Black Nationalism In Malcolm X's The Ballot Or The Bullet

Malcolm X once said, “Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery”. In the preceding quote, Malcolm X is explaining his threatening proposal of black nationalism. During the 1960s Malcolm X believed that African Americans were not being treated properly and that they must unite and take up arms if they fail to get what they want. Essentially, they were being politically oppressed. Despite the fact the fifteenth amendment was in place at the time, blacks in America were faced with political barriers when attempting to vote. Barriers included things such as voting poll taxes and literacy tests in some cases. X believed that these barriers were outrageous and needed to be taken down. In Malcolm X’s “The Ballot or the Bullet”, X advocates for a political philosophy called black nationalism in response to political barriers blacks were faced with at the time that prevented most from expressing their right to

Although some of X’s plans and ideas were extreme, the majority of it was actually quite compelling. In Peniel’s critique of a book about Malcolm X written by an author by the name of Manning Marable, Peniel states that Marable wrote about Malcolm as (2011), “one whose uncanny ability to reinvent himself during his prematurely short life and truncated public career touched upon themes of black political self-determination, economic justice, internationalism, and radical democracy”. As mentioned before, despite X’s radical views, he was extremely intelligent and laid the foundation for a major reform in American history. Malcolm X once said, “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it