A lost and forgotten speech by Malcolm X has surfaced, providing a rare gem to African-American history.
The audiotape of Malcolm X’s 1961 address in Providence, RI was discovered by 22-year-old Brown University student Malcolm Burnley, who stumbled across a reference to it in an old student newspaper. He found the recording of the forgotten visit gathering dust in the university archives and made his finding public.
“No one had listened to this in 50 years,” Burnley said. “There aren’t many recordings of him before 1962. And this is a unique speech — it’s not like others he had given before.”
Malcolm X delivered the May 11, 1961, speech to a crowd of 800 mostly white students and local residents, arguing that blacks should not look to integrate into white society but instead must forge their own identities and culture. He made the point that slavery and racism “has made the 20 million black people in this country a dead people. Dead economically, dead mentally, dead spiritually. Dead morally and otherwise. Integration will not bring a man back from the grave.”
Malcolm X also outlined the Black Muslim belief that black Americans cannot wait for white Americans to offer them equality. “No, we are not anti-white,” he said. “But we don’t have time for the white man. The white man is on top already, the white man is the boss already … He has first-class citizenship already. So you are wasting your time talking to the white man. We are working on our own people.”
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| Malcolm Burnley |
The recording of the speech is in mint condition as Burnley has since had the tape digitized and plans to air excerpts next week at an event hosted by the Rhode Island Black Heritage Association.
Saladin Ambar, a Lehigh University professor who is working on a book about Malcolm X’s 1964 visit to Oxford University, said any new recording of him is a huge deal and reason to celebrate.
“Malcolm’s best speeches, they’re just gone,” he said. “He’s not nearly as well-documented as he should be, when you consider his power as an orator.”
Wow. What and incredible find!As I've grown up, and matured greately in my thinking, I've come to believe that Malcom X was probably one of the most (if not THE most) misunderstood Black-American visionaries of his time.Suffice it to say, I now have a keener awareness, and a greater understanding and appreciation, for the man, his thoughts and his dream for Black America. How I wish he and Dr. King had not had their lives cut short. Had those two brilliant and Courageousmen been able to live out the fullness of their lives…to have been able to collaborate with each other, charting a visionary path forward for Black-America….Wow. Where would We be today?!