Rereading America Summary

In the book, “Rereading America” by, Gary Colombo, Robert Cullen, and Bonnie Lisle, it starts off on page 210 describing a well educated Black Man of the times in 1960s. “Born Malcolm Little; Malcolm X was one of the most articulate and powerful leaders of Black America during the 1960s. A street hustler convicted of robbery in 1946, he spent seven years in prison, where he educated himself and became a disciple of Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam” (p.210). Here I want to focus on the strength of a single black man in the 60’s and what it was like to be uneducated as an African American. The many struggles of a black person in general were enough, but a black man had it hard. The reading on Malcolm X had lots of points

Malcolm X was like any other man hustling on the streets to get by, like a lot you see in today society with the drug dealers and such. Starting off Malcolm X was not an intelligent man; he didn’t know how to write without a little slang to his words, he didn’t know how to articulate what he wanted to be said. Malcolm X was convicted of robbery and was sent to Charleston Prison, but was later sent off to the Norfolk Prison Colony School, this is where he gave himself the educated needed to be a well productive citizen. Malcolm X stated, “I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary-to study, to learn some new words (p.211). “I spent two days just riffling uncertainly through the dictionary’s pages.” “Finally, just to start some kind of action, I began copying.” Here Malcolm X is seeing his time being served in prisons to not only be a lessoned learned but to learn something that he knew he would never learn living out there in the streets. You see a lot of this same action going on today, you have your drug dealers, robbers, murders, etc. They all end up going to jail, now not saying all but some of them are not highly educated

But in all it is what they have gained being locked up. My thoughts on this is, if they can make do with getting educated while sitting behind bars, then why can’t they force themselves into higher learning and education when they are out with their freedom? Why do it take them to be locked away for several years to make them realize that getting educated may be the only way out? My answer to that is, the strict and punishments enforced while behind bars have set them to do nothing on a consistent 24 hour period which in terms gives them nothing better to do then to pick up a book. In the text Malcolm X talks about how copying words from the dictionary was what got him started on to basically broaden his vocabulary and help him work on his penmanship. He states, “I suppose it was inevitable that as my word-base broadened, I could for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying,” (p.212). This again is some of the struggles that’s faced with everyday life, with the fact that children are not reaching their fullest potential in school, so they are averaging at the bottom of the class, which in terms singles them out, for the most part, and make them just want to give up with school