Malcolm X at Oxford University 1964

We love find­ing these vin­tage media gems. Below, we have Mal­colm X speak­ing at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty in 1964. In this clas­sic speech, you get a good feel for Mal­colm X’s pres­ence and mes­sage and also the social issues that were alive dur­ing the day. You’ll hear X’s famous claim that lib­er­ty can be attained by “what­ev­er means nec­es­sary,” includ­ing force, if the gov­ern­ment won’t guar­an­tee it. Then there’s his notion that “intel­li­gent­ly direct­ed extrem­ism” can achieve lib­er­ty more effec­tive­ly than paci­fist strate­gies (e.g., what MLK had in mind). You can lis­ten to the speech in its entire­ty here (Real Audio), some­thing that is well worth doing. But we’d also encour­age you to watch (see below) the dra­mat­ic clos­ing min­utes and pay some atten­tion to the nice rhetor­i­cal slide — to how we get from Ham­let’s doubts (“To be or not to be”) to tak­ing up arms against state enshrined racism. This piece of video is added to our YouTube playlist.

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