They [prisons] are not designed to rehabilitate the - the inmate, though the, the public propaganda is that this is their function.
Malcolm XThe black man in Africa had mastered the arts and sciences. He knew the course of the stars in the universe before the man up in Europe knew that the earth wasn't flat.
Malcolm XI'm trying to get at this. That is, a man may know that he belongs to, say, a group - this group or that group - but he feels himself lost within that group, trapped within his own deficiencies and without personal purpose.
Malcolm XAt the bottom of the social heap is the black man in the big-city ghetto. He lives night and day with the rats and the cockroaches and drowns himself with alcohol and anesthetizes himself with dope, to try and forget where and what he is. That Negro has given up all hope. He's the hardest one for us to reach, because he's the deepest in the mud. But when you get him, you've got the best kind of Muslim. I look upon myself as a prime example of this category - as graphic an example as you could find of the salvation of the black man.
Malcolm X