10 questions · Society & Everyday
His life falls into four parts, and in each of them he had a different name. Born Malcolm Little in Omaha in 1925, he was the son of a preacher who campaigned for a return to Africa and received threats for it. His father died when Malcolm was six, run over by a streetcar; the family never believed it was an accident. His mother was committed to a psychiatric hospital and the eight children were split up among foster homes. A teacher advised the top pupil in the class to become a carpenter: being a lawyer was no realistic goal for a Black boy, and he said it with a racist slur. Malcolm left school for Boston and Harlem, where he lived as „Detroit Red“ on burglary and small rackets until he was sentenced to ten years in prison in 1946, aged twenty. The second part began in prison. He read his way through the library and, to learn to write more fluently, copied out an entire dictionary page by page. Through his siblings he found the Nation of Islam, a Black religious movement, and dropped the surname a slaveholder had once given his family: in its place went the X, standing for the African name nobody knew. After his release in 1952 he became the Nation's most important speaker. Under him it grew from a few hundred members to tens of thousands. His language was the opposite of Martin Luther King's. He spoke of self-defence „by any means necessary“, called integration an illusion and the March on Washington a circus. White America listened to him with alarm; young Black people in Northern cities listened because he put their anger into words instead of soothing it. Then came the fourth part, and it was the shortest. In 1964 Malcolm broke with the Nation of Islam, travelled to Mecca and saw Muslims of every colour praying side by side. He took the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz and said publicly that he had been wrong: not all white people were the enemy. On 21 February 1965 he was shot dead in a Harlem ballroom in front of his wife and daughters, months before his autobiography appeared. He was 39: exactly King's age three years later.
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The unknown African name
The surname „Little“ had been given to his family by a slaveholder.
💡 Did you know? The Nation of Islam gave the X to all members (where first names repeated, they were numbered): Malcolm X, Malcolm 2X, Malcolm 3X.
In prison
He served time from 1946 to 1952 for burglary and read his way through the entire prison library.
💡 Did you know? He said later that no university could have taught him as much as those years: books had opened his eyes, „literally“.
The Nation of Islam
Under him it grew from a few hundred members to tens of thousands.
💡 Did you know? Its leader Elijah Muhammad had been a father figure to Malcolm for years: which is why the break in 1964 hit him so hard.
„By any means necessary“
He rejected King's non-violent line: anyone under attack had the right to fight back.
💡 Did you know? The phrase originally comes from a play by Jean-Paul Sartre. Malcolm gave it the meaning everyone now knows.
The pilgrimage to Mecca
There he saw Muslims of every colour praying side by side, and wrote home that he would have to rethink some things.
💡 Did you know? Afterwards he called himself El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. „El-Hajj“ is the title of someone who has made the pilgrimage.
Elijah Muhammad
The trigger was revelations about his private life and growing tension over Malcolm's influence.
💡 Did you know? Muhammad had been a father figure to him for years. From then on Malcolm was an apostate: his house was firebombed a week before he was killed.
With Alex Haley
Haley interviewed him over more than two years; the book appeared months after the assassination.
💡 Did you know? The same Alex Haley later wrote „Roots“, the family history that reached millions as a television series.
In Harlem
He was killed while speaking, in front of his pregnant wife and his daughters.
💡 Did you know? Two of the three men convicted were exonerated in 2021: after 55 years it emerged that evidence had been withheld.
Spike Lee
Denzel Washington was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for the title role.
💡 Did you know? The baseball cap with the X became a fashion item through the film: Lee had deliberately put it into circulation before release.
Foto: Marion S. Trikosko · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Malcolm X
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