Malcolm X

Malcolm's life is a Horatio Alger story with a twist. His is not a "rags to

riches" tale, but a powerful narrative of self-transformation from petty

hustler to internationally known political leader. Born in Omaha,

Nebraska, the son of Louise and Earl Little, who was a Baptist preacher

active in Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association,

Malcolm, along with his siblings, experienced dramatic confrontations

with racism from childhood. Hooded Klansmen burned their home in

Lansing, Michigan; Earl Little was killed under mysterious

circumstances; welfare agencies split up the children and eventually

committed Louise Little to a state mental institution; and Malcolm was

forced to live in a detention home run by a racist white couple. By the

eighth grade he left school, moved to Boston, Massachussetts, to live

with his half-sister Ella, and discovered the underground world of

African American hipsters.

Malcolm's entry into the masculine culture of the zoot suit, the

"conked" (straightened) hair, and the lindy hop coincided with the

outbreak of World War II, rising black militancy (symbolized in part by

A. Philip Randolph's threatened March on Washington for racial and

economic justice), and outbreaks of race riots in Detroit, Michigan, and

other cities (see Detroit Riot of 1943). Malcolm and his partners did

not seem very "political" at the time, but they dodged the draft so as

not to lose their lives over a "white man's war," and they avoided

wage work whenever possible. His search for leisure and pleasure took

him to Harlem, New York, where his primary source of income derived

from petty hustling, drug dealing, pimping, gambling, and viciously

exploiting women. In 1946 his luck ran out; he was arrested for

burglary and sentenced to ten years in prison

Malcolm's downward descent took a U-turn in prison when he began

studying the teachings of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam (NOI), the

black Muslim group founded by Wallace D. Fard and led by Elijah

Muhammad (Elijah Poole). Submitting to the discipline and guidance of

the NOI, he became a voracious reader of the Qu'ran (Koran) and the

Bible. He also immersed himself in works of literature and history at

the prison library. Behind prison walls he quickly emerged as a

powerful orator and brilliant rhetorician. He led the famous prison

debating team that beat the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,

arguing against capital punishment by pointing out that English

pickpockets often did their best work at public hangings!

Upon his release in 1952 he renamed himself Malcolm X, symbolically

repudiating the "white man's name."As a devoted follower of Elijah

Muhammad, Malcolm X rose quickly within the NOI ranks, serving as

minister of Harlem's Temple No. 7 in 1954, and later ministering to

temples in Detroit and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Through national

speaking engagements, television appearances, and by establishing

Muhammad SpeaksÐ'--the NOI's first nationally distributed newspaperÐ'--

Malcolm X put the Nation of Islam on the map. His sharp criticisms of

civil rights leaders for advocating integration into white society instead

of building black institutions and defending themselves from racist

violence generated opposition from both conservatives and liberals. His

opponents called him "violent," "fascist," and "racist." To those who

claimed that the NOI undermined their efforts toward integration by

preaching racial separatism, Malcolm responded, "It is not integration

that Negroes in America want, it is human dignity."

Distinguishing Malcolm's early political and intellectual views from the

teachings of Elijah Muhammad is not a simple matter. His role as

minister was to preach the gospel of Islam according to Muhammad.

He remained a staunch devotee of the Nation's strict moral codes and

gender conventions. Although his own narrative suggests that he

never entirely discarded his hustler's distrust of women, he married

Betty Sanders (later Betty Shabazz) in 1958 and lived by NOI rules:

men must lead, women must follow; the man's domain is the world,

the woman's is the home.

On other issues, however, Malcolm showed signs of independence from

the NOI line. During the mid-1950s, for example, he privately scoffed

at Muhammad's interpretation of the genesis of the "white race"