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EI mer «RM - BS Rep ng ae E we te F é “+ nal AONE = An autobiography ~~ —_ “PAE EFIRGEA Fm Eheirvi ALAING 10 YOU, LTC AA ° Walle MAN = " =F dream thal ome day Katory mili look pou me as one of tis eplcws thal helped Be scce my comniry Trem 4 Setestvep he ay ate wel . rt. ' oo The explosive Black Muslim rebel who defies both white and Negro leadership tells a story that swings from violence and degradation to religion and | racism. a en my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, a party of Ku Klux Klan nder came mad- denly one night, galloping on their homes aroand our home in Omaha, Nebr. They stopped with their up oo neh tather yt arou ‘the ro wy m ¢ cain door. She defied them that she tas alone small children, and that my father way ‘away, prea in Milwaukee. The Klansmen shouted threats and warn- _ dmgs at ber that we had better get out of Omaha because the good Christian white people were not going to stand for my father’s “spreading trouble’ among the local “good” Negroes with the “Back To Africa” teachings of ” “Marcus Garvey—at that time, 1925, the most controver- mia! black man on earth. ‘The Klansmen spurred their horses and galloped about ak howse, dlose enough to mse ehae gua butts ta shatter aft of the glass panes in the windows. they rode away. My father, the Rev. Earl Little, was eqraged be returned. He decided that they would wait until ] was _. born—which woold be soon—and then the fimily would “ ove. Tam not sure why be made this as he was « \inot a frightened Negro, as most then were, still are today. My father was 2 big, six-foot-four, very black man. He had only one eye. How he had lost the ther one, { > eae eit eae ee , where he Sad finished the third or maybe the fourth “ Eemeetf and his siz brothers he had seen fou of them die of violence, three of them in the South, killed by white a ae Fane ol ee See Bho ww fashoe Prope, mcluding one of them hong. ity isis _ gould not know was that of the three inchadiig A Spoil only wee nay Uncle Tim weal in bed, of illness. Norther white police were later going to shoot sry Uncle Oscar, and my father was finally, fo, going to dic at white hands. It has always stayed on my mind that J would die by eC eect il Ho bes eee: father’s seventh child. He hed by a previows | srarviage free, Elia, Earl and Masy, who fived ia Boston. * In Pheedeiniee be bad met and married my mother. there, They moved from Philadeiphia, to Ocuaha, where Hilds and then Philbert were born, and then ¥ wae fhe - Bext one in line. The family waited es wry fether bed tected’ ‘ped aay | — <a wat hin - in Grenada, in the British West Indies, looked like a whine _ woman. Her father was white. She had black hair, antl © her accent did not sound like a Negro's, Of this white so devil father of hers, I know sothiong except ther dhame” about it; F remember hearing her say that che was glad that she never had seen him. Ht was of course 2s a mowalt of him that I got my reddish-brown “mariny” color of | skin, and my hair of the same color. I grew up as the lightest child in our house. (Out in the world tater om, in Boston and New York, I was for years insane enough to feel that it was some kind of status symbol to ‘be light complexioned. Now, I hate every drop of that white rapist’s blood that is in me.) = eee re ore po May 13 38 1925, in an = i We next went to Lansing, Mich A bipuse was'bpnght,: “and soon my father was doing free-lance Christian Bap- tist preaching in local Negro churches, gad daring the .. week he was moving about, snreatiing the Garvey teach-~ ings. He had begun laying the foundation for the stave ‘that be had always wanted to Own when, as always, some stupid local “Uncle Tom” Negrocs began fonneling every. _ people. -. “hing they heard to the local white On the nightmare 1929 night which is the earkest vivid memory that I have, I remember being suddenly snatched awake into a nearly petrifying confusion of pisiol shots - - and shouting and smoke and flames. My father had seen and shouted and shot at the two white men who had set five to our house and were running away. My mother with the baby in her arms just made it into the yard before the house crashed in, showering up sparks The police and firemen came and stood around watching the house burn the rest of the way. ; ee ut. - {remember waking vp io 1931, agin to the souad of “ my mother's screaming. When I scrambled out, { saw the police in the living room. All of as children who were star- - . Pr ree wor