Malcolm X Speaks
Malcolm X
by Malcolm X
The speeches of Malcolm X's last year, gathered by George Breitman and published within months of the assassination. "The Ballot or the Bullet" is here, and so is his answer to a question in Paris.
Malcolm X Speaks collects fifteen speeches, letters and interviews, almost all from the last year of Malcolm X's life. The editor, George Breitman, was a founding member of the Socialist Workers Party, and Merit Publishers in New York brought the book out in 1965.[1][2] The book runs from "Message to the Grass Roots" in Detroit in November 1963 to interviews given in February 1965, the month he was killed. "The Ballot or the Bullet", given in Cleveland on 3 April 1964, is the third chapter.[3] Breitman wrote a short note before each piece giving the date, the place and the audience.
Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam in March 1964 and was shot dead on 21 February 1965. Almost everything in Malcolm X Speaks comes from the eleven months in between. The one exception is the opening speech, "Message to the Grass Roots", given in Detroit on 10 November 1963, while he was still Elijah Muhammad's minister.[3]
The fifteen chapters follow the calendar. After Detroit come his declaration of independence in New York in March 1964, "The Ballot or the Bullet" in Cleveland, and "The Black Revolution" in New York. Letters he wrote from Jedda, Lagos and Accra in spring 1964 follow, and then his appeal to African heads of state in Cairo that July. The winter chapters come from meetings at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, a meeting with Fannie Lou Hamer, a talk to young people from McComb, Mississippi, and a radio debate. The book ends with "Last Answers and Interviews", short statements from 23 November 1964 to 21 February 1965.[3]
Breitman's foreword says Malcolm X was a speaker first and a writer second. The only pieces in the book he wrote himself are the memorandum he took to Cairo and some letters. Breitman corrected slips of the tongue and small grammatical lapses. He also cut passages repeated from other speeches and marked each cut with three dots.[4] I. F. Stone reviewed the book with the Autobiography in The New York Review of Books on 11 November 1965. He wrote that Malcolm X's call for Black Americans to act together with Africa and the rest of the colored world comes out more sharply here than in the Autobiography.[5]
Chapters I to IV, November 1963 to April 1964. "Message to the Grass Roots" (Detroit, 10 November 1963), "A Declaration of Independence" (New York, 12 March 1964), "The Ballot or the Bullet" (Cleveland, 3 April 1964) and "The Black Revolution" (New York, 8 April 1964).[3]
Chapters V to VII, spring and summer 1964. "Letters from Abroad", written from Jedda, Lagos and Accra in April and May. "The Harlem 'Hate-Gang' Scare" (New York, 29 May). "Appeal to African Heads of State", the memorandum he took to the Organization of African Unity meeting in Cairo on 17 July.
Chapters VIII to XII, December 1964 and January 1965. Two meetings at the Audubon Ballroom, a joint appearance with Fannie Lou Hamer, a talk to young people from Mississippi on 31 December, and "Prospects for Freedom in 1965" at the Militant Labor Forum on 7 January.
Chapters XIII to XV, February 1965. "After the Bombing" (Detroit, 14 February), a radio debate on WINS called "Confrontation with an 'Expert'" (18 February), and "Last Answers and Interviews", short statements from 23 November 1964 to 21 February 1965.[3]
Malcolm X spoke in Paris on 23 November 1964, on his way home from Africa. Le Monde reported the meeting at the Mutualité, where French-speaking Black students questioned him. The last chapter of Malcolm X Speaks starts on that date. One of its short answers is labelled as given at a Présence Africaine meeting in Paris on 23 November 1964. Someone in Paris had asked him about the American presidential election held earlier that month.
His answer was that the system mattered more than the president. He said Lyndon Johnson was acceptable to the world only because Barry Goldwater was the alternative, and he used the image of a fox and a wolf to say so. He added that Johnson had troops in the Congo and South Vietnam while people hoped he was a man of peace.
He tried to go back to Paris on 9 February 1965 and was refused entry at Orly airport. Three pieces in the book deal with that week. Breitman's note before "After the Bombing" says the French government barred him without explanation, and that his house in Queens was firebombed a few hours after he got home.
In the Detroit speech itself, given that same evening, Malcolm X says he had helped Afro-Americans in Paris organize a group in November. The Paris group and the African community there had invited him back to speak. He tells the audience that France, Britain and the United States were all frightened by the idea of Afro-Americans working with Africans.
Four days later, on the WINS radio program Contact, a caller asked him about the refusal. Malcolm X said he had sent a telegram to Secretary of State Dean Rusk demanding an investigation. He blamed Communist trade-union workers in Paris for blocking the halls his hosts tried to book. The French translation of the book, Le Pouvoir noir, was published in Paris the following year.
George Breitman was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1916 and joined the Trotskyist movement in the 1930s. He was a founding member of the Socialist Workers Party in 1938 and edited its weekly paper, The Militant. From the mid-1950s to the late 1960s he worked as a proofreader and led the party's Detroit branch.
Two of the speeches in the book were given in Detroit, "Message to the Grass Roots" in November 1963 and "After the Bombing" in February 1965. The publisher's acknowledgments credit The Militant for several texts it had printed first. "The Harlem 'Hate-Gang' Scare" and "Prospects for Freedom in 1965" were both given at the Militant Labor Forum in New York.
I. F. Stone noted in 1965 that the book was edited and published by Trotskyists. He thought that was why the international side of Malcolm X's thinking came through more clearly here than in the Autobiography, which Alex Haley wrote down. Breitman went on to edit By Any Means Necessary in 1970 from the same kind of material.
I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner.
You can't hate Africa and not hate yourself.
I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.
"The Ballot or the Bullet" and "Message to the Grass Roots" are the two speeches most often quoted from him, and both are complete in this book.
The Autobiography was dictated while his views were changing. These speeches show what he was telling audiences month by month after he left the Nation of Islam.
Merit Publishers brought the book out in 1965, with a note before each piece saying where and when it was given and who was in the room.
The last chapters include his answer to a question at a Paris meeting and his own account of being turned away at Orly.
Detroit, 10 November 1963, at the rally that closed the Northern Negro Grass Roots Leadership Conference, in the King Solomon Baptist Church. Breitman's note calls it the only speech in the book from his years in the Nation of Islam.
Cleveland, 3 April 1964, three weeks after he left the Nation of Islam. The book's third chapter and its best-known speech.
Detroit, 14 February 1965, hours after his house in Queens was firebombed and days after France refused him entry.
1963
Malcolm X gives "Message to the Grass Roots" in Detroit on 10 November, while still a minister of the Nation of Islam.
1964
He leaves the Nation of Islam in March and gives "The Ballot or the Bullet" in Cleveland on 3 April. On 23 November he speaks in Paris.
1965
France refuses him entry at Orly on 9 February. He is shot dead in Harlem on 21 February.
1965
Merit Publishers in New York publishes Malcolm X Speaks, edited by George Breitman. I. F. Stone reviews it in The New York Review of Books on 11 November.
1966
F. Maspero publishes the French translation, Le Pouvoir noir, in Paris.
1990
Grove Weidenfeld issues the Evergreen paperback that stays in print for decades.
2024
Grove Press publishes a new edition with an introduction by Ibram X. Kendi.
Published the same autumn. I. F. Stone reviewed the two books together and called this one the supplement to the Autobiography.
Read our takeBy Any Means Necessary
Malcolm X
George Breitman's second collection, from 1970, with more of the 1964 speeches and a full item on the Paris meeting.
Read our takeMalcolm X: The Last Speeches
Malcolm X
More speeches from the same weeks of February 1965, including the Rochester talk that opens on the refusal at Orly.
Read our takeThe End of White World Supremacy
Malcolm X
Four speeches from the Nation of Islam years, for comparison with the views he held after the break.
Read our takeA collection of fifteen speeches, letters and interviews by Malcolm X, edited by George Breitman and published by Merit Publishers in New York in 1965. All but the first come from the last year of his life, after he left the Nation of Islam.
Yes. The speech he gave in Cleveland on 3 April 1964 is the third chapter. "Message to the Grass Roots", from Detroit in November 1963, is the first.
A writer and editor born in Newark in 1916, a founding member of the Socialist Workers Party and a former editor of its weekly paper, The Militant. He also edited the 1970 collection By Any Means Necessary.
The Autobiography is his life story, told to Alex Haley. Malcolm X Speaks prints what he said in public during his last year, speech by speech, with a short note on each. I. F. Stone read the two together in 1965 and thought the speeches showed his politics more clearly.
Yes. The last chapter includes an answer he gave at a meeting in Paris on 23 November 1964. "After the Bombing" and the WINS radio debate both deal with his being refused entry to France on 9 February 1965.
Le Pouvoir noir, which means Black Power. F. Maspero published it in Paris in 1966, translated by Guillaume Carle with a preface by Claude Julien. La Découverte reissued it in 2008.
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View authorThe sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Malcolm X Speaks, its publication, and its place in literary history.
Library of Congress record for the 1965 Merit Publishers first edition: editor, place, date and collation.
New York University finding aid, used for George Breitman's life and his work for The Militant and Pathfinder Press.
The book itself, read for the editor's notes and for the Paris and Orly passages in chapters XIII to XV.
I. F. Stone's 1965 review of this book and the Autobiography; source for two of the quotations.
Transcript of "The Ballot or the Bullet", used to check the wording of two quotations.
Contemporary report of the Paris meeting of 23 November 1964.
Clippings and memoranda on the refusal of entry at Orly, 9 February 1965.
Scholarly account of Malcolm X's visits to France and the Orly refusal.
BnF record for the first French translation, Paris, 1966.
BnF record for the 1968 Maspero reissue.
BnF record for the 2008 La Découverte edition and its ISBN.
Library of Congress record for Breitman's second collection, By Any Means Necessary (1970).
Library of Congress record for the 1989 Pathfinder cloth edition and its ISBN.
Library of Congress record for the 1990 Grove Weidenfeld paperback and its ISBN.
Publisher's page for the 2024 edition with Ibram X. Kendi's introduction.
Open Library edition records, used to check that each ISBN belongs to this book.
HathiTrust copyright status of the 1965 first edition: in copyright, search-only.
The primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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