Malcolm X

BORN: May 19, 1925 • Omaha, Nebraska

DIED: February 21, 1965 • New York, New York.

American civil rights activist

Malcolm X became one of the most important icons of twentieth-century African American life after his 1965 assassination, but stirred tremendous public debate about racial injustice in the United States in the years just before his death. As the national spokesperson for the Nation of Islam, a black Muslim religious sect, he urged African Americans to move beyond the promise of uniting with mainstream America and embrace their rich, but buried African heritage instead. He later broke with the Nation of Islam, converted to the traditional form of the Muslim religion, and began to promote racial and cultural tolerance. His black nationalism, however, influenced a younger generation of activists. Although Malcolm X became more tolerant toward the end of his life, some people continued to take a militant stance. Urban frustration and unrest eventually erupted in various American cities in the years following his death.

"The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks."

Troubled childhood

Malcolm X was born on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska, as Malcolm Little. His father, Earl Little, was a freelance preacher who headed the Omaha chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). This was an influential black nationalist group founded by Marcus Garvey (1887–1940), an African American of Jamaican origin. Malcolm's mother, Louise, was of West Indian heritage. Malcolm was the fourth of the couple's six children.

Omaha authorities considered Earl Little a troublemaker because of his speeches promoting the UNIA message, which urged blacks to rediscover and take pride in their African roots. The family was harassed by white-supremacist groups—those who believe in the superiority of the white race above all others. In 1929, just after the birth of a new Little, Yvonne, the family's house burned down in the middle of the night in what was likely a case of arson. They relocated to Lansing, Michigan, where Earl Little continued his work for UNIA. Again, shadowy white-supremacist groups bullied him. One night in 1931, he was found dead. He had been hit by a streetcar, a vehicle that ran on rails laid into the street and powered by electricity. Although Little had been beaten before being struck by the streetcar, his death was ruled a suicide. That ruling meant Louise Little was unable to collect on a life insurance policy, and the family struggled as a result. They received government aid in the form of monthly welfare checks, but such assistance also brought frequent visits from county caseworkers. Eventually, the social workers put Malcolm and his siblings into foster care, a system where children are sent to live with other families in an effort to give them the care that they need. Louise Little had a nervous breakdown and was placed in a state psychiatric hospital, where she spent the next twenty-six years.

Growing up in a mid-sized town in the Midwest, Malcolm was limited by racial attitudes during that era. As he wrote in his autobiography, blacks were never expected to be on any street after dark in nearby East Lansing, home to Michigan State University and thousands of white college students. They were also expected to show a proper amount of respect to whites, a practice Malcolm opposed intensely. In his early teens, he ran into trouble at school, was expelled, and sent to a juvenile detention home. While there, he attended a local middle school where he was its only black student. He earned good grades and was even elected his seventh-grade class president. A year later, a teacher asked him what he wanted to do for a living in the future. Malcolm said that he hoped to become a lawyer. The teacher told him that was an unrealistic goal and that he should think about carpentry instead. Realizing that top grades and leadership abilities were not enough to succeed in the predominantly white world, Malcolm became withdrawn and sullen.

Influenced by Nation of Islam

Malcolm had spent the previous summer in Boston, Massachusetts, with his half-sister, Ella, from his father's first marriage. After he finished the eighth grade around 1941, he wrote Ella and asked if he could come and live with her. He spent the next few years living first in Roxbury, Boston's predominantly black quarter, and working at odd jobs before taking a food-service position on the train that ran from Boston to New York City. Already fascinated by urban living, he spent more and more time in Harlem, the thriving African American section of Manhattan. He became a well-known figure, nicknamed "Detroit Red" for the slight reddish color of his hair, which he straightened by means of painful barbershop chemicals. He satisfied his desire for flashy suits, gambling, and a nightclub-centered social life with illegal business activities, which included selling marijuana and committing burglary. His luck ran out in 1946 when he was arrested and jailed for the next six years.

Prison transformed Malcolm. He read extensively and learned about a new religion, the Nation of Islam, thanks to letters and visits from two of his brothers, who were members of the black Muslim group. Originally called the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, the sect was led by Elijah Muhammad (1897–1975) and had been founded in Detroit, Michigan, where Malcolm's older brother, Wilfred, lived. The religion contended that many Africans had originally been Muslim (followers of Islam), and it urged African Americans to renounce Christianity, the religion that had permitted slavery. Nation of Islam ministers also preached that Africans had been the first race on Earth, while the white race resulted from genetic experiments carried out by an evil scientist on the Greek island of Patmos.

When Malcolm was paroled in 1952, he moved to Detroit and adopted the Nation's rules completely. He had already given up cigarettes and pork in prison. Once out of jail, he stayed away from alcohol and drugs, and he prayed five times a day. Families like Wilfred's lived according to strict rules of personal conduct, with the women dressing modestly and the children acting subdued and respectful. "I had never seen any Christian-believing Negroes conduct themselves like the Muslims," he wrote in his autobiography about the first Nation of Islam services he attended. "I had never dreamed of anything like that atmosphere among black people who had learned to be proud they were black, who had learned to love other black people instead of being jealous and suspicious."

Becomes "Malcolm X"

Malcolm quickly emerged as a leader within the Nation of Islam. He met Elijah Muhammad, who suggested that he change his last name from Little to "X." This was a symbolic rejection of Little's previous name, which they considered to have been a slave name. Within a few years, Malcolm X rose to a post that made him second in command only to Elijah Muhammad. Also, he had opened Nation of Islam temples in Boston, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. His extraordinarily powerful style of preaching lured many new converts. He worked to win over the skeptics, who were doubtful and uneasy about the Nation's strict rules against gambling, drug and alcohol use, and sexual misconduct. He reminded them that blacks needed to live pure lives, otherwise the whites would continue to control them. He followed those teachings in his own personal life, providing an example of a committed husband and father after his 1958 marriage to Betty Sanders, a nursing student. Over the next seven years, they became parents to six daughters, including twins born shortly after he was killed.

Malcolm X's leadership is generally credited with increasing Nation of Islam ranks from just 500 in 1952 to 30,000 members just ten years later. But as Black Muslim converts grew in number, media interest in the group also increased. In 1959 Malcolm X was interviewed for a television news documentary about the Nation of Islam, which was presented by CBS News journalist Mike Wallace. After agreeing to participate, Malcolm X and the other Nation of Islam leaders were upset by the sensationalist nature of the story that aired under the title "The Hate That Hate Produced." They felt that the religion's teachings were misrepresented to suggest that Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and others were promoting hatred toward whites.

The television special made Malcolm X famous across America, and he was asked to appear on panel discussions on radio and television to debate the topic of race in America. His fellow panelists were often black scholars or civil rights leaders, and he easily intimidated his opponents. Sometimes he was accused of inciting blacks to become violent. Malcolm warned that asking the white establishment for fair treatment, through its own legal and judicial system, was misguided. The rights of blacks, he asserted in what became his most famous phrase, must be seized "by any means necessary."

Discontent with the Nation of Islam

Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, and the Nation of Islam were watched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The growing number of followers in cities with a large black population concerned the FBI. The agency was aware that unrest was brewing in various parts of the United States. By the early 1960s, the Nation of Islam's leadership was urging the creation of a separate black state, and Malcolm X went to Georgia in January 1961 to meet with Ku Klux Klan leaders there. The Ku Klux Klan is a secret organization, founded in the United States around 1866, to advance white supremacy often through intimidation, terror, and violence. Such meetings and political activity only intensified the FBI's interest. Malcolm X later claimed that some FBI agents sent to spy on Nation of Islam meetings actually joined the movement and turned into counterspies as a result.

The enormous amount of media attention that focused on Malcolm X caused resentment within the Nation of Islam. In turn, Malcolm X began to have doubts about the leadership of Elijah Muhammad. There had been some rumors that Elijah Muhammad had engaged in adultery. Malcolm X met with two former female employees of the Nation of Islam, who had filed paternity lawsuits against Elijah Muhammad. Such legal actions claimed that Muhammad had fathered one or more of the secretaries' children. Only then was Malcolm X convinced that the rumors were true. He confronted Elijah Muhammad, who explained that the affairs, which were expressly forbidden by the strict Nation of Islam code of personal conduct, were similar to those that biblical prophets had also enjoyed. Disillusioned, Malcolm X began to question some of the group's teachings and goals. He began to rethink the organization's policy of helping only African Americans who converted and became part of its membership, rather than all blacks in need. He was also uneasy with the group's ideology of black separatism, realizing that it shared similarities with white-supremacist beliefs.

Malcolm X's formal break with the Nation of Islam came in a series of events that followed the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963; served 1961–63). At a New York City lecture, an audience member asked Malcolm X to comment on the tragedy. He answered that it was a case of "chickens coming home to roost." By this he meant that there was an overall state of violence in America that he believed Kennedy had done little to stop. In his eyes, that culture of violence was responsible for the assassination. Newspaper headlines repeated the comment the following day, and Malcolm X was widely criticized for his words. In response, Elijah Muhammad banned him from speaking to the media for three months.

In March 1964, Malcolm X officially left the Nation of Islam and established the Muslim Mosque, Inc., in Harlem. A month later, he made a pilgrimage (journey) to Mecca, the city in Saudi Arabia that all orthodox Muslim men are required to visit once in their lifetimes. After making the hajj, or Islamic pilgrimage, he visited several countries in Africa. The experience changed him. As noted on the Malcolm X Museum Web site, he wrote the following in an Egyptian newspaper: "At Mecca I saw the spirit of unity and true brotherhood displayed by tens of thousands of people from all over the world, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans." He added that the experience provided "a new insight into the true brotherhood of Islam, which encompasses all the races of mankind."

Emerges as more tolerant leader

When Malcolm X returned to the United States in May 1964, a crowd of reporters and photographers was there to greet him at the airport. In the ensuing press conference, he announced that he had become a traditional Sunni Muslim, and that his Muslim Mosque in Harlem was linking itself to the 750 million Muslims around the world. He also noted that his visit to the Middle East and Africa had changed some of his views on race in America. "In the past, yes, I have made sweeping indictments [accusations] of all white people," he said, according to his autobiography. "I will never be guilty of that again—as I know now that some white people are truly sincere, that some truly are capable of being brotherly toward a black man. The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks."

Malcolm changed his name to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and in June 1964 founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity. He returned to Africa a month later as its delegate to the first conference of the Organization of African Unity, a new political alliance created by some of the former European colonial territories that had recently achieved independence and elected their first black-led governments. He also reached out to other social reform groups, including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which had led the desegregation fight in the South, and to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) and his associates. Previously, he had dismissed King's crusade of civil disobedience and nonviolent protest, believing it was misguided.

Malcolm X's change in attitude angered many Muslims who had joined the Nation of Islam in the last decade. For years, he had received death threats, by mail and over the telephone, from white supremacists. After his pilgrimage, however, there were rumors that his former colleagues wanted to assassinate him. On February 14, 1965, Malcolm X's family home in Queens, a New York City borough, was firebombed, but his wife and four children escaped the explosion and flames unharmed. Elijah Muhammad told the press the following day that Malcolm X had probably set the fire himself in order to stir public sympathy.

On Sunday, February 21, 1965, Malcolm X arrived at the Audubon Ballroom on West 166th Street in Harlem to speak to a crowd of about four hundred. Introduced by a colleague, he took the stage and greeted the audience with "Asalaikum, brothers and sisters!" This is a traditional Muslim greeting that means "peace be upon you." The crowd responded with "Asalaikum salaam!" ("And also upon you!"). Immediately after that, there was a disturbance and a scuffle in the audience, and three men rose from their front-row seats and fired guns at him. Malcolm X was shot sixteen times, in front of his pregnant wife and four young daughters. The crowd erupted in a frenzy and managed to prevent one of the gunmen from fleeing. Two of the suspects were identified by witnesses as Nation of Islam members.

"Our own black shining prince"

Malcolm X was rushed to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, but was pronounced dead from gunshot wounds to the chest shortly after arrival. As the news spread, it was feared that riots would break out. New York City police as well as law-enforcement authorities in several other U.S. cities kept a close watch that night in predominantly black neighborhoods. Twenty-two thousand people paid their respects during the public part of the funeral. Actor Ossie Davis (1917–2005) delivered the eulogy. Davis noted that although Malcolm X would be forever associated with the idea of violence, it should be remembered that the slain leader had led a peaceful, nonviolent life. As noted on the Official Web Site of Malcolm X, Davis remarked that "Malcolm was our manhood, our living, black manhood! This was his meaning to his people. And, in honoring him, we honor the best in ourselves…. And we will know him then for what he was and is—a Prince—our own black shining Prince!—who didn't hesitate to die, because he loved us so."

Malcolm X was legendary during his lifetime. In death, he ascended to mythic status. Within a few years, new organizations that were founded on black nationalist principles emerged in several U.S. cities. The militant Black Panther group was the most prominent among these. Malcolm X's Autobiography, finished after his death by journalist Alex Haley (1921–1992), is considered among the most influential works of nonfiction in the twentieth century.

In 1992 filmmaker Spike Lee made a long-awaited, three-hour-plus movie about Malcolm X's life, starring Denzel Washington. That same year, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson (1945–2005) wrote about Malcolm X's importance to African Americans in an essay for Life magazine. Wilson pointed out how thrilling it was to hear recordings of the speeches as a young black man in what most Americans called the "ghetto," which is a neglected, impoverished area of a city. "Having heard Malcolm speak that first time you could not turn away from the clear unadulterated [pure] truth, his impeccable [flawless] logic and a torrent [downpour] of words that came straight at you," Wilson wrote. "His public stance was that of a man who did not hold his tongue, a man who was unafraid, a man who was not seeking approval from whites."

For More Information

BOOKS

Alkalimat, Abdul. Malcolm X for Beginners. New York: Writers and Readers, 1990.

Carson, Claybourne, et al., eds. The Eyes on the Prize: A Civil Rights Reader. New York: Penguin, 1991.

Jenkins, Robert L. The Malcolm X Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002.

Malcolm X and Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Grove, 1965. Reprint, New York: Ballantine Books, 1992.

PERIODICALS

Cone, James H. "Malcolm X: The Impact of a Cultural Revolutionary." Christian Century (December 23, 1992): p. 1189.

Wilson, August. "The Legacy of Malcolm X." Life (December 1992): p. 84.

WEB SITES

Malcolm X. http://www.brothermalcolm.net/ (accessed on July 4, 2006).

Malcolm X. "Article Written by Malcolm X for an Egyptian Newspaper." Malcolm X Museum. http://www.themalcolmxmuseum.org/ (accessed on July 4, 2006).

Official Web Site of Malcolm X. http://www.cmgww.com/historic/malcolm/index.htm (accessed on July 4, 2006).