“If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.”
– Frederick Douglass

“You are a glass that I have paid to shatter
and I swallow the pieces down with my spit.”
– Buying The Whore, Anne Sexton

THE ARGUMENT: In 1945 a two-bit hustler named Malcolm Little ruled the Harlem night. Born on May 19th, 1925 to the Reverend Earl Little and his wife, Louise, Malcolm had a childhood fraught with temptation and danger. Taking a cue from the Romans, he became their greatest advocate.

“Hey baby, the word is this:
You can do it or you can not do it;
that’s the choice- it’s like some cat
who comes dicin’ for some reefer without any stash.
I say ‘It’s copacetic, my brother.’
BUT he knows he’ll hafta pay….
someday. […]