Revolutionary Black Liberation Leader in the U.S.
1925-1965
“The police are able to use the press to make the white public think that ninety per cent or ninety-nine per cent of the Negroes in the Negro community are criminals, and once the white public is convinced that most of the Negro community is a criminal element, then this automatically paves the way for the police to move into the Negro community exercising Gestapo tactics, stopping any black man who is on the sidewalk, whether he is guilty or whether he is innocent, whether he is well-dressed or whether he is poorly dressed, whether he is educated or whether he is dumb, whether he’s a Christian or whether he’s a Muslim, as long as he is black and a member of the Negro community the white public thinks that the white policeman is justified in going in there and trampling on that man’s civil rights and on that man’s human rights.
Once the police have convinced the white public that the so-called negro community is a criminal element, they can go in and question, brutalize, murder, unarmed innocent negroes and the white public is gullible enough to back them up.”
Excerpt from Malcolm X speech in Los Angeles, May 5, 1962
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