#24

20 january 2011

Today, in the class of English, we finally had the time to let Pousada finish his presentation about Malcom X that he had already begun in the class of 17th January.

His presentation, was really extensive and detailed. He decided to present a power point with a chronology of Malcom X, which means, he got through all of the years of Malcom X's life and explained what he did on those years to raise awareness to his cause, but what he did on those years with his personal life as well.

I think Pousada did this, so we could know something about the personal himself and not only about the cause, because whenever someone tries to do a presentation of someone who did that a lot of stuff dedicated to his cause in his life , they let themselves skip the personal life and the character of who they are talking about, and they just explain what he did, so I think that's a positive point in Pousada's presentation.

So, Malcom X lived for 40 years, and to introduce, he fought for some of the ideals of Martin Luther King, but he chose another path. Malcom X was born as Malcom Little, and before he was born, the KKK, a racist organisation, threatened his family so they had to move out, and they did that, twice by the menace of KKK. In his early years , Malcom lived in several foster homes, after his father death. Now I want to emphasize that death as Pousada did, just because I think it's Pousada's favourite part of his presentation, because, as he explained, Malcom's father death, after having been run over by a car, was considered an ‘accident’. Now, Pousada did a lot of hand gestures indicating inverted commas, to try to explain that later on it was proved that it couldn't hve been an accident, so I think he really thinks that it wasn't an accident... But now, as I was saying, Malcom X lived in several foster homes after his father died and after his sister (i don't remember if it was his sister or his mother) was declared insane. Then he got arrested, and after he was released, in '53 he was named assistant minister. Then he was asked to lead Temple 7 in '54, just two years after his release, and in '59 he went to Africa for the first time. In the year of 1960 he met Fidel Castro and in '63, after making a comment on a radio show about the death of J.F. Kennedy, he got 90 days of prohibition of public speaking, and then, in the same year he became a Sunni Muslim and travelled to the UK where he argued in an important debate that was even aired by the BBC. In '64 he left the NOL and founded the Muslim Mosque, inc, went to Africa for the 2nd and the 3rd time, he also met Martin Luther King but it was only a meeting for the cameras because they had never spoken with each.

At last, he was murdered on the 21 February of 1965, when he was going to start his speech, but then someone shouted: " Nigga, get your hands of my pocket", and then someone appeared with a shot gun and shot him at the same time. Then another man appeared and did the same. They were up to court and one got out the jail in the '90's and the others, just last year. Finally, Martin Luther King said he cared about him because he believed on the black community.