On the board I write “SWBAT [students will be able to] discuss the five evolutions of Malcolm X and compare and contrast his evolution to their own.”
Then I write, “DO NOW. Write a five-paragraph essay reflecting upon and answering the following questions: What is your government name (the name your mother gave you)? Who were you in the street (your nickname and why)? Who are you in jail (your jailhouse nickname and why)?” And finally, “Look into the future. What type of man do you see yourself evolving into?”
I ask the group, “Who knows the five names of Malcolm X?”
“What you talking ’bout, Ms. P? Five names? He was just Malcolm X,” Tyquan, one of my more attentive (but hyperactive) students, blurts out.
I respond, “He had a government name—the name he was born with. Then he had a name that he was called when he was running the streets hustling and—”
“Malcolm X was a hustler?” Tyquan interrupts.
“Yeah, nigga, he did time in prison! Right, Ms. P?” Tyrone, the leader of the Bosses, interjects, looking for approval.
“Watch that word. No niggas,” I say. “But yes, he sure did do time in prison, and when he was in prison he was called something else, and later he changed his name to Malcolm X. Then, after his trip to Mecca, he would change it again to something else. Malcolm X had five names. So what was his first name? What was his government, legal name? What did his momma name him?” I ask, challenging them.
“Oh shit, I should know this,” Tyrone says, snapping his fingers, trying desperately to remember. “Spike Lee did a movie on him. Denzel played Malcolm and the nigga—”
I cock my head to the side, prompting Tyrone to correct himself.
“I mean that brotha looked just like him too.”
After a moment, he says, “I don’t know, Ms. P. I can’t call it.” Tyrone gives up.
I’ve held their suspense long enough, and they’ll never guess it, so I tell them. “He was born Malcolm Little,” and I write the first name on the board.
“So okay, when he was in the street hustling, getting paper, what was the street name he went by?” I continued.
Stunned to learn that Malcolm X had a dark past in the streets, Tyquan asks, “He sold drugs, for real?”
“He did a little bit of everything… Burglary, pimping, number running, gambling, hustling… He was in the street hard-body, just like you. So what was his hustler name?” I ask again. Looking at their bewildered faces and shrugging shoulders, I try to give them a little help: “Part of his name described the color of his hair, and the other part of his name was the city where he was from.”
“Harlem!” yells Tyrone, confident that he’s right.
“Harlem Heeey!” yell Raheim and Marquis, the two Harlemites in the back of the class.
“Harlem got the most snitches!” Shahteik quips from across the room.
Raheim flags him with his hand and sucks his teeth as he shoots back, “Not as many as Brooklyn, I mean Snitchlyn.”
“I don’t give a fuck about snitches in Brooklyn cuz I ain’t from bum-ass Brooklyn,” Shahteik responds with a trickster smile, knowing his comment will surely get a rise out of his buddy Tyrone, who’s from Brooklyn.
“Yo, watch your mouth, son,” Tyrone growls, falling right into Shahteik’s trap to stir up drama by any means necessary.
Mekhai, another one of the Bosses who sits next to Tyrone, chuckles like a Muppet.
I have to nip this shit in the bud. “All right, all right. Every borough has snitches, so let’s drop it and focus.” Being called a snitch is a dis. A dangerous dishonor like the mob calling you a rat.
I immediately reengage Tyrone. “Ty, you’re on the right track. Malcolm did eventually wind up hustling in Harlem, but he was not originally from Harlem. Good guess, though.”
“Damn, Ms. P. I’m stumped. I can’t call it.” Tyrone shakes his head in defeat.
“He was called Detroit Red, for his reddish brown hair.”
“I’da never guess that,” admits Tyrone.
“Well now you know. That’s how you learn,” I reassure him.
“True, true.” Tyrone’s interest in the lesson seems to corral most of the class. He loves Black history and makes sure to let me know. “I like learning shit like this,” he says, jotting the answers down on a sheet of paper. He nods his head and shoots me a friendly, slightly flirty, smile. Ty’s skin is the color of blackstrap molasses, flawless, and he has porcelain-white teeth that shine like brand-new piano keys.
Shahteik is determined to be a disruption and pain in my ass today, hell-bent on being the bane of my existence. He’s back out of his seat.
“Shahteik, please take your seat,” I politely ask.
“Ms. P, I don’t care about no Malcolm X. What he ever do for me? Fuck that nigga!”
This boy makes my blood rise. I wanna slap the taste out of his mouth for disrespecting my hero, one of the greatest, most courageous Black leaders, whom I consider a divine miracle for Black people… our Black shining prince. And this raggedy pipsqueak, this ignorant little chicken-bone twerp, is throwing dirt on my sacred gladiator of Black love and truth whose life was spent (and sacrificed) trying to wake the sleeping giants to remember our greatness. Aww, hell to the naw!
“Watch your mouth! Don’t you dare disrespect Malcolm X like that! You know what, as a matter of fact, go take a walk, Shahteik. I’m not dealing with you today.” With my long arm outstretched, I point to the door, gesturing for him to get out now.
“So if someone asks me why am I in the hallway, I’mma say, ‘Ms. P told me I could take a walk,’ and it’s gonna be more on you than me, ya heard?” he quips through his slightly crooked, candy-corn-colored teeth. He’s not a bad-looking kid. He just needs to see the dentist—and the wizard, for a new attitude.
“Say what you gotta say, Shahteik. Just go take a walk, thank you.” My tone dismisses him.
“Your wish is my command, lady,” he replies all snarky as he excitedly struts out of class doing his infamous George Jefferson peacock walk, which draws more snickering from Mekhai the Muppet. Shahteik has his very own hype man in Mekhai, who laughs at everything Shahteik says or does, which further prompts Shahteik to cut up.
Shahteik has been locked up for over a year, so he knows all the COs and is able to move around a little more freely than some of the other kids. He has ingratiated himself with a few of the officers by being helpful back in the housing area. This, combined with his jail tenure and smart-alecky personality, has earned him a longer leash with some of the COs. Being caught in the hallway is not going to be a problem for Shahteik, who could slip into a buddy’s class or chat up one of his favorite officers. He’ll figure it out. It will take a long minute for Shahteik to grow on me. Right now he is a supreme pest, the adversary who plucks my nerves—all day, every day.
Tyquan brings the focus back. “So Ms. P, what was Malcolm’s third name when he got knocked?”*
“He was so foulmouthed and mean that they called him Satan,” I answer.
“Word?” “Oh snap.” “Nigga musta been a beast.” Several students blurt out responses in a collision of shock.
“Watch that word… but yes, Malcolm was not to be messed with.”
“How long was he locked up?” Tyrone asks.
“He was sentenced to eight to ten years and served six.”
“Damn, I ain’t know Malcolm put it in like that,” Tyrone says, leaning back in his seat, looking older than his youth.
Daniel, aka Danny, a five-foot-nine scrawny Black and Puerto Rican kid with eyes shaped like the ancient Egyptian eye of Heru (Horus), has been sitting at his desk all morning with a furrowed brow and clenched teeth, carrying distress all over his gentle baby face. I am well aware that every day these kids are navigating a plethora of legal, emotional, and family issues while also facing the pressure of jail life, dealing with layers of drama back in the housing areas with officers and troublemaking peers. This cocktail of stress makes depression and rag
e commonplace.
Something about Danny reminded me of Tariq, one of my former students during my early freshman years on the Rock as a teaching artist in C-76, where I eventually became the poet in residence for three years. I was the eager, bubbly, bright-light poetry lady sporting a secondhand green army jacket, camouflage cargos, and a tall purple head-wrap/turban-esque crown giving me a warrior queen aesthetic and vibe, smelling like Tunisian frankincense. Tariq was the kid with beautiful long lashes adorning his wide, walnut-shaped sad eyes who never smiled. His thick fuzzy cornrows looked like they were done three months ago and he needed them done badly or cut off or else they’d turn into dreadlocks. He was super-gifted and super-angry. Didn’t talk much but still came to class every day, albeit stone-faced. His writing revealed a childhood wound and tremendous pain that evolved into adolescent rage. I marveled at his capacity to articulate it so honestly in his prose and transform it into poetry. A brilliant kid who obtained his GED before getting arrested, he ran the streets desperate for money, desperate for love, haunted by his mother’s abandonment at age four. Tariq had been passed around to live with various family members like a rotten hot potato. One cousin hung him out of a housing project high-rise window by his ankles, threatening to drop him, and broke beer bottles over his hand when he was just six years old and still playing with superhero action figures. The keloid battle scar is still there reminding him of a war he was drafted into against his will. He just wanted to watch cartoons, eat sugary cereal, and play. He just wanted his mother’s love and a safe lap to crawl into. He would share his story with me, the luminous windows to his soul revealing a wounded baby, now a gorgeous man-child navigating turbulent emotions without a road map or any support.
Tariq smoldered. There was something about this kid, a light, a spark of genius, a flash of great potential I saw in him. “I knew I shouldn’t have robbed that man, Sista Liza, but I was hungry and I ain’t have no money to eat. All I did was take the cash. I even gave him back his wallet with his credit cards and ID. I had a gun on me but I didn’t use it, but that don’t matter ’cause now I got a violent felony on my record. I’ll never get a job. Seems like my fate is sealed, Sista Liza.” Tariq quietly confessed this to me as he let out a deep sigh and put his head down to write, and write and write. Despite this being his first arrest, Tariq was facing five years in an upstate adult prison. Weren’t there second-chance programs for kids like this? No one was hurt, no one was killed. Didn’t this constitute a crime against poverty? Isn’t five years and a permanent felony conviction a little extreme for a kid’s first offense? A kid who, just like most of the boys sitting in my class now, still hadn’t started growing facial hair yet?
Going to jail is a traumatic experience. Some guys fight to release and snap themselves out of depression. Some sleep a lot to escape. Others dance and joke around. And then there are the instigators, who set up conflicts for entertainment wherever they can. They all have employed various coping mechanisms, which vary from kid to kid and from day to day.
I generally don’t let the guys sleep in my class, but I told them if they must sleep, if they have been up all night due to a cell search by the officers or couldn’t sleep because they’re stressed, mind full of doubt, fear, and anxiety, or if they are not feeling good for any number of reasons and need to put their head down for a while, just find a seat in the back row and be as inconspicuous as possible. I explained, “If the assistant principal walks by my class and sees you all sleeping in front of my face, then I have to answer for that.”
Danny is sitting in the second row, and halfway through the lesson he puts his head down. I continue talking as I walk the aisle toward his seat and very lightly and gently tap him on his shoulder. Like a rattlesnake ready to attack, he pops up in a wild rage, which shocks me. He spits venomous fire. “Miss, don’t touch me! Don’t put your hands on me or wake me up for nothing!”
I somehow hold it together and remain calm, sensing he just might bite. “Excuse me, but I was not disrespectful to you, and there is no reason to be disrespectful to me when I was only going to tell you to take a seat in the back row if you need to put your head down.” With Danny consumed by a rage that has nothing to do with me, I’ve become the target of his anger as he continues to explode. “I don’t want you telling me nothing. And don’t fucking touch me!”
He wants to attack and fire off his loaded clip of bottled-up fury, and if it has to land on me, so be it. He is ready to pop off and suffer the consequences. All reason has left his mind. I can feel it. This is not the normal wolf ticket I’m used to. I remember how he first walked into my class: wound tight, brooding, and looking awfully broken.
“Sir, I don’t know what happened to you, but it has nothing to do with me, and I am not going to tolerate this level of disrespect,” I snap, squeezing a formal response from between my clenched teeth.
“So write me the fuck up. The fuck I care,” he growls.
“Thank you, I most certainly will.” I see what kind of day this is going to be. “You’re gonna have to leave the room, sir. Go take a walk. Think I’m gonna let you sit in my class and disrespect me like that? No siree. Take a walk.” I have to put him out. He’s not testing me; no, this is pure misdirected rage. The tone and cadence differentiate the two. That may be why I have a mustard seed of compassion for him in spite of his outburst. Instincts in this place are a matter of survival as much for the inmates as they are for the teachers and COs.
He walks out of class and stands right outside my door, pouting with eyes on the verge of tears; the kid looks twelve in an instant. Not having jail-time tenure, status, or a cavalry of comrades to visit in another class like Shahteik, he knows he can’t just wander the hallway. He’s too new. A neophyte. He’s been here two, maybe three days max.
No sooner than he leans back against the faded gray wall, an officer roars, “Get out of the hallway and go back to your class. Now!”
With great hesitation, Danny tentatively walks back into my classroom, then pauses. He braces himself for my reaction. He’s caught between a rock and a hard place. Just minutes earlier he had torn his drawers with me, but now I have the leverage, and every right, to deny him reentry into my class, sending him back into the grips of the grisly CO monitoring the hallways. He doesn’t know how to navigate this terrain; he’s too green. Back out in the hallway with the roaring CO means a loud and embarrassing verbal flogging, plus a possible infraction* if the officer inquires why he was kicked out of my classroom. I have the power to inflict more punishment, and we both know it. Briefly I glance at Danny and, in a split-second decision, I grant him a lifeline. He slowly and humbly takes his seat, his shoulders slouched in defeat, the fire in his eyes doused by the tears rising and dancing on the edge of his lower lid without falling. We make a silent truce.
I continue on about Malcolm, not skipping a beat. “And what’s so deep about this brotha is that he dropped out of school in the eighth grade, was involved in every kind of criminal activity you can think of, got arrested, sent to prison, and was so mean and grimy that even the other inmates called him Satan. But it was during his incarceration that his most profound transformation began. He didn’t go to prison thinking he was going to evolve into a great man and world leader who would touch the lives of millions of Black people. He was just like you. But the Creator had a different plan for him. Just like the Creator has a plan for each one of you sitting right here.”
The room is focused, hanging on my words, and, with the timing of an annoying gnat that flies in your glass of red wine right before you take a sip, Shahteik pops his head back into the room and bounces over to Mekhai.
“Nigga, lemme git that strawberry Pop-Tart. I know you got it. I’m hungry as shit.”
“Shahteik!” I yell.
Mekhai laughs while digging into his pocket, handing over the sugary Pop-Tart to Shahteik as he runs out of the room, but not before turning and winking at me on his way out.
I take an audible deep breath, unab
le to hide my irritation. Mekhai, a skilled instigator, takes the opportunity to bring attention to the obvious. “He be gitting on your nerves, don’t he, Ms. P?” I refuse to dignify his baited question with a response. Instead, I just roll my eyes at Mekhai, making him giggle even more. I know he wants to get me riled up and the eye roll was enough to satisfy him for the moment.
I continue: “Your moment of transition into greatness could be happening right now. Maybe it will happen tomorrow, next week, next month, next year—you don’t know when you will be called for greatness or when your purpose will be revealed, just like Malcolm didn’t know he was being called for greatness. He didn’t know part of his destiny was going to prison in order to become a great man; just like you’re sitting right here and in my class for a reason. Your life is still unfolding, brothas. Who you are now is not who you are going to always be.”
Tyquan’s eyes are big, water-filled, glassy brown full moons, mesmerized by my every word.
“That’s deep, Ms. P,” he says, nodding his head. “I like how you put that. I’m feeling that. Word. I’mma be a great man.”
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