to commend him for speaking at MalcolmÆs funeral. However, they all took care to express their disagreement with much or all of what Malcolm said.
Malcolm believed that all white people in America profit directly or indirectly from racism even though they may or may not practice it or believe it. Davis wrote about Malcolm with great affection:
He scared the hell out of the rest of us, wrote Davis, bred as we are to caution, to hypocrisy in the presence of white folks, and to the smile that never fades. Malcolm kept snatching our lies away. He kept shouting the painful truth we did not want to hear, and he would not stop (Haley and X 465-466).
The death of MalcolmÆs father in 1931 devastated MalcolmÆs mother, who was left with eight children to rear. MalcolmÆs father had become a prominent preacher who advocated the back-to-Africa ideas of Marcus Garvey. The family believed the father was murdered by the Black Legion in Lansing because he was actively circulating these ideas among the black population. MalcolmÆs mother slowly lost her mind under the strain of trying to care for the children and was institutionalized. Malcolm spent several years in foster homes. He became an excellent student and was voted class president. After finishing the eighth grade, he moved to Roxbury, Massachusetts to live with his half-sister, Ella, and her second husband.
Malcolm dropped out of school at 15. From Boston, he drifted to New York City, where he became involved in HarlemÆs underground world of drugs, prostitution and confidence games. He organized a small gang and began committing burglaries. He was caught, convicted and sent to prison from 1946 to 1952. He notes in his autobiography that he was being punished for being with the two white women who were part of his gang, not for the burglaries. As a first offender, the normal sentence, even for a black man, would have been two years. Malcolm was sentenced...