Post 8

The definition that I got from reading “Sponsors of Literacy,” is that a sponsor is a figure or figures who have turned up typically in a person’s memories of learning through literature. These sponsors were sometimes older relatives, teachers, priests, supervisors, military officers, editors, and other influential members of society. The sponsors of literacy according to Brandt, were “powerful figures who were usually richer, more knowledgeable, and more entrenched than the sponsored, sponsors nevertheless enter a reciprocal relationship with those they underwrite, but also stand to gain benefits from their success.” When Malcolm X was in prison, he turned to members of society that were influential in furthering the rights of African Americans, and seeking social justice for the years of hardships that the white man had put colored peoples through.

Malcolm X’s sponsors were Elijah Muhammad, the Norfolk Prison Colony, and Bimbi. His access to sponsors were determined by socioeconomic conditions contingent upon race and class, because he became interested in reading about black history, or non-whitened history. Slavery shocked him, and made the greatest impact upon him in the search for information and history on colored people. Most of the history that was reported during that time was from the white man and does not describe the hardships that many Africans, African Americans, and other colored peoples had to go through. This made him want to go further in to history and found sponsors who were also interested in reporting the hardships that colored peoples have had to go through, as well as being activists for the equality of colored people. One can argue that Malcolm X’s literacy sponsors “constrained” his literacy acquisition, because much of his focus in literature became reading only stories based on white peoples oppressing colored peoples. I also feel that one of his constraints could be that he was trying to please Mr. Muhammad with what he was reading. I feel like this could have been one of the constraints, because I felt that in the beginning Malcolm was only focusing on certain topics that Mr. Muhammad was interested in.