“If he’s not ready to clean his house…it should catch on fire.”

Malcolm X

On the night of April 27, 1962, policemen raided a mosque in Los Angeles, Ca., wounding seven unarmed Muslims, paralyzing one Roger Williams and taking the life of one Ronald Stokes by gunshot.

The moment was a catalyst that preceded the Watts Rebellion of 1965. But in the immediate aftermath, the tragedy was seized by Malcolm X, who condemned the incident in an impassioned speech, and used it as an opportunity to highlight the brutal nature of the relationship between black people and law enforcement.

Today we’re sharing the speech in its entirety in solidarity with those who have become or may one day become victims of that continuing police brutality, and those who protest it.

Excerpts:

In order for you and me to devise some kind of method or strategy to offset some of the events, or repetition of the events that have taken place here in Los Angeles recently, we have to go to the root. We have to go to the cause. Dealing with the condition itself is not enough. We have to get to the cause of it all, or the root of it all. And it is because of our effort, toward getting straight to the root that people oft-times think we’re dealing in hate.

We are oppressed. We are exploited. We are downtrodden. We are denied not only civil rights but human rights. So the only way we’re going to get some of this oppression and exploitation away from us or aside from us is come together against a common enemy.

And I for one as a Muslim believe that the white man is intelligent enough, if he were made to realize how black people really feel, and how fed up we are, without that old compromising sweet-talk. Stop sweet-talking him. Tell him how you feel. Tell him what kind of Hell you been catching, and let him know that if he’s not ready to clean his house up, if he’s not ready to clean his house up…he shouldn’t have a house. It should catch on fire.

And burn down.

El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X, was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement. He is best known for his staunch and controversial black racial advocacy, and for his time spent as the vocal spokesperson of the Nation of Islam.

He was assassinated in 1965.