A Call to Arms: Passivity and 'Message to the Grass Roots'

• In Event: 'A Change Is Gonna Come': Reflecting on the Voices and Strategies of Change Agents from the Civil Rights Movement

Abstract

By putting the 1963 speech "Message to the Grass Roots" in contemporary historical and political contexts and closely reading its text, this paper will argue that Malcolm X invokes the concept of passivity in the speech to encourage a more radical political stance for activists within the Civil Rights movement.

Author

• A.C. Hawley, University of Iowa