Malcolm X's Speech

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In the speech of Malcolm X “Address to a meeting in New York, 1964” there are many words or phrases that I had trouble understanding. Some of the words or phrases are Pilgrimage, Devoutly, Complacent, Strife, Animosity, and Brutality. I am using my context clues to figure out what those words mean. The words Pilgrimage and Devoutly are new and unfamiliar words to me so I decided to look at the sentence that the words are in. In the text it states, “Malcolm moderated his opinions after a Pilgrimage to Mecca where he saw blacks and whites praying Devoutly side by side.” From this quote I can infer that Pilgrimage has something to do with traveling. The dictionary definition according to dictionary.com is “a pilgrim 's journey.” The word Devoutly is still troubling me, I know by reading the sentence that it has something to do with praying or religion. To check my guess I looked it up on dictionary.com and it says that Devoutly means “having or showing deep religious feeling or commitment.” or “totally committed to a cause or …show more content…

In the text it states, “So today, when the black man starts reaching out for what is America says are his rights, the black man feels that he is within his rights- when he becomes the victim of Brutality by those who are depriving him of his rights- to do whatever necessary to protect himself. . . .” I noticed that the word Brutality looks a lot like brutal. From the text, I can Infer that the word Brutality has something to do with the word brutal. According to the true definition it means “savage physical violence; great cruelty” While the word brutal means “savagely violent, punishingly hard or uncomfortable, or direct and lacking any attempt to disguise unpleasantness.” Therefore, Brutality and Brutal are synonyms and will help me understand what Brutality

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