"I did not intend to allow the white people of this country to tell me who I was, and limit me that way, and polish me off that way. And yet, of course, at the same time, I being spat on and defined and described and limited, and could have been polished off with no effort whatever. Every Negro boy - in my situation during those years, at least - who reaches this point realizes, at once, profoundly, because he wants to live, that he stands in great peril and must find, with speed, a "thing," a gimmick, to lift him out, to start him on his way. "