Essay Example about Malcolm X

Conveying one’s message is important; to be easily understood in expressing your ideas and feelings is necessary. For example, communicating with your employees about your duties, not expressing your message clearly can cause confusion, misunderstanding, and conflict. This can cause employees to not do their duties properly and likely cause trouble in the workplace. This is an example of why it is essential to convey your knowledge. However, if you’re in a situation like Malcolm X, who had not reached a proficient level of literacy, he wouldn't have become a figure of the movement for black empowerment. Additionally, had he not taught himself how to convey and express his motives and beliefs for change for black rights, he would not have become a prominent civil rights leader. Malcolm X dropped out of school during 8th grade and started doing drugs, sex trafficking, and robbery. This could be due to his dad’s death, who was assassinated by a white supremacist group, or other traumatizing experiences he faced while growing up. He ended up behind bars after getting caught with robbery. On the streets, he was an “articulate hustler” but in prison, he wasn’t articulate in reading and understanding letters, let alone conveying a message (1). The article, “A Homemade Education” by Malcolm X talks about his journey of self-education during prison. Three goals he had as a result of ending up in this predicament were 1. seeking self-education, motivated by Bimbi and Elijah Muhammed. Bimbi was an inmate like Malcolm X, and Elijah Muhammed was Malcolm X’s role model; 2. improving his writing and reading skills by copying words down from a dictionary; and 3. reading many books about “Black Man’s History”, which motivated him to free black men from discrimination. 

Malcolm X wouldn’t have been able to acquire literary skills if he hadn’t received the inspiration he did from Bimbi and Elijah Muhammed. It started off in prison, where Malcolm X noticed he found it hard to formulate his thoughts in letters to Elijah Muhammed, who was a black Muslim leader of the Nation of Islam during Malcolm X’s time in prison. Malcolm X states, “I became increasingly frustrated at not being able to express what I wanted to convey in letters that I wrote, especially those to Mr. Elijah Muhammad” (1). His annoyance at his inability to convey his message motivated him to seek self-education. Additionally, Bimbi also played a significant role in motivating Malcolm X in acquiring knowledge. Bimbi was an acquaintance of his from his time in prison. Visually studying Bimbi’s ability to lead and guide a conversation, Malcolm X took notes on how effective it was at impressing and having an impact on the other prisoners. He states, “Bimbi had always taken charge of any conversations he was in, and I had tried to emulate him” (1). Malcolm X becomes jealous by how Bimbi was earning respect from other prisoners for his extensive knowledge and tries to copy and even surpass him but struggles to reach his level of effective communication and knowledge, which motivates him to pick up a book and start reading. When he started reading a book, unfortunately, he was unable to understand anything. Malcolm X states, “But every book I picked up had few sentences which didn’t contain anywhere from one to nearly all of the words that might as well have been in Chinese” (1). This shows his annoyance at his inability to make sense of the letters and words in the book, and even more at his inability to comprehend it. It was both the desire for literary comprehension and the inability to convey his thoughts that led him to pursue an education. 

Malcolm X gained abundant knowledge in literary skills due to Bimbi’s and Elijah Muhammed’s influence on him. After receiving the motivation Malcolm did, he began seeking self-education. As previously mentioned, he realized after picking a book, he was unable to understand the letters/words in the book. So he had the idea of getting a dictionary while starting from scratch. Once he received it, he began jotting down some words from the dictionary onto a notebook and also began improving his handwriting skills. He first learned the alphabet(letters), then the words. Day by day he would write & learn more words along with their definitions, gradually picking up more speed and eventually memorizing the entire dictionary. He not only acquired vocabulary along with their meanings but also came across renowned people, locations, and historical events. 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” (3). This shows the stance he is at, he has improved significantly because he has developed a wider vocabulary with better reading and writing skills which allows him to now pick up a book and comprehend it. After reading one book, he went on a rampage by reading several other books. His determination to read many books made him unstoppable. He states, “When I had progressed to really serious reading every night at about ten p.m. I would be outraged with the “lights out.” It always seemed to catch me right in the middle of something engrossing” (4). This shows his progress and determination in achieving his goal. This is important because he shows to his audience that he is focused on his goal of improving his reading skills and gaining an education. During his progressive reading, he came across books about Black History.

By reading many books, he educated himself on many things, specifically Black History simply because of his curiosity on the topic. His interest in Black History started by exploring the teachings of Elijah Muhammad. From him, Malcolm X learned about his people and the obstacles they faced such as being tortured, raped, and discriminated against. He states, “I never will forget how shocked I was when I began reading about slavery’s total horror” (6). He read many books that moved him in a way, eager to make some kind of change with his newfound knowledge about the injustices that non-whites faced through slavery and discrimination. Additionally, from all the books he read, some books he came across such as “Herodotus, “the father of History,” is about how white men treated non-whites by causing fear in them (7). He states, “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 sufferings of exploitation” (7). This shows remorseless methods white men used to obtain land through deception, power, and promises. This is important because by reading many books on Black History, he shows his abundant knowledge and interest in the topic. The knowledge he acquired motivated him to become a Black activist, to set free Black people from such discriminatory acts. In the end, his emotions about the injustice of his people led him to make arguments, to put an end to black discrimination with his collective knowledge. 

Through his journey of self-education, he had proved to himself that by taking the steps he did from starting off with a dictionary to reading a book, and eventually gaining extensive knowledge on Black History and becoming a successful role model in terms of preventing black discrimination shows the significant progress of his determination to improve his literary conveyance, reduce society’s racially motivated system, and produce an overall more balanced order for the black community.