Malcolm X

El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, known to most as Malcolm X, was born Malcolm Little in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. His father was an outspoken Garveyite, who supported Marcus Garvey's views on separatism and racial politics. When his father was murdered by members of the KKK in Omaha, his mother was left to raise multiple children on her own--a task that led to her nervous breakdown and hospitalization. In his formative years, young Malcolm spent time in foster homes, moving from one family to another, before becoming involved in criminal activity. As your text reports, he was arrested and incarcerated for burglary in Massachusetts and it was there, in the Charlestown State Penitentiary, where Malcolm Little underwent a transformation. Embracing the teachings of Elijah Mohammad, Little began writing to the leader of the Nation of Islam from his prison cell. He would embark on his own, self-styled education, which enlightened him to the fact that the black man had largely been written out of the history taught to him as a child.

"It has always been my belief that I, too, will die by violence." (Malcolm X)

By the 1960s, Malcolm had made a trek to Mecca, where he discovered Muslims of all ethnic and racial backgrounds congregating under a single faith. His trip to Mecca did, in some regard, soften his attitudes toward separatism in the U.S., and his attitude toward the Nation of Islam began to cool. In Spike Lee's adaptation of X's life, the film suggests that Malcolm X had become disenchanted with Elijah Muhammad as a leader when he found out that the holy man had several dalliances with his secretaries. It is suggested that Malcolm X's knowledge of, and threat to expose this knowledge is what led to his murder in 1965.

Malcolm X is important for so many reasons: he enlightened his listeners with the ways African Americans had been cheated out of their own history; he called upon them to recognize their own worth, and to reevaluate the way the black woman had been regarded throughout history. In the clip below, Malcolm X makes it plain what a Muslim will do if his woman is threatened.

Looking back on history, it is perhaps natural to align Malcolm X with Martin Luther King, Jr. The two leaders have been understood as rivals, sharing a fairly tense relationship over racial politics. While King was accommodationist in his approach (a strategy Malcolm X decried), X was, for most of his speaking career, a separatist. However, Dr. Gates points out that at some point they were actually not as adversarial as previously thought (566).