[INTRO — SPOKEN, QUIET] My name was Malcolm Little. Before the speeches. Before the X. Before anybody knew my name. I was just a boy trying to understand why the world looked different depending on where you stood. [VERSE 1] Daddy said we came from somewhere where a man could stand up straight, He wore his colors like a banner, wouldn't bow down to their hate. Mama kept the kitchen moving, seven children, little room, I learned early how a family can make a little into enough. We had land outside of Lansing, had a house and had a name, Till the night the house was burning and the darkness looked like flame. I remember running barefoot, I remember Mama's voice, I remember knowing something had been taken from the boys. Daddy told us we were people, not the names they called us then, So I thought that being fearless was just something grown men did. [PRE-CHORUS] But a child don't know what a world can take. You think tomorrow is a promise you can make. [CHORUS] I was Malcolm Little, just a little boy with a dream, Trying to make some sense of the things I'd seen. I thought if I could learn enough, if I could do it right, Maybe someday I'd become a lawyer, dressed in white. I didn't know the road was waiting, I didn't know the price, I didn't know how many times a man could change his life. I was Malcolm Little. [VERSE 2] Then Daddy never came home, and the house got quiet fast. Mama tried to hold us together, but the future wouldn't last. Bills came through like winter, every knock became a threat, And the family that was seven started coming apart in pieces. Then they took my mother from us, said she couldn't raise her own, And they sent us different places so we learned to live alone. I went to school in Mason, and for once I felt I fit. I was good at what I did there, and I knew that I was it. Straight A's on the paper, my name standing at the top, I became the class president— I thought nothing could stop me. I said, "I think I'll be a lawyer." He looked at me and laughed. Said, "That's no realistic goal for a Negro boy like that." [BEAT DROPS OUT] And I remember— not the laughter. The silence after. [VERSE 3 — QUIETER] Because maybe he was right. Maybe dreams had certain borders. Maybe some doors weren't for me. Maybe wanting something badly didn't mean that you could be. So I packed away the question. I stopped asking what I could be. Funny how a single sentence can become a prophecy. I didn't know the world was bigger than the room they put me in. I just knew I wasn't wanted in the place I'd wanted in. So I turned away from school. And somewhere underneath me, something started moving. [CHORUS — BIGGER] I was Malcolm Little, just a little boy with a dream, Trying to make some sense of the things I'd seen. I thought if I could learn enough, if I could do it right, Maybe someday I'd become a lawyer, dressed in white. But dreams don't always disappear— sometimes they change their clothes. Sometimes the boy you bury is the man nobody knows. I was Malcolm Little. [OUTRO — HALF-SUNG / SPOKEN] Before Detroit Red, before Malcolm X— there was just Malcolm. A boy who wanted to be somebody. A boy who had been told what somebody like him could never be. And I believed him. For a while. [BEAT CONTINUES — TRANSITION] Then I went to Boston.
