Reading Amiri Baraka for my poetry class. A poem written after the murder of Malcolm X: Poem for Black Hearts.
For all of him, and all of yourself, look up,
black man, quit stuttering and shuffling, look up
black man
I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X when I was a high school student in Beardstown, Illinois. I was at the county fair a while later with my friend Sue Hye. A couple black guys from Chicago were flirting with us. I asked mine what he thought he was doing. Didn’t he know that I was the white devil? He looked at me confusedly and then turned to his friend, “Yo! Raymond, come hear this white girl talk.”
