“The Ballot or the Bullet,” one of Malcolm X’s best-known speeches, encapsulates the atmosphere of protest, often violent, that enveloped the United States during a decade in which disenfranchised groups sought the rights that they were due. White America must choose between giving black people voting rights—offering “the ballot” to millions of black Americans who were disenfranchised by both aggressive and sly means in both the North and the South—and “the bullet,” violent reaction after centuries of frustration over being deprived of basic freedoms and rights. Though Malcolm delivers his speech to a black audience, he entitles the speech as though it is intended for a white audience. He presents two options to those with whom both he and his audience have grown exasperated: Provide black people with the vote (though Malcolm knows that white supremacists are loathe giving up power), or face the possibility of revolutionary violence similar to that being carried out in far-flung countries like Algeria and Vietnam.

In 1964, “the bullet” carried the feeling of imminent threat, both in black and white communities. Malcolm delivers his speech nearly five months after the assassination of President Kennedy and nearly a year after the assassination of Mississippi’s NAACP field secretary, Medgar Evers.