Malcolm X

Malcolm X, 1925–65, militant black leader in the United States, also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, b. Malcolm Little in Omaha, Neb. He was introduced to the Black Muslims while serving a prison term and became a Muslim minister upon his release in 1952. He quickly became very prominent in the movement with a following perhaps equaling that of its leader, Elijah Muhammad. In 1963, Malcolm was suspended by Elijah after a speech in which Malcolm suggested that President Kennedy's assassination was a matter of the "chickens coming home to roost." He then formed a rival organization of his own, the Muslim Mosque, Inc. In 1964, after a pilgrimage to Mecca, he announced his conversion to orthodox Islam and his new belief that there could be brotherhood between black and white. In his Organization of Afro-American Unity, formed after his return, the tone was still that of militant black nationalism but no longer of separation. In Feb., 1965, he was shot and killed in a public auditorium in New York City. His assassins were vaguely identified as Black Muslims, but this is a matter of controversy.

Bibliography

See his autobiography (as told to A. Haley, 1964) and selected speeches, Malcolm X Speaks (1965); biographies by P. Goldman (1973) and B. Perry (1992); J. H. Clarke, ed., Malcolm X (1969); study by M. E. Dyson (1994).

---

Malcolm X

 orig. Malcolm Little later El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz

Malcolm X

(credit: AP)

(born May 19, 1925, Omaha, Neb., U.S.—died Feb. 21, 1965, New York, N.Y.) U.S. black Muslim leader. He was raised in Michigan, where the family house was burned by the Ku Klux Klan; his father was later murdered and his mother was institutionalized. He moved to Boston, drifted into petty crime, and was sent to prison for burglary in 1946. He converted to the Black Muslim faith (Nation of Islam) the same year. On his release in 1952, he changed his last name to X to signify his rejection of his “slave name.” Soon after meeting the Nation of Islam's leader, Elijah Muhammad, he became the sect's most effective speaker and organizer. He spoke with bitter eloquence against white exploitation of blacks and derided the civil rights movement and integration, calling instead for black separatism, black pride, and the use of violence for self-protection. Differences with Elijah Muhammad prompted Malcolm to leave the Nation of Islam in 1964. A pilgrimage to Mecca led him to acknowledge the possibility of world brotherhood and to convert to orthodox Islam. Rival Black Muslims made threats against his life, and he was shot to death at a rally in a Harlem ballroom. His celebrated autobiography (1965) was written by Alex Haley on the basis of numerous interviews conducted shortly before Malcolm's death.

---

Malcolm X (b. Malcolm Little) (1925–65) African-American activist; born in Omaha, Nebr. Malcolm claimed his father, a minister and follower of Marcus Garvey, was murdered by racists in Lansing, Mich. (1931) (but at least one researcher claims his father died accidentally). Moving to Boston, Malcolm turned to pimping and drugs as a teenager. He was sentenced to ten years in prison for burglary (1946) where he discovered the antiwhite Black Muslims. Joining the Muslims (1952), he became a recruiter, changed his name, and came to national attention with his writings and through a television documentary (1959), both of which tended to portray him as a threat to white people. Breaking with the Muslims (1964), he founded the Muslim Mosque in an effort to internationalize the Afro-American struggle and journeyed to Muslim lands abroad where he was impressed with their lack of racial bias. Returning to the U.S.A. convinced that whites were not inherently racist, he called himself El-Hajj Malik El Shabazz and formed the Organization of African American Unity, hoping to cooperate with progressive white groups. Before his assassination in the Audubon Ballroom in New York City (March 1965), he came to believe that leaders of the Nation of Islam and powerful elements within the U.S. government wanted him dead; the only legal trial put all the blame on members of the Nation of Islam. Alex Haley helped immortalize him as coauthor of The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), and Spike Lee's 1992 film renewed interest in the man and his message. He proved as powerful after his death as alive, influencing disparate movements with his positions on black power and neocolonialism, and transforming the consciousness of a generation of African-Americans.