Quibinar #35 - Malcolm X & The United Nations

Robeson, DuBois and Patterson

• W. E. B. Du Bois was scheduled to accompany Patterson to Paris, but the U.S. State Department prevented him from leaving the country.
• The book-length petition documented hundreds of lynching cases and other forms of brutality and discrimination, proving a clear pattern of government inaction and complicity.

Lynching in America

• It charged that in the 85 years since the end of slavery more than 10,000 African Americans were known to have been lynched (an average of more than 100 per year), and that the full number can never be known because the murders are often unreported.

The Petition Cited the UN’s Definition of Genocide

“Any intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, racial, or religious group is genocide.”

The Petition Concluded…
. . .the oppressed Negro citizens of the United States, segregated, discriminated against, and long the target of violence, suffer from genocide as the result of the consistent, conscious, unified policies of every branch of government.

If the General Assembly acts as the conscience of mankind and therefore acts favorably on our petition, it will have served the cause of peace.