Rhetorical Analysis Of Learning To Read By Malcolm X

Education is Power The Civil Rights Movement took place during the mid-1950s and late 1960s where African Americans protested against the injustice of not receiving the same civil liberties as white Americans. Activists who took part in the Civil Rights Movement, used a non-violent approach to protesting such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Greensboro sit-ins, and the march from Selma to Montgomery in order to bring about equality. African Americans began to receive equality as shown by the implementation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. In Malcolm X’s, “Learning to Read”, he encourages his audience to learn from his mistakes through stories of his background that reflect his beliefs that under-educated people need to become aware of the less than positive history of the oppression of African Americans if they plan on attaining their freedom.

Discussing the difficulties that Frederick Douglass and other slaves have encountered during the first half of the 19th century. The struggles are being told in “Learning to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass. The main obstacle was learning to read and write and being stripped from that experience so African-Americans don’t become educated. Fearing the ideas of their owned slaves surpassing them in intelligence and overthrowing them. But comparing that to of “Learning to Read” by Malcolm X of the mid-20th century where slavery ended but racism is still America’s greatest threat.

Frederick Douglass was persistent in learning how to read. He did very small steps, one at a time and persevered and finally succeeded. Also, we can point out that because he was one among the few educated black persons from his time, that may explain why the stood out from the crowd of black folks. The struggle he went through as a kid and the lessons he learned gave him the strength to stand up against slavery and fight for justice. History proved us that doing so is risky, we think of Mahatma Gandhi, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. or Fred Hampton.

On November 10th 1963 Malcom X ( Muslim Civil Rights Activist) delivered a speech to many African Americans attending the Northern Negro Grass Roots Conference. This speech would help in the fight for African American rights. Here Malcom X demonstrated how African Americans were being oppressed and directly exposed racism. This speech is important to history because it began to encourage people to act instead of wait. In Malcom X's speech he wants to encourage African Americans to stand up for themselves and he is also stating action needs to be taken.

Repetition is found all throughout Washington 's speech. He repeats the phrase "cast down your buckets where you are" to strengthen his allegory. The more it is said, the more it is clear that he is not just talking to the African Americans, he is also talking to the "those of the white race". He is implying that the Whites could look to the African Americans for the prosperity of the South, instead of looking to "those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits" (Line 74-75). He is telling both sides to notice what is around them and use what they have.

Thesis: In “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, Malcolm X in his telling of his life to Alex Haley uncovers the theme of positive and negative environments unearthed by the interaction of African Americans and White Americans in his life and what those kinds of environments inherently produce. Annotated Bibliography Nelson, Emmanuel S. Ethnic American Literature: an Encyclopedia for Students. Greenwood, An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2015.This encyclopedia points out that the negative interaction he held with the white man as a young hustler was countered by these same experiences pushing Malcolm X to reclaim his “African identity”. This shows, as described by the cited work, what a man pushed by his negative interactions with the oppressive white men is willing to do to find his identity (i.e. through hustling).

“After apologizing for his ignorance, and reminding the audience that slavery was a poor school for the human intellect and heart, he proceeded to narrate some of the facts in his own history as a slave, and in the course of his speech gave utterance to many noble thoughts and thrilling reflections. (Preface.4)” In this quote, Frederick Douglass is giving a big speech in front of an even bigger audience. This is one of Douglass’s earlier speeches, so he hadn’t had much practice when it came to public announcements. In the quote, Douglass is simply trying to inform the audience of the education that slaves and blacks, in general, are given.

“The age” (1) describes the modern age we live in where people are recognising their wrongdoings and commemorating achievements and efforts made to fix mistakes of the past. Although there are many movements to correct such errors, in this poem, the efforts especially pertain to African American culture and the efforts to mitigate the terrible history of history of discrimination. Then the poem moves on to elaborate on the “task” (2) that the poem asks of this generation. Using verbs in the command form, he calls the readers to action when talking about his tasks. The first order is to “create/ a different image” (4).

The Power Behind “Just Walk on By” In Brent Staples article “Just Walk on By”, Staples shares his thoughts on the way marginalized groups interact. He uses his own experiences as a young African American man to shed light on how people can have implied biases that affect the way they treat other people. Staples does this to demonstrate how society develops preconceived notions in the minds of individuals about marginalized groups, primarily African American men, which are often a flawed representation of the people within these groups. The rhetoric he uses is key to developing an understanding persona and an emotional appeal that exposes the implied biases of people without alienating or offending the audience, to whom-- among others-- he attributes these biases.

Social Activists Influential Techniques Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream," and Malcom X's "The Black Revolution," were both influential speeches during the civil rights movement. There are aspects and characteristics of the two speeches that distinguish them from others, make them especially moving. The writers use powerful diction, tone, literary devices, and appeal to emotional, ethical, and logical beliefs. The diction, phrases, and words used in King's "I Have a Dream" speech, appeal to the emotional aspect of the audience.

The Story of Malcolm X Malcolm X was a Black rights activist during the 1960’s, he was regarded as a powerful speaker and a highly intelligent person. He was averse to blacks and white living in harmony, and spearheaded the black separatist movement. Malcolm X was not always the man that is taught to the public in history classes however, “Learning to read”, and excerpt from Malcolm X’s autobiography, recounts the tale of who Malcolm X was before he was well read, and how a prison’s library shaped views during the civil rights movement, and started fanning the flames for his racism.

a. Explain the process by which the author improved his reading and writing abilities. The process by which the author improved his reading and writing abilities begins when he is in prison. At first, he studied in prison under the teaching of Mr. Elijah Muhammad, and he wrote letters to people, whom he knows in the outside world. After these letters were sent, he found out that it was difficult for him to express his feelings because of the lack of vocabulary.

Education Malcolm X did not graduate from a college, but he was aware of the difficulties of the American society in his time. Also, he wanted to erase the paradigm that black people were not educated, indeed he learned all his education in one of the toughest places to learn: jail. When he realized that he was not able to write simple English, he decided to improve, inspire by, John Elton Bembry as he refers as “Bambi” and the heavy emphasis on rehabilitation that existed in the jail, but that inspiration and the time he spent reading his books opened a bunch of new ideas, a whole new world and “freedom”, as he describes, “I have never been so truly free in my life”, and by education and discipline he became one of the most important public

The story” Learning to Read”, by Malcolm X, depicts how the motivation could push people further to achieve their academic goal no matter where you from or who you are. The author himself never made it past the eighth grade because he dropped out from the school. Of course with unemployment he got himself involved in criminal activity and later, be putted into prison. the life in prison makes him revalue his past and trying to stand up for himself in order to beat this circumstance. He taught himself how to read and become literate even all he could rely on is a dictionary, and the limit recourse obtained from the prison school.

As noted by Malcolm X in his essay Learning to Read, self-education can help bring awareness to the United States’ appalling history of oppression effectuated against African-Americans. In relation to the reading, Malcolm X assimilated prominent examples of oppression through personal anecdotes that descriptively stated what the “evil white men with whips and clubs and chains and guns” did (193). Correspondingly, the negative consequences society has put into place can be stemmed back to the history of European colonization.