposition) became offensive (stank) in the nostrils of the intelligent and civilized world. Our kind in the East failed to recognize us as their long-lost brothers (the lost sheep). Our people in the East forgot us completely, and we, too, soon forgot our blood-ties with them.
But Almighty God ALLAH forgets not. As He promised in the Old Testament (Mal. 4:5) that He would send ELIJAH to the “lost sheep” (the so-called Negroes of America) in the “last days” (of the white man’s world), to teach us the truth that would free us from our white slave master, and turn our hearts and minds back toward our own kind (our fathers in the East). And, in the last days of this wicked world, the hearts of our people in the East would be turned once again toward us (Isaiah 43:5).
We who have been raised by ELIJAH from the “grave” that was dug for us by the slave master, bear witness that this same ELIJAH, who was predicted to come, has been raised from our midst today and is even now with us here in America in the person of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He is the “first begotten” from this grave of ignorance, from the midst of we (so-called Negroes) who have long been a mentally dead people. He is the “First Fruit” raised from us who slept, and he has been raised from this grave by Almighty God, ALLAH Himself.
Examine his works among us, for his works are sufficient testimony to his identity. Only a fool, or an envious person, would fail to see the greatness of this man after examining his work. We who have been raised from the grave by him bear witness of his work.
In a short time, Messenger Muhammad is accomplishing what our educators and religious leaders here failed to do for 100 years, and what our brothers from the East neglected to do. Messenger Muhammad has brought our minds out of the sky (where the ignorant preachers had sent it), and has made us better able to face the reality of living. He has restored life (truth) to our long-lost dead people. Who else other than Almighty God, ALLAH, could have given Messenger Muhammad the power to do what all others have failed to do?
“And Allah sent down WATER from above, and therewith gives life to the dead earth after its death. Surely there is a SIGN in this for a people who listen.” (Quran 16:65.)
Praise be to ALLAH! Who would have believed it? An ex-slave, a man like Moses (Deut. 18:18), to whom ALLAH has given sufficient power to stand up and speak the truth so boldly here in the land of our bondage, facing not only the wrath of the wicked slave master (modern Pharaoh), but also the wrath of his own kind, who are ignorant of the truth. They are too blind to see what is good for them. There are those also who are jealous and envious of his Wisdom and his Divine Mission.
Messenger Muhammad’s teachings have really inspired us with a thirst today for truth. We who follow him are filled with an enthusiastic desire to wear the Crown of Life, the jewels of which are: Wisdom, Knowledge, Understanding ... Freedom, Justice, Equality ... Food, Clothing, Shelter ... and Love, Peace, and Happiness. He teaches us that these must be enjoyed while we are living.
These are the very essentials of life, and they adorn the Crown of Life which we shall all wear in ALLAH’s Paradise, the Kingdom of God, which shall soon be set up on this earth, for us to enjoy while we are living.
Almighty God, ALLAH, has a religion of life, not of death, that teaches us to live, the importance of living, and how to live. ALLAH is the God of the living, and not the God of the dead.
All praise is due to ALLAH! We who once followed foolishly and blindly after the slave master’s plurality of gods (TRINITY) and sought to have our heaven (the necessities of life) up in the sky after we die, are no longer fooled today by the slave master’s lies. Today, we know there is but ONE GOD. There is no God but ALLAH! And, we bear witness that The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is His last and greatest Messenger to us here in North America.
Yes, we who were once dead (mentally, morally, socially, politically, and economically), lying at the rich white man’s feet here in the grave of ignorance, are being raised today from this “death.” We are being made upright ... PERPENDICULAR ... by the WORD of this Noble Messenger of Almighty God, ALLAH. He has the Message of Life for 20,000,000 so-called Negroes here in America.
“The people (Negroes) that walked in darkness (ignorance) have seen a great light (Islam): they that dwell in the land (of bondage) in the shadow of death (the Cross) upon them has the light shined” (Isaiah 9:2).
Examine our previous condition, then judge Messenger Muhammad according to his work among us. We who are striving to carry his teachings into practice today are well on the road to mental, moral and financial independence.
Thanks to His Message we are well aware today of the importance of Freedom, Justice, Equality ... Wisdom, Knowledge, Understanding ... Food, Clothing, Shelter ... Love, Peace and Happiness, in sufficient quantity and quality, while we are living. This great teacher has filled us with a desire to rest not, until we have our own righteous nation, united together under ALLAH, the One God, wherein brotherhood is a practiced reality instead of a future dream or a “far-away promise” as it is in the Christian religion of our slave master.
Even you must bear witness that Messenger Muhammad is without question the most fearless and uncompromising representative of Almighty God, ALLAH, and His Religion of Islam. Messenger Muhammad doesn’t offer any apology to this wicked race, nor to the fearful and unbelieving “Uncle Toms” among our own kind. He has a Message from God. It is a warning of condemnation of the wicked, and despite all opposition he goes right ahead, boldly delivering his message.
He says (as Noah, Lot, and Moses did before him) that you can take it or leave it. So many of you will say that you believe in Almighty God, ALLAH; but, yet you hesitate to teach the naked truth, for fear of hurting the tender feelings of this wicked white race. Since you are filled with fear of the beast (Rev. 21:8), instead of standing in the way, holding up progress, hardening your hearts with envy, jealousy, and unbelief ... step out of his way so he can prove to the world that there is no God but ALLAH, and that this Great God ALLAH has come to redeem His long-lost people ... the so-called Negroes of America (Rev. 7:2).
According to the bible, destruction of the slave master by Almighty God can no longer be avoided nor delayed. And, oh how well the slave master (modern Pharaoh) knows this. Yes, this government, which was founded upon the slavery and suffering of God’s “chosen people,” is quite upset today because of the teachings of Messenger Muhammad (the modern Moses), the same as the biblical Pharaoh was.
Government agents have visited and questioned me so persistently and thoroughly that I spent many a sleepless night wondering what it is about the presence of this little meek and humble man that has them so terribly concerned and upset.
Yes, they visited and questioned many of his followers, but the more they visit and question us the more clearly we are able to see and know that this is indeed a Divine Man, God-sent to us poor slaves (Exodus 3:6-10), with truth that forever frees us from fear of this wicked, modern Pharaoh.
This little black man has not been to college; his formal education in the slave master’s school system is very limited, and he is not eloquent in his speech (Ex. 4:10), whereas these government agents who question us are highly trained and well schooled in all the modern sciences of life. They are well learned, yet the teachings of this little “unlearned” man has them hurt, confused, and upset. The average unlearned man cannot upset a learned person ... unless he has been given something by the MOST LEARNED ONE, the All-Knowing One, Almighty God, ALLAH Himself.
All praise is due to ALLAH! How well He has enabled us to see that this little meek and humble man is he of whom the bible says: “How knoweth this man letters (such great wisdom) having never learned (being unlearned) ...” (John 7:15). No man in history has ever fit such a prophetic picture more perfectly than this little “unlearned” man who is teaching us today with such great authority.
Yes, he may be “unlearned” according to the educational standards of the slave master, but he has been well schooled by Almighty God, ALLAH Himself ... for he tells us constantly that his doctrine (message) is not his own but was authored by the One God, ALLAH, who sent him (John 7:15).
All praise is due ALLAH! A man born in Georgia, mentally blind, deaf, and dumb, as ignorant as all the rest of us. Yet we see him today upsetting the slave master’s health, just as biblical Moses did in ancient times to the slave master of that day (Ex. 5:2), simply by declaring God’s plan to give these poor slaves (America’s so-called Negroes) a land of our own, wherein we won’t have to beg any slave master any more for “civil rights,” for we shall then have in our own land a righteous government, wherein FREEDOM, JUSTICE, and EQUALITY and all the other essentials of life will be natural products, flowing for us and to us ... like “milk and honey.”
In the Holy Quran it says: “He it is who raised from among the ILLITERATES a Messenger from among themselves, who recites to them the book and the wisdom ... although they were before in manifest error.” (62:2.)
Also, “Those who follow the Messenger-Prophet, the ILLITERATE ONE, whom they find in the Torah and the Gospel. He enjoins them good, and forbids them evil, and makes lawful to them good things and prohibits for them impure things, and removes from them their burden and the shackles which were on them. So those who believe in Him and help Him, these are the successful.” (7:157.)
I, myself, being one who was lost and dead, buried here in the rubbish of the West, in the thickest darkness of sin and ignorance, hoodwinked completely by the false teaching of the slave master, am able to stand upright today, PERPENDICULAR, on the square with my God, ALLAH, and my own kind (in the East) ... able for the first time in 400 years to SEE and HEAR.
I bear witness that Almighty God, ALLAH, is the Finder of the lost sheep (American Negroes) and the Life-Giver to the dead. He, ALLAH, is the only Saviour for the 20,000,000 so-called Negroes, who were kidnaped by the white race and enslaved here in America.
Also, I bear witness that Messenger Elijah Muhammad has been taught (raised) by this Great God of the Universe, the Architect of the Universe, the Supreme Being Himself, ALLAH. And I bear witness that Messenger Elijah Muhammad is in turn raising us from the dead today, teaching us TRUTH, and raising us from the dead level of ignorance.