The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X

by Les Payne

The Windy City riot was part of a firestorm that hit some thirty-three cities, with mainly white mobs attacking Negroes, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Hundreds were left homeless and about 175 were killed, including at least 76 Negroes who were lynched, 11 of them war veterans. Writer James Weldon Johnson dubbed this bloody conflagration the Red Summer,

problems we bring on ourselves by our own inferiority feelings sometimes. If you acted like you were inferior, that’s the way they related to you. If you didn’t act like you were inferior, then they would be forced to treat you as an equal.

she came into motherhood hell-bent on ensuring all due rights for her children to attain a sound education and a life of accomplishment.

This immunization against black inferiority continued to set the Littles apart from their peers, both white and black.

“The state Welfare people . . . acted and looked at her, and at us, and around in our house, in a way that had about it the feeling–at least for me—that we were not people. In their eyesight we were just things, that was all.” 12