My Personal Opinion on Malcolm X'S Autobiography

In The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as Malcolm grows up, he goes through situations in his life that mark him as a person. He starts with a name and then he gets called another name and finally ends up with another. I think that each of the names he got represented him and who he was at that chapter of his life. This is why I will be writing about what is the significance/power of a name? I think Malcolm X is a perfect example to answer this question.

In the first part of his life, he is just Malcolm Little, a kid who lives with his parents and siblings. But as a child, he goes through rough things that mark him. It starts of with little malcom and his family being forced to leave their home because racist people from the Ku Klux Klan went tto his family house and threaten her mother and malcolm said “ The Klansmen shouted threats and warnings at her that we had better get out of town because the good christians white people were not going to stand for my father’s spreading trouble among the good negroes of Oahama with the back to africa preachings of marcus gravey”(haley 1). After the threats the Ku Klux Klan had made they went back but this time they destroyed their home and malcolm father decided they would leave town after he was born and they did they moved to lansing michigan.

Something that really impacted malcolm little was when his father died. Malcolm’s father was killed by the black white legion, “ i can remember a vague commotion, the house filled up with people crying, saying bitterly that the white black legion had finally gotten him”(haley 10). After his father dead his and his family life got rough they went downhill. Malcolm and his siblings go taken away from their mother and each of them went with other families. Her mother was sent to a mental hospital.

Later on he met her sister ella and he moved from michigan to boston with ella and there is where he went downhill because of the decisions he made and where he got the name Detroit Red. malcolm got a job as a shoeshine boy at the roseland state ballroom thanks to his friend he met whose name is shorty. I think that at this job is where he learns about gambling the drugs and other stuff. He started dronking and smoking and gabbling.” the first liquor i drank, my first cigarettes, even my first reffers, i can’t specifically remember. But i know they were all mixed together with my first shooting craps, playing cards, and betting my dollar a day on the numbers as i started hanging out at night with shorty and his friends”(haley 52).

Malcolm got his name dretroit red because of his hair and from where he was “ anyway, before long, my nickname happened. Just when i don’t know- but people, knowing i was from michigan, would ask me what city. Since most new yorkers had never heard of lansing i would name Detroit. Gradually, i began to be called Detrot Red- and it stuck.”( haley 99). Malcolm began selling refeers and he would get them from sammy the pimp he would sell them to the contacts he had. He started to make a lot of money and he liked that and i think because of that he got more and more into it. The detectives found out that malcolm was selling reefers and would follow him to caught him but he started to be more careful when it came to selling. Malcolm got caught in his apartment and he got about ten years.

In jail is where he saw that the things he did when he was out before he got caught was wrong. Here is where he made a positive change in him he began to study and here is where he became religious and how he got the name Malcolm X. He started to find about the religous world because of his brother philbert wrote to him and told him he should pray to allah.” one day in 1948, after i had been transferred to concord prisoj, my brother philbert, who was forever joining something, wrote me this time that he had discovered the natural religion for black man he belonged now, he said to something called the nation of islam. He said i should pray to allah for deliverance.”(haley 158). He then beagn to get more involved in the islam religion and began to learn about elijah mohammed. After he got out of prison he would work with elijah mohammed. He would get his name Malcolm X becuase elijah mohammed said that their last names were the names of the white men who owned their ancestors and to replace their last name they would replace it with the letter X. He was then kicked out of the nation of islam and he goes to mecca and there is where he changes his name to El Hajii Malik El-Shabazz.

I think that the way that my name has imapct my life is that it makes me kind of unique in the way that i don’t know and haven’t heard of many people with ny name i think my name is not as common as other names are. I don’t really get called a lot of names i don’t have nicknames i just like to get called by name.

In conclusion as i reaader i think that i did okay but i could have done better becasue i was engaged in the book i found it very interesting as read on but i didn’t finsh it and that’s only me to blame because i chose to do other things instead of reading the book. If i were to reccomend this book to anybody it would be anyone who is interested in learning about malcolm X.

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