"If I take the wages of everyone here, individually it means nothing, but collectively all of the earning power or wages that you earned in one week would make me wealthy. And if I could collect it for a year, I'd be rich beyond dreams. Now, when you see this, and then you stop and consider the wages that were kept back from millions of Black people, not for one year but for 310 years, you'll see how this country got so rich so fast. And what made the economy as strong as it is today. And all that slave labor that was amassed in unpaid wages, is due someone today. And you're not giving us anything when we say that it's time to collect."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Malcolm X, "Twenty million black people in prison," in Malcolm X: The Last Speeches, p. 51
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Slavery
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Slavery
331 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Slavery →
Related Quotes
"Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves."
"Servi peregrini, ut primum Galliæ fines penetraverint eodem momento liberi sunt."
"If my present theme were the institution of slavery in general, I should endeavour to show that it has been a mighty …"
"Let us see delineated before us the true map of man. Let us hear the dignity of his nature, and the noble rank he hol…"
"Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery."
"I Shall not pause to consider whether my Opinion will be popular or unpopular with the Slave Holders, or Slave Trader…"
"The first steps of the slaveholder to justify by argument the peculiar institutions is to deny the self-evident truth…"
"Slavery must have differed in details in one country from that in another, but after all, it was shameful in Brazil, …"
"I did more for the Russian serf in giving him land as well as personal liberty, than America did for the negro slave …"
"Fit in dominatu servitus, in servitute dominatus."