User:Eddie891/1964 Oxford Union debate

Background
Malcolm X

Oxford Union

Malcom X was invited to speak, accepted "without hesitation" because Oxford was already seeing a lot of anti-racism protests. The president of the Oxford Union was Eric Anthony Abrahams.

Malcolm X did not accept offers to speak at prominent American colleges in late 1964, but agreed to speak at Oxford for free and at a time when he sought to return to the United States and had iffy finances. He considered that "the long run gains outweigh the risks" of visiting the UK.

Macolm X arrived in Oxford, where Henry Brownrigg, the Union's secretary, took him to stay at The Randolph, a major hotel in Oxford. Malcolm was offended by the hotel, which needed some repairs and asked him to fully write out his last name, considering it a "racist insult".

Barry Goldwater

The BBC broadcasted the debate. Oxford officials feared unrest at the university would break into violence, and Malcolm X's arrival placed racial tensions there under the national spotlight.

Content
on December 3, 1964, Oxford Union's annual "Queen and Country" debate at the end of the term. Topic, "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue". Malcolm supports the topic, even though Goldwater was an conservative who had advocated against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He wore a tie even though the dress code for men favoured bow ties, which were also characteristic of the Nation of Islam's dress. Malcom's opponent was Humphry Berkeley, a conservative politician.

Berkeley accused Macolm of being a racist. At one point he asked "why not Malcolm Z?" In response, Malcolm X said "The speaker that preceded me is one of the best excuses that I know to prove our point," arguing that he made his last name X "to keep from wearing his [Berkeley's] name" because his real name had been taken when Berkeley's ancestors tore across Africa.

Malcolm X held that it was necessary for people to defend themselves with weapons against violence supported by the state (in African colonies) and the violence of the Ku Klux Klan. He referenced an American-aided invasion of the Stanleyville District by Belgian forces in November 1964 where 3,000 civilians were killed and the aftermath of the Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, when local authorities did not prosecute the suspected killers. He drew parallels between the two events, and their lack of condemnation. He considered the invasion of the Congo "cold-blooded murder" and the embodiment of extremism, as well as the unchecked terrorism of Black citizens across the Southern United States. Malcolm X maintained that racism was sufficiently deeply ingrained into the American political machine that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 stood for little. Black citizens, according to him, had to "bring about justice where the government can't give them justice" whatever the means might be. Malcolm X attacked American media and attributed the killings in the Congo to Lyndon B. Johnson.

Aftermath
After his speech, Malcolm X toured England, visiting four cities.

Malcolm X lost the debate, but his speech was very popular and has since been "widely acclaimed", according to the historian Stephen Tuck. However, in 2013 Tuck also noted that the debate "generally occupies at most a curious footnote in the civil rights literature." Tuck considers the Malcolm X's speech at the debate to highlight his frustration by being dismissed in the American media.

Upon the fiftieth anniversary of the debate in 2014, two books chronicling it were published, a movie chronicling it was announced, and a documentary, When Tariq Ali Met Malcolm X, aired on the Smithsonian Channel in the United Kingdom. Henry Louis Gates Jr. described Malcolm X's speech as "as iconic as any in the Oxonian pantheon of great debates".