Black History: Malcom X

Malcolm X was one of the most fiery and controversial blacks of the 20th Century.

Born Malcolm Little in Omaha on May 19, 1925, Malcolm was the son of a Baptist Preacher who was an avid supporter of Marcus Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association. At an early age, Malcolm moved to Lansing, Michigan with his parents, both of whom were tragically lost to him in Childhood. (His father was run over by a street car, and his Mother was committed to a mental institution.)

Leaving school after the eighth grade, Malcolm made his way to New York, working for a time as a waiter at Smalls Paradise in Harlem. Soon part of the seamy under world life of the ghetto, Malcolm began selling and using drugs, turned to burglary, and was sentenced to a 10-year prison term in 1946.

While in prison, he became acquainted with the black Muslim sect headed by Elijah Muhammed and was quickly converted to its utopian and racist point of view. Paroled from prison in 1952, he soon became an outspoken defender of Muslim doctrines, accepting the basic evil was an inherent characteristic of the "white man's Christian world."

Unlike Muhammed, Malcolm sought publicity, making several provocative and inflammatory statements to predominantly white civic groups and college campus audiences. Branding white people "devils," he spoke bitterly of a philosophy of vengeance and "an eye for an eye." When in 1963, he characterized the Kennedy assassination as a case of "chickens coming home to roost," he was suspended from the Black Muslim movement by Elijah Muhammed , and soon formed his own protest group, the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

The group had built only a small following at the time of Malcom X's murder in 1965. He was buried as Al Hajj al-Shabazz, the name he had taken in 1964 after making his holy pilgrimage to Mecca.

Malcom X had a profound influence on both blacks and whites. Many blacks responded to a feeling that he was a man of the people, experienced in the ways of the street rather than the pulpit or the college campus, which traditionally have provided the preponderance of black leaders. And many young whites responded to Malcolm's blunt, colorful language and unwillingness to retreat in the face of hostility. By the 1970's, it had become apparent that Malcolm X would be ionized, or even beatified, by those who sought as much to revere his memory as to promote their own distorted view of the true meaning of his ideology and striving. In practical terms, he was an advocate of self-help, self defense, and education; as a philosopher and pedagogue, he succeeded in integrating history, religion, and mythology to establish a framework for his ultimate belief in world brotherhood and human justice. Faith, in his view, as a prelude to action; ideas were feckless without policy. At least three books published since his death effectively present his most enduring thoughts. They are his own classic Autobiography, a collection of "Speeches" given at Harvard, and "Malcolm X: the Man and His Times."