I Am Not Your Negro Page #4

I saw Malcolm before I met him.

I was giving a lecture

somewhere in New York.

Malcolm was sitting

in the first row of the hall,

bending forward at such an angle

that his long arms

nearly caressed the ankles

of his long legs,

staring up at me.

I very nearly panicked.

I knew Malcolm only by legend,

and this legend,

since I was a Harlem street boy,

I was sufficiently astute

to distrust.

Malcolm might be the torch

that white people claim he was,

though, in general,

white America's evaluations

of these matters

would be laughable

and even pathetic

did not these evaluations

have such wicked results.

On the other hand,

Malcolm had no reason

to trust me either.

And so I stumbled

through my lecture,

with Malcolm never

taking his eyes from my face.

Don't know why

There's no sun up in the sky

Stormy weather

Since my man and I

ain't together

Keeps rainin' all the time

As a member

of the NAACP,

Medgar was investigating

the murder of a black man,

which had occurred

months before,

had shown me letters

from black people

asking him to do this,

and he had asked me

to come with him.

Raise up!

Get yourself together,

And drive that funky soul

I was terribly frightened,

but perhaps that fieldtrip

will help us define

what I mean by the word

"witness".

I was to discover that the line

which separates a witness

from an actor

is a very thin line indeed.

Nevertheless, the line is real.

I was not, for example,

a Black Muslim,

in the same way,

though for different reasons,

that I never became

a Black Panther.

Because I did not believe that

all white people were devils,

and I did not want young

black people to believe that.

I was not a member of any

Christian congregation because

I knew that they had not heard

and did not live

by the commandment,

"Love one another

as I love you."

And I was not a member

of the NAACP

because in the North,

where I grew up,

the NAACP was fatally entangled

with black class distinctions,

or illusions of the same,

which repelled

a shoe-shine boy like me.

I did not have to deal with the

criminal state of Mississippi,

hour by hour and day by day,

to say nothing

of night after night.

I did not have to sweat

cold sweat after decisions

involving hundreds

of thousands of lives.

I was not responsible

for raising money,

or deciding how to use it.

I was not responsible

for strategy

controlling prayer-meetings,

marches,

petitions,

voting registration drives.

I saw the Sheriffs,

the Deputies,

the Storm Troopers,

more or less in passing.

I was never in town to stay.

This was sometimes

hard on my morale,

but I had to accept,

as time wore on,

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