Master Student: Malcolm X

Malcolm Little became Malcolm X at age 26. In the Muslim religion, the name "X" symbolizes the true African family name that no one can ever know. The nation of Islam believe that they will keep the name "X" until God returns and gives each person a holy name.

Malcolm was born on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska. His father was the Reverend Earl Little, a Baptist minister, and his mother was a native of Grenada, British West Indies. Soon after his birth, the family moved to Lansing, Michigan. Trouble followed them. In 1929, a group of whites called "The Black Legion" burnt the Little's home to the ground. They punished Rev. Little for being an "uppity nigger" who was spreading revolutionary ideas.

The next year, Rev. Little was murdered, apparently by the same Black Legion. The attackers had bashed the Reverend's head and then laid him across the tracks where the streetcar severed him practically in half. After the Reverend's death, the family began to fall apart as hunger eroded their pride. Employers would fire Malcolm's mother as soon as they learned she was the widow of the Reverend Little. Mrs. Little and her nine children subsisted on welfare checks, which were handed over for grocery bills before they could be cashed.

Poverty eventually forced Malcolm's mother to give custody of the children to the state welfare workers. It broke her heart. She suffered a complete breakdown and spent the next 26 years in the State Mental Hospital at Kalamazoo. Malcolm began to cause assorted troubles at school. He was expelled and sent to a detention home. Malcolm lived in the detention home and then a foster home while completing his education in Lansing. Things looked up when his practically all-white 7th grade class elected him president. He also starred on the basketball team.

The summer before 8th grade, 1940, Malcolm stayed with his half-sister in Boston. He returned to Lansing in a restless spirit. Discussing his career plans with his English teacher, Malcolm expressed his intention of becoming a lawyer. His teacher said that was not a realistic goal for a Black and that he should consider carpentry instead. That remark changed Malcolm. He turned his back on the whole white world. At the end of the 8th grade, Malcolm quit school and moved to Boston.

He was quite a sight in his zoot suit and conked hair. He hung out in pool rooms and gambled on the numbers. Before the age of 20, he had worked as a shoeshine boy, soda jerk, busboy, waiter,