El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz - born Malcolm Little - better known as Malcolm X
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Arabic: ٱلْحَاجّ مَالِك ٱلشَّبَازّ, romanized: al-Ḥājj Mālik ash-Shabāzz; born Malcolm Little; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965), better known as Malcolm X, was an African American minister, and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement. He is best known for his time spent as a vocal spokesman for the Nation of Islam.
Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Malcolm X spent his teenage years living in a series of foster homes after his father's death and his mother's hospitalization. He engaged in several illicit activities there, eventually being sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1946 for larceny and breaking and entering. In prison, he joined the Nation of Islam, adopted the name Malcolm X, and quickly became one of the organization's most influential leaders after being paroled in 1952. Malcolm X then served as the public face of the organization for a dozen years, where he advocated for black supremacy, black empowerment, and the separation of black and white Americans, and publicly criticized the mainstream civil rights movement for its emphasis on nonviolence and racial integration. Malcolm X also expressed pride in some of the Nation's social welfare achievements, namely its free drug rehabilitation program. Throughout his life beginning in the 1950s, Malcolm X endured surveillance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for the Nation's supposed links to communism.
In the 1960s, Malcolm X began to grow disillusioned with the Nation of Islam, as well as with its leader Elijah Muhammad. He subsequently embraced Sunni Islam and the civil rights movement after completing the Hajj to Mecca, and became known as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz.[A] After a brief period of travel across Africa, he publicly renounced the Nation of Islam and founded the Islamic Muslim Mosque, Inc. (MMI) and the Pan-African Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). Throughout 1964, his conflict with the Nation of Islam intensified, and he was repeatedly sent death threats. On February 21, 1965, he was assassinated. Three Nation members were charged with the murder and given indeterminate life sentences. Speculation about the assassination and whether it was conceived or aided by leading or additional members of the Nation, or with law enforcement agencies, have persisted for decades after the shooting.
A controversial figure accused of preaching racism and violence, Malcolm X is also a widely celebrated figure within African-American and Muslim American communities for his pursuit of racial justice. He was posthumously honored with Malcolm X Day, where he is commemorated in various cities across the United States. Hundreds of streets and schools in the U.S. have been renamed in his honor, while the Audubon Ballroom, the site of his assassination, was partly redeveloped in 2005 to accommodate the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center.
Malcolm Little was born May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska, the fourth of seven children of Grenada-born Louise Helen Little (née Norton) and Georgia-born Earl Little.[2] Earl was an outspoken Baptist lay speaker, and he and Louise were admirers of Pan-African activist Marcus Garvey. Earl was a local leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and Louise served as secretary and "branch reporter", sending news of local UNIA activities to Negro World; they inculcated self-reliance and black pride in their children.[3][4][5] Malcolm X later said that white violence killed four of his father's brothers.[6]
Because of Ku Klux Klan threats, Earl's UNIA activities were said to be "spreading trouble"[7] and the family relocated in 1926 to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and shortly thereafter to Lansing, Michigan.[8] There, the family was frequently harassed by the Black Legion, a white racist group Earl accused of burning their family home in 1929.[9]
When Malcolm was six, his father died in what has been officially ruled a streetcar accident, though his mother Louise believed Earl had been murdered by the Black Legion. Rumors that white racists were responsible for his father's death were widely circulated and were very disturbing to Malcolm X as a child. As an adult, he expressed conflicting beliefs on the question.[10] After a dispute with creditors, Louise received a life insurance benefit (nominally $1,000—about $17,000 in 2019 dollars)[B] in payments of $18 per month;[11] the issuer of another, larger policy refused to pay, claiming her husband Earl had committed suicide.[12] To make ends meet, Louise rented out part of her garden, and her sons hunted game.[13]
In 1937, a man Louise had been dating—marriage had seemed a possibility—vanished from her life when she became pregnant with his child.[14] In late 1938 she had a nervous breakdown and was committed to Kalamazoo State Hospital. The children were separated and sent to foster homes. Malcolm and his siblings secured her release 24 years later.[15][16]
Malcolm Little attended West Junior High School in Lansing and then Mason High School in Mason, Michigan, but left high school in 1941, before graduating.[17] He excelled in junior high school but dropped out of high school after a white teacher told him that practicing law, his aspiration at the time, was "no realistic goal for a nigger".[18] Later, Malcolm X recalled feeling that the white world offered no place for a career-oriented black man, regardless of talent.[18]
From age 14 to 21, Malcolm held a variety of jobs while living with his half-sister Ella Little-Collins in Roxbury, a largely African-American neighborhood of Boston.[19][20]
After a short time in Flint, Michigan, he moved to New York City's Harlem neighborhood in 1943, where he engaged in drug dealing, gambling, racketeering, robbery, and pimping.[21] According to recent biographies, Malcolm also occasionally had sex with other men, usually for money, though this conjecture has been disputed by those who knew him.[22][23][C] He befriended John Elroy Sanford, a fellow dishwasher at Jimmy's Chicken Shack in Harlem who aspired to be a professional comedian. Both men had reddish hair, so Sanford was called "Chicago Red" after his hometown and Malcolm was known as "Detroit Red". Years later, Sanford became famous as Redd Foxx.[31]
Summoned by the local draft board for military service in World War II, he feigned mental disturbance by rambling and declaring: "I want to be sent down South. Organize them nigger soldiers ... steal us some guns, and kill us [some] crackers".[32][33][34] He was declared "mentally disqualified for military service".[32][33][34]
In late 1945, Malcolm returned to Boston, where he and four accomplices committed a series of burglaries targeting wealthy white families.[35] In 1946, he was arrested while picking up a stolen watch he had left at a shop for repairs,[36] and in February began serving an eight-to-ten-year sentence at Charlestown State Prison for larceny and breaking and entering
Early life
When Malcolm was in prison, he met fellow convict John Bembry,[39] a self-educated man he would later describe as "the first man I had ever seen command total respect ... with words".[40] Under Bembry's influence, Little developed a voracious appetite for reading.[41]
At this time, several of his siblings wrote to him about the Nation of Islam, a relatively new religious movement preaching black self-reliance and, ultimately, the return of the African diaspora to Africa, where they would be free from white American and European domination.[42] He showed scant interest at first, but after his brother Reginald wrote in 1948, "Malcolm, don't eat any more pork and don't smoke any more cigarettes. I'll show you how to get out of prison",[43] he quit smoking and began to refuse pork.[44] After a visit in which Reginald described the group's teachings, including the belief that white people are devils, Malcolm concluded that every relationship he had had with whites had been tainted by dishonesty, injustice, greed, and hatred.[45] Malcolm, whose hostility to religion had earned him the prison nickname "Satan",[46] became receptive to the message of the Nation of Islam.[47]
In late 1948, Malcolm wrote to Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. Muhammad advised him to renounce his past, humbly bow in prayer to God, and promise never to engage in destructive behavior again.[48] Though he later recalled the inner struggle he had before bending his knees to pray,[49] Malcolm soon became a member of the Nation of Islam,[48] maintaining a regular correspondence with Muhammad.[50]
In 1950, the FBI opened a file on Malcolm after he wrote a letter from prison to President Truman expressing opposition to the Korean War and declaring himself a communist.[51] That year, he also began signing his name "Malcolm X".[52] Muhammad instructed his followers to leave their family names behind when they joined the Nation of Islam and use "X" instead. When the time was right, after they had proven their sincerity, he said, he would reveal the Muslim's "original name".[53] In his autobiography, Malcolm X explained that the "X" symbolized the true African family name that he could never know. "For me, my 'X' replaced the white slavemaster name of 'Little' which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed upon my paternal forebears
Marriage and family
In 1955, Betty Sanders met Malcolm X after one of his lectures, then again at a dinner party; soon she was regularly attending his lectures. In 1956 she joined the Nation of Islam, changing her name to Betty X.[67] One-on-one dates were contrary to the Nation's teachings, so the couple courted at social events with dozens or hundreds of others, and Malcolm X made a point of inviting her on the frequent group visits he led to New York City's museums and libraries.[68]
Malcolm X proposed during a telephone call from Detroit in January 1958, and they married two days later.[69][70] They had six daughters: Attallah (b. 1958, named after Attila the Hun);[71][E][F] Qubilah (b. 1960, named after Kublai Khan);[75] Ilyasah (b. 1962, named after Elijah Muhammad);[76] Gamilah Lumumba (b. 1964, named after Gamal Abdel Nasser and Patrice Lumumba);[77][78] and twins Malikah and Malaak (b. 1965 after their father's death, and named in his honor)