MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD

In his review of “Malcolm” (Sept. 8), Gerald Early states that “many African-Americans have been denied language” and the Establishment doesn’t often “let its outcasts latch on to something so empowering.”

An establishment (of white people, Nazis, Communists, Voudoun priests or whatever kind of fascist) can deny someone a public forum, access to the printed page or admission to places of formal instruction. It cannot deny language per se, any more than a white man can steal mathematics from preliterate black Africans and not give it back.

In the same issue of Book Review are references to African-Americans W. E. B. Du Bois, George S. Schuyler, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Booker T. Washington, Elijah Muhammad, Marcus Garvey and Shelby Steel, who put the lie to Early’s assertion. Might I add Claude Brown, my personal favorite, to this list, as well as Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Eldridge Cleaver and, indeed, Malcolm X. These are African-American authors who were on the Establishment (high school) reading list during my senior year (Des Moines, Iowa, 1969).

Rather than waiting to be given language, these writers took the initiative. Ah, but that’s a different issue, best argued in the Opinion section.

ERIC S. LUDWIG, LOS ANGELES