The day that the black man takes an uncompromising step and realizes that he’s within his rights, when his own freedom is being jeopardized, to use any means necessary to bring about his freedom or put a halt to that injustice, I don’t think he’ll be by himself.

In this statement Malcolm X argues that Black Americans possess a moral and legal right to defend their freedom when it is threatened, including through forceful resistance if necessary. The “uncompromising step” is a shift from pleading for inclusion to asserting self-determination and self-defense—an outlook associated with his critique of nonviolence as a universal tactic and his insistence on human rights rather than merely civil rights. The closing assurance—“he’ll not be by himself”—suggests solidarity: once oppressed people act from a clear sense of entitlement to freedom, allies and broader collective power will follow, making resistance less isolated and more effective.