The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman
Spoken byMalcolm X1925–1965 · Nation of Islam minister and human-rights activist
He really said it, almost word for word. The lines come from the Los Angeles address circulated as Who Taught You to Hate Yourself?, delivered at the memorial service for Ronald Stokes — the Nation of Islam member shot dead by the LAPD on 27 April 1962. The audio recording survives ↗, and the three sentences run consecutively, exactly as quoted.
“The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman” Malcolm X, address at the memorial service for Ronald Stokes ("Who Taught You to Hate Yourself?"), Los Angeles, 5 May 1962 — audio recording, Internet Archive. Verified by Quotle.info.
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Provenance
The source
Speech
Who Taught You to Hate Yourself?
Delivered
Los Angeles, 5 May 1962
Occasion
Memorial service for Ronald Stokes, shot by the LAPD on 27 April 1962
Survives as
Archival audio recording, with circulating transcripts
The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman. And as Muslims, the honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us to respect our women and to protect our women.
… mid-speech
In the circulating transcript ↗ this paragraph follows directly on the passage of rhetorical questions about hating the texture of one’s hair, the colour of one’s skin and the shape of one’s nose and lips. The fourth sentence is the one quoters almost always drop.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive ↗ sets the scene: LAPD officers raided Mosque No. 27 on 27 April 1962, killing Ronald Stokes; Malcolm X held a press conference on 4 May and, the next day, delivered a eulogy at Stokes’ memorial service before an estimated two thousand people.
The speech itself survives as audio, catalogued at the Internet Archive ↗ under the title “WHO TAUGHT YOU TO HATE YOURSELF (May 5, 1962, Los Angeles)” and credited to Malcolm X.
A full transcript at Speakola ↗ carries the three sentences consecutively and verbatim. Its own dating of the speech — 22 May 1962 — differs from the recording’s catalogue date.
Notably, Wikiquote’s Malcolm X page ↗ does not list this line at all (checked 6 Aug 2026), and Quote Investigator ↗ has never investigated it — so the recording and its transcripts are the evidence that matters here.
This is a 1962 speech, far too recent for the US public domain. Rights in Malcolm X’s spoken words and in recordings of them rest with his estate, which licenses his speeches and writings. Quotle.info reproduces a short excerpt for identification and commentary only — do not assume the full text or audio is free to reuse.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Right man, wrong details
The attribution here is sound — this is one of the rare famous Malcolm X lines with surviving audio behind it. What travels badly is everything around the words: the date, the occasion, and the sentence that came next.
✕
The date“22 May 1962” contested
Widely repeated in music-press coverage of Beyoncé’s Lemonade sample, including Mic ↗ and the Speakola transcript ↗. The archived recording is catalogued as 5 May 1962, and the UCLA Film & Television Archive ↗ puts Malcolm X’s eulogy at the Stokes memorial service on that day. Both dates are still in circulation.
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The occasion“Malcolm X’s speech to Black women” recast
The framing is a modern one, used even in the transcript’s own title ↗. The address was a eulogy delivered to a general audience at a memorial service for a man killed by police; the passage about Black women is one movement inside a long speech about the raid.
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The wording“The most disrespected woman in America…” mis-worded
A common variant swaps person for woman in the opening sentence — it appears in the headline and body text on Black Dawah Network ↗, with no source given. On the recording the parallel structure is “person… person… person” all three times.
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The sentence afterThe Elijah Muhammad line cropped
The quote is almost never carried past its third sentence. In the speech Malcolm X continues straight into a credit to the Nation of Islam’s leader — that as Muslims they are taught to respect and protect their women. Whatever one makes of it, it is the frame he himself put on the words.
✓The words are genuinely his. He said them in Los Angeles in May 1962, standing over the coffin of a man the LAPD had shot — and you can still hear him say them ↗.
Context
Why it was said
On 27 April 1962 roughly seventy LAPD officers descended on Nation of Islam Mosque No. 27 in South Central Los Angeles after two members were harassed on a false suspicion. Seven unarmed Muslims were shot. Ronald Stokes, a Korean War veteran and the temple’s secretary, was shot from behind with his hands raised ↗ and killed. William X Rogers was left paralysed for life.
Malcolm X — who had founded that temple in 1957 — flew to Los Angeles, held a press conference on 4 May, and the next day eulogised Stokes before a crowd estimated at two thousand. The famous lines about Black women are not a standalone aphorism: they arrive mid-speech, immediately after the “who taught you to hate” sequence, as the emotional hinge of an argument about who in America gets protected and who does not.
It is a eulogy for a man killed by police — not, as the internet usually frames it, a speech to women.
What the speech is actually about
The bulk of the address is about the raid: the grand jury, the Los Angeles press, Mayor Sam Yorty, and a point-by-point account of how the shooting unfolded. Malcolm X calls the arrested men forward on stage and describes their wounds.
The Black-women passage sits inside a longer argument that police violence and internalised self-hatred are the same wound seen from two angles — which is why the “who taught you to hate the texture of your hair” questions run directly into it.
Historian Peniel E. Joseph ↗ treats the Stokes killing as the episode that galvanised Malcolm X against police brutality as a public cause.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1925–1965 · Nation of Islam minister and human-rights activist
Born Malcolm Little in Omaha in 1925, he took the name Malcolm X as a minister of the Nation of Islam and became its most electrifying public voice before breaking with the organisation in 1964. He founded Los Angeles’ Temple No. 27 in 1957, which is why the killing of one of its members in 1962 brought him west and produced this speech. He was assassinated in New York on 21 February 1965, aged 39.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Cite this page
Malcolm X. Address at the memorial service for Ronald Stokes, circulated as “Who Taught You to Hate Yourself?” Los Angeles, 5 May 1962. Audio recording, Internet Archive.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman’?” Last verified 6 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-most-disrespected-person-in-america-is-the-black-woman/