Manning Marable Quotes

New book on Malcolm X says we don't know how he was killed. Want to bring in the FBI. Maybe they were in already.

I once did a - the first piece on Malcolm X that anyone had ever seen in the - white press.

If you blink, you will miss me, but I am in 'Malcolm X.'

If you are living in a free society then use the freedom. What good is freedom if you do not use it.

Malcolm X was a man among men.

Betty Shabazz was the wife of a man who challenged a government that was historically unjust. She was harassed and placed under surveillance by the Nation of Islam (NOI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The single most important thing you can do politically for gay rights is to come out. Not to write a letter to your congressman but to come out.

Internal differences within the Nation of Islam forced me out of it. I did not leave of my own free will. But now that it has happened, I intend to make the most of it. Now that I have more independence of action, I intend to use a more flexible approach toward working with others to get a solution to this problem.

I believe that if we could see the chapters that are missing from the book [The Autobiography of Malcolm X], we would gain an understanding as to why perhaps - perhaps - the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the New York Police Department and others in law enforcement greatly feared what Malcolm X was about, because he was trying to build a broad - an unprecedented black coalition across the lines of black nationalism and integration. And in way, it presages 30 years ahead of time, the Million Man March.

Malcolm X got famous mainly by being hard on white people, white devils, blue-eyed blond-headed dogs.

I believe that the FBI clearly was concerned, wanted to monitor and disrupt Malcolm X wherever possible.

Newsman are the ones who - without them we don't have a civil rights movement, we don't have a women's movement, we don't have a Vietnam movement.

Either Malcolm X or Martin [Luther King] could have played the role of a unifier, but it was - Malcolm as long as he remained within the Nation of Islam, talking to the converted, he did not represent a fundamental threat to the American government.

Malcolm X already envisioning the N.O.I. playing a role cooperatively with integrationist organizations.

I suppose that the first organized effort that might be considered something of civil rights was the Young Negroes' Cooperative League. Now, this offers certain contradictions at this point, perhaps, because it was stimulated by the writings of George Schayler who, at this point, is considered an arch-conservative, I understand.

Often those who are denied rights are least empowered to bring about the changes they seek.

There were internal critics, sharp critics, who were very opposed to [Malcolm X], and who were very - some of them were members of Elijah Mohammad's family, such as Herbert Mohammad, Raymond Shareef, who was the head of the Fruit of Islam, the brother-in-law of - the son-in-law of Elijah Mohammad. They isolated Malcolm X and kept him out of the newspaper of the organization Mohammad Speaks for over a year, which is kind of curious.

As the culture war rages on, Lord give us wisdom to see the difference between defending our rights and protesting our slights.

I didn't look at it as a transition so much, because I never intended to have a career as a journalist, writing about people who make movies.

Malcolm's X objective was actually to reingratiate himself within the Nation of Islam, that because he had emerged by the early 1960s as a very prominent figure outside of the N.O.I., there were critics within the organization that were saying to the patriarch of the N.O.I., the Honorable Elijah Mohammad, that Malcolm planned to take over the organization, which was not true.

I believe it is my obligation to tell the story of the civil rights movement to the next generation.

If the FBI parks a van bristling with cameras outside your house, you are justified in closing your blinds.

I've heard people in the Middle East tell me that the most inspiring thing for them as people struggling against dictatorship in the Middle East is the memory of the civil rights movement.

It's a misconception to believe that the resistance ended with the civil rights movement.

Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace... One compels respect from others when he knows how to defend his dignity as a human being... The people owe all the political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength.