I have seen Malcolm X do this with tremendous effectiveness. I once debated with him on TV in Los Angeles. He took the stand of a Muslim, saying that the Moslem faith was the black man’s original culture. Malcolm must make this basic thrust or all else he says rests on historical sand. As we were leaving the studio, we were greeted by several white students, Moslems from Persia, who complained to Malcolm that they had attempted to visit Muhammad’s temples and were refused entry because they were white blue-eyed devils. Malcolm glossed the matter over, and they all parted wishing Allah’s blessing each upon the other. In reality, Malcolm is not interested in any white people, Moslem or not. These Persians could no more get in a Black Muslim temple than Governor Faubus could. “Let’s look at it this way,” Malcolm told the Persians. “If a lion is in a cage, his roar will be different from the roar of the lion who is in the forest. That,” he concluded, “is why you couldn’t get in our temple. But both the lion in the forest and the lion in the cage are lions. That is what matters. Lions love lions; they hate leopards.” Translated, Malcolm was saying that the American Negro, as a Moslem, must make different noises from the free Moslems of, say, Persia, because the American Negro is in a cage. The cage, of course, is white civilization; that is why the roar of the American Negro Moslem is so provincial; that is why Persians would do well to worship Allah in their own way in their own temples, while the Black Muslims and Allah have their rendezvous in a dinky auditorium over a pool hall in Los Angeles’ Negro ghetto. It is in such meetings that Malcolm adds the historical ingredient to his theology. It takes two forms: First, the Black Muslims excite Negroes to shouts by proving that the Negro is somebody, a man with a past and a history. I know from personal experience that Malcolm X is one of the best-versed people in America on African history. I have sat with him in private and general gatherings where he has recited startling facts about the nature of early African civilizations. When challenged, Malcolm is always able to produce a text--and a legitimate one at that--to support what he says. Malcolm’s teachings come as a surprise not because they are new, previously unknown facts about Africa, but because the entire system of education in the Western World, particularly in America, has carefully distorted the true history of Africa to support the notion of white, male supremacy. And so it is from Malcolm X, not from his sixth-grade history teacher--who is probably white--that the Negro child in the North learns the truth about Africa and what once really happened there.