MALCOLM X: Lomax, as you know, these Negro leaders have been telling the white man everything is all right, everything is under control, and they have been telling the white man that Mr. Muhammad is wrong, don’t listen to him. But everything that Mr. Muhammad has been saying is going to come to pass, is now coming to pass. Now the Negro leaders are standing up saying that we are about to have a racial explosion. You’re going to have a racial explosion, and a racial explosion is more dangerous than an atomic explosion. It’s going to explode because black people are dissatisfied; they’re dissatisfied not only with the white man, but they’re dissatisfied with these Negroes who have been sitting around here posing as leaders and spokesmen for black people and actually making the problem worse instead of making the problem better. LOMAX: Do you deny that Negroes are now getting the protection of the Federal Government; after all, both the President and the Attorney General have come to our aid. MALCOLM X: You never will get protection from the Federal Government. Just like King is asking Kennedy to go to Alabama to stand in a doorway--to put his body in a doorway. That’s like asking the fox to protect you from the wolf! The masses of black people can see this, and it is only the Negro leadership, the bourgeois, hand-picked, handful of Negroes who think that they’re going to get some kind of respect, recognition, or protection from the Government. The Government is responsible for what is happening to black people in this country. The President has power. You notice he didn’t send any troops into Birmingham to protect the Negroes when the dogs were biting the Negroes. The only time he sent troops into Birmingham was when the Negroes erupted, and then the President sent the troops in there, not to protect the Negroes, but to protect them white people down there from those erupting Negroes. LOMAX: Are not Negroes American citizens? MALCOLM X: If they were citizens, you wouldn’t have a race problem. If the Emancipation Proclamation was authentic, you wouldn’t have a race problem. If the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution were authentic, you wouldn’t have a race problem. If the Supreme Court desegregation decision was authentic, you wouldn’t have a race problem. All of this is hypocrisy that has been practiced by the so-called white so-called liberal for the past four hundred years that compounds the problem, makes it more complicated, instead of eliminating the problem. LOMAX: What, then, do you see as the final result of all these demonstrations?