Most Active Stories Around the Nation Sat February 4, 2012 Lost
Malcolm X Speech Heard Again 50 Years Later Last semester, Brown
senior Malcolm Burnley took a narrative writing course. One of
the assignments was to write a fictional story based on
something true — and that true event had to be found inside the
university archives. "So I went to the archives and started
flipping through dusty compilations of student newspapers, and
there was this old black-and-white photo of when Malcolm X came
to speak," Burnley says. "There was one short article that
corresponded to it, and very little else." Malcolm X came to
speak at Brown University in Providence, R.I., on May 11, 1961.
Burnley noticed that at the end of the article, there was a
brief mention of another article — also from the Brown student
newspaper — written by a senior named Katharine Pierce. Her
article was the reason Malcolm X wanted to visit Brown. He
tracked down Pierce's phone number and gave her a call. "I
immediately started asking her what she