Speaking, as always, in behalf of “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad,” Malcolm X journeyed to Yale University in 1962 to debate with Herbert Wright, then National Youth Secretary of the NAACP.
The first third of this Yale Speech is Malcolm’s attempt to put the Black Muslims’ doctrine in world perspective. One may dispute, as Herbert Wright did, the lessons Malcolm draws from current history, but this lecture shows once again how the Black Muslims are struggling to give their doctrine the advantages of learning and information. Malcolm’s point is that the world situation demands that the American Negro have a separate state and that even such threats as the Communist take-over in Cuba will not subside until that all-Negro state is brought into being.
This talk has a particularly scorching indictment of middle-class Negroes. Several people who were present at the debate have told me that Herbert Wright became difficult at times, for Malcolm, and that Malcolm responded with an unusual amount of bile. This was one of a series of debates between Wright and Malcolm X, and the NAACP finally ordered a halt to the encounters.
Remembering that the Black Muslims have a prohibition against voting, the reader will be particularly interested in Malcolm’s arguments as to why the majority of American Negroes do not vote. He sees this apathy at the polls as a rebellion against “integration-minded” Negro leadership. And this may be a commentary on why the Muslims have themselves decided to enter politics.
In behalf of my beloved leader and teacher, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and the many young Muslims who follow him, we wish to thank you for this opportunity to explain our position today in what we feel to be the only solution to the serious race problems confronting America and the entire troubled Western World.
In this crucial hour in which we live today, it is essential that our minds constantly be kept open to reality. We have both races here in this Yale Law School Auditorium tonight. Let us not be emotional. Let us be governed and guided only by facts.
I represent Mr. Elijah Muhammad, the spiritual head of the fastest-growing group of Black Muslims in the Western Hemisphere. We who follow him know that he has been divinely taught and sent to us by God Himself. We believe that the miserable plight of the 20 million black people in America is the fulfillment of divine prophecy. We believe that the serious race problem that our presence here poses for America is also the fulfillment of divine prophecy. We also believe the presence today in America of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, his teachings among the so-called Negroes, and his naked warning to America concerning her treatment of these so-called Negroes is all the fulfillment of divine prophecy.
Thus, when Mr. Muhammad declares that the only solution to America’s race problem is complete separation of the two races, he is fulfilling that which was predicted by all of the biblical prophets to take place in this day. But, because Mr. Muhammad takes this uncompromising stand, those who don’t understand biblical prophecy wrongly label him as a racist and as a hate teacher, or as being anti-white, or as teaching Black Supremacy. So tonight, while we are all here together, face to face, we can question and examine for ourselves the wisdom or the folly of what Mr. Muhammad is teaching.
Studying world conditions in the light of facts, facing reality as grown men and women ... seeing things not as we would like them to be, but as they really are ... only then can we determine the rightness, the validity, the divine origin of Mr. Muhammad and the solution which he offers as the only hope for America’s 20 million so-called Negroes, and also as the only hope for this troubled Western World.