Malcolm X Quotes

My father was a slave and my people died to build this country and I am going to stay here and have a part of it just like you.

The greatest problem is not with flat-out white racists, but rather with the far larger number of Americans who believe intellectually in racial equality but are quietly oblivious to injustice around them.

The world has made being black a crime .... I hope to make it a virtue.

I don't know that white people need to be 'allies' so much as understand that any black struggle in America is ultimately a struggle for the large country. 'Ally' presumes a kind of distance that I am not sure exists.

There's a lot of things that need to change. One specifically? Police brutality.

What I really feel is necessary is that the black people in this country wil have to upset this apple cart. We can no longer ignore the fact that America is not the... land of the free and the home of the brave.

I think #BlackLivesMatter is a huge campaign that is important and integral to our advancement as a people.

Black Lives Matter was born out of our unwavering love for black people and our undeniable rage over a system that has historically dehumanized black people.

People are more afraid of black unity than black rage.

I think it's important for black people in general to be aware of what's going on and do what you got to work around it. Not bow down to it publicly.

We keep calling for accountability and reinvestment and a push for all of us to imagine a world where black people are not policed but instead supported and loved and cared for. Where our families can feel safe and inspired and protected.

Black Lives Matter is really an affirmation for our people. It's a love note for our people, but it's also a demand. We know that the system was not designed for justice for us.

I think in order to achieve real change, we as the black community need to come up with real asks and we have to determine, what do we actually want? We obviously want some social reform, on police brutality and things like that. We also need political changes. But it's more than voting. What are we as black people asking of these politicians?

It is just not something we need to forget easily, to just bend the knee, to put on our t-shirts, Black Lives Matter, and one week after everyone forgets that.

The cure for the Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner tragedies is not education or exposure. It's the gospel.

We actually know that all lives do matter. And we believe it is so much so that we had to create Black Lives Matter.

In 2016, the conversation of the black experience is so broad, and it's very raw. I mean, c'mon, we have a black president. That's a major thing, and there are so many other significant occurrences that have come from the '60s and '70s up to now.

Yet and still, Peter Norman took into account that the aboriginals were suffering just as much in Australia as Blacks in the United States were suffering.

The cornerstones of this country's operation are economic and political strength and power. The black man doesn't have the economic strength - and it will take time for him to build it. But right now the American black man has the political strength and power to change his destiny overnight.

[James] Baldwin said the real question is not when there will be the first Negro president in this country. The important question is what country he's going to be the president of.

Racism should never have happened and so you don't get a cookie for reducing it.

If, with the nation watching, three black women at three different levels can't get justice... for this community, you tell me where you're going to get it in our country.

White privilege allows a certain kind of leisure that can be deployed by white people of advantage toward our restoration. That's all true and good. But it also suggests that there is an individual approach to the issues that many of these white people have taken up as a recognition of their tie to and responsibility for some of the inequities that exist. And I don't think it has to be an either-or. I think it has to be a bifocal approach.

A people who have suffered so much for so long at the hands of a racist society must draw the line somewhere.

The only thing I really feel is necessary is that the black people, not only in Mississippi, will have to actually upset this applecart. What I mean by that is, so many things are under the cover that will have to be swept out and shown to this whole world, not just to America. This thing they say of "the land of the free and the home of the brave" is all on paper. It doesn't really mean anything to us. The only way we can make this thing a reality in America is to do all we can to destroy this system and bring this out to the light that has been under the cover all these years.