As an aspiring reporter, the author wrote about race issues as they moved from idealism to disillusion to anger to violence.

"The greatest mistake of the Movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first then you’ll get action."

“I must confess that it did my heart a world of good to sit back and listen to Mr. X. list the sins of the white man toward the black man in America. He does it well”

“To put it crudely, America would not exist without 244 years of black slavery, 85 years of Jim and Jane Crow, and now, one of two black kids caught in a violence-infested life of poverty.”

“Just look at all the T-shirts, the buttons, the photographs, the records, the film and video appearances. Malcolm is to­day's black hero, a black ideal for turbulent times: the steely mirror image we want our­selves to see.”

“X is dead, long live X. He’s like the Elvis of Black pop politics — a real piece of Afro-Americana. That’s why Spike’s logo is branded with an American flag. Malcolm couldn’t have happened anywhere else.”

"Malcolm had been the spokesman for that part of all blacks that is in constant rage at their life in the land of the rich and the home of the righteous"

The coming age of the post-nationalist black aesthetic.

‘It did my heart a world of good to sit back and listen to Mr. X list the sins of the white man’

“The black Woody Allen, a camera-wielding Sharpton, a gifted charlatan, an inspiration, a generous sort, a media hound (or barker)”