Malcolm X on Lumumba

By Malcolm X, 28 June and 28 November 1964

[From] Speeches by Malcolm X. The first part was given at a rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (a movement he founded) held on June 28, 1964, at the Audubon Ballroom in New York. The second is from a radio broadcast on New York station WMCA on Nov. 28, 1964.

Lumumba [is] the greatest black man who ever walked the African continent. He didn’t fear anybody. He had those people so scared they had to kill him. They couldn’t buy him, they couldn’t frighten him, they couldn’t reach him. Why, he told the king of Belgium, Man, you may let us free, you may have given us our independence, but we can never forget these scars. The greatest speech—you should take that speech and tack it up over your door. This is what Lumumba said: You aren’t giving us anything. Why, can you take back these scars that you put on our bodies? Can you give us back the limbs that you cut off while you were here?

No, you should never forget what that man did to you. And you bear the scars of the same kind of colonization and oppression not on your body, but in your brain, in your heart, in your soul, right now.

I think too much time is spent by newspapers, commentators, and some of these so-called scientists who are supposed to be authorities trying to prove that the Congolese are savage, that they are not fully developed, that they are not able to govern themselves. Most of the things that we’ve seen in print usually are designed toward that end, and this is not done actually to prove that they are savage as much as it is done to justify what the Western powers are doing in the Congo, or the presence of the Western powers in the Congo, and primarily the presence of the United States.

The basic cause of most of the trouble in the Congo right now is the intervention of outsiders—the fighting that is going on over the mineral wealth of the Congo and over the strategic position that the Congo represents on the African continent. And in order to justify it, they are doing it at the expense of the Congolese, by trying to make it appear that the people are savages. And I think, as one of the gentlemen mentioned earlier, if there are savages in the Congo then there are worse savages in Mississippi, Alabama, and New York City, and probably some in Washington, D.C., too.