This book argues that Malcolm X told African Americans to affirm their blooming sense of self and to assert themselves in their own uniqueness. However, he realized that the first route to African American affirmation of self was to awaken black self-consciousness and he therefore called for black wide-awakeness. The book concludes that "Malcolm X's call for a psychological return to Africa through a process of historical reconstruction was aimed at overthrowing the enslavement of African American thought and thereby setting African Americans on the path to freedom and human dignity."