Prisoner/Activist Profile: Malcolm X
Article by Julia Lutsky
Long before 1925 when Malcolm was born in Omaha, Nebraska, his father Earl Little, a Baptist minister, had been an activist in the Marcus Garvey Negro Improvement Association. Little’s activism earned him numerous death threats and forced him to relocate his family frequently. When Malcolm was four, Little’s mutilated body was found on the streetcar tracks in Lansing, Michigan, where the family was then living. The police called it an accident but Malcolm’s family blamed the white supremacist Black Legion. His mother, Louise, faced with raising nine children alone broke under the strain; six years later when Malcolm was 12, she was committed to a mental institution where she remained until 1963.
Malcolm lived with a foster family for four years and then he was sent to his elder half-sister, Ella Collins, in Roxbury, Massachusetts. He had already become familiar with the underworld and though he was a good student, near the top of his class, he left school after the eighth grade, took a job shoe shining and entered Roxbury’s hustler society. He soon became proficient at dealing drugs. Soon Malcolm was shuttling between Roxbury and Harlem, and by 1942 he had become an expert at coordinating drug, prostitution and gambling rings.
Eventually his activities caught up with him and, in early 1946, he was sentenced to 7 years in the Charleston, Massachusetts prison for burglary. While he was in prison his youngest brother, Reginald, a follower of Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, was a frequent visitor. Malcolm, who had determined to use the time in prison to educate himself, became interested in his brother’s religion and began to read everything he could find. At the insistence of Ella and of Reginald he converted to the Nation of Islam, renounced his slave name of Little and was given the name “X”. Eventually he was corresponding directly with Elijah Muhammad.
Elijah Muhammad had tapped into the energy of a people relegated to second class citizenship and repressed since the days of slavery. Spiritual heir to Marcus Garvey, he did not preach integration but rather a separate black nation. Malcolm became one of the Nation’s foremost spokesmen and most eloquent ministers; he founded mosques in several cities including Boston, Harlem and Philadelphia.
The Black Muslim movement grew separate from, but alongside, the civil rights movement during the 1950s and early 60s. Between 1952 and 1963 its membership grew from 500 to approximately 30,000. Much of this must be credited to Malcolm’s hard work—he made use of the press, radio and television to get the Nation’s message across. In 1959 he was asked to participate in a week long Mike Wallace TV program “The Hate that Hate Produced” in which Wallace attempted to explore the fundamentals of the Nation of Islam. By this time it had become obvious that Malcolm had eclipsed Elijah Muhammad as the Nation’s principal spokesman. At the same time, Malcolm was becoming increasingly uncomfortable in the orthodoxy of the Nation.
Shortly before President John F. Kennedy was shot to death in November, 1963 Malcolm expressed both the Black Muslim ethos and his own emerging independence: “Revolution is bloody, revolution is hostile, revolution knows no compromise, revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way...Who ever heard of a revolution where they lock arms ... singing ‘We Shall Overcome’? You don’t do that in a revolution. You don’t do any singing, you’re too busy swinging. It’s based on land. A revolutionary wants land so he can set up his own nation, an independent nation.” (Message to the Grass Roots, Detroit, November 10, 1963.)
Malcolm’s observation that the murder of President Kennedy was a case of “chickens coming home to roost” caused Elijah Muhammad to forbid him to speak for 90 days. This, in addition to differences with some of the more conservative members of the Black Muslim movement and his personal disappointment with Elijah Muhammad, led Malcolm to break irrevocably with the Nation in March of 1964, calling it sectarian. At no time, though, did he cease being a Muslim.
Later that same year he traveled to Mecca to perform his pilgrimage, the Hajj; it is the obligation of all Muslims to perform this if they are able. It formed one more piece of his education for it was during this trip that he
“...first began to perceive that ‘white man,’ as commonly used means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. In America, ‘white man’ meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That ... was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about ‘white’ men.” (The Autobiography of Malcolm X )
When he returned he formed the secular Organization of Afro American Unity. He would work with existing civil rights movements simply because “there is no use deceiving ourselves. Good education, housing and jobs are imperatives for the Negroes and I shall support them in their fight to support these objectives...”( Press conference, Sheraton Hotel, New York, March 12, 1964.) He had grown from being an activist for one race and religion to being an activist for all of humankind. Within a few short months he would be cut down precisely for his outspokenness, much as his father was.
Malcolm’s activities did not pass unnoticed by the powers that be. FBI agents infiltrated the Nation, placing bugs, wiretaps and cameras in order to monitor both his activities and those of the group. His departure from the Nation caused much rancor and bitterness and it was reported he was marked for assassination. In February of 1965 the home he shared with his pregnant wife Betty and four daughters in East Elmhurst, New York, was firebombed. No one was hurt but on February 21st, as he was speaking at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, he was attacked and cut down by a fusillade of bullets. No motive was given for his murder but three Nation of Islam members were convicted and sentenced to prison in 1966. His death, like that of Martin Luther King three years later, leaves many questions still unanswered.
“If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us, and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.” Malcolm X, November 1963, New York City
