Articles by Malcolm X from LA Herald-Dispatch/July 25, 1957

Messenger Muhammad has taught us how we so-called Negroes were kidnapped from the East by the white Christian Slavemaster, brought to America in chains and robbed of our own religion, robbed of our own language, robbed of our own culture, robbed of our own God, robbed of our own flag, robbed of our own names, and robbed even of our own nationality . . . and after robbing us of all that we originally could proudly call our own, then the Slavemaster taught us to call ourselves Negroes, telling us that this was so because he had brought us from along the banks of the Niger River.

Messenger Muhammad asks us today: since when does one get one’s nationality from a river? This same wicked Slavemaster taught us that “Negro” means “black” in Spanish. Messenger Muhammad again asks us why then don’t all of the dark, Spanish speaking people of Spain, South and Central America, accept it (Negro) as their nationality too? Messenger Muhammad says that we too should get our nationality from the nation which our foreparents originated from (as do all other recognized peoples).

Messenger Muhammad teaches us how the Bible says we were purposely cut off from our own kind after being robbed of our identity by the cruel Christian Slavemaster (Ezek. 37:11; Psalms 83:4 Psalms). Messenger Muhammad says the Slavemaster took our own names, language and religion from us, so that we would then have to accept him, obey him, and worship him (Daniel 1:6-7).

Messenger Muhammad has given us many scriptures to prove that his teachings to us are true and in accord with the prophecies of the Bible. He says it is we so-called Negroes in America who were robbed deaf, dumb and blind to the knowledge of our own God and of our own selves, so that today we are like dry bones in the valley (spiritually dead, in the graves of ignorance). We are now able to speak only the Slavemaster’s tongue, and we are even yet called the same “slave names” given by the Slavemaster to our fathers during slavery time . . . names such as Jones, Smith, Powell, King, Bunche, Diggs, Dawson, etc.