Compair and Contrast.

Nightjohn was a book about a young girl that lived in a hut on a plantation. Her name was Sonya; she explained how rough it was to live on this plantation. She said that they were beaten and weren’t feed well at all. A new man came to the plantation named Nightjohn; he offered anyone in the hut on letter of the alphabet for some tobacco. She eventually learned how to read and write. Her mother then found out that she was being taught letters of the alphabet and she was extremely upset because black people of her time weren’t allowed or supposed to know how to do such a thing. Nightjohn told her what he was doing and what his mission was and he said that he was once free in the north and that he came back down south to teach people like Sonya how to read and write.

                Malcolm X was about a boy that was extremely awkward negro boy that grew up in Michigan.  He was always feeling down on himself in the beginning of the book because he was jealous of his brother because he was an excellent boxer. Malcolm knew he was too awkward to box like his brother. He wanted attention so he acted out, his parents eventually sent him to a reform school in Alma Michigan where he felt he could fit in. He was one of the only two black children there but was at the top of his class. He was elected class president.  He wanted to be a lawyer but his elders felt that it was an unrealistic goal for him. He never became that layer and all because his teacher told him the he thought it wasn’t a good idea.

                The Great Debaters and Nightjohn were similar in the way that one of the characters in the book witnessed a negro lynching. In the Debate movie they were driving in Texas and drove up on a man that had been hung and was burning for no reason at all. In Nightjohn, Sonya saw lynching more frequently because people would act out and be executed because of their actions. Malcolm X was similar because both Negros were beat down and told they wouldn’t be able to do something. Malcolm was told he could never be a lawyer and the negro school was told they would never be able to beat a white ivy league school such as Harvard University.