The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim by Iceberg Slim

leaned toward me, light eyes ablaze, and said with evangelical heat, “The people loved Melvin because they knew Melvin was prepared to die for them and the struggle. Melvin’s power was in his integrity and the beautiful respect and trust thing between him and the people.”
    Gently I asked, “Did you see him on that day? Before he was . . .”
    A spasm jerked at the corner of his mouth to cut me off. His teeth gnawed at his bottom lip before he nodded. I felt the tremors of powerful emotions. His eyes softened and glanced past me at the open door. His face, unforgettable in the pale light, seemed ancient and haggard, yet at the same time, boyishly fresh; a face both savagely hard and softly innocent. In that sorcerous instant I realized our kinship, for his face was Melvin X’s, mine, all black people’s. It was a living flesh-and-bone montage of the ancestral nobility, beauty, bravery, misery, pain and struggle of our black race.
    Finally the young man said softly, “Yes, I saw Melvin comethrough that door for the last time on June 6th. It was in the afternoon. I don’t know why but somehow Melvin always looked very tall coming through that doorway. He was actually only five nine or ten. I guess he always looked taller because of the beautiful way he had gotten himself together inside.”
    â€œI picture Melvin as being strict,” I said. “You know, tough on any brother of the BSA that he caught goofing off. Was he?”
    â€œMelvin was so respected that he never had to stay in a real tough bag. He would come through that door and, you know, Melvin never just came on a scene—he exploded on it. The brothers sitting along the walls would stop rapping and look up at him. Sometimes Melvin would notice that the office needed straightening up or something. Then he’d look around at all the faces with those piercing brown eyes of his and chew the brothers out. But they respected and loved him and dug that he was right to stop bullshit when there was work to be done. They dug his concern and love for them beneath the hardness.”
    â€œDid he ever confront any of the phonies in the black middle class?”
    The young dude smiled wryly before answering. “Melvin often appeared at meetings of those game-running black bourgeoisie, and his mere presence intimidated them. They knew he was aware that their Oreo noses were rammed up Mr. Charlie’s ass. And they probably suspected that for Melvin, the cream, the real elite in Black America were the masses imprisoned in funky ghettos.”
    I listened to a great deal more about Melvin X before I walked back out into the casket-gray morning. For days after, I talked to many others who had been and still were his followers.
    Melvin X was the kind of effective revolutionary perhaps most feared by the enemies of freedom and justice. He had not risen to revolutionary stardom with its clutter of hounding TV cameras, hatchet-men news reporters and, in their wake, the bloodthirsty sharks of law enforcement. The energies of the revolutionary star aresapped by constantly defending himself from killer cops and from a long penitentiary sentence or even execution for a trumped-up capital crime.
    Melvin X had not been hobbled by notoriety. He was a mere 22 years old, a student at UCLA and the father of twin one-year-old sons at the time of his death. But his followers told me that he had already developed great revolutionary savvy. He moved quietly and powerfully among the street niggers whom he loved so much—educating them, gadflying them for the precious struggle.
    Melvin X was an intellectual who had the rare gift of relating to all mental levels, from pompous egghead to grade-school dropouts. He was respected for his iron integrity, his consistency, and the courage and rage that moved him to say such things as:
    â€œWe have prayed too long, we have meditated too long, we have talked too long without acting enough.