Paul Robeson and Malcolm X

In many ways, Robeson was more favored in life than was Malcolm Little, later to be called Malcolm X. For both men, education would be an important element in their success, but the natures of their respective educational experience were very different. Their family lives as children also were quite different. Paul Robeson was born in 1890 in Princeton, New Jersey, far from the racially troubled South. The civil war had ended some 30 years before. The slaves had been freed, but the free blacks had not achieved equality or overcome the discrimination that replaced slavery. Blacks and whites were sharply divided in the North as well as in the South, and Robeson would remember his schooling as taking plac

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ed it. What might be called the radicalization of malcolm X took place as a direct consequences of his experiences first as a criminal and then as a thinking individual for whom the world suddenly opens up when he begins to read. Prior to this, he had experienced the discrimination and bigotry facing all blacks in American society in some degree. Paul Robeson was an educated man who also experienced this discrimination and bigotry. He had decided to become an actor, and he found the theatrical world also beset with discriminatory practices. For Malcolm X, his developing philosophy in prison was a reaction to the perception that so many blacks had blinded themselves to the reality of their position and acquiesced in their new form of enslavement. Robeson, as an actor, at first enjoyed the opportunity he was given, something so few blacks could have, especially to the degree that he achieved starring roles on stage and in films: Later I came to understand that the Negro artist could not view the matter simply in terms of his individual interests, and that he had a responsibility to his people who rightfully resented the traditional stereotyped portrayals of Negroes on stage and screen. The political and social careers of R
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Approximate Word count = 3306
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)