Just ten weeks after the historic civil rights march in August of 1963, Malcolm X gave an important speech — “Message to the Grassroots” — in which he attacked the civil rights misleaders who had collaborated with the ruling class and sold out the antiracist struggle of the day.
When reading Malcolm’s insightful analysis, quoted below, it’s helpful to keep in mind that back then Malcolm still viewed nearly all white folks as enemies and advocated black capitalism. But within a year, after two trips to Africa, he would make profound changes in his thinking. He came to recognize that all oppressed people, including white workers, are part of a common, international struggle against a common oppressor. When Malcolm uses the word “white” in this speech, we can substitute “capitalist” to better reflect where he was heading.
He concluded that the real enemy is capitalism. As Malcolm X put it, “You can’t operate a capitalistic system unless you are vulturistic; you have to have someone else’s blood to suck to be a capitalist. You show me a capitalist, I’ll show you a bloodsucker.”

Leading up to the summer of 1963, there was growing anger against racism, with lots of working-class struggle. As Malcolm explains, the March on Washington was spurred by militant grass-roots leaders:

It was the grass roots out there in the street. . .  [It] scared the white power structure in Washington, DC to death; I was there. When they found out that this black steamroller was going to come down on the capital….they called in these national Negro leaders that you respect and told them, “Call it off.”
Kennedy said, “Look, you all letting this thing go too far.” And Old Tom said, “Boss, I can’t stop it, ‘cause I didn’t start it.” I’m telling you what they said. They said, “I’m not even in it, much less at the head of it.” They said, “These Negroes are doing things on their own. They’re running ahead of us.” And that old shrewd fox [Kennedy], he said, “Well If you all aren’t in it, I’ll put you in it. I’ll put you at the head of it. I’ll endorse it. I’ll welcome it. I’ll help it. I’ll join it.”
Malcolm went on to describe how liberal capitalists bought off the “Big Six” civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King, A. Philip Randolph, James Farmer, and Whitney Young, with $1.5 million for their new coalition, the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership:
Soon as they got the set-up organized, the white man made available to them top public relations experts; opened the news media across the country at their disposal; and then they begin to project these Big Six as the leaders of the march….They became the march. They took it over...
And as they took it over, it lost its militancy. They ceased to be angry. They ceased to be hot. They ceased to be uncompromising. Why, it even ceased to be a march. It became a picnic, a circus. Nothing but a circus, with clowns and all...I know you don’t like what I’m saying, but I’m going to tell you anyway ‘cause I can prove what I’m saying….[I]t was a sellout. It was a takeover