Autobiography of Malcolm X

I truly believe that if ever a state social agency destroyed a family, it destroyed ours. We wanted
and tried to stay together. Our home didn't have to be destroyed. But the Welfare, the courts, and
their doctor, gave us theone-two-three punch. And ours was not the only case of this kind.
I knew I wouldn't be back to see my mother again because it could make me a very vicious and
dangerous person-knowing how they had looked at us as numbers and as a case in their book,
not as human beings. And knowing that my mother in there was a statistic that didn't have to be,
that existed because of a society's failure, hypocrisy, greed, and lack of mercy and compassion.
Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then
penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.
I have rarely talked to anyone about my mother, for I believe that I am capable of killing a person,
without hesitation, who happened to make the wrong kind of remark about my mother. So I
purposely don't make any opening for some fool to step into.
Back then when our family was destroyed, in 1937, Wilfred and Hilda were old enough so that the
state let them stay on their own in the big four-room house that my father had built. Philbert was
placed with another family in Lansing, a Mrs. Hackett, while Reginald and Wesley went to live
with a family called Williams, who were friends of my mother's. And Yvonne and Robert went to
live with a West Indian family named McGuire.
Separated though we were, all of us maintained fairly close touch around Lansing-in school and
out-whenever we could get together. Despite the artificially created separation and distance
between us, we still remained very close in our feelings toward each other.