MALCOLM X ACTIVITY
Background:
Malcolm X, whose given name was Malcolm Little, became one of the most influential leaders and activists of the 20th
century. He spent his early years in Wisconsin and then Michigan until a white supremacist group killed his father and
drove the rest of the family out of town. Malcolm X dropped out of school after the 7th grade and headed to New York
where he had various odd jobs and then became involved in a life of crime. Malcolm X periodically lived in Boston as
well, and it was during one of his stays in Boston that he was arrested and sentenced to a 10-year prison term in
Charlestown MA. He taught himself to read in the Charlestown prison library. Also while in prison, Malcolm X was
introduced to the Nation of Islam, headed by Elijah Muhammed. He became an avid follower and outspoken member of
the sect. It was around this time that he changed his last name from “Little,” which he described as a “slave name,” to
“X,” a letter representing his lost African tribal name. Once released from prison, Malcolm X was known to give fiery
speeches where he advocated freedom, justice, and equality for African Americans “by any means necessary.” He later
traveled to Mecca, Islam’s holy city, and returned with new views on how Black people in America could work through
established channels to fight white racism. To help him write his life’s story, he commissioned Alex Haley, a writer who
would later become most famous for his book and ground-breaking TV mini-series, Roots. In 1965, the same year his
autobiography was published, Malcolm X was assassinated.
Directions: Read the following four excerpts from “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” and take notes over each
section by filling out the worksheet.
Excerpts from The Autobiography of Malcolm X
1)
It went on that way, as I became increasingly restless and disturbed through the first semester. And
then one day, just about when those of us who had passed were about to move up to 8-A, from which we
would enter high school the next year, something happened which was to become the first major turning point
of my life.
Somehow, I happened to be alone in the classroom with Mr. Ostrowski, my English teacher. He was a
tall, rather reddish white man and he had a thick mustache. I had gotten some of my best marks under him,
and he had always made me feel that he liked me. He was, as I have mentioned, a natural-born “advisor,”
about what you ought to read, to do, or think—about any and everything. We used to make unkind jokes
about him: why was he teaching in Mason instead of somewhere else, getting for himself some of the “success
in life” that he kept telling us how to get?
I know that he probably meant well in what he happened to advise me that day. I doubt that he meant
any harm. It was just in his nature as an American white man. I was one of his top students, one of the school’s
top student—but all he could see for me was the kind of future “in your place” that almost all white people see
for black people.
He told me, “Malcolm, you ought to be thinking about a career. Have you been giving it thought?”
The truth is, I hadn’t. I never have figured out why I told him, “Well, yes, sir, I’ve been thinking I’d like
to be a lawyer.” Lansing certainly had no Negro lawyers—or doctors either—in those days, to hold up an
image I might have aspired to. All I really knew for certain was that a lawyer didn’t wash dishes, as I was
doing.
Mr. Ostrowski looked surprised, I remember, and leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands
behind his head. He kind of half-smiled and said, “Malcolm, one of life’s first needs is for us to be realistic.
Don’t misunderstand me, now. We all here like you, you know that. But you’ve got to be realistic about being
a nigger. A lawyer—that’s no realistic goal for a nigger. You need to think about thing you can be. You’re good
with your hands—making things. Everybody admires your carpentry shop work. Why don’t you plan on
carpentry? People like you as a person—you’d get all kinds of work.”
The more I thought afterwards about what he had said, the more uneasy it made me. It just kept
treading around in my mind.
What made it really begin to disturb me was Mr. Ostrowski’s advice to others in my class—all of them
white. Most of them had told him they were planning to become farmers. But those who wanted to strike out
on their own, to try something new, he had encouraged. Some, mostly girls, wanted to be teachers. A few
wanted other professions, such as one boy who wanted to become a county agent; another, a veterinarian; and
one girl wanted to be a nurse. They all reported that Mr. Ostrowski had encouraged what they had wanted.
Yet nearly none of them had earned marks equal to mine.
It was a surprising thing that I had never thought of it that way before, but I realized that whatever I
wasn’t, 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.
It was then that I began to change—inside.
I drew away from white people. I came to class, and I answered when called upon. It became a physical
strain simply to sit in Mr. Ostrowski’s class.
Where “nigger” had slipped off my back before, wherever I heard it now, I stopped and looked at
whoever said it. And they looked surprised that I did.
I quit hearing so much “nigger” and “What’s wrong?”—which was the way I wanted it. Nobody,
including the teachers, could decide what had come over me. I knew I was being discussed.
2)
It was because of my letters that I happened to stumble upon starting to acquire some kind of a
homemade education. 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. In the street, I had been the most articulate
hustler out there—I had commanded attention when I said something. But now, trying to write simple
English, I not only wasn’t articulate, I wasn’t even functional.
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. It had really begun back in the Charlestown Prison, when Bimbi first made me feel envy of his stock of
knowledge. Bimbi had always taken charge of any conversations he was in, and I had tried to emulate him.
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. When I just skipped those words, of course, I really ended up
with little idea of what the book said. So I had come to the Norfolk Prison Colony still going through only
book-reading motions. Pretty soon, I would have quit even these motions, unless I had received the motivation
that I did. I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary—to study, to learn some words. I
was lucky enough to reason also that I should try to improve my penmanship. It was sad. I couldn’t even write
in a straight line. It was both ideas together that moved me to request a dictionary along with some tablets and
pencils from the Norfolk Prison Colony school.
I spent two days just riffling uncertainly through the dictionary’s pages. I’d never realized so many
words existed! I didn’t know which words I needed to learn. Finally, just to start some kind of action, I began
copying. In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my tablet everything printed on that first
page, down to the punctuation marks. I believe it took me a day. Then, aloud, I read back, to myself,
everything I’d written on the tablet. Over and over, aloud, to myself, I read my own handwriting. I woke up
the next morning, thinking about those words—immensely proud to realize that not only had I written so
much at one time, but I’d written words that I never knew were in the world. Moreover, with a little effort, I
also could remember what many of these words meant. I reviewed the words whose meanings I didn’t
remember. Funny thing, from the dictionary first page right now, that “aardvark” springs to my mind. The
dictionary had a picture of it, a long-tailed, long-eared, burrowing African mammal, which lives off termites
caught by sticking out its tongue as an anteater does for ants. I was so fascinated that I went on—I copied the
dictionary’s next page. And the same experience came when I studied that. With every succeeding page, I also
learned of people and places and events from history. Actually the dictionary is like a miniature encyclopedia.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
3)
The teachings of Mr. Muhammad stressed how history had been “whitened”—when white men had
written history books, the black man simply had been left out. Mr. Muhammad couldn’t have said anything
that would have struck me much harder. I had never forgotten how when my class, me and all of those whites,
had studied seventh-grade United States history back in Mason, the history of the Negro had been covered in
one paragraph, and the teacher had gotten a big laugh with his joke, “Negroes’ feet are so big that when they
walk, they leave a hole in the ground.”
This is one reason why Mr. Muhammad’s teachings spread so swiftly all over the United States, among
all Negroes, whether or not they became followers of Mr. Muhammad. The teachings ring true—to every
Negro. You can hardly show me a black adult in America—or a white one, for that matter—who knows from
the history books anything like the truth about the black man’s role. In my own case, once I heard of the
“glorious history of the black man,” I took special pains to hunt in the library for books that would inform me
on details about black history.
I can remember very accurately the very first set of books that really impressed me. I have since bought
that set of books and have it at my home for my children to read as they grow up. It’s called Wonders of the
World. It’s full of pictures of archeological finds, statues that depict, usually, non-European people.
I found books like Will Durant’s Story of Civilization. I read H.G. Wells’ Outline of History, Souls of Black
Folk by W.E.B. DuBois gave me a glimpse into the black people’s history before they came to this country.
Carter G. Woodson’s Negro History opened my eyes about black empires before the black slave was brought to
the Unites States, and the early Negro struggles for freedom.
4)
Largely, the American white man’s press refused to convey that I was now attempting to teach
Negroes a new direction. With the 1964 “long, hot summer” steadily producing new incidents, I was
constantly accused of “stirring up Negroes.” Every time I had another radio or television microphone at my
mouth, when I was asked about “stirring up Negroes” or “inciting violence,” I’d get hot.
“It takes no one to stir up the sociological dynamite that stems from the unemployment, bad housing,
and inferior education already in the ghettoes. This explosively criminal condition has existed for so long, it
needs no fuse; it fuses itself; it spontaneously combusts from within itself…”
They called me “the angriest Negro in America.” I wouldn’t deny that charge. I spoke exactly as I felt.
“I believe in anger. The Bible says there is a time for anger.” They called me “a teacher, a fomenter of violence.” I
would say point blank, “That is a lie. I’m not for wanton violence, I’m for justice. I feel that if white people
were attacked by Negroes—if the forces of law prove unable, or inadequate, or reluctant to protect those
whites from those Negroes—then those white people should protect and defend themselves from those
Negroes, using arms if necessary. And I feel that when the law fails to protect Negroes from whites’ attack,
then those Negroes should use arms, if necessary, to defend themselves.”
“Malcolm X Advocates Armed Negroes!”
What was wrong with that? I’ll tell you what was wrong. I was a black man talking about physical
defense against the white man. The white man can lynch and burn and bomb and beat Negroes—that’s all
right: “Have patience” … “The customs are entrenched” … “Things are getting better.”
Well, I believe it’s a crime for anyone who is being brutalized to continue to accept that brutality
without doing something to defend himself. If that’s how “Christian” philosophy is interpreted, if that what
Gandhian philosophy teaches, well, then, I will call them criminal philosophies.
I tried in every speech I made to clarify my new position regarding white people—“I don’t speak
against the sincere, well-meaning, good white people. I have learned that there are some. I have learned that
not all white people are racists. I am speaking against and my fight is against the white racists. I firmly believe
that Negroes have the right to fight against these racists, by any means that are necessary.”
But the white reporters kept wanting me linked with that word “violence.” I doubt if I had one
interview without having to deal with that accusation.
“I am for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American black
man’s problem—just to avoid violence. I don’t go for non-violence if it also means a delayed solution. To me a
delayed solution is a non-solution. Or I’ll say it another way. If it must take violence to get the black man his
human rights in this country, I’m for violence exactly as you know the Irish, the Poles, or Jews would be if they
were flagrantly discriminated against. I am just as they would be in that case, and they would be for
violence—no matter what the consequences, no matter who was hurt by the violence.”
"The Ballot or the Bullet"…
Directions: Read the following excerpts from Malcolm X’s speech called, “The Ballot or the Bullet”, and
summarize what Malcolm has to say about the following 6 topics. Fill out the opposite side of your worksheet.
Background: The Ballot or the Bullet is the name of a public speech by human rights activist Malcolm X. In the speech,
which was delivered on April 3, 1964, at Cory Methodist Church in Cleveland, Ohio. Malcolm advised African-Americans
to judiciously exercise their right to vote, but he cautioned that if the government continued to prevent AfricanAmericans from attaining full equality, it might be necessary for them to take up arms. It was ranked 7th in the top 100
American speeches of the 20th century by 137 leading scholars of American public address.
*Job Creation:
The black man himself has to be made aware of the importance of going into business. And once you and I go into
business, we own and operate at least the businesses in our community. What we will be doing is developing a situation
wherein we will actually be able to create employment for the people in the community. And once you can create some
employment in the community where you live it will eliminate the necessity of you and me having to act ignorantly and
disgracefully, boycotting and picketing some practice some place else trying to beg him for a job. Anytime you have to
rely upon your enemy for a job—you’re in bad shape.
*Self-Help:
We need a self-help program, a do-it-yourself philosophy, a do-it-right-now philosophy, a it’s-already-too-late
philosophy. This is what you and I need to get with, and the only way we are going to solve our problem is with a selfhelp program. Before we can get a self-help program started we have to have a self-help philosophy.
*Political Parties:
I’m no politician. I’m not even a student of politics. I’m not a Republican, nor a Democrat, nor an American, and got sense
enough to know it. I’m one of the 22 million black victims of the Democrats, one of the 22 million black victims of the
Republicans, and one of the 22 million black victims of Americanism. And when I speak, I don’t speak as a Democrat, or a
Republican, *nor an American*. I speak as a victim of America’s so-called democracy. You and I have never seen
democracy; all we’ve seen is hypocrisy. So, I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flagsaluter, or a flag-waver — no, not I. I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes
of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.
…These Northern Democrats are in cahoots with the Southern Democrats. They’re playing a giant con game, a political
con game. You know how it goes. One of them comes to you and makes believe he's for you, and he’s in cahoots with the
other one that’s not for you. Why? Because neither one of them is for you, but they got to make you go with one of them
or the other. So this is a con game. And this is what they’ve been doing with you and me all these years.
*The Black Vote:
You're the one who put the present Democratic Administration in Washington DC. The whites were evenly divided. It
was the fact that you threw 80% of your votes behind the Democrats that put the Democrats in the White House. When
you see this, you can see that the Negro vote is the key factor. And despite the fact that you are in a position to be the
determining factor, what do you get out of it? The Democrats have been in Washington DC only because of the Negro
vote. They’ve been down there four years, and after all other legislations they wanted to bring up, they brought it up and
gotten it out of the way, and now they bring up you. You put them first, and they put you last 'cause you’re a chump, a
political chump. Anytime you throw your weight behind the political party that controls two-thirds of the government,
and that Party can’t keep the promise that it made to you during election time, and you’re dumb enough to walk around
continuing to identify yourself with that Party, you’re not only a chump, but you’re a traitor to your race.
*Unity:
So I say in my conclusion, the only way we're going to solve it: we got to unite. We got to work together in unity and
harmony. And black nationalism is the key. How we gonna overcome the tendency to be at each other's throats that
always exists in our neighborhood? And the reason this tendency exists – the strategy of the white man has always been
divide and conquer. He keeps us divided in order to conquer us. He tells you, I'm for separation and you for integration,
and keep us fighting with each other. No, I'm not for separation and you're not for integration, what you and I are for is
freedom. [applause] Only, you think that integration will get you freedom; I think that separation will get me freedom.
We both got the same objective, we just got different ways of getting' at it.
*Other:
1-We suffer political oppression, economic exploitation and social degradation. All of 'em from the same
enemy. The government has failed us. You can't deny that. Any time you're living in the 20th century, 1964,
and you walking around here singing "We Shall Overcome," the government has failed you. [applause] This is
part of what's wrong with you, you do too much singing. [laughter] Today it's time to stop singing and start
swinging
2-Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being born here in
America doesn't make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn't need any legislation,
you wouldn't need any amendments to the Constitution, you wouldn't be faced with civil-rights filibustering
in Washington, D.C., right now.
3-I'm nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me. But when you drop that violence on me, then you've
made me go insane, and I'm not responsible for what I do. And that's the way every Negro should get. Any
time you know you're within the law, within your legal rights, within your moral rights, in accord with justice,
then die for what you believe in. But don't die alone. Let your dying be reciprocal. This is what is meant by
equality.
4-This afternoon we want to talk about the ballot or the bullet. The ballot or the bullet explains itself. A ballot is
like a bullet. You don't throw your ballots until you see a target, and if that target is not within your reach,
keep your ballot in your pocket. Since Blacks were denied their civil liberties, either the ballot or the bullet is
next. Blacks will either get their rights or they will rebel against government.