The Night Malcolm X Spoke at the Oxford Union

How does it feel to be a problem? -W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903

The logic of empire, together with the provision of scholarships, meant that nonwhite students from British colonies continued to come to Oxford during the early twentieth century. By World War II, some 6 percent of Oxford's matriculating students were from the colonies, many of them "coloured. " Pixley ka Isaka Seme, the first black South African to study at Columbia University in New York-where he won first prize in a speaking competition for an oration on the "regeneration of Africa" in which he celebrated "awakened race consciousness"-came to Jesus College in 1906.24 The cadre of African students that he met in Oxford exhilarated Seme. "Here are to be found the future leaders of African nations," Seme told the African American educator Booker T. Washington. "These men will, in due season, return each to a community that eagerly awaits him and perhaps influence its public opinion. "25 Seme, a Zulu, organized an African students' club in Oxford, and on return to South Africa became one of the founders of the African National Congress.26