If I could have chosen a flag back then, it would have been embroidered with a portrait of Malcolm X, dressed in a business suit, his tie dangling, one hand parting a window shade, the other holding a rifle. The portrait communicated everything I wanted to be-controlled, intelligent, and beyond the fear. I would buy tapes of Malcolm's speeches-"Message to the Grassroots," "The Ballot or the Bullet"-down at Everyone's Place, a black bookstore on North Avenue, and play them on my Walkman. Here was all the angst I felt before the heroes of February, distilled and quotable. "Don't give up your life, preserve your life," he would say. "And if you got to give it up, make it even-steven." This was not boasting-it was a declaration of equality rooted not in better angels or the intangible spirit but in the sanctity of the black body.
( Ta-Nehisi Coates )
[ Between the World and Me ]
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