“Queen Mother” Audley Moore Speech

In 1973, a prisoners’ group called Think Tank coordinated efforts with the African-American community outside the prison walls to invite civil and labor rights activist Queen Mother Moore to speak at Greenhaven Prison Community Day. The People’s Communication Network video collective recorded the speech. This excerpt was transcribed from a tape which has been preserved by the Video Data Bank in Chicago.
“Queen Mother” Audley Moore (1898-1997) was an organizer, activist, and theorist who challenged racist oppression and imperialism through a huge number of diverse campaigns from workplace safety, to the drive for reparations for descendants of US slaves.



my children, I’m here today to identify myself and rededicate myself in the spirt of Marcus Garvey and our beloved brothers who are incarceratedhere behind these infernal walls to meet the struggle on the behalf of our men who find themselves recaptured under captivity.
Marcus Garvey came at a time when we needed him. When we had been
taught that we were black because we were cursed, Marcus Garvey was
he one that taught us from the very beginning black is beautiful.
It’s beautiful to be black. He taught us our history.
Marcus Garvey taught us about Africa. He taught us about the great
people of Africa, the great cultures that we had in Africa.
He taught us about the wealth of Africa, He taught us how the white
people were living off of our wealth. He taught us about the gold mines
and the diamond mines and the great forests and the fine animals and
all of the wealth that we had, the great great resources in the land.
Marcus Garvey taught us what they had robbed from us, and to think
and to speak in terms of robbery, I want our young brothers here,
who have been incarcerated here for perhaps in a small, in a very small
way, taking back what was taken from us.

You couldn’t steal brothers you cant steal you cant steal from a white
man, all that you can do take back from him. Its all you can do because
everything that he’s got- everything, everything the white man has,
everything, he stole it from you. Everything, he stole it from you
You are not the criminals. You are not the criminals.

I’d like to ask you, have you stolen anybody’s heritage? Have you stolen
children from their mothers and sold them on the slave blocK?
Have you stolen wealth from the land and have you stolen whole countries?
I wanna show you- You haven’t been stealing no you haven’t been stealing.
I wanna tell you have you taken mothers and strung them up by their heels?
And took your knives and slit their bellies so that their unborn babies could fall to the ground and then took your heel and then crushed that baby into the ground? Brothers you are not murderers, you’ve never murdered.
True some of you have killed but you’re not murderers.
Have you dropped bombs on people and killed whole countries of people.
No. Have you done that people? Na uh. Some of you have tried in a small
way to imitate these gangsters, But you haven’t. No you’re not the gangsters.

Brothers We came here to tell you to come home to us. We want you. We
came here to invite you and to let you know that you are not alone and to
let you know that you have brothers and sisters who are waiting for you and
who are fighting for your return and who are preparing places to receive you. And we don’t want you to feel rejected. You’ve been rejected out of the man’s society. But you are not rejected out of black society.
You see.

Some of you believe that those of us in the south and I came from way way
way south, but some of you believe that we were cowards down there.
I wanna give you a little example of the story of Marcus Garvey.
I wanna tell you something that nobody else could tell you who hadn’t lived
long enough to be here today to experience this to tell you.
Those who were there.
Down in New Orleans when the police told Marcus Garvey he couldn’t
speak to us, and prevented him from coming to speak to us one night.
We of course went in delegations and everything and raised such a ruckus
that they had to let Marcus Garvey speak to us the next night.
But when we went. I want you to hear me.
When we went, we went determined that nothing would stop Marcus
Garvey from speaking to us. Now how did we do that?
How do you go determined to keep the powers that be from
preventing your leader from speaking to you. How do you do that?
Well I’ll tell you how we did it. Everyone of us including myself went armed. We went armed. I had two guns on me. I had. I had one in my bosom and one in my pocketbook. Blue steel and special. Pearl handle.
Pearl handle. I’ll never forget my little pearl handle gun.
You think you’re bad huh. Some of you think your bad. We went.
Brothers and sisters do you think we went there with a round of
ammunition. No we went with handbags of ammunition.
Everybody had handbags of ammunition.
We used to call them satchels thatchels of satchels. Ammunition.
Now when the police came then they filed in our hall and they lined up
against all the sides of the benches, came to the front, lined up the side of the rostrum, line up the other sides, lined the back.
When Garvey came in we was on benches just like you sitting now in the
Longshoremen hall. We stood up, you know and applauded him.
Garvey said, “My friends, I wish to apologize to you for not speaking to you tonight but the reason I didn’t speak to you is because the mayor of the city of New Orleans permitted himself to be used as a stooge by the Police Department to keep me from speaking. “
When he said that the police jumped up on the sides, on the rostrum and
said I’ll run you in. When he did that, everybody stood up on the benches.
All of the Smith and Wesson’s, the Winchesters came out.
Everybody’s gun came out, and this is what they said, “Speak, Garvey speak.
Speak, Garvey,” with the guns in their hands. “Speak Garvey speak.”
And Garvey said, “as I was saying.”