Malcolm X

MALCOLM X

Coming to an Awareness of Language

I’ve never been one for inaction. Everything I’ve ever felt strongly about, I’ve done something about. I guess that’s why, unable to do anything else, I soon began writing to people I had known in the hustling world, such as Sammy the Pimp, John Hughes, the gam- bling house owner, the thief Jumpsteady, and several dope peddlers. I wrote them all about Allah and Islam and Mr. Elijah Muhammad. I had no idea where most of them lived. I addressed their letters in care of the Harlem or Roxbury bars and clubs where I’d known them. (1)

I never got a single reply. The average hustler and criminal was too uneducated to write a letter. I have known many slick sharp- looking hustlers, who would have you think they had an interest in Wall Street; privately, they would get someone else to read a letter if they received one. Besides, neither would I have replied to anyone writing me something as wild as “the white man is the devil.” (2)

What certainly went on the Harlem and Roxbury wires was that Detroit Red was going crazy in stir, or else he was trying some hype to shake up the warden’s office. (3)

During the years that I stayed in the Norfolk Prison Colony, never did any official directly say anything to me about those let- ters, although, of course, they all passed through the prison censor- ship. I’m sure, however, they monitored what I wrote to add to the files which every state and federal prison keeps on the conversion of Negro inmates by the teachings of Mr. Elijah Muhammad. (4)

But at that time, I felt that the real reason was that the white man knew that he was the devil. (5)

Later on, I even wrote to the Mayor of Boston, to the Governor of Massachusetts, and to Harry S. Truman. They never answered; they probably never even saw my letters. I handscratched to them how the white man’s society was responsible for the black man’s condition in this wilderness of North America. (6)

It was because...