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"Separate State for Negroes?"
Harvard
Law Record - March 30, 1961 - Pages 7, 8
By Robert C. Berry
reprinted by permission
Whether the Black Muslim movement of Elijah Muhammad will bring about "something new, something which has never before been revealed," or whether it promises only "a crescent shaped pie-in-the-sky to come by-and-by," focused the Law School Forum debate last Friday evening between Malcolm X, Muhammad's chief minister and organizer, and Walter Carrington, of the NAACP and the Massachusetts State Commission Against Discrimination. Roger Fisher, professor of law, moderated the program.
The Black Muslims are a movement, restricted solely to non-whites, who demand a separate state carved from American territory, where the black man will be free of his white slavemaster." Before a jammed Sanders Theater crowd that included at least 200 Muslim followers, Malcolm X, the resonant-voiced adherent to Islam and Allah, warned of the wrath of God that will inevitably descend on the United States if she insists on keeping the black man in bondage.
Create Separate State
Drawing analogies to the biblical conflict of Moses and the Pharaoh, Malcolm X demanded that the United States hew out a separate state for the black man with provisions for support for 20 to 25 years until his industry and society can gain equal but separate footing with America's. Otherwise, he warned, the curse of the Pharaohs will descend, by snow, hail and greater earthquakes yet to come.
Prompted by a question from the audience, Malcolm X said that his divine leader, Mr. Muhammad, had not designated any specific territory for the milk and honey, only that it be fertile.
"The Caucasian slavemaster does not trust us to let us leave and live elsewhere," he said. "On the other hand, he is not willing to let us live here unless we are puppets to parrot his ideas." Since neither of these will suffice, and since Mr. Muhammad wants justice for all and not just some of the "twenty million ex-slaves," he has sought recourse through the idea of a separate state within the United States.
In addition to describing his own movement, Malcolm X also took the opportunity to disparage the efforts of other groups working on the Negro problem, particularly the NAACP, accusing that organization's leaders of excepting the "thirty pieces of silver" of token integration.
Later, when the NAACP's Walter Carrington had his opportunity to speak, he replied to these charges by assuring the audience that the NAACP likewise opposes token integration and will work vigorously against any measures aimed at keeping integration within those spheres. However, he rapidly departed from any further agreement with Black Muslim philosophy by declaring that the time to act is now through the gains already realized, and not by waiting for the will of Allah to intervene. He stressed equality for the Negro within the United States.
Mr. Carrington scored heavily with the Harvard audience in his quipping responses to the Black Muslim ideas. Carrington confessed that he had earlier tried to "feel out" his opponent at a dinner preceding the program to see what might be in store for him later in the evening. "I knew I was in for it," Carrington said, "when he took his coffee straight black."
Carrington discarded the idea that the Muslim movement offered anything new. He likened it, instead, to the back- to-Africa ideas of the early American colonial days or to the Marcus Garvey movement of the '20's and 30's, the communist advocacy in the 30's, or the Moorish Scientist cult of a still later decade.
Carrington also noted how paradoxical it must seem that the greatest outside support this movement can find would be from such sources as the White Citizen's Counsel, from whose ranks a lawyer for the Muslims was recently recruited. "It's the best thing to happen to the Ku Klux Klan since the invention of the bedsheet," he sallied.
Professor Fisher introduced the speakers as well as moderating the program. He noted at the beginning of the evening's affair that there had been a question as to the desirability of two Negroes airing their differences in public before a predominantly white audience. But, he added, to take this attitude was like having the pilot of a crashing plane turn to the co-pilot and say, "Boy, you've got a problem!"