Malcolm X

• Born: May 19, 1925
• Birthplace: Omaha, Nebraska
• Died: February 21, 1965
• Place of death: New York, New York

American religious and political leader

Malcolm X rose from life as a criminal hustler to become the national minister of the Nation of Islam and a popularizer of Black nationalism, which emphasized self-defense for Black Americans and independence from White America. Malcolm X’s separatism served as a political alternative to Martin Luther King Jr.’s advocacy of nonviolence and desegregation.

Areas of achievement Civil rights, religion and theology

Early Life

In his best seller The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1964), Malcolm X, who was born Malcolm Little, described his father, Baptist preacher Earl Little, and his mother, Granada native M. Louise Norton, as dedicated followers of Marcus Garvey. Garvey, founder of the United Negro Improvement Association, argued that Black people in the Western Hemisphere could achieve political freedom only by returning to the African homeland and could win economic independence by developing Black-owned businesses. According to the autobiography, Louise was pregnant with Malcolm when Ku Klux Klan nightriders, angered at Earl’s preaching, appeared at the Little home and warned them to move out of Omaha.

Nineteen months after Malcolm was born, the family left Omaha, eventually settling in Lansing, Michigan. According to the autobiography, a local White hate group called the Black Legion became alarmed about the “uppity” Earl Little, suspecting him of spreading unrest in the Black American community. In late 1929, a deliberately set fire broke out at the Little home. The family escaped unharmed, but Earl was forced to build a new home outside East Lansing. On September 28, 1931, Earl died after being struck by a streetcar. Malcolm later claimed that the Black Legion murdered his father.

Alone, Louise had eight children to raise. Worried about her family and embarrassed by having to accept welfare, she suffered a nervous breakdown eight years after her husband’s death. The courts divided the Little children among several foster families. Often hungry as he grew up during the Great Depression, Malcolm still did well in school through the eighth grade. He made the highest grades among his peers and became class president in the seventh grade even while enduring condescending, racist comments from teachers and his peers. A previously supportive White English teacher asked Malcolm what he wanted to do for a living. When Malcolm said he wanted to become a lawyer, the teacher told him, “that’s no realistic goal for a nigger,” and advised him to become a carpenter. Disillusioned, Malcolm withdrew from White society and committed petty thefts before spending time in a detention home. Malcolm’s problems prompted his move in 1941 to Boston, where he lived with his half sister Ella.

Malcolm accepted several low-paying jobs, including work as a busboy, dishwasher, and shoe shiner. He also drifted to the fringes of Boston’s underworld and spent his years in Boston and New York as “Detroit Red,” a zoot-suit-wearing dope dealer, con artist, and pimp who organized a burglary ring. In February 1946, when Malcolm was picking up a stolen watch he left at a Boston jewelry store for repairs, police arrested him for several felony charges, including illegal breaking and entering. The court sentenced him to a seven-year sentence.

Life’s Work

While in Charleston Prison, Malcolm began an intense self-education program, copying a dictionary word for word and voraciously reading at the prison library. By the time he was transferred to a prison in Concord, Massachusetts, his brothers Philbert and Reginald had exposed him to the teachings of the Nation of Islam religious sect led by Elijah Muhammad. The Nation of Islam (NOI), founded in Detroit around 1930, taught that White people were an inherently evil race created in ancient times by a dissident Black scientist named Yacub. The slave trade destroyed the great African civilizations, stripped Black men and women of their culture, and deceived them with a Christian religion that left them vice ridden and subservient. The NOI taught that political reform was futile in an innately evil world. Only the final judgment of the NOI deity, Allah, against the White race could bring justice. Until then, Black people should redeem themselves by surrendering vices such as alcohol, avoiding impure foods such as pork, and rediscovering past achievements of the Black race. Rather than integration into a White society poisoned with racism, Black people needed separation from the White world and the creation of a financially independent Black homeland.

Muhammad’s teachings explained for Malcolm his past experiences with racial injustice. Released from prison in 1952, Malcolm replaced his last name with “X,” which represented the African family name lost under slavery. After working briefly in Michigan as a furniture salesperson and auto assembly worker, he soon devoted himself full-time to the Muslim ministry and became Muhammad’s most effective recruiter and spokesperson.

An imposing figure, Malcolm stood about six feet five inches tall with a lanky physique, closely cropped hair, and grayish eyes that peered intensely through horn-rimmed glasses. Despite his intense appearance, he often surprised audiences and visitors with his politeness and charm. He rose quickly through NOI ranks, becoming an assistant minister at Detroit Temple Number 1 in late 1953, then holding minister’s posts in Boston, Philadelphia, and, in June, 1954, at New York Temple Number 7. It was there that he met his future wife, Betty Saunders. Malcolm and Betty married in January 1958 and eventually had six daughters.

Malcolm acquired high visibility when New York City police beat and jailed NOI member Hinton Johnson in April 1957. Malcolm led a contingent of fifty Muslims who gathered outside the Harlem police station where Johnson was being held. Malcolm insisted that Johnson be transferred to a hospital for medical treatment. When police complied, the incident prompted front-page coverage by the Black-owned Amsterdam News and inspired closer police surveillance of the Muslims and their charismatic minister.

Malcolm gained national exposure with the July 1959 New York broadcast of “The Hate That Hate Produced,” a television report by journalist Mike Wallace. Malcolm boldly denounced not only White people but also middle-class Black leaders, whom he dismissed as Uncle Toms. Malcolm called Martin Luther King Jr. a “chump” for advocating integration and insisted that “an integrated cup of coffee was insufficient pay for 400 years of slave labor.” Malcolm rejected the vision of brotherhood in King’s “I Have a Dream” speech during the 1963 March on Washington as a nightmare. At times straying from NOI’s doctrine, Malcolm called for a global “black revolution” aiming at independence, not the integration sought by King’s “Negro revolution.”

By 1964, Malcolm’s flamboyant rhetoric had made him the second most sought after speaker on college campuses, after Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. Many within the NOI considered him Muhammad’s heir apparent. Under Malcolm, the NOI grew from a few hundred adherents to 100,000 or more members during the early 1960s. Malcolm’s successes sparked jealousy within the NOI even as Malcolm found himself frustrated with the NOI’s apolitical approach. For all its rhetoric of self-defense and autonomy, the NOI stood on the sidelines while the civil rights campaign directly challenged White authority.

Reports that the married Muhammad had affairs with several secretaries and fathered six illegitimate children further alienated Malcolm. Corrupt NOI officials may have also feared that Malcolm, if he succeeded Muhammad, would crack down on financial improprieties. When Malcolm described the recent assassination of President John F. Kennedy as a case of “chickens coming home to roost” at a New York rally in December 1963, Muhammad feared a backlash and suspended Malcolm from his ministry for ninety days. The breach, however, proved permanent.

On March 8, 1964, Malcolm announced a formal break with the Nation of Islam. He sought closer ties with the mainstream civil rights movement, saying that he and King both sought Black freedom. Malcolm urged Black people to make their voting rights a reality. He hoped to link the struggle of Black Americans with the liberation struggles fought by people of color around the globe. He soon formed Muslim Mosque Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which aimed to make the rights of Black Americans an international issue. Malcolm completed his transformation that April when he undertook the journey to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, required of traditional Muslims. There he encountered Muslims of all colors who were experiencing spiritual brotherhood. He no longer saw all White people as devils but would judge White individuals by their actions. Concluding that the racist theology of the NOI conflicted with traditional Islam, he converted to the Sunni branch of Islam and took the name el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz.

Malcolm sought a United Nations hearing on the suppression of Black human rights in the United States, a goal never realized. His New York home, rewarded to him for his ministerial work, was firebombed on February 14, 1965, four days before the NOI evicted him. On February 21, at the start of a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in New York, Malcolm was shot repeatedly by Talmadge Hayer. A grand jury later indicted Hayer, Norman 3X Butler, and Thomas 15X Johnson for Malcolm’s murder. All three had ties with the Nation of Islam and were convicted the next year. One day after the murder, Muhammad denied involvement with the assassination.

In 2021, as reviews of the convictions in Malcolm's assassination were underway, a document reported to have been written by a man who had been serving as an undercover police officer with the New York Police Department (NYPD) at the time was presented by Malcolm's family during a press conference as evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the NYPD played a role in the murder. Malcolm's family, who held the conference along with members of the family of the deceased former police officer, Raymond Wood, requested that the letter and its contents be included in a reopened investigation.

Significance

Malcolm X’s influence increased after his death with the publication of his autobiography. As racism and Black poverty persisted even with the signing of major civil rights legislation by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and 1965, Malcolm’s rage rang true for increasingly radicalized youth in organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The “black is beautiful” slogans of the 1960s and the development of Black studies programs at universities and public schools echo Malcolm’s emphasis on Black pride and knowledge of the African past. The Black Panther Party, founded in Oakland, California, in 1966, acknowledged their ideological debt to Malcolm X and his emphasis on self-defense and the economic roots of racism. Transformed into a merchandising franchise by director Spike Lee’s 1992 film biography Malcolm X, Malcolm’s image haunts rap music videos, while rap recordings sample his speeches. In popular culture, Malcolm X now serves as both antihero and hero in the guise of the street-smart hustler and the self-educated minister who redeemed himself from an intellectual ghetto.

Bibliography

Bassey, Magnus O. Malcolm X and African-American Self-Consciousness. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005. Explores Malcolm X’s life within the context of his times, describing how he transformed black Americans’ self-consciousness through the ideas of Islam and humanism.

Dyson, Michael Eric. Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. At 215 pages, this work explores the political uses (and abuses) to which Malcolm’s memory is subjected. The book includes analysis of previous biographers and provides a helpful overview of the scholarly literature on Malcolm X, summarizing academic disagreements about the man, his life, and his cultural impact.

Gallen, David. Malcolm X as They Knew Him. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1992. Gallen’s book includes vivid reminiscences of Malcolm from friends and associates, a Playboy interview of Malcolm by Alex Haley before they worked together on the autobiography, and lively essays from writers as diverse as Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver and southern novelist and poet Robert Penn Warren.

Jacobo, Julia. "New Claims Surrounding Malcolm X Assassination Surface in Letter Written on Former NYPD Officer's Death Bed." ABC News, 21 Feb. 2021, abcnews.go.com/US/claims-surrounding-malcolm-assassination-surface-letter-written-nypd/story?id=76031383. Accessed 1 Apr. 2021.

Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. 1964. Reprint. New York: Ballantine, 1992. This autobiography contains both the eloquent oration that actor Ossie Davis delivered at Malcolm’s funeral and Haley’s illuminating epilogue, which captures the pressures, fears, and hopes of Malcolm’s last months. Compellingly written, this remains the definitive text on Malcolm’s life.

Natambu, Kofi. The Life and Work of Malcolm X. Indianapolis, Ind.: Alpha, 2002. Concise biography recounting Malcolm X’s childhood, years as a street hustler, conversion to and work for the Nation of Islam, and assassination.

Perry, Bruce. Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America. Barrytown, N.Y.: Station Hill Press, 1991. Aggressively revisionist, Perry suggests that a childhood of physical abuse and guilt over an ambiguous sexual orientation partly drove Malcolm’s rage and the sudden shifts in his identity. Critics complain that Perry carelessly evaluates the quality of his evidence.

Sales, William W., Jr. From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Boston: South End Press, 1994. Sales seeks to shift attention from Malcolm the emotionally powerful icon to Malcolm the political and economic thinker. He sees the post-NOI Malcolm as an almost Marxist revolutionary who clearly articulated the relationship of capitalism and colonialism to the oppression of black people.