The Night Malcolm X Spoke at the Oxford Union

I have already traveled through twenty-three different states. -Letter from Malcolm Little to Zolma Holman of Jackson, Michigan, November 18, 1941

Moving to Boston was also the way to seek out a better, black world. When first catching the bus to Boston, Malcolm later recalled, "If someone had hung a sign, 'HICK,' around my neck, I couldn't have looked much more obvious. " In Boston, he took a job working as a dishwasher on the railway, giving him a chance to travel along the East Coast and to visit some of the northeast's bigger black communities. None, however, was bigger, or more intoxicating, than Harlem. Malcolm had long hoped to visit what had become the capital of black America, having heard stories from his father of Garvey's parades and the boxer Joe Louis's victories there. Malcolm's first impressions fulfilled his lofty expectations. "New York was heaven to me. And Harlem was Seventh Heaven!"