Analysis Of The Article ' The Bird Catcher ' By Malcolm X

Malcolm X’s legacy to the struggle for black equality in the USA went far beyond focusing on solely equality. Malcolm X hardly forgot the fact that he was the ‘servant’ and not the ‘master’ of the black nation’s aspirations and dreams. Malcolm X resisted the objective of integration and encouraged blacks to build their own society. ‘We can never win freedom and justice and equality until we do something for ourselves’.[i] He felt they should shield themselves against violence, ‘by any means necessary’. Malcolm X confronted the United States to protect its own hypothetical qualities. He held up a mirror for the country to scrutinize itself, now was the reflection showing too much for some white individuals in America?

I also found Malcolm X’s perspective interesting and how literacy affected his life in prison. Literacy sponsors came to play in his life by helping him fully understand the corruption that was going on in the world. Specifically racial discrimination and disputes. Learning to read and write helped Malcolm X to grow intellectually as a person. Literacy sponsors have assisted him in building his character.

Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass were two very important men in America’s history. As educated black men, they defied the idea of uneducated blacks. Their prowess with language allowed them to communicate their movements’ message to the masses easily and effectively, letting them have an active role in society. Douglass wrote his autobiography, which was a bestseller, and exposed to antebellum America the true harshness of slavery. Malcolm X became an important figure in the fight for civil rights one hundred years later, giving speeches across the country. For both men, education became a process of enlightenment. It made them eager to learn more and more. However, this process had some differences. The most glaring difference is the way they learned; Malcolm X taught himself to read and write while Douglass’s mistress taught him first, and later by smaller children in the area. Besides that, the end result was vastly different for Malcolm X compared to Douglass, as he read much more diverse content than Douglass did. Thus, Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X shared both similarities and differences in learning to read and write.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told by Alex Haley is the story about a man who greatly impacted American history. Malcolm Little, or Malcolm X as he is more widely known, taught what he believed in regards to segregation, racism, and discrimination. Growing up in a large family with a father Earl Little, a Baptist minister, and his mother Louis Little, who was a homemaker, Malcolm’s life at the time seemed very promising. His father’s involvement in support of the Black National gained him many death threats at the hands of white supremacists. In 1929, they lost their house to fire, and two years later the body of Malcolm’s father was found mutilated. This lead to the emotional breakdown of Malcolm’s mother and in turn she was institutionalized. Malcolm and his siblings were separated and placed in foster homes, and from then, his life began a path of drugs, sex, and crime. It was not until he was imprisoned in 1946, that he decided to make some changes for the better. This essay will assess and discuss those changes whether negative or positive, on a micro, mezzo, and macro level. It will also cover some of the effects of racial prejudice on human behavior, and how society today keeps the ideology of Malcolm X alive.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley is an account of Malcolm X’s evolving perspective on racial justice. Malcolm X was a prominent figure in the Nation of Islam who advocated for black nationalism and separatism. The man who became one of America’s most powerful voices for African Americans was deeply affected by the terrors of racism, which shaped his view of social justice and the condemnation of the white man. The way Malcolm X narrates his experiences changes as his views on race change. At first, he wants readers to feel the destructiveness of racism, so he conveys his experiences through provocative language. When he aims to promote universal peace, he takes on a more optimistic tone. As a

Malcolm X’s tone is bluntly honest when sharing his own personal anecdotes; He discusses of the way he was treated in school when saying, “...I was smarter than nearly all of those white kids. But apparently I was still not intelligent enough, in their eyes, to become whatever I wanted to be” (44). He goes on to say, “I was thus schooled well, by experts in such hustles as the numbers, pimping, con games of many kinds, peddling dope, and thievery of all sorts, including armed robbery” (97). Malcolm X speaks of his experiences as simply as reciting established facts; he retells his life with his blunt honesty, used to carefully and tactfully discuss the controversial issue of racism that is not often discussed so truthfully in media.

People often become angry at themselves when they are unable to do something; this leads to frustration and then a choice they have to make: giving up or stubbornly continuing it. Malcolm X was also in a situation like that during his time in prison. He never finished his education in reading or writing and tried to learn how to read and write which it was hard for him, but he still continue to learn to those skills. In Malcolm X’s “Learning to Read”, despite being a prisoner, he decides to learn how to read and write making use of his time in prison in order to learn more about the world than continuing to be ignorant.

Malcolm X was a well-known figure in the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. In “Learning to Read”, Malcolm X tells a personal journey of how he became interested in reading and speaks about his individual enlightenment. In this essay, Malcolm X uses his experiences to influence his audience, he seizes the opportune time to bring light to an important issue, and a stern tone to reinforce the importance that learning to read had on his life.

Malcolm’s Stance in this piece is very passionate, yet also extremely grateful that he had the chance to be able to experience the things he did in prison. He feels as if reading has changed him and opened his eyes to new ways of thinking and comprehensions. He stated that he feels no one has gained as much as he has from his experiences through reading in prison. However, he Stance took a slight detour when he started talking about African American men or “black race” in America. He still was passionate, but he started to sound annoyed with how the African American man was going about trying to obtain his civil rights. Malcolm felt as if African Americans were fighting a lost cause because they didn’t even have their human

Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X were African Americans who became important people to the American history of black people. They were both involved with the civil rights movement. They pursued equal rights and freedom for all African Americans. Both Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X supported the education and advancement of blacks to learn to read and write. Douglass wrote “Learning to Read and Write”, and Malcolm X wrote “Can Prison Be a School?” which told us stories of their journey of learning. These two chapters are highlighted in the book “Now and Then” by Judith Stanford. The details of these two chapters tell readers that education could impact their personal or social lives. In their autobiographies, Frederick Douglass and Malcolm

Many people know Malcolm X for his work in the civil rights movement, but few know about his time in prison stay and how it was spent. After being released, X put his newly found knowledge from prison with teachings of Islam to become the distinguished civil rights activists people know today. In “Learning to Read”, X describes his journey of learning to read, understanding the truth about Europeans, and realizing how powerful blacks could be if they knew their true history. X began his self-education because of the inability to express himself in letters to his mentor, Elijah Muhammad. According to X, he began to envy prisoners who were knowledgeable, “… Bimbi first made me feel envy of his stock of knowledge.”

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you will learn, the places you’ll go.” (Dr. Suess) The unique and most grateful thing in live is learning.

In his short-lived life, Malcolm X was both a civil rights activist and a Muslim minister. After being sentenced to ten years in prison, X began dedicating his free time to reading books from the prison’s library. In doing so, he educated himself by broadening his vocabulary, allowing him to communicate his thoughts and opinions in a better fashion. In Malcolm X’s “A Homemade Education” he demonstrates how he gained knowledge in order to educate others of the impending oppressive events that occur throughout the world, demonstrating his credibility by his self-motivation and his sources. Teaching himself vigorously in order to educate others in his community of many instances where “whites” oppressed people of color around the world (11).

Malcolm X never had confidence in himself that he was intelligent, he thought it would be a good idea to start reading which would help him grow his intelligence. Malcolm was sent to a state penitentiary and started going to the library and getting books and dictionaries to keep up with his learning. Malcolm X did not even know where to start so he just began to write down words and read them aloud to himself, Malcolm used to stay up in prison past curfew and get out of bed to read books then as the guards would walk by to check on the inmates he would quickly jump into bed and pretend he was asleep, he would repeat that for nights. According to Malcolm X, “Look daddy, let me pull your coat about a cat, Elijah Muhammad... (1) Malcolm X mentioned this because he thought this was not the proper way to speak English, so he wanted to become more

“How is a black man going to get civil rights before he wins his human rights” Malcolm X was a bold and courageous human rights activist. He was imprisonnoated back inside a facility in Charlestown for larceny and breaking and entering. Malcolm met a friend in prison named Bimbi he was very smart and it made Malcolm follow him and want to imitate his knowledge. The best thing he did was get hold of a dictionary, he taught himself how to spell out words and he would rewrite them to memorize the definitions. He improved his penmanship and made this a routine every day. There would be nights he would wake up and have dreams of doing it. He did that every day and so on until he reached the end of the dictionary. He eventually moved onto books, and stories about history, he was progressing in his reading. It got to the point where he would check out the maximum amount of books he could.