Micro-Activity # 3: Malcolm X

Quote 1:  “ Many who today hear me somewhere in person, or on television, or those who read something I’ve said, will think I went to school far beyond the eighth grade. This impression is due entirely to my prison studies.” -Malcolm X

Response: During the times that Malcolm X grew up in he wasn’t able to get the education he needed so he didn’t know many words and wasn’t able to express him self properly. Malcolm X motivated him self and taught him self how to read and write over time. He even studied during his prison time and learned how to speak, read, and write as if he had really good education and he did not let anything stop him from learning.

Quote 2:  “Between Mr. Muhammad’s teachings, my correspondence, my visitors,… and my reading of books, months passed without my even thinking about being im­prisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.

Response: While Malcolm X was in prison his escape from reality was his studying  and as he learned new words he was able to read books with out struggling and not knowing what words meant. Books helped him expand his knowledge, horizons, and pass his time in prison. Finally being able to read books without a problem it made him feel free.

Quote 3: “ Book after book showed me how the white man had brought upon the world’s black, brown, red, and yellow peoples every variety of the suffering of exploitation. I saw how since the sixteenth century, the so-called “Christ­ian trader” white man began to ply the seas in his lust for Asian and African empires, and plunder, and power. I read, I saw, how the white man never has gone among the non-white peoples bearing the Cross in the true man­ner and spirit of Christ’s teachings – meek, humble, and Christlike.”

Response: Over time as Malcolm learned how to read he had discovered all the injustice people of color have been experiencing through out the years and how history is being white washed. Learning to read had opened his eyes as to what was really going on in the world.