Segregation: Malcolm X

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Segregation mini-series, episode 255) is a short documentary about Malcolm X, one of the most famous leaders of black Americans in the 1960s. A narrator explains that he was born Malcolm Little in 1925, that his childhood was very hard (his father died when he was six and his mother later became very ill), and that he grew up in other people's homes. As a young man he went to prison for stealing, in 1946. In prison he wanted to write letters but did not know enough words, so he copied a dictionary by hand, page by page, reading each page aloud, and then read every book in the prison library. He also joined a religious group, the Nation of Islam, and when he came out in 1952 he changed his name: he said Little came from the people who once owned his family as slaves, so he chose X for the African family name he never knew. At first, as a powerful speaker, he said that black people should live apart from white people; after his journey to Mecca, the holy city of Islam, in 1964, where he met Muslims of every color, he came to believe that people of all colors could live together. His death in New York in 1965 is told in one plain sentence, and the episode ends on a question about the dictionary.

The narration uses the present simple and the past simple; no grammar point is taught. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (Mecca, the Nation of Islam, page by page). The closing question (Why do you think the dictionary was so important to Malcolm X?) opens a short class discussion about words, reading and having a voice.

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script; there is no lesson plan. The pupil pack and the teacher pack (answers highlighted) are one A4 page each, with the text, three pictures, the key words and the 10 questions. The folder also holds a one-page pupil sheet and a teacher sheet with the answer key. Learners should know the present simple and the past simple of common verbs. The script explains its new words as it goes.