Black Movement Quotes

Mr. President, we are going to march on Washington. The people are restless. The Black masses are restless.

I also think it's crucial to convey that the [Black] Movement largely succeeded because of the unwavering dedication of young people willing to risk their comfort, their safety, their lives.

I was involved with the Nation of Islam. I wasn't doing no marching. I've been involved with the Nation for 50 years. Back in those days, they tried to label us as black Muslims. There are Muslims all over the world. It doesn't have to be black; it doesn't matter what color he is.

J. Edgar Hoover’s counter-intelligence program was designed to prevent a Black Messiah from rising to unite the people.

I think that most people don't think in terms of an American revolution, they think in terms of a Russian revolution, or even a Ukrainian revolution. But the idea of an American revolution does not occur to most people. And when I came down to the movement milieu seventy-five years ago, the black movement was just starting, and the war in Europe had brought into being the "Double V for Victory" [campaign]: the idea was that we ought to win democracy abroad with democracy at home. And that was the beginning of an American revolution, and most people don't recognize that.

I had formed a black movement, so I would speak for the Trotskyist movement and then walk about a hundred yards to where the black movement was speaking.

Universal Negro Improvement Association

We gathered for the purpose of neutralizing King as an effective Negro leader.

Remember, we're talking [in The Black Power Mixtape] about 1967, the year before [Martin Luther] King's assassination. We're talking about the emergence of black power, which is a discussion King mentioned in his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? We're talking about the meaning of black power and the possibility that it alienated our supporters, both white and black.

Our leaders were assassinated, one of the things I was reading today was - 28 Panthers were killed by the police but 300 Black Panthers were killed by other Panthers just within - internecine warfare. It just began to seem like we were in an impossible task given what we were facing.

UCLA acknowledged this shift by bringing in Alex Haley (the co-author of The Autobiography of Malcolm X) and Eldridge Cleaver (Soul on Ice) as speakers.

When we talk about 'Sweetback,' yes, it stars the whole black movement, but it's also the first time an independent film made that kind of money and was that successful and taken seriously.

I think that Malcolm X was envisioning, even while he was in the Nation of Islam, a black nationalist progressive strategy toward uniting black people across ideological, class lines, denominational religious lines, Christians, as well as Muslims, to build a strong movement for justice and for empowerment.