Volume 16, Number 1
May 1964 Interview with Malcolm X
by A.B. Spellman Home
Subscribe Books of Interest:
The Education of Black People
by W.E.B. Du Bois Discourse
on Colonialism
Race: A Study
in Social Dynamics
by Oliver C. Cox The following interview with Malcolm X, formerly the minister of the New York City and Washington, D.C. mosques of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, headed by The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, was held on March 19, 1964. The interview, conducted by poet and jazz critic A.B. Spellman, appeared simultaneously in Monthly Review and Revolution The Muslims tell Negroes to be proud of their African heritage, to make a new identity for themselves by adopting an X or a Muslim surname and dropping their "slave name," thereby severing all ties with a history of subservience to whites. The Muslims have urged Negroes to be polite in their dealings with whites and to be non-violent, even if provoked. But if attacked, the Muslims say, a Negro should defend himself by any means at his disposal. The Muslim solution to the race problem in America is separation of the races, either in the allocation to Negroes of several states in the South or the repatriation of Negroes to Africa. (The separatist solution has been in the programs of several movements varying in size and appeal since the early nineteenth century, culminating in the Garvey movement which, though irreparably fragmented, still has considerable appeal in many major Negro communities.) Estimates of Muslim membership have ranged from 10,000 to 250,000. | |
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