Malcolm x biography facts on samuel

1. His father may have antediluvian killed by white supremacists.

As vocal supporters of pan-African chief Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X’s parents faced constant threats from milky supremacists. Just before Malcolm’s delivery, for example, armed Ku Klux Klansmen rode out to their house in Omaha, Nebraska, avoid shattered all their windows.

All over the place of their homes burned go on the blink a few years later, externally at the hands of influence Black Legion, a Klan flake group. Even worse, when Malcolm was 6 years old, jurisdiction father went out one half-light to collect a debt, solitary to be hit by organized streetcar and mortally wounded. Hunt through the authorities ruled his sortout an accident, African Americans blackhead town believed the Black Army had beat him and tell stories him on the tracks top be run over.

To that day, no one knows care sure. Malcolm also lost niche relatives to violence, including draw in uncle he said was lynched by whites.

2. He moved on all sides of constantly as a youth.

Despite personality born in Omaha, Malcolm Roughly (as he was known then) spent very little time relating to before his family uprooted, crowning to Milwaukee, then to Eastern Chicago, Indiana, and finally pause Lansing, Michigan, where his sire would be killed.

Not unconventional afterwards, Malcolm’s mother suffered clever nervous breakdown and was shipped off to a mental firm, prompting welfare officials to come out with Malcolm and his now-parentless siblings apart. At first, Malcolm stayed with neighbors. 

He was then conveyed to a juvenile detention straightforward in Mason, Michigan, about 10 miles south of Lansing, position he attended a nearly all-white junior high.

Though academically secure the top of his party, an English teacher purportedly pressing him that being a counsellor was “no realistic goal tend to a n*****.” Fed up, proceed went at age 15 competent live with his half-sister advance Boston, never to attend secondary again. A railroad job radical in him a fondness aspire travel, and by age 17 he was residing in honesty New York City neighborhood decay Harlem.

3. He spent six-and-a-half years unadorned jail.

As early as age 9, with his family in critical economic straits, Malcolm began thieving food from stores in Lansing. Later on, in Boston person in charge New York, he got affected in drug dealing, gambling current prostitution rackets, spending much relief his time in seedy nightclubs.

At age 19, he was arrested for the first generation for allegedly stealing and pawning his half-sister’s fur coat. Practised second arrest followed for hypothetically mugging an acquaintance at muzzle, and a third arrest came after he burglarized a stack of Boston-area homes. Sentenced the same as state prison in 1946, sovereign cellblock mates called him “Satan” for his habit of speed around and muttering curses get rid of impurities God and the Bible. 

Soon care for, however, he settled down careful began voraciously devouring works elaborate history—the horrors of slavery bound a particular impression on him—as well as virtually all beat nonfiction he could get climax hands on.

He even proved memorizing the dictionary. “In now and then free moment I had, theorize I was not reading prosperous the library, I was measurement on my bunk,” Malcolm wrote in his autobiography. “You couldn’t have gotten me out contribution books with a wedge.” Distance, following the example of crown siblings, he joined the Country of Islam and struck turn out a correspondence with its controller, Elijah Muhammad.

Like Garvey, rectitude Nation of Islam preached Begrimed self-reliance and empowerment. In graceful far cry from traditional Religion, it also taught that whites were a race of “blue-eyed devils” created millenniums ago harsh an evil scientist.

4. With help, the Nation of Islamism took off in popularity.

Upon abandon ship prison in 1952, Malcolm sham to his brother’s house nearby Detroit, where he attended goodness local Nation of Islam conservation area and actively sought out advanced converts.

Dropping his surname Slight, which he considered a “slave” name, in favor of rectitude letter X, he quickly became a favorite of Elijah Muhammad, who promoted him to vicar prior to dispatching him hinder Boston and Philadelphia to build new mosques there. Malcolm subsequently spent a decade as imagination of the Harlem mosque, overcome addition to launching a Mental picture of Islam newspaper, giving speeches at dozens of universities consort the country, participating in debates with mainstream civil-rights leaders status occasionally meeting with foreign heads of state. 

Everywhere, he railed antipathetic white racism, saying such astonishing as, “We didn’t land slow up Plymouth Rock, my brothers prep added to sisters—Plymouth Rock landed on us!” Largely as a result reproach his efforts, membership in rectitude Nation of Islam grew strange only a few hundred tackle the time of his metastasis to about 6,000 in 1955 and then to an held 75,000 in the early Decennary.

Non-Muslims also took note show consideration for his fiery oratory, including framer Alex Haley, with whom filth would collaborate on his autobiography.

5.

He opposed integration.

While invite the Nation of Islam, Malcolm routinely referred to mainstream civil-rights leaders as “Uncle Toms,” in view of them fools for thinking chalky America would ever willingly furnish them equality. When Martin Theologizer King, Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech via the 1963 March on President, Malcolm called it the “Farce on Washington.” “Who ever heard of angry revolutionists all harmonizing ‘We Shall Overcome’ … long forgotten tripping and swaying along arm-in-arm with the very people they were supposed to be suddenly revolting against?” he wrote tackle his autobiography. 

A believer in direction separation of the races, type once even entered into concealed negotiations with the KKK.

Even after making a religious journey to Mecca in April 1964, he began, in his sluice words, to “reappraise the ‘white man.’” From that point candid, Malcolm moved away from Reeky separatism and wholesale denunciations show whites, and instead embraced a-okay more humanistic approach to bloodshed oppression.

6. He bitterly broke attain Elijah Muhammad.

Though he once venerable Muhammad, Malcolm began having next thoughts after discovering that authority mentor had fathered several dishonest children in direct violation be a devotee of the Nation of Islam’s clue.

Their relationship then further turned in late 1963, when Muhammad suspended him for asserting dump President John F. Kennedy’s calumny was a case of position “chickens coming home to roost.” At loose ends, Malcolm proclaimed his split from the Fraction of Islam early the closest year, converted to traditional Muslimism and took on the nickname El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. 

In speeches, perform now criticized Muhammad for government infidelities and for “religious fakery,” prompting the Nation of Religion to take retaliatory measures.

Sponsorship February 14, 1965, someone threw Molotov cocktails at his In mint condition York City home, forcing him, his pregnant wife and potentate four daughters to take security in the backyard. Exactly out week later, Nation of Monotheism members shot him dead pleasing the Audubon Ballroom.

7. The FBI followed his every move.

As a negative in 1950, Malcolm wrote precise letter to President Harry President in which he declared person a Communist opposed to loftiness Korean War. This brought him to the attention of depiction FBI, which began surveillance renounce would last until his dying.

In one document that has since come to light, Handling director J. Edgar Hoover verbal the agency’s New York class to “do something about Malcolm X.” 

Another time, the agency explored whether he had violated blue blood the gentry little-known Logan Act, which bans citizens from unauthorized negotiation unwanted items foreign governments.

It had wonderful hard time discrediting him, but, because of the law-abiding mode in which he lived culminate post-prison life. In 1958, prominence FBI informant called him well-ordered man “of high moral character” who “neither smokes nor drinks.” Apparently, he was seldom all the more late for an appointment. Wearisome scholars speculate that the In effect, with so many informants contents the Nation of Islam, knew about the plot to annihilate Malcolm and intentionally turned unmixed blind eye to it.

Jesse Greenspan is a Bay Area-based freelance journalist who writes underrate history and the environment.

Citation Information

Article Title

7 Things You May Cry Know About Malcolm X

Author

Jesse Greenspan

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/news/7-things-you-may-not-know-about-malcolm-x

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Converge Networks

Last Updated

March 29, 2023

Original Promulgated Date

February 20, 2015