The Awakening of Malcolm X

by Ilyasah Shabazz

  I breathe in and think of Lightning. The look on his face, his desperate plea for another chance at life.

  As the affirmative team, we’ve spent the last two weeks researching historical facts, quotes, and studying the law, finding every possible reason to do away with the death penalty. I’m so well versed that once free, I might even be able to represent myself if I ever have to go back to court. Not that I plan to.

  “Once you’re at that podium, you will have five minutes to present your argument. Boston University will present their case. Then you will have a small break to prepare for your rebuttals. This will be your chance to attack every single point mentioned by Boston University.”

  “How do we score?” I ask, even though the better question would be How do you win? because that’s all I really care about.

  “The judges count the number of points raised in your argument, and subtract it by the number of points refuted by your opponents. The team with the most points at the end of the debate wins. Now Mr. Nash is going to give you a few pointers.”

  Mr. Nash stuffs his hands in his pockets and takes center stage. As always, he looks real serious.

  “Right. So there are a few things on which you need to focus. First things first, all these college kids are going to see is a bunch of criminals. That’ll be their first mistake and you should use it to your advantage. Assumptions are their weakness. Second, you can support anything with the right amount of evidence. It’s why we’ve had you study on your own. These kids are being spoon-fed their facts. You have an intimate knowledge of every point. You’ll find yourselves making points which you weren’t even prepared for.

  “Third, and most important, time is of the essence. Five minutes doesn’t sound like much. However, be accurate and concise, with the right inflection, and you can make anyone believe wine is water. It’s all about the delivery. Okay? Let’s go through a few practice rounds.”

  Akil goes first, then I follow. Each of us taking turns with our practiced talking points. Nash paces around the room, hand on his chin as he listens. Our fellow teammates take notes while O’Connell clocks our time.

  When done, Nash turns to me. “Malcolm, intensify your tone, speak as if you don’t have a mic. Pronounce every word with authority. You’ve been to church, I’m sure. You want to speak like a minister addressing his congregation with conviction and passion.”

  I think of Papa and swallow hard.

  Up, up, you mighty race!

  Papa didn’t just speak. He roared. I clear my throat, tilt my chin up, and try again.

  “The irreversible act of taking a life does not set this democracy apart from its barbaric predecessor. No, it only confirms their propensity for ruthlessness and lack of respect for life…”

  Everyone in the room shifts back in their seats with stunned expressions.

  “Whoa,” Akil mumbles.

  Nash nods. “Better. Much better.”

  After we wrap up our session for the day, Shorty and I head back to our dorm to prep for supper.

  “Ain’t gonna lie to you, homeboy,” he says. “I’m a little nervous.”

  “You? You were born for the stage!”

  “But this here … is different. Bigger. You realize what we get to do? We get to tell off those white boys and not lose our tongues. We get to show out and let them know they ain’t as smart as they think.”

  He laughs, an almost delirious laugh from deep in his gut.

  When lights are out for the night, I stay up, studying. Shorty’s right. We get to educate the miseducated. Show them that despite our circumstances, above all things, we are made of the same material.

  Mr. Muhammad would be proud.

  * * *

  The debate takes place in the Norfolk Prison assembly hall. With three hundred seats filled, the place is packed not just with inmates, but college kids, locals, church groups, and even press. All smiles and joyful interactions. The Norfolk Colony’s orchestra provides music for the affair, with instruments played by inmates, including Shorty on the sax. It’s remarkable, a real sight.

  The debate will air live on the radio. I imagine what Sugar Ray thinks before entering the ring, knowing that the whole world is listening, waiting for the big fight. This is a different type of fight. Instead of our hands, we’re using our minds.

  I spot Alfred, Ozzy, and Frankie sitting in the middle row, along with other brothers from the kitchen crew. George sits in the same row as Nash and O’Connell. In front of the audience is a panel of three judges, three white men in suits and wearing black-rimmed glasses. Winslow is busy greeting some of these academics and businessmen in sharp navy suits, the kind I wouldn’t mind scoring on credit back in Harlem, when I was Detroit Red.

  Standing on the auditorium stage under the hot-white lights, I reshuffle my notes. Across the stage are our opponents from Boston University, three tall, lanky white boys, all dressed in dark gray suits, crisp white shirts, and burgundy bow ties. Sharp contrast to our prison uniforms.

  My collar feels tight. I fidget with my pencil, instinctively go to smooth my hair down … then remember my conk is long gone.

  “Relax,” Akil whispers next to me. “Don’t let them scare you. We’re just as worthy.”

  The room grows humid and sticky. Feels like we’re standing on the surface of the sun. I reshuffle my notes again, notes I don’t really need since I’ve just about memorized everything on the pages.

  “What if I … say it all wrong?”

  He shakes his head. “You got this, brother. You know this stuff better than all of us.”

  I glance at the opposing team again as they stare around the hall, eyes wide and leery. Bet they never dreamed of being inside a prison before. Can’t imagine why they would agree to challenge us. Then I see it, the way they look across the stage at us, the smirks of preemptive satisfaction. They think this will be an easy win. They are sadly mistaken.

  Educate the miseducated. I am no longer afraid.

  I pray to Allah before taking the podium.

  “The whole history of penology is a refutation of deterrence theory, yet this theory, that murder by the state can repress murder by individuals, is the eternal war cry for the retention of Capital Punishment…”

  Behind me, the Boston boys are taking copious notes, preparing for their rebuttals. Once I’m done, the first Boston boy steps up to the podium. He turns, giving us a once-over before a slick smile spreads across his face.

  “The death penalty is about one thing only: justice. Justice for victims and their families. It’s a debt that is owed for the crime committed. Numbers show that setting examples deter criminals from repeating the same offense. These lessons, while hard, are the only way the criminal will learn…”

  The pencil in my hand snaps in two. I scan the audience for a reaction. None of them ever knew a man who was sentenced to death, knew someone whose life was minimized to nothing more than a “lesson.” In the front row, Nash gives me a small nod and I wait for my turn back at center stage, notes long forgotten.

  “Killing people to show killing is wrong is the very definition of hypocrisy! If we intend that violence will deter more violence, then we haven’t paid attention to the history of the world…”

  The judges stare up at me, their faces remain unmoved. But the audience gazes in awe.

  At the end of round three, we wait for the judges to tally their scores. In the band section, Shorty is biting his nails. But I am not worried.

  The moderator takes center stage, rereading his note. “Ladies and gentlemen, the winners are … Norfolk Colony!”

  Victory. The crowd cheers. Everyone is clapping. All I can do is smile at the unbiased support.

  We’re given a celebratory dinner, which isn’t much more than regular dinner and a slice of pound cake. Smiles upon the faces of my fellow inmates fill the room. Proud smiles. Congratulations come from every direction.

  “Well done, Malcolm,” Winslow says, greeting me in the main hall of the Colony, the hea
rt.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “It’s amazing how in such a short time, you’ve learned so much and have become so articulate. I knew you were going to be one of our brightest stars!”

  “Well, actually, sir, I studied much of this before. Just didn’t know what to do with it.”

  Winslow frowns. “But, you don’t even have your high school degree. I’m sure you can see how this place has really shaped you.”

  I hold a steady face. “Sir, with all due respect, I was shaped long before I arrived here. Have a good night, sir.”

  * * *

  Debating is my superpower. With every debate, I become stronger and stronger. You can dismantle a man’s rhetoric solely and simplistically with facts. That’s what Bembry meant by the power of using your words. That was my parents’ secret and their greatest gift to me. It’s all making sense. Every book I read helps add to the arsenal of words and facts I can use against my opponent to disprove his unfounded arguments.

  It is the first time I can confront a white man and knock him out without lifting a finger. But I don’t just want to beat him. I want him to know that I’m just as good, if not smarter, than he is. The proof is in my victories.

  The proof satisfies my soul.

  CHAPTER 13

  To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.

  —MALCOLM X

  Sophia’s soft fingers danced up my neck, her red nails like delicate drops of candy. She hummed a song I couldn’t place and snuggled against my chest, squeezing me tight.

  “I’ve missed you,” she cooed.

  The bedsprings creaked under us as I stared at the ceiling, the fan spinning round and round. Her hair smelled like lilac, and I wondered if Mom’s garden grew such a flower or if all women’s hair smelled like hers. Maybe even Laura’s.

  Laura. I hadn’t thought of her in years. The pretty girl who walked into that soda shop where I worked up on the Hill. All she wanted was for us to go to a good Negro college together. But I couldn’t see that dream, not when Roxbury was thrumming with energy. What would my life have looked like if I had gone home with her that night instead of with Sophia?

  I must have stayed quiet too long. Sophia looked up at me, hurt in her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, baby.”

  “Well, something must be wrong.” She pouted.

  I didn’t want to talk about what had really been on my mind—Mom, home, family. I also wondered if Sophia liked to garden and if she would be happy in a small house out in the country. Crazy thoughts. Dangerous thoughts.

  I slipped from under her arms and scooped up my T-shirt and slacks. She lay on her side, watching me.

  “Did you mean what you said the other day?” I asked. “About me moving back to Boston?”

  She sat up and smiled. “Yes.”

  “So you want me to leave Harlem?”

  Sophia hopped out of bed and leaped up on top of me, throwing her arms around my neck and her legs around my body. I had no choice but to hold her.

  “I want you to come home with me,” she said, beaming.

  “And what about you? Will you leave your husband and live with me?”

  Sophia blinked, as if waking up from a dream. She stared at the floor, slowly untangling herself from my lanky body.

  “We … we have a good thing here, don’t we?”

  In so many ways, her no was crystal clear.

  “I guess,” I muttered.

  Sophia stepped away before throwing her hands up. Collecting her clothes tossed on the floor.

  “I didn’t come all the way down here just to sit in some Harlem apartment and fight with you.”

  She leaned back in a chair, dressed in a lace slip, and lit a cigarette. Her puffs of smoke engulfed the room in a haze. I grabbed the bottle of whiskey off the side table, drank it straight. It ran down my throat like liquid fire, the same way I remembered my first drink with Shorty, back in Roxbury. I looked at Sophia, the memories of our times together flooding back, out of order and shaken.

  “Don’t you want … more?” I asked her.

  She stared at the carpet, a scowl on her pretty little face.

  “I don’t know what you want from me?” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s not like I can change what … is.”

  “But … you can try. We can try, together? Right?”

  She picked up her pointy brassiere, almost the same color as her skin, ivory cream. I used to love kissing her beautiful white porcelain skin.

  “I have to do what’s best for me.”

  “And what about me?” I asked, then coughed, the smoke thickening in my throat.

  “You’re a good time,” she continued. “But you’re asking for the impossible.”

  She had years on me, but I didn’t know this Sophia. I didn’t know that monsters could hide in pretty white skin.

  * * *

  The kitchen is a beehive, preparing for supper. Shorty is here now. We got him switched off laundry duty. He helps Frankie with the meal prep, watching the ovens so that nothing burns. Ozzy loads in crates of fresh carrots, tomatoes, and romaine lettuce to have with our turkey slices. Even Alfred is busy taking pans out of the broiler.

  What am I doing? Pretending the pot in the sink is Sophia, trying to scrub her power of six years off me.

  Alfred walks by and laughs, touching my arm.

  “Hey, man, don’t break my pot now. It didn’t do nothing to you!”

  My arms ease out of their tight flex. Been in the kitchen almost all afternoon. The thought of sitting still in the library today made me want to rip my hair out in chunks. I’m angry with Sophia, but most of all I’m angry with myself, for never really knowing her in the first place. Never knowing who I was becoming with her.

  “Something on your mind, young man?”

  I spit out my first thought without thinking.

  “You married, Alfred?”

  Alfred cackles. “Well, I’ll be, I knew it had to be lady troubles! Yes, sir, I got me a woman. And just like with you, she makes me want to hit a few tin pans myself sometimes. You married?”

  I let out a relieved laugh.

  “Married? Man, I’m too young. I doubt I’ll ever get married. I don’t have the best record when it comes to the ladies. But … how’d you know that your lady was the one for you? How do you know somebody that well to trust them?”

  Alfred dumps more dirty trays in the sink.

  “Ain’t how much you know about them, but how much you know about you. When you know yourself, you can sense what type of character anybody is made of just like that!” He snaps his fingers. “My momma always used to say, if you don’t have a good sense of who you is, you can’t love anyone the way you supposed to. You see, you got to love yourself first, Red.”

  “My mom used to say something like that,” I mention, voice low. Thinking of Mom still locked in that hospital always makes my thoughts choke.

  “Hey! Maybe we kinfolk! Where your people from again? I don’t think you ever told me.”

  “My mother is from the Caribbean, Grenada. But I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, till our house was burned by the Klan, and then we moved to Lansing, Michigan. You?”

  Alfred’s smile fades a bit.

  “Tulsa, Oklahoma. Born and raised in this little town called Greenwood. Ever heard of it?”

  “No. Can’t say I have.”

  Alfred tenses, his mood shifting.

  “It was … real nice. Nicest place for a Black family to be, if you ask me. We owned our own little section of this country. Everyone was doing good. Going to school, universities. Had our own doctors, dentists, lawyers, teachers, newspaper, a theater for the picture shows … Man, you ask anyone and they’d tell you, me and Daddy owned the nicest grocery in town. And Mama? She always had a fresh-baked cake in the oven.”

  It sounded like the paradise Papa talked about. A place where Black people governed th
eir own livelihoods.

  “With a place that nice, how you end up here?”

  Alfred thought real hard before responding. He rinses off his pan and hangs it to dry.

  “Everyone left. Well, those who made it out alive.”

  “Alive? What happened?”

  Alfred struggles with his next words.

  “They … ran through our town, shooting folks … dead. Killed my daddy, my baby brother, burned down homes and businesses like it was their job. All them little children crying, running, getting snatched up and killed … It was … the scariest day of my life, man.”

  Alfred pauses, blinking, as he stares off into the distance. He didn’t have to explain who the “they” was.

  “Seems like they were just waiting for anything to set them off.”

  “So what did?” I ask.

  Alfred looks at me. “White lady said this Negro boy winked at her in an elevator, something or other. All I know is, whatever she said, stuck. A mob of them crackers came and took that poor boy. And his pappy and them friends went to go help him. But all them white folk saw was uppity Black folk living better than them. The next thing you know there were mobs and tank trucks killing us from every which way. Even from the sky. Felt like World War I. They bombed us, tore through our homes like a tornado. Burned the entire community to the ground.”

  Man, crackers are sick. They just always terrorizing somebody, and we the ones that end up behind bars.

  “We were just Black folks, doing good, being happy, minding our own business, taking care of our families, while the white folks were living dirt poor. And instead of us living together, they just wanted us dead!”

  Alfred frowns.

  “Well … it was a lie that any Black boy would so much as look at a white girl and everybody would know about it but—”

  “You see how white girls will get you killed,” I go off, my blood sizzling, voice rising. “Or worse, get you thrown in prison!”

  Sophia’s face sharpens into view again and it makes me want to scream. She sold me out quick. After all we’d been through. All our good times together. What made me think that she was the one, when she never once showed me I was the one? The way she cried in that courtroom, those fake tears. She was okay with me rotting in a hellhole. Never once reached out or sent word to me. Should’ve never gotten involved with her.