The NOI and KKK Alliance (as told by Malcolm)

In the Service of our Ancestors and African Love,
Listen Seeker, I come in peace,

“Peace is the fruit of activity, not of sleep.” — African Proverb

Activity is most efficient Organized.  Even in the animal kingdom, the disorganized predator will have trouble with organized prey; yet we Africans are like disorganized prey against organized predators: bound for genocide.

The following interview speaks to the efficacy of Organization and how Africans can sit with even the Klan as long as Africans hold Power.  Of course, our Power ought not be to sit with the Klan.  This shows that Ideology must be exact, lest Organization will be Misorganization, an all too familiar phenomenon amongst African people.

On February 15, 1965, six days before Malcolm X was assassinated, he gave this speech which likely expedited his murder (although forming the OAAU is the most probable culprit.)  He begins by exposing how Elijah Muhammad impregnated at least 9 teenage girls, not only the two who sued him.  He then reveals that the NOI is tactically inefficient, holding potential through militant African youth but also misdirecting Africans against ourselves; a legacy which continues to this day (oftentimes Africans speak against the tactics of other Africans [“you integrationists,” “Bunch of Uncle Toms”, etc.] or speak toward “spiritual enlightenment as activity,” though neither liberate African people.)

He follows with Jeremiah X Pugh and himself actually meeting with the KKK on January 28, 1961.  He neglects to mention how prior to this meeting, the KKK would abuse the NOI’s operations in the South.  For instance, in Pell County, Alabama sixty-three of the NOI’s prized dairy cattle were either shot or poisoned by the KKK and fully one-tenth of St. Clair County assembled at a meeting vowing to oust the NOI eventually encircling the Muslims and arbitrarily jailing them.  (Source)

The KKK’s doings shows the Power of Organization and how the KKK isn’t a word to throw around but an actual Organization with actual meetings and an actual ideology and actual leadership.  Another person mentioned by Malcolm is George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party.  The NOI’s alliance with the American Nazi Party shows the importance of Organization but also Ideology.  To ally with Europeans is to not be ideologically ready to empower Africans.  Malcolm X later reveals that Venable, the KKK’s Lawyer, was the chosen representation for certain Muslims.  When Malcolm X praises the Muslim movement as the best in America, he either forgot about other groups (Carlos A. Cook’s African Nationalist Pioneer Movement or Robert F. Williams’ Black Armed Guard, for instance) or didn’t realize that a “Muslim” movement is inherently anti-African as Islam has always been anti-African.  See “Islamic Enslavers.”

Still, he continues on Elijah Muhammad having become more Mercenary and having been associated with a rich Texan.  He doesn’t identify the man, but the man is Haroldson Lafayette Hunt.  This European located in Dallas, Texas, funded the John Birch Society, the Minutemen, Liberty Lobby, among many other groups, and he hated Malcolm X for supporting Lumumba and opposing Tshombe (in the Congo.)  H. L. Hunt liked Tshombe.  It’s speculated the H. L. Hunt was the person behind Malcolm and JFK’s assassination.  This is partly why Malcolm X was so disciplined following the JFK comment.  We also see that Elijah Muhammad had become frightened after JFK was assassinated.  As obviously, a U.S. President is well protected, and if some rich man can just up and assassinate the U.S. President, he wields significant Power.

The speech finishes with an apt prediction.  He explains that once the militants of the NOI are awakened to the NOI’s uselessness, the Civil Rights struggle will get a jolt of energy.  This of course is where the Black Panther Party and later the Black Liberation Army comes in.  Though, one also sees how offshoots of the NOI (York, Nations, etc.) may have been Government induced to prevent the real Militants.  Please enjoy and remember to join an Organization and donate to Organizers–it’s not easy running meetings, writing articles, sacrificing time.

The NOI and KKK Alliance
(as told by Malcolm X)

Yes, he’s immoral [Elijah Muhammad]. You can’t take nine teenaged women and seduce them and give them babies and not tell me you’re—and then tell me you’re moral. You could do it if you admitted you did it and admitted that the babies were yours. I’d shake your hand and call you a man. A good one too. Any time you seduce teenaged girls and make them be charged with adultery, make them hide your crimes, why, you’re not even a man, much less a divine man. So, and this is what he did. He took at least nine that we know about. And I’m not speculating, because he told this to me himself. Yes, that’s why he wants me dead because he knew as soon as I walked out that I’d tell it. Nine of them. Not two of them who are suing him, but nine of them. And the FBI knows it. The law in Chicago knows it. The press even knows it. And they don’t expose the man.

And don’t let me get out of here tonight without telling you why they won’t expose him. Why they’re afraid to expose him. They know that if they expose him, that he has them all set. See, the Black Muslim movement, it was organized in such a way that it attracted the most militant, the most uncompromising, the most fearless, and the youngest of the Black people in the United States. That’s who went into it. Those who didn’t mind dying. They didn’t mind making a sacrifice. All they were interested in was freedom and justice and equality, and they would do anything to see that it was brought about. These are the people who have followed him for the past twelve years. And the government knows it. But all these upfront militants have been held in check by an organization that doesn’t take an active part in anything. And therefore it cannot be a threat to anybody because it’s not going to do anything against anybody but itself.

Don’t you know? The way they threw that bomb in there they could have thrown it in a Ku Klux Klan house. Why do they want to bomb my house? Why don’t they bomb the Klan? I’m going to tell you why.

In 1960, in December, in December of 1960, I was in the home of Jeremiah, the minister in Atlanta, Georgia. I’m ashamed to say it, but I’m going to tell you the truth. I sat at the table myself with the heads of the Ku Klux Klan. I sat there myself, with the heads of the Ku Klux Klan, who at that time were trying to negotiate with Elijah Muhammad so that they could make available to him a large area of land in Georgia or I think it was South Carolina. They had some very responsible persons in the government who were involved in it and who were willing to go along with it. They wanted to make this land available to him so that his program of separation would sound more feasible to Negroes and therefore lessen the pressure that the integrationists were putting upon the white man. I sat there. I negotiated it. I listened to their offer. And I was the one who went back to Chicago and told Elijah Muhammad what they had offered. Now, this was in December of 1960.

The code name that Jeremiah gave the Klan leader was 666. Whenever they would refer to him they would refer to him as Old Six. What his name was right now escapes me. But they even sat there and told stories how—what they had done on different escapades that they had been involved in. Jeremiah was there and his wife was there and I was there and the Klan was there.

From that day onward the Klan never interfered with the Black Muslim movement in the South. Jeremiah attended Klan rallies, as you read on the front page of the New York Tribune. They never bothered him, never touched him. He never touched a Muslim, and a Muslim never touched him. Elijah Muhammad would never let me go back down since January of 1961. I never went South, as long as I remained in the Black Muslim movement, again, from January of 1961, because most of the actions the Muslims got involved in was action that I was involved in myself. Wherever it happened in the country, where there was an action, it was action that I was involved in, because I believed in action. I never have gone along with no Ku Klux Klan.

And another one that he had made a deal with was this man Rockwell. Rockwell and Elijah Muhammad are regular correspondents with each other. You can hate me for telling you this, but I’m going to tell it to you. Rockwell attended the rally because Elijah Muhammad put the okay on it. And Sharrieff, the captain of the FOI, and I had discussed it, wondering why Rockwell could come to our meeting because it didn’t help us. But Elijah Muhammad said let him in, so he had to be let in. No one questioned what Elijah Muhammad said. Now, if you doubt that this is true, you get all of the back issues of Muhammad Speaks newspaper and you will find articles in it about the Ku Klux Klan actually praising him. Jeremiah interviewed—I think it was—J.B. Stoner for the Muslim newspaper, and the old devil even gave him a contribution that he reported about in that paper. Sure he did.

When the brothers in Monroe, Louisiana, were involved in trouble with the police, if you’ll recall, Elijah Muhammad got old Venable. Venable is the Ku Klux Klan lawyer. He’s a Ku Klux Klan chieftain, according to the Saturday Evening Post, that was up on the witness stand. Go back and read the paper and you’ll see that Venable was the one who represented the Black Muslim movement in Louisiana.

Now, brothers and sisters, until 1961, until 1960, until just before Elijah Muhammad went to the East, there was not a better organization among Black people in this country than the Muslim movement. It was militant. It made the whole struggle of the Black man in this country pick up momentum because of the unity, the militancy, created by the Muslim movement lent weight to the struggle of the Black man in this country against oppression.

But after 1960, after Elijah Muhammad went over there in December of ‘59 and came back in January of ‘60—when he came back, the whole trend or direction that he formerly had taken began to change. And in that change there’s a whole lot of other things that had come into the picture. But he began to be more mercenary. More interested in money. More interested in wealth And, yes, more interested in girls.

And I guess many of you have heard it said that his financial support comes from a rich man in Texas. I heard that while I was in the movement. I’ve heard it more since I left the movement. A rich man in Texas. You can look up, any of you can look up his name. But the FBI knows that too. But they still don’t touch him. And never have I seen a man—and this rich man who lives in Texas, by the way, lives in Dallas. His headquarters is in Dallas, his money is in Dallas, the same city where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And never have I seen a man in my life more afraid, more frightened than Elijah Muhammad was when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I’ve never in my life seen a man as frightened as he was. And when I made the statement that I did, why he almost cracked up behind it because there were all kinds of implications to it that at that time were way above and beyond my understanding.

Now you may wonder, why is it so important to many interests for the Black Muslim movement to remain? But I told you, it has the most militant, most uncompromising, most dissatisfied Black people in America in it. Many have left it, many are still in it. The fear has been that if anything happened to Elijah Muhammad and the Black Muslim movement were to crumble, that all those militants who formerly were in it and were held in check would immediately become involved in the civil rights struggle, and they would add the same kinds of energy to the civil rights struggle that they gave to the Black Muslim movement. And there’s a great fear. You know yourself, white people don’t like for Black people to get involved in anything to do with civil rights unless those Black people are nonviolent, loving, patient, forgiving, and all of that. They don’t like it otherwise.

And there has been a conspiracy across the country on the part of many factions of the press to suppress news that would open the eyes of the Muslims who are following Elijah Muhammad. They continue to make him look like he’s a prophet somewhere who is getting some messages direct from God and is untouchable and things of that sort. I’m telling you the truth. But they do know that if something were to happen and all these brothers, their eyes were to come open, they would be right out here in every one of these civil rights organizations making these Uncle Tom Negro leaders stand up and fight like men instead of running around here nonviolently.

So they hope Elijah Muhammad remains as he is for a long time because they know that any organization that he heads, it will not do anything in the struggle that the Black man is confronted with in this country. Proof of which, look how violent they can get. They were violent, they’ve been violent from coast to coast. Muslims, in the Muslim movement, have been involved in cold, calculated violence. And not at one time have they been involved in any violence against the Ku Klux Klan. They’re capable. They’re qualified. They’re equipped. They know how to do it. But they’ll never do it—only to another brother. Now, I am well aware of what I’m setting in motion by what I’m saying up here tonight. I’m well aware. But I have never said or done anything in my life that I wasn’t prepared to suffer the consequences for.

Source: Perry’s “Malcolm X: The Last Speeches” pp. 121-122
Special Thanks to this Tumblr: http://freedombyanymeans.tumblr.com/
And it’s parent: http://disciplesofmalcolm.tumblr.com/
For an interesting quote on Malcolm’s assassination see: http://onitaset.tumblr.com/post/57461794940/excerpt-from-the-jfk-conspiracy-by-david-miller

Other Malcolm Posts:

Dr. Jeffries on Community Cop (5/17/11) — Subject: Malcolm
Malcolm X’s Speech at the Founding Rally of the [OAAU] — Brave Oration
Understanding Our Ecology with Malcolm X — Our Economics
“Harlem hadn’t always been [. . .]” — Malcolm X — Harlem’s Birth
Malcolm X: What you and I have to do is get involved — Get Involved!