The organized populism of late-nineteenth-century America was predominantly an outgrowth of southern and midwestern agrarian movements during the 1870s and 1880s. Cooperative alliances emerged claiming to defend the interests of farmers in the face of railroad expansion, exploitative banking practices, and diminishing crop prices. Of key importance were groups such as the Farmers鈥� Alliance, the Agricultural Wheel, and the Grange. In the early 1890s, the Farmers鈥� Alliance and other groups reached out to northeastern labor to form the relatively short-lived Populist (or People鈥檚) Party. Among other things, the new party advocated the regulation and possible public ownership of the railroads, the abolition of national banking, the graduated income tax, reduced tariffs, abandoning the gold standard and embracing free silver, the initiative and referendum, the direct election of U.S. senators, and the eight-hour workday.

The Populist Party reached its zenith when it joined with the Democrats to nominate William Jennings Bryan for president in 1896. While the Democratic Party absorbed Jennings鈥� defeat and survived, the smaller Populist Party could not, especially when Bryan lost again in 1900. The Populist Party collapsed soon afterward. Various strands of the party were absorbed into other elements of the political landscape, among them an emerging movement we now call progressivism.

The American progressive movement lasted roughly from the early 1890s to the early 1920s, encompassing much more than the political party that sprang up around Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. Yet, as with many such 鈥渕ovements,鈥� it 聽is difficult to reduce progressivism to a single defining concept or motivation. Among turn-of-the century progressives we find a hodgepodge of political and intellectual strains. Under the tent of progressivism one could find the remnants of the populist agrarians, a variety of Christian social activists, temperance advocates and suffragists, labor and industrial reformers, and university Ph.D.s in philosophy and the new behavioral and social sciences, just to name a few. Nevertheless, we might see in the movement some common themes, perhaps the most significant of which resides in the name attached to it鈥斺�減rogressivism.鈥� It might seem obvious, but one key element uniting many of these reformers, politicians, and intellectuals was their shared embrace of the doctrine of Progress with a capital 鈥淧.鈥� The particular engine of that progress, be it the internal dynamics of history itself or some notion of biological or social evolution, varied among thinkers. We might say, however, that a progressive is someone who likely adheres to some notion that the human condition, and the human being, are improving, developing, or evolving over time. Through social, political, and economic reform, we not only participate in that progress but might help speed it along. As the 鈥渋sm鈥� in the name suggests, progressivism is an ideology of progress. Distinguished from philosophy, which contemplates truth for its own sake, ideology tends to investigate and employ ideas for the expressed purpose of practical, political action, be it preservation or change. Whatever particular concerns might separate the various elements of the progressive movement, they were united in their dedication to changing American life in the name of progress.

In general, the progressives sought to reinterpret the American political order by giving the people more direct power over legislation and elected politicians, and in turn, giving administrative experts in state and federal agencies more power to regulate social and economic life. Progressive political scientists such as Woodrow Wilson and Frank Goodnow distinguished politics from administration. Politics might determine the broad ends or purposes of government, but administration, they argued, deals with detailed policy and the particular, technical means by which we secure those ends. Many progressives argued that enlightened administration could be released from the restraints of elections, separation of powers, and checks and balances to help solve political and economic problems. This progressive vision was perhaps best realized a few years later in the form of Franklin Roosevelt鈥檚 New Deal. Political scientists sometimes refer to this as the rise of the 鈥渁dministrative state.鈥�

Key to the progressive project was the attempt to regulate certain sectors of the economy and redistribute wealth and private property in the name of 聽鈥渟ocial and industrial justice.鈥� But these policies, many progressives argued, would not be enacted as long as the political process was dominated by powerful special interests and as long as the Constitution presented supposedly antidemocratic obstacles to progressive reform (e.g., representation, a difficult method of constitutional amendment, federalism, separation of powers and checks and balances, and a cumbersome legislative process).

For many, the progressive project required an explicit, direct criticism of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Progressive thinkers understood that the natural rights and social contract thinking that informed the Declaration of Independence provided the basis for a limited government constitutionalism that often seemed to frustrate contemporary progressive reform. They often claimed that these founding principles had been swept aside in the march of progressive history or by the evolutionary science of Darwinism. Educated men, they asserted, now knew that there were no transhistorical truths or natural rights that applied to all human beings everywhere and always. Liberty ought not to be seen as natural to man, but as a product of history, a convention, or a dispensation of government. Moreover, if human nature and political wisdom can be improved through historical and scientific progress, perhaps limitations on government were no longer necessary. These admittedly abstract ideas had very practical consequences for America鈥檚 political development.

This document volume deviates from more common 鈥渢extbook鈥� approaches to the study of populism and progressivism in American history, not only because it focuses on primary sources but because it takes ideas seriously. Indeed, the leaders in these movements asked Americans to think about the proper ends and means of American democracy. This is especially true of the progressive movement. Insofar as it is a reaction to the founding, any real understanding of progressivism requires that we place its ideas and institutions in conversation with those of the Founders. We must weigh, balance, and ultimately judge what among their opinions is most reasonable. Necessarily limited in its scope, the present volume can only contribute to part of that dialogue. The reader might begin to construct that dialogue, however, by pairing this volume with others in the Core Documents series, perhaps those on the American Founding and the Constitutional Convention.

I thank David Tucker for editorial advice and assistance. I am also grateful for the advice provided by two anonymous readers. In closing, I should also note that this volume is in part the result of a progressivism course I sometimes teach as a visiting faculty member in Ashland University鈥檚 MAHG program (Master of Arts in American History and Government). I wish to thank the students in those classes鈥攎ost of them teachers鈥攆or their conversation, insights, questions, and dedication to learning through primary source documents. I have also benefitted much from other faculty who have taught the course, among them Christopher Burkett, David Alvis, Ronald J. Pestritto, and William Atto. Pestritto and Atto鈥檚 excellent and frequently assigned reader on American progressivism originated in their iteration of the course. That volume should be required reading for anyone interested in the principles of American progressivism and is listed among the suggested readings in Appendix C.

Jason R. Jividen

Saint Vincent College

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This volume, however, is aimed at a different approach, as it aspires to study the presidency above and beyond the men who have been president. More precisely, this volume treats the presidency as an ongoing series of questions, questions about the president鈥檚 duty to defend the Constitution and execute the laws while at the same time leading and representing a changing constitutional democracy. Thus this volume treats the presidency as a dialogue among those who have made it. These persons include presidents, but they also include members of Congress and justices on the Supreme Court, as well as the intellectuals whose writings have shaped important changes to the office.

The volume adopts this approach because the presidency today continues to challenge analysis just as it continues to rise above biography as the best means of analysis. Does the president have the power to reclassify the immigration status of millions of persons? Can the president fire an independent counsel? What does it mean to say the president can decide whether there will be war or not? These questions are ripped from the headlines, but the headlines could be from this decade or any of several others.

This uncertainty over the length and breadth of the president鈥檚 power comes not only because the Constitution does not and cannot settle every political controversy, but also because the Constitution begins its own presentation of the presidency with a kind of puzzle. Article Two states, 鈥淭he executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.鈥� This presumes that there is a power or a set of powers that can be identified as executive even before there is a constitution. That means that either by nature or by custom, the executive power exists and can be identified. This is further suggested by the fact that Article One gives Congress only the legislative powers 鈥渉erein granted,鈥� that is, those specifically listed in the Constitution, presumably in Article One, Section 8. The problem, however, is that Article Two also goes on to list the powers given to the president in Section Two, leading many commentators to argue that Article Two should be read in the same way as Article One. Others argue that the Constitution intended the difference between Articles One and Two, and that this difference suggests that the president has all the executive power, while Congress only has those legislative powers herein granted.

This puzzle is only partially the result of the language of the text, because there is a deeper problem in designing the presidency. As the executive, the president鈥檚 job is to execute the laws. This is the first principle of separation of powers: he who makes laws cannot execute them. In the context of England, separation of powers was first and foremost a check on kingly power. In the context of the United States of the 1780鈥檚, however, separation of powers was accepted as an article of faith, but it was employed to be a check on legislative power. So the Framers of the Constitution made special effort not only to have a separate executive, but also an independent executive, that is, a president with his own electoral constituency and source of authority. But even with this innovation there remained an underlying feature of monarchical discretion. The person who executes the laws will also be the one to determine whether and when to execute the laws. Even if this does not mean the president has the power to make new law, it does reveal that the president as executive is not necessarily simply the enforcement arm of Congress. Rather, as Madison explains in Federalist No. 51, each department is given a 鈥渨ill of its own.鈥� With its own will, and with the unusual wording of the Vesting Clause at the beginning of Article Two, the presidency is an institution that forces serious reflection on what it means to live under the rule of law.

Each of the selections in this volume can be grouped with others and is meant to start a conversation about the presidency. Does the Constitution give the war power to the president or to Congress? Who elects presidents and whom do presidents represent? Can the president remove any executive branch official for any reason, or can Congress create offices that exist beyond the supervisory role of the Chief Executive? Does the Constitution give the president the power to break the law? These questions are enduring not only because we disagree about their answers but also because we disagree about how we should answer them, or rather about who should answer. This volume, then, is first and foremost an invitation to teachers and students to join the dialogue suggested by the documents. Rather than offering a series of precedents or important historical events, the documents offer opportunities for close study and will reward the instructor who can find the time for extended discussion.

It is important to note that my claim that these questions are enduring has some bearing on an important part of teaching the presidency. I have in mind the modern presidency. Several selections in this volume will invite students to reflect upon the emergence and importance of a modern presidency, but others will invite students to ask whether a deeper continuity is the more important story when it comes to the development of the presidency. That is, teachers and students should not take the modern presidency thesis for granted. Like other textbook accounts of the presidency, it has to be assessed in light of the evidence.

In closing, I am grateful to Allison Brosky, who transcribed these documents. Two anonymous readers for the press helped me decide which texts were important and pointed me to several that I had not considered. Sarah Morgan Smith and David Tucker were generous and clear in their editorial guidance. Finally, I want to thank the professors who taught me the presidency, including Michael Nelson at Rhodes College, Sid Milkis at Brandeis University, and Marc Landy and Bob Scigliano at Boston College. Thanks to these men, I have been thinking about these documents since 1992, and I hope it gives them some pleasure to see my own attempt to pull them into a single volume.

This publication was made possible through the support of a grant by the John 颅Templeton 颅Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the editors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

[1]鈥塛oodrow Wilson, Constitutional Government in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1908), 54.

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This volume and its companion, which covers American history to 1865, are part of an ongoing series of document volumes produced by the 澳门六合彩开奖直播 at Ashland University.

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Why Yankee land is at a stand,

And all in consternation;

For in the South they make a rout,

And all about Nullification.

Sing Yankee doodle doodle doo,

Yankee doodle dandy,

Our foes are few, our hearts are true,

And Jackson is quite handy.

. . .

Nat Turner’s plan¹, the daring man,

May soon reach South Carolina,

Then would the black, their bodies hack,

Cæsar, Cato, Pomp, and Dinah,

Sing Yankee doodle doodle doo,

Yankee doodle dandy.

These Southern folks, may crack their jokes,

If notherners are so handy.

. . .

Their cotton bags, may turn to rags,

If Eastern men don’t buy them,

For all their gold, they may be sold,

Or their slaves may yet destroy them.

Sing Yankee doodle doodle doo,

Yankee doodle dandy,

If their cotton bags don’t find a sale,

Their cash wont be so handy.

When we our glorious Constitution form’d,

These Southern men declined it,

But soon they found they were unarmed,

And petitioned to sign it.

Sing Yankee doodle doodle doo,

Yankee doodle dandy,

Now like the snake torpid in a brake,

They think Nullification it is handy.

. . .

Our country’s cause, our country’s laws,

We ever will defend, Sir,

And if they do not gain applause,

My song was never penned, Sir.

So, sound the trumpet, beat the drum,

Play Yankee doodle dandy,

We Jackson boys will quickly come,

And be with our rifles handy.

. . .

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In view of Mr. Cosgrave鈥檚 statement that I had read the proof of your very interesting article, I think I ought to leave it on record that I had not read the proof. I do this simply because the ordinary man would gather the impression — which I fear Cosgrave intended to convey — that as I had read the proof I endorsed all that you say. Now, as regards myself I am often interested in what you say; I sometimes agree with it and sometimes not; but I am always a hundred times more interested in some idea that you develop in the course of what you say about me than I am in what you thus say about me. You have an entire right to your opinion; and while I may or may not be interested in this opinion, I am a hundred-fold more interested in some idea which you apparently consider as incidental. Indeed, often I have been so wholly uninterested in your view of me, and so genuinely interested in your view of something else which you have developed in connection with the former, that I have simply forgot that you were expressing any view of me, and concentrated my attention on the other matter. It is a little difficult for me to express myself clearly without seeming to be slightly uncomplimentary. I know you will acquit me of any such intention. I merely wish to make it clear that I am not to be held as acquiescing in what you say because I do not express dissent from it. To me, for instance, it seems simply nonsense — a nonsense not much above the average spiritualistic s茅ance type, or, to use another simile, not much above the average long-haired and wiled eyed violent socialist type, or the silly, self-advertising parlor socialist of the Robert Hunter type — to say that I am not interested in fighting the Evil or do not see the great underlying cause of it; whereas others, by which I suppose you mean La Follette, do see it. When you express this view either in conversation or writing I do not contradict you or comment upon it because it seems to me a mere foolish vagary on your part, and I pass it by to deal with the points where you really do expressed needed truths that have not been exprest as well. For instance, in this article, if I gather aright what you mean, you contend that Taft and I are good people of limited vision who fight against specific evils with no idea of fighting against the fundamental evil; whereas La Follette is engaged in a fight against the “fundamental” evil. Now, I am really flattered by your having as good an opinion of me as you have. I am pleased at it; and it would never enter my head to point out where I think it is erroneous, if it were not that apparently I am considered as having endorsed your views. Not only I do not endorse them, but I think them on this point childish. Your attitude is to my mind precisely the attitude of the man who patronizes a good country doctor because the latter admits that he cannot cure all disease nor give a specific remedy against all “Disease;” whereas when you prefer La Follette as a type, I feel just as if you held up as better than this country doctor the man who blazons out that he has a particular kind of vegetable pill which will cure old age, consumption, broken legs, and every other ill to which flesh is heir. You can say quite truthfully that the country doctor is fighting evils, not “the Evil;” you can also say that the other individual is showing real “leadership” and is going to put a stop not only to “evils” but to all “Evil;” but if you said this you would be saying something that was foolish. The same is absolutely as true of political life as of medical life. It is only the quack who will tell you that he has a cure for everything, whether in the world of medicine and surgery, in the world of politics, or in the world of social and industrial endeavor. For instance, you speak of La Follette as standing for the great principle of really representative government, and you seem to imply that the application of this principle would put a stop to all evils. It will do nothing of the kind, and if you proceed upon the assumption that it will, you will yourself work far-reaching harm and will work it in a foolish manner. I have made a pretty careful study of communities in which the initiative and referendum exist, as compared with communities which live under representative institutions, and the difference between them in point of average welfare is so small that I am unable to get up any special enthusiasm for one side or the other. The system of direct primaries under the law works a slight betterment over existing conditions. That is, it works, I think, on the whole a very slight improvement over the other system, but it is very slight and consists, on the whole, of a preponderance of slight betterments over slight hurts. An absolutely representative government in the Yazoo would bring about the condition of Haiti. You must have a pretty robust faith in names and theories if you think the conditions of Haiti satisfactory. Absolutely representative government in the city of New York would mean the very most trifling improvement over present conditions unless with it went hand in hand the uplifting of the conscience of the average man. I am trying, however feebly, to make men better, as well as to get better laws, better administration of the laws; and the first is by far the most important. Graft obtains in little things as well as in the big grafter; and I wish to fight against graft as such, and attack can never result in any real betterment. I am fighting evil in the mass the only in which it is possible to fight it, when I fight different evils in the concrete. When you speak of “the system” you use a word that has a certain convenience and that appeals more or less to the imagination; but when you begin practically to speak of fighting “the system,” as if it meant anything else than doing a man鈥檚 duty according to the old standards, you simply lapse back into the condition of those religious enthusiasts of the days of Cromwell who announced that they wisht to fight “principalities and powers” and that they were for the “fifth monarchy, the monarchy of Jesus,” and that it was useless to try to improve humanity unless by a radical change and the installation of the “fifth monarchy.” This kind of talk did not indicate advanced morality nearly as much as it indicated an unsound mind, and the same statement applies exactly to those who use large phrases to cover up utter vagueness of thought when they come to deal with the political and social evils of today. La Follette has been three years in the Senate. His “plan” which you quote in the article referred to consists so far as it is good of a string of platitudes, and, practically, to adopt it wouldn鈥檛 mean anything. He talks about the railroads; but as far as action goes, he has not helped at all, since he came to the Senate, in the great work we have actually done towards getting control over the railroads. He has rather hindered this work. Like Tillman he has made great personal gains by what he has done as Senator, because he has advertised himself so that both he and Tillman are very popular in chautauquas, where the people listen to them both, sometimes getting ideas that are right, more often getting ideas that are wrong, and on the whole not getting any ideas at all and simply feeling the kind of pleasurable excitement that they would at the sight of a two-headed calf, or of a trick performed on a spotted circus horse. I tried faithfully to work with La Follette, just as I tried faithfully to work with Aldrich. Neither has been of much use in public life during the last three years, each has often worked detriment. Now and then I have been able to work a little with one, and now and then to work with the other; but the deification of one is just as absurd as the deification of the other — I might add just as absurd as the diabolization of one or the other. The men who have done good in the twenty-five years have tried to realize them in plain, practical fashion, and who have tried to do each his duty as the day came, and to fight each evil as they found it arise without bothering their heads as to the “ultimate” evil. I believe in the men who take the next step; not those who theorize about the 200th step. Again my experience has been that might little good comes from the individual who is fighting “the system” in the abstract; just a mighty little good comes from the church member who is fighting Beelzebub in the abstract. I care nothing either for the reformer or the church member who does not try to do good in the concrete, and who is not ashamed to cover his deficiencies in particular concrete cases by vague mouthings about general abstract principles which are as nebulous in his mind as in the minds of others. It was Lincoln and Oliver P. Morton and the men like them who really saved the Union and abolished slavery, and relatively thereto the part was insignificant which was played by the Wendell Phillips and the Garrisons and the others who lied to think of themselves as “leaders,” and to construct an imaginary plan for the perfection of everything which could not even be defined, and which could not have worked in one smallest part if there had been any attempt to realize it.

If you will come down to see me I will go over all this more at length with you, and for once, instead of pasing by or brushing aside what you say about me or about anyone else with which I disagree, I will tell you just what I do disagree with. Sincerely yours

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Salaam Alaikum. I suppose I should take time to explain what I mean when I say “Salaam Alaikum.” Actually, it鈥檚 an expression that means “peace,” and it鈥檚 one that is always given to one鈥檚 brother or to one鈥檚 sister. It only means “peace be unto you.” So, when I say “A Salaam Alaikum” or “Salaam Alaikum” and others reply, “Alaikum Salaam,” why, they鈥檙e just returning the peace. It means we鈥檙e all at peace with one another, as brothers and sisters.

Now, brothers and sisters, first I want to thank those of you who have taken the time to come through that snow, which almost turned me back myself, and come out where we can try and put our heads together and get a better understanding of what is going on, what we鈥檝e been through and what we鈥檙e all concerned about. As Sister Sharon has already pointed out, and I think she did so beautifully, during recent years our people have been struggling for some kind of relief from the conditions we鈥檙e confronted by.

When you go back over the period of struggle, I think it would be agreed that we鈥檝e gone through different patterns of struggle, that we鈥檝e struggled in different ways. Each way that we tried never produced what we were looking for. If it had been productive, we would have continued along that same way. We鈥檝e tried probably more different methods than any people. But at the same time, I think we鈥檝e tried more wrong methods than any other people, because most others have gotten more freedom than we have. Everywhere you look, people get their freedom faster than we do. They get more respect and recognition faster than we do. We get promises, but we never get the real thing. And primarily because we have yet to learn the proper tactic or strategy or method to bring freedom into existence.

I think that one of the things that has caused our people in this country to try so many methods is that times have changed so rapidly. What would be proper ten years ago would not have been proper seven years ago, or five years ago, or three years ago. Times change so quickly that if you and I don鈥檛 keep up with the times, we鈥檒l find ourselves with an umbrella in our hand, over our head, when the sun is out. Or we鈥檒l find ourselves standing in the rain, with the umbrella inside the door. If we don鈥檛 keep up with what鈥檚 going on, we will not be able to display the type of intelligence that will show the world we know what time it is and that we know what is happening around us . . . .

Several persons have asked me recently, since I鈥檝e been back, “What is your program?” I purposely, to this day, have not in any way mentioned what our program is, because there will come a time when we will unveil it so that everybody will understand it. Policies change, and programs change, according to time. But objective never changes. You might change your method of achieving the objective, but the objective never changes. Our objective is complete freedom, complete justice, complete equality, by any means necessary. That never changes. Complete and immediate recognition and respect as human beings, that doesn鈥檛 change, that鈥檚 what all of us want. I don鈥檛 care what you belong to鈥� you still want that, recognition and respect as a human being. But you have changed your methods from time to time on how you go about getting it. The reason you change your method is that you have to change your method according to time and conditions that prevail. And one of the conditions that prevails on this earth right now, that we know too little about, is our relationship with the freedom struggle of people all over the world.

Here in America, we have always thought that we were struggling by ourselves, and most Afro-Americans will tell you just that鈥攖hat we鈥檙e a minority. By thinking we鈥檙e a minority, we struggle like a minority. We struggle like we鈥檙e an underdog. We struggle like all of the odds are against us. This type of struggle takes place only because we don鈥檛 yet know where we fit in the scheme of things. We鈥檝e been maneuvered out of a position where we could rightly know and understand where we fit into the scheme of things. It鈥檚 impossible for you and me to know where we stand until we look around on this entire earth. Not just look around in Harlem or New York, or Mississippi, or America鈥攚e have got to look all around this earth. We don鈥檛 know where we stand until, we know where America stands. You don鈥檛 know where you stand in America until you know where America stands in the world. We don鈥檛 know where you and I stand in this context, known to us as America, until we know where America stands in the world context.

When you and I are inside of America and look at America, she looks big and bad and invincible. Oh, yes, and when we approach her in that context, we approach her as beggars, with our hat in our hands. As Toms, actually, only in the twentieth-century sense, but still as Toms. While if we understand what鈥檚 going on this earth and what鈥檚 going on in the world today, and fit America into that context, we find out she鈥檚 not so bad, after all; she鈥檚 not very invincible. And when you find out she鈥檚 not invincible, you don鈥檛 approach her like you鈥檙e dealing with someone who鈥檚 invincible.

As a rule, up to now, the strategy of America has been to tuck all of our leaders up into her dress, and besiege them with money, with prestige, with praise, and make them jump, and tell them what to tell us. And they always tell us we鈥檙e the underdog, and that we don鈥檛 have a chance, and that we should do it nonviolently and carefully; otherwise, we鈥檒l get hurt or we鈥檒l get wasted. We don鈥檛 buy that.

Number one, we want to know what are we? How did we get to be what we are? Where did we come from? How did we come from there? Who did we leave behind? Where was it that we left them behind, and what are they doing over there where we used to be? This is something that we have not been told. We have been brought over here and isolated-you know the funniest thing about that: they accuse us of introducing “separation” and “isolation.” No one is more isolated than you and I. There鈥檚 no system on earth more capable of thoroughly separating and isolating a people than this system that they call the democratic system; and you and I are the best proof of it, the best example of it. We were separated from our people, and have been isolated here for a long time.

So thoroughly has this been done to us that now we don鈥檛 even know that there is somebody else that looks like we do. When we see them, we look at them like they鈥檙e strangers. And when we see somebody that doesn鈥檛 look anything like us, we call them our friends. That鈥檚 a shame. It shows you what has been done to us. Yes, I mean our own people鈥檞e see our people come here who look exactly like we do, our twins, can鈥檛 tell them apart, and we say, “Those are foreigners.” Yet we鈥檙e getting our heads busted trying to snuggle up to somebody who not only doesn鈥檛 look like us, but doesn鈥檛 even smell like us.

So you can see the importance of these meetings on Sunday nights during the past two or three weeks, and for a couple more weeks. It is not so much to spell out any program; you can鈥檛 give a people a program until they realize they need one, and until they realize that all existing programs aren鈥檛 programs that are going to produce productive results. So what we would like to do on Sunday nights is to go into our problem, and just analyze and analyze and analyze; and question things that you don鈥檛 understand, so we can at least try and get a better picture of what faces us.

I, for one, believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what it is that confronts them, and the basic causes that produce it, they鈥檒l create their own program; and when the people create a program, you get action. When these “leaders” create programs, you get no action. The only time you see them is when the people are exploding. Then the leaders are shot into the situation and told to control things. You can鈥檛 show me a leader that has set off an explosion. No, they come and contain the explosion. They say, “Don鈥檛 get rough, you know, do the smart thing.” This is their role 鈥� they鈥檙e there just to restrain you and me, to restrain the struggle, to keep it in a certain groove, and not let it get out of control. Whereas you and I don鈥檛 want anybody to keep us from getting out of control. We want to get out of control. We want to smash anything that gets in our way that doesn鈥檛 belong there.

Listen to the last part of what I said: I didn鈥檛 just say we want to smash anything that gets in our way. I said we want to smash anything that gets in our way that doesn鈥檛 belong there. You see, I had to give you the whole thing, because when you read it, you鈥檒l hear we鈥檙e going to smash up everybody. No, I didn鈥檛 say that. I said we鈥檒l smash up anything that gets in the way that doesn鈥檛 belong there. I mean that. If it doesn鈥檛 belong there, it鈥檚 worthy to be smashed. This country practices that 鈥� power. This country smashes anything that gets in its way. It crushes anything that gets in its way. And since we鈥檙e Americans, they tell us, well, we鈥檒l do it the American way. We鈥檒l smash anything that gets in our way.

This is the type of philosophy that we want to express among our people. We don鈥檛 need to give them a program, not yet. First, give them something to think about. If we give them something to think about, and start them thinking in a way that they should think, they鈥檒l see through all this camouflage that鈥檚 going on right now. It鈥檚 just a show 鈥� the result of a script written by somebody else. The people will take that script and tear it up and write one for themselves. And you can bet that when you write the script for yourself, you鈥檙e always doing something different than you鈥檇 be doing if you followed somebody else鈥檚 script.

So, brothers and sisters, the thing that you and I must have an understanding of is the role that鈥檚 being played in world affairs today, number one, by the continent of Africa; number two, by the people on that continent; number three, by those of us who are related to the people on that continent, but who, by some quirk in our own history, find ourselves today here in the Western hemisphere. Always bear that in mind that our being in the Western hemisphere differs from anyone else, because everyone else here came voluntarily. Everyone that you see in this part of the world got on a boat and came here voluntarily; whether they were immigrants or what have you, they came here voluntarily. So they don鈥檛 have any real squawk, because they got what they were looking for. But you and I can squawk because we didn鈥檛 come here voluntarily. We didn鈥檛 ask to be brought here. We were brought here forcibly, against. our will, and in chains. And at. no time since we have been here, have they even acted like they wanted us here. At no time. At no time have they even tried to pretend that we were brought here to be citizens. Why, they don鈥檛 even pretend. So why should we pretend?

Look at the continent of Africa today and see what position it occupies on this earth, and you realize that there鈥檚 a tussle going on between East and West. It used to be between America and the West and Russia, but they鈥檙e not tussling with each other any more. Kennedy made a satellite out of Russia. He put Khrushchev in his pocket; yes, he did 鈥� lost him his job. The tussle now is between America and China. In the camp of the West, America is foremost. Most other Western nations are satellites to America. England is an American satellite. All of them are satellites, perhaps with the exception of France. France wants America to be her satellite. You never can tell what the future might bring. Better nations than this have fallen, if you read history. Most of the European Communist nations are still satelliting around Russia. But in Asia, China is the center of power.

Among Asian countries, whether they are communist, socialist 鈥� you don鈥檛 find any capitalist countries over there too much nowadays. Almost every one of the countries that has gotten independence has devised some kind of socialistic system, and this is no accident. This is another reason why I say that you and I here in America 鈥� who are looking for a job, who are looking for better housing, looking for a better education 鈥� before you start trying to be incorporated, or integrated, or disintegrated, into this capitalistic system, should look over there and find out what are the people who have gotten their freedom adopting to provide themselves with better housing and better education and better food and better clothing.

None of them are adopting the capitalistic system because they realize they can鈥檛. You can鈥檛 operate a capitalistic system unless you are vulturistic; you have to have someone else鈥檚 blood to suck to be a capitalist. You show me a capitalist, I鈥檒l show you a bloodsucker. He cannot be anything but a bloodsucker if he鈥檚 going to be a capitalist. He鈥檚 got to get it from somewhere other than himself, and that鈥檚 where he gets it–from somewhere or someone other than himself. So, when we look at the African continent, when we look at the trouble that鈥檚 going on between East and West, we find that the nations in Africa are developing socialistic systems to solve their problems.

There鈥檚 one thing that Martin Luther King mentioned at the Armory the other night, which I thought was most significant. I hope he really understood what he was saying. He mentioned that while he was in some of those Scandinavian countries he saw no poverty. There was no unemployment, no poverty. Everyone was getting education, everyone had decent housing, decent whatever 鈥� they needed to exist. But why did he mention those countries on his list as different?

This is the richest country on earth and there鈥檚 poverty, there鈥檚 bad housing, there鈥檚 slums, there鈥檚 inferior education. And this is the richest country on earth. Now, you know, if those countries that are poor can come up with a solution to their problems so that there鈥檚 no unemployment, then instead of you running downtown picketing city hall, you should stop and find out what they do over there to solve their problems. This is why the man doesn鈥檛 want you and me to look beyond Harlem or beyond the shores of America. As long as you don鈥檛 know what鈥檚 happening on the outside, you鈥檒l be all messed up dealing with this man on the inside. I mean what they use to solve the problem is not capitalism. What they are using to solve their problem in Africa and Asia is not capitalism. So what you and I should do is find out what they are using to get rid of poverty and all the other negative characteristics of a rundown society.

Africa is strategically located, geographically between East and West; it鈥檚 the most valuable piece of property involved in the struggle between East and West. You can鈥檛 get to the East without going past it, and can鈥檛 get from the East to West without going past it. It sits right there between all of them. It sits snuggled into a nest between Asia and Europe; it can reach either one. None of the natural resources that are needed in Europe that they get from Asia can get to Europe without coming either around Africa, over Africa, or in between the Suez Canal which is sitting at the tip of Africa. She can cut off Europe鈥檚 bread. She can put Europe to sleep overnight, just like that. Because she鈥檚 in a position to; the African continent is in a position to do this. But they want you and me to think Africa is a jungle, of no value, of no consequence. Because they also know that if you knew how valuable it was, you鈥檇 realize why they鈥檙e over there killing our people. And you鈥檇 realize that it鈥檚 not for some kind of humanitarian purpose or reason.

Also, Africa as a continent is important because of its tropical climate. It鈥檚 so heavily vegetated you can take any section of Africa and use modern agricultural methods and turn that section alone into the breadbasket for the world. Almost any country over there can feed the whole continent, if it only had access to people who had the technical know-how to bring into that area modern methods of agriculture. It鈥檚 rich. A jungle is only a place that鈥檚 heavily vegetated–the soil is so rich and the climate is so good that everything grows, and it doesn鈥檛 grow in season 鈥� it grows all the time. All the time is the season. That means it can grow anything, produce anything.

Added to its richness and its strategic position geographically is the fact of the existence of the Suez Canal and the Strait of Gibraltar. Those two narrow straits can cut off from Europe anything and everything Europe needs. All of the oil that runs Europe goes through the Suez Canal, up the Mediterranean Sea to places like Greece and Italy and Southern Spain and France and along through there; or through the Strait of Gibraltar and around on into England. And they need it. They need access through the Suez. When Nasser took over the Suez, they almost died in Europe. It scared them to death–why? Because Egypt is in Africa, in fact, Egypt is in both Africa and Asia . . . .

Before the Suez Canal was built, it was all one, you couldn鈥檛 really make a distinction between Africa and Asia. It was all one. When President Nasser took the Suez Canal, that meant that for the first time the Suez Canal was under the complete jurisdiction of an African nation, and it meant that other nations had to cater to this African nation if they wanted to survive, if they didn鈥檛 want their oil and other sources of supply cut off. Immediately this had an effect on European attitudes and European economic measures. They began to try and devise new means, new routes, to get the things that they needed.

Another reason the continent is so important is because of its gold. It has some of the largest deposits of gold on earth, and diamonds. Not only the diamonds you put on your. finger and in your ear, but industrial diamonds, diamonds that are needed to make machines 鈥� machines that can鈥檛 function or can鈥檛 run unless they have these diamonds. These industrial diamonds play a major role in the entire industrialization of the European nations, and without these diamonds their industry would fall.

You and I usually know of diamonds for rings 鈥� because those are the only diamonds we get close to, or the only diamonds within our line of thinking. We don鈥檛 think in terms of diamonds for other uses. Or baseball diamonds 鈥� some of us only get that far.

Not only diamonds, but also cobalt. Cobalt is one of the most valuable minerals on this earth today, and I think Africa is one of the only places where it is found. They use it in cancer treatment, plus they use it in this nuclear field that you鈥檝e heard so much about. Cobalt and uranium 鈥� the largest deposits are right there on the African continent. And this is what the man is after. The man is after keeping you over here worrying about a cup of coffee, while he鈥檚 over there in your motherland taking control over minerals that have so much value they make the world go around. While you and I are still walking around over here, yes, trying to drink some coffee 鈥� with a cracker.

It鈥檚 one of the largest sources of iron and bauxite and lumber and even oil, and Western industry needs all of these minerals in order to survive. All of these natural minerals are needed by the Western industrialists in order for their industry to keep running at the clip that it鈥檚 been used to. Can we prove it? Yes. You know that France lost her French West African possessions, Belgium lost the Congo, England lost Nigeria and Ghana and some of the other English-speaking areas; France also lost Algeria, or the Algerians took Algeria.

As soon as these European powers lost their African possessions, Belgium had an economic crisis 鈥� the same year she turned the Congo loose. She had to rearrange her entire economy and her economic methods had to be revised, because she had lost possession of the source of most of her raw materials 鈥� raw materials that she got almost free, almost with no price or output whatsoever. When she got into a position where she didn鈥檛 have access to these free raw materials anymore, it affected her economy. It affected the French economy. It affected the British economy. It drove all of these European countries to the point where they had to come together and form what鈥檚 known as the European Common Market. Prior to that, you wouldn鈥檛 hear anything about a European Common Market.

Being the gateway to Southwest Africa, Southern Rhodesia, Basutoland, Swaziland, and South Africa, the Congo is a country on the African continent which is so strategically located geographically that if it were to fall into the hands of a real dyed-in-the-wool African nationalist, he could then make it possible for African soldiers to train in the Congo for the purpose of invading Angola. When they invade Angola, that means Angola must fall, because there are more Africans than there are Portuguese, and they just couldn鈥檛 control Angola any longer. And if the Congo fell into good hands, other than Tshombe, then it would mean that Angola would fall, Southern Rhodesia would fall, Southwest Africa would fall and South Africa would fall. And that鈥檚 the only way they would fall. When these countries fall, it would mean that the source of raw material, natural resources, some of the richest mineral deposits on earth, would then be taken away from the European economy. And without free access to this, the economy of Europe wouldn鈥檛 be worth two cents. All of your European countries would be of no more importance than a country like Norway, which is all right for Norwegians, but has no influence beyond that. It鈥檚 just another country stuck up some place in the northern part, like Sweden and some of those places. Every European country would be just as insignificant as the smallest insignificant country in Europe right now 鈥� if they lost the rest of Africa. Because the rest of Africa that鈥檚 still colonized is the part of the African continent that鈥檚 still backing up the European economy. And if the economy of Europe was to sink any farther, it would really wash away the American economy. American economy can never be any stronger than the European economy because both of them are one. It鈥檚 one and the same economy. They are brothers.

I say this because it is necessary for you and me to understand what is at stake. You can鈥檛 understand what is going on in Mississippi if you don鈥檛 understand what is going on in the Congo. And you can鈥檛 really be interested in what鈥檚 going on in Mississippi if you鈥檙e not also interested in what鈥檚 going on in the Congo. They鈥檙e both the same. The same interests are at stake. The same sides are drawn up, the same schemes are at work in the Congo that are at work in Mississippi. The same stake 鈥� no difference whatsoever.

Another frightening thing for this continent and the European continent is the fact that the Africans are trying to industrialize. One of the most highly industrialized African nations is Egypt. They have had a limited source of power up to now, but they are building a dam in upper Egypt, where the black Egyptians live. I was there, I took some pictures– I鈥檓 going to show you some movies, probably on the first Sunday in January, a week from next Sunday. The Aswan Dam is something that everybody should see. The Aswan is being built on the Nile in the heart of the desert, surrounded by mountains. One of the most outstanding things about this dam isn鈥檛 so much its miraculous technical aspects, but the human aspects.

When you build a dam in an area where there鈥檚 already vegetation, that鈥檚 one thing. But this dam is being built in an area where there鈥檚 no vegetation. Once this river is dammed, it will create a lake in the middle of the desert which will set up a water cycle 鈥� rain, you know, clouds, and all of that stuff 鈥� and it will turn the desert into a civilization, into a very fertile valley. In order for this artificial lake to be built in that way, from that dam, it washed away the homes of the Nubians–people who look just like you and I do, who have been living there for thousands of years. They had to replace them, they had to transplant them from where they were living for thousands of years to another area.

This in itself was an operation that would hold you spellbound if you could see all the aspects of it. It meant taking a people from one place and putting them in another place. The place where they had been was antiquated. Their methods, their customs, their homes were thousands of years old. But overnight these people, who lived that far in the past, were taken to new cities that had been built by the government. Modern cities, where they had modern schools, modern rooms in which to live, and modern hospitals. When you go into these new cities that are Nubian villages, the first thing you always see is a mosque. Their religion is Islam, they鈥檙e Muslims.

The Egyptian government, the revolutionary government, differs from most revolutions in that it鈥檚 one of the few revolutions that have taken place where religion has not been minimized. In most revolutions, religion is immediately de-emphasized. Eventually that revolution loses something. Always. But the thing about the Egyptian revolution was that it never de-emphasized the importance of religion. In these new cities, the first thing they build is a mosque, so people can practice their religion. Then they build schools so the people can be educated free; and then they build hospitals. They believe that the religious aspect keeps the people spiritually and morally balanced, and then everyone should have the best education and free hospitalization.

These new villages actually reflect the whole motive behind the Egyptian revolution. I found this quite interesting. I was there and could study it for two months. It鈥檚 a balanced revolution. I go for revolution, but revolution should always do something for the people and it should always keep them balanced. You don鈥檛 find anybody that鈥檚 more revolutionary than those people over there in Egypt; they鈥檙e revolutionary, they鈥檙e involved in every revolution that鈥檚 going on on the African continent right now.

So the Aswan Dam creates enough additional power to make it possible to step up or speed up the industrialization of that particular African nation. And as their industrialization is stepped up, it means that they can produce their own cars, their own tractors, their own tools, their own machinery, plus a lot of other things. Not only Egypt, but Ghana too. Ghana is building a dam, they鈥檙e damming the Volta River. There鈥檚 the Volta High Dam, and it鈥檚 being built for the purpose of increasing the power potential of Ghana, so that Ghana also can increase its industrial output.

As these African nations get in a position to increase their own power and to industrialize, what does it mean? It means that where they now are a market for American goods and America鈥檚 finished products, and a market for European finished products, when they鈥檙e able to finish their own products, they will be able to get their products cheaper because they鈥檙e putting their own raw materials into the finished products. Now the raw materials are taken from Africa, shipped all the way to Europe, used to feed the machines of the Europeans, and make jobs for them, and then turned around and sold back to the Africans as finished products. But when the African nations become industrialized, they can take their own products and stick them in the machines and finish them into whatever they want. Then they can live cheaper. The whole system will be a system with a high standard of living but a cheaper standard of living.

This standard of living automatically will threaten the standard of living in Europe because it will cut off the European market. European factories can鈥檛 produce unless they have some place to market the products. American factories can鈥檛 produce unless she has some place to market her products. It is for this reason that the European nations in the past have kept the nations in Latin America and in Africa and in Asia from becoming industrial powers. They keep the machinery and the ability to produce and manufacture limited to Europe and limited to America. Then this puts America and the Europeans in a position to control the economy of all other nations and keep them living at a low standard.

These people are beginning to see that. The Africans see it, the Latin Americans see it, the Asians see it. So when you hear them talking about freedom, they鈥檙e not talking about a cup of coffee with a cracker. No, they鈥檙e talking about getting in a position to feed themselves and clothe themselves and make these other things that, when you have them, make life worth living. So this is the way you and I have to understand the world revolution that鈥檚 taking place right now.

When you understand the motive behind the world revolution, the drive behind the African and the drive behind the Asian, then you get some of that drive yourself. You鈥檒l be driving for real. The man downtown knows the difference between when you鈥檙e driving for real and when you鈥檙e driving not for real. As long as you keep asking about coffee, he doesn鈥檛 have to worry about you; he can send you to Brazil. So these dams being set up over there in different parts of the continent are putting African nations in a position to have more power, to become more industrial and also to be self-sustained and self-sufficient.

In line with that: In the past it was the world bank, controlled again by Europeans and from Europe, that subsidized most of the effort that was being made by African nations and Asian nations to develop underdeveloped areas. But the African nations are now getting together and forming their own bank, the African bank. The details of it aren鈥檛 as much in my mind as I would like them to be, but when I was in Lagos, Nigeria, they were having a meeting there. It was among African bankers and African nations, and the Organization of African Unity, which is the best thing that has ever happened on the African continent, had taken up as part of its program the task of getting all of the African nations to pool their efforts in creating an African bank, so that there would be an internal bank in the internal African structure to which underdeveloped African nations can turn for financial assistance in projects that they鈥檙e trying to undertake that would be beneficial to the whole continent . . . .

Politically, Africa as a continent, and the African people as a people, have the largest representation of any continent in the United Nations. Politically, the Africans are in a more strategic position and in a stronger position whenever a conference is taking place at the international level. Today, power is international, real power is international; today, real power is not local. The only kind of power that can help you and me is international power, not local power. Any power that鈥檚 local, if it鈥檚 real power, is only a reflection or a part of that international power. If you think you鈥檝e got some power, and it isn鈥檛 in some way tied into that international thing, brother, don鈥檛 get too far out on a limb.

If your power base is only here, you can forget it. You can鈥檛 build a power base here. You have to have a power base among brothers and sisters. You have to have your power base among people who have something in common with you. They have to have some kind of cultural identity, or there has to be some relationship between you and your power base. When you build a power base in this country, you鈥檙e building it where you aren鈥檛 in any way related to what you build it on. No, you have to have that base somewhere else. You can work here, but you鈥檇 better put your base somewhere else. Don鈥檛 put it in this man鈥檚 hand. Any kind of organization that is based here can鈥檛 be an effective organization. Anything you鈥檝e got going for you, if the base is here, is not going to be effective. Your and my base must be at home, and this is not at home.

When you see that the African nations at the international level comprise the largest representative body and the largest force of any continent, why, you and I would be out of our minds not to identify with that power bloc. We would be out of our minds, we would actually be traitors to ourselves, to be reluctant or fearful to identify with people with whom we have so much in common. If it was a people who had nothing to offer, nothing to contribute to our well-being, you might be justified, even though they looked like we do; if there was no contribution to be made, you might be justified. But when you have people who look exactly like you, and you are catching hell, to boot, and you still are reluctant or hesitant or slow to identify with them, then you need to catch hell, yes. You deserve all the hell you get.

The African representatives, coupled with the Asians and Arabs, form a bloc that鈥檚 almost impossible for anybody to contend with. The African-Asian-Arab bloc was the bloc that started the real independence movement among the oppressed peoples of the world. The f i r s t coming together of that bloc was at the Bandung conference … .

To show you the power of that bloc and the results that they鈥檝e gotten and how well the Europeans know it: On the African continent, when I was there, one thing I noticed was the twenty-four-hour-a-day effort being made in East Africa to turn the African against the Asian; and in West Africa to turn the African against the Arab; and in parts of Africa where there are no Asians or Arabs, to turn the Muslim African against the Christian African. When you go over there and study this thing, you can see that it is not something that鈥檚 indigenous, it鈥檚 not a divisive situation that鈥檚 indigenous to the African himself. But someone realizes that the power of the oppressed black, brown, red and yellow people began at the Bandung conference, which was a coalition between the Arab and the Asian and the African, and how much pressure they鈥檝e been able to put on the oppressor since then.

So, very shrewdly they have moved in. Now when you travel on the continent, you see the African in East Africa is being sicked on the Asian 鈥� there鈥檚 a division taking place. And in West Africa he鈥檚 being sicked on the Arab — there鈥檚 a division taking place. And where the oppressor, this ingenious oppressor, 鈥� diabolically ingenious 鈥� where he hasn鈥檛 found an Asian to sic the African on, or an Arab to sic the African on, he uses the Muslim African against the Christian African. Or the one that believes in religion against the one that doesn鈥檛 believe in religion. But the main thing he鈥檚 doing is causing this division, division, division to in some way keep the African, the Arab and the Asian from beating up on him.

He鈥檚 doing the same thing in British Guiana. He鈥檚 got the black Guianians down there fighting against the so-called Indians. He鈥檚 got them fighting each other. They didn鈥檛 fight each other when the British were there in full control. If you notice, as long as the place was an old-style colony, no fight. But as soon as the British are supposed to be moving away, the black one starts fighting the red one. Why? This is no accident. If they didn鈥檛 fight before, they don鈥檛 need to fight now. There鈥檚 no reason for it. But their fighting each other keeps the man on top. The fact that he can turn one against the other keeps the man on top.

He does the same thing with you and me right here in Harlem. All day long. I turned on the radio last night. I heard them say, every hour on the hour, that James Farmer, the head of CORE, was going to Africa, Egypt and Israel. And they said the reason he was going was because he wanted to correct false statements made by black nationalist leader Malcolm X when he was over there. If I hadn鈥檛 had this experience before, immediately I would have started blasting Farmer. But I called him up today. He said he didn鈥檛 know what they were talking about. But why do they do it? They do it to make us fight each other. As long as we鈥檙e fighting each other, we can鈥檛 get at the man who should be fought against from the start. Do you understand? Once we see the strategy that they use at the international level, then we can better understand the strategy that they use at the national and at the local level.

Lastly, I would like to point out my understanding of what I think is the position taken in African policy. Their policy, in a nutshell, is positive neutrality, non-alignment. They don鈥檛 line up either way. Africa is for the Africans. And the Africans are for the Africans. The policy of the independent African states, by and large, is positive neutrality, non-alignment. Egypt is a good example. They take from East and West and don鈥檛 take sides with either one. Nasser took everything Russia could give him, and then put all the communists in jail. Not that I mean the communists should necessarily have been put in jail. For the communist is a man, a capitalist is a man, and a socialist is a man. Well, if all of them are men, why should they be put in jail, unless one of them is committing a crime? And if being a communist or being a capitalist or being a socialist is a crime, first you have to study which of those systems is the most criminal. And then you鈥檒l be slow to say which one should be in jail.

I cite that as an example just to show what this positive neutrality means: If you want to help us, help us; we鈥檙e still not with you. If you have a contribution to make to our development, do it. But that doesn鈥檛 mean we鈥檙e with you or against you. We鈥檙e neutral. We鈥檙e for ourselves. Whatever is good for us, that鈥檚 what we鈥檙e interested in. That doesn鈥檛 mean we鈥檙e against you. But it does mean we鈥檙e for ourselves.

This is what you and I need to learn. You and I need to learn how to be positively neutral. You and I need to learn how to be non-aligned. And if you and I ever study the science of non-alignment, then you鈥檒l find out that there鈥檚 more power in non-alignment than there is alignment. In this country, it鈥檚 impossible for you to be aligned–with either party. Either party that you align yourself with is suicide. Because both parties are criminal. Both parties are responsible for the criminal condition that exists. So you can鈥檛 align yourself with a party.

What you can do is get registered so that you have power 鈥� political potential. When you register your political potential, that means your gun is loaded. But just because it鈥檚 loaded, you don鈥檛 have to shoot until you see a target that will be beneficial to you. If you want a duck, don鈥檛 shoot when you see a bear; wait till you see a duck. And if you want a bear, don鈥檛 shoot when see a duck; wait till you see a bear. Wait till you see what you wan 鈥� hen take aim and shoot!

What they do with you and me is tell us, “Register and vote.” Don鈥檛 register and vote 鈥� register! That鈥檚 intelligent. Don鈥檛 register and vote 鈥� you can vote for a dummy, you can vote for a crook, you can vote for another who鈥檇 want to exploit you. “Register” means being in a position to take political action any time, any place and in any manner that would be beneficial to you and me; being in a position to take advantage of our position. Then we鈥檒l be in a position to be respected and recognized. But as soon as you get registered, and you want to be a Democrat or a Republican, you are aligning. And once you are aligning, you have no bargaining power 鈥� none whatsoever.

We鈥檝e got a program we are going to launch, which will involve the absolute maximum registering of as many of our people as we can. But they will be registered as independents. And by being registered as independents, it means we can do whatever is necessary, wherever it鈥檚 necessary, and whenever the time comes. Do you understand?

So, I say in my conclusion, we have a lady that I want to introduce you to, who I think is one of the best freedom fighters in America today. She鈥檚 from Mississippi, and you鈥檝e got to be a freedom fighter to even live in Mississippi. You鈥檝e got to be a freedom fighter to live anywhere in this country, but especially Mississippi. This woman has been in the forefront of the struggle in Mississippi. I was on a program with her this afternoon. . . .

As I mentioned today 鈥� and you鈥檒l probably read about it tomorrow; they鈥檒l blow it up, and out of context 鈥� what we need in this country (and I believe it with all my heart, and with all my mind, and with all my soul) is the same type of Mau Mau here that they had over there in Kenya. Don鈥檛 you ever be ashamed of the Mau Mau. They鈥檙e not to be ashamed of. They are to be proud of. Those brothers were freedom fighters. Not only brothers, there were sisters over there. I met a lot of them. They鈥檙e brave. They hug you and kiss you 鈥� glad to see you. In fact, if they were over here, they鈥檇 get this problem straightened up just like that.

I read a little story once, and Mau Mau proved it. I read a story once where someone asked some group of people how many of them wanted freedom. They all put up their hand. Think there were about 300 of them. Then the person says, “Well, how many of you are ready to kill anybody who gets in your way for freedom?” 澳门六合彩开奖直播 fifty put up their hands. And he told those fifty, “You stand over here.” That left 250 sitting who wanted freedom, but weren鈥檛 ready to kill for it. So he told this fifty, “Now you wanted freedom and you said you鈥檇 kill anybody who鈥檇 get in your way. You see those 250? You get them first. Some of them are your own brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers. But they鈥檙e the ones who stand in the way of your freedom. They鈥檙e afraid to do whatever is necessary to get it and they鈥檒l stop you from doing it. Get rid of them and freedom will come naturally.”

I go for that. That鈥檚 what the Mau Mau learned. The Mau Mau realized that the only thing that was standing in the way of the independence of the African in Kenya was another African. So they started getting them one by one, all those Toms. One after another, they鈥檇 find another Uncle Tom African by the roadside. Today they鈥檙e free. The white man didn鈥檛 even get involved–he got out of the way. That鈥檚 the same thing that will happen here. We鈥檝e got too many of our own people who stand in the way. They鈥檙e too squeamish. They want to be looked upon as respectable Uncle Toms. They want to be looked upon by the white man as responsible. They don鈥檛 want to be classified by him as extremist, or violent, or, you know, irresponsible. They want that good image. And nobody who鈥檚 looking for a good image will ever be free. No, that kind of image doesn鈥檛 get you free. You鈥檝e got to take something in your hand and say, “Look, it鈥檚 you or me.” And I guarantee you he鈥檒l give you freedom then. He鈥檒l say, “This man is ready for it.” I said something in your hand 鈥� I won鈥檛 define what I mean by “something in your hand.” I don鈥檛 mean bananas.

So, we are honored to have with us tonight not only a freedom fighter, but some singers on that program today 鈥� I think they鈥檙e all here; I asked them to come out tonight because they sang one song that just knocked me out. I鈥檓 not one who goes for “We Shall Overcome.” I just don鈥檛 believe, we鈥檙e going to overcome, singing. If you鈥檙e going to get yourself a .45 and start singing “We Shall Overcome,” I鈥檓 with you. But I鈥檓 not for singing that doesn鈥檛 at the same time tell you how to get something to use after you get through singing. I realize I鈥檓 saying some things that you think can get me in trouble, but, brothers, I was born in, trouble. I don鈥檛 even care about trouble. I鈥檓 interested in one thing alone, and that鈥檚 freedom–by any means necessary. So I鈥檒l bring you now the country鈥檚 number one freedom-fighting woman.

(Mrs. Hamer speaks.)
Now you see why Mississippi is in trouble. And I hope that our brothers, especially our brothers here in Harlem, listened very well, very closely, to what I call one of this country鈥檚 foremost freedom fighters. You don鈥檛 have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is be an intelligent human being. And automatically, your intelligence makes you want freedom so badly that you鈥檒l do anything, by any means necessary, to get that freedom. And I want Mrs. Hamer to know that anything we can do to help them in Mississippi, we鈥檙e at their disposal. One of the things that we will definitely provide you with, because I think it鈥檚 the only real help that you can get down there: You can let those hooded people know that, from here on in, when they start taking the lives of innocent black people, we believe in tit for tat.

If I were to go home and find some blood on the leg of one of my little girls, and my wife told me that a snake bit the child, I鈥檇 go looking for the snake. And if I found the snake, I wouldn鈥檛 necessarily take time to see if it had blood on its jaws. As far as I鈥檓 concerned the snake is the snake. So if snakes don鈥檛 want someone hunting snakes indiscriminately, I say that snakes should get together and clean out their snakey house. If snakes don鈥檛 want people running around indiscriminately chopping off the heads of snakes, my advice to snakes would be to keep their house in order. I think you well understand what I鈥檓 saying. Now those were twenty-one snakes that killed those three brothers down there. Twenty-one 鈥� those are snakes. And there is no law in any society on earth that would hold it against anyone for taking the heads of those snakes. Believe it, the whole world would honor you or honor anyone who did what the federal government refused to do.

We should let them know that we believe in giving them what they deserve. There are brothers around the country right now, a lot of them, who feel like I do, a lot of them who feel like I do. I鈥檝e even met white students who feel that way. When they tell me that they鈥檙e liberal, I tell them, “Great, go get me one of those snake heads.” I鈥檓 sincere about this. I think that there are many whites who are sincere, especially at the student level. They just don鈥檛 know how to show their sincerity. They think that they鈥檙e showing sincerity by going down there and encouraging our people to be nonviolent. That鈥檚 not where it鈥檚 at. Since they鈥檙e white, they can get closer to whitey than we can. They can put on a sheet and walk right on into camp with the rest of them.

I鈥檓 telling you how to do it: You鈥檙e a liberal; get you a sheet. And get you something up under that sheet that you know how to use, and walk right on in that camp of sheeted people with the rest of them. And show how liberal you are. I鈥檒l come back and shake your hand all day long. I鈥檒l walk you around Harlem and tell everybody what a good white person you are. Because you鈥檝e proved it. But I don鈥檛 accept any nonviolent liberals. This doesn鈥檛 mean that you鈥檝e got to be violent; but it does mean that you can鈥檛 be nonviolent
(Introduces Freedom Singers.)

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Before we try and explain what is meant by the ballot or the bullet, I would like to clarify something concerning myself. I’m still a Muslim; my religion is still Islam. That’s my personal belief. Just as Adam Clayton Powell is a Christian minister who heads the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York, but at the same time takes part in the political struggles to try and bring about rights to the black people in this country; and Dr. Martin Luther King is a Christian minister down in Atlanta, Georgia, who heads another organization fighting for the civil rights of black people in this country; and Reverend Galamison, I guess you’ve heard of him, is another Christian minister in New York who has been deeply involved in the school boycotts to eliminate segregated education; well, I myself am a minister, not a Christian minister, but a Muslim minister; and I believe in action on all fronts by whatever means necessary.

Although I’m still a Muslim, I’m not here tonight to discuss my religion. I’m not here to try and change your religion. I’m not here to argue or discuss anything that we differ about, because it’s time for us to submerge our differences and realize that it is best for us to first see that we have the same problem, a common problem, a problem that will make you catch hell whether you’re a Baptist, or a Methodist, or a Muslim, or a nationalist. Whether you’re educated or illiterate, whether you live on the boulevard or in the alley, you’re going to catch hell just like I am. We’re all in the same boat and we all are going to catch the same hell from the same man. He just happens to be a white man. All of us have suffered here, in this country, political oppression at the hands of the white man, economic exploitation at the hands of the white man, and social degradation at the hands of the white man.

Now in speaking like this, it doesn’t mean that we’re anti-white, but it does mean we’re anti-exploitation, we’re anti-degradation, we’re anti-oppression. And if the white man doesn’t want us to be anti-him, let him stop oppressing and exploiting and degrading us. Whether we are Christians or Muslims or nationalists or agnostics or atheists, we must first learn to forget our differences. If we have differences, let us differ in the closet; when we come out in front, let us not have anything to argue about until we get finished arguing with the man. If the late President Kennedy could get together with Khrushchev and exchange some wheat, we certainly have more in common with each other than Kennedy and Khrushchev had with each other.

If we don’t do something real soon, I think you’ll have to agree that we’re going to be forced either to use the ballot or the bullet. It’s one or the other in 1964. It isn’t that time is running out鈥攖ime has run out!

1964 threatens to be the most explosive year America has ever witnessed. The most explosive year. Why? It’s also a political year. It’s the year when all of the white politicians will be back in the so-called Negro community jiving you and me for some votes. The year when all of the white political crooks will be right back in your and my community with their false promises, building up our hopes for a letdown, with their trickery and their treachery, with their false promises which they don’t intend to keep. As they nourish these dissatisfactions, it can only lead to one thing, an explosion; and now we have the type of black man on the scene in America today鈥擨’m sorry, Brother Lomax鈥攚ho just doesn’t intend to turn the other cheek any longer.

Don’t let anybody tell you anything about the odds are against you. If they draft you, they send you to Korea and make you face 800 million Chinese. If you can be brave over there, you can be brave right here. These odds aren’t as great as those odds. And if you fight here, you will at least know what you’re fighting for.

I’m not a politician, not even a student of politics; in fact, I’m not a student of much of anything. I’m not a Democrat. I’m not a Republican, and I don’t even consider myself an American. If you and I were Americans, there’d be no problem. Those Honkies that just got off the boat, they’re already Americans; Polacks are already Americans; the Italian refugees are already Americans. Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren’t Americans yet.

Well, I am one who doesn’t believe in deluding myself. I’m not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on that plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn’t need any legislation; you wouldn’t need any amendments to the Constitution; you wouldn’t be faced with civil-rights filibustering in Washington, D.C., right now. They don’t have to pass civil-rights legislation to make a Polack an American.

No, I’m not an American. I’m one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver鈥攏o, not I. I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.

These 22 million victims are waking up. Their eyes are coming open. They’re beginning to see what they used to only look at. They’re becoming politically mature. They are realizing that there are new political trends from coast to coast. As they see these new political trends, it’s possible for them to see that every time there’s an election the races are so close that they have to have a recount. They had to recount in Massachusetts to see who was going to be governor, it was so close. It was the same way in Rhode Island, in Minnesota, and in many other parts of the country. And the same with Kennedy and Nixon when they ran for president. It was so close they had to count all over again. Well, what does this mean? It means that when white people are evenly divided, and black people have a bloc of votes of their own, it is left up to them to determine who’s going to sit in the White House and who’s going to be in the dog house.

lt. was the black man’s vote that put the present administration in Washington, D.C. Your vote, your dumb vote, your ignorant vote, your wasted vote put in an administration in Washington, D.C., that has seen fit to pass every kind of legislation imaginable, saving you until last, then filibustering on top of that. And your and my leaders have the audacity to run around clapping their hands and talk about how much progress we’re making. And what a good president we have. If he wasn’t good in Texas, he sure can’t be good in Washington, D.C. Because Texas is a lynch state. It is in the same breath as Mississippi, no different; only they lynch you in Texas with a Texas accent and lynch you in Mississippi with a Mississippi accent. And these Negro leaders have the audacity to go and have some coffee in the White House with a Texan, a Southern cracker鈥攖hat’s all he is鈥攁nd then come out and tell you and me that he’s going to be better for us because, since he’s from the South, he knows how to deal with the Southerners. What kind of logic is that? Let Eastland be president, he’s from the South too. He should be better able to deal with them than Johnson.

In this present administration they have in the House of Representatives 257 Democrats to only 177 Republicans. They control two-thirds of the House vote. Why can’t they pass something that will help you and me? In the Senate, there are 67 senators who are of the Democratic Party. Only 33 of them are Republicans. Why, the Democrats have got the government sewed up, and you’re the one who sewed it up for them. And what have they given you for it? Four years in office, and just now getting around to some civil-rights legislation. Just now, after everything else is gone, out of the way, they’re going to sit down now and play with you all summer long鈥攖he same old giant con game that they call filibuster. All those are in cahoots together. Don’t you ever think they’re not in cahoots together, for the man that is heading the civil-rights filibuster is a man from Georgia named Richard Russell. When Johnson became president, the first man he asked for when he got back to Washington, D.C., was “Dicky”鈥攖hat’s how tight they are. That’s his boy, that’s his pal, that’s his buddy. But they’re playing that old con game. One of them makes believe he’s for you, and he’s got it fixed where the other one is so tight against you, he never has to keep his promise.

So it’s time in 1964 to wake up. And when you see them coming up with that kind of conspiracy, let them know your eyes are open. And let them know you鈥攕omething else that’s wide open too. It’s got to be the ballot or the bullet. The ballot or the bullet. If you’re afraid to use an expression like that, you should get on out of the country; you should get back in the cotton patch; you should get back in the alley. They get all the Negro vote, and after they get it, the Negro gets nothing in return. All they did when they got to Washington was give a few big Negroes big jobs. Those big Negroes didn’t need big jobs, they already had jobs. That’s camouflage, that’s trickery, that’s treachery, window-dressing. I’m not trying to knock out the Democrats for the Republicans. We’ll get to them in a minute. But it is true; you put the Democrats first and the Democrats put you last.

Look at it the way it is. What alibis do they use, since they control Congress and the Senate? What alibi do they use when you and I ask, “Well, when are you going to keep your promise?” They blame the Dixiecrats. What is a Dixiecrat? A Democrat. A Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat in disguise. The titular head of the Democrats is also the head of the Dixiecrats, because the Dixiecrats are a part of the Democratic Party. The Democrats have never kicked the Dixiecrats out of the party. The Dixiecrats bolted themselves once, but the Democrats didn’t put them out. Imagine, these lowdown Southern segregationists put the Northern Democrats down. But the Northern Democrats have never put the Dixiecrats down. No, look at that thing the way it is. They have got a con game going on, a political con game, and you and I are in the middle. It’s time for you and me to wake up and start looking at it like it is, and trying to understand it like it is; and then we can deal with it like it is.

The Dixiecrats in Washington, D.C., control the key committees that run the government. The only reason the Dixiecrats control these committees is because they have seniority. The only reason they have seniority is because they come from states where Negroes can’t vote. This is not even a government that’s based on democracy. lt. is not a government that is made up of representatives of the people. Half of the people in the South can’t even vote. Eastland is not even supposed to be in Washington. Half of the senators and congressmen who occupy these key positions in Washington, D.C., are there illegally, are there unconstitutionally.

I was in Washington, D.C., a week ago Thursday, when they were debating whether or not they should let the bill come onto the floor. And in the back of the room where the Senate meets, there’s a huge map of the United States, and on that map it shows the location of Negroes throughout the country. And it shows that the Southern section of the country, the states that are most heavily concentrated with Negroes, are the ones that have senators and congressmen standing up filibustering and doing all other kinds of trickery to keep the Negro from being able to vote. This is pitiful. But it’s not pitiful for us any longer; it’s actually pitiful for the white man, because soon now, as the Negro awakens a little more and sees the vise that he’s in, sees the bag that he’s in, sees the real game that he’s in, then the Negro’s going to develop a new tactic.

These senators and congressmen actually violate the constitutional amendments that guarantee the people of that particular state or county the right to vote. And the Constitution itself has within it the machinery to expel any representative from a state where the voting rights of the people are violated. You don’t even need new legislation. Any person in Congress right now, who is there from a state or a district where the voting rights of the people are violated, that particular person should be expelled from Congress. And when you expel him, you’ve removed one of the obstacles in the path of any real meaningful legislation in this country. In fact, when you expel them, you don’t need new legislation, because they will be replaced by black representatives from counties and districts where the black man is in the majority, not in the minority.

If the black man in these Southern states had his full voting rights, the key Dixiecrats in Washington, D. C., which means the key Democrats in Washington, D.C., would lose their seats. The Democratic Party itself would lose its power. It would cease to be powerful as a party. When you see the amount of power that would be lost by the Democratic Party if it were to lose the Dixiecrat wing, or branch, or element, you can see where it’s against the interests of the Democrats to give voting rights to Negroes in states where the Democrats have been in complete power and authority ever since the Civil War. You just can’t belong to that Party without analyzing it.

I say again, I’m not anti-Democrat, I’m not anti-Republican, I’m not anti-anything. I’m just questioning their sincerity, and some of the strategy that they’ve been using on our people by promising them promises that they don’t intend to keep. When you keep the Democrats in power, you’re keeping the Dixiecrats in power. I doubt that my good Brother Lomax will deny that. A vote for a Democrat is a vote for a Dixiecrat. That’s why, in 1964, it’s time now for you and me to become more politically mature and realize what the ballot is for; what we’re supposed to get when we cast a ballot; and that if we don’t cast a ballot, it’s going to end up in a situation where we’re going to have to cast a bullet. It’s either a ballot or a bullet.

In the North, they do it a different way. They have a system that’s known as gerrymandering, whatever that means. It means when Negroes become too heavily concentrated in a certain area, and begin to gain too much political power, the white man comes along and changes the district lines. You may say, “Why do you keep saying white man?” Because it’s the white man who does it. I haven’t ever seen any Negro changing any lines. They don’t let him get near the line. It’s the white man who does this. And usually, it’s the white man who grins at you the most, and pats you on the back, and is supposed to be your friend. He may be friendly, but he’s not your friend.

So, what I’m trying to impress upon you, in essence, is this: You and I in America are faced not with a segregationist conspiracy, we’re faced with a government conspiracy. Everyone who’s filibustering is a senator鈥攖hat’s the government. Everyone who’s finagling in Washington, D.C., is a congressman鈥攖hat’s the government. You don’t have anybody putting blocks in your path but people who are a part of the government. The same government that you go abroad to fight for and die for is the government that is in a conspiracy to deprive you of your voting rights, deprive you of your economic opportunities, deprive you of decent housing, deprive you of decent education. You don’t need to go to the employer alone, it is the government itself, the government of America, that is responsible for the oppression and exploitation and degradation of black people in this country. And you should drop it in their lap. This government has failed the Negro. This so-called democracy has failed the Negro. And all these white liberals have definitely failed the Negro.

So, where do we go from here? First, we need some friends. We need some new allies. The entire civil-rights struggle needs a new interpretation, a broader interpretation. We need to look at this civil-rights thing from another angle鈥攆rom the inside as well as from the outside. To those of us whose philosophy is black nationalism, the only way you can get involved in the civil-rights struggle is give it a new interpretation. That old interpretation excluded us. It kept us out. So, we’re giving a new interpretation to the civil-rights struggle, an interpretation that will enable us to come into it, take part in it. And these handkerchief-heads who have been dillydallying and pussy footing and compromising鈥攚e don’t intend to let them pussyfoot and dillydally and compromise any longer.

How can you thank a man for giving you what’s already yours? How then can you thank him for giving you only part of what’s already yours? You haven’t even made progress, if what’s being given to you, you should have had already. That’s not progress. And I love my Brother Lomax, the way he pointed out we’re right back where we were in 1954. We’re not even as far up as we were in 1954. We’re behind where we were in 1954. There’s more segregation now than there was in 1954. There’s more racial animosity, more racial hatred, more racial violence today in 1964, than there was in 1954. Where is the progress?

And now you’re facing a situation where the young Negro’s coming up. They don’t want to hear that “turn the-other-cheek” stuff, no. In Jacksonville, those were teenagers, they were throwing Molotov cocktails. Negroes have never done that before. But it shows you there’s a new deal coming in. There’s new thinking coming in. There’s new strategy coming in. It’ll be Molotov cocktails this month, hand grenades next month, and something else next month. It’ll be ballots, or it’ll be bullets. It’ll be liberty, or it will be death. The only difference about this kind of death鈥攊t’ll be reciprocal. You know what is meant by “reciprocal”? That’s one of Brother Lomax’s words. I stole it from him. I don’t usually deal with those big words because I don’t usually deal with big people. I deal with small people. I find you can get a whole lot of small people and whip hell out of a whole lot of big people. They haven’t got anything to lose, and they’ve got every thing to gain. And they’ll let you know in a minute: “It takes two to tango; when I go, you go.”

The black nationalists, those whose philosophy is black nationalism, in bringing about this new interpretation of the entire meaning of civil rights, look upon it as meaning, as Brother Lomax has pointed out, equality of opportunity. Well, we’re justified in seeking civil rights, if it means equality of opportunity, because all we’re doing there is trying to collect for our investment. Our mothers and fathers invested sweat and blood. Three hundred and ten years we worked in this country without a dime in return鈥擨 mean without a dime in return. You let the white man walk around here talking about how rich this country is, but you never stop to think how it got rich so quick. It got rich because you made it rich.

You take the people who are in this audience right now. They’re poor. We’re all poor as individuals. Our weekly salary individually amounts to hardly anything. But if you take the salary of everyone in here collectively, it’ll fill up a whole lot of baskets. It’s a lot of wealth. If you can collect the wages of just these people right here for a year, you’ll be rich鈥攔icher than rich. When you look at it like that, think how rich Uncle Sam had to become, not with this handful, but millions of black people. Your and my mother and father, who didn’t work an eight-hour shift, but worked from “can’t see” in the morning until “can’t see” at night, and worked for nothing, making the white man rich, making Uncle Sam rich. This is our investment. This is our contribution, our blood.

Not only did we give of our free labor, we gave of our blood. Every time he had a call to arms, we were the first ones in uniform. We died on every battlefield the white man had. We have made a greater sacrifice than anybody who’s standing up in America today. We have made a greater contribution and have collected less. Civil rights, for those of us whose philosophy is black nationalism, means: “Give it to us now. Don’t wait for next year. Give it to us yesterday, and that’s not fast enough.”

I might stop right here to point out one thing. Whenever you’re going after something that belongs to you, anyone who’s depriving you of the right to have it is a criminal. Understand that. Whenever you are going after something that is yours, you are within your legal rights to lay claim to it. And anyone who puts forth any effort to deprive you of that which is yours, is breaking the law, is a criminal. And this was pointed out by the Supreme Court decision. It outlawed segregation.

Which means segregation is against the law. Which means a segregationist is breaking the law. A segregationist is a criminal. You can’t label him as anything other than that. And when you demonstrate against segregation, the law is on your side. The Supreme Court is on your side.

Now, who is it that opposes you in carrying out the law? The police department itself. With police dogs and clubs. Whenever you demonstrate against segregation, whether it is segregated education, segregated housing, or anything else, the law is on your side, and anyone who stands in the way is not the law any longer. They are breaking the law; they are not representatives of the law. Any time you demonstrate against segregation and a man has the audacity to put a police dog on you, kill that dog, kill him, I’m telling you, kill that dog. I say it if they put me in jail tomorrow, kill that dog. Then you’ll put a stop to it. Now, if these white people in here don’t want to see that kind of action, get down and tell the mayor to tell the police department to pull the dogs in. That’s all you have to do. If you don’t do it, someone else will.

If you don’t take this kind of stand, your little children will grow up and look at you and think “shame.” If you don’t take an uncompromising stand, I don’t mean go out and get violent; but at the same time you should never be nonviolent unless you run into some nonviolence. I’m nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me. But when you drop that violence on me, then you’ve made me go insane, and I’m not responsible for what I do. And that’s the way every Negro should get. Any time you know you’re within the law, within your legal rights, within your moral rights, in accord with justice, then die for what you believe in. But don’t die alone. Let your dying be reciprocal. This is what is meant by equality. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

When we begin to get in this area, we need new friends, we need new allies. We need to expand the civil-rights struggle to a higher level鈥攖o the level of human rights. Whenever you are in a civil-rights struggle, whether you know it or not, you are confining yourself to the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam. No one from the outside world can speak out in your behalf as long as your struggle is a civil-rights struggle. Civil rights comes within the domestic affairs of this country. All of our African brothers and our Asian brothers and our Latin-American brothers cannot open their mouths and interfere in the domestic affairs of the United States. And as long as it’s civil rights, this comes under the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam.

But the United Nations has what’s known as the charter of human rights; it has a committee that deals in human rights. You may wonder why all of the atrocities that have been committed in Africa and in Hungary and in Asia, and in Latin America are brought before the UN, and the Negro problem is never brought before the UN. This is part of the conspiracy. This old, tricky blue eyed liberal who is supposed to be your and my friend, supposed to be in our corner, supposed to be subsidizing our struggle, and supposed to be acting in the capacity of an adviser, never tells you anything about human rights. They keep you wrapped up in civil rights. And you spend so much time barking up the civil-rights tree, you don’t even know there’s a human-rights tree on the same floor.

When you expand the civil-rights struggle to the level of human rights, you can then take the case of the black man in this country before the nations in the UN. You can take it before the General Assembly. You can take Uncle Sam before a world court. But the only level you can do it on is the level of human rights. Civil rights keeps you under his restrictions, under his jurisdiction. Civil rights keeps you in his pocket. Civil rights means you’re asking Uncle Sam to treat you right. Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth. And any time any one violates your human rights, you can take them to the world court.

Uncle Sam’s hands are dripping with blood, dripping with the blood of the black man in this country. He’s the earth’s number-one hypocrite. He has the audacity鈥攜es, he has鈥攊magine him posing as the leader of the free world. The free world! And you over here singing “We Shall Overcome.” Expand the civil-rights struggle to the level of human rights. Take it into the United Nations, where our African brothers can throw their weight on our side, where our Asian brothers can throw their weight on our side, where our Latin-American brothers can throw their weight on our side, and where 800 million Chinamen are sitting there waiting to throw their weight on our side.

Let the world know how bloody his hands are. Let the world know the hypocrisy that’s practiced over here. Let it be the ballot or the bullet. Let him know that it must be the ballot or the bullet.

When you take your case to Washington, D.C., you’re taking it to the criminal who’s responsible; it’s like running from the wolf to the fox. They’re all in cahoots together. They all work political chicanery and make you look like a chump before the eyes of the world. Here you are walking around in America, getting ready to be drafted and sent abroad, like a tin soldier, and when you get over there, people ask you what are you fighting for, and you have to stick your tongue in your cheek. No, take Uncle Sam to court, take him before the world.

By ballot I only mean freedom. Don’t you know鈥擨 disagree with Lomax on this issue鈥攖hat the ballot is more important than the dollar? Can I prove it? Yes. Look in the UN. There are poor nations in the UN; yet those poor nations can get together with their voting power and keep the rich nations from making a move. They have one nation鈥攐ne vote, everyone has an equal vote. And when those brothers from Asia, and Africa and the darker parts of this earth get together, their voting power is sufficient to hold Sam in check. Or Russia in check. Or some other section of the earth in check. So, the ballot is most important.

Right now, in this country, if you and I, 22 million African-Americans鈥攖hat’s what we are鈥擜fricans who are in America. You’re nothing but Africans. Nothing but Africans. In fact, you’d get farther calling yourself African instead of Negro. Africans don’t catch hell. You’re the only one catching hell. They don’t have to pass civil-rights bills for Africans. An African can go anywhere he wants right now. All you’ve got to do is tie your head up. That’s right, go anywhere you want. Just stop being a Negro. Change your name to Hoogagagooba. That’ll show you how silly the white man is. You’re dealing with a silly man. A friend of mine who’s very dark put a turban on his head and went into a restaurant in Atlanta before they called themselves desegregated. He went into a white restaurant, he sat down, they served him, and he said, “What would happen if a Negro came in here? And there he’s sitting, black as night, but because he had his head wrapped up the waitress looked back at him and says, “Why, there wouldn’t no nigger dare come in here.”

So, you’re dealing with a man whose bias and prejudice are making him lose his mind, his intelligence, every day. He’s frightened. He looks around and sees what’s taking place on this earth, and he sees that the pendulum of time is swinging in your direction. The dark people are waking up. They’re losing their fear of the white man. No place where he’s fighting right now is he winning. Everywhere he’s fighting, he’s fighting someone your and my complexion. And they’re beating him. He can’t win any more. He’s won his last battle. He failed to win the Korean War. He couldn’t win it. He had to sign a truce. That’s a loss.

Any time Uncle Sam, with all his machinery for warfare, is held to a draw by some rice eaters, he’s lost the battle. He had to sign a truce. America’s not supposed to sign a truce. She’s supposed to be bad. But she’s not bad any more. She’s bad as long as she can use her hydrogen bomb, but she can’t use hers for fear Russia might use hers. Russia can’t use hers, for fear that Sam might use his. So, both of them are weapon-less. They can’t use the weapon because each’s weapon nullifies the other’s. So the only place where action can take place is on the ground. And the white man can’t win another war fighting on the ground. Those days are over The black man knows it, the brown man knows it, the red man knows it, and the yellow man knows it. So they engage him in guerrilla warfare. That’s not his style. You’ve got to have heart to be a guerrilla warrior, and he hasn’t got any heart. I’m telling you now.

I just want to give you a little briefing on guerrilla warfare because, before you know it, before you know it. It takes heart to be a guerrilla warrior because you’re on your own. In conventional warfare you have tanks and a whole lot of other people with you to back you up鈥攑lanes over your head and all that kind of stuff. But a guerrilla is on his own. All you have is a rifle, some sneakers and a bowl of rice, and that’s all you need鈥攁nd a lot of heart. The Japanese on some of those islands in the Pacific, when the American soldiers landed, one Japanese sometimes could hold the whole army off. He’d just wait until the sun went down, and when the sun went down they were all equal. He would take his little blade and slip from bush to bush, and from American to American. The white soldiers couldn’t cope with that. Whenever you see a white soldier that fought in the Pacific, he has the shakes, he has a nervous condition, because they scared him to death.

The same thing happened to the French up in French Indochina. People who just a few years previously were rice farmers got together and ran the heavily-mechanized French army out of Indochina. You don’t need it鈥攎odern warfare today won’t work. This is the day of the guerrilla. They did the same thing in Algeria. Algerians, who were nothing but Bedouins, took a rine and sneaked off to the hills, and de Gaulle and all of his highfalutin’ war machinery couldn’t defeat those guerrillas. Nowhere on this earth does the white man win in a guerrilla warfare. It’s not his speed. Just as guerrilla warfare is prevailing in Asia and in parts of Africa and in parts of Latin America, you’ve got to be mighty naive, or you’ve got to play the black man cheap, if you don’t think some day he’s going to wake up and find that it’s got to be the ballot or the bullet.

I would like to say, in closing, a few things concerning the Muslim Mosque, Inc., which we established recently in New York City. It’s true we’re Muslims and our religion is Islam, but we don’t mix our religion with our politics and our economics and our social and civil activities鈥攏ot any more We keep our religion in our mosque. After our religious services are over, then as Muslims we become involved in political action, economic action and social and civic action. We become involved with anybody, any where, any time and in any manner that’s designed to eliminate the evils, the political, economic and social evils that are afflicting the people of our community.

The political philosophy of black nationalism means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community; no more. The black man in the black community has to be re-educated into the science of politics so he will know what politics is supposed to bring him in return. Don’t be throwing out any ballots. A ballot is like a bullet. You don’t throw your ballots until you see a target, and if that target is not within your reach, keep your ballot in your pocket.

The political philosophy of black nationalism is being taught in the Christian church. It’s being taught in the NAACP. It’s being taught in CORE meetings. It’s being taught in SNCC Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee meetings. It’s being taught in Muslim meetings. It’s being taught where nothing but atheists and agnostics come together. It’s being taught everywhere. Black people are fed up with the dillydallying, pussyfooting, compromising approach that we’ve been using toward getting our freedom. We want freedom now, but we’re not going to get it saying “We Shall Overcome.” We’ve got to fight until we overcome.

The economic philosophy of black nationalism is pure and simple. It only means that we should control the economy of our community. Why should white people be running all the stores in our community? Why should white people be running the banks of our community? Why should the economy of our community be in the hands of the white man? Why? If a black man can’t move his store into a white community, you tell me why a white man should move his store into a black community. The philosophy of black nationalism involves a re-education program in the black community in regards to economics. Our people have to be made to see that any time you take your dollar out of your community and spend it in a community where you don’t live, the community where you live will get poorer and poorer, and the community where you spend your money will get richer and richer.

Then you wonder why where you live is always a ghetto or a slum area. And where you and I are concerned, not only do we lose it when we spend it out of the community, but the white man has got all our stores in the community tied up; so that though we spend it in the community, at sundown the man who runs the store takes it over across town somewhere. He’s got us in a vise.

So the economic philosophy of black nationalism means in every church, in every civic organization, in every fraternal order, it’s time now for our people to become conscious of the importance of controlling the economy of our community. If we own the stores, if we operate the businesses, if we try and establish some industry in our own community, then we’re developing to the position where we are creating employment for our own kind. Once you gain control of the economy of your own community, then you don’t have to picket and boycott and beg some cracker downtown for a job in his business.

The social philosophy of black nationalism only means that we have to get together and remove the evils, the vices, alcoholism, drug addiction, and other evils that are destroying the moral fiber of our community. We our selves have to lift the level of our community, the standard of our community to a higher level, make our own society beautiful so that we will be satisfied in our own social circles and won’t be running around here trying to knock our way into a social circle where we’re not wanted. So I say, in spreading a gospel such as black nationalism, it is not designed to make the black man re-evaluate the white man鈥攜ou know him already鈥攂ut to make the black man re-evaluate himself. Don’t change the white man’s mind鈥攜ou can’t change his mind, and that whole thing about appealing to the moral conscience of America鈥擜merica’s conscience is bankrupt. She lost all conscience a long time ago. Uncle Sam has no conscience.

They don’t know what morals are. They don’t try and eliminate an evil because it’s evil, or because it’s illegal, or because it’s immoral; they eliminate it only when it threatens their existence. So you’re wasting your time appealing to the moral conscience of a bankrupt man like Uncle Sam. If he had a conscience, he’d straighten this thing out with no more pressure being put upon him. So it is not necessary to change the white man’s mind. We have to change our own mind. You can’t change his mind about us. We’ve got to change our own minds about each other. We have to see each other with new eyes. We have to see each other as brothers and sisters. We have to come together with warmth so we can develop unity and harmony that’s necessary to get this problem solved ourselves. How can we do this? How can we avoid jealousy? How can we avoid the suspicion and the divisions that exist in the community? I’ll tell you how.

I have watched how Billy Graham comes into a city, spreading what he calls the gospel of Christ, which is only white nationalism. That’s what he is. Billy Graham is a white nationalist; I’m a black nationalist. But since it’s the natural tendency for leaders to be jealous and look upon a powerful figure like Graham with suspicion and envy, how is it possible for him to come into a city and get all the cooperation of the church leaders? Don’t think because they’re church leaders that they don’t have weaknesses that make them envious and jealous鈥攏o, everybody’s got it. It’s not an accident that when they want to choose a cardinal, as Pope I over there in Rome, they get in a closet so you can’t hear them cussing and fighting and carrying on.

Billy Graham comes in preaching the gospel of Christ. He evangelizes the gospel. He stirs everybody up, but he never tries to start a church. If he came in trying to start a church, all the churches would be against him. So, he just comes in talking about Christ and tells everybody who gets Christ to go to any church where Christ is; and in this way the church cooperates with him. So we’re going to take a page from his book.

Our gospel is black nationalism. We’re not trying to threaten the existence of any organization, but we’re spreading the gospel of black nationalism. Anywhere there’s a church that is also preaching and practicing the gospel of black nationalism, join that church. If the NAACP is preaching and practicing the gospel of black nationalism, join the NAACP. If CORE is spreading and practicing the gospel of black nationalism, join CORE. Join any organization that has a gospel that’s for the uplift of the black man. And when you get into it and see them pussyfooting or compromising, pull out of it because that’s not black nationalism. We’ll find another one.

And in this manner, the organizations will increase in number and in quantity and in quality, and by August, it is then our intention to have a black nationalist convention which will consist of delegates from all over the country who are interested in the political, economic and social philosophy of black nationalism. After these delegates convene, we will hold a seminar; we will hold discussions; we will listen to everyone. We want to hear new ideas and new solutions and new answers. And at that time, if we see fit then to form a black nationalist party, we’ll form a black nationalist party. If it’s necessary to form a black nationalist army, we’ll form a black nationalist army. It’ll be the ballot or the bullet. It’ll be liberty or it’ll be death.

It’s time for you and me to stop sitting in this country, letting some cracker senators, Northern crackers and Southern crackers, sit there in Washington, D.C., and come to a conclusion in their mind that you and I are supposed to have civil rights. There’s no white man going to tell me anything about my rights. Brothers and sisters, always remember, if it doesn’t take senators and congressmen and presidential proclamations to give freedom to the white man, it is not necessary for legislation or proclamation or Supreme Court decisions to give freedom to the black man. You let that white man know, if this is a country of freedom, let it be a country of freedom; and if it’s not a country of freedom, change it.

We will work with anybody, anywhere, at any time, who is genuinely interested in tackling the problem head-on, nonviolently as long as the enemy is nonviolent, but violent when the enemy gets violent. We’ll work with you on the voter-registration drive, we’ll work with you on rent strikes, we’ll work with you on school boycotts; I don’t believe in any kind of integration; I’m not even worried about it, because I know you’re not going to get it anyway; you’re not going to get it because you’re afraid to die; you’ve got to be ready to die if you try and force yourself on the white man, because he’ll get just as violent as those crackers in Mississippi, right here in Cleveland. But we will still work with you on the school boycotts because we’re against a segregated school system. A segregated school system produces children who, when they graduate, graduate with crippled minds. But this does not mean that a school is segregated because it’s all black. A segregated school means a school that is controlled by people who have no real interest in it whatsoever.

Let me explain what I mean. A segregated district or community is a community in which people live, but outsiders control the politics and the economy of that community. They never refer to the white section as a segregated community. It’s the all-Negro section that’s a segregated community. Why? The white man controls his own school, his own bank, his own economy, his own politics, his own everything, his own community; but he also controls yours. When you’re under someone else’s control, you’re segregated. They’ll always give you the lowest or the worst that there is to offer, but it doesn’t mean you’re segregated just because you have your own. You’ve got to control your own. Just like the white man has control of his, you need to control yours.

You know the best way to get rid of segregation? The white man is more afraid of separation than he is of integration. Segregation means that he puts you away from him, but not far enough for you to be out of his jurisdiction; separation means you’re gone. And the white man will integrate faster than he’ll let you separate. So we will work with you against the segregated school system because it’s criminal, because it is absolutely destructive, in every way imaginable, to the minds of the children who have to be exposed to that type of crippling education.

Last but not least, I must say this concerning the great controversy over rifles and shotguns. The only thing that I’ve ever said is that in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it’s time for Negroes to defend themselves. Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun. It is constitutionally legal to own a shotgun or a rifle. This doesn’t mean you’re going to get a rifle and form battalions and go out looking for white folks, although you’d be within your rights鈥擨 mean, you’d be justified; but that would be illegal and we don’t do anything illegal. If the white man doesn’t want the black man buying rifles and shotguns, then let the government do its job.

That’s all. And don’t let the white man come to you and ask you what you think about what Malcolm says鈥攚hy, you old Uncle Tom. He would never ask you if he thought you were going to say, “Amen!” No, he is making a Tom out of you.” So, this doesn’t mean forming rifle clubs and going out looking for people, but it is time, in 1964, if you are a man, to let that man know.

If he’s not going to do his job in running the government and providing you and me with the protection that our taxes are supposed to be for, since he spends all those billions for his defense budget, he certainly can’t begrudge you and me spending $12 or $15 for a single-shot, or double-action. I hope you understand. Don’t go out shooting people, but any time鈥攂rothers and sisters, and especially the men in this audience; some of you wearing Congressional Medals of Honor, with shoulders this wide, chests this big, muscles that big鈥攁ny time you and I sit around and read where they bomb a church and murder in cold blood, not some grownups, but four little girls while they were praying to the same God the white man taught them to pray to, and you and I see the government go down and can’t find who did it.

Why, this man鈥攈e can find Eichmann hiding down in Argentina somewhere. Let two or three American soldiers, who are minding somebody else’s business way over in South Vietnam, get killed, and he’ll send battleships, sticking his nose in their business. He wanted to send troops down to Cuba and make them have what he calls free elections鈥攖his old cracker who doesn’t have free elections in his own country.

No, if you never see me another time in your life, if I die in the morning, I’ll die saying one thing: the ballot or the bullet, the ballot or the bullet.

If a Negro in 1964 has to sit around and wait for some cracker senator to filibuster when it comes to the rights of black people, why, you and I should hang our heads in shame. You talk about a march on Washington in 1963, you haven’t seen anything. There’s some more going down in ’64.

And this time they’re not going like they went last year. They’re not going singing ”We Shall Overcome.” They’re not going with white friends. They’re not going with placards already painted for them. They’re not going with round-trip tickets. They’re going with one way tickets. And if they don’t want that non-nonviolent army going down there, tell them to bring the filibuster to a halt.

The black nationalists aren’t going to wait. Lyndon B. Johnson is the head of the Democratic Party. If he’s for civil rights, let him go into the Senate next week and declare himself. Let him go in there right now and declare himself. Let him go in there and denounce the Southern branch of his party. Let him go in there right now and take a moral stand鈥攔ight now, not later. Tell him don’t wait until election time. If he waits too long, brothers and sisters, he will be responsible for letting a condition develop in this country which will create a climate that will bring seeds up out of the ground with vegetation on the end of them looking like something these people never dreamed of. In 1964, it’s the ballot or the bullet.

Thank you.

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It is peculiarly fitting to speak to the representatives of the Progressive party on Lincoln鈥檚 birthday; for we Progressives and we alone are today the representatives of the men of Lincoln鈥檚 day who upheld the hands of Lincoln and aided him in the great task to which he gave his life, and in doing which he met his death. I shall ask you tonight to listen while I quote certain sentences of Lincoln鈥檚 which possess a curious applicability to the questions of the present day. Lincoln and Lincoln鈥檚 supporters were emphatically the progressives of their day, and their violent opponents the Bourbon Democrats and Cotton Whigs of that time held the very principles by which the reactionaries of today including the Tories who now control the machinery of the Republican party, are themselves governed. The official leaders of the Republican party today are the spiritual heirs of the men who warred against Lincoln, who railed at him as a revolutionist, who denounced him for assailing the Supreme Court, who accused him of being a radical, an innovator, an opponent of the Constitution, and an enemy of property. Of course, Lincoln鈥檚 principles were actively applied to the great questions of union and slavery, both of which questions have now been solved; and as these questions are dead, the reactionaries of today are delighted to take a progressive position in reference to them the reactionary is always willing to take a progressive attitude on any issue that is dead. But in spite of the fact that Lincoln鈥檚 immediate life-work lay almost wholly with these two questions, it is curious to note the exact parallelism of his general attitude with the attitude that the Progressive party has now taken.

In the first place, remember that Abraham Lincoln鈥檚 great career began when at the age of forty-five he abandoned the Whig party in which he had been brought up and with which he had always acted, and took part in forming a new party, the Progressive party of that day. The new party in Illinois, in October, 1854, laid down a platform which I quote in part.

“1. Resolved, That we believe this truth to be self-evident, that when parties become subversive of the ends for which they are established, or incapable of restoring the government to the true principles of the Constitution, it is the right and duty of the people to dissolve the political bands by which they may have been connected therewith, and to organize new parties upon such principles and with such views as the circumstances and the exigencies of the nation may demand.

“2. Resolved, That the times imperatively demand the reorganization of parties, and, repudiating all previous party attachments, names and predilections, we unite ourselves together . . . pledged to bring the administration of the government back to the control of first principles.”

Lincoln himself, when upbraided for leaving the old party and allying himself with men from some of whom he differed on some points, responded to his critics by saying: “Will they allow me as an old Whig to tell them good-humoredly that I think this is very silly? Stand with anybody that stands right; stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong. Stand with the Abolitionist in restoring the Missouri Compromise and stand against him when he attempts to repeal the fugitive-slave law. In the latter case you stand with the Southern disunionist. What of that? You are still right. In both cases you are right. In both cases you oppose the dangerous extremes. In both you stand on middle ground, and hold the ship level and steady. In both you are national, and nothing less than national. . . . To desert such ground because of any company is to be less than an American.”

With hardly more than the change of a word or two the doctrine enunciated in this old Illinois platform of 鈥�54, the doctrine stated by this Illinois rail-splitter at the same time, contains the absolute justification for the actions of the Progressives today, and shows how fundamentally and basically alike the Progressive movement of today and the Republican movement of 1854 are. In Lincoln鈥檚 words too we find that sane and tempered radicalism which he in his great career exemplified as no other man in our history ever exemplified it, and which the Progressive party today in its turn exemplifies. When Lincoln says, “Stand with anybody that stands right; stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong,” and when the old Illinois first Republican platform says that “When parties become subversive of the ends for which they are established, it is the right and the duty of the people to dissolve the political bands by which they have been connected therewith, and to organize new parties,” we find the case of the men and women who met in Chicago on August last to launch the new Progressive party put with convincing clearness. Lincoln, who with his strange power of prophetic vision, forecast the present situation, when, in asserting his loyalty to principles rather than to a party name, he said that if the Republican party proved false to its principles, then “these principles round which we have rallied and organized that party would live; they will live under all circumstances, while we will die. They would reproduce another party in the future.” All that Lincoln foretold has come to pass before our eyes. The Republican party has proved false to its principles; and those principles have lived and they have produced another party, the party of progress, which has grasped the banner of righteous liberty from the traitor hands that were trailing it in the dust.

So much then for the right and the duty of the citizens to form a new party when the old parties prove incompetent to help the people. What is true of parties is no less true of issues which underlie the need of parties.

On the issue of his day Lincoln spoke as follows:

“That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles鈥攔ight and wrong throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says: “You toil and work and earn bread, and I鈥檒l eat it.” No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labors, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle. Surely the Progressive platform of today is but an amplification of this statement of Lincoln鈥檚. We Progressives are today standing for the common rights of humanity and against the doctrine鈥攚hether enunciated by political kings or by money kings, whether championed from a throne, or by a judge from the bench鈥攚hich announced that it is one man鈥檚 duty to toil and work and earn bread and the right of another man to eat it when earned. We who denounce this doctrine are accused of being revolutionary by the very men who now falsely claim heirship in Lincoln鈥檚 name although they repudiate Lincoln鈥檚 principles. What have these men to say about the words I thus quoted from Lincoln? What sentiment have we ever uttered more revolutionary than this I have quoted?

Again, Lincoln said that as a general rule, much of the plain old democracy is with us, while nearly all the old, exclusive silk-stocking whiggery is against us. I do not mean nearly all the old Whig party, but nearly all the nice, exclusive sort. And why not? There has been nothing in politics since the Revolution so congenial to their nature as the present position of our opponents. Here again, how would it be possible better to describe the exact position of us and of our opponents today?

Again, we have been taunted because we say that we put the man above the dollar, and regard the rights of man as superior to the rights of property. Our opponents say that these statements are demagogic. Well, I quote from Lincoln:

“The Jefferson party was formed upon this supposed superior devotion to the personal rights of man, holding the rights of property to be secondary only and greatly inferior.” (Our opponents) “hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing when in conflict with another man鈥檚 right of property.” (We) “on the contrary are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict, we are for the man before the dollar.” How would it be possible to put the Progressive position more strongly than Lincoln thus put it fifty-five years ago! Lincoln said that his opponents claimed to be “conservative, eminently conservative,” while they denounced Lincoln as “revolutionary” and “destructive.” Later he set forth in detail this alleged revolutionary and destructive position, saying: “This is essentially a people鈥檚 contest for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of man, to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life. This is the leading object of the government for whose existence we contend.” Could there be framed a better statement of the purpose of the Progressive party today, to war against privilege and for an equal opportunity; or a better answer to those who accuse us of being revolutionary and destructive?

Again our opponents have attacked us because they say we are trying to substitute pure democracy for representative government, and they uphold the ideal of the present Republican party as being a government of the people, not “by the people,” but by a “representative part” of the people. Our opponents have especially objected to our doctrine that the people have the right to control all their servants, judicial, executive, and legislative alike. Well, listen to Abraham Lincoln. He assailed his opponents because they made “war upon the first principle of popular government, the rights of the people”, because they “boldly advocated” “the denial to the people of the right to participate in the selection of public officers except the legislative,” and because they argued “that large control by the people in government” is the “source of all political evil.” Mind you, I am quoting from Lincoln鈥檚 words uttered over fifty years ago. They are applicable in letter and in spirit to our opponents today. They apply without the change of a word to those critics who assail us because we advocate the initiative and the referendum and, where necessary, the recall, and because we stand for the right of the people to control all their public servants, including the judges when the judges exercise a legislative function. Again, special opposition has been made to us because of our supposed attitude in exalting labor at the expense of capital. Well, listen to Lincoln once more. He says that he wishes to make a point in favor of popular institutions and against “the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government.” He continues: “Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” He then adds with his usual temperate wisdom: “Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights; nor is it denied that there is and probably always will be a relation between capital and labor producing mutual benefits. . . (there should be no) war upon property, or upon the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable, is a positive good in the world.” And he concludes with a thoroughly Lincoln-like touch: “Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.” Elsewhere he discussed what he calls “the mud-sill theory of labor” and his own. He states that the advocates of the mud-sill theory assume that labor and education are incompatible, that from their standpoint the ideal laborer is “a strong-handed man without a head.” Down in the bottom of their hearts, this is the precise position that the ultrareactionaries among our opponents take today! Then Lincoln develops his own theory, which is that all men should be educated, and that therefore educated people must labor, because otherwise “education itself would become a positive and intolerable evil, for no country can sustain in idleness more than a small percentage of its numbers. The great majority must labor at something productive, and the ideal is that each particular head should direct and control its own pair of hands.”

Here again surely Lincoln states exactly the Progressive position of today, the Progressive position which the reactionary Republicans of today denounce as radical and revolutionary.

Our opponents are fond of saying that the governmental regulation which we advocate interferes with “liberty.” This is the argument of which certain judges and certain lawyers are most fond. It is the “liberty” which every reactionary court wishes to guarantee to the employer who makes money from the life-blood of those he employs; the “liberty” of the starving girl to starve slowly in a sweat-shop, or to accept employment where she hazards life and limb, at her own risk, in; the service of others. Well, it was Lincoln who said that the reactionaries of his day “sighed for that perfect liberty the liberty of making slaves of other people.”

Even in such seemingly local and temporary matters as fusion, as “getting together” with men who have acted against us, we can learn from Lincoln. In 1859, after the Republican defeat nationally, and his own defeat by Douglas, he clearly outlined why it was desirable for all good citizens to act together without regard to past political differences, but added that it was indispensable that such action should be on the basis of the then Republican platform, the then Progressive platform. He warned one correspondent against the temptation to “lower the standard in order to gather recruits,” saying: “In my judgment such a step would be a serious mistake and open a gap through which more would pass out than pass in. There are many men in the slave States for whom I would cheerfully vote to be either President or Vice-President provided they would be willing to enable me to do so with safety to [our] cause, without lowering [our] standard. This is the indispensable condition of union with us, it is idle to talk of any other.”

To another correspondent he wrote: “As to the matter of fusion, I am for it if it can be had on [progressive] grounds; and I am not for it on any other terms. A fusion on any other terms would be as foolish as unprincipled. It would lose the whole (of what we have) while the common enemy would still carry (all the vote that is hostile to us. The question of men is a different one. There are good patriotic men and able statesmen [in the territory opposed to us whom I would cheerfully support if they would now place themselves on [progressive grounds, but I am against letting down the [progressive standard a hair鈥檚 breadth.” In these quotations I have merely substituted “Progressive” for the party name of the progressives of Lincoln鈥檚 day; and what Lincoln then said as to platform principles, men, and methods, applies exactly to all attempts to fuse or amalgamate the Progressives with any other party in our own days.

Our opponents are especially fond of denouncing our attitude toward the courts, and above all, our demand that the people shall be made masters of the courts as regards constitutional questions. Listen to Lincoln. “We must prevent these things [which are wrong] being done by either congresses or courts. The people of these United States are the rightful masters both of congresses and courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. How is it possible better to state the progressive position today? We wish to see the people the masters of the court not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow those who have perverted the Constitution into an antisocial fetish, used to prevent our securing laws to protect the ordinary working man and working woman in their rights.

The language that we have used in denouncing judicial decisions which today have cramped us in the effort to get social and industrial justice is far milder than the language which Lincoln used year after year in denouncing the Dred Scott decision the decision which in his day stood in the path of social and industrial justice. One of Lincoln鈥檚 chief opponents attacked him in this matter as follows: “He tells you that he does not like the Dred Scott decision. Suppose he does not, how is he going to help himself? He says that he will reverse it. How will he reverse it? I know of but one mode of reversing judicial decision, and that is by appealing from the inferior court to the superior court. But I have never yet learned how or where an appeal could be taken from the Supreme Court of the United States. The Dred Scott decision was pronounced by the highest tribunal on earth. From that decision there is no appeal this side of Heaven. Yet Mr. Lincoln says that he is going to reverse that decision. By what tribunal will he reverse it? Will he appeal to a mob? Does he intend to appeal to violence, to lynch-law? Will he stir up strife and rebellion in the land, and overthrow the court by violence? He does not deign to tell you how he will reverse the Dred Scott decision, but keeps appealing each day from the Supreme Court of the United States to political meetings in the country. He wants me to argue with you the merits of each point of that decision before this political meeting. I say to you, with all due respect, that I choose to abide by the decisions of the Supreme Court as they are pronounced. It is not for me to inquire, after a decision is made, whether I like it in all the points or not. When I used to practice law with Lincoln, I never knew him to be beat in a case that he did not get mad with the judge and talk about appealing; and when I got beat I generally thought the court was wrong, but I never dreamed of storming the court-house and making a stump speech to the people against the judge, merely because I had found out that I did not know the law as well us he did. If the decision did not suit me, I appealed until I got to the Supreme Court, and then if that court, the highest tribunal in the world, decided against me, I was satisfied, because it is the duty of every law-abiding man to obey the Constitution, the laws, and the constituted authorities. He who attempts to stir up odium and rebellion in the country against the constituted authorities is stimulating the passions of men to resort to violence and to mobs instead of to the law. Hence, I tell you that I take the decisions of the Supreme Court as the law of the land, and I intend to obey them as such.”

With only such changes as are necessary to fit the language to the issues of today instead of to the issues of fifty-five years ago, this denunciation of Lincoln by his opponents for what he then said is practically identical with the denunciation of us by our opponents for what we today say on the same subject. Our opponents now tell us that we must helplessly bow to the decisions of the courts when the decisions are wrong; we say, as Lincoln said of the Dred Scott decision, “somebody has to reverse that decision since it is made, and we mean to reverse it, and we mean to do it peaceably.” We say this of the Dred Scott decisions of our own time; of decisions like the tenement-house cigar-factory decision, like the bakeshop decision, like the Knight Sugar Case, like the Workmen鈥檚 Compensation Act decision. Lincoln, in taking the same attitude that we now take, said that he did not propose to disturb that particular decision, but that he would not have the citizen conform his vote to this decision of the Supreme Court nor the member of Congress his, and that he would oppose making it “a rule of political action for the people.” Is not this in principle the very position we Progressives now take? And Lincoln continued: “By resisting it as a political rule, I disturb no right of property, create no disorder, excite no mobs.” What better justification of our own present position could we ask than this which Lincoln made for us half a century ago?

Our position on this matter is fundamentally the position of Lincoln. We do not go as far as Jefferson and Jackson went. Our opponents say that we attack the courts. We do not. We attack judges when they go wrong, just exactly as we attack other people when they do wrong Presidents, senators, congressmen. And here again we follow Lincoln. In one of his speeches Lincoln said distinctly that he believed that there was a proslavery conspiracy between the chief justice of the United States, the outgoing and incoming Presidents of the United States, and a United States senator, the Dred Scott decision being one of the features of that conspiracy. He therefore charged that there was a “conspiracy” between the court and certain leading politicians belonging to the same party. This is an attack far more bitter than any we have ever made upon the courts. Lincoln was not attacking the courts any more than the presidency, although he attacked given individuals who were on the Supreme Court, just as he attacked given individuals who occupied the position of President. This is precisely and exactly the position that the Progressives take today. In his Inaugural Address Lincoln stated that “if the policy of the government on vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court” then “the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent resigned the government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.” Senator Bristow鈥檚 recently introduced amendments to give to the people the right themselves to decide the policy of the government upon vital questions in cases where they do not agree with decisions rendered by the Supreme Court is but carrying out the principles set forth by Lincoln in this his First Inaugural Address.

At this moment there has occurred in Idaho a decision by the highest State court which within its own limits is an even graver offense against justice and decency, and an even greater blot on the American judiciary, than the Dred Scott decision itself. The reactionary supreme court of Idaho has played into the hands of the Republican machine of which it was itself a part, precisely as Justice Taney and the majority of the Supreme Court of the nation in 1857 played into the hands of Presidents Pierce and Buchanan and the reactionary organization of which he and they were parts. In the campaign last year the Republican machine succeeded by the exercise of flagrant political dishonesty in preventing the will of the rank and file of the Republican party being expressed in the nomination. They then, wherever they dared, sought to deny to the people of the United States the right freely to express at the polls their preference for President. The Republican machine swindled the rank and file of the Republicans out of their rights, and nominated the machine candidate and in forty-six of the forty-eight States he went on the regular ticket without further effort, becoming thus the beneficiary of his and their wrong-doing. In but two States, California and South Dakota, were the Republicans forced to go on the ballot by petition; in precisely the same method by which we Progressives were forced to get on the ticket in the other forty-six States. Everywhere throughout the primary contest and at the subsequent electoral contest we Progressives scrupulously respected every right of the Republicans and saw that they had every chance to give the fullest and freest expression to their desires. But wherever they had the opportunity, the evil political bosses to whose keeping they had surrendered their political consciences, sought to cheat and swindle us. They did this in the primaries here in New York City; and in Washington, in Michigan, in Indiana, in Arizona, in Texas, in Alabama, and in every one of these cases when at the polls we could get even an approximately fair count we overwhelmingly defeated them. But so far as they dared they also tried to tamper with the election machinery so as to thwart the will of the people. In Idaho the result was as grave a miscarriage of justice at the election as had already occurred at the nomination convention, and the court became the most potent instrument in this denial of justice. The election law of Idaho makes no provision for presidential electors. The presidential electors nominated by the old parties in convention were put on under a section which made no direct provision therefor. I think this was quite right, for it was the highest duty of the court to try to favor the voters in expressing freely their choice for the highest office in the land. But when the Progressives sought to place their electors on the ticket by petition, the court, on the motion of the machine Republicans, denied the Progressives this right, stating that the electors were not State officers; and this although the United States Supreme Court had already held that they were not national, and although the Idaho court had itself previously held that in their law the term “State officers” was merely a phrase indicating area or extent of territory. This decision I hold to have been an outrage upon the people of Idaho, and not merely upon them but upon the people of the United States, for any interference with the right of an American in any State to cast his vote and to have it counted for the President of his choice is an offense against the Americans of all States. The Progressives were reduced to the necessity of writing the names of the electors on the ballot, and it is an astounding fact that twenty-five thousand men and women of Idaho were able to do this and to press the old parties hard. I think the result of the vote showed that if we had been given our clear and undoubted rights Idaho鈥檚 electoral vote would have been in the Progressive column. The action of the reactionary court, taken in combination with the action of the Republican machine, resulted in the deprivation of the right of the people of Idaho to express their choice for President.

Abraham Lincoln said that he believed the Dred Scott decision represented a conspiracy against liberty between the then Supreme Court and the leading officers of the reactionary party to which that Supreme Court belonged. I believe that with even more justice Abraham Lincoln if alive today could make the same statement about the action of the reactionary court of Idaho in connection with the reactionary leaders of the Republican machine of Idaho. But the court did not stop here. There was in Idaho a newspaper which fearlessly and in entirely proper manner condemned the court for this outrage. The editor and publisher of that paper, and another man connected with them, have been thrown into jail and fined heavily for contempt by the court. The court in its opinion has cited the numerous dynamite outrages and the like that have occurred, as justifying their action. No more extraordinary plea was ever made. I yield to no man in the horror I feel for the Anarchists and for all other criminals who do murder, whether by dynamite or in any other fashion. They cannot be condemned too unsparingly and no legal action against them can be too rigorous. But the damage they do, though great, is by no means as great to the cause of law and order as is that done by a decision such as the decision in question; and no Anarchist ever can or ever will hurt the courts as they are hurt by such action as this of the highest court of the State of Idaho. Remember that if the position of the Idaho court in punishing its critics for contempt is proper, then Abraham Lincoln should have been jailed and fined for his words about the Supreme Court of the United States in connection with the Dred Scott decision. Abraham Lincoln was no more and no less guilty than the three men whom the supreme court of the State of Idaho has imprisoned for contempt because they criticized, in less severe language than Abraham Lincoln鈥檚, a decision as indefensible from every standpoint of law and justice and popular rights as the Dred Scott decision itself. The incident emphasizes the fact that the time had come when it was necessary for such a protest to be made in reference to the courts as the Progressive party has made. Exactly as the attitude of the convicted Progressive editors in Idaho stands on all fours with the attitude of Abraham Lincoln fifty years ago, so the Progressive party in its attitude both toward the recall of judges and toward the right of the people to insist that they and not the judges are to have the ultimate say-so in making their own constitution, takes precisely the attitude of Abraham Lincoln when he said that “the people are the masters of both Congresses and the courts, not to destroy the Constitution, but to overthrow those who would destroy the Constitution.” A case like that in Idaho shows the need of the power of popular recall of the judiciary, a need which I believe could probably be best met by having the judges appointed or elected for life, but subject on petition to recall by popular vote every two years鈥攚hich system in its essentials would be like that which has actually, although not nominally, obtained in Vermont, except that it would substitute popular vote for legislative action.

This action would not, however, meet all the difficulties of the case. In this State, for instance, there have been many well-meaning judges who, in certain cases, usually affecting labor, have rendered decisions which were wholly improper, wholly reactionary, and fraught with the gravest injustice to those classes of the community standing most in need of justice. What is needed here is not the right to recall the judge, who in some one instance gives a mistaken and reactionary interpretation of the Constitution, but the right of the people themselves to express after due deliberation their definite judgment as to what the Constitution shall permit in the way of legislation for social and industrial justice. Always remember, friends, that I am not speaking of the judicial functions which can properly be called such. I am not speaking of the functions exercised by the judges in other great industrial countries such as France, Germany, or England. I am speaking of the purely political function exercised by the judge in our country, and only in our country, in annulling legislation. The reactionaries, the beneficiaries of privilege, the upholders of special interest, have denounced my proposal as radical. On the contrary, it is conservative. Our proposal is by no means as radical as the system which obtains at the present moment over the border in Canada, which obtains in England as well as in France and Germany. In these countries the judge has no power to question a legislative act. I do not propose to reduce the power of the judge to the level of the judge鈥檚 power in these countries. The absurdity of the outcry against my proposal as “revolutionary,” as “destructive” of the dignity of the courts is shown by the fact that I do not propose to shear the judge of any power any English judge possesses or for nearly three centuries has possessed. No English judge today exercises a particle of the power which I propose to take from the American judge, and I propose to leave the American judge power which the English judge does not possess.

Recently the prime minister of Great Britain, in speaking on the Home Rule bill, criticized sharply, and as I believe with justice, the provisions of our American Constitution which have caused the abuses of which we complain, or at least the interpretation which these provisions have been given by the American courts. Mr. Asquith is one of the foremost lawyers of the civilized world. He is the head of the great Liberal party of Great Britain and Ireland. He announced, speaking for the Liberals of Great Britain and Ireland, and for many of the Conservatives, that it was not the practice of the British democracy to submit to the decision of our courts the meaning of phrases such as those which have been invoked by our courts for the denial of the right of the people to do justice. The Liberal papers of Great Britain, and the Home Rule papers of Ireland, heartily backed Mr. Asquith鈥檚 statements. They pointed out that what had occurred in America showed that if the courts were given such power in England and Ireland as they have here, the lawyers would grow rich by resisting the enforcement of laws on constitutional grounds, all administration would be checked, the decisions of the courts would be treated with disrespect, and the laws themselves would be tossed from court to court for years in a vain effort to ascertain whether or not they need be enforced. As one of the Liberal dailies phrased it: “The American courts decide usually unfavorably, whether an act establishing an income tax, or workmen鈥檚 compensation act, or factory legislation, is law. Judges are not trained for this kind of function, and no man who knows the history of the exercise of this function by American judges will but agree that it erects one of the most galling of all possible tyrannies.”

I am sorry to say that I must agree with this criticism of this feature of our Constitution, or rather, of this practice of construing the Constitution as it has obtained in increasing measure for the last fifty years. Marshall performed a great and needed service, one of the greatest services any statesman ever performed, when in a period of national weakness he put the Supreme Court behind the national ideal. But such a practice as he inaugurated could be maintained permanently only if it was exercised with the greatest moderation. For over half a century it was thus exercised: But under the strain of what I must call class pressure鈥攖he pressure of the privileged classes鈥攖his power has during the last fifty years come to be exercised in utterly reckless fashion. The result has been in a lamentably large number of cases to make the courts the bulwarks of special privilege against justice. Against this misconception and provision of our Constitution the organization of the Progressive party is the protest of the American people. Rather than have the present practice continued, I believe the people would make the legislature the sole arbiter of its own functions under the Constitution, exactly as is done in England and in Canada. But this I should regret. I would much rather not go to this length. But this much is certain, if any event of the future can be considered certain. If the reactionaries by their foolish violence in objecting to sensible, moderate proposals intended not to abolish but to regulate the exercise of the extraordinary judicial power succeed in delaying every measure of relief, they will finally force the American people to such action because there is no other alternative. I am glad to have the courts retain their present power, provided always that we make living and efficient and practical the power which Abraham Lincoln claimed for the people, the power of being master over the courts exactly as they are master over the legislative bodies and executive officers. One of the prime reasons for the reckless legislation which we so often see in Congress and in State legislatures is the lack of responsibility of members, who believe they can safely pass any law demanded by a section of the people because the courts will declare it unconstitutional. Such a practice is destructive to self-respect in the legislator, it encourages ignorance and tyranny in the judge, and it is ruinous to the interests of the people. Our proposal is that when two of the agencies established by the Constitution for its own enforcement, the legislature and the courts, differ between themselves as to what the Constitution which created them, means, or what it is to be held to mean, then that the people themselves, the people who created the Constitution, who established, whom Abraham Lincoln said are masters of both court and legislature, shall step in and after due deliberation decide what the Constitution is or is not to permit.

I hold that in such a case as the Bakeshop Case, in such a case as the Workmen鈥檚 Compensation Act, in such a case as the Tenement-House Cigar-Factory Act, in such a case as the act providing for the safeguarding of dangerous machinery, in such a case as the eight-hour law, that it is for the people themselves to decide whether such a law is or is not to stand on the statute-books. I do not care whether you call this action of theirs “construing” the Constitution or “making” the Constitution. I care for the fact and not for the name. This is the position that Jefferson took when Jefferson said that if the legislature passes an act and the courts decide that it has not the power to pass it, the people must step in to decide which of these agents is to be upheld. In such matters as these I have spoken of, judges have no especial means of knowing the facts. Indeed they usually have less means of arriving at a just conclusion on such a question of policy than has the average man.

The reactionaries of both parties will fight us to the death on this issue. They are entirely willing to express lip-loyalty to Progressive policies if only they can prevent these policies being put into effect. They are entirely willing to express a desire for justice if they keep in the hands of the court the power to nullify every effort to get justice. We must make this nation a real democracy; an economic as well as political democracy free from every taint of either sectional or sectarian hatred; a democracy of true brotherhood which knows neither North nor South, East nor West, which recognizes the right of each man to worship his Creator as he chooses; a democracy which recognizes service and not pleasure as the ideal for every man and woman, which stands for each individual鈥檚 performance of his own duty toward others even more than for his insistence upon his rights as against others.

Then, friends, having made a real democracy, we must remember that however good we make the law, more important still is it that the people themselves shall show loyalty in support of the law. I wish to see this made a real democracy, because I believe that our people have the capacity for self-control, for self-mastery. Ever in government there must be control somewhere, mastery somewhere. Ever in government there must be loyalty and obedience to law if law is to prevail. Our purpose should be twofold. We should take from the boss, from the big financier, from the judge himself where the judge even though well-meaning acts against the cause of justice, the power to misrepresent us. We should give that power into the hands of the people. Then we should make it understood by the people that power is a curse to the holder if it is abused, that we the people must show obedience to the law, loyalty to our ideals, self-control, self-mastery, self-restraint. We must act with justice and broad generosity and charity toward one another and toward all men if we are to make this Republic what it must and shall be made, the nation in all the earth where each man can in best and freest fashion live his own life unwronged by others and proudly careful to wrong no other man.

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