The first need of a free people is to define their own terms.
The masses don’t shed their blood for the benefit of a few individuals.
So that the failures to pass a civil rights bill isn’t because of Black Power, isn’t because of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; it’s not because of the rebellions that are occurring in the major cities.
Capitalism is a stupid system, a backward system.
I place my own hope for the United States in the growth of belief among the unqualified that they are in fact qualified: they can articulate and be responsible and hold power.
The philosophers Camus and Sartre raise the question whether or not a man can condemn himself.
We had no more courage than Harriet Tubman or Marcus Garvey had in their times. We just had a more vulnerable enemy.
The death of Che Guevara places a responsibility on all revolutionaries of the World to redouble their decision to fight on to the final defeat of Imperialism. That is why in essence Che Guevara is not dead, his ideas are with us.
The only position for women in SNCC is prone.
No man can given anybody his freedom.
I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for black people.
I knew that I could vote and that that wasn’t a privilege; it was my right. Every time I tried I was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived.
Now you know where I got my name.
Integration is a man’s ability to want to move in there by himself. If someone wants to live in a white neighborhood and he is black, that is his choice. It should be his rights. It is not because white people will not allow him.
Dr. King’s policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That’s very good. He only made one fallacious assumption: In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.
If a white man wants to lynch me, that’s his problem. If he’s got the power to lynch me, that’s my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it’s a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism. Thus, if you’re anti-racist, whether you know it or not, you must be anti-capitalist. The power for racism, the power for sexism, comes from capitalism, not an attitude.
Reorientation means an emphasis on the dignity of man, not on the sanctity of property. It means the creation of a society where human misery and poverty are repugnant to that society, not an indication of laziness or lack of initiative. The creation of new values means the establishment of a society based on free people, not free enterprise.
The job of the conscious is to make the unconscious conscious.
Unfortunately in this essay we can not discuss the history and development of Pan-Africanism. That task was undertaken by Mr. Vincent Bakpetu Thompson in his excellent book Africa and Unity: The Evolution of Pan-Africanism.
In struggle one not only fights against something – injustice, oppression – but one must struggle for something equally real but positive. That’s the other part of the equation.
I’m convinced that the deck is so stacked that only a certain number can get through. I happened to be one of that certain number. That’s all.