The Ballot or the Bullet

“The Ballot or the Bullet,” one of Malcolm X’s best-known speeches, encapsulates the atmosphere of protest, often violent, that enveloped the United States during a decade in which disenfranchised groups sought the rights that they were due. White America must choose between giving black people voting rights—offering “the ballot” to millions of black Americans who were disenfranchised by both aggressive and sly means in both the North and the South—and “the bullet,” violent reaction after centuries of frustration over being deprived of basic freedoms and rights. Though Malcolm delivers his speech to a black audience, he entitles the speech as though it is intended for a white audience. He presents two options to those with whom both he and his audience have grown exasperated: Provide black people with the vote (though Malcolm knows that white supremacists are loathe giving up power), or face the possibility of revolutionary violence similar to that being carried out in far-flung countries like Algeria and Vietnam.

In 1964, “the bullet” carried the feeling of imminent threat, both in black and white communities. Malcolm delivers his speech nearly five months after the assassination of President Kennedy and nearly a year after the assassination of Mississippi’s NAACP field secretary, Medgar Evers. Malcolm encourages his black listeners to embrace their anger and aggression. He argues that doing so will prove to whites that black people are not weak, and it will instill in black people a sense of pride that will result in the self-help that he believes will most benefit them. Though he doesn’t directly dismiss working with whites, he refers to white people as enemies and suggests that it is foolish of black people to believe that they can work with enemies.

Although he defines 1964 as an explosive year because it is an election year, Malcolm doesn’t, ironically, embrace the vote as the means of liberating black people from oppression. He argues that there is a “government conspiracy” that will ultimately refuse to cede any rights to black Americans. Malcolm concludes that the United States is too corrupt for black people to have faith in its system. It can only achieve peace with this population by giving black people the rights and freedoms that are their due. He uses the prevalent fight for the ballot to bolster his argument in favor of black nationalism, which rejects American politics altogether, using the ballot as a metonym for all basic rights despite his cynicism about American politics.