Malcom X

            A book can be the window to a whole new world. Books can correct the slant that people see on certain things in their life. Books can correct misconceptions and ill conceived notions of other people, religions, and ideas. Books help people to understand something they have never understood before. The Autobiography of Malcom X has accomplished that with some of my ideas and thoughts. A view once skewed has become straighter. A dark corner of history now has a little more light. Never has a book of history opened my eyes wider, captivated me more, than the story of Malcom Little.
             Little, it seems a contradiction of terms for such a giant of a man, a man I never took the time to understand. In seventh grade black students at my school began wearing t-shirts with "Malcom and Martin" printed on them, I did not know who Malcom was. My African-American band director held the entire band over the bell one day to give us a lecture on Malcom X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., telling the students wearing those shirts that Malcom and Martin had nothing in common, and to wear such attire was a disgrace to the glorious legacy of Dr. King. I went to the library to find out who Malcom X was. Encyclopedias told me he was an American Muslim who helped build the Nation of Islam in this country who was assassinated. I formed an opinion of Malcom X based mostly on what my band director had told me that day. .
             Malcom X formed hasty opinions that he explained to Alex Haley during the creation of Malcom's autobiography. Upon entering the religion of Islam Malcom perceived all white skinned peoples to be "the devil." It was on his first pilgrimage to Mecca when a white skinned Muslim helped make his trip to Mecca possible that Malcom X began to change his views of white skinned people. Later, he would retract his statement of "white men are the devil" and admit to the world that there was such a thing as a decent and sincere white man.