MALCOLM X: As I told you, only Mr. Muhammad can answer that. But let me tell you something: Better jobs and housing are only temporary solutions. They are aspects of tokenism and don’t go to the heart of the problem.

This is why integration will not work. It assumes that the two races, black and white, are equal and can be made to live as one. This is not true.

The white man is by nature a devil and must be destroyed. The black man will inherit the earth; he will resume control, taking back the position he held centimes ago when the white devil was crawling around the caves of Europe on his all fours. Before the white devil came into our lives we had a civilization, we had a culture, we were living in silks and satins. Then he put us in chains and placed us aboard the “Good Ship Jesus,” and we have lived in hell ever since.

Now the white man’s time is over. Tokenism will not help him, and it will doom us. Complete separation will save us—and who knows, it might make God decide to give the white devil a few more years.

SUGGESTED
ADDITIONAL READING

Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. New York: Dial Press, 1963.

Bennett, Lerone, Jr. Before the Mayflower. Chicago: Johnson Publishing Co., 1962.

Beynon, Erdmann D. “The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Migrants in Detroit,” The American Journal of Sociology, XLIII, No. 6 (May 1938).

Franklin, John Hope. From Slavery to Freedom. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956.

Frazier, E. Franklin. Black Bourgeoisie. Chicago: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1957.

Handlin, Oscar. Race and Nationality in American Life. Boston: Little, Brown, 1957.

Herskovits, Melville J. Myth of the Negro Past. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941.

Lincoln, C. Eric. The Black Muslims in America. Boston: Beacon Press, 1962.

Leibrecht, Walter and others. Religion and Culture: Essays in Honor of Paul Tillich. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959.

Lomax, Louis E. The Reluctant African. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960.

——, The Negro Revolt. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962.

Myrdal, Gunnar. An American Dilemma. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944.