In 2017 Black folks are
still floundering ‘disorganized’ in
the midst of the current white backlash personified in ‘Trumpism’. Indeed, we believe the OAAU is still a relevant and effective
template for Unity, Black empowerment, and Self-determination. The following is an address
by Malcolm X introducing the OAAU:
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We, the members of the Organization of Afro-American
Unity, gathered together in Harlem, New York:
Convinced that it is the inalienable right of all our
people to control our own destiny;
Conscious of the fact that freedom, equality, justice
and dignity are central objectives for the achievement of the legitimate
aspirations of the people of African descent here in the Western Hemisphere, we
will endeavor to build a bridge of understanding and create the basis for
Afro-American unity;
Conscious of our responsibility to harness the natural
and human resources of our people for their total advancement in all spheres of
human endeavor;
Inspired by our common determination to promote
understanding among our people and cooperation in all matters pertaining to their
survival and advancement, we will support the aspirations of our people for
brotherhood and solidarity in a larger unity transcending all organizational
differences;
Convinced that, in order to translate this
determination into a dynamic force in the cause of human progress conditions of
peace and security must be established and maintained;
And by conditions of peace and security, we mean we
have to eliminate the barking of the police dogs, we have to eliminate the
police clubs, we have to eliminate the water hoses, we have to eliminate all of
these things that have become so characteristic of the American so-called
dream. These have to be eliminated. Then we will be living in a condition of
peace and security. We can never have peace and security as long as one black
man in this country is being bitten by a police dog. No one in the country has
peace and security.
Dedicated to the unification of all people of African
descent in this hemisphere and to the utilization of that unity to bring into
being the organizational structure that will project the black people's
contributions to the world;
Persuaded that the Charter of the United Nations, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Constitution of the United States
and the Bill of Rights are the principles in which we believe and that these
documents if put into practice represent the essence of mankind's hopes and
good intentions;
Desirous that all Afro-American people and
organizations should henceforth unite so that the welfare and well-being of our
people will be assured;
We are resolved to reinforce the common bond of purpose
between our people by submerging all of our differences and establishing a
nonsectarian, constructive program for human rights;
We
hereby present this charter.
I.
Establishment
The Organization of Afro-American Unity shall include
all people of African descent in the Western Hemisphere, as well as our
brothers and sisters on the African continent.
Which means anyone of African descent, with African
blood, can become a member of the Organization of Afro-American Unity and also
any one of our brothers and sisters from the African continent. Because not
only it is an organization of Afro-American unity meaning that we are trying to
unite our people in the West but it's an organization of Afro-American unity in
the sense that we want to unite all of our people who are in North America,
South America, and Central America with our people on the African continent. We
must unite together in order to go forward together. Africa will not go forward
any faster than we will and we will not go forward any faster than Africa will.
We have one destiny and we've had one past.
In essence what it is saying is instead of you and me
running around here seeking allies in our struggle for freedom in the Irish
neighborhood or the Jewish neighborhood or the Italian neighborhood, we need to
seek some allies among people who look something like we do. It's time now for
you and me to stop running away from the wolf right into the arms of the fox,
looking for some kind of help. That's a drag.
II.
Self Defense
Since self-preservation is the first law of nature, we
assert the Afro-American's right to self-defense.
The Constitution of the United States of America
clearly affirms the right of every American citizen to bear arms. And as
Americans, we will not give up a single right guaranteed under the
Constitution. The history of unpunished violence against our people clearly
indicates that we must be prepared to defend ourselves or we will continue to
be a defenseless people at the mercy of a ruthless and violent racist mob.
We assert that in those areas where the government is
either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property of our people,
that our people are within our rights to protect themselves by whatever means
necessary.
I repeat, because to me this is the most important
thing you need to know. I already know it.
We assert that in those areas where the government is
either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property of our people, that
our people are within our rights to protect themselves by whatever means
necessary.
This is the thing you need to spread the word about
among our people wherever you go. Never let them be brainwashed into thinking
that whenever they take steps to see that they're in a position to defend
themselves that they're being unlawful. The only time you're being unlawful is
when you break the law. It's lawful to have something to defend yourself. Why,
I heard President Johnson either today or yesterday, I guess it was today,
talking about how quick this country would go to war to defend itself. Why,
what kind of a fool do you look like, living in a country that will go to war
at the drop of a hat to defend itself, and here you've got to stand up in the
face of vicious police dogs and blue-eyed crackers waiting for somebody to tell
you what to do to defend yourself!
Those days are over, they're gone, that's yesterday.
The time for you and me to allow ourselves to be brutalized nonviolently is
passe. Be nonviolent only with those who are nonviolent to you. And when you
can bring me a nonviolent racist, bring me a nonviolent segregationist, then
I'll get nonviolent. But don't teach me to be nonviolent until you teach some
of those crackers to be nonviolent. You've never seen a nonviolent cracker.
It's hard for a racist to be nonviolent. It's hard for anyone intelligent to be
nonviolent. Everything in the universe does something when you start playing
with his life, except the American Negro. He lays down and says, "Beat me,
daddy."
So it says here: "A man with a rifle or a club can
only be stopped by a person who defends himself with a rifle or a club."
That's equality. If you have a dog, I must have a dog. If you have a rifle, I
must have a rifle. If you have a club, I must have a club. This is equality. If
the United States government doesn't want you and me to get rifles, then take
the rifles away from those racists. If they don't want you and me to use clubs,
take the clubs away from the racists. lf they don't want you and me to get
violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don't teach us nonviolence
while those crackers are violent. Those days are over.
Tactics based solely on morality can only succeed when
you are dealing with people who are moral or a system that is moral. A man or
system which oppresses a man because of his color is not moral. It is the duty
of every Afro-American person and every Afro-American community throughout this
country to protect its people against mass murderers, against bombers, against
lynchers, against floggers, against brutalizers and against exploiters.
I might say right here that instead of the various
black groups declaring war on each other, showing how militant they can be
cracking each other's heads, let them go down South and crack some of those
crackers' heads. Any group of people in this country that has a record of
having been attacked by racists and there's no record where they have ever
given the signal to take the heads of some of those racists why, they are
insane giving the signal to take the heads of some of their ex-brothers. Or
brother X's, I don't know how you put that.
III.
Education
Education is an important element in the struggle for
human rights. It is the means to help our children and our people rediscover
their identity and thereby increase their self-respect. Education is our
passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for
it today.
And I must point out right there, when I was in Africa
I met no African who wasn't standing with open arms to embrace any
Afro-American who returned to the African continent. But one of the things that
all of them have said is that every one of our people in this country should
take advantage of every type of educational opportunity available before you
even think about talking about the future. If you're surrounded by schools, go
to that school.
Our children are being criminally shortchanged in the
public school system of America. The Afro-American schools are the poorest-run
schools in the city of New York. Principals and teachers fail to understand the
nature of the problems with which they work and as a result they cannot do the
job of teaching our children.
They don't understand us, nor do they understand our
problems; they don't. "The textbooks tell our children nothing about the
great contributions of Afro-Americans to the growth and development of this
country."
And they don't. When we send our children to school in
this country they learn nothing about us other than that we used to be cotton
pickers. Every little child going to school thinks his grandfather was a cotton
picker. Why, your grandfather was Nat Turner; your grandfather was Toussaint
L'Ouverture; your grandfather was Hannibal. Your grandfather was some of the
greatest black people who walked on this earth. It was your grandfather's hands
who forged civilization and it was your grandmother's hands who rocked the
cradle of civilization But the textbooks tell our children nothing about the
great contributions of Afro-Americans to the growth and development of this
country.
The Board of Education's integration plan is expensive
and unworkable; and the organization of principals and supervisors in New York
City's school system has refused to support the Board's plan to integrate the
schools, thus dooming it to failure before it even starts.
The Board of Education of this city has said that even
with its plan there are 10 percent of the schools in Harlem and the
Bedford-Stuyvesant community in Brooklyn that they cannot improve.
So what are we to do?
This means that the Organization of Afro-American Unity
must make the Afro-American community a more potent force for educational
self-improvement
A first step in the program to end the existing system
of racist education is to demand that the 10 percent of the schools the Board
of Education will not include in its plan be turned over to and run by the
Afro-American community itself.
Since they say that they can't improve these schools,
why should you and I who live in the community, let these fools continue to run
and produce this low standard of education? So, let them turn those schools
over to us. Since they say they can't handle them, nor can they correct them,
let us take a whack at it.
What do we want? "We want Afro-American principals
to head these schools. We want Afro-American teachers in these schools."
Meaning we want Black principals and Black teachers with some textbooks about Black
people.
We want textbooks written by Afro-Americans that are
acceptable to our people before they can be used in these schools.
The Organization of Afro-American Unity will select and
recommend people to serve on local school boards where school policy is made and
passed on to the Board of Education.
And this is very important.
"Through these steps we will make the 10 percent
of the schools that we take over educational showplaces that will attract the
attention of people from all over the nation." Instead of them being
schools turning out pupils whose academic diet is not complete, we can turn
them into examples of what we can do ourselves once given an opportunity.
If these proposals are not met, we will ask Afro-American
parents to keep their children out of the present inferior schools they attend.
And when these schools in our neighborhood are controlled by Afro-Americans, we
will then return our children to them.
The Organization of Afro-American Unity recognizes the
tremendous importance of the complete involvement of Afro-American parents in
every phase of school life. The Afro-American parent must be willing and able
to go into the schools and see that the job of educating our children is done
properly.
This whole thing about putting all of the blame on the
teacher is out the window. The parent at home has just as much responsibility
to see that what's going on in that school is up to par as the teacher in their
schools. So it is our intention not only
to devise an education program for the children, but one also for the parents
to make them aware of their responsibility where education is concerned in
regard to their children.
We call on all Afro-Americans around the nation to be
aware that the conditions that exist in the New York City public school system
are as deplorable in their cities as they are here. We must unite our efforts
and spread our program of self-improvement through education to every
Afro-American community in America.
We must establish all over the country schools of our
own to train our own children to become scientists, to become mathematicians.
We must realize the need for adult education and for job retraining programs
that will emphasize a changing society in which automation plays the key role.
We intend to use the tools of education to help raise our people to an
unprecedented level of excellence and self-respect through their own efforts.
IV.
Politics and Economics
And the two are almost inseparable, because the
politician is depending on some money; yes, that's what he's depending on.
Basically, there are two kinds of power that count in
America: economic power and political power, with social power being derived
from those two. In order for the Afro-Americans to control their destiny, they
must be able to control and affect the decisions which control their destiny:
economic, political, and social. This can only be done through organization.
The Organization of Afro-American Unity will organize
the Afro-American community block by block to make the community aware of its
power and its potential; we will start immediately a voter registration drive
to make every unregistered voter in the Afro-American community an independent
voter.
We won't organize any black man to be a Democrat or a
Republican because both of them have sold us out. Both of them have sold us
out; both parties have sold us out. Both parties are racist, and the Democratic
Party is more racist than the Republican Party. I can prove it. All you've got
to do is name everybody who's running the government in Washington, D.C., right
now. He's a Democrat and he's from either Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Mississippi,
Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, from one of those cracker states. And
they've got more power than any white man in the North has. In fact, the
President is from a cracker state. What's he talking about? Texas is a cracker
state, in fact, they'll hang you quicker in Texas than they will in
Mississippi. Don't you ever think that just because a cracker becomes president
he ceases being a cracker. He was a cracker before he became president and he's
a cracker while he's president. I'm going to tell it like it is. I hope you can
take it like it is: We propose to support and organize political clubs, to run
independent candidates for office, and to support any Afro-American already in
office who answers to and is responsible to the Afro-American community.
We don't support any black man who is controlled by the
white power structure. We will start not only a voter registration drive, but a
voter education drive to let our people have an understanding of the science of
politics so they will be able to see what part the politician plays in the
scheme of things; so they will be able to understand when the politician is
doing his job and when he is not doing his job. And any time the politician is
not doing his job, we remove him whether he's white, black, green, blue, yellow
or whatever other color they might invent.
"The economic exploitation in the Afro-American
community is the most vicious form practiced on any people in America." In
fact, it is the most vicious practiced on any people on this earth. No one is
exploited economically as thoroughly as you and I, because in most countries
where people are exploited they know it. You and I are in this country being
exploited and sometimes we don't know it.
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