May 19, 1925 – Birth of Malcolm X

Malcolm X, born on May 19, in 1925, was an African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement. He is best known for his time spent as a vocal spokesman for the Nation of Islam. He was killed on February 21, in 1965, at the age of 39. He was shot to death in front of 400 people at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan by assassins identified as Black Muslims. His wife, Betty Shabazz, was pregnant with twins and sat in the audience along with his 4-year-old daughter Quibilah.

In 2021, the Washington Post reported that family members of Malcolm X revealed a letter written by a recently deceased New York police officer alleging that the NYPD and the FBI were behind the 1965 assassination of the Black leader. The letter was presented at a news conference by Malcolm X’s three daughters and civil rights attorney Ben Crump. Crump called on Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance’s office to launch a full re-investigation of Malcolm X’s assassination.

He was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, the fourth of five children of Earl Little and Louise Norton, both activists in the Universal Negro Improvement Association established by Marcus Garvey. Earl Little, a Georgia-born itinerant Baptist preacher, encountered considerable racial harassment because of his black nationalist views. He moved his family several times before settling in Michigan, purchasing a home in 1929 on the outskirts of East Lansing, where Malcolm spent his childhood. Their previous home had been destroyed in a mysterious fire. In 1931 Earl Little’s body was discovered on a train track. Although police concluded that the death was accidental, the victim’s friends and relatives suspected that he had been murdered by a local white-supremacist group. Earl’s death left the family in poverty and undoubtedly contributed to Louise Little’s mental deterioration. In January 1939 she was declared legally insane and committed to a Michigan mental asylum, where she remained until 1963. What this young boy had to endure was a shame.

Although Malcolm Little excelled academically in grammar school and was popular among classmates at his predominantly white schools, he became embittered toward white authority figures. In his autobiography he recalls quitting school in the eighth grade after a teacher warned that his desire to become a lawyer was not a “realistic goal for a nigger.” As his mother’s mental health deteriorated and he became increasingly incorrigible, welfare officials intervened, placing him in several reform schools and foster homes. In 1941 he left Michigan to live in Boston with his half sister, Ella Collins.

In Boston and New York during the early 1940s, Malcolm held a variety of railroad jobs while also becoming increasingly involved in criminal activities, such as peddling illegal drugs and numbers running. First arrested in 1944 for larceny and given a three-month suspended sentence and a year’s probation, Malcolm was arrested again in 1946 for larceny as well as breaking and entering. When the judge learned that Malcolm was involved in a romantic relationship with a white woman, he imposed a particularly severe sentence of from eight to ten years in prison.

While in Concord Reformatory in Massachusetts, Malcolm responded to the urgings of his brother Reginald and became a follower of Elijah Muhammad (formerly Robert Poole), leader of the Temple of Islam (later Nation of Islam—often called the Black Muslims), a small black nationalist Islamic sect. Attracted to the religious group’s racial doctrines, which categorized whites as “devils,” he began reading extensively about world history and politics, particularly concerning African slavery and the oppression of black people in America. After he was paroled from prison in August 1952, he became Malcolm X, using the surname assigned to him in place of the African name that had been taken from his slave ancestors.

By 1953 Malcolm X had become Elijah Muhammad’s most effective minister, bringing large numbers of new recruits into the group during the 1950s and early 1960s. In 1954 he became minister of New York Temple No. 7, and he later helped establish Islamic temples in other cities. In 1957 he became the Nation of Islam’s national representative, a position of influence second only to that of Elijah Muhammad. In January 1958 he married Betty X (Sanders), who later became known as Betty Shabazz; together they had six daughters.

Malcolm’s electrifying oratory attracted considerable publicity and a large personal following among discontented African Americans. In his speeches he urged black people to separate from whites and win their freedom “by any means necessary.” He was particularly harsh in his criticisms of the nonviolent strategy to achieve civil rights reforms advocated by Martin Luther King, Jr. Malcolm derided the notion that African Americans could achieve freedom nonviolently. “The only revolution in which the goal is loving your enemy is the Negro revolution,” he announced. “Revolution is bloody, revolution is hostile, revolution knows no compromise, revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way.”

Despite his criticisms of King, Malcolm nevertheless identified himself with the grassroots leaders of the southern civil rights protest movement, as he became increasingly dissatisfied with Elijah Muhammad’s apolitical stance. As he later explained in his autobiography, “It could be heard increasingly in the Negro communities: ‘Those Muslims talk tough, but they never do anything, unless somebody bothers Muslims.’”

Malcolm’s disillusionment with Elijah Muhammad resulted not only from political differences but also from the hypocrisy he perceived when he learned that the religious leader had fathered illegitimate children. Meanwhile, other members of the Nation of Islam began to resent Malcolm’s growing prominence and to suspect that he intended to lay claim to leadership of the group. Elijah Muhammad used the excuse of a controversial remark made by Malcolm to ban his increasingly popular minister from speaking in public.

Despite this effort to silence him, Malcolm X continued to attract public attention during 1964. He counseled the boxer Cassius Clay, who publicly announced, shortly after winning the heavyweight boxing title, that he had become a member of the Nation of Islam and adopted the name Muhammad Ali.

Cassius Clay, shown in 1962; he changed his name to Muhammad Ali in 1964. (Photo Dan Grossi, AP)

In March 1964 Malcolm announced that he was breaking with the Nation of Islam to form his own group, Muslim Mosque, Inc. The theological and ideological gulf between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad widened during a month-long trip to Africa and the Middle East. During a pilgrimage to Mecca in April 1964 Malcolm reported that seeing Muslims of all colors worshiping together caused him to reject the view that all whites were devils. Repudiating the racial theology of the Nation of Islam, he moved toward orthodox Islam as practiced outside the group. After returning to the United States on May 21, Malcolm announced that he had adopted a Muslim name, el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, and that he was forming a new political group, the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), to bring together all elements of the African American freedom struggle.

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, March 26, 1964

Determined to unify African Americans, Malcolm sought to strengthen his ties with the more militant factions of the civil rights movement. In one of his most notable speeches, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” he urged black people to submerge their differences “and realize that it is best for us to first see that we have the same problem, a common problem—a problem that will make you catch hell whether you’re a Baptist, or a Methodist, or a Muslim, or a nationalist.”

Malcolm’s political enemies multiplied within the U.S. government as he attempted to strengthen his ties with civil rights activists and deepen his relationship with black leaders around the world. The Federal Bureau of Investigation saw Malcolm as subversive and initiated efforts to undermine his influence. In addition, some of his former Nation of Islam colleagues, including Louis X (later Louis Farrakhan), condemned him as a traitor for publicly criticizing Elijah Muhammad. The Nation of Islam attempted to evict Malcolm from the home he occupied in Queens, New York. On 14 February 1965 Malcolm’s home was firebombed; although he and his family escaped unharmed, the perpetrators were never apprehended.

Six days after Malcolm X was killed in 1965, more than fifteen hundred people attended his funeral service held in Harlem. Ossie Davis gave a moving eulogy that contrasted the public’s perception of an angry Malcolm with the loving and gentle man he knew, a person who gave voice to the pain of his people and gave courage to those who were afraid to speak the truth.

Line for the funeral of Malcolm X

After his death, Malcolm’s views reached an even larger audience than during his life. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, written with the assistance of Alex Haley, became a best-selling book following its publication in 1965 . During subsequent years other books appeared, containing texts of many of his speeches, including Malcolm X Speaks (1965), The End of White World Supremacy: Four Speeches (1971), and February 1965: The Final Speeches (1992). In 1994 Orlando Bagwell and Judy Richardson produced a major documentary, Malcolm X: Make It Plain. His words and image also exerted a lasting influence on African American popular culture, as evidenced in the hip-hop or rap music of the late twentieth century and in the director Spike Lee ‘s film biography, Malcolm X (1992).

[Primary sources include Malcolm X by Clayborne Carson in African American National Biography and The Autobiography of Malcolm X.]