Malcolm X Quotes

If this country is a melting pot, then either the Afro-American didn't get in the pot or he didn't get melted down.

Separate and unequal didn't work 100 years ago. It will not work today.

The current neglect of the problem can only irritate this deplorable state of affairs. The Black Muslims should constitute a warning to our society, a warning that must be heeded if we are to preserve the society.

Although the race problem may seem to lie dormant at times, it continually exists, lives on and on and sometimes rages with all the fury of a jungle beast. It gnaws at the very vitals of our existence, in time it will sap our strength and destroy the greatness of our American way of life unless solved properly and permanently.

Segregation is a problem not just in my country but in every country.

While the old spiritual 'Slavery Chain Done Broke at Last' was sung by blacks in the hours following the Appomattox surrender, racism sadly continues to be a crippling national scourge.

To the great majority of white Americans, the Negro problem has distinctly negative connotations. It suggests something difficult to settle and equally difficult to leave alone. It is embarrassing. It makes for moral uneasiness.

What is our greatest enemy? Segregation.

The city of Memphis has demonstrated that neither character nor standing avails the Negro if he dares to protect himself against the white man or become his rival.

The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.

Apartheid is alive and well and it lives in our schools, and I'm sad to say it lives in the halls of the State legislature.

... if the United States is indeed the great melting pot, the Negro either didn't get in the pot or he didn't get melted down.

We insist that educationally and socially we maintain a segregated society …

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line - the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.

You get racism crossing the street; it's in the very fabric of American society.

I grew up in the once segregated South. I experienced forced integration during my formative school years. I lived the sacrifices, burdens, and tears. I also lived the moments of understanding, of acknowledgment, of fellowship and success. I saw my parents and grandparents coming home beaten down - and some of my friends beaten up.

I'm from South Carolina. I'm from a real cultured state, where there's still racism daily. Still, places are segregated.

There is, however, a somber point in the social outlook of Americans. Their sense of equality and human dignity is mainly limited to people of white skin.... The more I feel like an American, the more the situation pains me.

I grew up in the southern United States in a city which at that time during the late '40's and early '50's was the most segregated city in the country, and in a sense learning how to oppose the status quo was a question of survival.

The difference with Cleveland is that the racial tension was not a casual taste of it. It was outlandish.

We who follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad feel that when you try and pass integration laws here in America, forcing white people to pretend that they are accepting black people, what you are doing is making white people act in a hypocritical way.

If you're African American, you are forced into making different choices, in a lot of cases, than you are as a white person.

This nation is being divided into black and white, and the present system encourages this.

If acknowledging that racial misgivings and misunderstandings are still a part of politics and life in America, I plead guilty.

I do not think white America is committed to granting equality to the American Negro. This is a passionately racist country; it will continue to be so in the foreseeable future.