Malcolm X Autobiography

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home, he received favored treatment (as a "mascot" of the white couple who operated the home), and rather than being sent on to reform school, he remained in the home through the eighth grade.

In junior high school, Malcolm became an outstanding student and was very popular with his schoolmates. But his world was upset in the eighth grade when his English teacher advised him not to try to become a lawyer because he was "a nigger." He became despondent and his schoolwork suffered. Finally, he asked to be transferred to the custody of his half-sister Ella, who lived in Boston. The request was granted, and he arrived in Boston in the spring of 1941.

In Boston, Malcolm found himself more attracted to the street life in the ghetto than to Ella's upper-class Roxbury society. A friend got him a job as a shoeshine boy at the Roseland Ballroom, which rapidly became the center of his social life. With straightened hair and wearing a zoot suit, the hustler's uniform, he began to spend ...

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