EPILOGUE
August 1968
THE Black Man’s new and final — final because it will be victorious for us — war in America has been slow starting, it was 1963 when the dogs and fire-hoses had been used with such brutality against us in Birmingham, 1963 when the young blacks of Birmingham had lifted the first Molotov cocktail against the police, and 1963 when, finally, innocent black children would be murdered and maimed in a bomb- blast, set by a white racist, as they sat in Sunday School. For ail the publicity and flurry which would surround nonviolence for another five years, non-violence, as a hope-pregnant technique for black people, had died with the children in 1963.
True: it would be nearly a year before the valiant blacks of Harlem would add the rifle and shotgun to the molotov cocktail and thus open our final war in America. And it would be four years more before the blacks of Cleveland would trap and ouigun the police in the ghetto, thus punctuating that period — four years long — during which we had been the victor in destroying the beast’s property with the torch, but during which he, the beast, had been the victor in the number of persons killed. Now, having passed Cleveland, we will never go back. For this is a prime characteristic of the black man's war here: that we progress slowly toward all-out conflict, but, once past a step, we never go back.
As I write this, young black men in Inkster, a suburb of Detroit, have shot and killed a state policeman and wounded several others. As you read this, other black men will almost certainly be taking their toll of white policemen’s lives because — the white policeman is the shock-troop of the oppressors army, because the white policeman has been the closest, most visible, most palpable, most explosively vicious instrument of the white race’s continuous brutality against us, the chief instrument of the white race’s will against us.
Like the black guerrillas in Inkster these others, too, will probably have been exposed to the concept of land and power, it is this concept which must shape the next meaningful step in our war in America.
The exercises in the northern cities, the war against the police, are a demonstration of the courage of our generation, and our determination, a statement of contempt for the so-called odds against us. The war against the police is a necessary response of men to brutality, and it must be aided by all of us. Every black person has this obligation: to support the black underground, to support those who bear arms — through confidence in the underground, through pride in the guerrillas, through money where that is necessary, through concealing the guns, the ordnance, the equipment, and the persons of the guerrillas, through medical and legal services, through giving information to the underground, through service on juries and a vote for acquittal — this is most important — when black guerrillas are hapless enough to be captured and tried by the enemy. After Cleveland, no one of us, black, stands beyond the obligation to support and serve — in some way — the black underground. For, non-violence failed, after the fair trial of eight difficult, suffering years (1955 through 1963); no one can ask for more. Now it is our turn.
And you who are in the underground have obligations too. The name of the game is service. Your act is without the blessing of God, of history, of your people unless it is performed for the purpose of serving the Revolution. Your oath requires that you be a leader in creating a better world and a better people: that you reject the use of narcotics or the sale of them to your brothers and sisters or Negroes; that you reject the hustle, putting game on brothers and sisters; that you treat brothers’ wives as one’s own sisters. You have an obligation to protect black people; to educate black people and Negroes without terror, if possible, to create opportunities for non-combative brothers and sisters to serve the revolution, without exploiting them. And what is given for the Revolution, what is solicited for the Revolution, what is taken for the Revolution must go to the Revolution; the good guerrilla will be sustained. Then, call yourself not a guerrilla-revolutionary unless you submit to intolerance for cowardice and death for treachery, laziness or sloth.
You have the further obligation of moving our war in America toward the successful acquisition of land and power, on this continent, in our time. Do not be misled and do not mislead your brothers into thinking that you must die in the streets of the northern cities; this would be good enough — to fight in the streets of the northern cities for nothing more than our dignity and our manhood — were there no further goal and no possibility of further victory. But the further goal is here, and it is attainable: land and power, a separate, free, progressive, rich powerful black nation, in our time, on this continent, through your faith and your courage and your arms.
Many brothers must come South with us now and fight as guerrillas and as soldiers in the Primary Army, the Initial Expeditionary Force, to hold the land and protect the sovereignty of the Republic of New Africa. Many more brothers must go to overseas bases, by the hundreds of thousands, to train and be equipped with the modern implements of war, to return here, finally, and consolidate our victory, that we ail may build, after our War In America, a new society in which wax is fought no more and mankind together, having used technology to serve our animal needs, may turn to the pursuit of God, to the pursuit of man’s true place in the universe and mankind’s true destiny.
LAND AND POWER!
In this short book Brother Imari, an heir to Brother Malcolm, carries Malcolm’s theoretical work to its logical conclusion. He tells how the black man's revolutionary war in America, now being fought, must be fought in the future. He tells how we can win and how we can and must go on to establish a black Nation on this continent, free, progressive, rich and powerful—taking in what is now Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina.
A call to courage and resolution, WAR IN AMERICA is a road map to independence, freedom, and power; a road map that lifts off from the paths now being burned and blasted out by black guerrillas in scores of cities across the United States.
