Remembering Malcolm

good evening sorry about the delay you had a little trouble with it with the restaurant who was Malcolm X a man who has a three hour movie made of his life a man who has the entire nation in a frenzy to get an X hat X t-shirt excuse X ox x bumper stickers bumper stickers etc etc but after all the hype is over let's does not forget the man who caused all this height the black man whose name alone struck fear in white people's hearts the black man who at the time when most blacks were bowing down he stood up we must remember the man what better way to remember the man that you listen to someone who knew him Benjamin Karim served as First Assistant Minister to Malcolm s as Mark atmoss number seven during the 1960's he worked side by side with Malcolm until that fateful day in 1965 he's going to share with us a Malcolm the general public really viewed a teacher who spoke more of obedience moderation and peace dinner violence the editor of the book the end of white world supremacy which is a collection of speeches by Malcolm X and also the author of remembering Malcolm I'm pleased to introduce you to a German in Germany what well as Muslims saying salaam-o-alaikum in other words it means peace be unto you and I'm sure everybody desires peace but let me first tell you something about this restaurant we were sitting in the restaurant right I hadn't haven't eaten since last last evening and this morning my wife said eat breakfast I had worked out I said I'm not hungry so I got to O'Hara Airport I went to get something to eat and hot dogs with three dollars and fifty cents a little slice of Pisa was five dollars so when I got you a restaurant here I ordered tomato soup and he called it onion rings so it's later she brought this little thing that I thought was my tomato soup and onion ring and I ate it I said wow this this tomato soup is spicy and what it was I've come to find out then she brings me another little thing there she said this is your tomato soup so I said what was this that I just finished eating she said that's the sauce onion yeah well the sister sister that introduced me was correct I did open the meeting for Malcolm X the day that he was killed which was about 27 years ago the 21st of this month February how many of you saw the movie than one Wow it's good they are the movie was very authentic in the the dance and all that back in those days people danced that way without going to dancing school the the actor that played Baines there was no such person as Baines but he was a composite of all of those people that had come against Malcolm this prison scene of meeting Baines in prison is not how Malcolm was introduced to Islam his brother Reginald but rather against Spike rather than using many different actors he just used one actor as a composite figure the scene at the police station was good was exactly and that was the incident in Harlem that brought Malcolm X into focus is when this young man by the name of Johnson was brutalized by the police in Harlem in 1957 and at that time the african-american men in Harlem weren't allowed to even congregate on the sidewalk any more than three people were dispersed so you could say at that time Harlem was under power military occupation force so to speak and there was no such thing of anyone going to any african-american going to the police precinct and demanding anything or protesting and no one had ever got someone but in general we knew nothing about Malcolm X in Harlem in 1957 and any anybody in Harlem in 1957 that was worth knowing we knew them but this man first he went to the police precinct and demanded to see Johnson his brother Johnson who was a Muslim and the police denied that they even had anyone there by the name so he left and when he came back there were about there's the Muslims had come in from Philadelphia New Haven surrounding cities but still there weren't more than about a hundred but by the time he got to the precinct there were thousands of people thousands of young people that had began to march with this man called Malcolm X to the police precinct and when he went in this time he told the police officer to look out the window and believe it that would be a window that's when they changed their mind and they took this man to silentium Hospital and a neurosurgeon by the name of dr. Matthews who was also a mortician I mean if he couldn't save you then he had he could bury and he was very active in civil rights movement at that time but anyway by the time they got johnson to sign him hospital has the new york police force had come out and these muslims this was when he was with the Nation of Islam began to encircle groups of police officers now that's unheard of and Malcolm told the deputy police commissioner that if that man dies I'm not responsible for what happened to those police officers that in those circles so in the interim dr. Matthews came out and told him the man and plate this was inserted in his head and he told Malcolm had he gotten him there 15 minutes earlier he couldn't have saved his life and what Malcolm did he raised his hands he lowered his hands and thousands of people that knew nothing about this man just vanished quietly and the Deputy Police Commissioner did say that no man to have that much power that was true then sell his script was almost verbatim of what Malcolm actually said when Denzel Washington and all of us we were with him and we are the Spike Lee and the other stars that were playing in the the film in the movie and they were to begin the next month which was September and Denzel Washington had listened to every tape every record that he could hear news from news media that he could see in here Malcolm speak he read his autobiography he talked to people like myself and other people excuse me who knew him personally and at that time Malcolm eat one meal a day and Denzel Washington began eating one meal a day and Spike Lee said a few months ago you know when they they film and then they say cut blue gadget he said at one time Denzel Washington told him that he did not remember a thing that he had said and that's how he had taken on the spirit of Malcolm X and when they flashed to black and white to betray Malcolm when he came back from making Hajj coming back from Africa you know I had to look twice myself to distinguish whether that was Malcolm or Denzel Washington and I think that each and every one of you should she see that movie it's an excellent movie and also it portrays the part and the influence that mr. Mohammed had upon Malcolm and it's impossible to understand him in his beginning without understanding the part that Elijah Muhammad played in shaping Minister Malcolm's life and I was with him for eight years at that time as a member of what was known then as the Nation of Islam but I hope that each and every one of you to go and see it oh and the song that was being played sung by Sam Cooke when he was on his way to the Audubon Ballroom it was Malcolm X believe it or not that influenced Sam Cooke to write that song a change will come how do we know it because at the premiere Sam Cooke's father who is the Reverend he told us that it was Malcolm X that influenced him to write the song the change will come so hopefully each and every one of you will go and see this movie and since this is Black History Month and I guess you could say to us it's somewhat of of a sacred month I think he began at Black History Day then Black History Week then Black History Month but when we say black history that's the term that has to be qualified because black history or history is intertwined let me tell you what I mean that at some point on this earth we know the human being did not exist and any of you who are Christians Muslims or Buddhist or Hindu or or Indian or whatever you are all the legends and the Scriptures speak of a time when a human being did not exist on this earth then at some point somehow the human being appeared on this earth it means that that human being are those two people had to have been created or evolved someplace and the anthropologists have come to a conclusion that the beginning of the human being began along the equator on the continent that you and I today call Africa we also know at some point from those two people came all the other people that exists today on this earth if there were two people then these two people either they were colourless or they had color since we live in a world that's so caught up in color and nobody likes to talk about it means they they they must have had they had to have some color if not then they would have just remained water so they had some color then we can assume as anthropologists and the archaeologists can assume that these two people were black black black when we say black we mean black and from these two black people came all the other colors came all the other races on this earth we had nothing to do with that absolutely nothing and if I may recite a verse in the Quran and in some of your scriptures it says so o mankind surely we have created you from water from two people and in one point it said black mud and have many view tribes and families that you may know one another at some point on this earth the human being began to develop a language you're speaking of the human beings well those two people were as smoothly designed as we are or whether those two people were quote-unquote crudely designed as they have shown us and some of the skeletons that they found of the human being as the human being existed millions of years ago but we do know that perhaps millions of years later the same upright creatures appeared in other parts of the world speaking different languages at some point we know that there were no people in Japan because they have histories and that goes so far back that there are mythological legends the people of some more on those islands they know at at some point their ancestors migrated from somewhere to those islands the people in Europe they know at some point there were no people in Europe so at some time in the annals of history the human being migrated and appeared in Europe but none of these people can tell you the Chinese the African the Caucasian the Indian here and there found evidence that the Indians had been here over 30,000 years but at some point in the annals of time that Indian came from somewhere else so what are legends in our myths and our Scriptures tell us that the human being developed and was created or evolved our your persuasion is in one place and those human beings would have to have been black black blacker than any human being that now exists on this earth in all of all the other colors to evolve because we know that the color blind is really not a color when I say black I mean black it's the sum total of all colors if you look at black mud on a microscope you won't see black you see all the other colors also we know that on this continent that evidently the human being evolved and those people are the forefathers of all of us and those people we had nothing to do or no part that we played in their creation and their evolution or even our own existence so on this continent perhaps millions of years later arose of civilization a civilization that degrees later on thousands and thousands of years later they call the civilization Egypt as' but we call Egypt and this civilization that we call Egypt is a civilization that borrowed nothing from any other civilization no language devoured no medicine they borrowed no architecture they borrowed no style of garment they bought with nothing there has never been and this is the mystery and it had nothing to do with us it has to do with those people this is the mystery of that civilization but at one point the continent of Africa on that continent was the center of world civil nation on that continent there had never been a civilization that existed on this earth that borrowed nothing there may have been civilizations that create that predated that one but that's the one that has come down to us through animals of history intact China borrowed the Chaldeans borrowed the Hittites the Sumerians the Sumerians our civilization here matter of fact everything that we have here was borrowed except jazz jazz is the only culture it's true that was created here in this country nothing else Valley no dance form nothing calendar Egypt did not borrow the calendar the Egyptians originated their own calendar some these people and not only that they ruled a great empire that stretched all the way into what today we call Syria and it's time went on as every civilization has done they decline as one civilization declines for whatever reason another one rises as they decline then there were some other dark-skinned people when you say black history it's it's you know you have to it's a tricky it's a tricky thing if you say black history then you're talking about the Dravidians of India I mean Africa is not the only place in this world spot-on geographical area where black people have lived and do them and have built civilizations if you just think of one continent in one place then you have to broaden your scope you know so I could say Asian civilization I mean agency and covers more than japan-china you're talking about Malaysia Cambodia Thailand Central Asia yeah so about 2000 BC some other dark-skinned people crossed the Mediterranean and he found some people in Europe that were somewhat barbaric without culture when you when you when you have no culture you are barbaric barbaric you're not savage because the people that we call savages they have culture they have tradition they have myths they have legends they have religion but we're talking about a barbaric people and these people here have nothing to do with those people in those days there was no such thing as people considering each other's color that came after the Moors were driven I was staining the Portuguese started that thing but anyway the Greeks and they went into Europe and these people civilized these barbaric people and behind this civilization came a great civilization that we call the Greek civilization the Greeks call these docks can people Phoenicians the Greek word fauna cos it means sound it also means the thing that's the color of clay a dark color and they took into here the alphabet they introduce them to architecture they introduce them to culture and refinement and I don't know whether after sometimes after you come in and you and you you help people and they wind up killing you and nobody knows what happened to the definitions that were there in Europe and the Greek civilization rose and the Greeks came closer than any other civilization in the Western world to this day to create a perfect democracy the Greeks gave much credit to Egypt for the the knowledge that that they had acquired in medicine even the clothes that they wore you can see came from across the togas was not a European garment and they created a beautiful civilization that has not been equal in terms of culture and civilization since that time and they got weak and they begin to argue and they begin to fight the Peloponnesian walls and that civilization declined and when they decline Europe went into somewhat of a dark age and then some other dark-skinned people cross the Mediterranean and they found some people that italic tribes and they brought civilization to these people see when you say it's civilization not just to say hey somebody did this you want to know what contribution was made to the progress of civilization and these people that today we call Etruscans they civilize some people that later developed what is called in history Rome that developed into what was called the Roman Empire and these were people that came from across the Mediterranean into Europe and in the Romans they they were mighty and after a time when they became rich with luxury they began to become saw and men began to complain about the young people and how unmindful they had become they began to complain about women taking birth control to prevent themselves from having children they began to complain about the same thing that we're complaining planing about now how unsafe it is you can't leave your doors open you have to look over your shoulders and that civilization fair and for a thousand years there was no civilization in Europe except the church that kept the writing going that that began to write books the mall and in seventy eleven after Islam has spread across Africa there were some people that cross the Straits of Gibraltar that that were called the Moors at the invitation of King Theodorus because the Gothic tribe the people that today we call Germans had taken over and they had they were oppressing the Jews that were living in Spain at that time they were very cruel people so these Moors these Moors ten thousand of them cross the Straits of Gibraltar and they conquered the Gothic tribes and the random out of Spain and they set up built a civilization that lasted from seven-eleven until 1492 and during this era these men that crossed from what we call Morocco North Africa into Europe they passed on to Europe optics without which there would have been no Galilee oh they they passed on medicine even cena's theses on medicine was used in Europe until the 17th 18th century 17th century they call them in your books they call them Averroes his name is even cena even rashid another medicine man Oxford University was created out of the sciences that demoys had passed on to Europe through Spain the Arabic numerical system was passed into Europe by these men that crossed into into Spain and stayed 700 years it is not one instance that any woman they took no women was ever raped there was no pillage these men were cultured you talk about culture your culture your black culture your white culture these men were culture these men were refined these men had respect for themselves and at the same time they were great warriors during that era if I may say this and this is no insult to anyone because we had nothing to do with those people they they thought quite differently than we do now at that time no one thought they were superior because of a color people were superior according to their deeds your arm your car with your valor that made you superior and it's still the same now if you don't have that then then we're all in fear and severe there was at this time to show you how people advanced at this time in Spain and certain parts of Europe if you took a bath you were put to death you were put this is history you were put to death to show you how far civilization has advanced that that has nothing to do with people with these people today it has something to do with those people in that day and that was a nun it's the book by white writer his name is Lam heroin heroin wrote the Crusaders anyway the name of the book is the Moors in Spain and he's an Englishman stanley lane to get that Stanley Lane food and this nun was bragging that the only time that water had ever kissed tip it ever touched the tip of her fingers was in time for what he called in the church when he sprinkled water yeah so that was the only time and these men built seven hundred bath houses in the city of Seville Spain and they introduced hygiene into Europe please set up universities no one paid to come to those universities versity is to learn the same year that Columbus discovered America the last these malls were driven I was painting and behind that the astrolabe isn't the instrument that's used for navigation was introduced into Europe by these men geography was introduced into Europe by these men a more correct geography than some of the Europeans had he's going to photography yeah after these Moors were driven out of Europe then the the the Portuguese were the first to sail the seas behind the Portuguese came to English behind the English came to French and behind that came to slave trade so up until that point Dede if you say black you may get wrong impression but the none white people of Africa and their people in Africa that are as light as anyone in Europe but the Africans had room see every every people have had the opportunity to rule and this has happening throughout history so when we celebrate Black History Month we have to look back and see what are the contributions that people of our race so to speak contributed to world civilization and we can't look back and say oh we went wee wee wee took such and such a thing up into Europe there were people of our race that built the pyramid so you can go to sleep not only we can you have whites that can go to sleep bragging about what they contributed to civilization high technology which happened and then what happened the Japanese came on the scene and the Japanese created a technology that overshadowed the technology of this society so now we in America trying to wake up to say how can we get this house back in order again how can America again become an economic power how can we create jobs how did you can get ahead of us you know why because culture teaches you it gives you the flexibility to change and unless you have the flexibility to change your stagnated person or stagnated country if you are fixed or I'm fixed in my ways and my ideas and I said because it's summer I'm on the beach with my bathing suit on and then the season began to change and you say hey Kareem is getting chilly I said no man forget it you know I'm a ham just like this and then worthless sex then and I'm so fixed in my way that I refuse to change no matter what's happening with the environment I'm going to remain the way I am and then about the middle of January I'm standing there in a block of ice frozen because I did not have the flexibility to change and that's what's wrong with this country and this is what Malcolm used to talk about he taught us about all of these civilizations I mean even further back than what we're going into now but it's the ability to change and many of you know that from the newsreel the television the newspapers FBI reports that nobody ever thought that Minister Malcolm would ever say I never thought it and I was with the man for seven years eight years seven years as his assistant he was only he only lived 11 months well he left the Nation of Islam and all of us were shocked Lee wrote a letter back to us that I have made the Hajj the pilgrimage to Mecca and I met white people with the eyes the bluest of blue hair the promise of blind that had no consciousness of racism and I tell you something we are at the time you know we were all sort of then we couldn't see that I mean you got dogs down here biting these people to young college students did police in the South arresting these girls bring their legs open beating them between their legs with belt buckles water hose to 300 pounds of pressure ripping people clothes off black people being murdered Buster set on fire by right man it's no way in the world that he could have gone somewhere unless I sweets a mouth on this he's gone and he's you know he's nuts he's so loud but that wasn't true it wasn't true what it was is that when he left this country he found ours that he discovered say that white America did not reflect the whole white race that the thinking of white America did not reflect the thinking of all white people on this earth and by many of us not being at liberty to travel it we couldn't see that only those who travel there's a whole more proverb that says that one who never traveled will never know man so if you never travel then you and I may remain in a very narrow concept of life but Malcolm had the ability to change his mind because once you come into contact with reality and reality is that which exists and our ideas concerning it has more effect on in other words if we saw a car coming at 60 miles an hour and the man doesn't have any brakes and we were standing in the middle of the street until he left me see this wasn't your area it was that area but he changed so what does that tell us that's why I say we should all of us you see that movie because we all struggle with something some of us struggle to prevent ourselves from committing suicide because we don't have the heart and we don't have the culture and we don't have a discipline that will allow us to understand that failure only allows us to know what does not work but we said no I'm going to kill myself because I feel I'm going to kill myself because of this problem or that problem that's a weakness and this is why those people that have a discipline that have not necessarily family values but have the value of family and if you don't have the value of family you have yourself and that will never be another you that will never be another you on this earth and you can travel from here and you can look into the faces of every human being on this earth you will not find another you know if you even find one person that have your finger friends so your valuable person and when a person realizes his or her value then they realize that I must develop the ability and the flexibility to change in order to adapt to those things that are changing around me and I didn't want to speak too much on my phone because I find that every time we do this then someone who we finish there's a thousand questions so I usually just leave that for questions because I don't know what interview may want to know but one thing I can say is that we people here in America you really need to change you know we really need to change we really need to adapt ourselves to a global mentality today number one if you don't learn a foreign language you're restricted if you think that the United States is an isolated country and what happens somewhere else does not affect us then I would say with all of your learning you're ignorant if you say what the heck I don't need to learn anyone elses language perhaps you don't but you may graduate and you may not get a job here in this country but suppose you can change the polls you say hey I can change my mind they give me a passport I want to travel what do you want to go well I don't want to speak Japanese I'll learn to speak Chinese I learned to speak French I learned to speak the Malaysian language I learned the Indonesian I learn Arabic do you leave here with a profession and a skill that you can offer somebody in this world they may not be able to pay you money but many of these countries have resources they have Jim pepsi-cola is not paid money in Russia they borrow Pepsi Cola takes vodka in Pensacola brings the vodka here and they sell vodka for US dollars so you there's always the first the first exchange was bothering not money so you learn a language I tell any of you learning language because ignorant people have never developed civilization evil people have never liberated themselves out of their ignorance ignorant people are dangerous and like Malcolm said that ignorance is worse than poverty because once you enlighten a man or woman they can raise themselves out of their condition if they have the discipline to do it so of any questioners okay are there about Malcolm or anything nothing no question most controversial country you mean in reality or four or something or was some speech the media mayor say it was country I tell you one that that he made in at the Manhattan Center in New York and D some of the first 1963 when after President Kennedy was assassinated some woman in the audience at well let me tell you what happened mr. Mohammed had sent out I guess you could say and eating eat that no one should speak out against the dead president you don't want any Muslim ministers to speak out against President Kennedy he said because black people in this country love President Kennedy and he did not want to turn black people against Muslim so we had mr. Mohammed was supposed to speak at the Manhattan center on the first and we had put out literature and had pamphlets and people were you know had been riled up they wanted to hear mr. Mohammed speak there in Holland and then a man at the Manhattan sent him so he cancelled it then Malcolm called and asked if he could speak in this place which he did and someone asked Malcolm what did he think about the death of President Kennedy and Malcolm said that it was a sign of the chickens coming home and to show you how almost everything he said was misconstrued even this thing about any means necessary Avenue and anybody ever break that down as to what the man actually meant when he said that so behind that he was suspended as minister spokesman for the Nation of Islam and three months later he he officially split I think that was the most controversial one-line statement that that he had made all his speeches public publicly seem to have been controversial but where the news media was concerned what about what Oh tricky oh no he explained that now he said that he said that he said that that America had such a wicked history and the way that people had been treated the Indians the black people in this country realize this is 1963 I mean still segregation in this country he said that that had created so much hatred that it had culminated in an American citizen assassinating his own president you know you know there was a saying that he used to recite if I can remember he said that of all our studies history is most attractive and best qualified all research for it develops the springs and motives of human actions and cadet and predicts the consequences of circumstances that act so profoundly on the destiny of all human beings so what he was saying was that that the hatred in this country had culminated in am an American citizen assassinating his own president that's what he said he meant by that and it wasn't some kind of mockery about the President Kennedy being fascinated but it was just misconstrued a documentary a muse of shop captain Joe yeah what about that Malcolm and Miss Muhammad was heading down collision whoa yes but it was not of their own making it there there were people around miss Muhammad at that time that had become very much afraid of Malcolm X I'm talking about in the Nation of Islam of issues around mr. Muhammad and he was he was ill he had bronchitis and they were afraid they were afraid manufacturing the body of Muslim did not even believe mr. Muhammad to die and that's the truth but the officials however believe the higher up as the masses of people believe in the church out the church in government or at work and they knew if mr. Muhammad had passed at that time the possibility that Malcolm would have become the number one dealer of the Nation of Islam and they knew had that happened that he would roll so it was important that they knew with him because we're dealing with a lot of millions and millions of dollars and what you have millions and millions of dollars you have power and we're doing that power you have corruption so and yes they were on a collision of course because of people feeding mr. Mohammed the wrong information about - the mountain let me tell you something when he was when he was killed he could have been a wealthy man had he wanted the material world had had he not chose to dedicate his life to adjust us to try to help act American people he could have been wealthy when he was killed he had $150 that's all he had in the world he never even had a bank account the car that he was driving the old low bill before he got that car he had an old run-down Chevrolet and mountain mists was running up and down the road from one place to another talking to people setting up miles or at that time setting up temples trying to enlighten people and he would drive fast but he would always he told us when we traveled like that for the Bible on the dashboard if you stopped by police to say that we were preachers we've gone to a premium and he said police don't dear creatures tickets you know and and so miss Muhammad told him to back Samantha back yourself a car you know did them dude take your money and buy yourself a car and he wouldn't do it he said he was talking to us he said the reason why I'm not going to buy a car is because I don't walk to become jealous of me so what happened the same captain joseph and brother Maceo back there before all the other stuff took place went out and bought that car that Malcolm had when he was assassinated about a week or so before that we will come upon the to reach the hotel and he'd gone to insurance company to try to ensure his life because he had nothing to leave his family nothing like I said not even a bank account nothing and even even the clothes that he had was burned up in the house that was set on fire and the same thing happened to this parents his father and his mother when he was a kid this was it look before this had happened and we were walking down from the Teresa hotel there on 125th and 7th Avenue and had been snoring and he had this trench coat and he sware galoshes you know that pant piece these are what he called it through the snaps latches and and he would he would leave about three of them unlatch you know he walked them through these things are clinging and he said you know I just came from the mushaf continent to try to get life and showing and he said they would not insure my life because I was too much of a hassle and he said that shows you that tells you how much my life is worth see but I mean that's the death kind of dedication that he had for people and then the saying say your service to humanity is the rent that you paid for your space here on this earth and he paid his rent and to those people that kill him are they one of them that was shot is the only one that went to prison that was involved in his assassination for them never went to prison too before are there the other two are still here and I guarantee you that they regret that they killed him you can't solve problems by killing people you create problem