Donnie Mossberg: Malcolm X Debate With James Baldwin, September 5, 1963

Source:Real Life Journal 

This is the perfect debate to have because what is integration worth if it doesn’t come with freedom. You could have different races and ethnicities integrated in the same community, city, state or even country. But if one race of people or one ethnicity of people doesn’t have the same freedom and constitutional rights under law as another and can be fired and denied the right to vote, or live in a home or speak out in public simply because of their race, then what is integration worth for the people who do not have freedom.

Malcolm X wasn’t interested in integration at all and simply not integration at the sake of integration. But he was interested in freedom for an entire race of people who had been denied it for their entire existence in North America. Since the time they were African slaves to Europeans in the British colonies and then later the United States, to post Civil War where they were denied the same freedom as European-Americans as officially American citizens and free people.