Malcolm X

"When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. " - Malcolm X

The Dictionary

When those of us are asked to think of the legacy of a man, who confronted the issues at hand and pointed the fingers at the root and the existence of the problem, we think of Malcolm X. You begin to think of the powerful speeches and the passionate remarks made about the pressing issues that were at hand and you begin to think of the life he led and those he touched through his words. Some, would generalize that Malcolm x, had attended high school and even attended college. Well unfortunately they would be sadly mistaken. They have quite a clouded view on that man, who called himself Malcolm X. Shockingly; all of Malcolm's education was through his time spent during his sentence in prison, for the crimes he committed on the street.

It all began for Malcolm, during his time in prison when he was confronted countlessly by a man named Bimbi. Bimbi's also an inmate at the time, had a broad knowledge of the world and its surroundings, and thus gave Malcolm a reason to change his way of life. Malcolm became frustrated when he was in able to express his feelings in letters to Elijah Mohammad. Malcolm admitted that he had the upper hand on the streets, but when it came to reality he didn't have what it took to communicate with the outside world. He knew that slang was not the appropriate way to convey himself to Elijah Mohamed and thus decide to change. Malcolm's ability to read and write were premature, when reading, Malcolm would skip the words that he didn't know or understand and would end up with a clouded view on what the book had said.

The day that he got a hold of a dictionary, was the day Malcolm changed. He would sit for countless hours and with a pencil, he would copy down the words from the dictionary from A to Z. At the end of the day, Malcolm would read over and over aloud to himself, what he had written on the tablet, and found himself in awe over the amount of words that existed in the world. After the experience, Malcolm decided to further his enlightenment by copying every last page in the dictionary.

The rest of his time in prison was spent copying the pages of the dictionary and writing letters