◆ SpookStack

‘Negroes of Roxbury. . . actually worked as menialsand | “Rice also set the limits on his youthful embrtions during what he describes a3 his “mascot years” in a detention home run by whites with mixed feelings of affection and superiority towards him. One of the top students in his school and a member of the debating club, Malcolm went to an English teacher he admired and told him of his ambition to become a lawyer. “Mr. ! Ostrowsky looked surprised and said, ‘Malcolm, one ' of life's first needs is for us to be realistic... that’s no realistic goal for a nigger . . . you're good with your hands . . . why don’t you plan on car! pentry?'"" How many times has this scene been re- | peated in various forms in schoolrcoms across the country? It was at this point, Malcolm writes, “that I began to change—inside. I drew away from white people.” . Too many people want to believe that Malcolm “the angry black man sprang full grown from the bowels of the Harlem ghetto.” These chapters on his child- hood are essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the plight of American Negroes. Malcolm Little was 14 when he took the Greyhound | to Boston to live with his half-sister, Ella, who had fought her way into the Boston “black bourgeoisie.” The “400,” as they were called, lived on “the Hill,” only one step removed socially, economically and gee- graphically from the ghetto (“the Town"). Malcolm writes that “a big percentage of the Hill dwellers were in Elfa's category—Southern strivers and scramblers and West Indian Negroes, whom both the New Englanders and Southerners called ‘Black Jews. 'e Eils owned some real estate and her own home, and like the first Jews who arrived in the New World, she was determined to shepherd new immigrants and teach them the strange ways of city life. There were deep bonds between Ella and her younger brother, and she - tried to help him live a respectable life on the Hill. But for Malcolm the 400 were only “a big-city version of those ‘successful’ Negro bootblacks and janitors back in Lansing... 8 out of 10 of the Hill servants... I don’t know how many 40- and 50-year- old errand boys went down the Hill dressed as ambas- | sadors in black suits and white collars to downtown | jobs ‘in government,’ ‘in finance,’ or ‘in law.’” Mal-! colm mstead chose ‘‘the Town,” where for the first. time he felt he was part of 2 people. : Unlike the thousands of Negro migrants who poured into the Northern ghettos, Malcolm had a choice. But from the moment he made it, the options harrowed. He got a job at the Roseland Bailroom, where all the jazz greateplayed. His title ~wee-shee- shins boy. but his real a lawyer, i a aaa ae nel FE i a ea RE ee jor? to hustle-whtskey, prophylactics and women to Ne- groes and whites. He got his first conk and zoot suit and a new identity, “Red,” -and his secondary education began be- fore he was 15. “I was... schooled well, by experts in such hustles as the numbers, pimping, con games of many kinds, ped- dling dope, and thievery of all - sorts, including armed robbery.” It is significant that it was Malcolm's good qualities—-his intelligence, integrity, and dis- taste for hypocrisy—as well as his sickness that made him choose-crime rather than what passed in the Negro community for a respectable bourgeois life. Later he moved on to bigger things in Harlem, became “De- trait Red,” went.on dope and at one time carried three guns. His description of the cut- throat competition between the hustlers and their fraternity is both frightening and moving. j “As in the case of any jungle,” ‘| he writes, “the hustler’s every waking hour is lived with both the practical and the subcon- scious knowledge that if he ever J relaxes, if he ever slows down, the other hungry, restless foxes, ferrets, wolves, and vul- : tures out there with him won't see i a hesitate to make him their prey.” He summed up his moral- ity at the time: “The only thing I considered wrong was what I got caught doing wrong... and everything T did was done by instinct to survive.” As a “steerer” of uptown rich whites to Harlem “sex specialties,” he Tecounts perversions with racial overtones, of white men beg- ging to be beaten by black women or paying large amounts to witness interracial sex that make Genet’s “The Balcony” seem inhibited by comparison. “Detroit Red” was a limited success in his trade for four years. But even in this business, success was limited by race. The big operators, the successful, respectable, and safe executives of policy, dope, and prostitution tackets, were white and lived La ghetto. ete