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FREEDOMWAYS FOURTH QUARTER 1971

One day while browsing the library a white prisoner who worked in the library asked me if I wanted to real a very good book. I said yes and he gave me Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. This book told the most moving story of human oppression I had ever read. In reading it I was moved to tears and anger on several occasions. When I finished this book, i asked myself over and over again: "Why, why does man have to suffer such abuse and persecution at the hands of his fellows?" I did not know, yet I swore that before I die I would have the answer, no matter the cost.
In school I was learning about science, man's conquest of disease and human suffering. I noticed that science often stood in opposition to ignorance and superstition, thus I decided to study science. In reading science books I learned the language of science is mathematics, so like a man dying from thirst plunges into water, I plunged into mathematics.
I began with textbooks that contained sections on arithmetic and algebra. I was very much fascinated with algebra, for it was like learning to speak in some unknown tongue. I progressed rapidly because I was eager to learn and no one could stop me. Finally, I came upon a book in the prison library called Mathematics for the Million by Lancelot Hogben and it was such a happy accident because this was just what I wanted, a book that covers the whole field of mathematics and written for laymen like myself. I fell in love with this delicious little book (I think it contained about 600 pages) because everything I wanted to know was here, and the author had written it in such a way that it read like an exciting mystery story. I found myself copying down Hogben's brilliant satirical comments on white supremacy, mysticism, and the relation between science and society. After reading Hogben's book, I was convinced that science alone had the key to the riddle of the universe.
After Hogben I ventured to take a look at the classical mathematicians and scientists. I went to the library and tapped the Great Books of the Western World; I read Euclid, Archimedes, Descartes, Pascal, Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, Ptolemy. I also became interested in modern physics and cosmology. I wrote Professor Robert L. Carter at Missouri University inquiring about plasma physics. I studied the atomic theory, and became familiar with the works of Dr. Albert Einstein. I think the best book I ever read on physics was The Evolution of Physics by Infield and Einstein.
It is very difficult for a person of my temperament to study knowledge for its own sake. I was seeking a purpose in life, therefore as

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