In thesummer of 1963 , a young Sudanese student at Dartmouth College name Ahmed Osman was walk through Harlem with a friend when he decided to pop into Muhammad ’s Temple No . 7 . There he encountered a charismatic , 38 - year - old minister of religion identify Malcolm X , who was delivering a passionate talk on the divinity of theNation of Islam .
At the prison term , Malcolm X was expounding the philosophy of his ghostly leader , Elijah Muhammad , who , among other thing , asserted that thewhite man was the hellion . After the talking , there was a Q&A academic term and Osman challenged Malcolm X , noting that theIslamic faithwas a religion that welcomed hoi polloi of all backgrounds and ethnicities .
It was the beginning of a long friendly relationship , which would see Malcolm X through his pivotal rejection of Elijah Muhammad and his rebirth to Sunni Islam . And it was Osman who arrange for his friend to perform hajj , the pilgrimage to Mecca . The hajj was a watershed moment in Malcolm X ’s lifetime — a multi - ethnic gathering of people link up not by culture or skin color , but by religion . This was a revelatory experience for someone who had grown up in a order permeated by racism .
Malcolm’s Early Life
Malcolm X was bornMalcolm Little in Omaha , Nebraska , in 1925 . It ’s a lesser - known fact that he could just as easy have been comport in Montreal , Quebec . That ’s where his parents fulfill in 1917 . His mother , Louisa Langdon Norton , was a recent immigrant from Grenada , who had move to the Little Burgundy neck of the woods of Montreal to live with her uncle . Malcolm ’s Padre , Earl Little , had left his first wife and three children in small - Ithiel Town Georgia and joined theGreat Northward Migration , eventually landing in the City of a Hundred Steeples .
Earl and Louisa met after joining theUniversal Negro Improvement Association(UNIA ) , founded by the Jamaican illusionist , Marcus Garvey . Garvey ’s Pan - African position would have a life - long influence on Malcolm ’s thought . As activists in the movement , his parent go first to Philadelphia , and then to Omaha to man an outpost of the organization there . It was grievous work . Earl Little received legion death threats and one nighttime , when he was out of townspeople , hooded Klansmen bearing Aaron’s rod came await for him . When a pregnant Louise informed them that he was away , they shattered every windowpane in the house before leaving .
After Malcolm ’s birth , the family moved several times , eventually taking up residence in Lansing , Michigan . There , despite being burned out of the family ’s new family — mostly likely by white-hot neighbour — Earl continued his activism on behalf of the UNIA , take his favorite tyke , 5 - year - old Malcolm to coming together .
InSeptember 1931 , Earl died after being cut virtually in two by a street car . Although his destruction was ruled as accidental , many suspect that he ’d been murdered by a local white supremacist organization .
Earl ’s death was a polar event in Malcolm ’s childhood . His mother never fully recovered from the shock of it and the sudden burden of becoming an impoverished exclusive parent . She suffer a equipment failure and her children finish up in surrogate aid and orphanages . By 1946 , Malcolm was in Boston , where he was arrested for burglary and sentenced to 10 years in prison .
Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam
He spent seven years behind bar before being paroled . During that fourth dimension , he read widely and bring together the Nation of Islam , the sect of Black Muslims his brother Reginald had joined . They preach and embraced an political theory of Black nationalism that promote for Black Americans to establish a state freestanding from white Americans . He exchange his name to Malcolm X before he was released from prison in 1952 .
Once out of prison , Malcolm X quickly establish himself as the Nation of Islam ’s most articulated and successful spokesman . He worked with Elijah Muhammad to further expound the Nation of Islam ’s substance from Temple No . 7 in Harlem and Temple No . 11 in Boston where he was a minister .
His teachings and speeches were competitive in style — he preach that albumen were not to be trusted . He suggested Black people use " any substance necessary , " including violence , to gain their freedom .
His electrifying speech communication rang genuine with disastrous crowd , and by the 1960s , he became the revolutionary vocalisation of thecivil right movement . Malcolm X offered a different solvent for those looking for an choice to Martin Luther King Jr. ’s non - wild approach .
Under Malcolm X ’s leadership , national membership in the Nation of Islam increased from1,200 in 1953 to as many as 75,000 by 1961 . But that influence also earned him the unwanted attention of the FBI , which infiltrate the Nation of Islam with agent who bugged and wiretapped members . It subsequently emerged that one of Malcolm ’s bodyguards was , in fact , an FBI agent .
His Journey to Mecca
All this clock time , Malcolm X strictly adhered to the educational activity of the Nation of Islam , include his commitment to celibacy until his marriage to Betty Shabazz in 1958 . This made it even more painful when he watch in 1963 that his phantasmal leader , Elijah Muhammad , was secretlycarrying on outlawed relationshipswith six dissimilar women , some of whom had bear his child , violating his own teachings .
It was at this point that Malcolmbroke with Muhammadand the Nation of Islam , establish his own organization , Muslim Mosque , Inc. and go on hajj . It was in Saudi Arabia that he also convert to Sunni Islam and changed his name again to El - hajj Malik El - Shabazz . He returned to the United States with a renewed religion in the civil rights movement and race relation .
But because of his enormous influence on the Nation of Islam , such a cataclysmic shift was leap to create dangerous wave . The FBI agents in his circle learned that he was marked for destruction by elements of the Nation of Islam . His house was firebomb , though none of the category was injured .
His Assassination
But the net was closing in . On Feb. 21 , 1965 , as he was preparing to give a talk in the pack Grand Ballroom of the Audubon in Washington Heights , Manhattan , a disturbance broke out in the crowd . As two men tussled in the audience , Malcolm ’s security system guards affect to interfere , bequeath him alone on stage . A man in the front row stood , walked quickly to within 15 feet ( 4.5 time ) of Malcolm X , pull a saw - off shotgun from under his winter pelage and open fire . Two other gun followed him . In all , they shoot Malcolm X 15 multiplication . He was numb by the time he catch to the infirmary . He was just 39 .
tenner of one thousand of masses reckon Malcolm X ’s dead body and at his funeral , his acquaintance , the actor Ossie Davis deliver the paean . Three men were arrested for the assassination and eventually sentenced to life in prison . One of them , Tommy Hayer , was caught at the scene and confessed to the offense , but he insisted that the other two men convicted were in reality innocent . Years later , after the death of Elijah Muhammad , Hayer revealed the name of his four other co - conspirators , all members of the NOI . None of them had been give , he insist . They believed at the time that they were doing proper affair .
In the aftermath of his blackwash , Malcolm X only make headway more celebrity . His autobiography , co - written by Alex Haley , became an international best seller and an enormously influential work . Years after , Spike Lee ’s feature film handling of Malcolm ’s story reignited interest in the aliveness and instruction of one of the 20th C ’s most significant cultural physique .
