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MALCOLM X: None of them have ever done anything for Negroes. All of them have tricked ° the Negro, and made falag‘“~sr es to him at election timeg wh’ \ they never fulfilled. Lincoln's concern wasn’ a for the blacks but to sii g. Jnion. PLAYBOY: Wasn't the Civil War fought to decide whether this nation could, in the words of Lincoln, “endure permanently half slave and half free'? MALCO'M X: Sir, many, many people are completely misinformed ebout Lincoln and the Negro, That war involved two thieves, the North and the South, fighting over the spoils. The further_we get away from the actual incident, the more they are trying to make it sound ss though the battle was over the black man. idincoln said that if he could save the Union without freeing the slaves, he would. But after two years of killing and carnage he found out he would have to free the slaves. He wasn't interested in the slaves but in the Union. As for the Emancipation Proclamation, sir, it was an empty document. If it freed the slaves, why, a century later, are we still battling for civil rights? FLAYBOY: Despite the fact that the goal of racial equality is not yet realized, many eoclologists--and many Negro commentatore--agree that no minority group on earth has made as much social, civil and economic progress as the American Negro in the past 100 years. What is your reaction to this view? MA_COLM X: Sir, I hear that everywhere almost exactly as you state it. This is one of the biggest myths thet the American black man himself believes in. Every immigrant ethnic group that has come to this country is now a genuinely first-class citizen group--every one of them but the black man, who was here when they came. While every- tbody else is sharing the fruit, the black man is just now starting to be thrown some seeds. It is our hope that through the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, we will at last get the soil to plant the seeds in, You talk about the progress otf the Negro--I'il tell you, mister, it's just because the Negro has been in America whik America has gone for- ward tnat the Negro appears to have gone forward, The Negro is like a man on a luxury commuter train doing 90 miles an hour. He lcoks out of the window, along with all the white passengers in their Pullman chairs, and he thinks he's doing 90, too. Then he gets to the men's room and looks in the mirror--and he sees he's not really getting anyvhere at all. His reflection shows a black man standing there fn the white uniform of a dining-car steward. He may get on the 5:10, all right, but he sure won't be get- ting off at Westport. PLAYBOY: Is there anything then, in your opinion, that could be done~-by either whites or blacks--to expedite the social and economic progress of the Negro in America? MALCCLH X: First of all, the white man must finally realize that he's the one who has committed the crimes that have produced the miserable condition that our people are in. He can't hide this guilt by reviling us today because we answer his criminal acts-- past and present--with extreme and uncompromising resentment. He cannot hide his guilt by accusing us, his victims, of being racists, extremists and black supremacists, The white man must realize that the sins of the fathers are about to be visited upon the heads of the children who have continued those sins, only in more sophisticated ways, Mr. Elijah Muhammad is warning this generation of white people that they, too, are also facing a time of harvest in which they will have to pay for the crime committed when their grandfathers mode slaves out of us. But there is something the white man can do to avertthis fate, He must atone--and this can only be done by allowing black men, those who choose, to leave this land of bondage and go to a land of our own. But if he doesn't want a mass movement of our people away from this house of bondage, then he should separate this country. He should give us several states here on American soil, where those of us who wish to can go and set up our own government, our own economic system, our own civilization. Since we have given over 300 years of ovr slave labor to the white man's America, helped to build it up for him, it'a only right that white America should give us everything we need in finance and materials for the next yietr + to eet eit arm matiann f2 ahlea fm . stand an ffs faar Than 1f the Linntaen Heed -_ phere 4s attacked by outside enemies, we would have both the capability and the motiva-_ tion to join in defending the bemisphere, in which we would then have a sovereign stake. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that the black man has served under the rule of all the other peoples of the earth at one time or another in the past. He teaches that it is now God's intention to put fhe black man back at the top of civilization, where he was in the beginning--before Adam, the white man, was created. The world since Adam has been white--and corrupt. The world of tomorrow will be black--and righteous. |,