El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, mostly known as Malcolm X, delivered the Ballot or the Bullet speech on April 3 of 1964 at a CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) meeting in Cleveland, Ohio. Race dominated the domestic agenda of America at the time. Also, a bill for outlawing segregation (Civil Rights Act of 1964) in public places was up for debate in Congress. The speech came a month after Martin Luther King Jr. gave his significant I Have a Dream speech. The speech was also was given a short time after Malcolm X announced that he was separating from the Nation of Islam and declared his Black Nationalist philosophy, a topic heavily discussed throughout the speech. The speech got its' title in reference to 1964 being the year that Lyndon B. Johnson was going to run for re-election. Throughout the speech, Malcolm X had tried to encourage Afro-Americans, as he referred to them, to increase their involvement in voters' registration and other political engagement. He made reference comparing the two, a ballot and a bullet, by saying, "A ballot is like a bullet. You don 't throw away your ballots until you see a target, and if that target is not within your reach, keep your ballot in your pocket" (Malcolm).
Some say that The Ballot or the Bullet might have been a direct response to Dr. Kings I Have a Dream speech. They were delivered only one month apart, and throughout his speech, Malcolm made sarcastic references to both Dr. Kings' speech and movements Dr. King supported. For example, Malcolm makes a reference to the hymn "We Shall Overcome", the hymn sang at the March on Washington. He says, "Any time you're living in the 20th century, 1964, and you're walking around here singing We Shall Overcomethis is the part of what's wrong with you. You do too much singing" (Malcolm). He uses a juxtaposition when he says "I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare" a clear reference to Dr.
