Excerpt from MALCOLM X - BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY
by Walter Dean Myers
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When Malcolm's father was killed in 1931, the country was in the middle of a depression. Every morning in the cities there were long lines of men and women looking for jobs, and sometimes just a meal to get them through the day. Nighttime found many of these same people sleeping under bridges and in old shacks on the edges of towns. Whites and Blacks alike suffered as factories closed and steady employment was hard to find. For the Little family it was a time of near desperation.
With the death of his father, Malcolm felt insecure. The very idea that someone so close to him, someone he had considered so large and invincible, could suddenly be dead, was a shock. Malcolm hadn't had the chance to see his father before he died; Earl Little had not been there to reassure him the way he always had in the past. Nights were suddenly filled with the possibilities of terror and of sudden death. The six-year-old was afraid to go to sleep in the dark.
There had been another change in Malcolm's life. He had recently started school. Nearly all of the children who went to Pleasant Grove Elementary were white. Malcolm didn't mind that as long as they were nice, and most of them were. He knew that he couldn't stay home with his mother anymore. Most of the time she was out working, or looking for work.
Most black women in and around the Lansing and East Lansing areas did "day's work." They cleaned people's homes and were paid for the day's work. Local help-wanted ads offered white women five dollars a week for six or seven days' housekeeping. Black women made less. An eight-to-ten hour workday would often bring Louise Little only fifty cents.
While Louise worked, Hilda took care of the younger children. There was no money for clothing. Malcolm had to wear what was handed down by his older brothers, and he was often teased about his poor clothing. Some of the white children in the school were also poor, but few were as Poor as the Littles.
Louise Little was an intelligent, well-educated woman who, had she had been white, could have done better. She was a proud woman, too. It was painful for her not to be able to take better care of her family. When she couldn't find work, or lost a job that she so desperately needed, Malcolm would see her crying. He would watch her try to hide the tears from the children.
Sometimes the family had barely enough to get and would have to make soup out of wild dandelion greens they could gather. Malcolm would sometimes take the leftover greens to school the next day to eat for his lunch. Sometimes they only had cornmeal to eat, and their mother would make bread and soak it in whatever broth she could make.
There were times when Malcolm went to school without eating anything. Being very hungry gives you a sense of dizziness, as if you're going to pass out at any moment, and sometimes Malcolm would sit in class and hope that he wouldn't fall.
From Malcom X - By Any Means Necessary. Copyright © Walter Dean Myers.
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