I knew Malcolm was a threat—my second-grade classmates’ tears taught me that—but when I finally came to understand why, I held the threat close. The threat represented a truth I had, to that point, failed to see. Malcolm taught us that white supremacy was the enemy of self-love. He preached pride in our blackness as both a birthright and a tactic against an American system of devaluation. And he was killed for it.
