Cardinal Newman's definition of a university can be used to describe the acquisition of knowledge by Frederick Douglass, Eudora Welty, and Malcolm universal learning; a place where different people with different backgrounds meet under one roof. This kind of definition has more than Eudora Welty's charm; where she was taught in class, lesson after lesson. However, this was not true of either Frederick Douglass or Malcolm X; their informed way of learning was due to their own thoughts and perseverance. They took the other side of the definition of what a university is. As the Cardinal states here in his book The idea of ​​university I. What is a University? “…circulation of thought, through personal relationships…” (1). Whatever the case, all authors preserved knowledge in different ways. Frederick Douglass was a born slave who escaped Maryland, although he was far from his slaves he became a defender of those still enslaved. Douglass could not have achieved this goal if he had not learned to read and write. Since he had not learned to read and write. Since he was born a slave, reading and writing were nothing more than a distant dream. However, he received assistance from his lover named Sophia. Sophia was Douglass's teacher from the beginning; she had only shown him the alphabet when her husband had asked her to teach the blacks to read. So he immediately stopped teaching him. But that didn't stop young Frederick, oh no, she had given him an inch now that she wanted the whole yard. In his essay “Learning to Read and Write” he states, “…was to make friends with all the little white boys I met… middle of paper… on his pilgrimage to Mecca . There he saw that Elijah Muhhammad's teachings were not entirely true. As the Wikipedia source states, "Malcolm (Wikipedia10). With this new knowledge Malcolm sought to change the way Islam was taught in America. However this new idea had led to the death of Malcolm X in the year 1965. All three of these infamous writers and rights advocates had all learned the information in different ways. Whether it's scamming white children on the streets, in a classroom, or even behind suffocating prison walls; knowledge is everywhere and you don't have to go to one place to learn it. Knowledge is obtained by those who seek it with sufficient dedication and tenacity.