Malcolm, I am writing to you in acknowledgement of your 100th birthday. It was a significant milestone that was recognised globally on May 19 — even here in Bermuda.

I spent time a week earlier engaged in the Personal Empowerment Circle at Westgate Correctional Facility, during which we discussed your transformational life journey.

The “circle” was inspired by the legacy you have left.

A new inmate joined the circle that day, one who exemplified that while your life was brutally taken, the spirit that motivated you lives on. When asked if he knew of you, this young man — let’s call him John — explained that he had read your autobiography in the early 2000s as a 14-year-old.

John reminisced about reading the book “cover to cover”, having found it on his stepmother’s bookshelf. Of this, three decades after your demise and given the historical erasure that has occurred, we were pleasantly surprised.

I shared with John how I, too, had read your autobiography as a teen, a year or two after your death. This during the global renaissance of the Sixties when many young people were inspired by your life story. In fact, it was the book that sparked my transformational journey, as it did for many.

John shared aspects of his challenging life journey. He recounted how at 6, he was traumatised when he discovered his grandfather on the bedroom floor owing to a brain haemorrhage, leading to his long-term hospital admission. Months later his mother was committed to the mental hospital, and he noted that this was in parallel to your life journey.

John went on to describe how he would react to school bullies “with a punch” and end up in trouble — a narrative repeated across formal education. Family circumstances led to him living for two years at the Sunshine League. Notwithstanding his challenging journey, John shared some deep insights that paralleled the reflections that had occasionally surfaced over the four years that our small group of volunteers have enjoyed while facilitating this circle.

John’s contribution reminded me of a comment that one team member made sometime back. The retired member of the senior management team of an iconic local company said that during his decades-long career, he had never experienced being as moved as he had been by some of the insights shared by many of the incarcerated members of the circle.

Beginning at Westgate, we have leveraged your transformative sense of independence as a guiding light for the circle.

Your character led you to challenge the status quo during circumstances of institutional racism, lynchings, bombings, etc, as well as to courageously challenge your personal assumptions when uncovering a non-alignment with integrity. This exemplified an appreciation for “always learning”.

Given these globally challenging times, your exemplification of character offers today’s generations a “North Star”.

You refused to be defined by your circumstances. So much so that in your youth, societal conditions led to your incarceration — and you used that opportunity for rebirth, facilitated by the Nation of Islam.

Although you championed that ideology for a period, your continued evolution led you to question the Nation’s philosophy, and you assumed a much more universal perspective in embracing humanity.

• Glenn Fubler represents Imagine Bermuda