MALCOLM X

 MALCOLM X

El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (1925–1965

WHO HE WAS

Malcolm X was the most uncompromising Black voice America ever produced. Born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska, he was the fourth of seven children of Earl Little — a Baptist preacher and follower of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association — and Louise Little, born in Grenada. His father organized for Garvey while the family lived under constant threat from white supremacists. They were driven out of Omaha and later settled in Lansing, Michigan.

When Malcolm was six, his father was found dead on the streetcar tracks. The death was ruled an accident. His family never believed it. Two years after that, his mother suffered a breakdown and was committed to a state mental hospital — Malcolm watched her taken away. The children were split up into foster homes. He later said that day broke something in him forever.

As a teenager he drifted to Boston, then Harlem, where he ran the streets as "Detroit Red" — hustling, dealing, robbing. In 1946, at twenty years old, he was caught in a burglary and sentenced to prison. He went in a criminal. He came out something else entirely.

PRISON AND THE 

THE HAJJ

In April 1964 he made the pilgrimage to Mecca. There he became El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. He wrote home that seeing Muslims of every color praying together as equals changed him — his view of white people began to shift. He returned home broader, sharper, and more dangerous to the powers that feared him. His house was firebombed a week before his death.

THE DEATH

On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X stood before four hundred people at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights, Harlem, to address his Organization of Afro-American Unity. Minutes into his speech, a commotion broke out in the crowd. As his bodyguards moved toward it, three gunmen rushed the stage with a shotgun and pistols. He was shot 21 times. He died at 39 years old. Betty Shabazz, his wife, was in the audience with their daughters.

WHO KILLED HIM

Three members of the Nation of Islam were convicted of the murder: Talmadge Hayer (also known as Thomas Hagan), Muhammad Abdul Aziz (Norman 3X Butler), and Khalil Islam (Thomas 15X Johnson). Hayer confessed but always insisted the other two were innocent and named four different men as his accomplices.

In November 2021, after a review found the FBI and police had withheld evidence, the convictions of Aziz and Islam were vacated — they had spent over twenty years in prison for a murder the evidence never tied them to. The city and state paid them $36 million. Hayer served 44 years before his parole in 2010.

A man who was never finished becoming. The truth he spoke is still doing its work.NATION OF ISLAM

In prison his brother Reginald introduced him to the Nation of Islam. Malcolm devoured the prison library — dictionaries, history, philosophy — reading so much his eyesight suffered. He took the name Malcolm X. The X stood for the unknown African family name stolen from him by slavery.

Paroled in 1952, he rose fast. Under the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, he became the Nation of Islam's national spokesman. He built temples across the country and recruited thousands. No one spoke harder. His speeches — "Message to the Grass Roots," "The Ballot or the Bullet" — told Black people to stop begging for freedom and start demanding it. He called America out by name.

THE BREAK

In late 1963, after President Kennedy was assassinated, Malcolm said the violence was "chickens coming home to roost." Elijah Muhammad suspended him. Around the same time, Malcolm learned of Elijah Muhammad's affairs with young secretaries of the Nation — a moral contradiction he could not swallow. On March 8, 1964, he left the Nation of Islam and founded the Muslim Mosque, Inc., and later the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

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