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trigger mechanisms of violence—such as inadequate supplies of food, clothing, or shelter—were absent.
view of the violence surrounding it, to leave. But I found out that, violent and destructive as the neighborhood was, there was one good principle to be learned by all, and it has remained with me throughout my life. This was the acceptance of people, regardless of race, creed, or color.
I came to believe that no man could actually be the master of his own frail destiny and that everything under the sun was as it should be, or it wouldn’t be. So, I accepted the inevitable, and with this acceptance came the belief that I had been betrayed by the white distributors of equal justice.
Somewhere, someplace, I had once read that loneliness at times is as important as a lover ... and that a true individualist has got to be lonely.
Jersey. It’s not what a man says that makes him what he is, it’s what he does, and my conduct was in complete harmony with the opinions I couldn’t express verbally:
“Knowledge,” he said, “and especially of one’s self, has in it the potential power to overcome all barriers. Wisdom is the godfather of it all.”
“What the hell, what harm could it possibly do if I checked out this Islam thing?” So out of the cradle of ignorance came Saladin Abdullah Muhammad—me—the warrior and general!
Once a man starts backing away from what he believes is right, he won’t easily find a way to go forward again.
Meanwhile, a multitude of young white boys, who had very little schooling and whose only qualification was being cousin to somebody’s uncle who held a high position in the bureaucracy of the administration, came and went through the prison employment system daily.
Because self-protection is the absolute right of every living being on the face of the earth. No matter who he is, what color he is, a person has a right to live, and to do so without always being dangled over the political edge of genocide every day of his life.
Like Malcolm X, whom they hated for his tolerance and feared for his wisdom, my willingness to fight their battles to protect their own children only threw their shame right back into their faces.
Isn’t it strange that if a black man kills a white man, no matter what the circumstances, that ultimately, if he isn’t killed on the spot, he’s charged with first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment or death? Meanwhile, the same white man could massacre ten black men, five women, and three little children, but he would only be charged with violating the dead nigger’s civil rights. A penalty which would net him only three years in prison, if anything. Where’s the equality of that? In the White House?
The telephone rang early one morning. Mae Thelma answered it. It was from Dr. Martin Luther King. He wanted to know if I would consider coming down to Selma, Alabama, to march in his demonstration to dramatize the voting discrimination. I had made the March on Washington with him in 1963. “Alabama!”. I exclaimed aloud, and saw the fright in my wife’s face.
Because—shit!—if the poor, black masses could be educated against the acceptance of violent death, that would mean self-protection—destroying their enemy. But destroying the poor people’s enemy would mean destroying the government—the cops! And they couldn’t go for that. So the Hurricane had to go.
Somewhere in the United States Constitution it says that a defendant must be tried by a jury of his peers; that an accused man shall not suffer death or imprisonment when convicted by those who are not his equals.
