Comparing Two Black Activists' Autobiographies

Both The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Booker T. Washington's autobiography, Up From Slavery, contain descriptions of their development as students and readers interspersed throughout. Those narratives contain some similarities (arising partly from survivorship bias in that they both obtained education sufficient to write an autobiography) as well as differences (whose existence is also unsurprising given their markedly different approaches to life and race relations).

The extent of their commitment to learning is a striking similarity between Malcolm X and Booker T. Washington. They both professed a love of learning in their autobiographies. Malcolm X wrote, "you will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I'm not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man." Washington discussed his passion for education arising early in his life upon seeing a school while he was a slave. He wrote, "the picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression on me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise." They also both relate stories illustrating their commitment being reflected in sacrificing sleep for studying. In prison, Malcolm X would continue reading after lights out by a slight glow that came from the hallway, pretending to be asleep when the guards came past. "Three of four hours of sleep a night was enough for me," he wrote. "Often in the years in the streets I had slept less than that." Similarly, Washington sacrificed some sleep to be able to attend the Hampton Institute. In order to pay for room and board, he took on a job as a janitor. He wrote, "I had a large number of rooms to care for, and had to work late into the night, while at the same time I had to rise by four o'clock in the morning, in order to build the fires and have a little time in which to prepare my lessons."

 

A mugshot of Malcolm X

The experiences of Malcolm X and Booker T. Washington diverge in the types of education that they received. Malcolm X initially had some formal education but then ended up in prison, where he taught himself for the rest of his education. He wrote in his autobiography that people who did not know him often thought that he was quite educated but that that "impression [was] due entirely to [his] prison studies." In contrast, Washington's early education was self-directed. He wrote, "I tried in all the way I could think of to learn it [the alphabet],—all of course without a teacher, for I could find no one to teach me." It was only later on that he started getting tutoring at night and eventually went to the Hampton Institute, where he got his first real formal education.

Another difference is related: the motivation and content of their self-studying. In his autobiography, Washington wrote, "from the time that I can remember having any thoughts about anything, I recall that I had an intense longing to learn to read. I determined, when quite a small child, that, if I accomplished nothing else in life, I would in some way get enough education to enable me to read common books and newspapers." Thus the nature of his studies: he obtained a spelling book and taught himself to read. Malcolm X found himself in a different situation. He had some schooling, so he knew how to read and write. He was motivated by the limitations of his education. He wrote, "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." Thus, his autodidacticism began not with a spelling book but a dictionary and not for the purpose of being able to read but of being able to write.

 

Washington giving a speech in 1906

Malcolm X and Booker T. Washington were two influential figures who had very different ideas. While Malcolm X said that white people were the devil, Washington encouraged Black people to work hard to move up in society. Their different outlooks can perhaps be partially explained by their personal journeys with reading. Malcolm X's views arose because he ended up in prison, where he was able to read a lot about how, in his words, "the collective white man had acted like a devil in virtually every contact he had with the world's collective non-white man." Washington's contrasting views arose from his contrasting experience of having to teach himself to read and work very hard to get an education. That he was ultimately successful led him to believe that the path he had taken was one open to all Black people, should they choose to pursue it.