Who Was Malcolm X?

Born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, Malcolm X was an African-American Muslim religious leader and human rights activist during the early 1960s civil rights movement in the U.S.

Malcolm was born in Nebraska and was moved with his family while an infant to Lansing, Michigan. Malcolm was orphaned at age six. Amidst poverty, his mother, Louise Little, was committed to a mental facility in 1939, and Malcolm and his siblings were sent to foster homes or to live with family members.

Serving a prison sentence from 1946-52 led to his conversion to Islam and joining the Nation of Islam, an African American movement that combined elements of Islam with Black nationalism.

Malcolm X served as the voice of African Americans during the major phase of the civil rights movement from 1955 to 1965, but with a more antithetical approach than Martin Luther King, Jr.’s mainstream civil rights movement of integration and nonviolence.

The growing hostility between Malcolm and Nation leader Elijah Muhammad over the political direction of the Nation culminated in his exit and later assassination on February 21, 1965, while delivering a lecture at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem.

He left behind his wife, Betty Shabazz, and six daughters.

His martyrdom, concepts, and public lectures contributed to the development of Black nationalist ideology and the Black Power movement and helped to immortalize autonomy and independence among the African American populace in the 1960s and ’70s.