Malcolm Little was born May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska, the fourth of seven children of Grenada-born Louise Helen Little (née Langdon) and Georgia-born Earl Little. Earl was an outspoken Baptist lay speaker, and he and Louise were admirers of Pan-African activist Marcus Garvey. Earl was a local leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and Louise served as secretary and "branch reporter", sending news of local UNIA activities to Negro World; they inculcated self-reliance and black pride in their children. Malcolm X later said that White violence killed four of his father's brothers.
Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of Islam (NOI) until 1964, he was a vocal advocate for Black empowerment and the promotion of Islam within the Black community. A posthumous autobiography, on which he collaborated with Alex Haley, was published in 1965.
Because of Ku Klux Klan threats, Earl's UNIA activities were said to be "spreading trouble" and the family relocated in 1926 to Milwaukee, and shortly thereafter to Lansing, Michigan. There, the family was frequently harassed by the Black Legion, a White racist group Earl accused of burning their family home in 1929.
In 1937, a man Louise had been dating—marriage had seemed a possibility—vanished from her life when she became pregnant with his child. In late 1938, she had a nervous breakdown and was committed to Kalamazoo State Hospital. The children were separated and sent to foster homes. Malcolm and his siblings secured her release 24 years later.
From age 14 to 21, Malcolm held a variety of jobs while living with his half-sister Ella Little-Collins in Roxbury, a largely African American neighborhood of Boston.
Malcolm attended West Junior High School in Lansing and then Mason High School in Mason, Michigan, but left high school in 1941, before graduating. He excelled in junior high school but dropped out of high school after a White teacher told him that practicing law, his aspiration at the time, was "no realistic goal for a nigger." Later, Malcolm X recalled feeling that the White world offered no place for a career-oriented Black man, regardless of talent.
After a short time in Flint, Michigan, he moved to New York City's Harlem neighborhood in 1943, where he found employment on the New Haven Railroad and engaged in drug dealing, gambling, racketeering, robbery, and pimping. According to biographer Bruce Perry, Malcolm also occasionally had sex with other men, usually for money, though this conjecture has been disputed by those who knew him. He befriended John Elroy Sanford, a fellow dishwasher at Jimmy's Chicken Shack in Harlem who aspired to be a professional comedian. Both men had reddish hair, so Sanford was called "Chicago Red" after his hometown, and Malcolm was known as "Detroit Red". Years later, Sanford became famous as comedian and actor Redd Foxx.
In late 1945, Malcolm returned to Boston, where he and four accomplices committed a series of burglaries targeting wealthy White families. In 1946, he was arrested while picking up a stolen watch he had left at a shop for repairs, and in February began serving a sentence of eight to ten years at Charlestown State Prison for larceny and breaking and entering. Two years later, Malcolm was transferred to Norfolk Prison Colony (also in Massachusetts).
Malcolm spent his adolescence living in a series of foster homes or with relatives after his father's death and his mother's hospitalization. He committed various crimes, being sentenced to 8 to 10 years in prison in 1946 for larceny and burglary. In prison, he joined the Nation of Islam, adopting the name Malcolm X to symbolize his unknown African ancestral surname while discarding "the white slavemaster name of 'Little'", and after his parole in 1952 quickly became one of the organization's most influential leaders. He was the public face of the organization for 12 years, advocating Black empowerment and separation of Black and White Americans, and criticizing Martin Luther King Jr. and the mainstream civil rights movement for its emphasis on non-violence and racial integration. Malcolm X also expressed pride in some of the Nation's social welfare achievements, such as its free drug rehabilitation program. From the 1950s onward, Malcolm X was subjected to surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
At this time, several of his siblings wrote to him about the Nation of Islam, a relatively new religious movement preaching Black self-reliance and, ultimately, the return of the African diaspora to Africa, where they would be free from White American and European domination. He showed scant interest at first, but after his brother Reginald wrote in 1948, "Malcolm, don't eat any more pork and don't smoke any more cigarettes. I'll show you how to get out of prison", he almost instantly quit smoking and began to refuse pork.
In 1950, the FBI opened a file on Malcolm after he wrote a letter from prison to President Harry S. Truman expressing opposition to the Korean War and declaring himself a communist. That year, he also began signing his name "Malcolm X." Muhammad instructed his followers to leave their family names behind when they joined the Nation of Islam and use "X" instead. When the time was right, after they had proven their sincerity, he said, he would reveal the Muslim's "original name." In his autobiography, Malcolm X explained that the "X" symbolized the true African family name that he could never know. "For me, my 'X' replaced the white slavemaster name of 'Little' which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed upon my paternal forebears."
From his adoption of the Nation of Islam in 1952 until he broke with it in 1964, Malcolm X promoted the Nation's teachings. These included beliefs:
After his parole in August 1952, Malcolm X visited Elijah Muhammad in Chicago. In June 1953, he was named assistant minister of the Nation's Temple Number One in Detroit. Later that year he established Boston's Temple Number 11; in March 1954, he expanded Temple Number 12 in Philadelphia; and two months later he was selected to lead Temple Number 7 in Harlem, where he rapidly expanded its membership.
In 1953, the FBI began surveillance of him, turning its attention from Malcolm X's possible communist associations to his rapid ascent in the Nation of Islam.
In 1955, Betty Sanders met Malcolm X after one of his lectures, then again at a dinner party; soon she was regularly attending his lectures. In 1956, she joined the Nation of Islam, changing her name to Betty X. One-on-one dates were contrary to the Nation's teachings, so the couple courted at social events with dozens or hundreds of others, and Malcolm X made a point of inviting her on the frequent group visits he led to New York City's museums and libraries.
The American public first became aware of Malcolm X in 1957, after Hinton Johnson, a Nation of Islam member, was beaten by two New York City police officers. On April 26, Johnson and two other passersby—also Nation of Islam members—saw the officers beating an African-American man with nightsticks. When they attempted to intervene, shouting, "You're not in Alabama ... this is New York!" one of the officers turned on Johnson, beating him so severely that he suffered brain contusions and subdural hemorrhaging. All four African American men were arrested.
Malcolm X proposed during a telephone call from Detroit in January 1958, and they married two days later. They had six daughters: Attallah (b. 1958; Arabic for "gift of God"; perhaps named after Attila the Hun); Qubilah (b. 1960, named after Kublai Khan); Ilyasah (b. 1962, named after Elijah Muhammad); Gamilah Lumumba (b. 1964, named after Gamal Abdel Nasser and Patrice Lumumba); and twins Malikah (1965–2021) and Malaak (b. 1965, both born after their father's death, and named in his honor).
In 1959, Malcolm X visited and met with religious leaders at Al-Aqsa mosque as a representative of Elijah Muhammad. In 1964, X visited the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza where he visited a local hospital and dined with religious leaders in Gaza. He also met Palestinian poet, Harun Hashem Rashid, who recounted to him how he narrowly escaped the Khan Younis massacre of 1956. A few weeks later, Malcolm X headed to Cairo where he met with members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. These meetings and experiences inspired Malcolm X to write an essay entitled "Zionist Logic" that was published in the Egyptian Gazette. In this essay Malcolm X explained how the "present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history" and described how Zionism was essentially a colonial and imperialist project:
Malcolm X had already visited the United Arab Republic (a short-lived political union between Egypt and Syria), Sudan, Nigeria, and Ghana in 1959 to make arrangements for a tour of Africa by Elijah Muhammad. After his pilgrimage to Mecca in April 1964, he visited Africa a second time. He returned to the United States in late May and flew to Africa again in July. During these visits he met officials, gave interviews, and spoke on radio and television in Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanganyika, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Sudan, Senegal, Liberia, Algeria and Morocco.
In September 1960, at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, Malcolm X was invited to the official functions of several African nations. He met Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea, and Kenneth Kaunda of the Zambian African National Congress. Fidel Castro also attended the Assembly, and Malcolm X met publicly with him as part of a welcoming committee of Harlem community leaders. Castro was sufficiently impressed with Malcolm X to suggest a private meeting, and after two hours of talking, Castro invited Malcolm X to visit Cuba.
In 1961, Malcolm X spoke at a NOI rally alongside George Lincoln Rockwell, the head of the American Nazi Party. Rockwell saw overlap between Black nationalism and White supremacy. According to historian Stephen H. Norwood, Malcolm X's negative statements about Jews continued even close to his death, referring to Jews as "bloodsucker[s]" in statements he made during the last months of his life.
In late 1961, there were violent confrontations between the Nation of Islam members and police in South Central Los Angeles, and numerous Muslims were arrested. They were acquitted, but tensions had been raised. Just after midnight on April 27, 1962, two LAPD officers, unprovoked, shoved and beat several Muslims outside Temple Number 27. A large crowd of angry Muslims emerged from the mosque and the officers attempted to intimidate them.
In the late 1960s, increasingly radical Black activists based their movements largely on Malcolm X and his teachings. The Black Power movement, the Black Arts Movement, and the widespread adoption of the slogan "Black is beautiful" can all trace their roots to Malcolm X. In 1963, Malcolm X began a collaboration with Alex Haley on his life story, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. He told Haley, "If I'm alive when this book comes out, it will be a miracle." Haley completed and published it some months after the assassination.
Rumors were circulating that Muhammad was conducting extramarital affairs with young Nation secretaries—which would constitute a serious violation of Nation teachings. After first discounting the rumors, Malcolm X came to believe them after he spoke with Muhammad's son Wallace and with the girls making the accusations. Muhammad confirmed the rumors in 1963, attempting to justify his behavior by referring to precedents set by Biblical prophets.
Malcolm especially hated Moïse Tshombe of the Congo as an "Uncle Tom" figure. In a 1964 speech in New York, he called Tshombe "the worse African ever born" and "the man who in cold blood, cold blood, committed an international crime-murdered Patrice Lumumba". Tshombe's decision in 1964 to hire White mercenaries to put down the Simba rebellion greatly offended Malcolm, who accused the mercenaries of committing war crimes against the Congolese.
While he was a member of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X taught its beliefs, and his statements often began with the phrase "The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that ..." It is virtually impossible now to discern whether Malcolm X's personal beliefs at the time diverged from the teachings of the Nation of Islam. After he left the Nation in 1964, he compared himself to a ventriloquist's dummy who could only say what Elijah Muhammad told him to say.
He inspired the boxer Muhammad Ali to join the Nation, and the two became close. In January 1964, Ali brought Malcolm X and his family to Miami to watch him train for his fight against Sonny Liston. When Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam, he tried to convince Ali (who had just been renamed by Elijah Muhammad) to join him in converting to Sunni Islam, but Ali instead broke ties with him, later describing the break as one of his greatest regrets.
In April 1964, with financial help from his half-sister Ella Little-Collins, Malcolm X flew to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, as the start of his Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca obligatory for every Muslim who is able to do so. He was delayed in Jeddah when his U.S. citizenship and inability to speak Arabic caused his status as a Muslim to be questioned.
The September 1964 issue of Ebony dramatized Malcolm X's defiance of these threats by publishing a photograph of him holding an M1 carbine while peering out of a window.
Following his return to the United States, Malcolm X continued to speak about the issue of Palestine describing in 1965 in one of his speeches in Detroit how "We need a free Palestine... We don't need a divided Palestine. We need a whole Palestine."
The house that once stood at 3448 Pinkney Street in North Omaha, Nebraska, was the first home of Malcolm Little with his birth family. The house was torn down in 1965 by new owners who did not know of its connection with Malcolm X. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. A Nebraska Historical Marker now marks the site. The Malcolm X—Ella Little-Collins House in the Roxbury section of Boston, Massachusetts, where Malcolm X lived with his half-sister Ella Little-Collins and began getting involved in the Nation of Islam, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2021. Several archaeological surveys have been performed on the house's grounds, and there are ongoing efforts to preserve the site.
One gunman, Nation of Islam member Talmadge Hayer (also known as Thomas Hagan), was beaten by the crowd before police arrived. Witnesses identified the other gunmen as Nation members Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson. All three were convicted of murder in March 1966 and sentenced to life in prison.
Dozens of schools have been named after Malcolm X, including Malcolm X Shabazz High School in Newark, New Jersey, Malcolm Shabazz City High School in Madison, Wisconsin, Malcolm X College in Chicago, Illinois, and El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz Academy in Lansing, Michigan. Malcolm X Liberation University, based on the Pan-Africanist ideas of Malcolm X, was founded in 1969 in North Carolina.
In cities across the United States, Malcolm X's birthday (May 19) is commemorated as Malcolm X Day. The first known celebration of Malcolm X Day took place in Washington, D.C., in 1971. The city of Berkeley, California, has recognized Malcolm X's birthday as a citywide holiday since 1979.
In Lansing, Michigan, a Michigan Historical Marker was erected in 1975 on Malcolm Little's childhood home. The city is also home to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz Academy, a public charter school with an Afrocentric focus. The school is located in the building where Little attended elementary school.
At trial, Hayer confessed, but refused to identify the other assailants except to assert that they were not Butler and Johnson. In 1977 and 1978, he signed affidavits reasserting Butler's and Johnson's innocence, naming four other Nation members of Newark's Mosque No. 25 as participants in the murder or its planning. These affidavits did not result in the case being reopened.
Butler, today known as Muhammad Abdul Aziz, was paroled in 1985 and became the head of the Nation's Harlem mosque in 1998; he maintains his innocence. In prison Johnson, who changed his name to Khalil Islam, rejected the Nation's teachings and converted to Sunni Islam. Released in 1987, he maintained his innocence until his death in August 2009. Hayer, who also rejected the Nation's teachings while in prison and converted to Sunni Islam, is known today as Mujahid Halim. He was paroled in 2010.
Many cities have renamed streets after Malcolm X. In 1987, New York mayor Ed Koch proclaimed Lenox Avenue in Harlem to be Malcolm X Boulevard. The name of Reid Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, was changed to Malcolm X Boulevard in 1985. Brooklyn also has El Shabazz Playground that was named after him. New Dudley Street, in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, was renamed Malcolm X Boulevard in the 1990s. In 1997, Oakland Avenue in Dallas, Texas, was renamed Malcolm X Boulevard. Main Street in Lansing, Michigan, was renamed Malcolm X Street in 2010. In 2016, Ankara, Turkey, renamed the street on which the U.S. is building its new embassy after Malcolm X.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a resurgence of interest in his life among young people. Hip-hop groups such as Public Enemy adopted Malcolm X as an icon, and his image was displayed in hundreds of thousands of homes, offices, and schools, as well as on T-shirts and jackets. In 1986 Ella Little-Collins merged the Organization of Afro-American Unity with the African American Defense League.
In 1986, composer Anthony Davis's opera X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X premiered at the New York City Opera. It was the first work by Davis, who would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his opera The Central Park Five (2019). In 2023, it was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in a production by Robert O'Hara, with Will Liverman playing the title role. It received positive reviews.
In 1992 the film Malcolm X, an adaptation of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, was released,. In 1998, Time named The Autobiography of Malcolm X one of the ten most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century.
In 1996, the first library named after Malcolm X was opened, the Malcolm X Branch Library and Performing Arts Center of the San Diego Public Library system.
The U.S. Postal Service issued a Malcolm X postage stamp in 1999. In 2005, Columbia University announced the opening of the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center. The memorial is located in the Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm X was assassinated. Collections of Malcolm X's papers are held by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Robert W. Woodruff Library.
In a 60 Minutes interview that aired during May 2000, Farrakhan stated that some things he said may have led to the assassination of Malcolm X. "I may have been complicit in words that I spoke," he said, adding "I acknowledge that and regret that any word that I have said caused the loss of life of a human being." A few days later Farrakhan denied that he "ordered the assassination" of Malcolm X, although he again acknowledged that he "created the atmosphere that ultimately led to Malcolm X's assassination."
A controversial figure accused of preaching racism and violence, Malcolm X is also a widely celebrated figure within African American and Muslim American communities for his pursuit of racial justice. He was posthumously honored with Malcolm X Day, on which he is commemorated in various cities across the United States. Hundreds of streets and schools in the U.S. have been renamed in his honor, while the Audubon Ballroom, the site of his assassination, was partly redeveloped in 2005 to accommodate the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center.
No consensus has been reached on who was responsible for the assassination. In August 2014, an online petition was started using the White House online petition mechanism to call on the government to release, without alteration, any files they still held relating to the murder of Malcolm X. In January 2019, members of the families of Malcolm X, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy were among dozens of Americans who signed a public statement calling for a truth and reconciliation commission to persuade Congress or the Justice Department to review the assassinations of all four leaders during the 1960s.
After a community-led initiative, Conrad Grebel University College in Canada (affiliated with the University of Waterloo) launched the Malcolm X Peace and Conflict Studies Scholarship in 2021 to support Black and Indigenous students enrolled in their Master of Peace and Conflict Studies program.
In 2021, Muhammad Abdul Aziz and Khalil Islam (formerly Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson) were exonerated from their murder convictions, following a review that found the FBI and the New York Police Department withheld key evidence during the trial. On July 14, 2022, Aziz filed suit in the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn against the City of New York, seeking $40 million in damages related to his wrongful imprisonment.
In the 1960s, Malcolm X began to grow disillusioned with the Nation of Islam, as well as with its leader, Elijah Muhammad. He subsequently embraced Sunni Islam and the civil rights movement after completing the Hajj to Mecca and became known as "el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz," which roughly translates to "The Pilgrim Malcolm the Patriarch". After a brief period of travel across Africa, he publicly renounced the Nation of Islam and founded the Islamic Muslim Mosque, Inc. (MMI) and the Pan-African Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). Throughout 1964, his conflict with the Nation of Islam intensified, and he was repeatedly sent death threats. On February 21, 1965, he was assassinated in New York City. Three Nation members were charged with the murder and given indeterminate life sentences. In 2021, two of the convictions were vacated. Speculation about the assassination and whether it was conceived or aided by leading or additional members of the Nation, or with law enforcement agencies, has persisted for decades.
A February 21, 2021, press conference attended by three of Malcolm X's daughters and members of deceased NYPD undercover officer Raymond Wood's family released his authorized posthumous letter that stated in part: "I was told to encourage leaders and members of the civil rights groups to commit felonious acts." The Guardian reports that "The arrests kept the two men from managing door security at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights on the day of the shooting, according to the letter." On February 26, 2021, the daughter of Raymond Wood, Kelly Wood, stated that the letter presented at the February 21 press conference is fake. Kelly Wood stated that the letter was created by her cousin Reggie Wood for attention and book sales.
When Malcolm was six, his father died in what has been officially ruled a streetcar accident, though his mother Louise believed Earl had been murdered by the Black Legion. Rumors that White racists were responsible for his father's death were widely circulated and were very disturbing to Malcolm X as a child. As an adult, he expressed conflicting beliefs on the question. After a dispute with creditors, Louise received a life insurance benefit (nominally $1,000 —about $20,000 in 2023) in payments of $18 per month; the issuer of another, larger policy refused to pay, claiming her husband Earl had committed suicide. To make ends meet, Louise rented out part of her garden, and her sons hunted game.
In late 1948, Malcolm wrote to Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. Muhammad advised him to renounce his past, humbly bow in prayer to God and promise never to engage in destructive behavior again. Though he later recalled the inner struggle he had before bending his knees to pray, Malcolm soon became a member of the Nation of Islam, maintaining a regular correspondence with Muhammad.
In early 2023, members of Malcolm X's family said they would file a $100 million wrongful death lawsuit against the CIA, the FBI, the NYPD and others for allegedly concealing evidence related to the assassination and for alleged involvement to it. The attorney representing the family is Benjamin Crump.