Malcolm X

• 1. Introduction

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  Malcolm X was pronounced dead at 3:30 pm on the 21st of February 1965, shortly after gunmen opened fire on him at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan. The autopsy identified 21 gunshot wounds. He was 39 years old. In the hours after the shooting, telegrams and newspaper editorials poured in from across the globe. African newspapers hailed him as a martyr. The People's Daily in China called him a freedom fighter killed by imperialists. And yet papers in his own country called him a demagogue, a racist, a man whose gifts had been turned to evil purpose. Who was this man who, in death, split the world into two utterly opposed verdicts? To understand Malcolm X is to follow one of the most extraordinary journeys in American history: from a childhood fractured by racial terror, through prison cells and pulpits, across the mosques of Mecca and the halls of Oxford, to a ballroom stage on a Sunday afternoon. Each transformation he underwent was complete. Each came at enormous personal cost. And none of them were finished when the shotgun blast ended everything.

• 2. A Childhood Under Siege

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  Malcolm Little was born on the 19th of May 1925 at University Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, the fourth of seven children of Louise and Earl Little. His father was a Baptist minister and an outspoken local leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. His mother served as branch secretary, writing news of local activities to Negro World. Both parents were devoted admirers of Pan-African activist Marcus Garvey, and they raised their children with a deep sense of black pride and self-reliance. The family home stood at 3448 Pinkney Street in Omaha, later designated a historical site by the National Register of Historic Places.

  Before Malcolm was a year old, the family had already been forced to flee. Members of the Ku Klux Klan threatened Earl over his UNIA organizing, calling it trouble-spreading, and the family relocated first to Milwaukee and then to Lansing, Michigan. In Lansing, a white racist group called the Black Legion harassed them repeatedly; Earl later accused them of burning the family home in 1929. When no fire truck responded to the blaze, that absence said something about the protections their neighborhood did and did not enjoy.

  In 1931, Earl died in what was officially ruled a streetcar accident. Malcolm was six years old. His mother Louise believed the Black Legion had killed her husband, and those rumors circulated widely enough to deeply disturb the young Malcolm. He carried conflicting feelings about the question well into adulthood. Without Earl's income, the family struggled. Louise received a life insurance payout of nominally one thousand dollars, paid at eighteen dollars a month; a second, larger policy refused to pay at all, claiming Earl had died by suicide. To survive, Louise rented out part of the garden and her sons hunted game.

  By 1938, Louise had suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to Kalamazoo State Hospital. Her children were separated and sent to foster homes. Malcolm and his siblings would not secure her release for another 24 years. He attended West Junior High School in Lansing and then Mason High School, where he excelled until a white teacher told him that becoming a lawyer, his dream at the time, was no realistic goal for a Black boy. Malcolm later said he came to feel the white world had no place for a career-minded Black man, no matter his abilities. He left school before graduating.

• 3. Crime and Conversion

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  From age 14 to 21, Malcolm moved between Boston and New York, cycling through a range of jobs while living with his half-sister Ella Little-Collins in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. In 1943, he moved to Harlem, found work on the New Haven Railroad, and also moved into drug dealing, gambling, racketeering, robbery, and pimping. In Harlem he befriended a fellow dishwasher named John Elroy Sanford at a restaurant called Jimmy's Chicken Shack. Both men had reddish hair; Sanford was nicknamed Chicago Red for his hometown, while Malcolm went by Detroit Red. Sanford would later become famous as the comedian and actor Redd Foxx.

  When summoned by the draft board in late 1943, Malcolm feigned mental illness by ranting about organizing Black soldiers to steal guns and kill white people. He was declared mentally disqualified for military service. In late 1945, he and four accomplices carried out a series of burglaries targeting wealthy white families in Boston. He was arrested in 1946 when he went to pick up a stolen watch he had left for repairs. In February of that year he began serving a sentence of eight to ten years at Charlestown State Prison for larceny and breaking and entering.

  In prison, Malcolm encountered a self-educated convict named John Bembry, whom he later described as the first man he had ever seen command total respect using only words. Under Bembry's influence, he developed an intense appetite for reading. Several of his siblings wrote to him about the Nation of Islam, a religious movement preaching Black self-reliance. His brother Reginald's 1948 letter carried a simple instruction: stop eating pork and stop smoking, and he would show Malcolm how to get out of prison. Malcolm quit smoking almost immediately and refused pork from then on.

  His brother's subsequent visit introduced him to the Nation's teachings, including the belief that white people were devils. Malcolm initially struggled with this idea. Over time, he reflected on every meaningful relationship he had had with white people and concluded they had all been marked by dishonesty, injustice, greed, and hatred. The man his fellow prisoners had nicknamed Satan, for his hostility toward Christianity, wrote to Elijah Muhammad, the Nation's leader, in late 1948. Muhammad advised him to renounce his past, pray, and commit to better conduct. In 1950, after writing a letter from prison to President Harry S. Truman opposing the Korean War and declaring himself a communist, the FBI opened a file on him. That same year, he began signing his name Malcolm X. Muhammad taught his followers to replace their family surnames with an X, symbolizing the African ancestral name that slavery had stolen from them.

• 4. The Nation's Public Face

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  After his parole in August 1952, Malcolm X visited Elijah Muhammad in Chicago and quickly proved himself. In June 1953, he was named assistant minister of the Nation's Temple Number One in Detroit. By the end of that year he had established Boston's Temple Number 11. In March 1954 he expanded Temple Number 12 in Philadelphia. Two months after that, he was selected to lead Temple Number 7 in Harlem, where the membership grew rapidly. By 1955 he had established three more temples: Number 13 in Springfield, Massachusetts; Number 14 in Hartford, Connecticut; and Number 15 in Atlanta. Hundreds of African Americans were joining the Nation of Islam every month.

  He stood 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighed about 180 pounds. Writers described him as powerfully built, mesmerizingly handsome, and always spotlessly well-groomed. He was also the organization's sharpest and most tireless speaker. Between the early 1950s and early 1960s, the Nation's membership grew from around 1,200 to between 50,000 and 100,000, with as many as 25,000 attending meetings regularly. Malcolm X is widely credited with driving that expansion.

  The American public got its first real look at him in 1957, when Nation of Islam member Hinton Johnson was beaten by two New York City police officers. Johnson suffered brain contusions and subdural hemorrhaging. When a crowd of around 500 people had gathered outside the police station, officers allowed Malcolm X to speak with Johnson. He then arranged an ambulance transfer to Harlem Hospital. By the time Johnson was returned from the hospital, some 4,000 people had gathered outside the station. Malcolm X stepped out and gave a hand signal; Nation members silently dispersed, and the rest of the crowd followed. One police officer told the New York Amsterdam News: "No one man should have that much power."

  By 1959, he was appearing on New York City television in a broadcast titled The Hate That Hate Produced. In September 1960, he attended functions at the United Nations General Assembly, where he met Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea, and Kenneth Kaunda of the Zambian African National Congress. He also met Fidel Castro publicly, and Castro was sufficiently impressed to seek a private meeting. After two hours of conversation, Castro invited Malcolm X to visit Cuba. Malcolm later said Castro was the only white person he had ever liked, though he told the FBI he could never be a communist because communists did not believe in God.

  Betty Sanders first heard him lecture in 1955, joined the Nation in 1956, and became Betty X. Malcolm proposed by telephone from Detroit in January 1958, and they married two days later. Together they had six daughters, the last two twins named Malikah and Malaak, both born after their father's death.

• 5. Fracture and Departure

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  Malcolm X had long been the most visible figure in an organization whose actual leader was Elijah Muhammad, and by 1962 the tensions between them were becoming unsustainable. The first major rupture came after a violent confrontation between Nation of Islam members and the Los Angeles Police Department. Just after midnight on the 27th of April 1962, two LAPD officers beat several Muslims outside Temple Number 27, unprovoked. More than 70 backup officers raided the mosque and beat Nation members at random. Police shot seven Muslims. Ronald Stokes, a Korean War veteran, was shot from behind while raising his hands to surrender; the coroner ruled his killing justified. No charges were laid against the police.

  The second rupture was personal. Rumors had been spreading that Muhammad was conducting extramarital affairs with young women on his staff, a serious violation of Nation teachings. After speaking with Muhammad's son Wallace and the accusers in April 1963, Malcolm X came to believe the rumors. Muhammad confirmed them that year, justifying himself by reference to precedents from Biblical prophets. In a series of national television interviews between 1964 and 1965, Malcolm X described his investigation and Muhammad's own confirmation of multiple counts of child rape, and disclosed that seven of the eight women involved had become pregnant.

  On the 1st of December 1963, when asked to comment on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X said the killing was a case of chickens coming home to roost, and that such things had always made him glad rather than sad. He also cited the murders of Patrice Lumumba and Medgar Evers as earlier examples of the same logic. The Nation, which had already sent condolences to the Kennedy family, publicly censured him. He retained his post but was barred from public speaking for 90 days.

  By early 1964, several Nation members had begun to believe Malcolm X was a threat to Muhammad's leadership. Publishers were pursuing his autobiography. When author Louis Lomax wrote a 1963 book about the Nation, he placed Malcolm X's photograph on the cover and included five of his speeches but only one of Muhammad's. The disparity made Muhammad envious. On the 8th of March 1964, Malcolm X publicly announced his departure from the Nation of Islam.

• 6. The Hajj and a Changed World

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  In April 1964, with financial help from his half-sister Ella Little-Collins, Malcolm X flew to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to begin the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that is obligatory for every Muslim who is able to undertake it. His US citizenship and inability to speak Arabic caused authorities to question whether he was truly a Muslim; he was held in Jeddah. He had been given a copy of Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam's book The Eternal Message of Muhammad along with his visa approval, and he contacted the author. Azzam's son arranged his release and lent him his personal hotel suite. The following morning Malcolm X learned that Prince Faisal had designated him a state guest. Several days later, after completing the Hajj rituals, he had an audience with the prince.

  What he witnessed during the pilgrimage shook something loose in his thinking. He later described seeing Muslims of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans, interacting as equals. He wrote from Mecca that these experiences had convinced him to rearrange his thinking about race and to set aside some of his earlier conclusions. After the Hajj he traveled across Africa, and the continent's leaders received him with remarkable openness. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, and Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria all invited him to serve in their governments. After he spoke at the University of Ibadan, the Nigerian Muslim Students Association gave him the honorary Yoruba title Omowale, meaning the son who has come home. He later called this his most treasured honor.

  In November 1964, on his way back from Africa, he stopped in Paris and spoke at the Salle de la Mutualite. Then on the 30th of November he flew to the United Kingdom. On the 3rd of December he took part in a debate at the Oxford Union Society on a motion drawn from a statement by US presidential candidate Barry Goldwater: extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. Malcolm X argued for the affirmative, and interest in the debate was so high that the BBC televised it nationally. At Oxford, he rejected the label of black Muslim, describing himself instead as a Muslim who happened to be black, a framing that reflected his conversion to Sunni Islam.

  In a conversation with journalist Gordon Parks two days before his death, he said that listening to Nasser, Ben Bella, and Nkrumah had awakened him to the dangers of racism as a force that destroyed nations, not just individuals. He said he regretted having once turned away a white college student who wanted to help bring Black and white people together. He had been, he said, like a zombie: hypnotized and pointed in a direction, told to march. Twelve years of it, he called a bad scene.

• 7. Assassination and Aftermath

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  Throughout 1964, death threats against Malcolm X had multiplied. In February, a leader of Temple Number Seven ordered the bombing of his car. In March, Elijah Muhammad told Boston minister Louis X that hypocrites like Malcolm should have their heads cut off. The April 10th issue of Muhammad Speaks published a cartoon depicting Malcolm X's severed, bouncing head. On the 8th of June, FBI surveillance recorded a phone call in which Betty Shabazz was told her husband was as good as dead. On the night of the 14th of February 1965, the night before a scheduled hearing on postponing an eviction from their home in East Elmhurst, Queens, the house was destroyed by fire.

  On the 19th of February, Malcolm X told an interviewer that the Nation of Islam was actively trying to kill him. Two days later, on the 21st of February 1965, he was preparing to address the Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom. Someone in the 400-person audience shouted an accusation to create a disturbance. As Malcolm X and his bodyguards moved to calm the situation, a man rushed forward and fired a sawed-off shotgun into his chest. Two others charged the stage with semi-automatic handguns. The autopsy found 21 gunshot wounds.

  Three men were convicted of murder in March 1966 and sentenced to life in prison: Talmadge Hayer, Norman 3X Butler, and Thomas 15X Johnson. Hayer confessed at trial but insisted the other two were not his co-conspirators. In 1977 and 1978 he signed affidavits naming four members of Newark's Mosque No. 25 as the actual participants. Those affidavits did not reopen the case. In 2021, Butler (now known as Muhammad Abdul Aziz) and Johnson (who had taken the name Khalil Islam and died in August 2009) were exonerated after a review found the FBI and New York Police Department had withheld key evidence during the trial. On the 14th of July 2022, Aziz filed suit in federal court seeking 40 million dollars in damages related to his wrongful imprisonment.

  The public viewing at Unity Funeral Home in Harlem drew between 14,000 and 30,000 mourners over several days. At the funeral on the 27th of February, loudspeakers carried the service to an overflow crowd outside a thousand-seat church in Harlem. Actor and activist Ossie Davis delivered the eulogy, calling Malcolm X our shining black prince who didn't hesitate to die because he loved us so. Martin Luther King Jr. sent a telegram to Betty Shabazz calling the assassination shocking and tragic, and said Malcolm had a great ability to put his finger on the existence and root of the problem. Friends took up the gravediggers' shovels to complete the burial themselves at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

  In 1992, the film Malcolm X was released, an adaptation of the autobiography he had co-written with Alex Haley, published posthumously in 1965. Haley completed the book after Malcolm X's death; Malcolm had told him: if I'm alive when this book comes out, it will be a miracle. In 1998, Time named The Autobiography of Malcolm X one of the ten most influential nonfiction books of the twentieth century. The Audubon Ballroom where he was killed was partly redeveloped in 2005 to house the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center.