Viewing page 14 of 100

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

FREEDOMWAYS FOURTH QUARTER 1971

knowing what lay outside my mind. Consequently, I found myself imprisoned once again-imprisoned within the confines of my own thought processes, locked-up in my own narrow experiences. Hegel's words "A great mind is great in its experience" offered no consolation. My mood was amply depicted by Goethe's "Ultimatum":

"No mortal mind can Nature's inner secrets tell
Too happy only if he knows the outer shell." 
For sixty years to this I've had to hark,
I curse the sentiment, but keep it dark, 
Not shell no kernel Nature does possess
Is everything at once and nothing less.

I refused to accept the idealist bifurcation between appearance and reality. I knew knowledge was positive, and I firmly believed that through positive scientific knowledge Man could become master of the universe and create a world free of hunger and disease. In mt opinion science accepts the unknown but not the unknowable. Also I felt that any school of philosophy which taught that no mortal mind could know Nature's inner secrets was catering to superstition and ignorance.
By this time I had had about enough of philosophic controversy. I now wanted to know how the vast store of human knowledge could be used to change the world, to improve the quality of human life. Also I wanted to share my knowledge with my Black people, and I was beginning to realize that I knew a great deal about western culture but next to nothing about my own Black culture. On several occasions Black brothers in the prison came to me because they respected me, and asked me questions about Black culture and I was unable to answer them. I felt badly about this because, after all, and in spite of my learning, I was a Black man.
Also my contacts with the Black Muslim brothers intensified my desire to learn about Black culture. I remember quite vividly, an incident with the Muslim brothers that more or less embarrassed me. I had attended one of their meetings in the prison yard, and the brothers asked me would I teach them Black history; they told me that felt I was the only Black brother qualified to do this. I stood up and told them that I was very sorry but my ignorance would not permit me to do this; however, I said they could rest assured that I would prepare myself for the task. They all clapped and I left the meeting very much embarrassed and ashamed of myself. 
I had a very difficult time getting books on Black studies because at

336