"I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive."
American civil rights leader and Black nationalist who became a prominent spokesperson for the Nation of Islam in the 1950s and early 1960s. After leaving the organization, he founded Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. He was assassinated in New York City in 1965.