In Message from the Grassroots, perhaps his most powerful speech, Malcolm X reminded us that "you don't catch hell because you're a Methodist or Baptist, you don't catch hell because you're a Democrat or a Republican, you don't catch hell because you're a Mason or an Elk... You catch hell because you're a black man.... All of us catch hell for the same reason." Malcolm could just as easily have said that we don't catch hell because we're Haitian or African American. A white supremacist system sees us as Black people. Abner Louima was not tortured because he was Haitian, nor was Amadou Diallo gunned down by the police because he was from Guinea. The offending officers saw no difference. In their eyes they were inferior, scorned Black men. Malcolm saw Black unity/ solidarity as the counter and corrective of racism and white supremacy.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
270 p., Cuba's geographic proximity to the United States and its centrality to US imperial designs following the War of 1898 led to the creation of a unique relationship between Afro-descended populations in the two countries. Drawing on archival sources in both countries, the author traces four encounters between Afro-Cubans and African Americans.
