On June twenty-seventh of that year, nineteen thirty-seven, Joe Louis knocked out James J. Braddockto become the heavyweight champion of the world. And all the Negroes in Lansing, like Negroeseverywhere, went wildly happy with the greatest celebration of race pride our generation had everknown. Every Negro boy old enough to walk wanted to be the next Brown Bomber1. My brotherPhilbert, who had already become a pretty good boxer2 in school, was no exception. (I was trying toplay basketball. I was gangling3 and tall, but I wasn't very good at it-too awkward.) In the fall of thatyear, Philbert entered the amateur bouts5 that were held in Lansing's Prudden Auditorium7.
He did well, surviving the increasingly tough eliminations8. I would go down to the gym and watchhim train. It was very exciting. Perhaps without realizing it I became secretly envious9; for one thing, Iknow I could not help seeing some of my younger brother Reginald's lifelong admiration10 for megetting siphoned off to Philbert.
People praised Philbert as a natural boxer. I figured that since we belonged to the same family, maybeI would become one, too. So I put myself in the ring. I think I was thirteen when I signed up for myfirst bout6, but my height and rawboned frame let me get away with claiming that I was sixteen, theminimum age-and my weight of about 128 pounds got me classified as a bantamweight.
They matched me with a white boy, a novice11 like myself, named Bill Peterson. I'll never forget him.
When our turn in the next amateur bouts came up, all of my brothers and sisters were 24 therewatching, along with just about everyone else I knew in town. They were there not so much because ofme but because of Philbert, who had begun to build up a pretty good following, and they wanted tosee how his brother would do.
I walked down the aisle13 between the people thronging14 the rows of seats, and climbed in the ring. BillPeterson and I were introduced, and then the referee15 called us together and mumbled16 all of that stuffabout fighting fair and breaking clean. Then the bell rang and we came out of our corners. I knew Iwas scared, but I didn't know, as Bill Peterson told me later on, that he was scared of me, too. He wasso scared I was going to hurt him that he knocked me down fifty times if he did once.
He did such a job on my reputation in the Negro neighborhood that I practically went into hiding. ANegro just can't be whipped by somebody white and return with his head up to the neighborhood,especially in those days, when sports and, to a lesser17 extent show business, were the only fields opento Negroes, and when the ring was the only place a Negro could whip a white man and not belynched. When I did show my face again, the Negroes I knew rode me so badly I knew I had to dosomething.
But the worst of my humiliations was my younger brother Reginald's attitude: he simply nevermentioned the fight. It was the way he looked at me-and avoided looking at me. So I went back to thegym, and I trained-hard. I beat bags and skipped rope and grunted18 and sweated all over the place.
And finally I signed up to fight Bill Peterson again. This time, the bouts were held in his hometown ofAlma, Michigan.
The only thing better about the rematch was that hardly anyone I knew was there to see it; I wasparticularly grateful for Reginald's absence. The moment the bell rang, I saw a fist, then the canvascoming up, and ten seconds later the referee was saying "Ten!" over me. It was probably the shortest"fight" in history. I lay there listening to the full count, but I couldn't move. To tell the truth, I'm notsure I wanted to move.
That white boy was the beginning and the end of my fight career. A lot of tunes19 in these later yearssince I became a Muslim, I've thought back to that fight and reflected that it was Allah's work to stopme: I might have wound up punchy.
Not long after this, I came into a classroom with my hat on. I did it deliberately20. The teacher, who waswhite, ordered me to keep the hat on, and to walk around and around the room until he told me to stop. "That way," he said, "everyone can see you. Meanwhile, we'll go on with class for those who arehere to learn something."I was still walking around when he got up from his desk and turned to the blackboard to writesomething on it. Everyone in the classroom was looking when, at this moment, I passed behind hisdesk, snatched up a thumbtack and deposited it in his chair. When he turned to sit back down, I wasfar from the scene of the crime, circling around the rear of the room. Then he hit the tack21, and I heardhim holler and caught a glimpse of him spraddling up as I disappeared through the door.
With my deportment record, I wasn't really shocked when the decision came that I had been expelled.
I guess I must have had some vague idea that if I didn't have to go to school, I'd be allowed to stay onwith the Gohannases and wander around town, or maybe get a job if I wanted one for pocket money.
But I got rocked on my heels when a state man whom I hadn't seen before came and got me at theGohannases' and took me down to court.
They told me I was going to go to a reform school. I was still thirteen years old.
But first I was going to the detention22 home. It was in Mason, Michigan, about twelve miles fromLansing. The detention home was where all the "bad" boys and girls from Ingham County were held,on their way to reform school-waiting for their hearings.
The white state man was a Mr. Maynard Allen. He was nicer to me than most of the state Welfarepeople had been. He even had consoling words for the Gohannases and Mrs. Adcock and Big Boy; allof them were crying. But I wasn't. With the few clothes I owned stuffed into a box, we rode in his carto Mason. He talked as he drove along, saying that my school marks showed that if I would juststraighten up, I could make something of myself. He said that reform school had the wrongreputation; he talked about what the word "reform" meant-to change and become better. He said theschool was really a place where boys like me could have time to see their mistakes and start a new lifeand become somebody everyone would be proud of. And he told me that the lady in charge of thedetention home, a Mrs. Swerlin, and her husband were very good people.
They were good people. Mrs. Swerlin was bigger than her husband, I remember, a big, buxom23, robust,laughing woman, and Mr. Swerlin was thin, with black hair, and a black mustache and a red face,quiet and polite, even to me.
They liked me right away, too. Mrs. Swerlin showed me to my room, my own room-the first in mylife. It was in one of those huge dormitory-tike buildings where kids in detention were kept in thosedays-and still are in most places. I discovered next, with surprise, that I was allowed to eat with theSwerlins. It was the first time I'd eaten with white people-at least with grown white people-since theSeventh Day Adventist country meetings. It wasn't my own exclusive privilege, of course. Except forthe very troublesome boys and girls at the detention home, who were kept locked up-those who hadrun away and been caught and brought back, or something like that-all of us ate with the Swerlins sitting at the head of the long tables.
They had a white cook-helper, I recall-Lucille Lathrop. (It amazes me how these names come back,from a time I haven't thought about for more than twenty years.) Lucille treated me well, too. Herhusband's name was Duane Lathrop. He worked somewhere else, but he stayed there at the detentionhome on the weekends with Lucille.
I noticed again how white people smelled different from us, and how their food tasted different, notseasoned like Negro cooking. I began to sweep and mop and dust around in the Swerlins' house, as Ihad done with Big Boy at the Gohannases'.
They all liked my attitude, and it was out of their liking24 for me that I soon became accepted by them-as a mascot25, I know now. They would talk about anything and everything with me standing26 rightthere hearing them, the same way people would talk freely in front of a pet canary. They would eventalk about me, or about "niggers," as though I wasn't there, as if I wouldn't understand what the wordmeant. A hundred times a day, they used the word "nigger." I suppose that in their own minds, theymeant no harm; in fact they probably meant well. It was the same with the cook, Lucille, and herhusband, Duane. I remember one day when Mr. Swerlin, as nice as he was, came in from Lansing,where he had been through the Negro section, and said to Mrs. Swerlin right in front of me, "I justcan't see how those niggers can be so happy and be so poor." He talked about how they lived inshacks, but had those big, shining cars out front.
And Mrs. Swerlin said, me standing right there, "Niggers are just that way. . . ." That scene alwaysstayed with me.
It was the same with the other white people, most of them local politicians, when they would comevisiting the Swerlins. One of their favorite parlor27 topics was "niggers." One of them was the judge whowas in charge of me in Lansing. He was a close friend of the Swerlins. He would ask about me whenhe came, and they would call me in, and he would look me up and down, his expression approving,like he was examining a fine colt, or a pedigreed pup. I knew they must have told him how I acted andhow I worked.
What I am trying to say is that it just never dawned upon them that I could understand, that I wasn't apet, but a human being. They didn't give me credit for having the same sensitivity, intellect, andunderstanding that they would have been ready and willing to recognize in a white boy in myposition. But it has historically been the case with white people, in their regard for black people, thateven though we might be _with_ them, we weren't considered of them. Even though they appeared tohave opened the door, it was still closed. Thus they never did really see _me_.
This is the sort of kindly28 condescension29 which I try to clarify today, to these integration-hungryNegroes, about their "liberal" white friends, these so-called "good white people"-most of them anyway.
I don't care how nice one is to you; the thing you must always remember is that almost never does he really see you as he sees himself, as he sees his own kind. He may stand with you through thin, butnot thick; when the chips are down, you'll find that as fixed30 in him as his bone structure is hissometimes subconscious31 conviction that he's better than anybody black.
But I was no more than vaguely32 aware of anything like that in my detention-home years. I did mylittle chores around the house, and everything was fine. And each weekend, they didn't mind mycatching a ride over to Lansing for the afternoon or evening. If I wasn't old enough, I sure was bigenough by then, and nobody ever questioned my hanging out, even at night, in the streets of theNegro section.
I was growing up to be even bigger than Wilfred and Philbert, who had begun to meet girls at theschool dances, and other places, and introduced me to a few. But the ones who seemed to like me, Ididn't go for-and vice12 versa. I couldn't dance a lick, anyway, and I couldn't see squandering33 my fewdimes on girls. So mostly I pleasured myself these Saturday nights by gawking around the Negro barsand restaurants. The jukeboxes were wailing34 Erskine Hawkins' "Tuxedo35 Junction," Slim and Slam's"Flatfoot Floogie," things like that. Sometimes, big bands from New York, out touring the one-nightstands in the sticks, would play for big dances in Lansing. Everybody with legs would come out to seeany performer who bore the magic name "New York." Which is how I first heard Lucky Thompsonand Milt Jackson, both of whom I later got to know well in Harlem.
Many youngsters from the detention home, when their dates came up, went off to the reform school.
But when mine came up-two or three times-it was always ignored. I saw new youngsters arrive andleave. I was glad and grateful. I knew it was Mrs. Swerlin's doing. I didn't want to leave.
She finally told me one day that I was going to be entered in Mason Junior High School. It was theonly school in town. No ward4 of the detention home had ever gone to school there, at least while still award. So I entered their seventh grade. The only other Negroes there were some of the Lyons children,younger than I was, in the lower grades. The Lyonses and I, as it happened, were the town's onlyNegroes. They were, as Negroes, very much respected. Mr. Lyons was a smart, hardworking man, andMrs. Lyons was a very good woman. She and my mother, I had heard my mother say, were two of thefour West Indians in that whole section of Michigan.
Some of the white kids at school, I found, were even friendlier than some of those in Lansing hadbeen. Though some, including the teachers, called me "nigger," it was easy to see that they didn't meanany more harm by it than the Swerlins. As the "nigger" of my class, I was in tact36 extremely popular-Isuppose partly because I was kind of a novelty. I was in demand, I had top priority. But I alsobenefited from the special prestige of having the seal of approval from that Very Important Womanabout the town of Mason, Mrs. Swerlin. Nobody in Mason would have dreamed of getting on thewrong side of her. It became hard for me to get through a school day without someone after me to jointhis or head up that-the debating society, the Junior High basketball team, or some otherextracurricular activity. I never turned them down.
And I hadn't been in the school long when Mrs. Swerlin, knowing I could use spending money of my own, got me a job after school washing the dishes in a local restaurant. My boss there was the father ofa white classmate whom I spent a lot of time with. His family lived over the restaurant. It was fineworking there. Every Friday night when I got paid, I'd feel at least ten feet tall. I forget how much Imade, but it seemed like a lot. It was the first time I'd ever had any money to speak of, all my own, inmy whole life. As soon as I could afford it, I bought a green suit and some shoes, and at school I'd buytreats for the others in my class-at least as much as any of them did for me.
English and history were the subjects I liked most. My English teacher, I recall-a Mr. Ostrowski-wasalways giving advice about how to become something in life. The one thing I didn't like about historyclass was that the teacher, Mr. Williams, was a great one for "nigger" jokes. One day during my firstweek at school, I walked into the room and he started singing to the class, as a joke, "'Way downyonder in the cotton field, some folks say that a nigger won't steal." Very funny. I liked history, but Inever thereafter had much liking for Mr. Williams. Later, I remember, we came to the textbook sectionon Negro history. It was exactly one paragraph long. Mr. Williams laughed through it practically in asingle breath, reading aloud how the Negroes had been slaves and then were freed, and how theywere usually lazy and dumb and shiftless. He added, I remember, an anthropological37 footnote on hisown, telling us between laughs how Negroes' feet were "so big that when they walk, they don't leavetracks, they leave a hole in the ground."I'm sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think thereason was that mathematics leaves no room for argument. If you made a mistake, that was all therewas to it.
Basketball was a big thing in my life, though. I was on the team; we traveled to neighboring townssuch as Howell and Charlotte, and wherever I showed my face, the audiences in the gymnasiums"niggered" and "cooned" me to death. Or called me "Rastus." It didn't bother my teammates or mycoach at all, and to tell the truth, it bothered me only vaguely. Mine was the same psychology38 thatmakes Negroes even today, though it bothers them down inside, keep letting the white man tell themhow much "progress" they are making. They've heard it so much they've almost gotten brainwashedinto believing it-or at least accepting it.
After the basketball games, there would usually be a school dance. Whenever our team walked intoanother school's gym for the dance, with me among them, I could feel the freeze. It would start to easeas they saw that I didn't try to mix, but stuck close to someone on our team, or kept to myself. I think Ideveloped ways to do it without making it obvious. Even at our own school, I could sense it almost asa physical barrier, that despite all the beaming and smiling, the mascot wasn't supposed to dance withany of the white girls.
It was some kind of psychic39 message-not just from them, but also from within myself. I am proud tobe able to say that much for myself, at least. I would just stand around and smile and talk and drinkpunch and eat sandwiches, and then I would make some excuse and get away early.
They were typical small-town school dances. Sometimes a little white band from Lansing would be brought in to play. But most often, the music was a phonograph set up on a table, with the volumeturned up high, and the records scratchy, blaring things like Glenn Miller's "Moonlight Serenade"-hisband was riding high then-or the Ink Spots, who were also very popular, singing "If I Didn't Care."I used to spend a lot of time thinking about a peculiar40 thing. Many of these Mason white boys, like theones at the Lansing school-especially if they knew me well, and if we hung out a lot together-wouldget me off in a corner somewhere and push me to proposition certain white girls, sometimes their ownsisters. They would tell me that they'd already had the girls themselves-including their sisters-or thatthey were trying to and couldn't. Later on, I came to understand what was going on: If they could getthe girls into the position of having broken the terrible taboo41 by slipping off with me somewhere, theywould have that hammer over the girls' heads, to make them give in to them.
It seemed that the white boys felt that I, being a Negro, just naturally knew more about "romance," orsex, than they did-that I instinctively42 knew more about what to do and say with their own girls. Inever did tell anybody that I really went for some of the white girls, and some of them went for me,too. They let me know in many ways. But anytime we found ourselves in any close conversations orpotentially intimate situations, always there would come up between us some kind of a wall. The girlsI really wanted to have were a couple of Negro girls whom Wilfred or Philbert had introduced me toin Lansing. But with these girls, somehow, I lacked the nerve.
From what I heard and saw on the Saturday nights I spent hanging around in the Negro district Iknew that race-mixing went on in Lansing. But strangely enough, this didn't have any kind of effecton me. Every Negro in Lansing, I guess, knew how white men would drive along certain streets in theblack neighborhoods and pick up Negro streetwalkers who patrolled the area. And, on the other hand,there was a bridge that separated the Negro and Polish neighborhoods, where white women woulddrive or walk across and pick up Negro men, who would hang around in certain places close to thebridge, waiting for them. Lansing's white women, even in those days, were famous for chasing Negromen. I didn't yet appreciate how most whites accord to the Negro this reputation for prodigioussexual prowess. There in Lansing, I never heard of any trouble about this mixing, from either side. Iimagine that everyone simply took it for granted, as I did.
Anyway, from my experience as a little boy at the Lansing school, I had become fairly adept43 atavoiding the white-girl issue-at least for a couple of years yet.
Then, in the second semester of the seventh grade, I was elected class president. It surprised me evenmore than other people. But I can see now why the class might have done it. My grades were amongthe highest in the school. I was unique in my class, like a pink poodle. And I was proud; I'm not goingto say I wasn't. In fact, by then, I didn't really have much feeling about being a Negro, because I wastrying so hard, in every way I could, to be white. Which is why I am spending much of my life todaytelling the American black man that he's wasting his time straining to "integrate." I know frompersonal experience. I tried hard enough.
"Malcolm, we're just so _proud_ of you!" Mrs. Swerlin exclaimed when she heard about my election. It was all over the restaurant where I worked. Even the state man, Maynard Allen, who still dropped byto see me once in a while, had a word of praise. He said he never saw anybody prove better exactlywhat "reform" meant. I really liked him-except for one thing: he now and then would drop somethingthat hinted my mother had let us down somehow.
Fairly often, I would go and visit the Lyonses, and they acted as happy as though I was one of theirchildren. And it was the same warm feeling when I went into Lansing to visit my brothers and sisters,and the Gohannases.
I remember one thing that marred44 this time for me: the movie "Gone with the Wind." When it playedin Mason, I was the only Negro in the theater, and when Butterfly McQueen went into her act, I feltlike crawling under the rug.
Every Saturday, just about, I would go into Lansing. I was going on fourteen, now. Wilfred and Hildastill lived out by themselves at the old family home. Hilda kept the house very clean. It was easier thanmy mother's plight45, with eight of us always underfoot or running around. Wilfred worked whereverhe could, and he still read every book he could get his hands on. Philbert was getting a reputation asone of the better amateur fighters in this part of the state; everyone really expected that he was goingto become a professional.
Reginald and I, after my fighting fiasco, had finally gotten back on good terms. It made me feel greatto visit him and Wesley over at Mrs. Williams'. I'd offhandedly46 give them each a couple of dollars tojust stick in their pockets, to have something to spend. And little Yvonne and Robert were doing okay,too, over at the home of the West Indian lady, Mrs. McGuire. I'd give them about a quarter apiece; itmade me feel good to see how they were coming along.
None of us talked much about our mother. And we never mentioned our father. I guess none of usknew what to say. We didn't want anybody else to mention our mother either, I think. From time totime, though, we would all go over to Kalamazoo to visit her. Most often we older ones went singly,for it was something you didn't want to have to experience with anyone else present, even yourbrother or sister.
During this period, the visit to my mother that I most remember was toward the end of that seventh-grade year, when our father's grown daughter by his first marriage, Ella, came from Boston to visit us.
Wilfred and Hilda had exchanged some letters with Ella, and I, at Hilda's suggestion, had written toher from the Swerlins'. We were all excited and happy when her letter told us that she was coming toLansing.
I think the major impact of Ella's arrival, at least upon me, was that she was the first really proud blackwoman I had ever seen in my life. She was plainly proud of her very dark skin. This was unheard ofamong Negroes in those days, especially in Lansing.
I hadn't been sure just what day she would come. And then one afternoon I got home from school and there she was. She hugged me, stood me away, looked me up and down. A commanding woman,maybe even bigger than Mrs. Swerlin. Ella wasn't just black, but like our father, she was jet black. Theway she sat, moved, talked, did everything, bespoke47 somebody who did and got exactly what shewanted. This was the woman my father had boasted of so often for having brought so many of theirfamily out of Georgia to Boston. She owned some property, he would say, and she was "in society."She had come North with nothing, and she had worked and saved and had invested in property thatshe built up in value, and then she started sending money to Georgia for another sister, brother,cousin, niece or nephew to come north to Boston. All that I had heard was reflected in Ella'sappearance and bearing. I had never been so impressed with anybody. She was in her secondmarriage; her first husband had been a doctor.
Ella asked all kinds of questions about how I was doing; she had already heard from Wilfred andHilda about my election as class president. She asked especially about my grades, and I ran and gotmy report cards. I was then one of the three highest in the class. Ella praised me. I asked her about herbrother, Earl, and her sister, Mary. She had the exciting news that Earl was a singer with a band inBoston. He was singing under the name of Jimmy Carleton. Mary was also doing well.
Ella told me about other relatives from that branch of the family. A number of them I'd never heard of;she had helped them up from Georgia. They, in their turn, had helped up others. "We Littles have tostick together," Ella said. It thrilled me to hear her say that, and even more, the way she said it. I hadbecome a mascot; our branch of the family was split to pieces; I had just about forgotten about being aLittle in any family sense. She said that different members of the family were working in good jobs,and some even had small businesses going. Most of them were homeowners.
When Ella suggested that all of us Littles in Lansing accompany her on a visit to our mother, we allwere grateful. We all felt that if anyone could do anything that could help our mother, that might helpher get well and come back, it would be Ella. Anyway, all of us, for the first time together, went withElla to Kalamazoo.
Our mother was smiling when they brought her out. She was extremely surprised when she saw Ella.
They made a striking contrast, the thin near-white woman and the big black one hugging each other. Idon't remember much about the rest of the visit, except that there was a lot of talking, and Ella hadeverything in hand, and we left with all of us feeling better than we ever had about the circumstances.
I know that for the first time, I felt as though I had visited with someone who had some kind ofphysical illness that had just lingered on.
A few days later, after visiting the homes where each of us were staying, Ella left Lansing andreturned to Boston. But before leaving, she told me to write to her regularly. And she had suggestedthat I might like to spend my summer holiday visiting her in Boston. I jumped at that chance.
That summer of 1940, in Lansing, I caught the Greyhound bus for Boston with my cardboard suitcase,and wearing my green suit. If someone had hung a sign, "HICK," around my neck, I couldn't havelooked much more obvious. They didn't have the turnpikes then; the bus stopped at what seemedevery comer and cowpatch. From my seat in-you guessed it-the back of the bus, I gawked out of thewindow at white man's America rolling past for what seemed a month, but must have been only a dayand a half.
When we finally arrived, Ella met me at the terminal and took me home. The house was onWaumbeck Street in the Sugar Hill section of Roxbury, the Harlem of Boston. I met Ella's secondhusband, Frank, who was now a soldier; and her brother Earl, the singer who called himself JimmyCarleton; and Mary, who was very different from her older sister. It's funny how I seemed to think ofMary as Ella's sister, instead of her being, just as Ella is, my own half-sister. It's probably because Ellaand I always were much closer as basic types; we're dominant48 people, and Mary has always been mildand quiet, almost shy.
Ella was busily involved in dozens of things. She belonged to I don't know how many different clubs;she was a leading light of local so-called "black society." I saw and met a hundred black people therewhose big-city talk and ways left my mouth hanging open.
I couldn't have feigned49 indifference50 if I had tried to. People talked casually51 about Chicago, Detroit,New York. I didn't know the world contained as many Negroes as I saw thronging downtownRoxbury at night, especially on Saturdays. Neon lights, nightclubs, poolhalls, bars, the cars they drove!
Restaurants made the streets smell-rich, greasy52, down-home black cooking! Jukeboxes blared ErskineHawkins, Duke Ellington, Cootie Williams, dozens of others. If somebody had told me then that someday I'd know them all personally, I'd have found it hard to believe. The biggest bands, like these,played at the Roseland State Ballroom53, on Boston's Massachusetts Avenue-one night for Negroes, thenext night for whites.
I saw for the first time occasional black-white couples strolling around arm in arm. And on Sundays,when Ella, Mary, or somebody took me to church, I saw churches for black people such as I had neverseen. They were many times finer than the white church I had attended back in Mason, Michigan.
There, the white people just sat and worshiped with words; but the Boston Negroes, like all otherNegroes I had ever seen at church, threw their souls and bodies wholly into worship.
Two or three times, I wrote letters to Wilfred intended for everybody back in Lansing. I said I'd try todescribe it when I got back.
But I found I couldn't.
My restlessness with Mason-and for the first time in my life a restlessness with being around whitepeople-began as soon as I got back home and entered eighth grade.
I continued to think constantly about all that I had seen in Boston, and about the way I had felt there. I know now that it was the sense of being a real part of a mass of my own kind, for the first time.
The white people-classmates, the Swerlins, the people at the restaurant where I worked-noticed thechange. They said, "You're acting54 so strange. You don't seem like yourself, Malcolm. What's thematter?"I kept close to the top of the class, though. The topmost scholastic55 standing, I remember, kept shiftingbetween me, a girl named Audrey Slaugh, and a boy named Jimmy Cotton.
It went on that way, as I became increasingly restless and disturbed through the first semester. Andthen one day, just about when those of us who had passed were about to move up to 8-A, from whichwe would enter high school the next year, something happened which was to become the first majorturning point of my life.
Somehow, I happened to be alone in the classroom with Mr. Ostrowski, my English teacher. He was atall, rather reddish white man and he had a thick mustache. I had gotten some of my best marks underhim, and he had always made me feel that he liked me. He was, as I have mentioned, a natural-born"advisor," about what you ought to read, to do, or think-about any and everything. We used to makeunkind jokes about him: why was he teaching in Mason instead of somewhere else, getting for himselfsome of the "success in life" that he kept telling us how to get?
I know that he probably meant well in what he happened to advise me that day. I doubt that he meantany harm. It was just in his nature as an American white man. I was one of his top students, one of theschool's top students-but all he could see for me was the kind of future "in your place" that almost allwhite people see for black people.
He told me, "Malcolm, you ought to be thinking about a career. Have you been giving it thought?"The truth is, I hadn't. I never have figured out why I told him, "Well, yes, sir, I've been thinking I'd liketo be a lawyer." Lansing certainly had no Negro lawyers-or doctors either-in those days, to hold up animage I might have aspired56 to. All I really knew for certain was that a lawyer didn't wash dishes, as Iwas doing.
Mr. Ostrowski looked surprised, I remember, and leaned back in his chair and clasped his handsbehind his head. He kind of half-smiled and said, "Malcolm, one of life's first needs is for us to berealistic. Don't misunderstand me, now. We all here like you, you know that. But you've got to berealistic about being a nigger. A lawyer-that's no realistic goal for a nigger. You need to think aboutsomething you _can_ be. You're good with your hands-making things. Everybody admires yourcarpentry shop work. Why don't you plan on carpentry? People like you as a person-you'd get allkinds of work."The more I thought afterwards about what he said, the more uneasy it made me. It just kept treadingaround in my mind.
What made it really begin to disturb me was Mr. Ostrowski's advice to others in my class-all of themwhite. Most of them had told him they were planning to become farmers. But those who wanted tostrike out on their own, to try something new, he had encouraged. Some, mostly girls, wanted to beteachers. A few wanted other professions, such as one boy who wanted to become a county agent;another, a veterinarian; and one girl wanted to be a nurse. They all reported that Mr. Ostrowski hadencouraged what they had wanted. Yet nearly none of them had earned marks equal to mine.
It was a surprising thing that I had never thought of it that way before, but I realized that whatever Iwasn't, I _was_ smarter than nearly all of those white kids. But apparently57 I was still not intelligentenough, in their eyes, to become whatever _I_ wanted to be.
It was then that I began to change-inside.
I drew away from white people. I came to class, and I answered when called upon. It became aphysical strain simply to sit in Mr. Ostrowski's class.
Where "nigger" had slipped off my back before, wherever I heard it now, I stopped and looked atwhoever said it. And they looked surprised that I did.
I quit hearing so much "nigger" and "What's wrong?"-which was the way I wanted it. Nobody,including the teachers, could decide what had come over me. I knew I was being discussed.
In a few more weeks, it was that way, too, at the restaurant where I worked washing dishes, and at theSwerlins'.
One day soon after, Mrs. Swerlin called me into the living room, and there was the state man,Maynard Allen. I knew from their faces that something was about to happen. She told me that none ofthem could understand why-after I had done so well in school, and on my job, and living with them,and after everyone in Mason had come to like me-I had lately begun to make them all feel that I wasn'thappy there anymore.
She said she felt there was no need for me to stay at the o detention home any longer, and thatarrangements had been made for me to go and live with the Lyons family, who liked me so much.
She stood up and put out her hand. "I guess I've asked you a hundred times, Malcolm-do you want totell me what's wrong?"I shook her hand, and said, "Nothing, Mrs. Swerlin." Then I went and got my things, and came backdown. At the living-room door I saw her wiping her eyes. I felt very bad. I thanked her and went out in front to Mr. Allen, who took me over to the Lyons'.
Mr. and Mrs. Lyons, and their children, during the two months I lived with them-while finishingeighth grade-also tried to get me to tell them what was wrong. But somehow I couldn't tell them,either.
I went every Saturday to see my brothers and sisters in Lansing, and almost every other day I wrote toElla in Boston. Not saying why, I told Ella that I wanted to come there and live.
I don't know how she did it, but she arranged for official custody58 of me to be transferred fromMichigan to Massachusetts, and the very week I finished the eighth grade, I again boarded theGreyhound bus for Boston.
I've thought about that time a lot since then. No physical move in my life has been more pivotal orprofound in its repercussions59.
If I had stayed on in Michigan, I would probably have married one of those Negro girls I knew andliked in Lansing. I might have become one of those state capitol building shoeshine boys, or a LansingCountry Club waiter, or gotten one of the other menial jobs which, in those days, among LansingNegroes, would have been considered "successful"-or even become a carpenter.
Whatever I have done since then, I have driven myself to become a success at it. I've often thought thatif Mr. Ostrowski had encouraged me to become a lawyer, I would today probably be among somecity's professional black bourgeoisie, sipping60 cocktails61 and palming myself off as a communityspokesman for and leader of the suffering black masses, while my primary concern would be to grab afew more crumbs62 from the groaning63 board of the two-faced whites with whom they're begging to"integrate."All praise is due to Allah that I went to Boston when I did. If I hadn't, I'd probably still be abrainwashed black Christian64.
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bomber
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| n.轰炸机，投弹手，投掷炸弹者 | |
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boxer
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| n.制箱者，拳击手 | |
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gangling
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| adj.瘦长得难看的 | |
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ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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bouts
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| n.拳击（或摔跤）比赛( bout的名词复数 )；一段（工作）；（尤指坏事的）一通；（疾病的）发作 | |
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bout
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| n.侵袭，发作；一次(阵，回)；拳击等比赛 | |
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auditorium
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| n.观众席，听众席；会堂，礼堂 | |
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eliminations
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| n.排除( elimination的名词复数 )；除去；根除；淘汰 | |
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envious
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| adj.嫉妒的，羡慕的 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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novice
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| adj.新手的，生手的 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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aisle
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| n.（教堂、教室、戏院等里的）过道，通道 | |
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thronging
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| v.成群，挤满( throng的现在分词 ) | |
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referee
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| n.裁判员．仲裁人，代表人，鉴定人 | |
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mumbled
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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tunes
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| n.曲调，曲子( tune的名词复数 )v.调音( tune的第三人称单数 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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tack
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| n.大头钉；假缝，粗缝 | |
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detention
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| n.滞留，停留；拘留，扣留；(教育)留下 | |
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buxom
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| adj.（妇女）丰满的，有健康美的 | |
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liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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mascot
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| n.福神，吉祥的东西 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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condescension
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| n.自以为高人一等，贬低(别人) | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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subconscious
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| n./adj.潜意识(的)，下意识(的) | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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squandering
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| v.（指钱，财产等）浪费，乱花( squander的现在分词 ) | |
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wailing
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的现在分词 )；沱 | |
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tuxedo
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| n.礼服，无尾礼服 | |
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tact
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| n.机敏，圆滑，得体 | |
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anthropological
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| adj.人类学的 | |
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psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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psychic
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| n.对超自然力敏感的人；adj.有超自然力的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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taboo
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| n.禁忌，禁止接近，禁止使用；adj.禁忌的；v.禁忌，禁制，禁止 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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adept
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| adj.老练的，精通的 | |
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marred
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| adj. 被损毁, 污损的 | |
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plight
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| n.困境，境况，誓约，艰难；vt.宣誓，保证，约定 | |
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offhandedly
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| adv.立即地；即席地；未经准备地；不客气地 | |
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bespoke
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| adj.（产品）订做的；专做订货的v.预定( bespeak的过去式 )；订（货）；证明；预先请求 | |
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dominant
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| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
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feigned
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| a.假装的，不真诚的 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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greasy
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| adj. 多脂的，油脂的 | |
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ballroom
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| n.舞厅 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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scholastic
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| adj.学校的，学院的，学术上的 | |
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aspired
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| v.渴望，追求( aspire的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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custody
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| n.监护，照看，羁押，拘留 | |
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repercussions
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| n.后果，反响( repercussion的名词复数 )；余波 | |
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sipping
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| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的现在分词 ) | |
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cocktails
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| n.鸡尾酒( cocktail的名词复数 )；餐前开胃菜；混合物 | |
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crumbs
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| int. (表示惊讶)哎呀 n. 碎屑 名词crumb的复数形式 | |
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groaning
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| adj. 呜咽的, 呻吟的 动词groan的现在分词形式 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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