Malcolm X

Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska, became one of the most forceful African American voices of the civil rights movement. Later known as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, he rose from poverty, family disruption, and criminal activity to national prominence as a revolutionary and Black nationalist leader. He was a vocal advocate for Black empowerment and for the promotion of Islam within the African American community. To many Black people and Muslims worldwide, he became a celebrated figure in the pursuit of racial justice, even as critics accused him of preaching violence.

His early life was marked by pressure, danger, and loss. His parents, Louise Little and Reverend Earl Little, admired Pan-African activist Marcus Garvey; Earl led a local Universal Negro Improvement Association branch, and Louise served as secretary and branch reporter. They taught their children self-reliance and Black pride. The family fled threats from the Ku Klux Klan and was harassed in Lansing, Michigan, by the Black Legion. In 1931, Earl died in what was officially ruled a streetcar accident, though Louise believed he had been murdered. After Louise was committed to Kalamazoo State Hospital in 1938, Malcolm and his siblings were separated and sent to foster homes.

Malcolm excelled in junior high school but left high school in 1941 before graduating, after a white teacher told him that becoming a lawyer was “no realistic goal for a nigger.” He later recalled feeling that the white world offered no place for a career-oriented Black man, no matter his talent. From age 14 to 21, he worked various jobs while living with his half-sister Ella Little-Collins in Roxbury, a largely African American neighborhood of Boston. In 1946, he was sentenced to eight to ten years in prison for larceny and burglary.

Prison changed the course of his public life. There he discovered the Nation of Islam, and after his parole in 1952 he adopted the name Malcolm X, using “X” to symbolize his unknown African ancestral surname while rejecting the name Little. From 1952 to 1964, he served as the Nation of Islam’s spokesperson and quickly became one of its most influential leaders. For 12 years he was its public face, calling for Black empowerment and separation of Black and white Americans, while criticizing Martin Luther King Jr. and the mainstream civil rights movement for their emphasis on nonviolence and racial integration. From the 1950s onward, he was also under FBI surveillance.

In the 1960s, Malcolm X grew disillusioned with the Nation of Islam and its leader Elijah Muhammad. After completing the Hajj to Mecca, he embraced Sunni Islam and the mainstream civil rights movement and became known as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. Following travel across Africa, he publicly renounced the Nation of Islam and founded the Islamic MMI and the Pan-African Organization of Afro-American Unity. In 1964, his conflict with the Nation intensified, and he was repeatedly sent death threats. He was assassinated in New York City on February 21, 1965. His autobiography, written in collaboration with Alex Haley, was published posthumously that same year.

Malcolm X’s words still carry weight because they came from a life lived close to fear, anger, discipline, faith, and change. He spoke in a direct style that did not soften what he saw. “So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise,” he said, and that sentence fits the public force of his life. He is commemorated through Malcolm X Day in various United States cities, and hundreds of streets and schools have been renamed in his honor. The Audubon Ballroom, where he was killed, was partly redeveloped in 2005 as the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center.