Malcolm X Hails Race Separation

"I'm not a Democrat or a Republican or an American or anything you want me to be," Malcolm X told a predominantly white Harvard audience last night. "I have proposed black nationalism as a political philosophy to make the black man take his destiny into his own hands."

More than 300 people filled the Leverett House Dining Room to hear Malcolm explain his role in the Negro revolution. Over 150 others overflowed into the Junior Common Room where a loud speaker had been set up. Still others clustered outside at open windows.

The rapt and responsive crowd heard Malcolm explain that his newly formed Moslem Mosque Incorporated will extend the work of Ehiah Muhammed into social, economic, and political spheres.

"Ehiah Muhammed's long-range policy that we should have our own home is right," Malcolm declared. "But it's a long range policy. For the short range we have to live here, and we must be in control of our own community."

In economics, he explained, black control means Buy Black. In politics, however, his recommendation is not a Negro party.

"So-called Negroes are just beginning to understand that they occupy a strategic political position," he asserted. They must now demand that all politicians be unrelentingly concerned, first and foremost, with the needs of Negroes.

James Q. Wilson, professor of government, one of the two panelists to comment on Malcolm's speech, described the failure of protest movements to achieve their goals by seeking power outside the two-party system.

Yet, citing the fragmented nature of American politics Wilson said he doubted that the demands of Negroes would be given exclusive priority over the needs of other--often contradictory -- pressure groups.

"I'm not a proponent of gradualism," he said, "but I don't know how to change the system." The Negro, he concluded, must appeal to the system's "fuzzy, dim, but existent conscience" through nonviolent demonstrations.

Martin Kilson, lecturer in government, was no more sanguine about Moslem Mosque Inc. than Wilson. Acknowledging that black nationalism is a legitimate part of American politics. "In fact as vile and mundane as proposals used by white immigrants," Kilson was pessi- mistic about the possibility of fashioning a better state by a separatist movement. The lack of social structure in urban Negro populations makes it almost impossible. Kilron said, to organize effectively outside the system.

Replying to the pessimism of both Kilson and Wilson. Malcolm said that "if professors and sociologists think things are hopeless, what thought do you think is going through the mind of one where oppressed? It's a wicked thought that I'm afraid to express," he added with a smile