Well, the African leaders showed their maturity by doing what the American white man said couldn’t be done. And whenever you find people who can’t forget their differences, then they’re more interested in their personal aims and objectives than they are in the conditions of the whole. They forgot their differences for the sole purpose of bringing benefits to the whole. But even the militant African leaders were able to sit down at the same table with African leaders whom they considered to be Toms, or Tshombes, or that type of character. You have some leaders that are considered Uncle Toms, some leaders who are considered very militant. ![]() They represent probably every segment, every type of thinking. Those who formed the organization of African states have differences. This organization consists of all independent African states who have reached the agreement to submerge all differences and combine their efforts toward eliminating from the continent of Africa colonialism and all vestiges of oppression and exploitation being suffered by African people. One of the first things that the independent African nations did was to form an organization called the Organization of African Unity. And my traveling over there was designed to help to find out how. So it was our intention to try and find out what it was our African brothers were doing to get results, so that you and I could study what they had done and perhaps gain from that study or benefit from their experiences. And you and I live in a country which is supposed to be the citadel of education, freedom, justice, democracy, and all of those other pretty-sounding words. And in a short time, they have gained more independence, more recognition, more respect as human beings than you and I have. They were suffering all forms of colonization, oppression, exploitation, degradation, humiliation, discrimination, and every other kind of -ation. Just ten years ago on the African continent, our people were colonized. They’ve also gained recognition and respect as human beings much faster than you and I. And tonight we are here to try and get an understanding of what it is they’ve come up with.Īlso, recently when I was blessed to make a religious pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca where I met many people from all over the world, plus spent many weeks in Africa trying to broaden my own scope and get more of an open mind to look at the problem as it actually is, one of the things that I realized, and I realized this even before going over there, was that our African brothers have gained their independence faster than you and I here in America have. There have been many of our people across the country from all walks of life who have taken it upon themselves to try and pool their ideas and to come up with some kind of solution to the problem that confronts all of our people. And that we would have some kind of meeting and determine at a later date whether to form a black nationalist party or a black nationalist army. ![]() Moderator, our distinguished guests, brothers and sisters, our friends and our enemies, everybody who’s here.Īs many of you know, last March when it was announced that I was no longer in the Black Muslim movement, it was pointed out that it was my intention to work among the 22 million non-Muslim Afro-Americans and to try and form some type of organization, or create a situation where the young people – our young people, the students and others – could study the problems of our people for a period of time and then come up with a new analysis and give us some new ideas and some new suggestions as to how to approach a problem that too many other people have been playing around with for too long. ![]() Malcolm returned to New York the following month to create the OAAU and on June 28 gave his first public address on behalf of the new organization at the Audubon Ballroom in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. While in Ghana in May, he decided to form the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). In May he toured West Africa and made a pilgrimage to Mecca, returning as El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. Malcolm X’s life changed dramatically in the first six months of 1964.
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