Malcolm X

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Malcolm X

I read an excerpt from the book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Malcolm X and Alex Haley. In this part of the book Malcolm discusses his quest for knowledge. He starts off by telling us about how he wrote his Harlem, hustler friends and told them all about Allah and Mr. Elijah Muhammad, the two main figures in the Islam religion. He never got a single reply and figured it was because the average hustler and criminal couldn't read. He also thought that maybe they thought he had gone crazy, because after all he was writing them about the devil; the white devil. Maybe his letters never even got there. White men, men who might have just thrown the letters out, censored all of his mail. However, no one ever said anything to him about them or ever treated him differently because of it.

As Malcolm X began to write more letters to a wide variety of people he became frustrated with the fact that he could not communicate with them as he wanted to. "It was because of these letters that I happened to stumble upon starting to acquire some kind of homemade education." He hated it because he had been the most articulate hustler on the streets of Harlem, and could get anyone's attention with his words. He was admired for the eloquent words he spoke and was not used to being ignored. For now even the simplest English was hard for him to write.

His quest for an education had begun, but it would be a long one. He decries how it all really began while he was being held at the Charlestown Prison. Bimbi, a fellow prisoner, was very intelligent and Malcolm envied his gift. Bimbi encouraged him to read and Malcolm would try but would end up quitting because he would skip the words he didn't know and keep reading. The problem with this was that he could never fully understand what he was reading and would put the book down. So he decided that he needed to learn how to read and write properly.

He decided that the best way to go about it would be to get a hold of a copy of a dictionary and study it. He requested a dictionary, some pencils and some pads of paper.

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