When
he took his place behind the podium at Brown
Chapel AME Church and began his address to
young civil rights activists in Selma,
Alabama, Malcolm X had less than three weeks
to live. Invited to speak by the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC),
Malcolm traveled to Selma to address 500
people on February 4, 1965, 17 days before his
execution on a fateful afternoon in Harlem’s
Audubon Ballroom.
SNCC’s
endeavor to increase Black voter registration
in Selma was thwarted by the local registrar’s
relentless efforts to block the Black vote,
which included “opening” the office to Blacks
only a few hours a month, and refusing to
process the voter registration applications of
the few Blacks who managed to obtain
them. Nearly a century after the 15th
Amendment granted the right to vote to Blacks,
tactics like those employed by Selma’s
registrar ensured that Black political
participation would not gain
footing. Indeed, in 1965, though
nearly 33,000 Blacks were in Dallas County,
which encompasses Selma, a mere 335 were
registered.
Unsatisfied
with SNCC’s progress, local leaders asked
Martin Luther King, Jr. to help promote the
voter registration effort. Shortly after
his arrival in Selma, King led a 400-person
march to the Dallas County Courthouse, but was
met by Sheriff James Clark, who said that the
office was closed for the day. On February 1,
1965 King was arrested after a second attempt
to register Blacks. Fearing that they
would lose momentum by King’s incarceration,
SNCC leaders invited Malcolm to speak in
Selma.
Malcolm’s
arrival in Selma was met with great
anticipation. In stark contrast to
King’s racial integration and non-violent
social protest philosophy, Malcolm preached a
message of Black nationalism and self-defense,
a message that terrified whites and both
inspired and disturbed Blacks.
In
one of his first civil rights addresses
following his separation from the Nation of
Islam, Malcolm spoke about the need to defend
against the broadening class distinctions in
the Black community, and about the necessity
for the Black masses to uncompromisingly
engage in the revolution occurring in
Selma.
Speaking
metaphorically, Malcolm explained that “there
were two kinds of Negroes” during slavery:
“There was that old house Negro and the field
Negro.”
Though
he recognized that house Negroes caught the
same “hell” as field Negroes, Malcolm used the
house/field Negro metaphor to explain that he
would stay outside of the American “house,”
and would pray for fire – and wind – to
destroy it if whites refused to respect Blacks
as human beings in it.
Identifying
himself as a “field Negro,” Malcolm, to a
roaring applause, said: “If I can’t live in
the house as a human being, I’m praying for
that house to blow down, I’m praying for a
strong wind to come along.” “But,”
Malcolm concluded, “if we are all going to
live as human beings, as brothers, then I am
for a society of human beings that can
practice brotherhood.”
After
his speech, Andrew Young asked King’s
wife, Mrs. Coretta Scott King, to re-emphasize
the importance of a non-violent
approach. Malcolm explained to Mrs. King
that his intentions were not to complicate
matters, but rather to show resistant whites
in Selma that an alternative philosophy
awaited them if they did not negotiate with
her husband.
Indeed,
in his "Ballot or the Bullet"
speech in 1964, Malcolm shared his political
philosophy of Black nationalism, which urged
Blacks to recognize that their "ballots are
like bullets," which should not be thrown away
on politicians who were non-responsive to
their specific needs. "You don't [cast] your
ballots until you see a target," he asserted,
“and if that target is not within your reach,
you keep your ballot in your pocket."
Notably,
shortly after Malcolm’s visit to Selma, a
federal judge, responding to a suit brought by
the Department of Justice, required Dallas
County registrars to process at least 100
Black applications each day their offices were
open.
On
February 21, 1965, 17 days after his speech in
Selma, Malcolm’s remarkable life was cut short
by the gunfire of three assassins in New York
City. He did not live to see the
Selma-to-Montgomery march the following month
that focused the attention of the nation and
the world on the issue of Black voting
rights. He did not live to see the many
fruits of his tireless labor, including the
passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,
perhaps the greatest piece of civil rights
legislation in history. The Voting
Rights Act provided the foundation for today’s
Selma in which Blacks represent the majority
of the city council and school board, and in
which James Perkins recently took office as
the city’s first Black mayor.
Malcolm did not live to see these strides
either.
