when my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, a party of klansmen on horseback surrounded our house in omaha.
my father's skull, on one side was crushed in, and then laid across some tracks, for a streetcar to run him over. his body was cut almost in half. my father, earl little lived two and a half hours in that condition. negroes were stronger than they are now.
like every hustler i was trapped. cats that hung together trying to find a little security, to find an answer -- found nothing. cats that might have probed space or cured cancer -- -- all victims of whitey's social order.
the average first offender gets two years for burglary. we were all first offenders. that's what sophia and peg drew--
but our crime wasn't burglary. it was balling white girls. they gave us the book.
fourteen counts of 8 to 10 years.
shorty thought he hit us with 114 years till i explained what concurrently meant. it meant a minimum sentence of 10 years hard labor at the charlestown state prison. the date was february 1946. i wasn't quite 21. i had not yet begun to shave.
i received a letter that day from the honorable elijah muhammad. the messenger of allah wrote me, a nobody, a junkie, a pimp and a convict.
it was like a blinding light and i became aware that he was in the room with me. he wore a dark suit and on his face i saw a pain so old and deep and black i could scarcely look at him. i knew i was not dreaming. he was there.
and suddenly as he came, he was gone.
we are told that saul, on the road to damascus, heard the words of truth, he fell from his horse. i do not liken myself to paul, but i understand. it happened to me.
this sweet, gentle man gave me the truth from his own mouth. and i adored him, in the sense of the latin root of the word. adorare, to worship and to fear. he was the first man i ever feared -- not fear such as the one has of a gun but the fear one has of the power of the sun, i pledged myself to him, even if it cost me my life.