It was in the summer of 1968 that a fellow student in a Baltimore Upward Bound program shoved a copy of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” into my hands. “I want you to read it with an open mind,” he admonished me, probably because, in an earlier class discussion, I had referred to Malcolm X in extremely unflattering terms.

Open my mind I did, so much so that I became completely engrossed in the autobiography. I soon went from being a Malcolm hater to being a Malcolmphile, reading or listening to everything written, spoken or said about the man.