The story Nightjohn is about a girl named Sarny who lived in a hut on a plantation. On the plantation you got to eat two times a day from a wooden trough, and then they had to get back to work right away. A man came to the plantation named Nightjohn whose back was filled with scares from his old whipping. One day Nightjohn can around asking if anyone had some tobacco. He found Sarny and asked her to trade him for tobacco, but Sarny didn’t know what he would want in return. Nightjohn said he would trade her the letters A, B, and C for a lip of chew. Sarny didn’t know what letters where or what they meant but she wanted to learn. So she waited for her mammy to go to sleep then when out for her lesson with Nightjohn. He taught her the letter A by drawing it into the ground and saying this sounds like “ayyy” or “ahh.” All night that was all she could think about. In the story it also talks about others sad stories including Alice’s, she was caught wandering and was whipped until her back was ripped and bleeding. She was then left to hang there until the next day. Sarny’s mammy when out and covered her back and when she was able to get down the next morning mammy helped her clean the cuts. A couple days later Nightjohn teaches Sarny the letter B, explaining it sounds like “bee.” While in the middle of the lesson Mammy comes out of and yells at Nightjohn for trying to teach her to read and said “Child, they’ll cut your thumbs off if you learn to read.” Then Nightjohn begins to tell his story. He said he ran away and got clean; he ran all the way to the north but then came back. Mammy and Sarny were confused and asked him why he came back. He said to teach reading and writing so that they can write about their time at the plantation. Mammy then moved back and Nightjohn began with the letter C.

The next story is Malcolm X, he was a black boy who was gangling and tall, liked basketball but wasn’t very good at it, and had a brother who was a great fighter. Malcolm once thought that since his brother was a good fighter then he should try it to. So he was thirteen when he signed up for his first fight. He was paired up with a white boy names Bill Peterson, and was down pretty fast. After this he went into hiding so no one could make fun of him and then decided he should try and fight Bill one more time. This time he lost again and it was probably the shortest “fight” in history. At school one day Malcolm was being a troublemaker and put a thumbtack on one of the chairs and then was expelled for doing so. He was told he was going to be sent to reform school when he was thirteen years old, but ended up going to a detection home in Mason, Michigan. The lady in charge was Mrs. Swerlin and her husband and they were very good people. They had a white cook-helper named Lucille Lathrop and her husband’s name was Duane and he worked somewhere else. In the classroom people said the word “nigger” in a common sentence and Malcolm didn’t think they were giving him the credit for having the same sensitivity and intellectuality as them! One day she finally told him that he was going to enter Mason Junior High School and he and his friends the Lyonse’s were the only town Negroes. In school he liked English and history the most and disliked math! Malcolm says basketball was a big think in his like and they traveled places to play. Years later he visited Boston and saw for the first time a black-white couple strolling down the street holding hands. He also for the first time in his life had restlessness with being around white people. Malcolm wanted to be a lawyer when he got older but his teacher Mr. Ostrowski said to him that he needed to be realistic, and this made Malcolm upset, because he was one of the best students in the class with the highest grades. In the end he moved to Boston and became “successful.”

The Great Debaters and Nightjohn were similar in the way that one of the characters in the book nightjohn they witnessed a Negro being lynching. In The Great Debate movie the team of debaters was driving and drove up to a spot where a Negro was being hung and burned to death for no reason at all! And when the people spotted them they ran after the car but the team got away. Malcolm X was similar because both the Negros were told they couldn’t do anything but then ended up doing great in the long run. Also because in all three they were treated different because of their color. In the end all three were treated badly for different and similar things including, smarts, color, and many others.