Great Minds

I guess Ta nehisi Coates and I were thinking along the same lines. I had seen so many references to Martin Luther King Jr. leading up to President Barack Obama's (damn don't that sound good) inauguration that I felt the need to look for some Malcolm X to remind folks of the fact that there were other leaders of that time that helped to shape the discourse and were instrumental in inspiring black people to fight for their rights. This is a long speech but its well worth it, especially for those who have only learned of a caricature of who Malcolm X really was. He was a very dynamic speaker much like President Obama, and they also shared other traits as he was also very intelligent and prescient in ways that I am not so sure that other black leaders of his time,including Martin, were. You see Malcolm X not only wanted us to fight for our rights. He also wanted black folks to prepare for the trials and tribulations that would come with embracing those new rights AFTER we won the fight for them.

This is "The Ballot Or The Bullet" from 1964.