Today, you’re coming out of college, you’re coming out of the leading universities, you’re trying to go in a good direction but you don’t know which direction to go in, and if somebody tries to take you right to the root of your problem, they say that that man’s a hate teacher. And then again if we tell you that Negroes are being hung on the trees, or being shot down illegally, unjustly and those Negroes should do something to protect themselves, you say, “You’re advocating violence.” The white man is tricking you. He’s trapping you. He doesn’t call it violence when he lands troops in South Vietnam. He doesn’t call it violence when he lands troops in Berlin. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he didn’t say get nonviolent. He said, “Praise the Lord but pass the ammunition.”
But when someone attacks you, when someone comes at you with a club, when someone comes at you with a rope, when someone comes at you with a gun, despite the fact that you’ve done nothing, he tells you, suffer peacefully. Pray for those who use you despitefully. Be long-suffering. And how long can you suffer after suffering for four hundred years? - Malcolm X