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TIL Malcolm X, while serving a prison sentence in his early 20s, spent
his time reading the dictionary and copying its pages to improve his
vocabulary. This practice not only expanded his knowledge but also
transformed him into one of the most articulate civil rights leaders.
https://www.massmoments.org/moment-details/malcolm-x-imprisoned.html
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|u/BolivianDancer - 15 hours
|
|This was parodied in a skit in the 90s but I don't recall whether it was
|on SNL or MadTV.  The politically active prisoner would carry on using
|language that was nearly incomprehensible to those around him.


  |u/LeviathanLust - 14 hours
  |
  |[In Living Color - Best of Oswald
  |Bates](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71xxvp5R9hE)


    |u/BolivianDancer - 13 hours
    |
    |Yay!!! Thanks!


  |u/InertiasCreep - 15 hours
  |
  |In Living Color.  Damon Wayans did it and it was always hilarious.


    |u/buckfouyucker - 10 hours
    |
    |You know why they keep the black olives in a can but green olives in
    |a glass jar? Because they want you to think the black olives are
    |crazy!


    |u/gonzo5622 - 14 hours
    |
    |“1 fish, 2 fish…” lol


      |u/MrPaineUTI - 11 hours
      |
      |Mick mack, paddy whack....


      |u/BolivianDancer - 13 hours
      |
      |Thanks!!!


    |u/BolivianDancer - 13 hours
    |
    |Bingo!!! Thanks!


    |u/TheMightyTywin - 8 hours
    |
    |Link?


|u/Yorgonemarsonb - 13 hours
|
|Writing things down significantly seems to improve my ability to
|remember them. Even if I never have to look what I wrote.


  |u/Ramoncin - 13 hours
  |
  |It's a known phenomenon. I'm studying now for the first time in ages
  |and my tutors always advice me to write things down to memorize them.


    |u/GetsGold - 13 hours
    |
    |Your brain can get lazy when just reading and looking at things. If
    |you write it down, especially by memory without looking, it forces
    |you to process it at least into your short term memory (you can't
    |have written it down if you didn't temporarily memorize it). Doing
    |it repeatedly will help put it into long term memory.


    |u/JustCrazyIdeas - 10 hours
    |
    |I've heard of professors that allow students to bring a one page
    |hand written "cheat sheet" with any important notes they want to
    |include to help with their midterms and final exams. The professor
    |in this circumstance is essentially manipulating the students into
    |studying and remember key facts that might show up on the exam.


|u/reiveroftheborder - 14 hours
|
|He could certainly hold his own in a debate. When he was young, his
|family was attacked by the klan in Nebraska and his father murdered. He
|struggled at school and got in to a life of crime. Meeting NoI in prison
|altered his life in so many ways. After he split from them, I do wonder
|what his philosophy would have been by the end of the 60s and 70s had he
|not been gunned down.


  |u/AdventurousPurpose80 - 13 hours
  |
  |He did change his philosophy after he discovered the truth about that
  |nation ,and after he went to Hajj. That's why he was gunned down in
  |the first place , because he went against them and adopted a new way
  |of fighting racism that was different and against their interests .
  |There are videos of him talking about it , how he changed the way he
  |saw and dealt with things.


    |u/Historical_Pound_136 - 9 hours
    |
    |[you sure about NOL being the assassin
    |?](https://news.yahoo.com/news/malcolm-xs-family-files-
    |lawsuit-024236422.html)


      |u/InappropriateTA - 6 hours
      |
      |Nation of Lislam?


      |u/pblokhout - 2 hours
      |
      |"His family claims none of the undercover agents protected him at
      |the event".    You sure you read the article?


      |u/AdventurousPurpose80 - 2 hours
      |
      |It's not confirmed. There isn't a solid evidence. But everyone
      |suspected it . especially his wife , maybe even was sure of it and
      |talked about after his assassination but apparently she was forced
      |to take it back. that's what I read.


    |u/meandyouandyouandme - 7 hours
    |
    |NOI had nothing to do with his assassination.


  |u/Billy1121 - 14 hours
  |
  |Who is Nol ?


    |u/AasgharTheGreat - 13 hours
    |
    |nation of Islam


  |u/CeruleanBlueWind - 11 hours
  |
  |Not only is he a great orator, he's also pretty funny and sounds very
  |modern (his speeches, not his ideologies). He reminds me of some of dl
  |hughleys routines.


|u/Kthulu71 - 14 hours
|
|Read the dictionary, I've heard.  All the other books are within.


  |u/Superhuzza - 10 hours
  |
  |Don't even need to do that, just read the alphabet and imagine the
  |letters in different orders


    |u/PunctuationsOptional - 8 hours
    |
    |Don't even need to do that, just open your eyes and imagine


      |u/punkalunka - 8 hours
      |
      |Imagine all the human beings in general or considered
      |collectively.


        |u/BigUptokes - 7 hours
        |
        |Imagine imagining.


          |u/FayeDoubt - 3 hours
          |
          |Imagine rich people making concerned faces into a webcam


|u/p0tty_mouth - 10 hours
|
|I just read the dictionary cause I was poor as a kid and didn’t have any
|other entertainment.


  |u/fdes11 - 12 minutes
  |
  |were you transformed into one of the most articulate kids?


|u/waldo--pepper - 14 hours
|
|Many hours lucubrating he did.


  |u/bigfatfurrytexan - 11 hours
  |
  |I, too, have spent many hours lubricating.


    |u/waldo--pepper - 10 hours
    |
    |Academic calumny will surely pass you by then.


      |u/bigfatfurrytexan - 10 hours
      |
      |Ivr had my academic calamity already, thanks


|u/429300 - 4 hours
|
|Yes. He found that many of the other prisoners were quite well read. He
|memorised the dictionary because of his poor vocabulary. Each day he
|would do a page and he said if someone were to ask him what’s an
|aardvark, he would know. It’s a very memorable recollection in his
|autobiography.  He equated being able to read a book to being free
|“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.
|How would I sound writing in slang, the way 1 would *say* it,
|something such as, “Look, daddy, let me pull your coat about a cat,
|Elijah Muhammad—”              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. Finally the dictionary’s A section had
|filled a whole tablet—and I went on into the B’s. That was the way I
|started copying what eventually became the entire dictionary. It went a
|lot faster after so much practice helped me to pick up handwriting
|speed. Between what I wrote in my tablet, and writing letters, during
|the rest of my time in prison I would guess I wrote a million words.
|            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. \*\*Anyone who has read a great
|deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something:
|from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was
|not reading in the library, I was reading on my bunk. You couldn’t have
|gotten me out of books with a wedge. Between Mr. Muhammad’s teachings,
|my correspondence, my visitors—usually Ella and Reginald—and my reading
|of books, months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned.
|In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.”\*\*


|u/Consistent_Fan_4551 - 15 hours
|
|Impressive!


|u/whit9-9 - 13 hours
|
|And yet when anyone is talking about it. He's always overshadowed by MLK
|jr.


  |u/Category3Water - 10 hours
  |
  |That's because MLK never gave a speech where he claimed white women
  |bred with dogs in the caves of Europe and that's why white folks are
  |born with tails (that secretly get removed at birth), kiss dogs on the
  |mouth, and can't stand up straight.


    |u/whit9-9 - 10 hours
    |
    |This has gotta to be at least halfway facetious.


      |u/Category3Water - 10 hours
      |
      |not even a little bit. here's a pull quote, but I'll also link the
      |full speech from late 1962 if you want to peruse it. A lot of
      |conspiracy theory minded racism, but also some pretty funny jokes.
      |Even from the transcript, you can tell the guy had comedic timing.
      |The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that the white man went down
      |into the caves of Europe and he lived there for two thousand years
      |on all fours. Within one thousand years after he had gotten there
      |he was on all fours, couldn't stand upright. You watch an old
      |cracker today. Crackers don't walk upright like black people do.
      |Every time you look at them, they're about to go down on all
      |fours. But those who have had some education, they straighten up a
      |little bit because they're taught how to straighten up. But a
      |black man can be the most dumb, illiterate thing you can find
      |anywhere, and he still walks like a million dollars because by
      |nature he's upright, by nature he stands up. But a white man has
      |to be stood up. You have to put a white man on the square. But the
      |black is born on the square.  Can we prove it? Yes. You notice in
      |the East, dark people carry things on their heads, don't they?
      |Just throw it up there and walk with it, showing you they have
      |perfect poise, perfect balance. It just comes natural to them. You
      |and I lost our poise. We, you, can't even wear a hat on your head,
      |hardly, today \[chuckle\]. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that
      |within one thousand years after the white people were up in the
      |caves they were on all fours. And they were living in the outdoors
      |where it's cold, just as cold over there as it is outside right
      |now. They didn't have clothes. So by being out there in the cold
      |their hair got longer and longer. Hair grew all over their bodies.
      |By being on all fours, the end of their spine begin to grow. They
      |grew a little tail that came out from the end of their spine...Oh
      |yes, this was the white man, brother, up in the caves of Europe.
      |He had a tail that long. You ever notice that anything that walks
      |on all fours has a tail? That which straightens up doesn't have a
      |tail, because when you get down, you see, you just make that spine
      |come right on out. And just like a dog, he was crawling around up
      |there. He was hairy as a dog. He had a tail like a dog. He had a
      |smell like a dog. And nothing could get along with him but another
      |dog. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that all the beasts up in
      |Europe wanted to kill the white man. Yeah, they tried to kill the
      |white man. They were after the white man. They hated the white
      |man. So, he says, what the white man would do, he'd dig a hole in
      |the hill, that was his cave. And his mother and his daughter and
      |his wife would all be in there with the dog. The only thing that
      |made friends with the white man was the dog. Everything else hated
      |him. He'd sit outside of the cave at night in a tree with rocks in
      |his hand, and if any beast came up and tried to get in the cave at
      |his family, he'd throw rocks at it, or he'd have a club that he'd
      |swing down and try to drive it away with it. But the dog stayed in
      |the cave with his family. It was then that the dog and the white
      |man amalgamated. The white woman went with the dog while they were
      |living in the caves of Europe. And right to this very day the
      |white woman will tell you there is nothing she loves better than a
      |dog. They tell you that a dog is a man's best friend. They lived
      |in that cave with those dogs and right now they got that dog
      |smell. They got that dog...they are dog lovers. A dog can get in a
      |white man's house and eat at his table, lick out of his plate.
      |They'll kiss the dog right on the nose and think nothing of it.
      |You're not a dog kisser. You don't see black people kissing or
      |rubbing noses with dogs. But little white children will hug dogs
      |and kiss dogs and eat with dogs. Am i right or wrong? You -all
      |have been inside their kitchens cooling their food, and making
      |their beds, you know how they live. The dog will live right in the
      |white man's house, better than you can; you try and break your way
      |in there and they'll put a rope around your neck \[chuckle\], but
      |the dog has got free run of the whole house. He's the white man's
      |best friend.  [http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/malc
      |olm\_x\_history.html](http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speech
      |es/malcolm_x_history.html)


        |u/whit9-9 - 10 hours
        |
        |Holy crap.


          |u/Category3Water - 9 hours
          |
          |He eventually disavowed this type of stuff, but most Malcolm
          |quotes people use or post on social media or dorm room posters
          |are from a time when he was into this shit.


        |u/lord_ne - 6 hours
        |
        |Was waiting for it to say "they've got that dog in them", very
        |disappointed


|u/Intergalacticdespot - 14 hours
|
|Maybe the X was just where he stopped in the dictionary, to remind him
|in case he got locked up again? 


  |u/PhiStudios_ - 9 hours
  |
  |LMFAO I JUST GOT IT


  |u/IndependentFennel476 - 7 hours
  |
  |Now that was creative. I actually chuckled


  |u/Most_Double_3559 - 11 hours
  |
  |I thought this was funny :/


    |u/Intergalacticdespot - 10 hours
    |
    |I did too. And I thought people would get that it was a joke too.
    |But...reddit gonna reddit. 


      |u/interfail - 6 hours
      |
      |I don't know why Redditors assume that when no-one laughs at their
      |joke it means they didn't realise it was meant to be a joke.   We
      |don't do it this with anything else. If someone says they don't
      |like Dominos, you don't expect them to go "don't you understand?
      |It's supposed to be a pizza! How did you not notice?" They just
      |accept you think it's a shit pizza.


        |u/Eddagosp - 3 hours
        |
        |>We don't do it this with anything else.    Yes they do? It
        |happens literally all the time with practically everything.
        |State ***any*** subjective opinion and someone will crawl out of
        |the gaps in space and time to try to explain why you're wrong or
        |"just don't get it."


|u/Rocky_Vigoda - 9 hours
|
|This speech by him is still relevant.
|https://youtu.be/T3PaqxblOx0?si=T_axB7AZ9PbC_etU


|u/Enchanted_Culture - 7 hours
|
|He was so intelligent and articulate!


|u/MiamiPower - 4 hours
|
|Great book definitely worth reading.   The Autobiography of Malcolm as
|told by Alex Haley


|u/kobeyoboy - 43 minutes
|
|Still no confirmation of the identity of the person responsible for
|murdering this man .


|u/xboxwirelessmic - 10 hours
|
|I read the dictionary, turns out the Zulu did it.


|u/RexDraco - 6 hours
|
|Malcom X was so incredibly different in his earlier days and later. He
|not only learned how to speak better, he always presented himself better
|too. He was strongly inspired by Martin Luther King and his successful
|and peaceful protesting methods. Malcom X was trying to be a radical "by
|force" leader, but when he saw being peaceful as an effective option, it
|changed him and his methods for the better.        Id love to see a good
|movie watching the transformation. Dont get me wrong, I think the
|peaceful shit wouldn't work today, it is still inspiring lol


|u/HarveyDentBeliever - 12 hours
|
|This is a dumb person’s idea of how to build vocabulary strength.


  |u/Isaac_Shepard - 7 hours
  |
  |Eminem reads the dictionary all the time, what are you talking about?


|u/bigfatfurrytexan - 11 hours
|
|So...he was autistic?


|u/youre_soaking_in_it - 12 hours
|
|Reading the dictionary and taking notes does not seem like a good way to
|get smart.


  |u/MarromBrown - 11 hours
  |
  |Well seemed to work for Malcolm X mate what have you done?


    |u/Mithrilh4ll - 5 hours
    |
    |Motherfucker  believed in sky fairies...he should have tried science
    |books instead.


      |u/MarromBrown - 58 minutes
      |
      |Incredibly delusional for random redditors to say that _malcolm
      |x_, a brilliant orator who was a key figure in the civil rights
      |movement, was stupid. Truly peak reddit.