148 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be
able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as
sisters and brothers....
So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let
freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from
the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!...
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let
freedom ring from Lookout Mountain, Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every
hill and mole hill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
When we let freedom ring... we will be able to speed up that day when
all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of
the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are
free at last!’
Source: Reprinted by arrangement with the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr., c/o
Writers House as agent for the proprietor, New York, NT © 1963 Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr., copyright renewed 1991 Coretta Scott King.MALCOLM X’S SPEECH IN CLEVELAND, OHIO, APRIL 1964
Malcolm’s powerful speech is typical of his negative views of the mainstream
civil rights movement.
Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing is already
American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren’t Americans
yet.... No, I’m not an American. I’m one of the 22 million black people who
are the victims of Americanism.... So, I’m not standing here speaking to
you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver – no, not
I. I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America
through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an
American nightmare....
Black people are fed up with the dillydallying, pussyfooting, compromis-
ing approach that we’ve been using toward getting our freedom. We want
freedom now, but we’re not going to get it saying ‘We Shall Overcome.’ We’ve
got to fight until we overcome....
It’s time for you and me to stop sitting in this country, letting some cracker
senators, Northern crackers and Southern crackers, sit there in Washington,
D.C., and come to a conclusion in their mind that you and I are supposed to
have civil rights. There’s no white man going to tell me anything about my
rights. Brothers and sisters, always remember, if it doesn’t take senators and
congressmen and presidential proclamations to give freedom to the whiteDocument 11