Malcolm X

Who was Malcolm X?

Malcolm Little, later known as Malcolm X, was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925. Part of his youth was spent in foster homes. A burglary conviction sent him to prison in 1946, and he converted to the Nation of Islam there. He was freed in 1952 and rose to be a minister serving Elijah Muhammad. By the end of the 1950s he was the group's most famous voice. He left it in March 1964, made the pilgrimage to Mecca and became a Sunni Muslim. Two new groups followed, Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. On February 21, 1965, gunmen killed him as he spoke in Harlem's Audubon Ballroom.

Political views

• He called for freedom, justice and equality 'by any means necessary'. If the government failed to keep Black people safe, he said, they had the right to protect themselves.Source: en.wikipedia.org
• As the best-known spokesman for Black nationalism, he urged Black self-reliance and separation, and he spoke against integration.Source: kinginstitute.stanford.edu
• He turned down nonviolence and openly attacked Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolent, multiracial approach.Source: kinginstitute.stanford.edu
• His 1964 speech The Ballot or the Bullet urged Black voters to use the ballot. It also warned that armed struggle could come if equality was still withheld.Source: en.wikipedia.org
• He wanted civil rights recast as human rights, so that the United States could be accused before the United Nations.Source: en.wikipedia.org
• His Organization of Afro-American Unity supported Pan-Africanism and linked the Black struggle in America with the end of colonial rule.Source: constitutioncenter.org
• After going to Mecca in 1964 he wrote that his thinking on race had been rearranged and that he had dropped some earlier views.Source: en.wikipedia.org

Legacy

To admirers, Malcolm X was a brave opponent of racism. They credit his message of dignity, self-defence and pride with inspiring Black Power, the Black Arts movement and the phrase 'Black is beautiful'. The autobiography he wrote with Alex Haley came out after his death and is still widely read. Critics at the time, the NAACP among them, called the Nation of Islam extremist. They disliked its claim that white people were devils, his scorn for the 1963 March on Washington, and his remark that Kennedy's killing was 'chickens coming home to roost'. Three Nation of Islam men were found guilty of the murder in 1966. Two of those verdicts were set aside in 2021, when it came out that evidence had been withheld.

In their own words