Excerpt from "The Ballot or the Bullet," a speech delivered in Cleveland, Ohio, April 3, 1964
Reprinted from Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Statements and Speeches, 1965; also available online at: www.indiana.edu/~rterrill/Text-BorB.html

"Now in speaking like this, it doesn't mean that we're anti-white, but it does mean we're anti-exploitation, we're anti-degradation, we're anti-oppression. And if the white man doesn't want us to be anti-him, let him stop oppressing and exploiting and degrading us."

Although the civil rights movement of the 1960s started with a commitment to nonviolent protest, activists' opinions about how best to gain civil rights diverged by middecade. Malcolm X became a prominent leader of activists who doubted that nonviolent protest would ever produce the desired changes in the lives of blacks.